#the problem isn't women characters the problem is bad writing

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

ST DIALOGUE ANALYSIS – GENDER

for the whole project see my tag #star trek dialogue analysis and my spreadsheet data here

other related links: overview // TOS overview // TNG overview // DS9 overview // Voyager overview // Enterprise overview // race analysis

this post will be diving to explore the differences in amount of dialogue male vs female characters received in TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. i also have data on TOS but am not including it here because it aired over 20 years before TNG in a much different social climate with a different style of show and just isn't that useful for a comparative analysis in my opinion.

also a note/disclaimer that this project only looks at amount of dialogue, not necessarily the quality of women's roles in each show or the misogyny present in the content of the shows. here i'm just trying to do a statistical analysis with quantitative data, not looking at qualitative elements as many people have already written about Star Trek's various misogyny & sexism problems more coherently than i can. (though please feel free to use this data in any qualitative analyses!)

and one last note – i use the words "woman" and "female" (and "man" and "male") interchangably here. this is mostly because in English "female/male characters" is grammatically correct and is a more used term than "woman/man characters". i'm not trying to pull any bullshit terfy sex vs gender shit. and while some characters do have trans/genderqueer subtext to their characters (especially alien characters), i am just looking at this through the gender of the actor portraying them (all of whom are cis).

so without further ado – read the results under the cut!

cast composition by gender

it goes without saying that all four of these shows had less female characters than male characters overall – TNG, DS9, and Voyager all had ten regular cast members at various points. in TNG – 4 of the characters are women but only had 2 female regulars for six of its seven seasons (with 3 in season 1). in DS9 – there are 3 female characters with 2 at any given point. in Voyager – there are 4 female characters with 3 at any given point. and in Enterprise – there are 2 female characters out of the 7 person cast.

this means that TNG's cast is comprised of 40% women overall and with 33.3% women in s1 and 25% women in s2-3 and 28.6% in s4-7. DS9 is comprised of 30% women overall with 25% women in s1-3 and 22.2% in s4-7. Voyager is made of 40% women overall and 33.3% in each season. And Enterprise has 20% women overall and in each season.

it should also be noted that the only people removed & replaced from the 90s Star Trek shows are women with Denise Crosby leaving because of frustration with the writing for her character & the general management of the show (though she later came back for guest appearances), Gates McFadden being fired for voicing her complaints with sexist writing (and eventually rehired), Terry Farrell leaving because of sexism, harassment, and unequal treatment from execs, and Jennifer Lien being replaced due to personal reasons. it goes without saying that this is a pretty bad history with 30% of actresses having been fired, forced to leave, or quit because of behind the scenes issues. (note that Diana Muldaur also left TNG but from my knowledge, she left because her contract was up & because Gates McFadden was rehired, not because of any particular issues around sexism or harassment so i did not include her in that 30% statistic.)

how much of the show's dialogue is from women vs men?

in TNG, women had 7,430 lines of dialogue from regulars across the show while men had 35,718 lines. this means that women had 17.22% of the dialogue across the seven season run.

(% of female character lines in blue and % of male character lines in red)

in DS9, women had a somewhat better 10,460 lines compared to the men's 32,698 lines. meaning women had 24.24% of the dialogue.

(% of female character lines in blue and % of male character lines in red)

in Voyager, women had a much improved 21,582 lines compared to the men's 29,549 lines. in other words, women had 42.21% of the dialogue.

(% of female character lines in blue and % of male character lines in red)

and while it seemed things were on an upward trend for women's representation, Enterprise only had 5,941 lines from female characters compared to the males' 19,077 lines. meaning women had 23.75% of the dialogue.

(% of female character lines in blue and % of male character lines in red)

in total across all four shows, women had 27.95% of the dialogue compared to men having 72.05%. (interestingly this is a similar ratio to the amount of dialogue from characters of color vs white characters.) the next time someone brings up that they preferred how women were written on older trek compared to new trek, be sure to remind them that women on average had only 28% of the dialogue despite the fact that women make up around half of the global population.

(% of female character lines in blue and % of male character lines in red)

average female characters' # of lines compared to male characters

this measure ignores the fact that men make up the majority of all the shows' cast and is now just focused on how many lines per episode on average female characters have compared to male characters.

in TNG, the average female characters' line count is 20.68 per episode compared to the males' 34.55.

in DS9, the average female characters' line count is 32.78 to the males' 28.18.

in Voyager, the average female characters' line count is 36.1 to the males' 29.32.

in Enterprise, the average female characters' line count is 30.01 to the males' 38.54.

out of all of the shows, the average female characters' line count is 29.65 and the males' is 32.21.

i would highlight that in both DS9 and Voyager, women typically have more lines than the men on the show, especially on Voyager given that the lead character is a woman. but there's a pretty large gender gap in both TNG and Enterprise which leaves male characters with slightly more lines overall.

most to least lines

female characters with the most to least lines per episode are as follows: Janeway (69.51), T'Pol (44.02), Seven (40.88), Ezri (39.84), Kira (32.24), Torres (26.3), Jadzia (26.26), Pulaski (23.95), Crusher (20.79), Yar (19), Kes (18.18), Troi (18.11), Sato (15.99).

it's also worth noting that out of the 13 female characters from this era of Trek, only 2 of them are characters of color (B'Elanna Torres and Hoshi Sato) who both have a below average amount of dialogue compared to other female characters. (Torres – 26.3 average lines per episode, Sato – 15.99 average lines per episode). obviously race is a highly significant factor when considering amount of lines/screentime and i will have a similar post dedicated to it here (link will be posted shortly).

[ophanstears]

no matter how positive in nature they may be, men on youtube who do huge essays on "this is how you should write a strong female character" are way more annoying than any mary sue could ever be it feels incredibly pretentious and in bad faith because there are just about a million male characters like them who will never face the same amount of criticism and scrutiny for the way they act. by pointing out these characters who "are different and work" they are acting like well written female characters do not exist in media at all which is simply not true.

i am well aware that these videos are positive in spirit and mean well but it just feels condescending and points out this problem that isn't really existing in the first place, beyond shitty hollywood movies that people that look for good writing shouldn't watch in the first place.

instead of focusing on how female girlboss characters are written as annoying bland mary sues we should maybe focus way more on how for ages women were written off as either bland love interests that the hero could "earn" or were fridged to be the motivation for the male hero character instead; and how this has been haunting and diminishing the narratives of so many stories for generations but i guess that would be too advocating toward women as a whole wouldn't it be.

[neverendingford]

.

