#generated from a misogynistic and very limiting idea

[bl00dlight]

an abuser? devolving into genocide? Targaryen fascist? is this really how you see Aemond? i think that's quite harsh and unfair to say... i think he deserves better than to be seen as that, he clearly cares about people, he's hurt and desperate. i find it hard to believe he could be that plain evil.

Yea... I don't know how to tell you this. But this isn't how I see him. That's literally what he is and literally what he does. Again, some of yall REALLY need to at least go on fan wiki or something. Because... it's worrying. I don't think you're gonna like S3....

Here is a tally of all the evil shit Aemond in the book does/is likely about to do:

Spoiler alert.

- Abandon his family at KL for Harrenhal, leaving them completely unprotected.

-Burn a bunch of villages, espeically in the Riverlands/generally burn the place to a fine crisp. Killing a bunch of innocent people basically just cause he is pissed the fuck off.

-Ethnically cleanse House Strong - and its Bastards. Including, but not limited to; Cutting Simon Strong into tiny pieces and then feeding him to Vhagar, massacring every male member of House Strong - including young children, "The heap made of their severed heads ultimately stood three feet tall.", possibly taking Alys as a sex slave (if he wasn't bewitched)

-He refers to people from the Riverlands as 'River-scum'; so you know... pretty obvious how he feels about non-Valyrians.

-Is a raging misogynist (he would be an incel today) - He refers to Rhaenyra as the 'The whore of Dragonstone' in the books. And literally asks if they have to 'kiss the old whores cunny (cunt)'

He also? Like I'm sorry girl, but even S1? He 10000% is abusive towards his nephews? Even if they did bully him, they are several years younger - ESPECIALLY Luke? He literally is beefing with a kid and then KILLS HIM?

On top of that, have you seen the way he speaks to people? He's a fucking asshole girl. Like I love him, I think he is fascinating, but you probably need to distinguish between Aemond Targaryen fluff VS how Aemond actually behaves. He is about to evolve into genocide, he is literally about to kill a bunch of people next episode.

I can't believe I have to defend the idea Aemond might not be a very nice dude. Remember most abusers are people who are hurt, are people who are scared. Did you even read my post?

[lizbethborden]

I think being really defensive about your status as a childfree woman and being misogynistic towards mothers is pretty common, and that's what that person is afflicted with . They use mothers as the scapegoat for feeling attacked for not taking the path that is deemed most honorable for women in society or whatever. It's weird but I've had to unpack this type of thinking a bit myself

I agree with you. I also think that there's a general tendency for all people to think of mothers symbolically rather than as individual human beings. Because we become attached (or not attached) to our mothers from the first moment of our conscious development, it's very hard to erase or retrain old emotional pathways around either our own individual mother, or The Mother as archetype and idea. The ideal would be that as we grow up and enter adulthood we are better able to appreciate the humanity of mothers but it often doesn't happen. Look at how often for example men lose attraction to their spouses after having a child because now she's "a mother" and therefore a non-sexual, off-limits being that belongs to the baby. All of the cultural cargo around mothers, motherhood, our role as women and potential mothers in this society is so heavy and it takes a LOT of hard work to begin to unpack it and it is very very hard to recognize that we are being misogynist toward mothers because of how tightly misogyny is woven in with this baggage.

[blue-grama]

Jesus motherforking shirtballs

Or: I am asking every business journalist to take one (1) gender studies class before I tear my hair out.

This interview came across my dash and it's a lot of fun, particularly Apo's "dad joke" actually being a hilariously cringey pickup line, but one aside by the writer made me wince.

ASDKHGKJ. This is not the first time I've seen an article about BL or gay romance in general speculate that the reason female audiences enjoy gay male romance is because there are no other threatening, icky girls on screen. I find this exceedingly irritating and misogynistic and I'm gonna rant about it. Now, look. Maybe there are women-identifying people out there watching mlm romance because they are threatened by beautiful actresses. Maybe. I haven't met every woman in the world. But this reasoning is, in my opinion, some male-gaze bullshit and needs to be smacked down. A non-exhaustive list of reasons to like mlm romance that AREN'T based on some weird idea of female competitiveness and insecurity: 1. Queer people... exist? Look, the LGBTQ+ community alone isn't the reason KP had huge international success. Just numbers-wise, it was probably watched by more straight people than not. But ignoring that audience makes absolutely no sense, especially because sexuality is fluid and many viewers interested in LGBTQ+ media may be uncertain/exploring. Cultural anthropologist Thomas Baudinette has talked about how many "straight women" exploring BL turned out not to be so straight. It's a thing. (Here on Tumblr the LGBTQ+ audience is THE thing, but there's a lot of selection bias here, obviously.)

