#for the fandom misogyny issue its like... I really see it & understand it in the hatchetfield fandom

[smytherines]

This is correct and you should say it.

I can understand Tatiana rescuing Curt from DMA-- she feels bad that she set this (honestly kinda pathetic at this point) guy up to die. That tracks. She gets him out of there and then they split up. Tatiana's motivation is to get rid of the leverage BVN has over her so she can reunite with her family. That makes sense, so far so good. But then she shows up in Geneva (for reasons that, like you said, the plot never explains but we can reasonably assume) and she saves Curt again. And this time Curt is even more of a mess, he's flailing and panicking and Tatiana gets him out of there.

But then, instead of continuing on with her objective (which, again, is reuniting with her family) she travels nearly 7000 miles away from her objective with a guy she has spoken to for all of five minutes (while they were both trying to manipulate each other)

She tells him all of her secrets, is incredibly focused on taking care of him and listening to all his existential pain, and is about to have sex with this guy until he makes it obvious that he is not into women. That's where her character, to me at least, stops being governed by her own motivations and becomes an accessory to the protagonist. At this point in the story there is absolutely zero reason for her to trust Curt, to set her goals aside to travel halfway around the world with him, to tell him her life story and to comfort him over the loss of his partner

I am personally more interested in Barb, and woo boy the way she is written is... oof. She's clearly intelligent enough to work at A.S.S. and invent guns that look like everyday objects, and by the time we meet her she is already working SOLO on the same technology Owen and Chimera are trying to develop, but those are all sort of treated as incidental to her helping Curt and swooning over Curt and sexually harassing/assaulting Curt, and at the end of the show she steals technology from her extremely classified government job to give to Curt, and helps Tatiana detonate a hydrogen bomb to help Curt, and while in the story she isn't punished for those actions they also don't really make much sense for her character, especially given that Curt has shown less than zero interest in her. But I guess at least you can say she is consistent in her motivations?

I mean Curt is the protagonist, so it makes sense that all the other characters in the show sort of revolve around him, I just wish they had motivations of their own or motivations that make sense for their characters as well? Tatiana has her own motivations, but she seemingly acts against them by continually saving a guy who (as far as she has seen, not having witnessed his work pre-fall) doesn't really seem to bring anything to the table when it comes to achieving those objectives. Barb's motivations are just "She's obsessed with Curt"

I would say that Cynthia is by far the best written woman in the show, not because we get any deep backstory for her or anything, but because she has her own consistent internal motivations, and while she seems to have some affection for Curt (maybe? She does try to kill him three times) that affection makes sense (he was her agent) and her actions are not governed by what Curt wants/what the plot needs to the detriment of her character and/or goals, which I don't think can really be said for Barb or Tatiana

Also I wrote most of this last night, and then this morning saw that confessions blog thing, and like

1. You can critique something and still love and adore it

2. getting an attitude about people (pretty mildly imo) discussing how the show handles women seems to very much go against TCB's own ethos? We Love the Prince was almost entirely rewritten to cut out the ableism. The Nazi chant has been cut from the show. I'm 100% confident based on what happened with SIS that if TCB ever did a full production of saf again they would rewrite some of the jokes around the Informant. They are exceptionally receptive to this kind of critique, and that's a big part of what I admire about them as creators

so when are we going to talk about how poorly written the female characters are in s- *i am taken out mid-sentence by an offscreen sniper*

[cinnamonest]

With this whole 'rape fantasies are a result of misogyny as they allow women a guilt free sexuality cos they have no autonomy'

Surely that means your writing and fantasies are contributing to misogyny? Adding to it and normalising it?

Like isnt the answer to write and encourage fantasies of empowerment? Not abuse and rape?

Just seems crazy to me like 'we do this because of misogyny. And we'll keep doing it'

Obviously some behaviour come from misogyny and exist to combat it. This... really doesn't

I just don't think it's a feminist win when your writing is indistinguishable from that of a misogynistic man's.

This isnt an attack on you it just really seems like common sense that if something exists because of misogyny the last thing we should do is feed into those ideas

(I assume this is coming from this post, so I might reference that a bit here)

No worries, I fully understand how this can come across negative to those who do not have the same experiences and I appreciate you approaching the matter in a non-attacking way with genuine desire to have dialogue on the subject. I'll do my best to address these points individually.

>Surely that means your writing and fantasies are contributing to misogyny? Adding to it and normalising it?

In the past few years fandom culture has become a bit obsessed with the idea of "normalization" to the point that the definition of the term has been a bit skewed, which creates issues with these discussions.

There is no concept of which existence of content containing it alone constitutes normalization, by the actual definition of the word. Normalization is the process by which it is distributed and way in which it is presented, and intent of its creation.

Normalization via fiction is a process in which a creator, generally intentionally, creates content that presents a concept as, well, normal. That is, not reprehensible or problematic to replicate, and presents this to a population with the intent of them accepting the idea as something acceptable in reality. Generally it also necessitates that the creator will try to ensure the media is viewed by mainstream general audiences who would not normally seek the content out, since the purpose of normalization is to make an idea acceptable amongst a population.

That is the opposite of what I am doing, which is creating a private space filled with warnings. I am going out of my way to ensure that people who do not want to see this content, have the foreknowledge to opt to avoid it.

By definition, if you’re creating content and ensuring that it is heavily warned, and marketing it as such that only a niche group who likes such content seeks it out, that’s not normalization by any reasonable metric.

>Like isnt the answer to write and encourage fantasies of empowerment? Not abuse and rape?

For some people, I’m sure that would help them, and in that case, that is a great solution for them.

But people are different, and certain things that help some, don’t help others. The types of fantasies that would probably be called “empowering,” personally do nothing for me but make me uncomfortable, in the same way that the sort of content I write makes some people uncomfortable. It does not have the same positive effects on my mental health that this form of content does.

>Obviously some behaviour come from misogyny and exist to combat it. This... really doesn't

That's fair — but it doesn't have to.

It is not intended to directly combat misogyny in any way, there are other ways to do that, and this does not have to be one. It's primary purpose is catharsis and the ways in which it benefits me and, as is my hope, those who choose to consume it.

>I just don't think it's a feminist win when your writing is indistinguishable from that of a misogynistic man's.

Again, I never had any intention for it to be a "win" — misogyny is the reason for why I have these desires, but in making what I make, my purpose is to provide catharsis for myself and others.

But also, I would heavily contest that it is indistinguishable from male fantasies. As someone who has seen actual men's misogynist fetishization fantasies, they are very different.

Female disposability and the complete worthlessness of women’s very being — that is, women being non-human objects that are interchangeable, and made to be used temporarily and replaced — is the core defining characteristic of male fantasy/sexuality. Male fantasies almost always involve multiple women to one man, largely because he does not have any actual bond with women, they are items to be collected, no interpersonal relationship actually exists.

The lack of interpersonal connection and lack of personableness itself is fetishized by men, what men get off to is the power they feel from completely disregarding the woman as a person in any way. The very act of the woman being thrown away after being used is fetishized.

In male fantasy, there is no interpersonal connection or affection of any kind, whereas that is one of the defining themes of content like mine.

Tl;dr — while misogyny impacts all women, the severity and form of it in different upbringings, environments and cultures can create misunderstandings and strong reactions when different people react so differently to the same content and thus form misconceptions about each other's perceptions and intentions, but I believe both sides of this argument are usually coming from a place of good intent.

While I fully understand how it would be difficult for those who do not have the same experience to grasp mine, I just ask for mutual understanding that some forms of content help some people, in the same way entirely different forms of content help other people.