[emdotcom]

*remembers what they did to Vanny* 500 FUCKING PIPEBOMB ATTACK.

[gojohatemail]

Sorry to still be a #Hater but, knowing I Will be playing 3 playthroughs of Persona 3 (2 Portable runs and one FES+The Answer run) sounds so much more fun and enjoyable than playing Persona 5 for a second time, vanilla or Royal I'M SORRY THIS IS A P5 HATE ACCOUNT NOW

[cardentist]

fandom isn't activism by the way. there's no way to do it good enough that it can stand in for putting in the work of real activism, but there's also no way to do it Bad enough that it cancels out any of your actual beliefs (as long as you treat the real people around you well, of course).

like, there's a difference between noticing that women tend to be under-represented in fics and linking that to societal misogyny (fandom as a whole is simply big enough that these trends are at least partially reflective of societal biases as a whole), and measuring specific characters and ships against each other and deciding that if one number gets below the other then feminism is LOSING.

or going up to specific People and grilling them about which characters they talk about most and why.

if someone is nice to women in real life and posts about wanting to raw old men all the time online then I think it literally doesn't matter at all actually.

recognizing that a trend As A Whole is probably influenced by societal bias doesn't translate to that Same bias being ever-present on an individual level. there's no way to write fanfic in a way that saves feminism.

fanfic is the Symptom, not the solution or even the problem. you treat the Societal Bias and the fanfic numbers change, you don't change societal bias by arguing with people online about the fics they do or don't write.

Sometimes people only write fics about gay sex because they're gay, and that's fine actually

[olderthannetfic]

/olderthannetfic/769334704445997057/another-fandometrics-year-in-review-another-bevy

I am - genuinely - very sympathetic to the frustrations of solely f/f shippers and I DO think some people are a little too quick to shrug off the lack of f/f in fandom spaces with “lack of representation in media what can you do” when fandom is all about assigning personalities and backstories to one-line characters. HOWEVER. As someone who likes all kinds of ships, the experiences I have had across many MANY fandoms with solely f/f shippers treating people who also liked the main m/m ship as traitors and bad feminists, not to mention the number of people who have told me, a trans man, that I HAVE to write more f/f and less m/m For The Sisterhood, has made me LESS likely to engage in f/f, not more. Some of y’all are your own worst enemy when it comes to this stuff I swear. (Hashtag not all femslashers, hashtag some of my best friends are femslashers, etc)

--

Demands that people defend and explain perfectly commonplace things always end up generating dumber and dumber explanations.

I agree that that explanation by itself is kind of weak, but "Why are you asking only about AO3?" (as people often are) plus representation problems plus the other commonly cited reasons add up to a perfectly sufficient explanation. People just don't like what they're hearing.

--

The kind of f/f fandom people are often looking for—a by cis wlw, for cis wlw one—is not that different in size from the by cis mlm, for cis mlm one. They are both small.

Yes, I know they pretend that's not what they mean. They are lying. Possibly to themselves. Just look at the bawwwwing over the idea that cis men liking f/f could add to the amount of f/f art or the audience for the same.

Many AO3 slashers are better compared to transbian catgirls making lesbian furry porn or cis dudes horny for Buffy/Faith or something. There are plenty of people who care about f/f. They're just not necessarily the ~right~ people in the right spaces making the right art to count in some wanker's statistics.

Part of the reason our explanations and discussions always sound so bonkers is that we constantly compare apples to oranges.

--

And while we're at it, let's talk about that hoary old ~one-line character~ thing.

The reality is that we like to talk about how we elevate random walk-on characters, but the vast majority of shippy AO3 fanfic is about fairly major characters. Clint/Coulson was bizarrely popular in 2012. It has been twelve years. It is time to get over it.

On top of most things focusing on leads, the focus is often on characters who are given a lot of interiority. The audience is invited to be in their head and care about their feelings. People aren't usually good at analyzing film, so they use more familiar metrics involving text: how many lines do they have in the script? How many minutes does that translate to on screen? They don't know how to quantify a character being treated as an object to be looked at beyond "Booty shorts bad". But it's not general sex appeal or amount of skin on display that matters here.

As audiences, we respond to film grammar and "Just happen to like" or not like some character as a result of it, but we aren't aware of the mechanics, so we can't explain why beyond vague spluttering and "How dare you! Everyone should think this because it's the natural response!"

In general, media with multiple central women who have intense relationships with each other and who are conventionally attractive generate plenty of interest in f/f. Media with one hot girl who has the camera trained on her ass all the time while the men do everything interesting usually don't.

It's a no brainer and the harebrained explanations come from trying to look deeper to find the secret conspiracy where there is none.

--

The biggest mistake of most of this dumb discourse is "But I see all these queer women here. Why isn't there more f/f?"

This presupposes some default "normal" level of f/f without any actual justification for why that would be expected. You see the same nonsense from people going "Why is there so much m/m?"

What's the default? 10% because of the fake statistic that 10% of people are gay? 75% because action movies are sausagefests and all the important relationships are between men? What's the "normal" level of femslash? 25% because f/f, f/m, m/m, and gen are all equally valid? 80% because lots of fanfic writers are women?

Chasing one precise number is a fool's errand, but building a whole theory on the idea that there's an implicit number without even digging into that assumption is more foolish still.

When you look at the fanfic (or art!) spaces that are full of dudes, they often look like a bit of a mirror of AO3. Lots of het still. Lots of f/f. Lots of lady blorbos people are obsessed with. Limited m/m. Depending on the space, there might be a lot more gen. It's not perfectly 1:1, but then AO3 isn't precisely like other chick-heavy fanfic spaces anyway.

--

In my experience, the thing that makes a blorbo take off is that they're fairly major in canon, often driving the narrative even if they aren't the main protagonist, and they show up early.

In the cases where they weren't there at the very beginning, them showing up was the catalyst for fans who like this type of character to get into the canon at all. It's not just Castiel: you see it with Methos from Highlander and plenty of others. It's usually in a context where that fandom didn't have that much established for this type of fan. There wasn't a second dude to pair the lead with or the ship turned some people off or something. Highlander, for example, had fucktons of het shippers, both of canon het and of various OFCs and canon dudes. It was the slashers who stampeded over there when friends told them there was new ship potential for m/m. SPN... Sam/Dean was very popular on LJ, but I think it's obvious why a viable non-brother ship was of interest to people. I watched tons of people get pimped into Teen Wolf for Sterek. Of course they ended up liking it and not really caring about other ships: they were pre-selected to like that specific vibe. (And they are all wrong because Scott is the best and Derek has weird teeth.) The same thing happens with f/f. People get into media all the time because they're promised such-and-such a ship dynamic.