2. A good romance is a good romance

In my personal (and admittedly limited) experience, cishet men have a hard time grasping this, but give me a good, swoony romance and IDGAF about the genders involved. I've noticed this is very common among my female-identifying and nonbinary friends, regardless of their sexual attractions in real life. Good chemistry is good chemistry, a good story is a good story, and honestly it's kinda insulting to silo LGBTQ+ romance off as something you need a particular reason to watch, if you're someone who likes watching romance. 3. Female gaze

Look. Mile and Apo are blisteringly hot individuals. It's interesting this article mentions the action sequences and not the inherent appeal of, say, these two humans exploring each other's bodies in front of God and Deutsche Bank:

Perhaps it's a family publication.

But to get a little more thinky about horniness: If you're a female-identifying person interested in men, it can be a tough slog out there. I'm coming from a western perspective, where romance is looked down upon in general. (Asian media seems more willing to look at the romance audience and go "hmm... $$$!" instead of "ugh, girl stuff.") And even when you get romance-driven stories, the male gaze is fucking ubiquitious. I remember having my mind blown some years ago by Outlander -- a show I did not make it through otherwise -- because the wedding episode in the first season has a sex scene in which the camera lingers on the male lead's face. That is some female gaze shit that you just do not see. I just spent a couple minutes checking in with the sex scenes in Bridgerton, probably the biggest romance-genre hit in the U.S. in some time, made explicitely for a female audience in mind, and even there, the camera spends FAR more time on the female leads' faces in sex scenes. Presumably the idea is that the female viewing audience will be inserting themselves into the scene and imagining her pleasure as their own, but ... show me a man's O-face, you cowards.

KP (and BL in general) does that.

I mean, quite literally. But also figuratively - men are posited as objects of desire, and the viewer is the agent desiring them. Taking a straight female as our theoretical viewer: We're so, so socialized to see females as the objects of desire and men as the agents of desire that even media made with straight women in mind parks the camera on the female lead. BL turns that on its head. The female viewer isn't watching a stand-in for herself being desired. She's actively desiring. I hope it's clear that this is miles away from "other girls are threatening." It's about being the one with agency for once.

4. Removal of the burden of one gajillion years of patriarchical bullshit

This is like a trauma response or some shit, istg, but sometimes it's nice to watch a romance not weighed down by 300,000 years of hetero gender relations. How many times have we seen a female character who is just a male fantasy or who starts out great but gets ruined by bad writing and it's like... fuck. Someone has probably written about this a lot more eloquently and intelligently than me, but sometimes it's just like, geez. Leave women out of it. Let us rest. I'm joking a bit, and this entirely elides the fact that non-het relationships can be just as abusive and problematic as a het relationship out there in the real world, but in the realm of fantasy I do think there's an appeal to stripping away at least part of the gender discourse. Especially for a fully escapist show like KP -- personally, I love a good female character, but I did not have any problem with the dearth of them in that series. Don't make me worry, even subconsciously, about the mafia's maternity leave policy, okay?? Contrary to idea that the mlm aspects save some sort of self-insert space for me in that romance, I as a woman-identified person did not want to be anywhere NEAR that hot mess. I wanted a world that touched on exactly zero of my real-life concerns.

Ok, maybe one real-world concern: How to find a small animal vet at an inconvenient hour.

Anyway, like I said at the start, I can't possibly explain everyone's motivations for watching KP or BL or anything, really. The world is a rich tapestry and sexuality is not a simple binary. But boiling it all down to, "women are insecure" ain't it and I would love to see that explanation permanently retired from casual use. EDIT: I forgot the link to the original article.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

I thank god everyday for the day I found your blog BPP. Min Hee Jin won her injunction against Hybe today and I feel so relieved for NewJeans and everyone at ADOR. It might seem silly but your posts made think, they made me want to step outside the Army echo chambers to read through the articles myself and I came to be Team MHJ with you.

I felt like I was fighting a lone war on reddit and twitter. I took your advice and limited my exposure to that space. Here's my view:

The only people convinced that HYBE would win were kpop stans who were either HYBE company stans, ARMYs or kpoppies who already really disliked MHJ.

