#i detest when my fave character on an ensemble ends up being a guy. like goddamn i had one job

[mischas]

Yesterday I saw this tweet quoting a list of the ‘ao3 ship stats of 2023’ and they were talking about how out of 100 ships, the list only had 27 women total. Then someone said that couldn’t simply be just misogyny, and another person said they had seen others explaining they mostly ship male characters because women are badly written/under developed, and I mean… Please, that’s such bullshit! It made me sad, and also it made me think of these characters we’ve been loving for so long and despite them being written by men, and sometimes being BADLY written or written ooc, they’re still so important and it’s so worth exploring their layers and giving them voice. I just wish female fic writers would step up and write about ourselves, write characters we can relate, flesh them out—we’re in 2024, ffs! How can we blame men for not writing women well and then just dedicate our time and creativity to write this so called interesting fictional men we have love or whatever? Sorry, I know this sounds more angsty than anything but it really pissed me off. We need to stop calling male blorbos “baby girl” and start writing and voicing real baby girls!!! (That obviously includes wlw relationships!) That’s why I love this blog so much, btw. That’s why when I thought of venting about it I thought: oh, she would understand! Thank you for always talking about Marissa’s layers and potential, thanks for making women who relate to her in some level feel understood. 🫶🏻

Oh wow, that's crazy. But also... unsurprising. So that's 27 total women out of 200 characters/individuals? Jesus. I'm not terribly versed in modern fandom (or even, like, old fandom, really) but male characters have historically been babied and loved on more. I don't really get it. A huge chunk of that is they were created and crafted by men and those stories come from a patriarchal perspective. How shows/stories shape and shift can really define how things are written moving forward and it's frankly true that audiences are much more harsh about the fallibility of female characters than they are of their male counterparts. I personally think it stems from men being generally terrible irl so people take male characters and run with them because it's safe and comforting rather than dealing with the reality of dudes irl.

You're right, we need to stand up for the ladies!! And that absolutely includes wlw relationships!

You're very sweet. I love Marissa. I could talk about her all day. It blows my mind that people still misunderstand her in 2024.