Wynonna Earp had plenty of people who were there for the women because the women are who matter for the most part. People were super into the canon f/f because it's hot and because it didn't seem like they were just going to get hit by a bus and shooed out of the narrative.

How many things that everybody and their sister saw have that many main women who matter? Some, definitely, but they're outnumbered by the sausagefests and by the things with very central het. Not everything with a huge audience gets a big fanfic fandom, but most things with big fanfic fandoms do have a big audience. You need critical mass to make a fandom happen.

Something like MCU has a variety of tasty shipping options, but the characters it spent all its time on first were the small selection of guys fandom cares the most about. When other characters were established very early, they also had an early spurt of fandom. I can't be the only one who remembers Pepperony fandom on LJ. It wasn't just people tagging canon ships in the background: Pepper/Tony shippers were a whole thing.

Yes, there are exceptions, but we make a big deal of them while ignoring the overall pattern.

Again, it is time to get over Clint/Coulson, Arthur/Eames, and people hallucinating that Hux had a personality in that first movie.

These are rare exceptions, and they're all snark-based at that. Darcy Lewis was also obnoxiously popular based solely on a few lines of snark, but that didn't count because she wasn't the correct and virtuous choice of favorite female character.

(Seriously, you should have seen the whining about all the people horny for Darcy who didn't give a fuck about boring Jane. Sorry, but your blorbo is a snooze and mine has amazing tits in addition to being funny.)

--

Let's go look at what's big on AO3 since it's easy and that's what other lazy statistics compilers do and then base their whining on:

Looking at the M/M tag, here's the sidebar:

Castiel/Dean Winchester (111856)

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (70823)

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (70134)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (67796)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (61397)

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) (56548)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (55109)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (49179)

Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku (46679)

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (44754)

I'm seeing canons with huge audiences. Teen Wolf and SPN are way more popular in fanfic fandom, relatively speaking, but they're certainly not obscure media.

I'm seeing a lot of leads. Sirius/Remus does stand out a little: they aren't walk-ons, but fanon did elevate them. Same with Draco, but main protagonist/most obvious nemesis is hardly a surprising ship type.

Let's play with exclude filters and see what's next (numbers won't be exact since this is via excluding the previous batches):

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (43234)

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (40115)

Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V (38398)

Keith/Lance (Voltron) (32757)

Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs) (32744)

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (31834)

Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV) (31527)

Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) (31011)

Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter (30819)

Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood (30133)

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson (27403)

Original Male Character/Original Male Character (26854)

Bakugou Katsuki/Kirishima Eijirou (26854)

Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin (26454)

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov (26453)

Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF) (21154)

Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion (20946)

James T. Kirk/Spock (20716)

Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin (20561)

Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet (20113)

Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru (20039)

Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio (18806)

Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel (18013)

Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier (17577)

Dan Howell/Phil Lester (17518)

Levi Ackerman/Eren Yeager (17404)

Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know (17390)

Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou (17141)

Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact) (17041)

Harry Potter/Severus Snape (16773)

Oh look: more leads.

Sure, there are some little oddities, like the fact that taekook is obviously the worst BTS ship and it is a personal attack on me that it is that popular. But come the fuck on: this is a parade of some of the most famous musicians and most popular anime, shows that had huge audiences and particularly huge audiences of the type that like fanfic.

Let's have a look at f/m:

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug (33773)

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy (33031)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) (29586)

Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (24192)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (21606)

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter (21088)

Kylo Ren/Rey (16028)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader (15922)

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley (15635)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (15335)

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (14552)

Fox Mulder/Dana Scully (14214)

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin (13616)

Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson (11471)

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak (11383)

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan (11272)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (11187)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (10529)

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov (9750)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (9736)

Okay, it is AO3 after all, so some m/m ships have snuck in there, but the general trend is still leads, leads, leads, now with some readerfic. (For James/Lily, you can blame the insanity that is Marauders fandom on TikTok, or so I hear.)

And f/f:

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (21520)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s) (17873)

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan (16168)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (13681)

Clarke Griffin/Lexa (12876)

Adora/Catra (She-Ra) (11532)

Amity Blight/Luz Noceda (10880)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (10532)

Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends) (8925)

Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long (7766)

Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler (7369)

Korra/Asami Sato (7146)

Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair (6720)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (6684)

Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught (5764)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (5529)

Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell (5347)

Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein (4895)

Jirou Kyouka/Yaoyorozu Momo (4662)

Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie (4402)

Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan (4284)

Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer (4223)

Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam (3936)

Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova (3876)

Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca (3700)

Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva (3689)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (3664)

Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price (3471)

Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs (3394)

Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee (3324)

Carmilla might be a little obscure compared to some media, and some other ships have snuck in here, but again, we're seeing some fairly prominent canons and the leads or at least main cast who have intense relationships in those canons. If most fantasy tv shows were Once Upon a Time, all of AO3 might be awash in nothing but swanqueen and captainswan.

The big thing that one sees is simply that f/f fandom often revolves around different media, while m/m and f/m are more likely to be into the same stuff that's full, full, full of main dudes getting to do things with one woman who matters.

We do not, in general, elevate anybody.

Not unless some very talented writer leads the way first with a juicy longfic that establishes all the fanon.

We repeat the myth that we do because it suits a certain narrative about how creative and transformative fandom is—and another equally popular narrative about how the lack of ship A/B is a ~conspiracy~ to rob one of one's rightful overflowing feed trough of fic.

It's bullshit.

We write about leads.

[glitter-stained]

A fun, happy dc story for a change

Look I can be very critical of Winick's writing because I'm so ambivalent about it but damn if it isn't, on a meta level, a really satisfying spite story.

At the core of this story, there is Jim Starlin. Now Starlin's writing has many flaws, not least of all the blatant racism and sexism. And if there's one thing Jim hates, it's Robin. He wants to kill that little boy so bad, oh how he hates that bright coloured child in tights that's just holding Batman back from reaching his true potential as an absolute badass... And hey, good news! Dc, in trying to bring a second Robin after the first got a new identity, has dropped the ball, and the new boy is unpopular amongst the fans who miss the previous iteration! This is his opportunity to kill Robin, definitely!

