#feminism in media should be about girls that are as well written as men not empty female leads who act quirky after mistreating a guy

[tategaminu]

Seriously it pisses me off so much some saying Rayla is ruined or OOC in arc 2‚ mostly because two reasons:

1- her character core was never about her physical strenght or being a badass. It was about self worth issues‚ love and opening about emotions. Seriously how do you watch the series and come to the conclusion that her being a "slay queen" is her biggest personality trait? She has always been an awkard disaster‚ just more open about it now. Also her strenght hasn't disappeared you know?

2- if you get angry at this kind of character development don't go around saying you want complex female characters. Just admit you want girlbosses that like breaking men's skulls‚ being sincere is not that hard.

Arc 2 Rayla is a blessing and some people don't deserve her (inside and outside of the show) and If I see more slandering comments in her next bday post I'm gonna get rabid btw

[rosemarydisaster]

I feel like the misogyny in fandom is only partially the fandom's fault. Let me explain: if the piece of media you're a fan of has a 50/50 female to male ratio, and treats its female characters with the same love, nuance and respect they treat their male characters with... Obviously you have a bigger chance of having your favorite character be a woman instead of a men.

If there's only one or two women, if they're written like shit, if they're not allowed the same complexity (because they're just set dressing or because "feminism dictates female characters can't have flaws" lest they call you out) well obviously you're gonna gravitate to the more nuanced male characters. If you don't care enough to write compelling female characters why should the audience feel compelled?

Don't get me wrong, even great female characters get sidelined in favor of "tall dudes with (dubiously) homoerotic tension". But in fandoms with majority female characters/really compelling female leads, the vibes are completely different. Even if there are still assholes. A great example is the fandom of Game of Thrones vs the fandom of A Song of Ice and Fire. When all your female characters either feel the same brand of girlboss/badass or are framed as annoying/evil while most of your male characters (even the evil ones) are painted as cool and badass as opposed to having a full cast of nuanced characters of both genders... yeah misogyny is gonna happen.

So yeah, we do need to work on our internalized misogyny and we do need to point out when we or the fandom treat female characters unfairly. But we also need more stories that love their female characters as much as their male counterparts. No one has the guts to hate on the female characters of The Locked Tomb Series. Mostly because why would you read a book with a mostly queer female cast about necromancy and the awfulness of love if you hated complex female characters??

We should try to give more attention to those stories. Once you start asking "isn't it weird there's no interesting women here?" When you watch/read/listen to a story you find yourself not caring much for a lot of shows. Hell it's why I can't watch most shonen anymore and why I gave up on supernatural at some point. As a "consumer" (hate that word) I also have the option to stop caring about a show that clearly doesn't care about me (or any woman for that matter).

Does this mean you can't read Sasunaru fanfic anymore? No, but when you start a new show you might want to keep that question in mind. And you also may want to consider specifically searching out for works about women or that care about their female cast as much as their male counterparts.

The fandoms don't yearn for the misogyny as much as we think. I've seen some fandom really work the terribly written female characters into extremely compelling stories. Or write new female characters in fandoms with barely any (shout out to "Local Skate Dads Adopt Three Sons and a Hooligan" for adding like three new female characters to a show with one and a half).

Our internalized misogyny is left alone to fester in a desert, deprived of good female characters. Of course people develop an almost paraphilic obsession with M/M ships when they've been trained from birth on shows that don't care for their female cast (if they have any). We center men because society centers men. And we have to do the individual job of decentering men/centering women while also aknowledging that the people that make our shows aren't doing the job.

Also if you're reading this and wondering "what even is good female representation? What kind of show should I watch?" Read the locked tomb series. Trust me, it is a religious experience (not just for women, it has so much gender in it).

Has this all been a ploy to get you to read about TLT? Yes. I also recommend The Magnus Protocol for podcasts, and Derry Girls for tv shows. They're all so good.

[they-them-that]

My conflicted feelings on femininity in Shoujo

I will defend shoujo like my life depends on it, even the ones I don't like, if somone uses it as a slight against girls and women. I am tackling issues within shoujo but this isn't an attack against the genre. Shounen has far more egregious issues with the difference being that shounen sets boys up to expect from women while shoujo sets girls up to meet those expectations for men. Shoujo writers, who are often women, are just products of social grooming that end up passing it on to the next generation of women. They're not the ones who created the problem and it's low hanging fruit to target shoujo just to condemn women's and girls' interests. There's also plenty of shoujo with strong and progressive writing that goes unnoticed or are treated like the exception. Also, as you can guess, I am tackling the CIS hetero-romantic aspects of shoujo but I'm well aware it's far more diverse than that, it's just that within this genre, there's a reoccurring problem I want to get off my chest. Finally, I hope shoujo-fans can interact with this post with an open mind but I understand that we have gone through a treacherous era of vilifying femininity and faux-feminism that's defined by capitalistic and masculinized achievements. It can be hard to critically talk about femininity (and particularly, the idea of "choice-feminism") but this isn't an interrogation on women, it's challenging the subliminal misogyny that permeates female-oriented media.

As someone who craves both feminine and feminist content, the way femininity is written in a lot of shoujo manga and anime can feel like a double edged sword. It's great to see feminine traits being valued and even essentialized but sometimes, there's stories that feel like its preaching to a patriarchal standard of femininity that is more aligned with the male gaze.

The "popular girls" in shoujo frames girls who prioritize their self-interests--like being into fashion, makeup and socialization--as selfish and vapid. There's a blatant vilification of women's confidence and assertiveness when the heroine is modest and insecure in contrast. She doesn't participate in indulgent hobbies unless a boy incentivizes her and even then, she still has to maintain her meekness to not come off as overzealous. One of the largest points I see shoujo fans make is how the feminine protagonist's strongest quality is her empathy which is definitely a good thing to have! But it feels questionable when her nurturing qualities are rooted in patriarchal expectations.

These female characters often talk down on themselves and put others first while still being dependent on others to be their protectors and source of affirmation. There's the well known stereotype of male love interests being pushy and entitled to the point it borders on harassment and even assault. Although it can be used to generalize and degrade shoujo romances (while shounen romances don't get enough vitriol), it is a reoccurring problem worth calling out. Girls should not be normalized to predatory and abusive behaviors from boys and men as gestures of affection, especially when the girls' love languages in the same stories are selfless and maternal.

Our definition of femininity is fuzzy because femininity itself is a social concept that takes on multiple meanings. Being feminine can be empowering but we have to acknowledge that a lot of what shapes our idea of femininity came from the patriarchy to instill gender essentialism for women to be subservient to men. Shoujo is very guilty of assigning heavily gendered roles in relationships--the protector (masculine) and the nurturer (feminine)--that can be problematic at most but just not very vindicating to consume at the least.

Shoujo protagonists tend to embody this level of stereotypical femininity that isn't even relatable or aspirational for girls and feels more like it's trying to convey what a "good, honest girl" is. There can be girls who do connect with those types of heroines but it makes it even more concerning when her ultimate reward for her docility is a man's attention. That doesn't mean I'm calling for more "girl-boss" heroines that puts masculinity on a pedestal but that we should redefine our understanding of femininity that doesn't exist in servitude to others. Femininity isn't a list of traits to begin with, it's a form of expression. We shouldn't shy away from prideful women like that's a "masculine" trait (or disavow masculinity in women at all tbh) and recognize femininity and self-care can and do co-exist.

[feral-radfem]

Hi, I'm the anon before who asked about written erotica. Thank you for answering my ask. It was a long response and I'm sure it took a little bit of time, so I'm grateful for that.

As I said I'm new to radical feminism so I haven't had the chance yet to delve too deeply into anti-pornography, just mainly about how women in porn are treated and how it skews men's view of women. So that was why I wanted to ask about erotica. I always saw it as a creative outlet, esp. for women writers since so much of written erotica is... well, you know. But that it rots your brain like any other pornography does make sense actually.

I was quite young when I first got on the internet and I think I may have also been influenced by what you said. And how it kind of fucks with your sexuality. That erotica can also be an addiction never occurred to me, but again, it makes sense.

I've got a lot to think about! I hope you have a nice day.

Thank you for reaching back out. I like knowing that the people I write the responses to do get to see them at some point. Sometimes it feels like answering anons is just screaming into the void, so this was nice.

There is no shame in trying to learn or being new to the subject you're trying to learn. It's good to ask questions. I can definitely see how you came to the conclusion that written erotica is a creative release for women, though. In an era where choice feminism is the dominant strain of feminism all women's choices were framed as a feminist choice. However, things women choose to do, even if they do individually benefit them, cannot be considered feminist if it is detrimental to other women and girls. It's just individualism and women can be just as self-centered as men when they want to be. That's a human condition, unfortunately.

You are not alone in having been young and entering internet spaces that made no effort of regulating this material around the children they knew were there. A lot of them actively encouraged young girls to read it because 5-10 years ago began the revival of the free love movement. Porn, and erotica for women, were equated with masturbation and sexual healthy development. Falsely equated but they were in mainstream media regardless.

