#the tower is gender

[clytemnaestraes]

Alicent + the woman in the window: Analysing the trope

“You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison”

— Rhaenys to Alicent, Hotd 1x09

There's a lot going on between Alicent and windows in House of the Dragon:

Alicent is a hightower, a woman trapped in a tower looking out the window. Her daughter and granddaughter die by jumping out the window.

For the purpose of this post, I'm limiting myself to analysing the "woman in the window" trope as seen in art.

The woman in the window has has been featured in Mediterranean pottery from the fourth century BCE through Botticelli, Raphael and Rembrandt, Sickert and Picasso.

A window is a border between the inside and the outside, the private and the public, the light and the dark. It provides commentary on cages, frames, prisons, and the limit of the subject's freedoms and horizons.

When a woman is framed in light streaming through a window, we are are seeing her as she was seen by the artist.

Tracy Chevalier noted the presence of a "relentless male gaze" when she visited Reframed: The Woman in the Window, an exhibition at Dulwich Picture gallery.

Between those two poles there are various depictions and judgments of women. Sometimes they’re prostitutes; other times they are the Virgin Mary.

In fact, among the earliest depictions of "a woman in the window" is a Mediterranean vessel depicting a courtesan.

1. Courtesan in a window, 18th century

2. The caption of "Woman at the Window" by Degas reveals that the featured woman is a courtesan he paid to model for him.

3. The Virgin and the Child, seen by a window

Are women in windows protected by being inside and shutting out the world, or are they being confined against their will?

In one of Picasso's portraits, his partner Francoise Gilot looks out the window, her hands pressed against the glass. Tracy notes that

knowing what we know about Picasso and his partners, it is clear Gilot is trapped inside the male gaze (though she does eventually escape the relationship), her hands semaphoring anxiety.

Windows and Waiting

Windows are also linked to waiting, and this is especially true of women in medieval times, waiting at the window for men to return from war, waiting at the window to learn their own fate.

[mothervega]

anyone out there who enjoys both Bive and The Smiler i’m boutta summon all of you cuz I MADE A SMILER INSPIRED BIVE AVATAR MUAHAHAHAHAA

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[theeretblr]

The first thing I ever paid for with money I earned from Twitch was a 1 day trip to Paris with my brother in 2020. Now I am here to attend TwitchCon. It's good to be back! :D

It's also my first time wearing a crop top in public, so I'm a little nervous, but feel great!

[doctorho]

Constellations

hiii guys!! i got this ask about the idea of Viktor with a reader who has some visible moles and Viktor gets...curious. About the possibility of there being more of them. so then i wrote this. 2k(ish) words, gender neutral reader, no warnings. alcohol mentioned but only in like a "there's a party and viktor has a cocktail" type of way, no heavy drinking involved. i like writing the fancy academy parties, what can i say. here you go!!

Viktor is nothing if not curious. And – well. Observant. It comes with the territory of navigating life in Piltover as a Zaunite, and doubly so as a disabled Zaunite that was now a semi-public figure deeply involved in the businesses and inner workings of Piltover. 

Being observant was useful, both when working on uncovering the still-veiled mysteries of the universe and when keeping track of social exchanges at formal events. It was as much a carefully wielded tool as it was a well-honed survival skill, developed over the years as someone on the sidelines. 

And being curious – well. That was just a deep-rooted facet of Viktor's existence. The day he'd stop wanting to look at the world just a bit more closely, to understand it a bit more deeply, to turn over one more problem, that would be the day that he'd stop breathing. That was just how he was. 

It's what landed him a place at the Academy in the first place, and it's what kept him going. 

It's also what's landed him in the current mess that he was in. 

(It was, truth be told, what landed him in most of the messes he found himself in. Well, that, or his rather exploratory problem solving habits, but what was a little trial and error without some error? Besides, if you were going to fail at something, it was best to fail fast and hard, as efficiently as possible, for the best results). 

This, however? This was different. This was a mess he hadn't anticipated. 

See, he's - he's at the lab most days. He doesn’t exactly seek out social gatherings, unless presented with a very intriguing premise. He's not anti-social, per se, but he simply stays out of other people's business when he can, he focuses on his work, and that's that. But then – then. 

