#a lot of you are genuinely being disgustingly misogynistic

[dandyleyen]

I really need you guys to put on your thinking caps and be very normal about how y’all treat Zelda as a character.

She was a 16/17 year old in BoTW. She wasn’t an awful, spoiled Princess. She was a young girl who had the fate of her entire people and country on her shoulders. She was thrust into a destiny and duty that she didn’t want, but knew she had to go through with. If she didn’t, everything would be lost. She wasn’t ready for the Calamity, but NO ONE WAS. All the Champions (including Link) had their skills ready and they knew what they were going to do and yet they were still all caught by surprise and overwhelmed. If it wasn’t for her and Link and the sacrifices they have made, Hyrule would never even have a CHANCE of recovering.

Link isn’t her servant. He has no obligation or duty to follow her around or stay by her say after BoTW ends and he saves her. The monarchy is all but dissolved by the time Tears starts and she’s [Zelda] is honestly more of a figurehead than an actual monarch. She’s not forcing anyone to follow her. People follow her because she is a smart and caring woman who wants to help the people of Hyrule (all races included) prosper and come back after having suffered so much. Link stays by her side because they care about one another. Whether you think that’s romantic or purely platonic doesn’t really matter, because the care and love is still there. She clearly respects him (you literally hear how highly she speaks of him in her interactions with others in Tears) and he respects her too.

Stop hiding your thinly veiled misogyny towards her behind “oh she’s a bad character who doesn’t respect link and is spoiled blah blah”.

You’re literally just engaging in character assassination and hating her for a personality that you’re making up for her. Can you guys genuinely be normal about her.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

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[askderynsharp]

Hey, maybe this is weird but I just wanted to let you know that while maybe you’ve gotten flack over it, your story/blog really changed my outlook on Deryn being trans. I never said anything out loud but it used to really, really bother me when I saw fics with her being trans. It wasn’t out of a place of hate. Diversity is beauty and I genuinely want a character that trans people can identify with. I was just personally better able to identify with her as a tomboy/girl undercover. 1/3

I’m a girl and since I was very little it was clear to me I wanted to go into science, and it was also clear how much of a male dominated field it is. Unconsciously I had put myself into Deryn’s shoes and it made me sad when people wrote Deryn as trans because it felt like they were saying Deryn *had* to be a boy to break that glass ceiling. That she had to be a boy to do what I want to do. 2/3Now I know I was being overly sensitive about this, because obviously that’s not what was happening. Deryn is just such a magical character and I think anyone who wants to identify with her SHOULD because she (or he/they, sorry about the names and pronouns) is stinkin’ cool and how could I ever take that away from someone? I’m not sure exactly what point I was trying to make with this other than thanks for opening my eyes! PS. Sorry this is disgustingly long. 3/3

Its a funny thing with books like Leviathan, its like everyone I talk to has this powerful attraction to it. I think that has something to do with the series being so unpopular, it sorta gets in our heads that we’re the only ones who will ever like it and that can turn possessive as we grow up. I myself still get powerfully offended when other people depict Alek in a certain way, just because i’ve had so much time to think to myself about what the text could mean and am used to my opinion on the series being the only opinion on the series. 

I’ve gotten flack only once on this blog by someone who sent me a bajillion messages about how I was a misogynist and shite. I decided not to post it at the time because I assumed that person was having a bad night or something. I later regretted that because, like you, I was offended by anyone insisting they knew what Deryn was supposed to mean more than me. Deryn was my favourite character, my weird thing that no one else had ever heard of. She was there in the back of my head all throughout my adolescence, my adulthood, and when I came out of the closet. And he was there when I decided to name myself after him. Someone getting on their high ass horse about how I was misrepresenting their golden girl made me absolutely furious. 

But I’ve come to realise the same thing as you, everyone feels the same about her. She was this random shot-in-the-dark character that a lot of people related heavily to. The prose used to describe her was written from the perspective of a cis man, and seemed to accidentally depict dysphoria for someone who is looking for it. 

The bits in the book where she complains about not being manly enough are taken at face value to a cis girl, but to a closeted trans man it mirrors a deep insecurity they cant put their finger on yet. The bit where she contemplates suicide over being discovered and the hopelessness of being trapped in a body you hate is obvious to a trans person, but represents oppression to a cis person. We all read the book differently, we all read the book alone, so it makes sense that we all think our own interpretation is the only one of worth.