It was seen as puritan to try to shame children from engaging in pornography because they hit puberty of course they want to be sexually curious. That was a mass grooming of children being done during the early 2010s on the internet. Now, we have a whole generation of young girls who were pressured or shamed by being told that they were vanilla and to engage with media that continued this pressuring and shaming into their adulthood that they should treat their expressions of sexuality as a performance for others.

Much like Dworkin suggested, we have entered a period in which girls are being convinced that porn is good for them and it's being encouraged by women who have already internalized this message as children. It's our job as radical feminist to make it very clear that pornography of any type has nothing to do with the natural sexual curiosity that comes with puberty nor does it need to be involved in any of your sexuality as you grow older. It never becomes healthy, it is always detrimental, in all its iterations.

Hope you have a great day. Thanks for the follow-up message. :)

[falcqns]

just some things we discussed in class that i thought were interesting:

vulnerability should be promoted by the teacher

feminist pedagogy!!

race, class, and sex determine whos exploited, discriminated against and oppressed

media has the power to in force negatively and postively

types of media and how they're sexist:

commercials - food consumption is sexualized

tv/ movies -

plus sized women are only there to further the plot (listen to Fat Funny Friend by Maddie Zahm, it showcases the entire experience of being a plus sized woman, and growing up as one.)

women are rarely the person in power and non sexualized

women are often only the 'love interests' and portrayed as people who need a man to survive

mental health awareness:

women aren't as diagnosed with disabilities such as ADHD and Autism simply because all the studies about these disabilities and how to diagnose them was done on men.

the symptoms were down played as Anxiety or Depression (something that can be cured) instead of the actual disability (something that cannot be cured, only helped, and is with us for life.) simply because the researchers failed to realize that the symptoms present differently in different genders

Gender Reveal

what is the point? why assign your child a colour (pink/blue), or a 'role' (superman for boys, 'lois lane' for girls - are we forgetting theres LITERALLY 1) superwoman, 2) wonderwoman, 3) supergirl, and SO many more female superheros?!!??!)

there are better options for 'reveals' - different colours, name reveal etc.

We watched a video called 'Leading Lady Parts as well. - Florence Pugh - not joking, that's my literal first note about this bc her >>> - accurately portrays how auditions are. (i send an audition tape that shows my head and shoulders only, why do casting directors feel the need to give me only ONE note, that note being "can you send this again but showcase your entire body' LIKE WHY???) - auditions are sexist, fatphobic, racist, ageist!!!!!! - typecasting still happens, and laughing about it normalizes it

How does this affect the children??

bell hooks' (early childhood theorist) practices and pedagogy ensure that children's learning is as effective as it can be.

bell hooks promoted a progressive wholistic education with an engaged pedagogy

'wholistic vs holistic' - wholistic refers to the entire child, seeing them as a whole being. holistic refers to the idea that the whole is more than just the 'sum of parts.'

equality is important, not just in feminism, but in everything

her pedagogy was called 'feminist pedagogy' and she was vocal about how feminism looks different for women of colour, than it does for white women.

young girls are still seeing unhealthy standards for women in all types of media despite the changes being made

think Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2 vs Black Widow (the costuming, the way she was written, the role she played to the plot), Kamala Khan vs Peter Parker (Peter is a 'typical' skinny teenager, Kamala has a bigger frame, is more what teens her age look like), and America Chavez + Kamala (non white characters with a leading role in their projects without the need for a romantic interest. yes, Kamala had one, but that wasn't the main plot point of Ms Marvel.

while these steps are good, it's not enough, and more needs to be done.

we, as educators, can't change the world and how the world sees women and minorities, but we can help change the future by teaching the future generations that this is NOT okay, it was NEVER okay, and something needs to change NOW.

Skin Again by bell hooks

skin is just a covering.

we're more, much more than just how we look.

you can encourage learning, you cannot force it. you can make your learning environment safe, warm and inviting, but ultimately it is up to the child to decide that they WANT to learn. forcing them to learn doesn't teach them anything, in fact it negatively shows them that we don't see them as people, as co-learners, as our teachers in the learning environment. it shows them that they are only there to serve one purpose, and not to be fully engaged in their learning like we want them to be.

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

While I’m Transformers-posting, honestly the concept of Strongarm as a character is kind of fascinating to me, because she’s like. One of those characters where I can see all the processes behind her creation and the fan reactions and why people were the way they around her.

Again, I came in late, so I can only talk about this as someone who was an outsider to the whole phenomenon, but it was fascinating seeing all those 2014-2015 era posts where people seemed like, really excited about her as a character. And a lot of it was very much in a very ‘checklist representation’ style tone. You know, you had a girlbot who wasn’t pink and who wasn’t slender and who was in a line of work women didn’t typically do (policing, rip). And I feel like that style of really liberal fandom feminism writing - going through a checklist of ‘not-often-done’ traits - was at least somewhat influential on the conceptualisation of her as a character, even if it obviously wasn’t the only influence it had on her character, along with being a part of her initial appeal*.

It also made subsequent backlashes in her writing interesting. Because I did see the pushback her episode with Windblade got. And I think at least a part of that pushback was like, okay, a part of it was because the writing of the series was far from The Best Ever lmao. And I know that a part of it was at least due to fandom shipping war bullshit. But I feel like, a little part of it maaaaay also be because at the time, a lot of normie liberal fandom feminist spaces were very insistent on the idea that women being represented as rivals was Bad and girls being friends was Good. So a lot of people tended to read media through that lens.

And while it is true that particular framings of such relationships and the way the trope get often presented in certain media does have roots in misogynistic ideas (women are all catty and bitchy and irrational about their dislike for each other, blah blah blah). I also recall listening to a podcast where the writer of the episode did actually talk about how she wrote it based on her own feelings and experience. And the way she and all the other normie liberal fandom feminist hosts were talking about it on the podcast, she seemed really proud of herself for writing that episode too! 

And it’s this thing where I realise it’s an episode written by a woman, in a very typically male-dominated industry and a historically male-dominated franchise. And it was like. It got a certain amount of backlash from normie fandom feminist types too, due to it falling into kind of unfortunate implications.

It’s these kinds of moments, which like, I find kind of fascinating! As someone who could be considered a ‘fandom feminist’ by some metrics, and as someone who thinks ‘more women creating’ should be the prioritised goal wrt feminism and art.I don’t necessarily think I have a conclusion for this that isn’t something I kind of already said. But like, yeah! It’s one of those things where I feel like so much about it is more indicative of the type of system the show was conceptualised in. Wherein it is a franchise where historically speaking most of the creators were men, some of whom were adamant on there being no girlbots, and how all that baggage does make it a lot harder for women to write their own stories. As well as like, what sort of stories and what sort of girls get approved and are acceptable for mainstream media appealing to this particular demographic.

It’s also interesting looking at it in hindsight. Because she was very much a Smurfette, even if she didn’t fall into the conventional tropes and image of a Smurfette. And I know those Rescue Bots cartoons also had a Smurfette principle thing going on too. So it’s like. Interesting seeing it now, when the role of The Girl has become kind of... not a thing anymore in quite a lot of Transformers media.

*It’s not completely absent now, but I feel like this style of like, repbaiting(?) has less power over people these days.

[bearlythere]

how i, as a woman, relate to each and every single one of the she-hulk episodes (episode 1)

DISCLAIMER: this post IS NOT intended to make anybody feel guilty about perpetuating such scenarios. it was written as a realisation of how important she-hulk is in highlighting the real issues we women face in our daily lives and understanding them. hopefully, you realise that it isn't about "putting the male gender down for feminism", but highlighting specific, common experiences every woman has or will experience in her lifetime due to SOME man perpetuating such stereotypes. it is written to show how important the show is to me, in validating my experiences.

in each one of these posts, green will be used to describe she-hulk scenes, and blue will be my thoughts corresponding to the scenes and how i have experienced something similar in my life. you can view the rest of my posts about she-hulk here.

we first see jen, introduced as an established lawyer, prepping for a court case closing speech. then we see a male colleague, bukowski immediately stepping in saying that he should have been the one handling that case, as well as how much of a better job he could have done because he's a man.

i personally felt that this was a homage to professional women, whose knowledge in their fields has always been undermined because of their gender. this is especially prominent in male-dominated fields like the tech, construction, and engineering industry. my own personal experience had a guy in my uni class trying to convince me that i did not know the basics of database management in the first week of class, although i had studied that for 4 years, and he had no prior background.

jen goes on a road trip with bruce, and fangirls over steve rogers. then a car crash happens and surprise! she's now a hulk.

there's no denying that steve rogers (well, chris evans) IS HOT. plus, i'm pretty sure there's a point in life where we all just are genuinely curious about the private lives of public figures who keep their private lives away from the public eye. RELATABLE.

jen runs away, and finds a bar, women in the bathroom help clean her up and offer her help and affirmation. she calls bruce, and walks out of the bar to wait for him, where she's catcalled by some men. when she doesn't respond, the men start getting touchy and aggressive, triggering her inner hulk.