But how? People may not have voted him dead yet, but Jim is already planning, setting up plots and trying his damndest to get him killed. And the thing about Jim- the thing that makes him a good writer, you see, the thing that separates him from those losers who fail to see Batman's true potential, is that his writing is gritty. He's not afraid to write a true dark knight facing the grimdark horrors of a town laden with crime, to shy away from the real dark, gritty topic that are mature and dark like rape. And uh, sexual violence against women. And uh, serial raping and killing women. (I'm kidding, of course, I didn't forget the native american cult leader who bathes in blood to prolongate his life. Or about the kgb agent Batman straight-up kills after he tries to kill Reagan. Or about the suicides, god I haven't forgotten about that. Don't worry.) But anyway, sexual abuse in general is a big theme for Jim. It shows how serious and dark and gritty he can be. So he has an idea: why not make Robin a child sexual abuse victim and give him AIDS? That way that's a justification to write Robin unlikeable (by making him emotional when exposed to situations of sexual abuse, unable to restrain his anger when defending a prostitute...) and at the same time it's the perfect way to kill Robin! DC has been considering giving a character AIDS, it's perfect! It will show everyone how dark and gritty Jim's writing is, he can make Robin even more unlikeable on top of how people are upset about the transition between Robins, and then he can finally kill Robin! It's perfect! Jim is a genius!!!

Now, of course, we know that plan failed: first because dc rejected Starlin's idea for Jason to die of AIDS, and second because as soon as Jason (as a character, which is what DC apparently had a problem with) died, they fired Starlin as a Batman writer and introduced a new Robin, making Starlin's vehement campaign against a fictional fifteen years old completely vain.

So that's it, right? Crisis avoided, we almost had some even worst writing that what already was, everyone sigh in relief and go home?

Enter Judd Winick stage left.

Now, remember how DC wanted to give a character AIDS? In 2003, Green Arrow #43 reveals that Mia Dearden, Oliver Queen's ward and a csa survivor of underage prostitution, is HIV positive, and in #45, she takes on the mantle of the second Speedy, becoming, according to Wikipedia, the most prominent HIV-positive superhero to star in an ongoing comic book. (And also one of my favourite comics characters, but that's unrelated.) An important thing about Winick, who wrote those issues, is that he is personally invested in education about AIDS, continuing his friend Pedro Zamora's educational work after his death of AIDS-related progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. (He also wrote a graphic novel about it, called Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I've Learned). So kudos! We finally got someone who has done research and actually holds respect for HIV+ people writing HIV+ characters. And Mia is so cool, man- but not only is she a really interesting character, she is, first and foremost, a survivor. That's how she characterizes herself, sees what happened to her: she did what she had to do to survive, and now she's a fucking superhero and she's here to help others and you know what she's not gonna do? Die "of AIDS."

Yeah, I haven't forgotten Starlin's terrible writing. And, if Winick's writing is any identification, it seems like he hasn't either. The idea of making the second Speedy a parallel with the second Robin isn't groundbreaking, but it's cool that it's there (and also, incidentally, a reminder that parallels are interesting and fun and backstories are not a finite resource characters can run out of or steal from eachother.) Anyway, this includes Winick altering Mia's backstory and making her a street kid to make it more similar to Jason's, as well as Mia's on-screen murder offering a nice parallel to Jason's ambiguous murder in Starlin's Diplomat Son (a parallel I can't help but regard with vindicative snark, because that's how you handle a teenager who has just caused, directly or not, a man's death out of hopelessness in a situation that felt impossible. A little snark of See? Now this is how it's done. Yeah, Starlin's Bruce isn't winning any parenting against Winick's Ollie, that's for sure.) So there it is! Our fun spite story, Winick taking on Starlin's terrible ideas, a teen vigilante and survivor taking on a hero identity to mirror a teen vigilant's loss and death, a good old fashioned schooling. Cool? Cool!

And then, in 2005, Winick buries Starlin's last remaining impact on DC by bringing back Jason Todd, in a move so audacious in the back-then landscape it would be kinda akin to bringing Ben Parker back to life in Spiderman's life as a villain (please don't tell me this happens in the comics I don't read Marvel and if someone wrote that I would honestly prefer not to know). Now, of course, the impact of Jason's death on the narrative can't and shouldn't be undone by that move, but that's not important, because that's not what Starlin wanted when killing Jason - he wanted to kill Jason/Robin, not give everyone grief-induced hallucinations where Jason/Robin had an incredibly salient place in the narrative, so he didn't get what he wanted anyway.

Personally, my view on Winick's writing of Jason is contrasted (and the fact that there are some elements of Starlin's characterization of Jason that I prefer to Winick's deeply amazes me, incredibly ironic situation. Which only serves to point that even Starlin' goal of making us hate his version of robin failed drastically, as me and my jaybin fan mutuals can attest. Sucks to suck!). But as much as some of the decisions frustrate me, do you understand how much of a power move it is to take this child, this victim who has been victim-blamed for years, and bring him back to life with a vengeance and a demand that his life mattered, that his death was a bad thing that shouldn't be tolerated? Do you know how good that story feels, especially to victims when reading it and see that indignation validated, that rebellion against the status quo and victim-blaming, how good it feels to see a "bad victim" that refuses to stay down ? And in the context of Starlin's intent to write Jason a CSA victim, Winick writing Mia, the HIV+ plot for them both- do you understand the genuine and violent glee I feel, that it's Winick that wrote Jason coming back to life and hunting down the narrative with a machine gun?

So yeah. This is the context in which I talk about acknowledging the csa subtext in Green Arrow: Seeing Red, but this post isn't about lecturing you to accept it as canon or imply that you're bad for not sharing that interpretation. It's about spite -towards Jim Starlin specifically. And it's about that interpretation, but the context in which it was written in general, is not just a victory against Starlin, that guy lost long ago, but the narrative equivalent of that Green Arrow meme about taking a funny selfie over a gravestone. In Seeing Red (specifically in the line that's discussed when questioning the csa headcanon), Jason tells Mia they are similar because of what they had to do to survive, framing the sexual trauma on Mia's part (and thus allegedly also on Jason's) again firmly on the side of survival rather than victimhood. Whether it's by becoming a villain or a hero, there's this rebellion against being an object to the violence, which is at the core of Starlin's treatment of sexual violence. This is fun. We're having fun. I'm repeating myself, but do you understand how satisfying, electrifying it is? I'm filled with unreasonable amounts of glee. You don't always need the context in which a story was written to enjoy it but in this case, doesn't this make it so much more enjoyable? (And on top of that, kudos to Winick for killing Captain Nazi, I hope it was as satisfying to write as it looked.) Anyway, Mia Dearden and Jason Todd, the characters that you are. I love them so much.

[leahkentwriter]

Backstories for girls and women in stories that *don't* involve sexual assault.