Then you off-handedly mention that even though most of the people of Piltover seemed to think of moles and freckles as flaws, as imperfections, you were trying to think of yours as the unique markings that they were, but it was difficult to ignore the external pressure to always be on the lookout for another flaw to feel self-conscious over. And then you're turning your arm in the air slowly, examining in the late afternoon light in front of the window at the lab, and Viktor's noticed the moles scattered over your skin before, of course, he's noticed them the same way he's noticed the swirls of ice crystals forming in the windows and the specs of dust glittering in a sunbeam on the floor – the moles are exactly what you say they are, he thinks, unique markings, something that made a person more interesting to look at. And he'd known that the people of Piltover had some...questionable opinions on beauty standards, on imperfections, but… 

Viktor didn't agree with them. 

“Would you consider the stars in the night sky as imperfections?” he asks, lowering the soldering iron he'd been holding, scraping down excess solder residue onto the pad under the heating station, and slowly turning to look at you with a carefully raised eyebrow when you don't immediately respond. 

“That's not really the same thing, is it.” You answer eventually, leaning back on your chair. 

“Isn't it?” 

“I don't illuminate anything, for one.”

“Details,” he counters, with a wave of his hand, then reaches into one of the drawers on his desk to retrieve pliers. “Besides, the sky is often pictured with inverted colors for convenience. With the stars as dark dots.”  

“Really?”

He hums in answer, leaning back over his project, holding his newly formed connection up to his eye level, inspecting it. 

“Huh,” you answer, lifting your arm over to the fading sunlight again. “Yeah, you could probably make a few constellations out of these.” 

And Viktor makes the mistake of looking over, because – while he truly had meant his analogy innocently, as just a supporting honest notion, the golden sunlight is hitting you now and that makes you as luminous as any collection of stars, and he has to force himself to look away before he gets caught staring. He exhales slowly and turns over the piece he was working on, for no particular reason – he already knew the connections were perfect – “Yes,” he agrees, “you probably could.”

He would have no professional explanation for staring, so he turns over the part he was holding one more time. 

This does not mean he won't steal a glance at opportune moments, when you're too busy to notice. Because he is intrigued now, and it's bad enough that he already thought you were beautiful, and worse than that, interesting to look at, and really, that was it. He was doomed. Done for. Utterly, irrevocably hooked, and what else was he supposed to do? Not be curious about this new aspect presented to him? Yeah, not likely. If he'd do that, he wouldn't be Viktor. 

He knew he'd wanted to get closer to you before, to touch you, he'd just…ignored it for convenience, shelved it under figure out later - too complicated for now.

The feeling seemed to have grown in hibernation. 

The metaphor stays in his mind, whirring in the background as he tries to go on with his day. But he keeps noticing it, noticing you, getting stuck watching the little specks on your skin disappear up your sleeves and into the collar of your overshirt, and he is itching to know what kind of constellations he could trace out of them. 

And then– then, the days just keep piling up on top of each other and Viktor keeps stealing glances and having annoyingly, frustratingly vague dreams about removed shirts and whispered sighs and too-light touches, and he keeps showing up to the lab pretending everything was normal and fine and totally under perfect control, all business as usual over on his side. Did the new shipment arrive already?

And then the Academic Year's Open Ceremony comes around, and Viktor did not account for the non-Academy-issued outfit that you would be wearing, even though he probably should have expected it. But foresight was not one of his talents, so when he'd agreed to go, he had not thought about the low lights and deep-cut necklines and what the champagne buzz in his head would do to his self-control. To the rational thinking that was usually his lifeline. To his imagination.

Now that was all he could think about. 

There was a champagne flute in one of his hands, and the other was gripping the handle of his cane slightly too hard. It would make his joints ache soon, but that would be a problem for future him. Perhaps even a nice little distraction from the torture of watching you in your glamorous getup, smiling and talking with someone, while he was merely pretending to be listening to the conversation he was in. 

Viktor nods at what he thinks are the correct moments (or at least, close enough), but his eyes remain glued to where you were standing. 

He hadn't seen you in clothes that revealing before, and he was taking this as a free research opportunity. His eyes trace over your skin, mapping the new-to-him pattern of moles and freckles, and something greedy at the bottom of his stomach wants to trace them with his fingers, too. And he knows that's inappropriate, especially while someone was lecturing him about the future of the Academy, but honestly, he didn't care. His train of thought was currently only about one heartbeat long, and the thing purring at the bottom of his stomach was getting louder, hungrier, needier, it was crawling up his spine, up the back of his neck, making him feel breathless, and he has to close his eyes just to re-calibrate his brain and breathe. 

He could not fathom how the Piltovians could see such marks as imperfections. They were like art, and Viktor would much rather spend his time looking at something interesting than something over-polished any day.