[nortsauce]

HERE COMES NORT, YAPPING ABOUT FANDOMS THAT I’M NOT EVEN IN!

(And i’ll be typing the rest here because there are too many slides so read bellow)

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

My LONG ASS rant on how MHA (among other things) fails to present its ab*se victims in a good way,

Starring the todoroki family

So, i know literally no one cares but i feel like it needed to be said: but MHA has a BIG issue with victims of abuse being treated kinda shittily, to making whole arcs about their abusers.

This isn’t a HUGE thing, as the lack of sympathy for Hawk’s abusers was definitely there, but they still were portrayed in a semi-sympathetic light. This is not the main focus however.

I’m sure many could go on and on about Bakugou and Midoriya’s relationship, but thats not what i’m focusing on.

I’m focusing on the most OVERLOOKED and ABHORRENTLY handled dynamic of the Todoroki family

I will be going over each of the characters and why they suck in some way, but as a whole i have to talk about this: Each one of the characters of the family are all victims of abuse in some way, and represent the different ways that trauma affects the victim, i understand that.

All in all, they do a good job of portraying the different ways in which the people handle abuse,

Endeavor being one who never dealt with his past egotistical superiority complex and threw his baggage onto his family/children to live vicariously

Rei being the one who is emotionally/physically damaged to the point of a mental break

Touya being the ex-golden child, and the one who continued the cycle of violence (and misogyny but thats another topic for another paper)

Fuyumi being the one who holds onto an idealized version of a family that possibly only existed in her dreams, being codependent and longing/working to get those “happy times” back with her family, clinging onto smth that was possibly never there

Natsuo being the one who is (justifiably) angry at his abusers, cuts his family off and goes to pursue his own life/dreams

and finally shoto

the one who realizes his role as the golden child is only for his parents to live vicariously, breaks his cycle and is trying to figure out who he is.

These are all great representations of how people cope/handle trauma, and i believe that was on purpose, considering that it also speaks on abuse of children on baselines of being in a famous family.

However, certain aspects are clearly not handled properly; allow me to explain.

Shoto, the youngest of the family, is often seen as the architect of the abuse, as the family was actually quite “fine-living” (i’ll come back to this) before shoto was born.

There were obviously cracks in their family from the beginning, Touya being the golden child despite not being able to physically handle his own power without hurting himself (an allegory i’ll discuss), the fact that Enji (endeavor) basically bought his way into marrying Rei, and of course enji’s complex of being less than All-might.

However, many characters seem to blame the birth of Shoto for breaking the camel’s back, and starting the domestic violence that had already threatened to spill through.

It’s shown through the anime that shoto has a kind heart and never liked enji, due to the fact that he would harm him, his siblings, and his mother,

but for being the tritagonist of this show, we never get to see how he really feels. In all of this, perhaps we could see him feeling guilt for being the reason his family is broken, the possible resentment yet dependency he has for his father, the thoughts on how he feels conflicted yet guilty about his mother and continues to blame himself.

Its interesting how he never stops blaming his father, but regardless we only get his apathetic views on his father and no one else. Its saddening to see the sideline of the victim of abuse while his abuser gets a whole arc. But i’m not there yet.

Moving on we have Natsuo and Fuyumi. I grouped them together because they both have opposite ways of dealing with their trauma, as Aforementioned: Natsuo tries to cut all ties while Fuyumi tries to be a “normal” family with her remaining members.

Both of them have valid ways to why they act this way, and its tragic, however, the way they deal with their youngest sibling, shoto, is disheartening to say the least.

Both of them understand how Shoto was physically abused since he was 5, and neglect to form any sort of connection with him despite his better efforts in natsuo’s case, using him as leverage against his father and nothing more, while in fuyumi’s case, basically presents him in her fantastical version of him in their fantastical “perfect” family life, causing him to have multiple meetings with his abuser and forcing him to relive the trauma so she can have peace of mind.

In hindsight, this is all interesting heavy topics to explore in a character, and i was honestly curious to see how it would be handled

however it all faltered as soon as I saw the hospital scene.

SPOILERS:

After Dabi’s Dance, the todoroki family comes to visit Shoto and Endeavor in the hospital, both of whom are heavily bandaged and bed-ridden.

Despite this all, Rei, Fuyumi, and Natsuo force todoroki, who is burnt and recovering his voice, to get up and walk over to his father’s ward to speak to him.

Shoto, despite being unable to form full sentences, makes it FULLY CLEAR he does not want to be there, by closing the door to his ward, and attempting to leave. Despite his clear efforts, his family makes him go in to talk to him.

this 16 year old boy being forced out of RECOVERING, fully bandaged and barely able to talk, forced to visit his abuser to hear him cry about not being able to fight his own son, depsite also being his son and physically harmed by him since childhood.

In my opinion that wasn’t a good move on any of the family’s part.

Rei is a difficult subject to discuss. She is clearly a victim and has been for. while. She is mentally distant after being harmed for so long and spent time in a psyche-ward to handle herself.

Saying that she was a bad mother would be too far in my opinion, as she did her best to provide a nice life for her kids as well as defend them from her husband.

Not much is said about her, but from what we can tell she loved her kids very much, until the abuse started.

I feel the blame for shoto began with her, not being able to face her own son after the “death” of her first and the fact that his face reminded her of the abuse she’s faced from endeavor.

Her character is honestly an interesting one, but she is not safe from my scrutiny of the hospital scene. She was very brave for facing her abuser like this, however, she did not have to drag her bedridden youngest into the fray.

She is the DIRECT reason shoto has a scar on her face, (indirectly endeavor’s fault)

But i will never blame her for the abuse she faced for her children, by her husband and to an extent, her own son touya, which leads me into my next point

SPOILERS

Touya, aka Dabi, is the “Late” eldest brother who was originally Endeavor’s ticket into living vicariously to defeat all-might and be the number 1 hero.

I could go into the psychology of his character but he is ultimately very interesting. In all honesty the way he is presented as being the consequences of endeavor’s actions is palpable and honestly quite raw. At a young age, he was handling the pressure of being his father’s perfect creation, and the fame and fortune that followed as he sought his father’s approval. Soon, his quirk began to burn him every time he used it, a fact that endeavor ignored to pursue his goal. Touya’s power became self-harm at some point, an allegory for his disregard for his own life and well-being for his father’s dream which ultimately (literally) exploded on itself.

Touya’s story is interesting, from his abuse causing him to act like his father craving his approval, which lead him to act put against his mother and shoto, while laying his baggage onto his younger siblings, to losing his mind and realizing that he wanted his father dead and continuing the cycle of abuse further.

This is all a deep and interesting way to look at abuse and how the abused may become an abuser, HOWEVER.

MY critique here, is how sidelined his whole arc is, as his story is more portrayed of Endeavor’s past coming to haunt him, all for the watcher to sympathize with endeavor rather than understand how the abuse endeavor put onto touya made dabi. This whole arc was framed to be sympathetic towards endeavor, and to fear Dabi. Don’t even get me started on how Shoto’s feelings meant nothing in this arc, as well as being immediately cut off by a surprise cameo of a character that possibly discredited Dabi’s expose video on his abuser.

Finally, we get to talk about the elephant in the room: Enji Todoroki, endeavor himself.

What is there not to say about this man.

I feel I should start eith the obvious:

The forgiveness/sympathy arc for endeavor was quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen in the anime, and this is not subjective.

The whole arc is based around how Endeavor is a victim of his own mind and is trying his hardest to make up for being a terrible person.