I beta read a lot, and am involved in writing communities of various kinds, and I briefly taught English way back in the day, and I consume storytelling media in general - and one of my biggest pet peeves is sexual assault backstories. While I think this is improving, it's still annoying to me that a lot of writers (of all genders, but particularly men) fall back on a sexual assault backstory whenever they need to make a girl or woman in a story complicated or haunted or fucked up in some way.

Unless your story is dealing with the topic of sexual assault in some way, please don't use it as a way to give a character depth or angst.

Here are some prompts, just to get you started with some ideas.

Why would a woman be trying to escape her past? Why would she be seeking a fresh start?

She hated her small town; the people there didn't understand her and she never felt like she fit in - she's queer, she has a weird birthmark, she's got unique interests, she has magical powers, etc.

She's a criminal - she robbed banks or stole cars and she wanted a fresh start

She was an addict and hurt people, and she wants a fresh start now that she's sober

Her parent is a criminal or an addict and she's trying to outrun the stigma of being related to them

She didn't get along with a stepparent and skipped town as soon as she turned 18

She had big dreams of being something else, and left to pursue them

Her childhood home was haunted, but no one believed her

She got married young then divorced, and wants to start over somewhere that no one knows her

Heartbreak of any variety - she's leaving a place that reminds her too much of someone she lost or couldn't have

She wants better; maybe more money, or a career, or simply a higher quality of life

Some other violent tragedy occurred - a school shooting, an explosion at the plant, police brutality, her best friend was killed, etc.

Her hometown no longer exists (climate change, the main factory shut down, it was overrun by rabid squirrels, etc.)

What would make a woman distrustful of others?

Heartbreak; being lied to, cheated on, left for her best friend, etc.

A big betrayal - her former best friend told everyone a secret about her, someone weaponized her trauma or her past or a major flaw she's sensitive about, etc.

She witnessed a traumatizing event as a child

Her mother was a grifter and used her as part of her scams

One parent cheated on the other and broke up the family

Her older brother isn't dead after all, he was disowned for being gay and now she's questioning everything her parents ever told her

She has problems with her memory, and is never quite sure what the truth is

She's bad at reading people and has been taken advantage of

She finds out a dark secret about someone she loves and is having trouble processing it

She gradually comes to see that someone she idealized as a child is not at all what they seem

Someone she thought was a good, kind, and genuine person is arrested for a terrible crime

Spiritual abuse - the worldview she was taught was right turns out to be exploitative, represses women, etc., so she leaves

What would cause a woman to have mental health issues?

Any form of abuse - doesn't have to be sexual

Her parents had really high expectations that she couldn't live up to

It simply runs in the family

Survivor's guilt - she survived something that someone else did not

She was bullied and no one protected her

Her parents were very controlling and destroyed her confidence

Her sibling was the golden child and she was the scapegoat

She's had issues since childhood but her parents refused to admit there was anything wrong with her, so she didn't get help

Being a part of any oppressed group of people who experience discrimination - she's a person of color, she's an immigrant, she's got a disability, she's queer, etc.

Any major trauma, either witnessed or being a part of - weather events and natural disasters, infrastructure collapse, crashes and accidents, fires, a shooting or a murder, etc.

You're a writer - get creative. There are lots of ways to traumatize and haunt a girl/woman character without having to resort to a sexual assault backstory. You can even make her the problem! Maybe she's the one who did something bad and is trying to outrun the guilt.

Let's also let go of the idea that it's meeting and falling in love with a man that saves her from her trauma. Let her have a healing arc that doesn't involve a man - a love story can still be there, but it can't be the magic healing balm that fixes her. Make her have to save herself. Give her autonomy to both make her own mistakes, and improve her own situation. Don't let your man go into savior mode - let him get frustrated with her. Let her push him away without him clinging to her in a desperate bid to show her what unconditional love is. Don't let him be a martyr to her trauma.

Women are complicated for many reasons. We have trauma for many reasons. We have mental health issues for many reasons. We may want to escape our past for many reasons. We're angsty and weird for many reasons.

Please pick literally anything other than sexual assault.

[genericpuff]

What is the thing you feel like Lore Olympus failed at or did the worst. The comic has a magnitude of problems but what is one problem that you have the most hatred for or just flat out makes you angry?

(Just curious)

There are so, so many things I could point to as "the worst" thing that the comic did, because it has a LOT of worsts, but I think ultimately the failing of the original myth's messaging has to take the cake because it's ultimately the root of all of LO's problems.

Rachel herself seems to have this disconnect between what's going on in her head vs. what she's actually writing. It's especially present in her Q&A's and interviews where she claims certain things about the comic / text that just aren't present in the slightest during the actual comic. One such example that ties into my answer is this response she gave to Girl Wonder Podcast:

"I feel like female characters in general, people will be a little harsher on them and sometimes way harsher on them, and I used to be like.. before I started writing the story and like making a story I was like yeah, sexism is not that bad, and [now] I was like oh it's bad. It's quite bad [laughs], so like, I don't know, I feel like the female characters in the story don't get so much of a pass. But this isn't consistent across the board, it's not all the time"

It's ironic at best and tone deaf at worst that she would claim that it's her audience being harsh on the female characters, when she's the one who wrote them into the characters they are that would get that reaction. Minthe had her BPD retconned so now she's just the abusive other girl. Hestia was turned into a cruel hypocrite when it was revealed she was a lesbian. Hera is racist to nymphs and cruel to the lower class and yet she's still rewarded in the end by getting to run off with a nymph girl who we've never seen her have any extended interaction with. And worst of all, Demeter was robbed of all of her agency all in favor of turning her into the evil Mother Gothel mom who's overbearing and cruel to poor Persephone. Some of these women deserve to be called out (Hera and Hestia), and others like Minthe and Demeter were simply used as props to do exactly what Rachel claims she doesn't like people doing and is labelling as sexism - to get harsh reactions and give the audience someone to hate on. Rachel desperately needs to learn to read her own work. Her audience is "sexist" towards these women because Rachel wrote them that way.

It fucking sucks and it's, ngl, extremely disrespectful to the messaging of the original myth that was written to comfort and empower the mothers who had lost their daughters to marriages back in the day. It wasn't some simple "aww the girl moved out and now she doesn't visit anymore!" girls who got married off were often literally never seen again and it wasn't by choice. Not only that, but in certain regions (such as in Athens) the women were isolated to their own section of the house upstairs (while the men lived downstairs) so that they wouldn't be seen by visiting guests or strangers.

