#i'm girlbossing at work

[angels444yuri]

going to bed thinking about how i'd be the greatest world leader of all time

[familyagrestefanblog]

Someday, I swear, someday...

Someday I will write down why not just the story of Cinderella but especially the dynamic between Cinderella, her evil stepmother and stepsisters is one of the most important stories that has lasted thousands of years for a VERY GOOD REASON

Not just regarding child abuse, feminist literature and literature of female (coded) life experiences

But one of the most important stories PERIOD.

SOMEDAY I will fucking explain why Adrien and Gabriel are a brilliant and extremely important depiction of that story, and a phenomenal gender swapped variation of it for modern feminist story-telling that is very much breaking some grounds. If only Marinette's own girlboss 'knight in shining armor' narrative wouldn't constantly undermine that, making them seem "lesser" bc Adrien is "just" her little damsel she will save "easily" because we can't allow for her to be seen as anything else but one of the "STRONG" modern female heros.

SOMEDAY I will explain why Cinderella and Lady Tremaine are NOT fucking jokes and outdated female (coded) archetypes to be laughed at for how "weak and backwards" they are, but if well utilized one of the most raw and gut-wrenching archetypes of the non-romantic interplay of love vs hatred that grabs you by the most intimit connection a human can have and potentially breaks down the very root of who you are and why.

I will fucking explain why despite how misogynistic our society is, Cinderella and Lady Tremaine are still one of the most iconic protagonist and villain pairs in all of fiction and will continue doing so for many ages to come.

Why Cinderella, no matter how much society will tear her down, will never stop rising from her ashes victoriously. And why Lady Tremaine, no matter how underutilized and slandered she's depicted, will never ever stop dominating 99% of any other villain she's put against.

Both entirely without special powers, status, or whatever. Just through their very presence and dynamic.

I swear to God this fandom...

[the-spooky-children]

Can't stop thinking about unhealthy co-dependent teen!fireskulls..

[wyfy-meltdown]

Here's a miscellaneous Homestuck OC!!!

I have many more at this point (←hyperfixation getting me good), but she's somehow my favourite and I just can't stop drawing and making stuff for her????

Anyways, her name is Pelagi Cyanea and she's a rogue of blood and a fuchsia blood!!! Personality-wise she's a bit ignorant/naïve of bad things, but genuinely wants good for society! She acts a lot more mean and leaderly than she is, and is secretly a gullible pushover. She has a kismesis (Monoce Kerosz), an auspictice (Ranhya Aldeba), and a complicated moirallegience/mutual pale crush with Cetari Lanala.

I'll post some of the other OCs at some point (probably the ones who I've made art for and am happy with the designs of)

[une-sanz-pluis]

The King’s Mother

Did Annie Garthwaite write poorly? I was planning to go and watch it, but some comments said that this Margaret Beaufort close-up is very good and very rare among York supporters

I'll be honest and admit I've not read Annie Garthwaite's The King's Mother in full yet, I've read several sections of the advanced reading copy I got off Netgalley and I've read Cecily, which The King's Mother is a sequel to. The King's Mother is only a good book if you're a Ricardian.

Cecily, I think, worked a lot better because it was about a relatively unexplored area in fiction and pop history and Garthwaite had to develop her own ideas about what happened. By the end, it started to become apparent Garthwaite hews very closely to most of the Ricardian tropes. The narrative of The King's Mother covers the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III so the Ricardian tropes are out in full force now and Garthwaite sticks hard to them. I think Garthwaite writes better than Philippa Gregory and she's slightly more sensible in regards to the witchcraft accusations against Jacquetta of Luxembourg but it's about as feminist as Gregory was. The only women we're meant to like are Cecily and Anne Neville, and Anne's characterisation is "tragically weak and sickly but she has brains so she agrees with everything Cecily says". Richard III is an utterly passive do-gooder who has to be cajoled by his wife and mother into serious action.

From the pieces I've read, Margaret Beaufort is the same old religious fanatic (unlike Cecily who is truly pious) and hypocrite who is weirdly obsessed with her son.The narrative and Garthwaite in her author's notes criticise her for being devoted to her son instead of her husbands (the same criticism is levelled at Margaret of Anjou) which is just blatantly misogynistic to me, particularly when Garthwaite does not make excuses for Edmund Tudor and depicts Henry VI as an extreme misogynist who throws his wife under the bus. Why the hell are we criticising them for not devoting themselves to their husbands who treated them like shit and are terrible people in Garthwaite's narrative?