It was personally frustrating for me to see people rant for weeks on the megathreads on all the main subs, basically showing they had no real idea what they were talking about and would misrepresent anything MHJ and her lawyers said even when they backed it up. This whole issue should’ve been very clear cut for HYBE if they had any real evidence, but they didn’t, so they chose the route of character assassination instead but by law that’s not enough to fire her. Personally the only way I saw her losing was if HYBE threw even more of their power and money to influence the decision, which I thought would be easy since Korea is generally unforgiving to women in most cases. But the fact HYBE lost in spite of their influence, in spite of the misogyny rampant in the legal system, just shows how weak HYBE’s legal case really was.

Honestly since MHJ’s press conference it was clear to me HYBE was unlikely to win their case. She raised so many issues that the court decision today reinforced (the indefinite non-compete, the toxic management of sub-labels in favor of BSH and her actions to support ADOR in that environment, what her actual issue was regarding the ‘plagiarism’ in context of the creative team, members and their parents, etc).

Now, Armys are taking this screenshot and misrepresenting it to justify a hate train on the NewJeans members themselves. https://x.com/enjeansville/status/1796145376820428815

MHJ said the issue of ‘plagiarism’ wasn’t about one issue but about several key distinctions in NewJeans debut formula that they had evidence that Belift literally, ‘lifted’, she said that most everyone at ADOR including creatives was aware of it, and that NewJeans parents (aka guardians/representatives) had even seen the negative comparisons with ILLIT and NewJeans in the media as well as disparaging comments towards NewJeans in the media, and petitioned MHJ to act on it to HYBE.

But the comments I’ve seen for the last few weeks from Armys and other kpoppies just drove home the fact that nobody here actually watched it nor read the supporting reports from Sejong. People just stayed in echo chambers that already hated MHJ and looked for ways to hate NewJeans members openly on that account. Sadly typical.

***

"from Armys and other kpoppies" made me laugh because truly, ARMYs have become indistinguishable from kpoppies. Perhaps it was inevitable given how often this switch happens, but it's still been quite the trip to witness.

"the only way I saw her losing was if HYBE threw even more of their power and money to influence the decision, which I thought would be easy since Korea is generally unforgiving to women in most cases. But the fact HYBE lost in spite of their influence, in spite of the misogyny rampant in the legal system, just shows how weak HYBE’s legal case really was."

I have a similar opinion. Frankly, anybody who actually watched Min Heejin's press conference and understood what she said, would've seen she was certainly more in the right, and had more legal basis for her claims, than HYBE did. Only the sort of k-pop stan who has suffered the peculiar sickness of stan brain rot would think one woman could brainwash most of a country that is lauded as one of the most misogynistic in the world. But I bet on her losing in any case because in Korea, conglomerates typically win. Bang PD has entered chaebol status and that alone tipped things in his favour. The fact he lost, even while using the top rated legal firm in Korea (Kim & Chang) is comical in how it exposes HYBE's legal case was even weaker than we assumed.

Still, this is far from over. From the start, this was a personal vendetta and since Bang Sihyuk has so far spared no expense nor convention in trying to destroy MHJ, the stakes are only higher now, so expect more of what we've seen the last few weeks. She's being sued and MHJ will begin her own countersuits regarding the text messages she says are manipulated and other issues raised during this mess. We likely won’t see a full resolution till the end of this year.

In the meantime, all the artists at HYBE will continue to suffer and the singular reason for this mess, again, is Bang Sihyuk.

Stream Groin and How Sweet.

[lemonhemlock]

The one ASOIAF tiktoker I really enjoyed and had some of the best takes on ASOIAF and HOTD put out a tiktok a few weeks back basically stating that she was either going to no longer post HOTD content or limit it severely because of the hate she got from female fans of Dany and Rhaenyra lmaoo (she didn't say their names directly but it was obvious which character's fans were the issue). This tiktoker is a dark dany believer and was also sympathetic to Alicent and made some incredibly milquetoast critiques of Rhaenyra. Oh course she got hit with 'you're being sexist and using the world building to hide behind your sexism' critiques from #that fandom.

Side note, I do think it's funny how people want to always blame male ASOIAF fans as being The Most Problematic, when some of the worst behavior and most misogynistic hate towards female characters has come from fellow female fans. But that's another conversation lol.

I want to preface this by saying that I have no idea who this girl is, as I don't really remember encountering Dark!Dany truthers in my FYP, but it's good to know they're out there, at least. Doing the Lord's work.

I am kind of torn on this issue, as I imagine that receiving hate mail on an account more closely associated with your real identity is going to sting much more than it would if you were just an anonymous blog on the internet. So I totally get why she'd feel like it's not worth it bothering with that side of the fandom and just bow out. But, at the same time, there's that combative gremlin in me that's outraged at the idea of not being able to comment on such a big part of the text. Like, in a very I'm-not-gonna-let-those-losers-tell-ME-what-to-do way. (And this is very much not me instructing people how to deal with hate & harassment, just more of a general observation, I suppose.)