Personally, i love to see character arcs of villains becoming a better person, but thats the very thing: Endeavor is trying to ask for forgiveness from his family, who he abused for 15 YEARS. This is no exaggeration as Shoto is now 16, and his cracks started forming as soon as he was born.

Endeavor had illegally married a woman that he basically bought his way into,

was illegally “breeding” (eugh) for quirk benefits,

Treated one of his son’s like a vicarious version of himself

Physically abused his son (age 5+) his wife, and verbally abused the rest of his children

isolated his son

treated his son like a weapon

and finally felt too prideful for any sort of meaningful apology.

This all adds up to a character who only felt sorry for his actions after the consequences started hitting him in the face, as he only felt remorseful when Shoto refused to be associated with him.

Now, some of you may be thinking: “A lot of characters are forgiven for more, why would he be the exception? It’s fictional why do you care?”

There are several reasons to why I care but i’ll speak in terms of framing for now. This show is highly influential to not only kids (as it is a KIDS SHOW) but to adults as well. May i direct your attention to the man who saved a woman from a murderous ex-boyfriend by blocking his machete hits all because My Hero Academia inspired him to take action and be a hero?

Or how about a murder that took place because the accused was inspired by an invader zim episode (the dark harvest)

Whether you like it or not, fiction HAS an affect on reality. Yes, we can determine what is real and what is fake, but you cannot deny that a lot of what media we consume helps us be who we are.

If the show promotes more sympathy towards an abuser than their victims, then people may find themselves sympathizing real world abusers over the voices of victims.

I wont speak on delicate subjects but I can already see affects of this happening, as people rally to defend famous people accused of being abusers rather than listen and provide support to the alleged victims.

In conclusion, These topics are definitely not easy to write, and I, for one, am NO expert and my word should not be used as gospel truth or a guideline on how to write these characters.

This is all simply my opinion on how the bias towards abusers in the show leads for the message to be skewed and marred in action.

I understand that no one is perfect, but if we only reward and sympathize with those who only seek redemption after they face scrutiny, then we lose the meaning of what makes someone worthy of forgiveness.

These topics are deep and interesting, but the way they are handled in this show is simply bad writing.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk and again: no shade towards the writers. Just critiques!

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

i haven't read the acotar series but yeah there are...SO many issues with it. I was about to say I'm not surprised that people wanted the racism to be more violent so they could acknowledge but actually, y'know what? No, I am surprised. I'm concerned that people want characters of colour to be dragged through the dirt and be the victims of horrific acts before they can acknowledge the racism of the author. I cannot emphasise how crestfallen, how upset I felt when I searched up what Illyrians were for the first time. Like...oh. They are brown, like me. But they are also a whitewashed version of what white people want them to be: a violent, primitive nation that treat their women awfully, just so that white people can come in and save them, as if they weren't the ones ramping up that kind of misogyny in the first place.

I look across the YA sphere and I see white authors constantly say, through their writing, that poc are violent, that we are backwards, that the women should not exist and do not have lives unless they are attached to white people. I feel that the only time this has kind of been challenged in a mainstream YA fandom has been the grishaverse, and even then, the rep for brown peoples is muddled and vague at best, and the rep for Black people feels like there was no exploration of culture at all.

What I'm trying to say is: it's not great in the YA market, but SJM is by far one of the most racist authors out there. White fans shouldn't be begging for the violence against characters of colour to be ramped up so they can decide when they can step in and say enough is enough.

ugh! this was so beautifully put!

thiis will be a long discussion!

i really want to preface this by saying i would really implore everyone in their free time to read toni morrison's playing in the dark! it's a deep dive into the ways blackness (and in this case minority status) is defined by white superiority; how the very presence of the non-white is always used to reiterated the inherent superiority of their white peers! poc are used as conduits to uphold beliefs of white supremacy - the very existence of the nonwhite existing to boasts the intelligence of their white peers.

sjm's work moves in such racist territory that it so easy so see these mentalities etched into her work. every single poc that is included in the story is relegated to this ideology; their very existence speaks to the power of the main character. the primary function of the interactions deal in shame, humiliation, and cowardice (see: tarquin, nehemia, thesan, helion, tarquin, cressida, nesryn, lucien, the unnamed enslaved @ endovier, baxian, unnamed illyrian population etc).

morrison opens up her novel by asserting that we should be conscious of the way the author's imagination expresses itself:

“Both [reading and writing] require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.”

morrison also posits that author's intenionality and/or bias are unfortunately apart of the creative process of imagination, reiterating:

“The imagination that produces work which bears and invites rereadings, which motions to future readings as well as contemporary ones, implies a shareable world and an endlessly flexible language. Readers and writers both struggle to interpret and perform within a common language shareable imaginative worlds. And although upon that struggle the positioning of the reader has justifiable claims, the author’s presence—her or his intentions, blindness, and sight—is part of the imaginative activity.”

this initial opening builds an understanding of the creative process, in a wholesome way. what i mean is - morrison is establishes that the creative process is informed by our own perceptions and understanding. the way our the narrative voice reconciles normalcy vs. unknown says something about the author. or what the author has put to page. the reason i am even discussing this is to make a similar point: sjm's writing oftentimes subconsciously asserts the dominance of the 'main, white character,' in conjunction with a ethnic, poor, nonwhite individuals of the story. when we meet celaena, we are immediately aware of aelin's 'superiority' over the slaves in endovier. the function of her slavery is to relate her power, while the story views the enslaved as dump, hopeless, individuals whose only goal is to die for their liberation in an endless cycle. aelin even complains that she 'finally' can talk to compotent people with assumption that the enslaved at endovier were somehow too dumb to adequtely communcate with her.

a court of thorns and roses invents an entire culture whose only cultural practices seemed be filled with violence, misogyny, and brutality. then the story argues that only three (3) out of thousands of brown men actually have common sense. that they're so dumb and brutish that they'd absolutely choose to have barely any resources out of spite of their benevolent high lord. cassian, rhys, and az are the strongest in history. and to relate their power, we get these dumb brutes who just seem okay for fighting for a country that would not even be allowed to enter....that's actually some crazy racist writing lmaooo. or the fact that nuala and cerridwen are trained spies, who up to this point, make so much money they'd probably be able to retire...and they just choose to be also the handmaidens...for five-hundred year old fae. like...immediately after acotar, there back working. rhys and feyre can still be reeling from that experience but nuala and cerridwen can just serve because that's just what they like to do.

the next notable quote states:

“These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national literature—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence”

“The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly conscious. It is an astonishing revelation of longing, of terror, of perplexity, of shame, of magnanimity. It requires hard work not to see this.”

in this way, the nonwhite becomes the site of a descent into darkness, hypersexality and power for white people. think of the way in which feyre's darkness is often times heavily associated with the nonwhite (see: court of nightmares). this sexy, liberated, dark woman using south asian culture to establish superiority while eschewing the people who are the originators of said culture.

but - really want to move this away from a discussion on individual characters and really focus the subject on sjm's role as the write. ultimately, feyre, aelin, nehemia, rhys...aren't real. they are reflections of the author's own internal dialogue. i actually really resonated with this observation/ assumption morrison's makes and that is:

“I assumed that since the author was not black, the appearance of Africanist characters or narrative or idiom in a work could never be about anything other than the “normal,” unracialized, illusory white world that provided the fictional backdrop.”

