#especially strong women

[sergle]

I don’t know if there really is any science behind workout routines separated by sex, but even if there is benefit to doing exercise “for women” i don’t give a shit. and i will intentionally seek out guides made For Men. because by and large, this is how the different video thumbnails shake out

[nixiecat]

I look fucking great today but my muscles are so sore... yknow I bet there's enough freaks following me that we could get one person who's really weird about each specific part of me that hurts so I can get like. a full body massage all at once what do we think

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[decisions-at-3am]

I will never get used to How gently you treat me. As if I were fragile as glass, My existence lacking solidity.

[deva-arts]

zomg... the girls! Sketched out! And a few characters I never showed designs for! haha! I keep thinking about the beach, so this is their swimwear.

I hope to make a full fledged drawing for all of them soon~ then the guys~~

Some newbies are: Aura (blue!) Katya (Gold!) and more of Verra (Green!) We'll eventually see more about them as I draw more things and doodles.

[skeleton-squid-boy]

I adored monkey man. I loved that it acknowledged people, especially the hijras, as victims but not as weak. I cried when those women fucked shit up.

[sir-adamus]

the FFXIII trilogy ends with Claire "Lightning" Farron taking the collective souls of humanity and shaping them into a massive sword with which she kills God,

but now because of the whining of internet dipshits, 16 gave us mardy Clive and his girlfriend who might as well not be there for how fucking little she contributes

[melmedarda]

Mel is so amazing, and I am so very thankful to the people at Riot for coming up with her and to the folks at Fortiche for bringing her to life. We really are so lucky to have her.

[kyouka-supremacy]

(sorry if this is a double ask I couldn't tell if my first one went through)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Teruko's role in ch113 if you'd like to share them! I didn't see anything inherently sexist in her role like you did, but I've also only been passively reading the recent chapters and so don't have a lot of context around the character's histories. I thought your original post about bsd's sexism was well-worded and informative so I always appreciate your critical analysis of bsd. if you want share i'd love to read! no pressure though

Hi, thank you! I already elaborated on this in the last ask but I'm taking the chance for a more personal note here: picture me last September, in the (miraculously empty) university library, watching the last season five episode, who knows they've just lost two trains home because the university wi-fi won't work for illegal streaming sites. Teruko suddenly stabs Fukuchi from behind, and I audibly gasp. I can't believe my eyes! This is it! Teruko is killing Fukuchi! I'm going to take back everything I've ever said about the author being sexist! They evidently can't be now! Teruko just killed Fukuchi! She must have done that because he betrayed her ideals! Ideals that she had in her! Ideals that make her her own independent person! That's consistent with how she's always been shown to be loyal to the military, she must have felt betrayed by Fukuchi, in finding out that he was actually a terrorist and betrayed the cause, and that's why she's killing him! She's so smart, she knew she couldn't do it before because she wouldn't have been able to outpower him, so she waited for him to let down his guard and strike when she knew he couldn't retaliate! Teruko has her own agency and free will and decided to act for what she believes in! Fukuchi is apologizing with her, so it must be a matter of betrayal and ideals! What a brilliant plot twist! That's amazing, spectacular, extraordinary, for a woman to conclude this arc! I love Teruko so much!

… And then sexism ensues. Like I know it would be foolish to be mad for what could have been (and I need to stretch that I'm not saying it's a sexist portrayal because it could have been better and more empowering, it's just sexist full stop), but I am a little bitter, I was so ready to accept the author for their newfound feminism and yet I was so wrong.

Like… I can't put in words how hurtful, but most than anything plain saddening it is to see Teruko here, after having consigned Fukuzawa her sword, take a step back from center stage. Her entrance happened after 19 minutes of male prevalence, and 60 seconds after she's already left. Please, write female characters better than that.

………………….. Then they show Kyouka and Lucy at the airport despite having done absolutely NOTHING at the conclusion of this arc. Literally, why didn't they make Kyouka or Lucy save Atsushi when Akutagawa had captured him (we know why). They didn't even give them a single spoken line. I'm literally begging the author to be at least a little respectful.

[strawberryshortpace]

I’m re-reading the selection series and I feel like more people should read the spin-off with America and Maxon’s daughter cause the lessons are lessoning

She wants to be seen as serious and professional so she forbids herself from showing any feeling that might have her deemed ‘emotional’

She stays away from doing/liking feminine things cause it might make people take her less seriously

She doesn’t even consider romance as a possibility since it might make her facade crack and have people think she’s too weak to rule

And the series is her learning that she can be feminine and show her emotions AND be the most powerful person in the kingdom. She can have a crown AND find love

[captainuranium543]

I hate it when I accidentally start beef with an erza fan like DUDE WERE ON THE SAME SIDE.

[envolvenuances]

lesbian masterdoc and the unforgivable damage of making people hear compulsory heterosexuality and think of "can lesbians have crushes on men?" (no) instead of "are heterosexual women settling in unhappy marriages with men bellow their worth because of economic and social pressure?" (yes)

[strangeasf]

some of u guys love strong morally grey characters who do questionable things for their own benefits as long as they are not women

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 6!!!