With the patterns he can see on your skin, he has theories about what must be on the parts he can't see, and he likes it. Not so much that he wouldn't like to make sure of his theories one way or the other – he was flexible, and open to being proved wrong, more than willing to gather more information on this. He takes a sip of his drink and his fingers flex over the handle of his cane and he exhales a tense sigh, and forces himself to look at his supposed conversation partner for a moment again as you lean your head back in a sparkling laugh. 

Torture. It was torture, pure and simple. Honey-thick and sweet as molasses, but torture all the same. 

Your skin glistens in the low golden lights of the party, and Viktor stares. You cleaned up nicely, and nothing about your outfit was inappropriate in itself, but his imagination was more than enough to change that. And he is aching to somehow warp the situation so that it was just you and him and just enough of the golden light to see by. The champagne could stay, and the music, but the band was on thin ice - they would have to be in a different room and preferably on the other side of a locked door. Viktor didn't appreciate interruptions, even in his imagination. He didn't like most of the people attending the party on a good day, and he definitely didn't like them now.

He takes a breath, fixes his posture, and takes another breath. Reminds himself of the reality he was in; the role he was playing. Five-year-plan. Yes. The Academy was getting a research grant from the Council. How nice.

The longer the night stretches on, the more his restraint stretches with it, and it was starting to wear thin. The reasoning he'd done with himself earlier about why he should stay away was starting to feel fickle – convenience? Had that really been his best selling point? What had he been thinking? 

It was itching at the back of his mind, the wrongness of forcing himself to pretend he didn't want to get closer, didn't want to go up and compliment you, to see you smile, to steal the privilege of your company for as long as he could, hopefully for the rest of the night. And currently, he was having a hard time convincing himself that the simplicity and convenience of keeping things how they had been before was worth it.

The sun had set hours ago, and the tall windows were starting to let in starlight, and when he finally gets a moment alone with you, it's while you're looking up at the sky, leaning over at a slightly awkward angle to be able to see as much of the sky as possible. 

He looks at you there for a moment, and takes a slow, deep breath. And then he walks to your side. 

If he was going to fail at this, he was going to fail fast and hard. Efficiently. And hopefully with minimal damage.

"Personally," he says calmly, "I prefer the view out there."

You turn to look at him, and he pretends to be totally casual and cool and collected and not nervous at all.

You look out the window again, and then, hum in agreement. "Unfortunately, I prefer the temperature in here." You answer with a small sigh and a half shrug, and now, Viktor turns to look at you.

Because now, now this was a problem that he had a solution for. 

He hmms in answer, and does a little double check in his head; yes, the upper levels of the building should be empty. The working staff was all here and the students were home. Should be vacant.

Viktor smiles a little. “How fortunate, then,” he says quietly, conspiratorially, “that we have an observatory tower.” 

For a single second, you look surprised. And then you blink, and a smile spreads over your lips. 

He raises an eyebrow. 

“I assume you have the keys?” 

Viktor shrugs nonchalantly. 

You grin and grab his hand, already moving towards the exit. “What are we waiting for, then?”

[pyxiverse]

Caught In The Act

Premise: Loki’s creating mischief as he always does and catches y/n reading something surprising

CW: smut mentioned not described otherwise fluffy wholesome one shot

~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~

It was a uniquely quiet afternoon in the Avengers tower. Sun shone through the floor to ceiling windows onto the large expensive white couch where Y/n laid shamelessly reading smut on their phone.

It was then that they felt a light breeze on their ear. Thinking it was a fly, they mindlessly swatted it away with one hand. Their eyes were still focused on the story in front of them. They felt a tickle on the back of their neck and scratched it absentmindedly. Then they heard what sounded like a muffled snicker from behind them. Frustrated they whipped their head around.

“What the hell-“ they questioned. There was nothing there. They give the empty space behind them a confused look before deciding it was nothing and turning back to their phone. A minute or two of silent reading their dirty fan fiction passed.

Out of nowhere a voice came from behind them. “How can you read such filth with a straight face?”

“Ahhhhhhh!” Y/n screamed as they dropped their phone onto the floor beside the couch. “What the hell Loki!”

He had just appeared over her shoulder and he was laughing like a madman. “I’d say…I’m sorry, darling but…I’d be lying…Your face…it was…priceless!” He said through his laughter as he clutched his stomach.