ultimately, i believe the racism comes from the fact that, although these are fictional worlds born from sjm's imagination, a lot of the racism comes from the fact that sjm is writing what she believes to be normal. and so - that's why the problem ultimately persists. violence against woc and poc are justified already. it doesn't matter that rhys slaughters hordes of illyrians because the assumption is that they're probably horrible, brutish people who ultimately deserve to die; nevermind, they could have had complex reasons, just like rhys. it's okay that the illyrian women are oppressed because...that's just the way things have always been. the only queen who helped rhys and feyre is humilated, murdered, and has her head shaven. we get one sentence about her and the story moves on. nehemia planned her own brutal murder, awoke dorian's power, and as a reward....her entire country is burned to the ground and the liberation of ellywe is delegated toward one sentence about maybe going to visit. , sorcha gets her head cut off (and its treated as a joke by the fandom) and dorian blames her for essentially being 'too fragile' or something like that. poc are already being brutalized in these stories, we're just positioned not to care.

and im not saying that ya isn't extremely racist - but i think sjm is by far one of the worst racist authors i have come across. not even ms. bardugo or aveyard or her other peers have this many racial problems by comparison and boy are there still problems even in those stories. like damn even george rr martin has like...semi-better writing (but he's actually another author that really exemplifies what morrison was talking about and id love to one day talk about that. but it woul take me quite awhile. i do like like asoiaf obvi, but it just has a lot of problems that i cant ignore). lmaooo even armentrout made some attempt to rectify her representation issue and thats saying a lot.

[davidthephoneguy]

A little (mostly Dialtown) rant of my own

Ok first of all you all need to calm down, I'm goin on this rant despite not currently being in the dialtown fandom but I was back around when the game first came out. I just feel like I gotta ask you to be calm because I know how agressive people can be online with that shield on anonymity. I also do not hate dialtown or Dogman nor do I blame them for said issues that will be stated.

Dialtown as a whole does pretty obviously have a problem about representation of fem/fem presenting characters especially in the fandom side. As a previous rant stated before most fem characters are either glossed over in favour of male/masc presenting ones, such as with the main dateables. It even extends to side characters which feels rather disheartening. Now I get why its mainly the male/masc presenting ones who get attention, I must highlight the fact that I am a Bi-Ace Transman and I tended to focus on Oliver and Randal over Karen so I was part of the problem on that part. So i get the gender serotonin of drawing them but I hope you can also see how it means that for example, Karen is almost completely overlooked. I would see myself in them because of the shared gender, I really do understand why this has been happening. You are not evil for doing this, that is not what this rant is about in the slightest. Like the previous rant before stated the game doesn't pass the Bechdal test (Which if you are unaware is a media test which requires two fem characters to talk to eachother about anything other then a man, already an extremely low bar to pass) which Dialtown does not pass. It's completely valid to have reservations about that as it is an overall problem with media at large. Media at large is still a white straight cis male dominated space and needs more diversity in all ways. Dialtown as a whole is a good game and has a diverse cast which is wonderful and amazing to see. The only issue is how some are highlighted more then others or demonized in a way that lines up with misogyny (Such as with Mingus' behavior being villainized by the fandom while Stabby and Shooty doing the same thing being ok and lighthearted in the eyes of the fandom which from an outside view just looks like misogyny I am sorry folks. If the only factor in if you like or dislike a characters actions is because they are a woman is misogyny even if they're cis or trans, misogyny is just the word for discrimination in this way) Pointing this out doesn't mean an attack on anyone, pointing out an issue is meant to bring attention to said issue so it can be improved or fixed. The previous person who I have been referencing and paraphrasing here (who I am not going to @ as they don't need more direct harassment) was slightly attacked for having a rant, yes everyone is entitled to their opinion but that does not give either side the right to actively attack the other. Please remain diplomatic.

People are allowed to highlight issues, if we don't then they won't ever get fixed. We're meant to stick together and fix things together, not attack eachother. Thats what people like terfs want us to do, they want us to tear eachother apart so that they get what they want, our destruction. We have to stand together with the things we love. My apologies for how long this ended up being but I just had to get it out of my head. Just my thoughts as a transman/voidrabbit on the topic

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

[gascon-en-exil]

Considering the undeniable fact that Edelgard was written for men and not them, what do you think that says about her lesbian fans? Are they following the wrong character? Or better question, does she truly have a significant sapphic fandom to begin with?

This is a difficult question for me to answer directly, because I'm not a lesbian. I've gotten a variety of comments from queer women addressing issues related to this on my relevant videos, with the range of responses being overall mixed. Even those who can enjoy Edelgard as a bi option (and/or her other F/F prospects) are usually still aware of IS's blatant misogyny in the way they handle their female characters, and acknowledge that these conversations are useful to have.

I think Monica's writing in Hopes sums up very well just how little the writers of these games are thinking about lesbians when they craft these characters and situations. Monica's attraction to Edelgard is treated as one long joke at her own expense, one that Edelgard appears to humor at best but never really understands. It's especially galling because this is the same game that takes a remarkably sober approach to Shamir's attraction to women, both in general and to Catherine specifically. There's also the matter of the M/M subtext, which as ever exists in a blind spot of straight male writers. With Dimidue alone, we have a situation where men are saying stuff like "You are irreplaceable, cherished" and "I cannot know happiness without you by my side" and holding hands and each other's gazes for something like fifteen seconds in an animated cutscene...and still expect us to believe that that's only platonic devotion. (As far as lord + retainer ships go, hold up Monigard and Dimidue side-by-side, and it's very obvious that IS is laughing at the former and isn't aware that the latter could even have romantic dimensions.)

The majority of IS's sapphic material exists in a different, though comparable blind spot: that lesbians exist as profitable titillation for straight men, and are always subject to the male gaze and the potential interposition of a male proxy for the audience (the Avatar, usually) because women's attraction toward one another isn't something to be taken seriously. Out of the various examples of F/F subtext and text in the entirety of FE, I feel like I could claim Heather from Radiant Dawn as maybe the only instance where the writers were thinking of actual queer women - and even then Heather is still mostly mild comic relief.

(As far as "following the wrong character" goes re: the fandom faction wars, there's always been the consistent irony that Rhea is subject to much of the same open objectification, ex. her summer duo alt with F!Byleth, and even gets to be a same-sex S rank as well. Humorously, this parallel or its implications is pretty much never brought up whenever Rhea's getting roasted as the Worst Ever.)

It's difficult to tell exactly how much of Edelgard's fanbase is sapphic. Of course Tumblr and AO3 skew queer as a rule, but those are just two sites; there's also Twitter and Reddit and SF and GameFAQs and 4chan and art sites like Pixiv and DeviantArt. We also know for a fact that at least two of the most prominent and combative elements in the pro-Edelgard side of the fandom are straight/bi men producing F/F Edeleth fanwork...which I remark on only as a counter to the frequent accusation that Dimitri fans are all horny fujoshi. How that does or doesn't play into what you're asking is hard to say - although one of them tends to get rather pissed when anyone brings something like that up and may still be stalking my blog.

It'll be interesting to see what troll anons I get now.

[bonefall]

Obviously nobody should be talking poorly about any of Bumble's competitors but it's insane how people voting for Alex are going 'its a CAT'. Like, okay and? Alex Dewitt is ink on paper and we rightfully take issue with her writing to the point of making it a term, so why is it any different when a fictional cat has misogynistic writing? And these are cats with a society, laws, religion, and understanding of (herbal) medicine. They are on par with people. And, it's a YA series. Shouldn't people take the message "fat, abused women dying isn't a problem because they can't contribute ackshually, and if we acknowledge it is how can the goodboy main character stop licking his brother's kitty boots if he's a bad person :(" as a red flag in any series? Let alone one for kids? Like, did everyone outside of the fandom miss the Ashfur defense? Because I was there for it and it was pretty clear a LOT of impressionable children genuinely believed the "he only loved too much" excuse hook line and sinker, and blamed Squirrelflight for everything. There were so many fans genuinely believing that I literally remember seeing hate art and fanfics portraying Squirrelflight as a horrible person just for asking to stay friends. That alone was a testament to how harmful Warriors can be, all because of that one scene of Ashfur being spotted in StarClan.

