#women ahead of their time

[faintingviolet]

The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint (CBR16 #9)

While perusing the Arlington Public Library’s List of Books You May Have Missed Last Year I spotted The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint written by Ylva Hillström and illustrated by Karin Eklund. I vaguely recognized af Klint’s name and popped it onto my list since a YA non-fiction was on my to read and this one struck my fancy, especially once I found out that Hillström is a curator at the Modern…

[lackadaisycal-art]

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

[feloire]

[gigamuffin]

i need her so bad

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

[gaytobymeres]

Shaun Evans interview in The Times today

[faithful-diaries]

"Khadijah رضي الله عنها,

I do yearn to be like you,

In words and actions

And character too."

[akimojo]

"Is it because of how differently it (Final Fantasy XIII) handles female characters compared to earlier games?" YES you are so right about this!! The main cast is majority female and the fact that each female is an individual vastly different from each other with multiple dimensions and layers to their character is probably why people shit on it. Plus if you look at the males in the group, they are FAR from the typical brooding male FF protagonist and yet still unique and nuanced in their own way. People didn't like that the characters broke the molds/archetypes/tropes that many of the FF games follow. And that's why the FFXIII cast stands out so strikingly to me personally.

And they're not just deep characters, they're allowed to have major character flaws that actually lead to negative consequences! Not to mention that their personal goals and motivations do NOT revolve around men

Even well-written female characters from other ff games (like yuna for example) don't have any traits that men would generally find unappealing in a woman, they don't challenge male players at all

And then in comes lightning, who starts off so toxic and poisonous to the people around her, acting violent toward male characters and making rash decisions that require you to think about why she does what she does, and the male-dominated fandom hates her

And don't even get me started on vanille and fang because their bond is at the foundation of ff13's story, but it's somehow the one aspect that I've seen haters sweep over the absolute most. Which is very strange considering most people can recognize how important zack was to cloud, or tidus to yuna, or rinoa to squall, or locke to celes, etc

Now that there's men going around wildly misinterpreting tifa's and aerith's friendship as them actually just fighting over cloud, you really gotta wonder if they just didn't care about fang and vanille because their relationship had nothing to do with a man lmao. And you just can't fully understand ff13's story without understanding how important fang and vanille are to each other, just like how you can't understand lightning without taking into account her struggle between self-preservation and the love she has for serah

I don't like to cry sexism over assumptions, but it's pretty hard not to do that when such a huge chunk of ff13 haters are men that insist the characters are one-dimensional, like?? how can anyone be that wrong?? Especially when the ff games they praise have some of the most one-dimensional female characters in the entire franchise (sorry ff4 but your handling of rosa is atrocious), but of course that doesn't matter because hey! The dudes need a love interest to sit there and look pretty for them!

[geezerwench]

In the Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror" there is a scene that we may pass over lightly as modern viewers but is important to consider in the context of the times. This episode first aired in December of 1966, 58 years ago.

With the Enterprise damaged by the Romulans' nuclear device detonation at close proximity, navigator Lt. Stiles is relieved by Captain Kirk to rush to Phaser Control and keep the weapons operational at a critical moment. The Captain orders Lt. Uhura to take over Mr. Stiles' station at navigation, which she immediately does.

At first blush, this may seem like just another action scene with the crew responding to the crisis. But why does the camera follow Uhura so closely and linger on her as she assumes the navigation station with Sulu looking on?

Consider the scene in the context of 1966. A black woman is portrayed as a professional, an officer in Starfleet, skilled at her job with the complete confidence of her Captain and her peers. She responds quickly and competently to orders without fanfare.

This is where Star Trek shines and where so many others fail. The scene is ahead of its time but is played perfectly straight, with just a lingering camera shot for emphasis. No obnoxious moralizing, no heavy-handed finger-wagging, or clumsy brute force to spoil the effort.

Star Trek showed us a better version of ourselves, one that we could aspire to, and it showed it to us in the best way; realistic people behaving realistically in a futuristic setting, without regard to superficial differences. And it was effective and groundbreaking precisely because of that.

Alabama News Beacon

[themirokai]

He would not fucking say that except it’s she would not fucking have her long hair down.

[rhineposting]

life still looks like shit for me, so have a casual rhinedottir from a magma canvas additional thoughts under cut

In my mind, Rhinedottir does dress pretty casually when she's not in risk of being seen by unauthorized people (literally anyone except Alice), because appearances are a big part of the persona she dons while in public, especially when interacting with the rest of the court (that and I think she has some minor narcissism going on but that's a different can of worms to open later.)

[dinosaurwithablog]

There were many beautiful women on Perry Mason. I saved the best and most beautiful for last.... Della Street ❤️ She was the epitome of beauty, both inside and outside. She was as smart as she was beautiful. I love Della!! ❤️😁😍

[ladyniniane]

"The reduction of the amazon to anomaly is recent. In the majority of the medieval popular literature & epic poems dealing with heroism, the Amazon in context of her own society is a commonplace. Thus it can be seen that the modern amazon novel shies away from the boldness of tradition in favor of an updated milquetoast approach, devoid, except in Delany's limited case, of Amazon theology & deep-rooted history." "The common delusion of fantasy writers is that they have freed themselves from the constraints of history. But history is filled with vastly more interesting amazons than can be found in these books. Fantasy novels appear to reduce into simplistic patterns the richness & complexity of reality, rather than building beyond the limitations of an unmagical universe. Hence the Amazon, like everything else encountered in the typical heroic fantasy novel, is a reduction, rather than an expansion, of women's history of adventure & heroism."

Amazon Heroic Fantasy: A critical overview, Jessica Amanda Salmonson

[mydaylight]

I must admit I have a lot of respect for Madam Yu (Yanran’s stepmom and Yanhong’s mother) for refusing to marry Yanhong to Gu Tingye after he tells her about the salt farms worth 27000 liang per annum to convince her about the marriage. I don’t think it was reasonable to expect Tingye to throw his children on the streets, but Madam Yu not wanting her only daughter to marry a man who clearly prioritizes another woman and basically only wants to marry to provide his mistress and kids with a stable situation is understandable as well. And she impressed me by the fact she wasn’t even the slightest tempted by the money. I was reminded of Minglan backing off the marriage to the He Family later on, which was not an entirely dissimilar situation when you think about it. Of course, Tingye is not entirely unsympathetic and would probably be decent enough to Yanhong, but I think in the end Madam Yu made the right call to cancel the wedding.

I really like how the drama compares the kinda flippant attitude dads have in this drama versus the more protective and uncompromising manner of the mothers (and grandmoms!). Mr Yu wanted Yanhong (and Yanran previously) to marry Tingye because of how rich he is due to the Bai’s family’s assets and we also saw how Sheng Hong settling for the Yuan Family for Hualan - against Ruofu’s protests, if I might add - brought her more harm than good eventually. I think the series is trying to make a point of how Mr Yu, and Sheng Hong and many other men are oblivious to the struggles of women due to their own male privilege, whereas women like Wang Ruofu, Madam Yu, Grandma Sheng, Youyang Grandma Sheng etc. are less likely to push their daughters or granddaughters in an imperfect marital situation because their own experiences as women inform them on how likely they are to suffer because of it.

[eternalergo]

replaying persona 5 with no intention to date anyone this time but shiit I need that achievement 🙄