It's why in some cultures the original H x P myth was considered a "golden standard" for marriages (at the time) because not only was Persephone given power over the domain alongside Hades, but she actually did get to see her mother - but it wasn't because Hades was just such a kind guy who would let her go willingly, it's because Demeter had to literally hold the world hostage and fight for her right to reunite with her child.

So for LO to not only twist Demeter's love and justifiable concern for her daughter into "helicopter parenting", but also rob her of her agency and power in fighting for her child, it fundamentally misses the entire point of the original myth and undoes itself as a retelling that's trying to be taken seriously in the discussion of Greek myth media. And for that, Rachel should be ashamed of herself.

[josru]

a little rant:

If you need to understand one thing about the Bear subreddit, here it is.

It's not a supportive place for women, let alone black women/women of colour. (Not surprising, as reddit is male and white dominated.) Sydney gets mad hate for daring to be apart of the main relationship in the show (that is now defunct), something that the writers wrote for her? Regardless if you see Sydcarmy as romantic or not. The whole point of the Bear is their partnership.

And yet the Bear fandom on reddit loves to diminish her role, and act as if Sydney is an uppity black woman who needs to be rid of. They act like it's surprising that people want to talk about her or like her. And they also think Sydcarmy is mad overrated and implausible. They bring it up constantly because it pisses them off that a sizeable portion of us love it.

Probably because Sydney is an actual character we can relate to and root for. But oh no, men don't like that because that means she isn't a perfect little white fantasy, and she has actual problems and ideas and speaks on them, and she's BLACK, god forbid!! And they could never have empathy for someone who wasn't themselves. Sydney is annoying to them because it reminds them they don't care about other people.

It's barely a place for white women too, because they only like you if you're a gf/therapist/not your own person. A flat, 2-D image with no problems. They don't care about Jess or Claire, they just want to fuck them. Even in this post, the respect of relatability and empathy is given to Richie in the title, because he finally "got some", despite the picture being of Jess. Like, great, guys, you diminished a woman (a PERSON) to being a "win" for a man, because that's all that matters, right? Whether or not a woman is a fuckable prize?

Even the writing of the show actually just pushes the whole "if women = gf, = only gf, nothing else" trope. So in a weird way, I guess I know where they're getting it from, but I expected more from adult men? My bad.

Women deserve to be more than someone's fantasy!! I am sick and tired of this misogynistic drivel. I also think it's fucked up how much of these dudes on reddit love Richie this much. Like, we get it, you think he's a self-help sigma alpha chad king now. Just keep ignoring the problems he keeps creating, how irritating he can be sometimes, as well as the fact that men picking up their lives will always have way more support than female characters. Richie is not some underdog character lol. The narrative of the show has made it clear he is very beloved and will have a nice, sweet arc.

Unlike Sydney, and Marcus, and apparently maybe even Tina. But yes, keep talking about how your white male character is the underdog who is being sooo mistreated and finally got something he deserved, even though in actuality, Syd and every other POC got treated like shit this season. It's like they swapped them, the real main characters, and made them the underdogs/tertiary while Richie has become so important. But it's key to reddit's white male victim complex that Richie is finally getting "good treatment" when he never suffered being completely ignored by the writers at all, and he was never at risk of that either.

[varpusvaras]

Winnick will come this close to writing a good, rightfullly angry character with BPD/CPTSD and ruin it by making him his conception of "a dangerous psychopath" because dc's understanding of mental illness begins and ends with the joker.

I like that Jason was angry i'm not gonna lie I enjoy the "bad victim who doesn't accept that they were a necessary sacrifice, who doesn't think what happened to them is something they should be expected to tolerate, like fuck your greater good, you weren't there, it isn't worth this." I think even looking at Jason's past before getting adopted he has reason to be angry, like he is poor af and starving and he had to take care of his mom and his dad is in jail because he couldn't see another way to provide and he gets trafficked -he has so many reasons to be angry. And he's not, and I love jaybin, but I think there are so many ways and things he can be angry about without it feeling classist. And I love that he can't emotionally regulate, that he has so clearly BPD/CPTSD because why the fuck would he not, have you seen his life (and that's not even counting the csa hc, which i am because willfully and consistently implying csa and then not addressing it/denying it feels like feeding into a culture of taboo that ruins lives and getting away with covert victim-blaming at the same time). The issue is that they lack finesse or any kind of understanding of anger. The think anger is a personality trait. They think angry = evil. They think being angry means you're violent at and about everything, that you shoot indiscriminately even though you've known better since you were a kid, that you're suddenly treating women like shit (which, wtf seriously) which okay maybe THEY treat women shitty for no reason when they're angry, but that'd be more of a them problem I'd say. Their portrayal of anger is classist because their conception of emotions hasn't evolved since fucking Descartes. Think anger = bad = poor and not only doesn't it occur to them that this is classist, they so instinctively assign moral value to the concepts of poor and angry that they don't realise it and just conceptualise poor=angry and end up with incredibly classist portrayals of anger. You can write characters that are mentally ill and violent without being ableist, you can write characters that are poor and angry without being classist, but that requires a level of respect for people, introspection, humility willingness to learn about the sensitive topics you are exploring that is simply not accessible to Winnick and so many other dc writers.

And here comes my very hot take that I'm too cowardly to say off anon: the pit shouldn't have healed Jason's malnutrition. Like, outside of canon I love big jay, I love big men who are emotionally vulnerable and need comfort etc. but in canon? It just comes off as another way to adultify Jason, and make the horrible things that happen to him acceptable. Jason "sleeping with Talia because he is fucked up about Bruce" because they both look like adults until you realise this is actually just rape and you can't put any responsibility of Talia taking advantage of the kid under her care (very ooc of course) on the child himself. Jason fighting Mia looking like a 40 years old beating up a teenage girl when they're the same damn age. Fucking Ethiopia 2.0. And Jason's murders as well, for the matter. Like don't get me wrong the duffle bag of doom is an iconic villain move, but it's just that: a massive shock effect and a "psychopathic" move. We shouldn't need Jason beheading anyone to be horrified, because just one murder, if written correctly, should be enough. A child killing someone is a terrible thing. A child being put in a position where they think killing someone is the only solution to ending suffering (thinking about the Garzonas case) is a terrible thing. A kid trying to kill his murderer (because fuck his death has to matter it has to) and only begging to be allowed it should be horrifying. Jason, with his unhealed malnutrition making him look a couple of years smaller and younger than his physical age, should look his mental age. It should be impossible to look away from the reality of what he is: a traumatized teenager who wasn't allowed to grow up. And he has a gun. This is already a horror story.