And with that fiasco in mind, how can anyone trivialize it to Bumble being 'just a cat'? Especially when kids are reading this, and could really take the harmful message Gray Wing the """Wise""" has for them that if you have nothing to contribute to the people you desperately need help from, you are stupid for trying to ask for it. I was lucky to not take any of the really harmful portrayals relationships in Warriors to heart, but not everyone will be. People should support Alex all they want, she deserves it! But downplaying what happened to Bumble because she's a cat is harmful :(

Alex DeWitt's story is so shocking and straightforward that you're able to sum it up with a single word; "Fridging." It's become the touchstone for a wider discussion about misogyny in media because it is so evocative and so easy to explain as an example.

That IS important. That IS a legacy.

But somehow, if you try to explain how EARLY misogyny in media starts, and how pervasive it is even in "less respectable" mediums like YA xenofiction, they lose their fucking minds. People who refuse to read anything at all going, "what could possibly have happened to a cat?"

You know what, though? I'm GLAD Bumble is winning, and I'm proud of this fandom and our campaigning. I think we actually deserve to be a little smug about this after all the damn "justa cat" comments. Bumble doesn't HAVE a legacy. The book doesn't VALUE HER LIFE AT ALL! "It's so sad Clear Sky is going to have his reputation ruined for killing this useless woman. I never liked Bumble anyway, what matters about this is my poor brother :("

The runner of the Canon Misogyny Tournament mentioned in passing how they kinda take issue with the idea of quantifying misogyny based on suffering because of how it oversimplifies the insidious ways it can express in a narrative, and I've thought a lot about that a lot. They're right.

And Alex is THE posterchild of this because her death is ghoulish. We needed what happened to her as a simple, evocative term, to advance the conversation around media misogyny and get it through people's skulls. But, she has become the conclusion of a sentiment that the more gruesome the death is, the more misogynist that makes it.

but. The fridge was not the misogynistic part of what happened to Alex. THE FACT SHE WAS ONLY INVENTED TO DIE FOR THE PAIN OF A MAN IS. THAT is what the term "fridging" is supposed to point out; The absolute LACK of interest in her as a 3-dimensional character, in women as people, to the point where the writer chose to send Alex out in a gorey, disrespectful way solely as a motivator for her boyfriend. THAT is the bad part.

But instead people have latched onto the fridge half. More violent = more misogyny.

There's a lot of ways for a narrative to be misogynist, though. To downplay the lives, emotions, or contributions of women characters, and to reinforce real-world bigotry.

Warrior Cats does a LOT of this, blaming bad mothers who didn't shut up and accept their 'purpose in life' for Brokenstar's tyranny, making it a TRAGIC thing that Clear Sky is being held accountable for murdering women because his man pain makes it ok, and even blaming Squirrelflight for rejecting Ashfur's advances which caused him to go "crazy" and attempt to murder her children (until, of course, the welcomed retcon of TBC).

Bumble's death, because she is a fat woman, is treated as unavoidable. It's not a terrible thing she died, Gray Wing never really liked her anyway, what REALLY "matters" is that now no one likes her murderer.

She was stupid and selfish to even ask for help, because she is so fat and weak. To be upset at all that her only friend watched her get dragged back to her abuser. Even as she bleeds out, she gets to listen to Turtle Tail making up excuses and wishing she "could have found happiness."

All while Tom the Wifebeater, the fat man who physically assaulted two women, gets a big cutesy redemption death and honored and beloved by everyone and even gets to "lose weight and that's so good :)". Because the books value the lives of men more than the lives of women, plain and simple.

Bumble wasn't just fridged. It's worse than that. Her life doesn't even have enough value to get Clear Sky held accountable for murdering her, because beloved writer favorite Gray Wing hated her for being friends with his wife and doesn't want anyone to hate his poor, innocent big brother :(

Like you said, you can ask anyone in this fandom and they'll tell you about the impressionable kid they were, or have MET, who was badly influenced by the constant misogyny of these books. People who defend Bramblestar tooth and nail as he abuses his wife, the screeds against both Leafpool and Nightcloud for making Crowfeather sad, and the absolutely radioactive Ashfur Defenders who have thankfully died down since TBC's welcome retcons.

It doesn't just end with annoying internet comments. Those kids carry that kind of message with them. It reinforces existing biases and causes them to downplay abused women and toxic men in their real lives.

But sure, "just a cat." Cool way to downplay the 20-year-old bestselling YA fantasy series that is still ongoing but ok. 50000 Bumblesweeps upon ye.

(though i do also have to say, since I started speaking more about it today, I'm seeing more non-wc fans push back against the 'just a cat' comments. Sincerely, thanks guys. It's not every DC fan or Alex voter, just a very vocal section of sore losers willing to downplay misogyny because they're angry.)

[dancingdorito]

i really appreciate discourse on penelope featheringtons character but it also reminds me that some people dont understand that she's not supposed to be this amazing gracious person. shes flawed and loyal and stubborn and she's also, guess what - 18 years old! i cant think of one good decision i made when i was that young and she has so much pressure to be what shes not.

penelope is not a great person, and THATS THE POINT. she's flawed and makes many mistakes and in the end, were some of the things she did selfish? sure. does it make her the devil reincarnated? no.

people is a teenager that has two friends and is ignored by her family. she is 18 and on the marriage market. she doesn't have much say on how her future will turn out but she DOES have a platform.

penelope is doing what she can and protecting her loved ones the only way she knows how. is that a good way to deal with her issues? not at all. but she's not perfect and LW is the only way people hear her (eloise only listens to her occasionally). you can argue all you want about her not deserving colin but its not like she's publishing things that aren't true or would not have come to light later on.

the point i'm trying to make is that female characters shouldn't have to be angels for the audience to accept them. i dont see one word about anthony when he attempted to literally KILL his best friend in a duel, or when he tried to place his sister in an arranged marriage when she wanted to marry for love. anthony is flawed too but the fandom sees past that because he was protecting his sister. but then what was penelope doing? how is that easier to excuse and look past? was she not protecting eloise and colin from worse fates in the wrong way? you cannot pick and choose what characters you give leeway to. especially when it REEKS of misogyny.

women shouldn't have to be perfect for men to love them. same thing goes for anyone of any gender. i'm tired of female characters not receiving the same treatment as male characters who do the same things.

no one ever claimed that penelope was supposed to be a good person, in fact nicola coughlan has stated multiple times that penelope is not, and that is precisely the point.

i could write a whole essay on this but i will end it here. stop expecting female characters to be perfect in order to deserve any good things.