i love how this scene portrays how women have each other's backs, especially in situations like these. and ohmygod the incessant catcalling! i can't get over how ridiculous catcalling is in real life. i have experienced my fair share of catcalling, while i was at work, and it ranged from encounters that i can brush off easily to explicit, unasked-for lines that still make me shudder when i think of it. catcalling is an uncomfortable experience that every woman would encounter at least once in her lifetime. most of the time, we can only just brush it off or run away in fear of triggering the man who made such comments.

jen goes through some denial, "i don't wanna be a hulk! i just want to be me! " bruce trains jen to be in control of her hulk powers. and jen can switch from jen form to hulk form easily! jen wants to go back to work, bruce is worried that she'll turn into angry hulk and go on rampages when she's angry. they then have this argument about whether jen is really "feeling fine" and "in control of her anger".

i get that bruce was genuinely concerned about jen's wellbeing, but the way where he keeps pressing and asking her, until she gets frustrated and yells back at him. it reminds me how women's emotions frequently get second-guessed by others and not taken seriously, and how there's even a trope in media where "if the girl says something, there's a hidden meaning behind that". in this case, i felt that bruce was pushing jen too much, and did not think that jen was serious about being perfectly fine, trying to push her into staying and "training to be a hulk".

jen then explains to bruce that the reason why she can control her anger better is that anger and fear is “the baseline of any woman just existing”. and telling him that if she ever decides to unleash that anger or fear to confront others, it'll just end up with the woman being labelled as "difficult" and "emotional".

i felt this on such a personal level. often when i share my passions/frustrations with others in the workplace or organisational structure, i've always been brushed off by others for being "emotional". when i highlight a problem in a male-dominated group project, my ideas are brushed off as "difficult to implement or work with" while the same idea gets adopted and agreed with immediately when a male person suggests it. if i voice my frustrations out, the number one reaction i'd get was to "chill out man, it's a small issue". if i happen to tear up a little talking about the frustrations i have with the current structure of organisations and what kind of changes i would suggest to improve shared experiences, i'm "unfit for leadership since i'm too emotional to stand firm" and "have biased experiences" although everyone else is equally as frustrated.

thank you for reading, and feel free to chime in about your own personal experiences below!

[beautifulmorningstar]

i never read the manga either. but, i did read a few other shoujo manga as a teen. i wasn't all that interested in the romance (with men) content for obvious reasons, but the girls around me liked that sort of thing, and i wanted very badly to understand them.

what i learned was a lot of straight women are all too eager to romanticize their own abuse. romance with way older men, romance with men in positions of power (they're her teacher, or her boss, or an extremely wealthy man that plucked her from an average, or even impoverished, life), men who verbally abuse women (including mc), men who assault them, men who don't take "no" for an answer, men who expect femininity from her, men who admonish her for being a human or individual rather than a servile decoration.

i think it's socialized, but the way that there's so much content out there made by women for women that depicts abusive, misogynistic men as charming, cool, or romantic does make me wonder just who is doing the socializing in this case. it benefits men, either way, so it's still men's fault no matter what, but i notice the most popular romantic material written for women is often written by women...and contains abusive and misogynistic material.

at the very least, the core premise of ohshc contains a couple glaring examples: haruhi is poor, and she got roped into essentially roleplaying "soft prostitution" by boys who were far wealthier than her by leveraging debt (from an accident) against her. sure, the boys are also roleplaying "soft prostitution," but that's also strange in of itself.

this is really long, sorry...😅

Anon you are so spot-on.. Like... I never say it because there's always someone who doesn't want to see it said. But you're totally correct: media by (straight) women is rife with toxic or even sick power dynamics in their relationships. I agree that this is probably a result of socialization (I would go further and say this could be an expression of their understanding of society), because I do know straight women who wholly reject this dynamic - but the ones who do often get the lesbian label wrongfully pushed onto them from dick-centric idiots, who struggle to find relationships that work for them, or have their perspectives ignored by larger society. Meanwhile the women with puddle-level depictions of heterosexuality and other relations between the sexes or within a sex class get platformed for regurgitating the same acceptable idea of male-favored dynamics. Not to mention the recurring phenomenon of actually interesting male characters vs background wallpaper / overly-unrealistic /eternally-suffering female characters that aren't the main self-insert. Why are women writers uninterested in giving their female characters the same level and detail of depth as the male ones?

Not all women-made media is like this, but soooo much of it is. There's an argument to be made about not censoring fictional works, of course - people can imagine whatever they want and enjoy whatever they want. But it would be silly not to acknowledge that a massive part of any popular media is one that supports the domineering ideology of relations between the sexes, and that this continues to socialize and influence each new set of young minds.

I wouldn't include in this, for example, female writers who have their male characters encounter actual growth and development if they started out annoying or misogynistic. But this is not usually the case (at least in my experience). Especially in romance, as you mentioned.

Many things about ohshc actually squicks me out in a way I was willing to overlook for my friends. I believe Kyouya knew from the start that Haruhi was female, and he's essentially the one who saddled her with the task of paying off her debt via the club...... The way they're always forcing her into feminine-coded dress...the whole thing reeks. :I

As lesbians though... Well, we should still throw out the forced feminization and other stupid parts, but at least the dynamics wouldn't be as painfully cringe.

[thescrapbookingscientist]

Biweekly Media Roundup

- Enola Holmes 2 (Movie) - While I am currently in the process of collecting info on various Sherlock adaptations, I probably wouldn’t have watched this (or the 1st for that matter) if it wasn’t for Family movie night. I don’t know if I would say it’s a bad movie per se, I did like the actual historical context around workers strike plot of the movie, as well as some of the sets and shots but...there’s just a lot of issues keeping me from getting realistically invested. Enola herself is written in that “I’m not like other girls I’m a quirky tomboy contrarian” way that writers do when they want to seem feminist by having a “strong independent woman” lead but in the process demonize femininity and other women as a concept while presenting their lead as an exception who “wise and brave” for telling people that the complex social rules they are raised in are dumb and they should just simply not do them. Very surface level feminism if you will. There’s also just a bunch of smaller issues, like the action scenes being long and boring, the characters being largely flat and nonsensical with their decisions, and an uninteresting romance plot that I felt was at least mildly entertaining in the 1st but fell entirely flat in this one. That being said I don’t want to seem too harsh, I’m clearly not the target audience, and I do think the mystery, while somewhat predictable, is interesting enough that younger viewers could have fun with it. 

- Moriarty the Patriot (Manga) - I’ve talked about the anime for this one before but decided to read through the manga for the Sherlock project I mentioned as it goes a little past the anime ending. From the way the anime was structured with it’s large cast of characters declaring how close they were and talking about the many adventures they had together I had assumed that there was a lot of content that was cut from the anime for time reasons, that the manga would offer more fleshed out relationships and plotlines. Turns out, no. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it, I do like the few characters who get depth (Namely William, Sherlock, and Irene), the concept of using crime to take out corrupt nobility and make the world better is good, some of the setup and payoffs of Williams plans are clever and interesting to see play out, the art is minimal but quite nice, and I do enjoy the idea of the little crime family thing they’ve got going, I just wish I could’ve seen more of them actually acting like friends rather than coworkers. In general, I think the manga has two main issues. Number one is that there are just way too many characters, there’s not enough time to give them all interesting things to do or establish complex relationships with one another, especially when most of them don’t have any particularly memorable traits to default to. Williams two brothers are the biggest offenders of this in my opinion, there was no reason to make them two different characters when “rich boy who grows disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the upper class finds purpose in the world changing schemes of his newly adopted beloved little brother and then must contest with what he wants beyond that once the plan reaches it’s conclusion” would’ve been a perfectly good character arc by itself, had it not been disjointed into two the way it was. The second major issue is just the general lack of nuance when it comes to their victims, the crimes they commit are almost entirely against comically evil men who hunt children for sport or blackmail people into murdering their family for fun or what not, there’s no actually hard moral questions here that could cast our heroes in a bad light, it’s just the illusion of a dark criminal mastermind without the work put in. I do think this kind of thing COULD work, you could weigh the lives of flawed but not evil political figures who nonetheless enact harmful policies against the victims those policies could create, use unsavory means to force projects that would ultimately be for the greater good to be implemented, put innocents in harm's way in such a way that would draw attention to a larger issue, ect ect but the important part is that for it to work, the people involved have to be PEOPLE, not just some comic book villain psychos who killing would be an absolute good 100% of the time. You can’t have a mastermind villain protagonist and not at least put some trolley problem level conundrums as a minimum here. Wow I had way more to say about that than I thought, I guess I just really would like to see the kind of story this manga could be if it took it’s premise to heart. Anyway, despite my complain I did like this, Sherliam is a cute ship and their interactions are always nice and while the James Bond stuff got a little silly it was still pretty fun. As long as you don’t take it too seriously it can be a fun mystery drama.

- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Movie) - With all the Holidays I watched a bunch of TV with my family, this old film adaptation of a play being my dad’s pick for family movie night. I can’t say I liked it exactly as the sexism and homophobia inherent from the time gave it some not so great messages and made it a bit difficult to watch today, though I could still appreciate the clever comedy writing in how well they balanced all the chaotic interweaving plot threads and fun back and forths and double-talks with the dialogue. You don’t really see a lot of this word-play focused comedy anymore which is a shame as it’s quite charming. The songs are bad but the lead actor does a good job, If you can look past the dated messaging it might be a fun watch but personally I would rather just skim over the script for the clever parts and bypass the less than desirable parts.

- Star Trek Lower Decks (TV) - Peanut Hamper is a pretty cute name for a robot.

- Breath of the Wild (Video Game) - More dad time, while I am still making my way through my second true playthrough myself, more excitingly my father has decided to give it a chance despite not generally being a fan of video games. I’m mostly trying to stop myself from backseat gaming as it’s interesting to see the process he uses to figure things out as someone who is not familiar with typical game mechanics. Welp, He seems to be enjoying it so far, so I’m more than pleased.

- Made in Abyss (Anime) - Oh boy well we finally finished this season at anime night and just. geez. I haven’t had time to fully process my feelings on the work as a whole so I won’t write up a big thing on it now but I can definitely say that not only did I not like this season but it actually made me question if I was right to ever like the series in the first place, which is frankly about the worst thing you can do as a continuation. It’s a shame because the music, art direction, and (most of) the character/creature designs were all great but the story it was attached to just made me feel like I wasted my time with so many uncomfortably exploitive moments and characters who I could not bring myself to care about. I’m honestly not sure I’ll bother finishing it after this, though I’m sure my curiosity will at least get me to read the endings synopsis.  A big disappointment. 

- The S Classes That I Raised (Webcomic) - Heyoo so I wanted something to read while being lazy and lying in bed since we were getting some crappy weather here, and ultimately decided to check out the other two Korean webcomics that ORV is often grouped into as a holy trinity. I can see why there's such an overlap in the fandoms, given the similar “self-sacrificial protagonist who has knowledge of the future uses his wit to survive and change the inner workings of an increasingly more complex video game esque fantasy world while bettering the lives of his ever-growing found family” plots, though so far I do feel like each story and protagonist has enough differences to keep them from feeling derivative. For this one, a story in which the protagonist uses his ultimate parenting skills to raise up and mentor various super strong people and monsters to avoid a grim future he managed to soley time travel out of, I’m really liking the soft fun dad energy of the protagonist even if I think his design is the least interesting of the three. I really like the decision to keep the protagonist physically weaker than rest of the cast as it means he has to be clever in how he handles situations and acts more as a coach/director in terms of making plans while considering the specific talents of the ones who will execute them. I also think it gives a bit more leeway to the “everyone loves and wants to protect the protagonist” thing without feeling too forced since he does actually need to be protected in most cases and his role as “mentor who genuinely believes in you and is always there to help and encourage you to reach your full potential” is one that would garner a lot of good will. I also like a lot of the female designs so far, glad they aren’t afraid to let there be tall muscular ladies. I doubt I’ll read the novel anytime soon given I’m still making my way through ORV, but I look forward to the webcomic updates, this was cute and fun. 

- Trash of the Count’s Family (Webcomic) - The next of the Holy Trinity, I’m not sure quite how I feel about this one when compared to the other two. That’s not to say I don’t like it, or even that I like it less than them, I just don’t have quite as clear of a grasp as where the plot is heading or what the story is trying to accomplish in terms of general themes and mood. The protagonist is very interesting, I appreciate his constant Machiavellian schemes that he works so hard on despite his ultimate goal of being a lay about, and out of all the 3 I’m most willing to believe in his impressive cleverness and planning skills as everything from his minor everyday interactions to his larger plots show how careful he is to always fully assess and react in the most optimal way to further whatever perception he wants people to have of him. It’s always funny to see the disconnect between his internal “30 steps ahead and done with this shit go away” dialogue and his outward “I’m just a careless yet charming unremarkable rich boy who doesn’t know anything” persona. I like how grand of a scale the story is coming up to with such plot points as establishing a navy, stopping a terrorist attack, rescuing a dragon, altering the public opinion of the prince ect, though I can’t help but feel a good amount of the side characters suffer for being just pawns to the narrative without really getting more than the barest characterization. Of course that could be remedied as the story goes on ,or could just be an adaptation issue from cutting things out of the novel. The mystery elements are pretty good here as well, as a single throughline it’s strong. This ones fun too, I’m glad I gave them all a shot. 

- Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (Webnovel) - Comparing ORV to it’s counterparts does make me appreciate the specific flavor of protagonist that is Kim Dokja and the ways in which he interacts with to his companions more. That is to say, as much as I love cinnamon rolls and a party that defaults to lovingly doting on and passionately defending their beloved protagonist, it’s refreshing to get a chaotic little rat man who’s companions simultaneously will die for him and want to beat him over the head with a shovel 80% of the time too. I’m also excited about getting more Han Sooyoung as I like her more and more with each appearance. I’ll probably get a lot further into the story next year when I have a proper tablet to read the webnovel rather than squinting at my phone.

As usual I am also watching along with the updates of Golden Kamuy, Jojo part 5, Chainsaw Man, Demon School, Spy X Family, Mob Psycho, Last Week Tonight, and Land of the Lustrous, so. There’s a lot.

Listening to: Anti-Hero and Mastermind by Taylor Swift, Something in the Orange by Zach Bryan, Lent by Autoheart, Holy Water by Michael Ray, Stay (Cover) by Reinaeiry, Curses by The Crane Wives, Nothing by Emilie Autumn, Encanto OST, All the Boys by Panic! at the Disco, Fear & Delight by The Correspondences.

[casually-slips-into-coma]

An Essay (sort of) Explaining the Many Grievances I Have With Debbie Gallagher

Once again, Debbie is the fucking worst.

I’ve been wanting to write out my feelings towards her character for a fucking minute now just so that I have a full concise list. Now, I can talk about how Debbie has a constant need for attention, or how her character has become someone unrecognizable in the past few seasons, or how she’s a terrible mother, but what I really want to focus on is the center of my issues with her: her sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to be a homophobic rant or anything. I just think her queer development has been written terribly and that should be addressed.

Too often I see people praising queer characters or relationships based solely on the fact that they are queer, and as a member of the community, I get it. I am also starved for representation. This, however, does not mean I’m going to settle for annoying, poorly written characters.

Why Make Debbie Queer?

The first thing I want to address is why suddenly develop a WLW storyline for her. Given that Debbie started as a little girl on the show, this gives the writers a lot of opportunity to give a character like that interesting storylines because she does not yet have a solid personality. It gives writers the liberty to take her story anywhere they want to without the constraints of established character because she, as a person, is still developing into adulthood. The show runners unfortunately dropped the ball with this.

From season 4 and onwards was when Debbie began showing interest in dating, sex, and romance having just turned the corner to puberty. From then up until season 9, she has shown exclusive interest in men. It isn’t until Alex the welder that Debbie deviates from this path. Alex is portrayed as a stud who confuses Debbie. I am inclined to believe that Debbie was originally attracted to her because she was masculine and therefore close enough to the people Debbie had previous experience with.

This arc was treated very much as Debbie experimenting with her sexuality, something that Alex also ends up realizing after Debbie tells her that having sex with a girl is “not that bad” and “like having sex with yourself” (S9E4). Once this storyline wrapped up (with Debbie shouting “you make me want cock again”) the writers powered through, adamant about Debbie now being a lesbian.

I have two theories as to why they’ve been fighting so hard for her queerness.

1) This was around the time that Cam was leaving Shameless. This obviously didn’t end up happening, but I was under the impression that the writers were freaking out at losing their token gay character and needed to fill that position. When Cam ended up staying, they were stuck with a queer Debbie storyline and decided to just go with it.

2) Shameless was planning on doing a WLW storyline regardless of Cam’s choice to leave and were originally going to give it to Fiona and her lesbian tenant that she had a close relationship and a lot of chemistry with, but Emmy Rossum wanted to move on from Shameless, and so they pivoted and gave the arc to Debbie, a character that was not supposed to be moved in that direction and so her new sexuality seemingly came out of nowhere. Fiona as a bisexual character would have made sense. Debbie still does not.

Shameless’s Awkward Relationship With Bisexuality

One of the biggest issues I have with Debbie is her insistence on being a lesbian. Lesbianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. Bisexuality, however, can. When you grow up being told that you are supposed to feel attraction to men, and you genuinely do feel attraction to men (which Debbie has expressed in past seasons/episodes) it’s easy to ignore your attraction to women and write it off as something that either isn’t a big deal, or something that isn’t there. It’s a lot more confusing than being strictly at one end of the spectrum. It would have been so much more believable if they had simply made Debbie bisexual. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t because the show has a history with bi erasure.