Additionally, I've spoken about this before, but I don't really know how much it applies to ASOIAF Tik Tokers. Another thing I find tedious is how these commentary channels come to pander to the prevailing discourse in the process of monetization. And, I get it, late stage capitalism is a bummer, so making money off of your hobby looks very attractive, but imagine having to depend on unhinged Dany stans for your next paycheck. It boggles the mind. It's very hard to keep to your true opinions and takes when you've come to rely on this stream of income and it's always going to be more profitable to play up to the masses. This is why I appreciate channels like Hills Alive that persevere despite receiving psychotic backlash.

I agree that female ASOIAF fans definitely love their bit of sexism when it comes to harassing other female fans who don't toe the party line, but I don't really know who to pick when it comes to toxicity. The dudebro reddit/forum dregs were pretty awful back in the day, too, you only have to look up any conversation on Cersei and Sansa and observe their foul language and cretin diatribes.

[diaphin93]

Your musings reminded me of my own thoughts about fe3h fandom in general and w.r.t. Edie, and it is such a weird beast… It makes for an uneasy neighborhood. On one hand, it's hard to find anything pro-Edelgard that doesn't have a token "her decisions are so stupid" comment. On the other, the analysis arms-race between subfandoms resulted in some of the most intricate and interesting media analyses I've ever seen haha, including literature and film

On one hand, you can find extreeeemely well done character studies exploring personhood, bodily autonomy, nature of authority — all incredible themes. Both popular and very niche. Some genuinely superbly written, and some more amature-ish but still sporting cool ideas. And somehow, this cohabits one ao3 tag with horrific humiliation-torture-porn of a too-radical woman. Brr, I steel sometimes think about it (and the existence of AG) and can barely avoid getting miserably triggered. I think that one time you spoke about historical treatment of transgressive ladies you hit the nail on the head.

[On a side note, 3Hopes is such a funny game. Heroic Edelgard w/ Claude in SB and GW enraged all the anti-Edelgard people, and AG is an atrocity to anyone who is pro-Edelgard and/or is remotely feminist. Imho, I could be wrong, of course, I'd love to be wrong, but that's the strong impression I got from my limited information]

I think I would've been more able to enjoy Dimitri and Claude, if none of their fans espoused deeply disturbing sexual assault jokes targeting a fictional abuse survivor… Ok fine I think I still wouldn't be fine with Dimitri and his whole "let's dismember that woman and make a spectacle out of it" spiel, but maybe it would be easier for me to not read it as misogyny if it wasn't weaponized by misogynists…

Sorry for the rant with some troubling topics! :( I figured you kinda enjoyed engaging with them, so I hope that's no bother

Hi. No worries, it doesn't bother me and I'm sorry that many aspects of the community have a triggering and uncomfortable effect to you. I'm always happy to reply here.

Personally I must say, on one hand the fact that Discourse is so heated and active even 5 years after the games release is on one hand testiment to the games success at deeply resonating with people and making the choice of horde and which side to fight the war on impactful and important.

On the other hand, it lead to a massive moral panic because alot of people simply can't handle a morally grey and nuanced female Antagonist/Protagonist or a game that lets you play opposing factions. I can't imagine how bad many people in the FE3H Fandom would have been in World of Warcraft back when everyone was obsessed with the Faction System. Not leaving myself out, especialy last year where I, admittedly, really went down the deep end due to personal reasons.

Though I will say, I also dislike the narrative of Edelgard just doing nothing wrong and being a flawless pure morally good character on our side of discourse. I get it, I went there too because Discourse got so heated and the sheer volume and intensityof the poison and outright misogyny many people on the Edelcrit side of things spill and I projected alot of it, unfairly, on Dimitri myself. Sometimes I still do, though I try to be more reasonable and remind myself of the fact, that similarily to Edelgard, Dimitri is for many people a comfort character whose narrative, trauma and personal development deeply resonates with them, and I really don't want to ruin that for the people who can at least respect and acknowledge the reasons why many people, especially queer women, feel drawn to Dimitri. I mean, I once convinced a person to be more open towards Edelgard but unevitably embittered them to Dimitri and thinking back on it, it kinda felt shitty. Sure, I want people to be more appreciative and less bashful towards Edelgard, but I think I don't really want them to in turn loss enjoyment of a character that before resonated strongly with them, because thats just not a nice thing to do.