[elfdyke]

Prefacing this ask is 100% in good faith and just trying to better understand your point of view. Totally get if you don't feel like answering it (and apologies in advanced for the long ask) But anyways, when it comes to the topic of people focusing on male characters instead of female ones in fandom I guess I just...don't get the issue? Like it seems like a minor fandom disagreement and not necessarily an indicator of misogyny. Like I think there's a difference between say, when the supernatural fandom harassed one of the actresses for "getting in between" a weird incest ship vs some dungeon meshi fans not really caring about the popular f/f ship. One has material harm towards a real person and one is just fandom beef imo.

well i cant lie you kinda just answered your own question KJDFNGKDF like those examples you gave show how people cant bother seeing female characters as anything other than nuisances or something getting in the way of the plot/ship. like the same thing happened to anna gunn on breaking bad, the majority of the fanbase couldnt even fathom seeing her as her own character with her own motivations. like shes soooo valid in her fear and distaste towards walt, yet shes somehow the most hated tv character, and her actress received rape and death threats over… playing her role. its just crazy like yes theres levels to it, dunmeshi latching onto laios/kabru and shifting away from the main ship being falin/marcille isnt like, horrible misogyny by any means, but its just kind of insane how time and time again people would rather focus on male characters than female. its weird and it sucks badly! like this effects creators as well, people not wanting to pick up projects bc its got a mainly female cast, the way birds of prey among other female centric media is often panned and criticized heavily is genuinely no coincidence!

[dekusleftsock]

THOUGHTS ON 376 TIME! WOOHOO!!

Three thoughts came into my mind on this page.

One, that “we still haven’t had our chat about romance” is a thought in ochako’s head, not just a distraction. (Very interesting..) But I may just be reading the bubbles incorrectly, as I’m aware that last chapter she said this to Ochako. Could it be Toga remembering it? Another possibility too.

Two, that Toga believes this is Ochako trying to TAKE BACK her rejection in some light. To my knowledge, (and if the translators didn’t mess anything up too badly, sorry y’all I’m aware it won’t be perfect no matter what) “taking a hint” is often used in English to describe someone not backing off romantically. The hint being, “I don’t have feelings for you”. (Edit: this post translated it in its most literal form, and it said “persistent” so, I still stand by what I said. It’s sounds like someone rejecting a romantic confession)

And number three, the most important. “Can’t take a hint” is the most tongue and cheek thing I’ve seen. IT SOUNDS LIKE IN MY VERY BIASED SHIPPER MIND THAT, THE AUDIENCE, AKA US, HAVENT GOTTEN THE HINT WITH THESE TWO.

I saw literal radio silence when chapter 375 came out. Now, I’m aware that togachako is a bit of a rare pair. Not only is it a sapphic ship, but it’s also with a more “problematic” dynamic, and with a character that was introduced later on into the series. Wayyyy after ochako was introduced as Izuku’s love interest.

Most bkdk shippers either outright ignore ochako, hate her, or ship her with Tsu. I only judge one option out of the three, as it’s usually born out of misogyny. (Purposefully or not, I’ve seen people love male characters with the same “annoying” traits ochako has. Tbh, most people hate her bc she’s a girl and she’s feminine. That’s it)

Anyway yeah, and the only people who really care about her character development are one: Ochako stans (love y’all <3) two: togachako shippers (me) and three: izu//ocha shippers. (Censored so that I don’t tread on their territory as I’m about to be a little…. Eh to them and their interpretations)

Now, izu//ocha shippers to me are pretty neutral. There’s the dudebros who I think everyone hates, and then there’s the normal batch of people. A mix of people who enjoy the series very casually, or people who just generally like them.

Because of this fact, however, they are, like me, also biased. Meaning if I presented my thoughts on togachako to an izu//ocha shipper, I will and have been called a little bit of a conspiracy theorist about it. That I’m in denial, yada yada. All that junk. And if I’m wrong? Then shit, guess it’s me getting kicked in my ass all over again for trusting a shonen writer. I have fandom to help me cope. I’ll live.

Now, because of this bias, it leaves the interpretations of chapters 289, 342, 348, and even 375 all deemed as “izu//ocha chapters”, because what else could it be leading up to other than that?

And that’s why I HOPE and I PRAY that Horikoshi pulls the rug out from under your feet. I hope and pray every day that’s what happens. If only to confirm in my mind that my eye for detail isn’t sketchy or rough around the edges. Or that my conclusions aren’t just delusions. I don’t like to be wrong, thank you very much.

The other thing I wanted to delve a little into. Toga’s mind is a labyrinth that I don’t think even us as the audience has quite cracked yet.

I like to think I understand people. Not in the casual social way, god no. Social cues are not my thing. But reading people? Getting to the bottom of their issues and wrenching them from their depths and into the open for someone to see? THATS what I’m good at. Understanding a person and how they work. Because, let me tell you, there is a reason for each and every thing a person does. Every little detail, from the way they stand to how they choose their words. How someone reacts defensively and offensively are the biggest giveaways to who a person actually is.

Toga Himiko’s walls are miles thick. They appear sheen, like she wears her emotions on her sleeve, but that’s just not TRUE. Before she broke, it was forced neutrality to the wrongdoings in her life. Possibly even any form of happiness wasn’t deemed respectable to wear. The mask was on at all times, no matter what, but now? Now it’s a smile. The mask is still there, it still exists. It’s just in a different form, something made to protect HER rather than EVERYONE else. It’s interesting.

Another notable thing about Toga, she’s cried once, in the entire manga. She has cried once.

And it wasn’t even for Twice’s death.

If toga were to cry at Twice’s death, if toga were to express any other vulnerability other than anger at his death, then she would be left with two things: the mask, shattered; the one that mattered. And two, she would have to accept that everyone was right about her. That she was a tragedy.

And not only was she a tragedy, but she had to accept that death affected her. That the love she “experienced” for people like Izuku or Sato, wasn’t love. Because she loved twice, yet never wanted to BECOME him.

And I can hear it now, “doesn’t she want to be ochako too?” No, actually. She wants to be like her.

And, if you ship bkdk, you probably follow some other analysis creators on here. People who have talked about Izuku wanting to become LIKE Katsuki, not become him.

And that begs the question, does ochako want to become deku? Or become like him?

I think it’s both.

The thing is, Ochako ofc can’t physically become him, but at every turn of trying to be like him, it hasn’t really let her evolve. It’s held her back, actually, like at the sports festival. Ntm, this requires some level of natural imitation, something Ochako clearly lacks in her relationship to Izuku.

But she does not lack with Toga.

Idk if I showed it here before, and if I didn’t, I apologize for not explaining completely at least. Essentially, Ochako naturally imitates how Toga looks in both her hairdo and some choice facial expressions. Toga naturally imitates through posing techniques mid air and behavior parallels. I don’t feel like grabbing the panels, sorry!!

But back to Himiko, I think that she desperately wants close connection, is extremely insecure about herself, and actively hides behind smiles. Not only that, but she’s been trying to imitate shigaraki this entire time by having his “I don’t care about love and I wanna destroy the world” attitude and disdain. Showing she’s trying to find the most powerful people in her mind right now to hide from herself, her own sadness. She wants to hide from her rejection, and views the rejection itself as her. She knows that people see something especially unnerving and wrong about her, yet doesn’t completely understand why. So this rejection sensitivity is not only heightened by her trauma, but also Twice’s death.

With him gone, she now becomes unnervingly aware that she does not like death the way she thought she did. She also can’t escape the reality that no one has ever truly cared about Toga Himiko as a person.

And in her mind, following Jin’s death, no one ever will.

One last note, these two panels felt like parallels to me. Might be a stretch.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

(Referring to this post: https://langernameohnebedeutung.tumblr.com/post/725361975543185408/you-heard-of-hating-female-characters-for-traits)

Do you think it's always a case of people being sexist, or do you think there are cases where the problem is the execution?

(sorry, I had my tabs mixed up).

I mean, for one, "always" is a word that I like to avoid because it's a word that is too big of a commitment to me.