I don't know what those commenters saw in Garthwaite's Margaret Beaufort that was so good unless it's the fact that Margaret does not kill the Princes in this - but only because Garthwaite follows Matthew Lewis's theory that the benevolent Richard III had them smuggled out to Europe. Garthwaite depicts Margaret as being willing to kill them and then spends some time talking about how utterly heinous she was for it and why Margaret's Damned To Hell because of this.* She is depicted as the lone woman who is able to outmanoeuvre Cecily but, y'know, she's still evil and she can only do it because Cecily taught her everything she knows. I just... look, is the bar that low on the floor that evil girlboss damned to hell but doesn't kill the Princes is actually a good and sympathetic depiction?

* Given Garthwaite depicted Cecily as canonically desiring to secretly give Jacquetta of Luxembourg a non-consensual abortion and willing to "deal with" (i.e. kill) the child Edward of Lancaster, this seems highly hypocritical of Garthwaite and Cecily. But then this is the same author who spends an entire book referring Henry VI with ableist language only to turn around and deliver a chest-thumping screed about the evils of Tudor ableism about Richard III's scoliosis.

[thefabelmans2022]

well that's just not true at all is it.

[penrose-quinn]

I'm sort of afraid that my Shinomi fic might get misinterpreted t.t

[angels444yuri]

one thing i love about pinterest is that whenever someone comments "who is she" there will always be "a misty memory" in the replies

[forgetful-river]

To be an apostle to a cruel god, a divinity long-dead who left festering wounds to the devout, is a righteous mission of self-destruction.

[the-crow-binary]

The love people show for the pink-haired BDSM vampire lady is proof that Isaac could’ve gotten fans who love him with his og design. Or maybe the world is still too homophobic for that.

Literally enrages me. And I'm someone who discovered Isaac first on NFCV and went "ew he's ugly wtf" when I first saw how he looked in the games. It didn't take me too long to actually take a liking to the design and realize how much more compelling it was thant N!Isaac though :) (no one would be shitting on G!Isaac as much as they are now if there wasn't N!Isaac to compare him to. there would still be people, but less)

I mean at least Isaac's design have a sense. There is meaning behind his tattoos, his half-covered face, his clothes (and the lack thereof) all up to his sharp nails. N!Isaac has nothing, even his Devil Forgemaster UNIFORM is a downgrade and lose the sense it was supposed to have by not even having the Devil Forgemaster's crest on it to begin with. (I saw someone say that he looked "mysterious" because of his tattoos and no. No he doesn't. It's a few dots and two lines. It's the laziest tattoos, G!Isaac has the Devil Forgemaster crest embedded in his skin and his tattoos actually have forms and complexity you can try to interpret. what is there to interpret in N!Isaac's dots and lines?? MORSE CODE?? IT MEANS "MEIIIE" JUST SO YOU KNOW)

So it's already insulting that they changed his design because "bohoo he too slutty and BDSM-y he wouldn't fit" (even though you just had to give him clothes or smth), but it's even worse now that they literally took a HUMAN OLD LADY character (that could have been fun to have fight, to change from all the young-looking people) and turn her not only into a VAMPIRE, but a vampire with PINK HAIR, PINK EYES, AND A BDSM OUTFIT. And why? Because it's hot I guess. :) There's no other reason. I mean I'll give NFCV the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe they'll give an explanation in-universe as to why she is the way she is (just like it was explained in-universe what happened to Isaac to make him look and act the way he does. But no N!Isaac fans care about that since they couldn't keep shitting on G!Isaac otherwise). But yeah, I don't have much hope. NFCV was never smart enough to have characterization as deep and complex as the games could have. In the best way I could describe it... it's literally so american. It REEKS of america and it's culture and it's own view on things such as religion and gender and sex and politics. Friendly reminder that CV is originally a japanese franchise. So ofc the non-japanese creators had to force their own culture on it (consciously or not).

But honestly it looks borderline sexist to me. NFCV forced a male character to conform to the american standard of masculinity, and sexualized and slutiffied a female character that did not have any sexy trait before (since it wasn't the point of her character). And thus for no apparent reason. And people are literally applauding them... what the fuck.