They should have known it was too quiet to be believed. Y/n gave him an aggravated expression that quickly melted into a smile with their laughter. “It’s not funny” y/n said holding up a finger and giggling. He looked at them with a raised eyebrow and a smirk as if to say a sarcastic, “really?” Y/n’s hand went flying down to their lap and they responded to his look with a whined “it’s not!” But they couldn’t help it they were laughing even harder as they said it. When y/n stopped laughing they bent down to pick up their fallen phone, checking for a crack. It was all clear.

Calming his laughter to a chuckle, Loki ordered y/n to “move over.” They did so, scooting as far to the end of the couch as they could get. Loki flung himself over the arm of the couch which gave a small groan as he landed next to y/n. He left his right arm sprawled out on the arm rest behind y/n’s head.

“How long were you standing there?” Y/n asked as he settled. Their face was slightly reddened with the knowledge of what they had been reading. “Long enough, darling. Long enough,” he chuckled.

He poked y/n with his free hand, “And you never answered my question” he jested. Y/n looked at him inquisitively but he explained further before they got a chance to ask. “How can you read such filth with a straight face?”

Their face reddened even further and they felt the need to shrink into the couch. “I read it for the writing…” y/n lied.

“Y/n, my dear, I was reading over your shoulder. If you think that’s good writing-“

“It’s not! It’s bad writing but that’s what makes it so funny! It’s like a comedy!”

“You didn’t seem to be laughing” he chortled.

“Oh shut it” y/n said giggling and snuggling in closer to Loki. The two of them stayed like that for a little while until Loki broke the silence.

“You gonna finish that story?”

“What?”

“Did you wanna finish that thing you were reading. I mean I just kind of interrupted you when I scared you-“ he spoke so fast his words almost slurred together.

Y/n’s eyes went wide. “Oh my god! You liked it!”

“No! No, I did not! You’re being ridiculous!” He tried to defend himself over the sound of y/n’s hysterical laughter. “I didn’t! I swear! I was just trying to be nice because YOU were enjoying it!”

The sound of y/n’s laughter continued to echo throughout the room. They wheezed letting out a struggled, “You totally did!…Oh my god…you’re blushing!” Tears were welling up in y/n’s eyes. Loki did not look amused. He grumbled and turned his head away from y/n and took a deep breath. He waited for y/n as they sighed dramatically to calm their laughter. “Oh god…my stomach hurts.”

Loki turned back to y/n. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yeah..yes I’m sorry I just never thought that poorly written…smutty…Destiel fan fiction would be your kind of thing.” Y/n said through more laughter.

“Oh just get on with it”

[future-supertuna]

this is very in-text but i love that zoro gets attuned to kiku from the get-go not only because of this sword wielder code that he's followed through all extremes of the practice, from brook to kin'emon -- recognizing and respecting all masters -- but because her existence is the solid evidence, the living proof that kuina was wrong

[deiaiko]

My contribution for maid day last week, feat Grace (Bam) and Agni (Khun)

Masterlist

[whereismyhat5678]

I DID IT I DID IT I DREW THE- THE PEPPINA- LOOK LOOK!!-

UUUUARRRRAGAGAHAGGAHAA SHE’S LEGIT SO PRETTY ACTUALLY WHY HAVEN’T I DRAWN HER YET- *DIES-*

[incorrecttowerofgodquotes]

I’ll never mentally recover from them

[atopvisenyashill]

i was thinking more about characters Performing Gender, but not necessarily Transgressing Gender. I wound up focusing on Ned and Sansa bc I feel like I understand them the most but-

Sansa as a hostage is imo the most obvious (bc it’s so well done) moment of someone clearly Performing Gender but not being transgressive in that performance. Which isn’t to say it’s not a complicated performance; it’s a fine line Sansa walks between weaponizing her gender to protect herself without seeming too fake. She’s trying to placate the Lannisters by playing the perfect, dedicated, air headed betrothed because it’s the only defense she has - if she outwardly rebels, she will be punished in a likely violent and/or sexual way (which isn’t even conjecture - when she says “or maybe he’ll give me yours” Joffrey has her struck with an armored hand). She’s not quite successful in being convincing but that’s because it’s a rather extreme situation; despite no one believing her, she does make herself seem meek and stupid enough that no one suspects she’s plotting to escape with Dontos until she’s well away from KL. The fact that she even has Dontos to confide in is because of Sansa’s relationship with gender! When she saves him, she covers her rebellious slip by playing up Joffrey’s intelligence & his role as King; she reaches for “tools” of her gender AND of ~proper manhood~ to save a life and herself from another beating. Her retreats into the godswood and silence are very much Sansa attempting to recharge from these draining interactions, the same way a knight would need to stop and eat and rest after a fight. She is fighting, constantly, by forcing herself to stay within the narrow confines of a specific type of gender performance as a way of shielding herself from harm.