Bisexuality has been treated badly all throughout Shameless, used as a vengeful plot device back in the earlier seasons where Monica was only ever with women when unmedicated. Then in Season 7 when Ian’s boyfriend Caleb cheated on him with a woman (enforcing the stereotype of bisexuals being unfaithful) Ian, possibly acting out of anger or ignorance, said things like “only women are bisexual. When a man says he’s bisexual he’s really just gay”. The only semi positive bisexual representation on the show was Svetlana and Vee when they were in a poly relationship with Kev (though I also think that storyline wasn’t handled as well as it could’ve been).

This fight against the bisexual label in media is not a new one but it is also a harmful stance to take when writing a sexually fluid character. Debbie declaring that she is, in fact, a lesbian after waxing poetic about how Matty had a big dick and Derek had a great body and knew what he was doing is not the way to go. 

You could argue that Debbie, like many other queer women, is an unfortunate victim of compulsory heterosexuality, but frankly I don’t think the writers are well versed enough in queer theory for that to be a possibility.

Debbie as The White Feminist

Debbie is the pinnacle of white feminism. It’s an unfortunate thought that has occurred to me a few times throughout the show. She talks a big game as a man hater and someone after the equal treatment of women but she herself participates in a lot of problematic and anti feminist behavior.

For one, she r*ped Matty back in season 5 when he was blacked out and unconscious. This was a point in the story that was glossed over and one where she suffered no repercussions other than Matty no longer wanting to be around her. It was explained in the show that Debbie didn’t realize what she did was wrong until after she was explicitly told so because she was maybe 14 when it happened (not 100% on the age Shameless is very inconsistent about timelines). It was treated as somewhat of a punchline, something that Shameless has unfortunately done more than once when referring to male sexual assault (Mickey’s r*pe, Liam in season 10 ((i think??)) and in this latest season, Carl) but that is a different topic. 

There was also the time in which she lied to her boyfriend about being on birth control so she could trap him into a relationship with pregnancy (which also counts as r*pe!!) Good on Derek for getting out of that.

Debbie has also been pro-life in the past. Now I understand this was when Fiona was pressuring her into aborting her pregnancy, and as a pro choicer myself, I believe that Debbie was fully in her right to have bodily autonomy and go through with the pregnancy. This isn’t where the issue lies. It’s when Fiona finds out that she too is pregnant and tells Debbie that she wants an abortion that Debbie accuses her of “killing her baby”. Again, her behavior could be explained by her age given that Debbie was still a young teen during this time.

When her actions as a White Feminist become less excusable is mostly in the latest season. Her relationship with Sandy is one that I’m not really happy with because Debbie doesn’t deserve her.

Recently, it has been revealed that Sandy is actually married to a man and has a son. It’s explained that she was basically married off against her will at the age of 15 to a man twice her age. This implies that the product of the marriage, her son, was most likely conceived through dubious consent (or worse) at the hands of an adult when she was just a kid. Just because Debbie thinks that Sandy’s husband “seems nice” does not give her the right to try and make a victim of grooming feel bad about not wanting to be with her abuser. While I understand that Sandy’s son has no fault in how he came into the world, I’m still gonna side with Sandy when it comes to having to take care of a child she didn’t want and who is most likely a source of trauma for her. It’s not difficult to sympathize with Sandy and see that she’s clearly gone through something fucked up and Debbie, despite claiming to love and support her, AND despite her dumb white feminist arc about wanting equal pay and all that jazz, turns her back on the girls supporting girls aspect of feminism.

This isn’t even mentioning how shitty it was to just leave Franny by herself and assume that one of her siblings would take her to school and pick her up and stuff as if they don’t all have separate lives. She talks a lot about being a good mother but decided to “let off some steam” by fucking off to a gay bar to get loaded on coke and fuck a gay man (which wtf thats not a thing that really happens with casual coke but whatever I guess). Once she realized she fucked up, instead of taking responsibility she decided to paint herself as the victim as well as spew offensive bullshit about how she “probably has AIDS now” because of her sexual encounter with a gay man. No lesbian in their right fucking mind would ever say that because as members of the LGBTQ+ community, you are at least a tiny bit informed as to how devastating and tragic the AIDS crisis was for queer people.

(I also have an issue with how Debbie capitalized on her felony as a sex offender and her sexuality to start her Hot Lesbian Convict business but I think that’s enough said.)

Blame the writers

The show got almost an entirely new cast of writers after season 7 which is why the show feels more like a sitcom with low stakes and no consequences rather than a drama, but if there is a queer writer on the team it’s not very evident. Even the better half of the queer relationship story, Ian and Mickey, I don’t feel has really been done justice since the change in writers. It’s just become painfully obvious that the actress is a straight girl playing a gay character (not to mention I have never seen any chemistry between her and all of her female love interests). I don’t fault Emma Kenney (the actress) for this. I actually really like her as a person and I like the videos she makes about the cast and such, and I think she does her best with the script she’s given. My complaints with Debbie are targeted entirely towards the writers.

This brings me to my final point. I need them to let Debbie be alone. Her whole thing for the second half of the season has been that she clearly has abandonment issues and is afraid of being alone. It’s why she’s so adamant about keeping the house and fighting with Lip about it (I’m actually on Debbie’s side for that one but that’s besides the point). They had her and Sandy break up which leaves Debbie to spiral further into her loneliness. From a writing point of view, it makes sense to take this opportunity to give her an arc in which she can overcome that and feel comfortable with herself so that she can move on as an adult instead of jumping into a new relationship. This is especially true since this is quite literally the last season ever of the show and any character development needs to be wrapped up. Introducing a new character out of nowhere does not give the viewers enough time to actually get invested in the new relationship. It’s also unfair to Debbie’s character because her arc is going to feel incomplete.

Anyway,,,,,,uuuhhhhh,,,,,feel free to add on if u want lmao

[nothorses]

hello! this is a story of sorts i don't need advice for once lmao i just thought you would be able to share in my frustration and disgruntled amusement

i'm a trans boy and i live in pakistan, and, as you may be aware, we have a significant problem in terms of women's rights and safety. one of the latest and most prominent women's rights movements here is the aurat march (aurat directly translates to woman, although it has more,,, biology focused connotations as well, etymologically speaking, which is something that the movement's opposition has a lot of issues with 🙄). this is essentially an annual citywide protest where feminists and feminist allies come together and march through certain areas of the city and chant slogans etc. there's usually a theme - this year it's 'women's health issues' - and a charter of demands.

around a year ago i really wanted to be a part of all this. but I've recently come to realize that it's actually a very superficial gesture. the march itself is mostly carried out by relatively privileged, upper middle class people from urban areas. the demands are never met, because this is an appeal to the people of the nation rather than the government (even though the demands require change in legislature). at most, it provides a communal space for a select group, and raises awareness to an extent. the value of this shouldn't be downplayed, but there is an ironic trend of people who think that the aurat march is the epitome of feminism that pakistan needs and simply refuse to hear anything otherwise.

i reposted a twitter thread on my social media; the thread was talking about how, essentially, the march cannot achieve anything more than some benefits for women in urban, already privileged circles; how a lot of it has been weaponized against women (you'll find a lot of articles about this if you look up "aurat march pakistan" or the phrase "mera jism meri marzi pakistan"); how we need to reform this approach or start anew if we want to bring about actual change.

sounds reasonable yeah? it is a perfectly valid criticism, not undermining the importance of the movement but explaining how it should be improved upon.

except it was written by a cis man.

when i reposted it, i reposted along with the accompanying tweet that actually brought it onto my feed: "stay out of women's business nobody asked for your stupid opinion", by a woman. in my own repost, i wrote something about how liberal feminists cannot handle when a man has valid constructive criticism.

and cue SO many other people who i don't even talk to anymore deciding to slander me behind my back for "hating on feminism". ironically, one of these people was a cis man who i cut off because he tried explaining to me why saying kill all men is a good and harmless thing. when THAT conversation happened, he was completely at a loss for words when he found out i was trans, after arguing with me about it for over an hour. side note: i think it's very telling that he thought he could explain a "feminist slogan" to me when he thought i was a cis girl, but then went totally quiet when it turned out my arguments had credibility especially because of my trans identity.

anyway. it's very disappointing to learn how many people around me lack basic critical thinking skills.

love you! hope you're doing well. in the process of writing this i've realized i would love to speak more about feminism in pakistan, so if you'd like hearing about that, please say so!

Wow, yeah, that is a great (and extremely frustrating) example of how liberal, mainstream feminism tends to be geared toward performative activism and arbitrary “rules” that are sort of just... echoes of more nuanced feminist theory.

It reminds me a lot of America’s “Women’s Marches”, which iconically features the pink “pussy hat” (pink knitted beanie with cat ears) because like... lol. The bio-essentialism and surface-level, performative, white-centric and middle/upper class-centric feminism is just so strong. 

I would love to hear more about feminism in Pakistan! Thank you for sharing this story! I hope you’re doing well, too. 💙

[readingaway]

(Backlisted) Danielle Babbles About Books - The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton

Rating: 5/5 stars

Sensitive content: I don’t remember a lot but it is written about and for people around 16-20 so, proceed with a little caution if you’re younger.

