#Feminist show

[ednamode1]

Probably watched one of the most badass tv shows in the history of Hindi cinema. It’s called “Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo” which roughly translates to “Mother-in-law, Daughters-in-law and Flamingo.” It’s about Savitri, who is a Gypsie and the matriarch of a massive cartel in the lawless borderlands of Rajasthan. Her daughter is the main chemist while her two “bahus” (daughters-in-law) handle the finances and the operations of cartel. She opens up a battle for succession to find her heir in a murky world of drugs and violence.

Would 10/10 recommend.

[exilley]

I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits

[idolomantises]

i'll be real, i always hated it whenever media tries to "critique" Christianity while portraying all Christians as bigoted, misogynistic and irredeemable. its why it matters a lot to me that my own angels have some nuances to them.

Sera is very puritanical and obsessed with showing her devotion to God, but she's still a caring and well-meaning angel.

[fruitface]

"How many girls go to this school, again?" "Oh my god, and again, they're all sixes at best."

PJ in Bottoms (2023)

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

the fact beyoncé was praised as a feminist icon when she actively perpetuates the homewrecker narrative… like girl your husband cheating is nobody’s fault but your husbands. other women can be seductive all they want, its still your mans choice to cheat. also she raised her man? ouch. and all that for… jay z of all people. and she is fucking BEYONCÉ she is untouchable yet she lowers herself to this. „i can understand why youre attracted to my man“ youre the only one 🤨

[menalez]

"6B4T is not radical feminism" yes it very literally is lol

[oifaaa]

Coming to the slow horrific realisation that my favourite one piece character is probably Sanji which is honestly so anti feminist of me that I may be dropping the series immediately

[d-a-mante]

Interesting (not in a good way) that Branderson and like-minded people are against both of Egwene's moments in the finale: her killing Renna and helping Rand against Ishamael. Taking away one of those I can prooobably understand. But both?

Without both, this would be a female character who begins the season feeling useless, gets abused for two episodes, and ends the season without a moment to take back power and help her friend like she thought she could have. Doesn't sound like a strong end to her character arc, Brando.

(on the note of characters getting to fuck up those who wronged them: Rand gets to do that, at least a couple of times later. If --and if-- he doesn't, then they might have a point that the show is disproportionately prioritizing female characters over Rand. But I have more faith in the writers than these guys, so)

Slightly related: could it be that the reason they don't see Rand's arc this season is because it's a more quiet strength, "I need to rely on my friends" arc? The kind women usually get in fiction?

[yourhighness6]

It's funny to me when people insist that "ATLA was really feminist" as if there wasn't really only one feminist message which was the very generic "girls can fight too" spiel that every 2000s show had going on whenever they briefly tried to jump on the feminism bandwagon or whatever

[magicaldreamfox1]

KINNPORSCHE THE SERIES (2022) + textposts — 3/?

[alicentes]

Alicent Hightower 🤝 Sansa Stark

Having their book counterparts agency stripped away from them and unnecessary scenes of SA being written for them instead

[rogersstevie]

really and truly unless it's a discussion about why peggy/steggy fans shouldn't like endgame, at this point idk why people feel the need to continually make the argument about her having a family as if that's the biggest problem about the ending especially when i figure most people are of the belief that it was another timeline or whatever idk what the current consensus on that is in the mcu and i don't care

but what about the fact that it destroyed steve's family? does that not matter because it's not the standard spouse and children but is instead a family he built for himself with sam and nat and bucky? because it's easier to decide steve is a selfish asshole and always has been instead of acknowledging that that storyline did more of a disservice to him than to anyone else? like oh maybe peggy's family was erased and that's horrible but it doesn't matter that steve's family was abandoned in the midst of the kind of trauma he knows very well?

i've said it before but it makes me so sad that so many people just turned on steve and decided a decade of movies don't matter in the face of one shitty desperate attempt of a movie to make him look like a pathetic creep just so they could justify their heterosexual nonsense ending

[gendont]

really craving media with an abundance of masculine women and I don't know how to find it. at best there will be one or two masculine women in a show or movie and that's still only by hollywood's standards of what an acceptable masculine woman is.

I want a whole extended series with female main characters who look like normal ass humans. no makeup. no push up bras. slender busty figure not on display. hairy as hell. not the butt of all the jokes.

so with that said, if anyone has recommendations, send them my way please.

[daenerysies]

why are alicent stan’s so gleeful about what the show has done to her character? book-wise she was an antagonistic, ambitious, manipulative woman who knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it; versus the show, where she has been turned into a constant victim to the men around her with no autonomy or agency what-so-ever. whether it’s otto, viserys, aegon, larys, she’s been reduced to a hypocritical, bitter, puppy-eyed woman with no want for anything in her own life; just a doll to be played around with and eventually discarded.

instead of being the calculating and intelligent woman who dog walks viserys up until his death (and even after) she's now his victim because of the decision to age her down to 15 rather than 18 like her canon age, and in turn age viserys up in order to further emphasize the age-gap and power dynamics. she is portrayed as an abusive mother on screen (physically and mentally to aegon, mentally to helaena and aemond), falling into the 'abused becomes the abuser' trope, which is a rather harmful stereotype. she told aegon that he would be king, but then began having 'second thoughts' when the actual usurpation took place, of which she apparently had no idea, "am i to understand that members of the small council have been planning secretly to install my son without me?" once again reducing her to a pawn of the men around her. these second thoughts took place because of her apparent 'reconciliation' with rhaenyra, as if a few words and hand holding could ever undue the years she spent undermining rhaenyra and attempting to have her and her children disinherited and shamed (mayhaps even killed due to the bastard rumors). she is now a victim to larys as well. larys, despite his lower standing than her THE QUEEN, is able to 'manipulate' her into doing sexual favors for him in order for her wishes to be granted. she has no control over the men around her and no respect from any of them because they know she is willing to bend over backwards to please them. she openly admits that she knew her father had been manipulating her for years, and she still fed into his bullshit. she only wants aegon to be king due to her 'misunderstanding' the words of a drugged up and dying man (and it being HIS 'wish' for aegon to succeed him, not hers). her only want in the show is 'to make a window in the wall of her prison.'

the greens were named for HER in the book. not aegon. not otto. not house hightower. her.