I can make jokes like “Dylan is trans sorry terfs :P” but that kinda closes me off to the fact that we all love the same character, and male or female, its not like Middie Sharp is ruined by the headcanons. Different takes for different people, and we’re all fans of the same thing :)

[theyrsick]

you cant ironically hate women, you just hate women. you cant ironically hate anyone because your brain doesnt understand the difference between irony and genuinely feeling that way. so they just hate women. 

they have the nerve to be upset with me for telling them they mansplain. they tell me they know they have problems and they have a lot to work on and months later im still seeing the most disgustingly misogynistic things. i think they’ve slowly started believing all the gross things they used to ironically say. they say they’re trans and its not as though i dont believe it but it doesnt make you exempt from being a misogynist. they still live as a guy, they present as a guy still, they introduce themselves and he/him and in no way are they affected by misogyny in the same way i am or even other trans women are and yet they deny the ways in which they treat me like men do. i have experienced poor treatment from men my whole life im not stupid. i can tell when you’re negging me or mansplaining or trying to be condescending. i know misogyny better than you ever will just based on experience. 

its convenient that im suddenly nonbinary when you want to dismiss my experiences as a girl but im a girl any other time i get upset with you for misgendering me. get over it. you look like a girl. you’ll always be a girl. you have literally also been socialized as a man. so yes you’re as guilty as the rest of them especially when you say stuff like “women amirite” to describe a woman who rejected you. you had to find a reason not to like her because she would never want you. she was perfect to you at one point, you loved talking to her. but then she got a boyfriend and he treated her poorly and as most sad orbiters do, they get bitter and offended because they treat the girl sooo much better and get nothing in return. maybe they dont want sex (but honestly i think they just feel shame in their sexuality. you’re not better than a regular nice guy incel because you dont desire sex. and you do. youre a pig.) but even then they still want their affection and validation. and they’ll never get that because they’re pathetic with nothing to offer. fuck you edgar. you hate women and try to get out of it with your transness. you’ve abused me in the same way every other man has but you want to tell me its different even when you’re the worst of them all. 

men dont care that im nonbinary. they see a feminine presenting person with a vagina. they see a girl and so they’ll treat me like a girl. dont act like youre above them when you constantly misgender me. i never viewed you as a boy after you came out to me. but you still acted like one in the way you were misogynistic. you were no different from the rest of them. you’d make fun of them and then ironically mimic them but then you just became them. 

[sportsanimebreakdown]

Breakdown: Teppu (The Sports Anime That Will Never Be)

SPOILER FREE ZONE

Teppu: Seinen manga, 2008-2015, supposedly finished. Done by Moare Oota which is evidently a pseudonym for someone else but I don’t know who.

Tropes: Unlikable Protagonist, Unlikable Women, Star Player, Anti-Hero, Genius

Not-Your-Wikipedia-Summary: Natsuo is taller than everyone and and athletic genius. Which makes her life a living hell because nobody can stand for her to be such an insufferable genius, not her brother, not her volleyball teammates, not her two-times-national-karate-champion-ex-best-friend Sanae. Natsuo is bored shitless- until she meets a girl, Yuzuko, who’s just moved from Brazil to Japan and does MMA and who is disgustingly happy. All the time. Especially when it comes to MMA. Naturally, Natsuo wishes, more than anything in the world, to beat the ever living shit out of her. But is Natsuo’s natural talent enough to bring a lifelong MMA nut to the ground?  Cue the queer sadomasochism references here, please.

TL;DR Review: It’s hard to review this without going into too many spoilers but- GODDAMN I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS SHIT. A totally sadistic bitch who can’t stand the “hard work will pay off! Pain doesn’t hurt!” hero?? Queerness EVERYWHERE? No fanservice?? FACKYUS. But seriously, this series goes out of its way to destroy a lot of sports manga tropes. Natsuo doesn’t join the school MMA team with Yuzuko and her Brazilian-adopted-sister/badass-MMA-fighter. Natsuo can’t stand their fucking cheerfulness. No, she joins a local MMA gym and happily deals with the bitches there in order to get stronger. Natsuo isn’t all “oh maybe I can grow stronger!” she’s more “maybe I can find someone strong enough to give me a challenge... and the pleasure of wiping their smile off their fucking face.” The way the author paces the fights with the flashbacks to the history between various characters is also done really well. It gives us the feeling that it’s not just a fight at stake; it’s the definition of who these people are that’s at stake. And these people are twisted. So that makes it even better. The only drawback to this series, to me, is the ending. (Read the “Male Writer Fuckups” section below the cut.) It really didn’t have to end like that either- this could have been the beginning of a really great longer series. They could have gone much farther with it. But whatevs. I’ll just not read the ending when I re-read it.

‘Objective’ Score: 7/10 The art was weak at the beginning, though it really strengthened up at the ending. The story jumped around a bit at the end as the author tried to cram in shit since he was clearly looking to end the series, so there’s some confusing bits there. But overall, an awesome subversion of a lot of tropes and a great addition to the genre.