Personally, I would actually love to play Azure Moon through the eyes of a Dimitri Fan, as it is clear, that for many people the writing, themes and emotions of this story were clearly very powerful, I just can't really enjoy the route that much and don't get emotionally invested into it, it is just not for me. And the discourse probably made it even worse over time, when originally, playing CF as my first route, I was hella excited to to play Dimitris route immediately afterwards, because he seemed like such a fascinating character and I've heard so much good about it. Maybe I should return to it nowadays and look at it with different expectations and a reopened mind.

I mean, I think really the most weird and problematic people are the church fans in my opinion. Not even for liking the church cast, outside of Gilbert, whoever likes him is yikes, but for this insistance of everything it doing being this bastion of moral righteousness and absolutely correct, when the games entire story is about how its not.

But yeah, probably less of an answer, but I saw it as a good opportunity to just talk about some things that are on my mind as of late.

[saberwitch]

Hearthfire Steading

this is a collective story that I'm building around (currently) eight of my Norn ladies. The core premise revolves around Halennia Hearthfire, an older woman who basically begins to unofficially adopt random Norn orphans (Norphans?) and welcoming them into her steading.

Most of them are adults. Many of them don't realize they've been adopted, or that the thing they've been missing from their lives is a mother figure. They just somehow found themselves at Halennia's table, like a lost traveler seeking shelter. And they found that no matter what else was going on in their lives, that table was always set and welcoming.

Sometimes they stay. They help out with the cooking and cleaning and keeping the fires. They become a community, whether they know it or not. Some come and go, disappearing for months or even years, but they always come back, and there's always someone there to welcome them home.

I have a number of headcanons that will feature in these stories which in my opinion are not lorebreaking, but also are not actual lore, so be warned.

The main one is that Norn, because of their connection to the Spirits of the Wild, and their ability to shape shift into animal forms, AND their possible descent from the Kodan, often exhibit animalistic traits of their own. These can be, but aren't limited to, the following: horns, antlers, fangs, eyeshine (tapetum lucidum), claws, pointed or animal ears, fur/scales, various eye colours and pupil configurations, and even sometimes tails.

Also, despite their enjoyment of moots, boasting/bragging/brawling, community hunts, and just overall party atmosphere, Norn are generally solitary and socially distant people. The cultural concept of personal glory and making of oneself a legend is a "lone wolf" exercise, and if not for moots and other such activities, the Norn would likely end up a decentralized mass of individual nomadic tribes. (The Norn love of ale and mead comes from the "necessity" of its use as a social lubricant.)

And finally, Norn are very open and accepting of all genders and sexualities, since Nature itself is fluid, and the art of creating one's own legend by its very nature (ha) requires a high level of personal expression. This makes the Sons of Svanir doubly aberrant, as not only are they misogynists, but their idea of "gender roles" is actually anathemic to Norn culture.

I'm going to put up a list of all the Hearthfire Steading characters later with a little bit about each in case anyone is interested.

[shimmerluna]

not personally a fan of the way people keep responding to The Idea of You criticism with "well, all rom-coms are superficial fluff." I don't think that's true about this movie or the genre, and I don't like the implications of that popular opinion

Firstly, The Idea of You actually has a lot of depth. Like the book author says, it's about feminism, ageism, the downside of celebrity, and other things (I don't remember the whole quote or where I saw it). All of this is clearly visible in the movie if you take the time to look for it. I wrote a whole post about it, and in my opinion, they do a great job weaving this narrative without making it super on the nose and unfun to watch. Those critics are just refusing to think critically about the movie.

Secondly, I think it's questionable to assume all rom-coms are superficial fluff. With the number of rom-coms there are, there's no way you can generalize all or even most of them like that. Not even Hallmark movies are completely superficial; they're known to be based in conservative politics and fantasies. I doubt that any writer sits down just to write something with no meaning or depth. I only have limited experience with creative writing, but that just doesn't seem to be how writing works.

It's much more likely that this is an inaccurate belief, one that stems from the fact that rom-coms are generally written by and/or targeted towards women. The entire romance genre in books, shows, and movies faces misogynistic ridicule because no one wants to take women seriously. They assume they can't write anything with depth or that their work just doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.

I feel like most people who are involved with feminism at all should know about this, so why is it still being repeated so often? Especially considering the movie is about feminism and the undeserved judgment women face, it's very disappointing that its "defenders" are using a misogynistic stereotype to do so. Instead of agreeing with people who say the movie has no substance, maybe you should dig deeper than they do and learn to appreciate the real beauty and potential of the romance genre.