Make utrh!Jason a villain if you must, but have the guts to sit with it. Don't shove the fact that he was a hero and a victim under the rug because it's uncomfortable. Sit with the unease that sometimes someone is doing something bad and is suffering a lot, and maybe they're doing the bad thing because they don't know how to survive the suffering, and suddenly it's not easy separating hero from villain from victim. Your imaginary lines in the sand will not protect you from the crude reality of the complicated and shitty situations you have chosen to depict; you open the can of worms now you can't look away and let the worms roam free just because you're squeamish.

How does it feel to be psychic and be in my head and write part of my essay on Jason for me? Fuck, I have so much to say about this but I need a good night of sleep to formulate it correctly. Look for a longer answer tomorrow, but in the meantime, everyone sit down and look at this and look at it hard. Thank you.

[lunarthecorvus]

After being a part of this fandom for a while, I have seen quite a few posts about people asking artists to draw Nina as fat, because we know she's curvy and isn't slim like some artists draw her. I've seen the debate around not telling artists what to draw and there is a lot to say, but I'm not here to talk about that. I just think that a part of Nina's appearance is obviously the fact that she isn't fitting the slim type that almost all women characters are.

Nina is (to quote the gv wiki) tall and curvaceous, and to quote Kaz "built like the figurehead of a ship carved by a generous hand". These descriptions are not descriptions of a thin person. I have scene people be offended by people drawing Nina larger than they think. The thing is we don't know her exact appearance, even the official art of her fluctuates, BUT from the descriptions it is so easy to tell that she is not slim/skinny/thin.

I grew up surrounded by people who were harassed, relentlessly for years bullied and ridiculed for their weight and the fact that they were bigger. Often the world fat is used as if it was a derogatory word, and I have seen it be used that way, which and I may be wrong here but I think people hate picturing Nina as fat and hate that people says she's fat because in most of media and in real life, fat is used as if it was a negative word and means bad/ugly but we shouldn't think that (and of course there are fatphobic people) because fat is not a bad or negative word, its the people that use it as if it was bad that are the problem. Being bigger/not slim is not bad, there is no better body type, Inej is described as slim, neither body is 'better'. I've strayed from the point I'm trying to make-.

To get back on track, what I'm trying to say is that for someone to see representation of their body type not being used as a derogatory way or a comedic way is so amazing, it will help people feel more comfortable with their body type and see the beautiful human being they are. And we know Nina knows how to dress well and is feminine which is quite rarely shown in body types that aren't thin, it feels so refreshing to have that, as characters who are bigger are often not dressed as well as the slim characters.

Also for Nina to have confidence and to be the icon that she is, she doesn't care that she's seen as loud or that people judge her for that. These aren't traits that are commonly seen in characters that aren't thin and if someone who isn't slim is loud they are made fun off and bullied for it. We know Nina was bullied, yet she is always unapologetically herself and doesn't squash that to satisfy how someone else thinks she should act.

I know there will always be a debate as to how 'fat' she is, everyone will have different ways of picturing Nina, but all we know for sure and is 100% is that Nina is not thin, and is curvy, there's still so many ways she could look but she is not slim. (We all should know that there is not just two body types, there are billions of variations and I know my terminology probably isn't the greatest but I hope you know what I mean). There are so many characters that are described as slim, leave alone Nina to not be drawn that way because it is explicitly canon that she isn't thin.

There are so many ways you could draw/represent Nina with a curvaceous body just because she's bigger does not mean that she only has one body type, again even the official fanart represents her in different ways, she just is not slim. I also want to reiterate that I do not think that all Nina is just her body type, I actually felt uncomfortable only writing about this because people like to put down women just to their body, but she has so much more to her than just her appearance. She is NINA motherfucking ZENIK for saints sake.

This post probably won't be posted because some people probably won't like it.

[wishingstarinajar]

Gonna throw out my thoughts and opinions about Earthspark Season 3. A fair warning that it isn't all that positive.

Spoilers under the cut!

What I liked about season 3:

Frenzy and Lazerbeak, fuck yeah! They were funny.

Prowl, for the most part.

Mopey and pouty Megatron (though perhaps that was a bit too much for too long).

The beef between Prowl and Megatron, which I'd have liked to last for far longer than it did in S3.

Agent Schloder, I miss you.

Beryllium baloney!

My gripes:

The new studio and writers.

The Quintessons felt like a not-thought-through plan to add a 2nd Big Bad to the series while cashing in on nostalgia. They were poorly executed. Not terrible but still not great.

The Chaos Terrans also felt like an afterthought in season 3.

The way I see it, we lost the Decepticons because the cast grew far too large for the climax thanks to the 2nd Big Bad of seasons 2 and 3 and new cast additions.

Because of the huge cast, characters often had to get hurt or be set aside for the dumbest reasons, all so that others could have their few seconds of spotlight/attention.

Why does this studio have such an issue with animating mouths?

It seems they couldn't get a hold of Keith David for Grimlock (or didn't have the budget to pay him) for this season. The awkward silences with Grimlock were, yeah, awkward.

While logical, Shockwave was too soft of a Decepticon leader and frankly, doomed all Decepticons to stay stuck in the dome. Though of course, the dome was a plot device to keep the Decepticons separated from the Quintesson plot line.

Breakdown's betrayal of Bumblebee was ?????.

The Quintesson ship was a drill! Why did you use the ship's screw shape and turn it vertically only not to use it like a drill a la 80s movie fashion?? screeee--

The writers tried to make Cosmos a silly little guy but missed the mark. Sorry Weird Al, at least you're funnier in other cameos.

Showing Starscream's silhouette behind the Titan's optic a few times as if he was going to be of importance later was a bit insulting, especially after it turns out he lost his marbles and held tea parties in the Titan's head with the "corpses" of the Chaos Terrans. He got to do nothing. Thanks, writing team.

Stiff action scenes compared to Season 1.

Nobody asked for a whole episode dedicated to Fairmaestro in an already extremely limited season 3. Nobody.

Prowl was fine and an interesting addition to the team until the 2nd half of the final episode. Another victim of "rushing the plot".

Elita-1 and Arcee are too similar in personality and fighting spirit and, while I have no problem at all with tough strong women in a series, I'd have liked at least one softer lady in the cast. Not all women have to kick butt.

Megatron's propellers are deemed "too old-fashioned" for a mission requiring flyers, so Cosmos and Prowl (who has two cool but "flimsy" thrusters) were put on the case instead. Fair, I guess? Yet the moment Prowl is out of commission, Nightshade replaces him. I mean, what makes Nightshade stronger than Megatron?