Personal Score: 8/10 (1 point deducted for misogynistic/abuse-affirming ending)

SPOILER ZONE

Full Thoughts: Okay so this author gets a lot of things right, the least of which are his meticulously-researched MMA/karate/ju-jitsu techniques, and the most of which are his fantastically unlikable female characters. Because there’s multiple of them. We have, on one side of the spectrum, our main character who we know from the beginning is unlikable. In the middle of the spectrum, we have her teacher/MMA fighter, Kotani Karin, who is a savvy, older woman trying to do right by her students and women’s MMA, who sometimes picks on Natsuo because she, understandably, doesn’t like Natsuo and thinks the best thing for her is a swift kick in the ass. 

Then on the OTHER SIDE of the spectrum.... we have Yuzuko. She’s the traditional main character of a sports manga, one who started young, who just loves the sport, who doesn’t care about the pain, who isn’t naturally talented, but works three times harder than everyone else. She seems, on the surface, likable. UNTIL it’s pointed out to us that that is fucking crazy/stupid/psychotic. Yuzuko is missing a goddamn screw in her head, and her Brazilian friend/sister Ringi and her father (an undefeated MMA champ) are the only ones who really realize it. Yuzuko, in the end, is just as unlikable as Natsuo because she is fucking insane and stupid.

So really, they’re perfect for each other. And the manga doesn’t shy around the queer coding. And speaking of queer, shout out to the not-even-coded, but totally gay stuff going on in the karate club of kickass women.

So this author, Oota, gets some things right. That women are complicated and not always likable, and they can all kick some serious ass. BUT. His misogyny and his rush to finish the series get in the way of two things: 1, a good ending, 2, a clearer/fuller understanding of these characters. 

For example, we never get a full understanding of Yuzuko. Is she just stupid? Is she psychotic? Is it masochism? The last is implied, but I don’t entirely buy it. And Natsuo- is she truly sadistic, or is her sadism an excuse to search for someone who can beat her, aka masochism? Her abusive relationship with her brother would imply masochism as well. This isn’t entirely cleared up with either of these girls.

Things Male Writers Always Fuck Up On While Writing Female Characters: Endings.  For those of you who are reading this spoilers section without reading the manga yet, this requires some background: Natsuo started karate with her brother when they were little, but she had so much natural talent that she outshone him easily. The brother quit karate and started getting beat up at school. When Natsuo beat the shit out of the guys who were beating him, he blamed her -and her natural talent- for all of his problems (misogyny 101: “you being good means I’m not good and so you should lower yourself to make me feel better”). But Natsuo, being an impressionable sister who only wants to be friends with her brother, takes it to heart.... even so far as to let her brother start beating her when they’re little kids, all in order to make him feel better. There starts an abusive relationship with her loser older brother.

This girl’s got fucking issues.

NOW. A girl having these issues isn’t a problem. Especially if she works through them and grows into saying “fuck you older brother, if you’re weak it’s your own goddamn problem, don’t make it MY responsibility, and if you hit me again I’ll show you what I learned in MMA.” But is that what happens? No. 

Because at the end of this story, this author makes the Golden Mistake When Writing Female Character’s Endings: he makes it about the brother’s personal growth instead of hers.

At the end of the story, Natsuo and Yuzuko are in a really awesome fight. Now we know that Natsuo has been looking to lose and she hasn’t lost yet. She needs to lose, for her personal growth. But the author brings in her brother to watch the fight and, at the very end, Natsuo sees him in the audience. Then she loses. Whether or not she loses on purpose or genuinely loses is unclear.

After the fight she has a dream where he suddenly likes her now and they watch movies together like how they used to. Outside of dreamland, her mother nervously asks her brother, as he shuffles into the living room, if she can cut his hair (implying that he’s been a shut-in for awhile and, now that he’s seen his sister lose, is finally joining the rest of fucking society).

This is not just misogynistic... this is abuse-affirming.

This is a child hoping that, maybe if they roll over and show their belly, their abuser will love them again. This is a boy shaming/abusing a girl because she was strong, literally tearing her down because he couldn’t stand how talented she was. And this ending is a girl letting herself be torn down in order to make her abuser-older-brother feel better and hopefully love her again. 

It’s sick, guys. This ending, more than anything else, is what puts it in the seinen (older) genre category. It’s unsatisfying, it’s misogynistic, it’s affirming of patterns of abuse. From my eye, it’s written by someone who wanted to write a mature story but didn’t want to take responsibility for representing those issues in a non-toxic way.

So, mixed feelings. I really enjoyed 4/5ths of this story. The last 1/5th was like finding a shit seed inside a piece of fruit though.