Ned yelling at Cat is another big one, and I’ve seen the scene referred to as Ned using his patriarchal power to scare Cat, which is a great description. It feels like a Performance because Ned is putting on this terrifying Lord Stark mask in an attempt to get Catelyn to stop asking about Jon (and Lyanna). This is not how he usually acts with those he loves! When Ned is with His People, he is welcoming of questions, curiosity, emotion, even transgressive thought (to a point! the idea that Ned is a feminist because he lets Arya learn to fight is Not accurate but you can’t deny he allows significantly more flexibility wrt gender expression than most of the fathers we meet in this series. the bar is in hell tho). Yet when Cat asks him about Jon’s mother, Ned scares her so well she stops asking & still remembers the moment bitterly over a decade later. And if that snippet we see through Bran’s eyes of Ned praying that Cat will forgive him does come after she asks (like it’s suspected), it’s clear not only that this is a performance he’s putting on & weaponizing against Cat, it’s one he does not like using as a weapon against someone he is close to. After using the power his gender gives him to cause harm, he retreats to the godswood and silence to pray and rest, much like Sansa. A spiritual cleanse, the way a soldier may pray after battle, to reset and reconnect Being A Proper Man to Being A Kind Man.

I think there’s something interesting in that two of the characters most widely defined by how well they adhere to Westerosi gender norms both dislike feeling like they had to weaponize their gender. They are exhausted by the performance, because it’s a performance. This isn’t Sansa getting excited over tourneys, or Ned teaching his sons to fight; it’s toxic masculinity, it’s structural misogyny. It’s something they’re good at, excel at, and connected to something they enjoy but when it’s paired with violence, whether done by Ned or done to Sansa, it crosses over in their minds from an innate part of themselves (The Gender) to a performance necessary due to survival (The Gender Role). And that after these performances, both retreat to nature & god as a way of resting and cleansing from the experience.

[ylge]

Past artwork

♀️ KhunBam

Full below (nudity warning? They are in cute undies)

[bob-mirum]

I AM

B E G G I N G YOU

TO DRAW EVERY PEPPINO GENDERBENT!

ESPECIALLY EVIL PEP.

N O W.

Sheeesh okaay

Hope y'all like it :v

[anghraine]

Do you have any favorite/interesting short essays? I'm in between semesters and not wanting to fall totally out of practice reading academic writing.

I do! It seems like you're specifically thinking of academic essays, which for me are generally specialized enough that it's a bit difficult to recommend them without knowing what topics someone is interested in.

That said, some academic essays worth reading, which are available on JSTOR:

Julia Prewitt Brown's 1990 review "The Feminist Depreciation of Jane Austen" articulated a lot of my frustration with feminist critics' often rather narrow readings of Austen (it's not anti-feminist, but rather pointing out the short-sighted form of feminism and bizarre hot takes in what was then the established feminist literature on Austen specifically). 11 pages long.

Elizabeth McGrath's 1992 article "The Black Andromeda" about the whitewashing of Andromeda (especially in reference to Ovid's Andromeda) in art and general discourse around her. 16 pages long.

Jacqueline Jones Royster's 1996 essay "When The First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." I have a lot of gripes with composition studies, but this one's good. 11 pages long.

William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley's 1946 "The Intentional Fallacy" is very dated, but also very worth reading in terms of the history of anti-intentionalism, especially given how important anti-intentionalism is to modern fandom (usually in reference to Barthes's "Death of the Author" but the basic concept long predates it). 19 pages long.

It belatedly occurred to me that you might be looking for shorter or more casual essays than these, or on less directly academic topics (though maybe not!). For instance, if you're more "here" for SF/F than my other interests, there are some great essays in Uncanny Magazine and Reactor among others (I find Reactor a bit hit and miss, but when it hits, it hits hard). For instance, I recently read and enjoyed "Seven of Nine is a Third-Culture Kid" by Dawn Xiana Moon and "On Learning to Read Generously" by Molly Templeton.

I could also give you some recommendations for essays more directly about history or psychology in some area that I find interesting, but that's likely to be less accessible and I assumed not what a follower of mine was likely looking for.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price

Tower of London (1939)

[smalltimidbean]

Is there a mouse in here, bc that's a whole bunch of Squeaks!!! (silly)