“the beacon on the hightower, do you know what color it glows when oldtown calls it’s banners to war?”

“green.”

except that it doesn’t in canon. house hightower’s only set color is grey, and their only beacon is the regular depiction of red and orange fire. there is no green to be scene anywhere to represent the hightower’s or oldtown or their beacon. the color green didn't have any meaning to her. alicent chose it for herself. she wasn’t ’showing off her allegiance to her father and house after being scorned by the targaryens’ it was a political statement that she CHOSE TO MAKE for herself. she was the leader of team green and was the main culprit in usurping rhaenyra and crowning aegon. she didn’t do it for her father, or her house, or viserys; she did it for herself, because SHE wanted aegon to be king.

there are ways to add complexities to characters without completely changing everything about them, and what they stand for. alicent might have partially fallen into the evil step-mother trope in the book, but considering it’s a historical account; we have next to no information on how she really feels. they could have deep dived into her feelings regarding the succession, how marrying the king without a male heir should have given her the privilege of being the future king’s mother, instead finding out the harsh reality; that viserys would not remove rhaenyra as heir, and that she was negated to only being the king’s wife and giving him spares. they could have played into how complicated her relationship with rhaenyra is, how angry and self-righteousness she would have felt considering the only reason viserys was made king was due to male preference primogeniture. why she felt the need to isolate and bully a child because of said child's father’s decisions. there were plenty of other roads that the writers could have taken to add actual nuance into alicent’s story, and not just adding in more unnecessary and brutal violence towards women.

all of this to say that aging her down and turning her into nothing more than a abused child-bride was not the way to go to add nuance to her story. women shouldn’t have to be tortured, neglected, raped, abused, etc. in order for the audience to like and feel sympathy for their character. that’s an inherently sexist and abhorrent point of view, and considering how virtue signaling a lot of her fans are it’s not surprising that they’re willing to overlook it for the sake of continuing their poor baby alicent ‘always a victim to the men in her life’ rhetoric; as if that was ever a core part of her character.

what they gave us in house of the dragon was not the real alicent hightower, just a cheaply made original character with alicent’s name slapped on her in place of a discount sticker. hotd's biggest crime was reducing powerful ambitious women to side pieces in the big bad men's war. why do women in this universe have to suffer in order for the audience to feel sympathy for them and their plight? and no, i'm not going to argue with anyone going, "b-but OBVIOUSLY you just don't understand her character uwu," i understand her plenty, thanks.

if you actually like alicent (or any of the women in general) in fire and blood you should be seething in outrage over house of the dragon's portrayal of them.

[beaft]

today i went through my wardrobe in my childhood room and got rid of a bunch of clothes that i haven't worn for years. i used to dress very manic-pixie-dream-girl: lots of pastels and polka dots, glitter and sequins and ribbons and ruffles, babydoll dresses, rainbow knee socks, candy bracelets, trainers that lit up and flashed when i walked.

i got a little sad while i was bundling it all into boxes - i guess because a part of me still loves those clothes, even though they don't feel like me anymore. transition has been good for me and hard for me in equal measure, because it's forced me to examine who i am beyond my appearance. as a teenager, i was very wedded to the idea of being small and cute and elfin and non-threatening, and i got a lot of euphoria whenever people viewed or described me that way.

but was it a healthy sort of euphoria? some of it was connected to poor body image - i was terrified of being fat, terrified of looking ugly. i don't know if it's good to tie your identity and your happiness to something as ephemeral as prettiness. sometimes the things that make you happy aren't necessarily the things that are best for you. being told that i looked "fragile" made me happy once, but that doesn't mean it was good for me to hear.

when it comes down to it, i think my ultimate goal is to be myself, utterly myself, and for my sense of self-worth to be divorced from other people's opinions. i want to abandon my desire for the approval of strangers. it's the difference between an uncomfortable, itchy designer outfit that you only wear because it gets you compliments, and a boring, comfortable sweatshirt that smells like home.

[lagosbratzdoll]

This is a very very unfinished thought but I've been thinking a lot as I reread the books about how the women of House of the Dragon don't really get catharsis and how that'll likely be worse in S2. Say what you want about asoiaf but a number of named women there experience catharsis.

They kill their abusers (Lysa, Cersei, Dany). They regain some agency after a violation (Lysa, Cersei, Lady Stoneheart, Dany), and they refuse to forgive the people complicit in their subjugation (Lysa, Cersei, Dany, Lady Stoneheart, Jeyne Westerling).

Obviously, three or four isn't enough in such an expansive cast of characters but the point remains that they claw back their autonomy however they have to. They're allowed to be angry, bitter, unforgiving and cruel to their abusers in a way women in House of the Dragon just aren't allowed. They're allowed grief, grief that is violent and destructive.

The women of House of the Dragon don't get angry. They stand around and stare plaintively at the camera, they cry prettily, and they plead for peace and non-violence. They suffer and suffer and suffer and there's no relief.