[heartofstanding]

Honestly, I've seen the claim that "(X) finds women with their own minds distasteful and never takes advice from women" for *so many* kings across history - or English history, since that's what the discussion was about - and it's such a simplistic and one-dimensional view of ... everything, really. These men were at the zenith of a systematically patriarchal society and obviously possessed the standard misogynistic views of their time, nobody is pretending otherwise and none of them are exceptions to that. But at the same time, it's such an incredibly limited perspective and I think, apart from double standards assigned to one's historical fav compared to the historical figure opposing them, it also stems from the very narrow idea that queens and other highborn women were only valued as status symbols rather than people who inherently exercised political power? Their authority obviously wasn't equal to their husbands' but having a good mind and strength of character was essential for queenship and necessary to run their own households and lands, I don't think of any (in this case, medieval English) king has actively pestered or encouraged their wives or female relatives to be anything different. (Maybe Henry VIII in his later reign was an exception? Idk much about him though so I won't comment further)

You see people point at kings who level misogynistic accusations against certain women which, while obviously distasteful, are clearly for political/pragmatic reasons (Henry V and Joan of Navarre) and use it to generalize their everyday attitude towards the women around them. Or you see men employ - unfortunately common, tried-and-tested - misogynistic propaganda against a specific woman who is clearly their political opponent for political reasons and say "they opposed her *purely* because of sexism, there are no political motivations here at all" or even more ridiculously "this is how they view and treat all the women in their lives, our views on literally all their other personal and political dynamics will 100% be shaped by what they said about this one woman who was a political rival".

The accusations and propaganda *are* misogynistic and made possible because of systematic misogyny, and acknowledging the harm they've done to women on a personal and political level is always important, but there's no need to erase the main political framework behind them, or to generalize them, or to deny the fact that kings obviously expected their wives/mothers/relatives to wield power and obviously listened to them. It's so strange when historical fiction or very biased historians pretend otherwise?

This went off on a tangent and I hope I don't sound like an apologist for historical kings, but that discussion on Henry IV and Henry V prompted something I'd been mulling over for a bit because it's unfortunately very common to see for a range of historical figures.

No, no, I agree with everything you wrote here. It's this kind of reductive view of both the historical figures and events and of misogyny itself. It avoids having to look at the full context to understand why things happened, as you said, and often extrapolates too much from this one event to make broad judgements.

But it reflects a tendency to treat misogyny as a personal, not societal, issue. It's a way of downplaying misogyny itself - the problem is just a few bad actors, it's not a societal and systematic issue. Joan of Navarre wasn't accused of witchcraft because Henry V was a sexist pig but because witchcraft accusations were a handy way to deal with "difficult" and unpopular women.

The other side of this idea that misogyny is a personal, not societal, issue are the avowedly feminist revisionist works that are based around the idea that this one woman has been unfairly and incorrectly remembered due to years of sexist smears and lies - but nearly every other woman in the narrative is treated dismissively. Even if these other women have far, far worse reputations, even if these reputations have been convincingly challenged (ever read a novel about Catherine de Valois? The way they depict Isabeau of Bavaria and Eleanor Cobham is as though the medieval chroniclers attacking them were being very restrained when they wrote about how awful they were.)

[onewomancitadel]

Cannot stop thinking about the idea that women represent sites of cultural anxiety, Whore of Babylon to the 'welfware queen', it's misogyny as a communicative device within society - reassuring in some ways, symbolic othering in others, scapegoating in most. I often think about the utility of misogyny (that is, incentive to be misogynistic) because I don't think its existence is arbitrary, and in this case the idea I'm very specifically interested in is its use as a narrative device. Because in their own ways, these collective archetypes represent projected cultural anxiety, not just because women are responsible for everything, but because the signifier of woman is so significant. It's a related thesis to the role of women's testimony in the Bible (the Mary Magdalene finds Jesus after resurrection) or women's speech in ancient Near Eastern texts (Epic of Gilgamesh) and even the Homeric, in that because of the absence of women's speech within society, it is significant when they speak (and potentially carries magical qualities).