Optimus makes a big deal toward Prowl about taking the spark revival key with him after leaving Cybertron, implying it is an important artifact, but he is totally fine with Mo nabbing it AND holding onto it like an oversized necklace.

The underwater fight scene with Robby and Mo on the Quintesson ship was boring and had bad sound mixing.

Why was Dottie reduced to Megatron's "army support human"?

I know I complain about the cast being too big but where was Tarantulas and when will he and Nightshade interact again?

I get Witwicky is a town in the middle of nowhere, but I don't think there is any forest or wildlife left with Terratronus stomping about.

Dafak was that snow rendering and animation?

Dafak was that drive-in theater episode?

Dafak was this season??

[lagosbratzdoll]

Ryan did a bunch of interviews recently that I've been reading and I have some thoughts. You can find the interviews here and here.

There's a lot of terrible stuff in it but I don't have the time or inclination to bother with all that. I'm going to be focusing on two things he said in the interviews.

Starting with this from the House of the Dragon podcast which I've linked above.

In it, Ryan talks about why he decided to contrast the lives of Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White with the lives of the privileged Targaryens. It was fascinating to get a peek into his head.

Ryan reads a rapist and thinks "this is a person worth deepening. We need an in-depth exploration of what goes on in this rapists head. We need the audience to sympathise with them."

Which wouldn't be so bad on its face, there's always room to analyse a fictional rapist. The problem is that he then reads about a little Black girl who raised herself on a tiny island rising up to become a dragon rider on her own merit. A little girl whose Valyrian heritage is constantly debated and discounted. He reads that and decides that there's nothing worth exploring there. Her story isn't unique. She isn't unique. In fact, she's so common that while we adapt and humanise not one but two rapists, we're going to erase one Black girl and turn the other into everyone's punching bag.

Then I read his puff piece from Big Think.

This is a fascinating glimpse into his thought process. I read this and Ryan Condal's baffling decisions began to make a little more sense.

By his own admission, Ryan's ideal show is one where Black women are erased, flattened and ignored. He claims to write powerful women but we've not seen hide or hair of these women. In Ryan's show, nothing is ever deliberate and the women are largely passive participants in their own lives.

In Ryan's ideal show there's no room for a little black girl to claim a dragon with nothing but faith and her wits. In Ryan's ideal show we need all of the rapist men but the Black women are interchangeable AND replaceable.

In Ryan's ideal world, it is too much to ask that a Black girl be adored, have songs written about her and knights joust for her favour. In Ryan's ideal show, Black people aren't fully developed characters, they're props that he forgets about for episodes on end.

And that is why the show will continue to drop in ratings. When I saw the Nielsen numbers for the premiere, I laughed until I cried. The biggest streaming day ever for Max and they couldn't beat The Boys or Your Honour. The most recent numbers are even funnier.

But don't worry gang, House of the Dragon is doing great. It's now number three. It finally beat a four year old show! Everything is fine.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Why do you think they don't show Marinette comforting other characters? It's always been a weird writing decision to me, and I sometimes wondered if I was legit just erasing all the times it happened out of my memory or smth. Like the first character trait established for her is she struggles to say no to people, she is a people-pleaser. And there isn't a better way to make ur mc lovable than showing how they effect the people around them. AND it would make her breakdowns genuinely heartbreaking, because she keeps giving and giving and it's a genuine flaw. Like, she rushed off to comfort Ivan in Origins, right? We should have had more of that. I'm reminded of that one Lady Wifi (i think?) scene where Ladybug is smiling at her adoring fans and the camera while Chat Noir is in the background actually comforting a child lmao. It just feels so weird, because I think Marinette IS actually supposed to be someone who does that, who provides that comfort to her loved ones all the time (even at the cost of her own mental health, boom, an actual thing she can work towards). But we just keep getting the reverse instead. She just kinda feels like a shit friend? Showing that emotional labor would also make her exhaustion work because like, what does the guardian even DO? Tell not show, but they ain't telling shit.

One of the things that drew me to Miraculous is the fact that the show tends to write the characters in non-standard gender roles, so I actually like the fact that Marinette tends to be more of a fixer than a comforter. She drives people to action and wants to solve problems and is very good at taking the weight of the world on her shoulders, but she kind of sucks at emotional vulnerability and comforting people. It's genuinely a good flaw for her character and a lovely thing to see in a show aimed at girls. No, we don't all need to be stereotypically maternal figures. Women can be just as bad as men stereotypically are when it comes to emotions!

The problem is that the show is obsessed with Marinette holding every important role in the story, meaning that we don't get a more emotionally aware character or characters to balance her out. Nor do we get to see her learn that this is a flaw of hers and either improve or just own that she's bad at this and learn to trust someone else with these types of issues. (This is one of the many things I think Adrien should have been allowed to do, btw. Ladybug is the brains, Chat Noir should be the heart.) We also don't get a true sense of Marinette's struggles because the show's formulaic nature rarely allows for those types of problems.

The Lila thing is a good example. Lila says that she's going to destroy Marinette's friendships, but she literally can't do that because that would mean changing the way the characters relate on a massive scale and formula shows can't do that. So instead of seeing Marinette struggle as Lila lies and manipulates everyone into hating Marinette, we get extremely annoying episodes where Lila lies and everyone believes her, but no one gets all that upset at Marinette's constant accusations. They just treat it as a minor quibble which is actually more aggravating than Lila changing the status quo in my opinion.

There's also the issue that you brought up: we don't see Marinette truly struggling to be the guardian, so her new role doesn't feel like a big deal. Not much changes for her save for the kwamis being around now. We don't even know what her relationship with Master Fu was really like because he was barely ever on screen so we really don't feel her loss.

All of this is just another problem to lay at the feat of our ever-present issue: Miraculous does not have the right conflicts and characters for a formula show. Formula shows thrive off of things being lighthearted and the heroes lacking major flaws. Miraculous chose to make things somewhat serious and give everyone flaws that are just begging to be address, but that can't be because this is the wrong format for that type of thing.

In a team show where character arcs were a thing or even just one where character dynamics were a thing and Marinette was allowed to share the screen in a more balanced manner, then everything about her would work fine. She's set up perfectly for that kind of show. She is not set up for a formula show where she's basically the only character that matters outside of the villains. If that's what they wanted to write, then Marinette needed to be limited to minor flaws that never last more than an episode or at least limited to flaws that are purely situational such as being stubborn or the classic sudo-flaw of being clumsy that the show already embraces.