Review: Oh this was darling. It’s been over a year and a half but this book definitely earned its rating which, if you know me, I rarely give out. (The rest of this review was written for an assignment last year and then lost in the endless stream of work and avoiding work.)

Jamie Pacton’s debut novel The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly begins with several conflicts being set up. The first, and most important, is a moral and legal conflict: Kit, the main character, organizes with coworkers to fight for women in her theater dinner workplace to be allowed to work as “knights,” thereby allowing them the opportunity to hold positions with higher pay. This starts with her having to fill in for her older brother, who has the knight job she covets, on the fly. Her display during and after that performance winds up going viral on social media, giving her the momentum to start the fight. Her obstacles are the manger (her uncle), a couple of sexist coworkers, and the corporate board who set the rules in the first place.

There are also several contributing subplots put into play. There’s a conflict over where Kit should go to college – if she gets in anywhere – because her family’s financial situation makes both funding a college education and keeping her mother afloat nearly impossible. Her family’s dire financial straits have to do with her father’s abandoning the family some years before. Kit is also in love with her best friend and regrets a compact to never date him.

The novel doesn’t stray far from many well-worn tropes in the Young Adult genre. Kit is a highly motivated young woman who takes far too much responsibility upon herself. I’d find it unbelievable if I hadn’t known so many girls with similar resolve when I was that age. Kit has a few close friendships and has to make more friends for her dream of knighthood come true. As a teenager and a person there are some problems she can solve with creativity and hard work. And there are other problems that she can’t solve herself. She faces opposition to her attempts to change her workplace’s rules, family issues and emergencies, and the consequences of her own actions varying from chapter to chapter.

I came in worried that this story would be full of heavy-handed performative feminism but was pleasantly surprised. While I still question the validity of many of Kit’s claims about the medieval period in Europe being less rampantly sexist than is popularly believed, it’s useful for the plot. The story also goes well beyond that simplistic idea that girls should be able to do whatever boys do and brings intersectionality into the tale. Kit’s close friends are both people of color. The band of employees who get together to train for a demonstration in order to put greater pressure on the company to change the policy is diverse, representing not just the right of white women to participate in the same activities as white men, but equality for all genders, sexual orientations, and ethnicities. The characters are fleshed out and believable. It’s a delightful book and I look forward to reading more of Pacton’s work in the future. (I have read Lucky Girl now and it’s also great.)

Favorite Quote: can’t find one because my copy is 5,000 miles away and nobody’s pulled or posted quotes.

[oraclemilf]

ok but i'm loving your takes on the female characters - like it's very disconcerting to watch this show with a lot of girls and then have almost none of them be actual friends, and when they interact they're either fighting or it's about a boy. a lot of them r reduced to stereotypes too like with sam and her "i'm not like other girls" spiel and paulina's... entire thing lol. i'd say at least valerie is well rounded but she never rly interacts with the other girls positively :/

“and like it's an older show where those kinds of messages were everywhere in kids media especially but it still sucks lol at least we can take what we like from fanon and totally change it into our own because butch really did them dirty” 2/2  

Yeah exactly. Not to be feminist on main but holy fuck do the girls in DP have issues. Like I get the whole argument that “it's an early 2000s show what can you do” and “all of the characters were shittily written” but the reason most of the female characters are bad in DP is specifically because they were written through a misogynistic lens. Like the show presents itself as having strong female characters but really all they do to break the gender binary is being able to fight. (I will give them points for letting the girls get kicked and punched the same as the men but that is the ONLY praise they are getting out of me.)

To expand on the “takes” in my previous ask: 

 -Dora, Ember, Desiree, Kitty, and Spectra all had boy/appearance-based backstories. Like seriously, the only female ghost I can think of whose backstory wasn’t entirely based on a man was Pandora and she appears in literally one episode for literally half the episode. (Also if you look at the myth of Pandora it's literally about a woman created by the gods to be the downfall of man so she doesn’t get any feminism points either.) Like listen. I’m not arguing that all the female ghosts should be totally retconned so they never interact with men at all. In fact, I think Kitty,though she has a heteronormative ultimate power, Dora, and Desiree’s backstories work really well for their characters. But Ember and Spectra? Why should Ember die because “she was so sad she was stood up she slept through a house fire” wtf?That literally doesn’t really work with her musician motif at all? How would that even work? Bitch did you have no alarms? Nobody was screaming or anything? Like its so astronomically stupid.  @grimgrinningghoul​ has some cool ideas for alternate Spectra motivations in this post so I really won’t get into that here but women being only motivated by their appearance is such a stale take. 

-Maddie legit says "behind every genius woman is a genius man" This is self explanatory really. Like come on girl seriously. But yeah, to elaborate on Maddie they could have had a great strong mother figure. I mean she was a scientist and a black belt for crying out loud! Then they kind of back track because you can’t make women too self-sufficient and have her practice traditional housewife roles, always take a back seat to Jack (even though she’s usually in the right) and have her put up with Vlad’s creepy advances far too much. Not ALL of these things are bad mind you and I probably wouldn’t mind her character too much besides for this one line but looking at it from a broader perspective it doesn’t really come together to make the best picture you know? Also, her sister Alicia - who was probably the most gender-non-conforming character in the show, is treated like she’s a joke or trashy by the narrative. (Don’t even get me started on the constant body-shaming either)

Paulina, Sam, Valerie, Jazz and Dani’s arcs all center around another male character (Danny) Ok this one is a tad more controversial because like yes, I understand Danny is the main character. It makes sense that most character growth is facilitated through him. Hell, even really progressive shows like Steven Universe filter character growth through the main male character. However, there are a couple key distinctions I’d like to point out. For example, Steven Universe has a Third-person limited omniscient POV. meaning all actions in SU are filtered directly through Steven’s perspective. This isn’t the case Danny Phantom, which has a Third-person objective POV, meaning that the story can follow many characters separate from each other, not just Danny. Also the female characters in Steven Universe are already 3 dimensional fully established characters without Steven and it’s even touched on in universe that the characters learn and grow without Steven’s help. This isn’t the case in DP. Paulina's main narrative shift is from being crazy about boys in general to being a devoted fan of Phantom. Sam’s whole arc is about getting together with Danny. Jazz’s arc is about learning how to best support Danny in ghost hunting. Val and Dani were probably two of the better female characters - despite still having Danny-centric arcs. Unfortunately, not only were their plans for character development cut short but any girl-power lines they may have had (something about there being no weak girls idk I’m too lazy to find it) feels fake and pander-y because of all the previous bad examples. 

TL;DR I know it's easy to be like “who cares we don’t even respect canon anyway” but I think when source material perpetrates bad messages it’s important to view the content you are working with through a critical lens so you don’t maintain harmful ideas within your own work.

((sorry I hijacked your ask to get on a soap box but I had THOUGHTS about this topic))

[strangertheory]

I'd love for Will to be able to have the power of reality alteration because him being the most powerful one would be a very nice plot twist. But. Do you really believe they make him more powerful than El? I keep finding crazy comments on social media, suggesting it's the "El show" 😪 *sigh*. And I know some people who say it'd be anti feminist since Will is a boy. Thx

That’s a lot of interesting questions to think about.

I’ll attempt to address each thought that you’ve shared one at a time and provide you with my own opinions and theories about each:

You said: “I'd love for Will to be able to have the power of reality alteration because him being the most powerful one would be a very nice plot twist. But. Do you really believe they would make him more powerful than El?”

I have a lot of conflicted feelings about the way that the fandom often talks about characters’ powers and supernatural abilities in Stranger Things. (I also really dislike the way that the fandom has decided that they can’t appreciate and support both El and Will’s happiness and that their happy endings and successes are somehow mutually exclusive, but I’ll address the topic of their powers first.)

Fans often focus on the abilities and superpowers of characters as something desirable and cool but fans rarely spend time considering what it cost those characters to develop their abilities in the first place. Neither El nor Will suddenly woke up one day and had superpowers that they had conscious control over.

Certain impressive skills that people have in the real world might also be developed under extremely traumatic and undesirable circumstances and not because they wanted them: the powers represented so far in Stranger Things are very much like that variety of skillset.

El’s powers and her ability to control them are canonically shown to have manifested during her imprisonment, abuse, isolation, and manipulation at the Lab. As Kali says “They stole your life, Jane!” Due to El’s isolation from society and from love and affection and from having a family and from everything else in the world beyond the Lab she has a significant amount of early childhood social and psychological development that was stolen from her that she can never truly get back. A healthy, loving, safe environment for development and self-actualization that children deserve to have was not provided to El and she has suffered so much and she has had significant delays in her opportunity to grow and become her own person because of what was done to her. So yes, El has psychic powers that give her a variety of unique abilities that are very useful. But at what cost? If El were given the choice to abandon all of her powers in exchange for a loving family, a community of friends that she’d had the opportunity to know and spend time with since early childhood, a variety of passions and hobbies that she chose for herself over the years as she was growing up and engaging with the world, an extensive understanding of the world outside of the Lab based on her own exploration of the world and not only what people tell her or what she sees on television, and most importantly a sense that she is treated kindly because people truly love her and not because they want to exploit her and her powers for their own purposes: wouldn’t she make that trade?