I was thinking about this for a few reasons - the role of women in storytelling generally, an emergent curiosity about feminine archetypes in fiction - and I suppose what I would call a dissatisfaction with the easy position that mostly when you're talking about female characters, you're talking about the presence, or lack thereof, of misogyny. It feels limiting in its own way I suppose, because then I think that leads to the current problems we've got, which is that writing women is a feminist responsibility, and not a work in the human condition, and in which case the didactic responsibility of that depiction - have you or have you not empowered women? - effectively stymies storytelling abilities at all. It's the natural answer to the idea that the work of storytelling for 4,000 years was specifically to disempower women through depiction, and to be entirely frank I think that gives too much power to narrative. This is actually an extremely common issue encountered in the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, that is, relying on cultural depictions through mythology to draw conclusions about that extant culture, and in which case I would say is also an ongoing source of contention, so you'll not find a definitive answer from me - I think from the get-go, a 1:1 assumption about how women (and indeed goddesses) are depicted is some sort of representation of an 'ought' model in society is probably wrong, though.

The reason I made this post just now is I was thinking about Grimes, because she just released the music video for So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth, and it made me think about how she takes on the cultural otheredness of her erstwhile romantic companion and billionaire, E/lon M/usk, and how female artists (especially trans and/or Black female artists) represent the cultural decay of celebrity, and the complicated cultural responsibility celebrities are endowed with. Just look at the furore over Taylor Swift's ability to potentially sway the vote in the next USA election, or the failure of her to speak on the I/P conflict (because if she did, this speech would be powerful). She's a site of political discourse, and worry about the emerging picture of the American Democrat voter, who happens to be female (both politically irresponsible for not voting for a third party, or not joining the communist revolution, or caring too much about abortion/trans rights/racial justice, or being one of those feminist harpies responsible for the collapse of civilisation), as it's projected that men are swerving more conversative - which women are also responsible for - including the new topic of straight men's loneliness (read: sexual/romantic loneliness) which women are responsible for and which only women can fix. Woman as site of inevitable decay!

But also that Grimes in this case represents the worst of the feminine artist - makes her own music (this is called into question by gossipmongerers), acts strangely, dares to have children mid-career and therefore compromises her artistic identity - to listen to her music is as bad as supporting her. No, I'm working towards a point here - I think there is something specifically anxiety-inducing about people choosing to consume women's art, who represent those sites of cultural anxiety, because it's considered tantamount to having the same opinions as her - that women's speech is actually dangerous because of this potent cultural symbolism. (I worked in the women's testimony thesis). The same sort of anxiety is not applicable for male artists, not generally speaking (people wouldn't ordinarily harrass you for it, or performatively demonstrate their not listening to it - Chris Brown is still charting by the way), because it simply doesn't carry the same cultural symbolism - men's political beliefs, moral actions, injurious behaviour, etc. is considered distinct from their cultural output. I'm not saying one or the other is worse - or necessarily a discrete phenomenon - women in general are expected to be both conscious creators and conscious consumers. Just look at environmentalism - more women are environmentalists, and there's a perception (I am not citing the survey here but I'd say this is generally true) that eco-friendly products are girly. Women as sites of environmental/cultural anxiety. Birth rates dropping? Thesis evolving.

The reason I think it's interesting that women carry this cultural symbolism - that misogyny here is achieving something within society, in some way, that this type of anxiety comes with a function not arbitrary, or at the very least enjoys useful application if not origin - is effectively also to say that women are models within society. That they are models of beauty, moral sensibility, the general fertility of society, the political growth of society, the decay of society, the power of women as guides in every walk of life - is actually pretty significant, and I don't really see this idea discussed when deconstructing and trying to challenge misogyny. Nowhere am I trying to suppose that misogyny is good - what I am trying to say is that if you feel despair as to why it persists, it's a much more complicated issue as to why it does at all.

I also think that there is generally an exhaustion with misogyny - the discussion of feminism's purpose, its aims, what it can achieve (which seem to be always everything and nothing at the same time) - and within the frame of storytelling, I think that the didactic aim, whilst noble (attempting to empower women?), misses the point. To identify why it doesn't work - that is, to recognise what purpose misogyny served in storytelling before - is necessary to understand how to fix it. So what do you do with that cultural symbolism and weight? What do you use it for? I introduced the celebrity element - is that even a responsibility they ought to have at all? Now, if you were to turn the thesis on its head, that is, what do male characters enjoy in storytelling - is that better or worse?

Better or worse in what sense, one supposes - because the storytelling quality of women, women's speech as magical inducement of delusion, or corruption - is in itself pretty potent, here I'm thinking of Odysseus, it seems to me that if the essence of storytelling is its humanistic quality, then you would hope that all characters would be able to enjoy this range in their own way. You're going to laugh, but I can't help thinking of the fandom belief that in RW/BY, Cinder is responsible for I/ronwood's actions in V7/8 - that his actions are depersoned by attribution to a woman's actions. Isn't that dehumanising in its own way? I'm not saying this is tantamount to violence - what I am saying is that I think it's strange how this idea of moral responsibility or lack thereof goes unchallenged.