I think execution as well as interpretation both play a role most of the time. And most of the time, they overlap and together they can develop their own very specific dynamics.

The thing is, when I entered fandom at now...almost 15 years ago, things were far worse. Far, far worse. Female characters were routinely portrayed as soulless evil and often violent harpies for no reason (the way they're e.g. often still treated in other, more dudebro-y spaces where female characters can basically be sorted into the categories "hot", "helpful" and "hated" (cough, Borderlands reddit and youtube, cough) - or their entire personality was erased to make her the perfect love-interest.

On the other hand, I feel like in the fandom spaces that have kind of reflected on these issues since then - both the misogyny in the original execution as well as the misogyny in fandom spaces - there is a certain anxiety that makes people ping-pong between these two problems and ultimately, shy away from the issue and the characters entirely.

One example is: How do we deal with female characters who are written to be problematic in extremely misogynistic ways (e.g. the nagging wife). Do we pile on by writing long texts about how she is annoying and nagging and doesn't support her poor husband, therefore meriting the poor writing while at the same time being true to her character and taking her at face value? Probably chiming in with the actual misogynists who will openly hate her AS a woman? Or do we ignore her entire personality and re-design her character into some fandom staple trope that feels more salvageable (but is often also ultimately a cliché like the long-suffering but good-natured doormat wife and isn't the act of making a woman more sweet and manageable sexist in its own right?)? Do we simply pretend her relationship with her husband is just a little bit quirky and fun that way? Or should we let her fade into the background? Do we ascribe a higher motive to her actions? Do we write "hey, yeah, Jane and I got divorced a few months ago" into our fic about the male lead to clear the road to whoever we ship him with? Or do we let him cheat because his wife is so horrible?

How do we deal with the female characters from old-timey works who are given basically no agency? Do we call her out for being useless and annoying and not contributing anything? Or do we construct some deeper agency to her actions? Do we turn her into another "reasonable, good-natured mom-friend"?

Another common complaint against female characters I see is that they're "annoying". On the one hand, I think this comes from the habit of writers of canon, who have decided that the peak of female character agency is to turn them into a token hindrance and rival for the male character who ultimately is wrong but still gets a lot of screen-time arguing and disagreeing and working against a male-character that the audience might like. Which often means they dislike her. The obvious solution is to ship them because they clearly have some hate-love kinda thing going on (I'm saying this in good humour, I love those ships). But sometimes that goes to another extreme where that same character who really, really, really hates a male character for very understandable reasons, has her personality erased and her values and priorities and boundaries ignored to ship her with him - and then fans will suddenly call her abusive and mean if her behaviour in canon doesn't reflect that fanon rationalisation. (though to be fair, I think this is also something that happens with m/m ships) Which is where we end up in the original scenario again, only worse.

I also think the low regard for women's experiences and feelings and the prevalence of misogynistic writing play a role. In execution, the female character's pain and experiences aren't given the same stage (especially if they would inconvenience the male characters around her). In fanon, because I think there is a certain discomfort with putting female characters through certain experiences because it is a misogynistic trope or because it has very specific connotations - and meanwhile, the idea that writing a male character dealing with these same experiences on the one hand (best interpretation) removes the lens of misogyny that causes this discomfort and let's us examine the issue from a less mapped out perspective and b) (less favourable interpretation) on the other hand, it might feel like this experience receives an upvaluation when a man is shown to be dealing with it.

For example, ages ago I saw this clip of an interview with...I think a director? and he talked about how he has to frame scenes, where the male lead cries very differently from the way he has to frame a scene where a female character cries because the audience reacts very differently because female characters are portrayed as crying so much more often, while a crying scene for the male lead is a show-stopper. It has a lot of gravity. This is something we also probably reflect at least subconsciously when we let a character cry. And I think this applies to a lot of things - both in our writing and in our interpretation of works that, e.g. are very male gaze-y. Showing male characters feeling love-lorn and sensitive and sexualised or domestic - that's an interesting exploration of masculinity, it is actively engaging with characters who probably weren't written like that in canon.

Showing your favourite action hero padding around his apartment making breakfast for his boyfriend in bed while thinking about how pretty he is (also, just to drive the point home, he might be pregnant now) is...just that tick more experimental than showing a female character in that same role. Especially if she, too, is a super-strong action heroine who can do anything. (and you are the one impregnating her and making her make breakfast? That doesn't feel nice!)

So yeah,...uh. I think both are an issue.

[partined]

Being a wife isn’t going to save you from misogyny. Motorsport has a really bad fucking reputation in general, Formula One, specifically in all of its subsidiaries has been pushing for close to two decades, the inclusion of more gender diversity within its ranks. However, when you take into account, the fact that it’s reputation is fucking horrible. no amount of PR noosed  statements about the funnel theory is going to change the fact that there are not enough women in motorsport.  The reputation and the stereotypes are not at all unfounded or baseless, unlike, however, the accusations made recently about Susie Wolff. 

It is an absolute privilege to the highest degree to be able to travel all over the world for close to half the year and work at the pinnacle of motorsport. Regardless of how smart you are, or how familiar you are with the industry, it is still a privilege. So when we talk about women in motorsport, most often will hear about team principles and drivers being asked these questions of “why do they think there aren’t enough women in the industry” most likely you’ll hear the same statement, changing the direction and  listing one to two common sense answers. “Well if you have already a small amount of women and girls involved in carting only so many people get to advance, or are able to.. It’s not about we aren’t letting women in. It’s just that there aren’t enough girls who want to.” I’m not going to ask some dumbass driver who didn’t finish high school, to fix the industries issue with gender diversity. My issue mostly lies with who these questions are getting asked to. Understanding that drivers are the face of their teams, yet not being able to expect them to give solid answers, tells us exactly how these people actually think. When you have team principles like Christian Horner, making comments about how the female fans of his sport are only there for the “hot drivers” when if we think about it, I don’t see how only three drivers are holding firm a close to 7 million increase in female viewer ship on their own.

In the depths of the fandom, already I’m seeing something that has been repeated time and time again. Formula One and the FIAs attempts to reach a broader audience in North America, going about it by putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, and releasing team statements, making the drivers talk about racism and misogyny within the sport. Appealing to the young will not actually fixing anything or making any sort of meaningful gestures isn’t going to keep an audience, especially when the audience you’re gunning for, has been known to flip-flop, follow the trends and abandon at the drop of a hat.  In general young women are smarter than perceived, but they’re still teenagers.  They’ll enjoy it for a little bit but once they see that this is not a welcome space for them, they’ll drop it no problem.  That’s the issue that Formula One and the FIA need to understand. You can’t beg for viewership and support from a group of people while simultaneously excluding them at every step of the conversation, and every step of the process, and doing absolutely nothing about the people making it an unwelcome space for them. 

[aureliaen]

When you say “is anyone hurt by the lack of florrick content” that’s kind of what op is getting at. I write & read mainly f/f & it does in fact suck that there’s so little content of those ships & chars. When demographics are so skewed we need to ask why-that’s why they brought up “ppl say female chars are less interesting” bc that’s a justification we hear a ton. They weren’t attacking individuals but a cultural issue in fandom. Interrogating systemic biases anywhere is important & makes fandom as a whole better.

That's fair, I def see your point. It's frustrating when your favorite ships and characters aren't getting as much attention as you'd want, especially as an active creator yourself, and I def understand how that might make you more reactively bitter about those that do. I feel similarly about Astarion. I quite enjoyed him while playing for the most part, but seeing how unreasonably overrepresented he is in the fandom made him a lot more annoying.