[denizenhardwick]

sumi should not be that thin. she trains so much, her metabolism is insane and she consumes and burns so many calories in a day, this girl should be absolutely fucking jacked.

[corpsentry]

there’s something so epic about hetero chinese period dramas and i think one part of it is that there is absolutely nowhere in the narrative i could exist.

lately i’ve been on a western media detox— i’ve cleaned english language music out of my playlists and have never been able to stomach western dramas anyway, so that part is easy— which might seem funny, because if i’m in singapore and i hate it and i won’t touch american music then what’s left? the answer is the false binarism of chinese period dramas, at least for me. the badly written ones are misogynistic and stupid and the better ones are less of those things, but regardless the world that emerges is clean-cut and easy to parse. there’s someone to root for and someone to hate. there’s a girl and a boy. there’s the comedy and the drama, the sheer thick drama, the music that signals to you precisely how to feel before the scene even starts going

try to jam a fifth culture transnational transgender they/them with 2 mental illness and 1 autoimmune disease into this world and it simply doesn’t work. and that’s kinda epic lolzers! it’s like watching high fantasy, or super hardcore sci-if. it both represents a simulacrum of the real world and is so far from the reality you know that you understand it as a hypothetical universe, one that disincludes you on principle. i exclude myself from the story and in doing so fangfei from moyuyunjian’s steely gaze becomes all the more important. i give so many shits and laugh and yell and spectate. but i am safe from the eyes of its inhabitants. if i entered the story it would break. so i sit outside of it, clapping by myself

in other news, we gave up on mysterious lotus casebook 16 episodes in. there are many character archetypes in these shows that i can no longer stand; the salacious sexy seductive supervillain lady is not necessarily one of them but the way they did miss ‘this man didn’t even Look at me when all men fall at my knees so i hated him’ ‘no one is allowed to steal buttchin from me’ jiao was way up there. surely a woman can have multiple personality traits and yet you would think from this drama that that is not at all true. and the strange harem that grew around li lianhua despite his absolute loser attitude— like i get it, he’s the gintoki of this show, that’s hot, but the way the women who were into him were written made me want to Eat Horse. it bothered me that di feisheng and lianhua’s homo as fuck dynamic was so intriguing and them + fang duobing was a winning trio but all the women in the show were written like complete fucking ass, and one of the big antagonists being a woman, the stakes throughout were not only lost to me but also Pissed Me Off. also, that case about the corpse flowers dragged on forever and all my pocky wilted

I Just Think, women deserve better in these damn stories. make them slutty as hell, sure, but make them other things too and i mean this in the most generous sense. slutty and proud. slutty and weird. slutty and oblivious. literally anything at all so they don’t come out cardboard flat from all angles. this is why i have a personal vendetta against the ditzy clueless female protagonist as well because if everything stems from the fact that she doesn’t know shit it’s like please someone Please tell her shit i’m on my hands and knees begging. give her more to chew on she’s dying of boredom over there

this is why i liked the so called antagonist of blossoms in adversity best (spoilers ahead). he was cruel as hell to huazhi and gu yanxi’s only parental figure. he was paranoid and selfish and lonely and craved a son’s love from the one person he couldn’t hold onto. in the end he is pushed further and further by huazhi, who won’t give in, to isolate yanxi from the people he loves and to lash out at those people as a way of punishing yanxi. and when he dies it’s because of his own distrust, his own negligent parenting, his absent cruelty from decades of insomnia and lack of faith in his people. but he cries for yanxi, and there’s something so human about that. to think of evil not as a first principle but rather an adjective for a verb that is set in motion by other events. to be honest, i haven’t seen such thoughtful writing in any chinese period drama before or after that and i strongly suspect i will never see such writing again in this genre but man, it was so fucking good (spoilers end).

in the meantime, i’ve dragged my mother to moyuyunjian/the double for the return casting of liu xiening and wang xingyue who are Eating so hard. they’ve got wang xingyue done up with the sluttiest makeup and liu xiening is breaking my heart with her pout and her Sassy Mean constitution and this is a revenge story, yes, but it’s a double revenge story. it’s a grief story. and fangfei is carrying more on her shoulders than lingbuyi imo, and doing so with much more grace too. her step mom’s a dick but she’s a smart, 5d chess playing dick who wears hot shades of green so i’m personally interested enough to keep watching (something lotus casebook DID NOT accomplish with their epic female antagonist…. mein gotte). and the princess too. unhinged as hell but god, so charismatic. and beautiful, with scary big eyes and the sweetest head tilt. fun fun fun! that’s fun character writing right there. the comedy might be too straightforward for my tastes but everything else is kind of hot and sexy And after the coming of age ceremony when jiangli appeared amidst the flowers i felt my throat close up even though we saw her for all of one (1) episode). i was like yes. they got me alright. i Care now

really that’s all that matters isn’t it. we want stories about people we care for. we want to give a shit. why else would we listen to the stories of other people. we are looking for us and the people we love in them

oh also moyuyunjian soundtrack goes hard as hell i love a little three step waltz. here’s a pic from the ‘gym’ for ur time. guten night