Do I currently agree with the theory that Will’s subconscious mind created the Upside Down, the Mindflayer, the demogorgon, and even most probably created many other characters and fantastical plotlines that exist in the story? Yes. But I believe it has (so far) been unintentional, entirely subconscious, and is a mental coping mechanism in response to extremely traumatic circumstances that Will has faced throughout his life. Would Will’s subconscious mind creating significant parts of the Stranger Things universe represent a certain level of “power” that is greater than El’s? I don’t personally think they’re comparable. There are things that Will can probably do that El cannot, and vice versa. They will surely each have their own strengths and weaknesses and their own limitations that we may or may not always be shown in the series.

But what does "more powerful” really mean to us, and why does that question even matter? It was not El’s choice to have powers and it was not Will’s choice to have powers. Much of what I believe Will has incidentally created is creating a lot of confusion and suffering for him and for others that he cares about. If the story were about real people I’d be offended at the question of who’s more powerful and feel as though that question and debate is the sort that Dr. Brenner and his colleagues would have: “How useful is this child to me? Which child is more powerful?” I dislike the question because it feels like asking a parent which child is their favorite. I care about them both, and I don’t care about them because they happen to have superpowers: I care about them because they are nuanced characters that are very well-written and that I can empathize with as if they were real people. I respect why it’s a popular thing for fans to debate over which X-Men is the most powerful, for example, but that’s never been what draws me into scifi and fantasy stories. What characters choose to do under unusual circumstances and with unique resources (such as superpowers) is far more important to me than the nature and intensity of the powers themselves. I believe that the Stranger Things fandom does these beautifully written characters a disservice by focusing too heavily on their abilities and not enough on their feelings, choices, relationships, dreams, goals, and experiences that humanize them.

I love Stranger Things because of the humanity of each of the characters and not because some of them can throw cars through walls.

You said: “I keep finding crazy comments on social media, suggesting it's the "El show"”

El is definitely an important character in the story at this point in the show and she has some really fascinating abilities in the Stranger Things universe that often give her iconic moments and provide her an opportunity to be in the spotlight.

I believe that there is a reason that the writers have decided to develop many characters in the story and in my opinion it can seem hard to pin-point a “main” character at times. I think this is absolutely intentional on the part of the writers, and I predict that we will learn how Will’s, Hopper’s, and El’s storylines intersect in season 4. I think we will learn something new about each of the characters.

I do not personally believe that it is the “El show” any more than it could be argued that this is the “Steve show” or the “Hopper show.” But I do appreciate that fans have grown to love El’s character.

I strongly disagree with anyone in the fandom that insists that Will is not important. I can tell that the way that he was quieter in season 3 inspired some fans to dismiss his role in the series entirely, but I think they’re mistaken. Quiet and less assertive doesn’t mean irrelevant in a story like this one. I believe that much of what Will has been through is at the heart of the entire series, and I think that he will play a very critical role in future seasons. If some fans passionately dislike Will then they might need to steel themselves for some severe disappointment.

You said: “And I know some people who say it'd be anti feminist [for Will to be more powerful than El] since Will is a boy." 

I would argue that El embodies many traits that are often presumed to be stereotypically masculine by certain incorrect and outdated schools of thought: assertiveness, the ability to win in combat, determination, resilience, and bravery (among others.) There were eras in which these traits were not always valued and respected in women, and arguably there are still many circumstances under which they still aren’t. El is a complex character who is not written as a gender stereotype and I think that is powerful and important.

We need more characters of many different genders that are written as people. Complex, multi-faceted, and capable of many different things regardless of their gender.

Yes. Will is a boy.

Will is a young boy who has been bullied for having certain traits that are very often stereotypically seen by society as feminine. As being “womanly.”

I believe that feminism needs to be intersectional and seek to address the ways that all people and all genders are harmed by a society that devalues women and devalues traits, work, and skillsets that are associated with femininity.

Feminism should not be reduced and oversimplified to “girl power.” Anyone that reduces feminism to that does not, in my opinion, understand feminism.

“Feminism is the belief in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.”

Devaluing admirable traits when someone of one gender expresses them but then deciding to value those exact same traits when they are expressed by a person of a different gender is prejudiced and anti-feminist because it maintains the false idea that certain traits only have value in people if they are a specific gender. 

El is a wonderful, empowering character and I appreciate that she is very well written and admired by many fans. But I worry when certain fans are more willing to appreciate a kick-ass fictional young woman that defies outdated and incorrect gender stereotypes but are not also willing to embrace gentler, more sensitive, less stereotypically masculine young men like Will with similar enthusiasm and affection.

Will is bullied and devalued by his small-town community for having traits and interests that are perceived as feminine and therefore, according to closeminded bigots like his dad, not allowed and are deserving of abuse and bullying. Will is arguably also devalued and dismissed by the Stranger Things fandom because he has traits that are perceived as feminine and undesirable in a young teen guy in the eyes of certain fans, too.

The devaluing and dismissal of gentle, kind, emotional young men is a feminist issue.

A character doesn’t have to be a girl in order to represent feminist ideals within a story. I know that there are probably plenty of feminists that will disagree with me (because there will always be people with their own opinions) but I strongly believe that Will's story is feminist as it has been explored so far (just as El's is.)

Anyone in the fandom that considers themselves a “Feminist” but that spends significant amounts of time criticizing Will Byers by dismissing him as “boring” and criticizing him for being quiet, sensitive, gentle, and emotional should take a good look in the mirror and reflect on what their personal brand of feminism stands for and whether their goal truly is “the equality of the sexes” or if their goal is simply hating men and only valuing and promoting stereotypically masculine traits in our society.

Feminism’s goal is not to make women more powerful than men or to make men less powerful than women, it is about the promotion of the “equality of the sexes.” 

Stereotypes are constructs our society has built and that impact the way we all currently relate to each other. Until society stops treating traits associated with society's currently constructed idea of femininity as something weak or bad then it is important to appreciate these traits in characters of many different genders and to value these traits in men (both in real life and in fictional stories) too. Anyone of any gender can be sensitive and sensitivity should not be seen as a weakness but rather as a strength and as something that's a valuable aspect of our humanity, and the same can be said for many other beautiful traits that society has wrongly decided to put into boxes and assign gender stereotypes to.

This complicated topic is incredibly important to me as a fan of both El and Will. I believe that both El and Will are feminist characters and that the series is very empowering and is challenging society’s gender biases through both of their stories. I hope that my response to your question was successful in communicating how I feel and resonates with you and with perhaps other fans who also care about El and Will and feel their own experiences, feelings, and identities validated by their story arcs.

Will some fans still whine and cry “sexism” and attempt to brand Stranger Things as “anti-feminist” if their hope that El will be the solo main character of the story and not have to share the spotlight with a boy is dashed? Sure. But I think they’re wrong, that their concept of feminism and sexism is incorrect, and that their priorities and their understanding of El’s value as a character is unfortunate. El is more than her superpowers. El doesn’t need to be “the strongest” or “the most powerful” in order to be an inspiring, complex, well-written, relatable, and empowering character.

Thank you for your Ask! I hope you don’t mind how long this response is. You mentioned a few things that I have some very complicated opinions about.

[2ndblogg]

Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)  

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

[brianwilly]

Game of Thrones did the thing that a couple of shows do where...it likes feminism.  It understood that feminism is important.  It wanted to be feminist.  It was cognizant of the fact that its setting was brazenly and intentionally misogynistic, and so it was even more important for its independent narrative to empower its female characters instead of mindlessly reinforcing the toxic beliefs of its own fictional world.  The whole point of the story, after all, was “this society is toxic, can our heroes survive it?” and so the narrative was voluntarily self-critical.

And so it knew to give us badass assassin Arya.  It knew to give us stalwart knight Brienne.  It gave us the pirate queen and the dragon queen and the Sansa getting revenge after revenge upon all the men who’d wronged her, and far more besides, and it talked big about breaking chains and how much men fucked things up and how great it would be if only women were in charge and et cetera et cetera.  And it’s, in fact, all actually really good that it had those things.  And because there were so very many moving parts of this story, it was super easy to look at those certain moving parts and think, yeah, they’ve done it!  They done good!

And it’s easy to forget and forgive -- to want to forget and forgive -- all the dead prostitutes that were on this show and the rapes used as motivation and fridgings and objectifications and the...y’know, whatever the hell Dorne was and Lady Stoneheart who? It’s easy to forget that this show actually played its hand a long time ago in regards to, like, what its relationship with feminism was going to be, and then kept playing the same hand again and again, to disappointing results.

Game of Thrones likes feminism.  It wanted to be feminist.  But its relationship with feminism was still predicated on some of the same old narratives and the same old storytelling trends that have disempowered female characters in the past, and so any progressive ideas it might have about women in its setting were nonetheless going to be constrained by those old fetters. As a result, its portrayal of women varied anywhere from glorious to admirable to predictable to downright cringeworthy.