The thing is, just because it's personally irritating doesn't make it an actual issue. What I mean by that is, fandom is driven by active fans. It is very possible that Astarion's fans are, for example, more prolific than Shadowheart's and make more than 1 fanfic per author on average, or that they're a lot younger and have more time on their hands. Just some possible examples.

We can and should talk about biases and the way they interact with the game and its community, but that's not what happened in that post. People reblogging are just using it as a place to complain and insult those they deem as guilty of the female characters' lack of popularity, with no quality discussion taking place. But those of us who write and read fanfics about Gortash instead of Orin don't do it because we hate Orin, it's because we love Gortash (and because his dynamic with Durge is completely different from Orin's so comparing them in the first place is inaccurate).

They weren’t attacking individuals but a cultural issue in fandom.

This rubs me the wrong way too. It just doesn't seem true. The fandom isn't a hivemind. It's made of individual, very specific people with specific interests, reasons to create and circumstances that do or don't allow them to create. It's not a cultural issue that a bunch of different groups enjoy male characters the author decided to often arbitrarily juxtapose with a different female character for the sake of proving a predetermined point. It's not like it's a male fans vs female fans thing either? I love Gortash and would rather write about him than Orin (even though I really like Orin). I love Minthara and would never write about Halsin. I don't give a shit about Zevlor or Florrick. For many, many people, there's no overlap.

So what the post (or maybe the people reblogging) is/are really doing is addressing a collective of creators with extremely varying interest in dynamics and characters, with one shared trait of them being male, and telling them that that's a bad thing and they're perpetuating misogyny. And you should also account for the fact that many of those people ship those male characters with their own female Tavs/Durges, who are often extremely fleshed out characters with intriguing backstories and characterization. It makes no sense.

Having said all that, I know how hard it is to start writing and I hope more F/F fans who don't currently create will join you in building that side of the community. BG3 has a ton of great female characters that deserve love, def no doubt about that.

[somehowmags]

also honestly, girl at an all boys school has been such a common trope for YEARS like. i know not everyone is insane like i was and went through a gacha phase but the fandom was literally 1/5 built off a girl mc in an all boys school trope. obviously we were all kids when we made it so gacha mvs weren't the best for the portrayal of nuanced, gendered issues or specifically, proper handling of misogyny for the matter but like. the theme itself definitely not weird as bad as people think. yuu literally got their asscheeks yoinked to an alternate world them being a girl is the least of their concerns. if any thing, it can be more interesting to see how characters differently interact with yuu and come to build positive, intimate and meaningful relationships with her especially as guys who have had limited interactions with girls, so both yuu and the characters learn from each other putting aside the main character development in the storyline. adding onto the feeling of the divide yuu would feel at the beginning as someone who's both from another world and of another gender in nrc. these girl in an all boys school plots often end up as a harem story where the mcs are just a blank slate in the character drama. and i hate it cause most of the times it ends up perpetuating the notion that guys can never be friends with girls due to romantic or sexual interest electing the girls as either someone to possess in a relationship or someone not suited to them at all, just generally being misogynistic pricks, or actually being a decent friend to a girl is humiliating and a sign of inferiority. or girls just aren't as interesting. my best friend is the lesbian to my gay twink and building relationships with people fundamentally different than you can be so, so beautiful and fulfilling. i love seeing girls and guys just being HOMIES!!! seeing fem yuu's learn and stumble and grow with the nrc and just. overall people drawing and writing their yuu's with their favorite character is like fuck, speak your truth man. to be honest i was mainly speaking about the inexperienced first years but just any character. malleus, lilia, vil, etc etc. let's go yuu nation

tdlr its a really intriguing dynamic and allows for a lot of possibilities a fan could think of. masc yuu's are great, gn yuu's are great, fem yuu's are great. some twsties need to LET OTHER twsties just enjoy their whimsical thoughts.

YES YES YES YES EXACTLY AGREEING WITH ALL OF THIS!!!! having a girl in an all boys school or a boy in an all girls school has been a trope for years, and sure sometimes it is used for uh. fanservice. but when it is properly explored it can be a really interesting trope!

i saw someone say once (before yuuka came out) that there shouldn't be an official fem yuu because then the studio would HAVE to canonize a yuu ship which is soooooo. firstly why would having a fem mc mean that you have to ship them with someone, and secondly what about the studio implies that they would ever do that, and thirdly what an ass backwards misogynistic take, and fourthly you have to understand that f/m and f/f ships are not lesser than m/m. please LKAHSDFLKASDHFLKH the lengths people go to to justify not liking fem yuus. i laugh but it sucks going in the twst tags sometimes because people are so mean its depressing.

nyeah i feel like fandom is a bit like. too romance focused. people can do whatever the hell they want forever ofc! i like shipping also! i am known to enjoy an reader insert fic! i buy romance novels and play otomes all the time ajksldfhlakshdfasldhf but it sucks when its all that there is yknow. i love pushing dolls faces together to make them kiss but sometimes i would also like to play something else.

i also wish there was less disdain towards different yuus. like man we're all stuck in disney anime boy hell can't you guys suffer with dignity like the rest of us instead of being mean. we should all hold hands and imagine our favorite characters together.

[the-owl-tree]

objectively im aware of the issues with a shadow in riverclan but also as a “bad trauma survivor” (read: somebody whos paranoid, lashes out, and self-isolates, currently in recovery) the book speaks to me on a personal level in a vaccuum and i cant really make myself hate it. and honestly some of the criticisms i see get REALLY close to the “if a trauma survivor lashes out at the wrong person then theyre an inherently horrible person” thing thats so common in fandom. if you get what im saying? like i dont think thats what theyre saying (im autistic and have a hard time looking past initial impressions) but also the phrasing is. eh.

its like in the grand scheme of warriors and the writers history of misogyny the issues are there, but the way some people word their takes makes me. Uncomfortable. if that makes sense. (this isnt me defending the writers or looking for a fight just something ive noticed that im having a hard time wording)??

that being said feathertail should have thrown leopardstar into a volcano and i cannot comprehend her decision to forgive her

No no you’re good! I understand what you’re trying to say, I definitely understand where you’re coming from. While I can definitely understand where you’re coming from, I think it’s worth mentioning (and I’m just preaching to the choir here, you seem well aware of these issues so I’m not trying to argue or dismiss your feelings) that Feathertail’s feelings are supported by the narrative. You’re meant to understand why she’s angry and lashing out, her feelings are justified by the story. So when people are discussing this, (and of course, I think being aware of wording and the potential hurt one can cause is important), her lashing out at Sasha in itself isn’t the issue, it’s how the narrative treats it.

Sasha in herself is a “bad victim”, she is someone who loves her abuser and, whether people want to admit it or not, it can lead a lot of people to invalidate the abuse people face because of this. So why is Feathertail able to forgive Leopardstar and not Sasha when the former plays a far larger in what happened to Feathertail? How does that play into Feathertail’s overall larger arc of forgoing outsider attachments and devoting herself to her Clan? And what is the narrative trying to tell us about Sasha, a character who, as I’ve stated, does not play her victim role “”right””?

Not saying you’re arguing that Feathertail’s treatment of Sasha is right, you’ve pointed out you recognized the underlying bias the narrative has. I’m just trying to speak to why this plot line is a bit of a double edged sword in trying to discuss “bad victims”. I definitely understand what you’re saying though, it’s always worth keeping real people’s feelings in mind when discussing these things.

You’re absolutely right on the last point, she should’ve fed Leopard to that fox lol