[theogony]

everyday i rotate between needing the most heartbreaking lesbian situationship of my life and needing to be the most self independent woman ever topping every single class and thriving on validation

[thatdykepunkslut]

No popular lesbian artist has all five:

Draws people of color

Draws trans people (realistically or at all)

Draws fat people

Draws people with short hair

Draws butches (related to the previous 2 but not synonymous)

[theharddeck]

turns out i am the type of hallmark FMC who's up for a massive promotion at work and is bummed bc she doesn't have someone to share it with, which sends her into a spiral of not being married yet 🙃 not what i wanted to find out about myself today

[bluebellhairpin]

I'm girlbossing too close to the sun. I'm looking at my chipped red manicure and hoping none of it is coming off in the floor I'm re-doing.

[mishkakagehishka]

Idc anymore i think i'm a good enough writer that i can say that when i noticed the pattern in what exactly makes a book "good" on booktok (and, bc of that, what makes it popular and top bestseller lists), it feels almost demeaning and denigrating to the entire craft. Idk if i should blame the way tiktok-esque social media has utterly rotted everyone's ability to concentrate and read more than three sentences, but literally none of those books are objectively good.

(Yes, yes, art is subjective. HOWEVER. Art is subjective when you look at style, at themes, at motifs, at plots and characters. Art is still a craft, it still requires skill. I've seen beyond the tiktok quotes of these books. Not even their editors are good given the amount of typos/spelling mistakes. That is not something that you should find in a traditionally published book.)

You look at these books, and you know the only reason for their existence is to make money. I cannot and will not accept that as art.

(I'm on Tumblr, of course I have to explain every point. Artists who make money off their art =/= people who only create art meant to be profitable. There is a difference between an artist who hopes to monetise doing what they love, who creates what they wish to see more of and who happens to then create something that other people wish to see more of, and a person who looks at what's trending and decides that making an unholy frankenstein's monster of a book that mashes all those trending tropes and motifs together would get them rich quick. The fact that a lot of these booktok books become popular because of nepotism is just the cherry on top. It's soulless.)

And to finally say what I wanted to say, it's because none of these books have any deeper message or even artistic value to them. You will find a few out of context quotes or paragraphs, ones written specifically so they'd look deep and beautiful when taken out of context, so that people would post them, so that people would buy the books. Entire books written just so those few lines could become viral and make cash. It cannot even be compared to a hook line writers would post to get people interested in their works, because in booktok's case, those are the only lines of quality and in the context itself, they are often out of place and forced.

I just hate booktok, i hate what modern social media has done to art. It's all created to be quickly consumed, for the few ☆aesthetic☆ glances, and then discarded. Just to make more money for those who are already nepo babies. As if artists needed more obstacles to jump over.

[bumblingbabooshka]

I know that the post about which Star Trek you've watched was not an invitation for suggestions and that no other series can even come close to what Voyager has with Tuvok, but I think you would really enjoy Enterprise's Carbon Creek for the sheer level of Vulcan lore and shenanigans in it, and it generally works as a stand-alone episode

Can I just say I really love how you worded this and it made me laugh very hard when I read it because it sounds like you're trying very delicately to get me to move on and live my life again after a tragedy and you're very correct to do so, I earnestly love it HEHEHEH you're so nice~ "Listen...we all know Tuvok means so so much to you. No one's trying to take that away, we couldn't even we tried, you know that. But there's a whole WORLD of Star Trek out there...he would have wanted you to watch Carbon Creek - no, he would have wanted you to enjoy it." And I tearfully nod, wiping my eyes. "You're right...I'm being silly, I know." [not at all] I smile slightly. "You know what....? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna watch Carbon Creek. What's the harm? Just one episode. It'll be good for me. It'll get my mind off him." Anyway I watched Carbon Creek

I immediately drew Tuvok <3 HEHEHE BUT I really did like the episode~!!! The subplot about Jack[?] being able to go to college was really sweet and I thought T'Mir was so lovely looking...I want to dress like her. Why can't /I/ be a little alien woman in a small town? Just because I'm mostly not a woman and live in a big city and am human?? How's THAT fair? Lying: The most fun a girl can have with her clothes on. <- deceiving others about the fact that you weren't lying? Double the fun!