New ideas require new vessels, new stories, in which to house them.  And for Game of Thrones, the ultimate story that it wanted to tell -- the ultimate driving force and thesis statement around which it was basing its entire journey and narrative -- was unfortunately a very old one, and one very familiar to the genre.

“Powerful women are scary.”

(Yes, I’m obviously making Yet Another Daenerys Essay On The Internet here)

So we have this character, this girl really, a slave girl who was sold and abused, and then she overcomes that abuse to gain power, she gains dragons, and she uses that power to fight slavery.  She fights slavery really well, like, she’s super hella good at it.  Her command of dragons is the most overt portrayal of “superpowers” in this world; she is the single most powerful person in this story, more powerful than any other character and the contest is not close.

But then...something really bad happens and oops, she gets really emotional about it and then she’s not fighting slavery anymore...she’s kinda doing the opposite!  This girl who was once a hero and a liberator of slaves instead becomes an out-of-control scary Mad Queen who kills a ton of innocent people and has to be taken down by our true heroes for the good of the world.

That’s the theme.  That’s the takeaway here.  That’s how it all ends, with one of the most primitive, archaic propaganda ever spread by writers, that women with power are frightening, they are crazy, they will use that power for ill.  Women with power are witches.  They are Amazons.  They will lop off our manhoods and make slaves of us.  They seduce our rightful kings and send our kingdoms to ruin.   They cannot control their emotions. They get hot flashes and start wars.  They turn into Dark Phoenixes and eat suns.  They are robot revolutionaries who will end humanity.  Powerful women are scary.

And let me emphasize that the theme here is not, in fact, that all power corrupts, because the whole Mad Queen concept for Daenerys actually ends up failing one of the more fundamental litmus tests available when it comes to representation of any kind: “would this story still happen if Dany was a man?” And the fact is that it would not.   And indeed we know this for a fact because “protagonist starts out virtuous, gains power in spite of the hardships set against him, gets corrupted by that power, and ends up being the bad guy” didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, to the guys in the very same story that we’re examining.  It doesn’t happen to Jon Snow, Dany’s closest and most intentional narrative parallel.  It doesn’t happen to Bran Stark, a character whose entire journey is about how he embroils himself in wild dark winter magic beyond anyone’s understanding and loses his humanity in the process.  In fact, the only other character who ever got hinted of going “dark” because of the power that they’re obtaining is Arya, the girl who spent seven seasons training to fight, to become powerful, to circumvent the gender role she was saddled with in this world...and then being told at the end of her story, “Whoa hey slow down be careful there, you wouldn’t wanna get all emotional and become a bad person now wouldja?” by a man.

(meanwhile Sansa’s just sitting off in the side pouting or whatever ‘cuz her main arc this season was to, like, be annoyed at people really hard I guess)

‘Cuz that’s the danger with the girls and not the boys, ain’t it?  Arya and Jon are both great at killing people, but there is no Dark Jon story while we have to take extra special care to watch for Arya’s precious fragile humanity.  Dany has the power of dragons while Bran has the power of the old gods, but we will not find Dark Lord Bran, Soulless Scourge of Westeros, onscreen no matter how much sense it should make. “Power corrupts” is literally not a trend that afflicts male heroes on the same level that it afflicts female heroes.

Oh sure, there are corrupt male characters everywhere, tyrants and warlords and mafia bosses and drug dealers and so forth all over your TVs, and not even necessarily portrayed as outright villains; anti-heroes are nothing new.  But we’re talking about the hero hero here; the Harry Potters, the Luke Skywalkers, the Peter Parkers.  The Jon Snows.   They interact with corruptive power, yes; it’s an important aspect of their journeys.  But the key here being that male heroes would overcome that corruption and come through the other side better off for it.  They get to come away even more admirable for the power that they have in a way that is generally not afforded towards female heroes.

There are exceptions, of course; no trends are absolutely absolute one way or the other. For instance, the closest male parallel you’d find for the “being powerful is dangerous and will corrupt your noble heroic intentions” trope in popular media would be the character of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy...ie, a preexisting character from a preexisting story where he was conceived as the villainous foil for the heroes.  Like, Anakin being a poor but kindhearted slave who eventually becomes seduced by the dark side certainly matches Dany’s arc, but it wasn’t the character’s original story and role.  And even then?...notice how Anakin as Vader the Dark Lord gets treated with the veneer of being “badass” and “cool” by the masses.  A male character with too much power -- even if it’s dark power, even if it’s corruptive -- has the range to be seen as something appealingly formidable, and not just as an obstacle that has to be dealt with or a cautionary tale to be pitied.

And in one of the few times that this trope was played completely straight, completely unironically with a male hero -- I’m thinking specifically of Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, of “Ryan Reynolds played him in the movie” fame -- the fans went berserk.  They could not let it go.  The fact that this character would go mad with power because a tragedy happened in his life was completely unacceptable, the story gained notoriety as a bad decision by clueless writers, and today the story in question has been retconned -- retroactively erased from continuity -- so that the character can be made heroic and virtuous again.  That’s how big a deal it was when a male hero with the tiniest bit of a fan following goes off the deep end.

To be clear, I’m not here to quibble over whether the story of Dany turning evil was good or bad, because we all know that’s going to be the de facto defense for this situation: “But she had to go mad!  It was for the sake of the story!“ as if the writers simply had no choice, they were helpless to the whims of the all-powerful Story God which dictates everything they write, and the most prominent female character of their series simply had to go bonkers and murder a bajillion babies and then get killed by her boyfriend or else the story just wouldn’t be good, y’know?  Ultimately though, that’s not what I’m arguing here, because it doesn’t actually matter.  There have been shitty stories about powerful women being bad.  There have been impressive stories about powerful women being bad.  Either way, the fact that people can’t seem to stop telling stories about powerful women being bad is a problem in and of itself.  Daenarys’ descent into Final Boss-dom could’ve been the most riveting, breathtaking, masterfully-written pieces of art ever and it’d still be just another instance of a female hero being unable to handle her power in a big long list of instances of this shitty trope.  The trope itself doesn’t become unshitty just because you write it well.

It all ultimately boils down to the very different ways that men and women -- that male heroes and female heroes -- continue to be portrayed in stories, and particularly in genre media.  In TV, we got Dany, and then we also have Dolores Abernathy in Westworld who was a gentle android that was abused and victimized for her entire existence, who shakes off the shackles of her programming to lead her race in revolution against their abusers...and then promptly becomes a ruthless maniac who ends up lobotomizing the love of her life and ends the season by voluntarily keeping a male android around to check her cruel impulses.  Comic book characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff are two of the most powerful people in their universe but are always, in-universe, made to feel guilty about their power and, non-diegetically, writers are always finding ways to disempower them because obviously they can’t be trusted with that much power and entire multiple sagas have been written about just how bad an idea it is for them to be so powerful because it’ll totally drive them crazy and cause them to kill everyone, obviously.  Meanwhile, a male comic character like Dr. Strange -- who can canonically destroy a planet by speaking Latin really hard -- or Black Bolt -- who can destroy a planet by speaking anything really hard -- will be just sitting there, two feet on the side, enjoying some tea and running the world or whatever because a male character having untold uninhibited power at his disposal is just accepted and laudable and gets him on those listicles where he fights Goku and stuff.

In my finite perspective, the sort of female heroes who have gained...not universal esteem, perhaps, but at least general benign acceptance amongst the genre community are characters who just don’t deal with all that stuff.  I’m thinking of recent superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, certainly, but also of surprise breakout hits like Stranger Things’ Eleven (so far) or even more niche characters like Sailor Moon or She-Ra.  The fact that these characters wield massive power is simply accepted as an unequivocal good thing, their power makes them powerful and impressive and that’s the end of the story, thanks for asking.  And when they deal with the inevitable tragedy that shakes their worldview to the core, or the inevitable villain trying to twist them into darkness, they tend to overcome that temptation and come out the other side even stronger than when they started.  In other words?...characters like these are being allowed the exact same sorts of narrative luxuries that are usually only afforded towards male heroes.

The thing about these characters, though, is that they tend to be...well, a little bit too heroic, right?  A lil’ bit too goody-two-shoes?  A bit too stalwart, a bit too incorruptible?  And that’s fine, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a traditionally-heroic white knight of a hero.  But what I might like to see, as the next step going forward, is for female heroes to be allowed a bit more range than just that, so that they’re not just innocent children or literal princesses or shining demigods clad in primary colors.  Let’s have an all-powerful female hero be...well, the easiest way to say it is let’s see her allowed to be bitchier.  Less straightlaced.  Let’s not put an ultimatum on her power, like “Oh sure you can be powerful, but only if you’re super duper nice about it.” Let us have a ruthless woman, but not one ruled by ruthlessness.  Let us have a hero who naturally makes enemies and not friends, who has to work hard to gain allies because her personality doesn’t sparkle and gleam.  Let her have the righteous anger of a lifelong slave, and let that anger be her salvation instead of her downfall.

In other words, let us have Daenerys Targaryen.  And let us put her in a new story instead of an old one.