But that is the convenience and the utility of women's culpability - because it is lazy, and useful. Sometimes, I fear that the simplest answer to misogyny - transmisogyny, misogynoir - or racism, or ableism, or homophobia, is that it's lazy. Not always, of course, but let's say you have a best friend who sexually assaulted another woman at a party (he touched her without permission), a girl you don't know, do you do the hard thing and cut off that friend, get justice for a stranger, or support the person you know? Too many people spend their time considering these situations in thinkpieces and not looking at the reality around them. This isn't just misogyny - this is Jake deciding it's too hard to stand up to his friend. If you knew Jake, you might decide just to tell him to fuck off - that's your interpersonal decision - but what I am also thinking is that Jake is spineless. This is something a lot of us go through. It's very hard being alive and trying to make the right decisions, and to decide whose testimony to trust, and sometimes I think it does us all a disservice when we only read this through the lense of [MISOGYNY 1+ / -1] and not the world in which that misogyny functions.

More specifically, how it is that storytelling interacts with, and reflects human motivations interests me, but also that it is a deep mysterious pit of the human psyche. When it comes to the question of writing a 'good' female character, the position seems to be - well, before, the bad female character conveyed the figure of women to be oppressed, now she is endowed with the opposite power. I think that this is untrue in both senses. I think that this is limiting, and not interesting, and speaks to the belief that storytelling bears social responsibility, not just is a reflection of those attitudes (of everything), which ends up with characters who are dehumanised anyway. If the empowered female character must represent every woman, bearing that cultural weight of responsibility women are already endowed with, I suspect you've not achieved much.

[fulgursmediaanalysisdrama]

Also I've heard the intriguing take that Witcher is very women centric in it's povs and opinions (never shutting up about the right to choose, bodily autonomy, consent and abortion after all), and in the way Geralt is often sexualized and dehumanized having to give in to performing masculinity even if he doesn't want to because it is expected from the women around him

This is, as I said, intriguing and somewhat true but not everything that is there

Geralt is generally ostracized and dehumanized, fitting in more with the dwarfs and halflings and other non humans

But the objectification of his is mostly related to the mages, and often bar girls and prostitutes

Which he also isn't comfortable with but also isn't against it? See Angoulême, see the Zerrikanians

But it is part of something that's very obvious, all that talks between Geralt and various women, say Calanthe, about abortion is dissenting talk. These ideas are not respected or liked even Sorceresses commonly provide them

See how Geralt and the entire Hansa talk Milva out of taking the abortion potion Reiges had made because no one liked the idea and how all it did was create tragedy. Angoulême as the only other woman only joining after that

The sorceresses as well give a huge fuck about being attractive to any man, in a world that is undeniably patriarchal even if the lodge tries to "center" all power in the hands of women/sorceresses, they still relie and manipulation but even if they didn't they'd be very far from their goal. And what is shown repeatedly is that you can't beat patriarchal standards by making yourself appealing to those standards and therefore gaining influence, because that influence isn't real it is dependent on optics and not breaking out of the rules limiting you. Because of you do you'll see how fragile the influence and respect you've gained really is

Does that mean wanting to be perceived as attractive is bad? Is wearing make up and dresses and jewelry? No. But determining your self worth and self confidence on the approval of others does not liberate you, you keep yourself dependent on others

And like if you are and you can't escape obviously there's no reason not to take whatever little straw there is, but these women, these sorceresses built their entire self image around being independent from and better than men, while enforcing misogynistic rules for themselves and others, even stripping them of autonomy and reproductive rights. Something I alluded to earlier, Calanthe and Geralt discussed as divine and unquestionable

All this stuff is also why Yennefers and Ciris talk about men and how to choose them, Ciris awkward attempts to be sexy to men, and later queer/bisexual self discovery with Mistle where she had to work through her own homophobia are important andn related in my eyes

Is there also room here to discuss how the Witchers boil themselves down to being Witchers (non humans) and men in order to protect themselves emotionally? How they denie all feelings in order to not have to confront/realize the abuse they are put through? How that leads to them not being able to properly develop healthy relationships and denies them certain facets of life and emotional closure? How that also is directly related to patriarchy and how it harms the men it on paper empowers as the sole group to be truly empowered by it?

None of the witchers are uncomfortable with their roles as men, none are queer all are straight, but we still see them hurt and stunted by patriarchal standards. They don't have a choice but to like it. And they aren't like bad people, they try their best in their way and with their limited knowledge taking care of Ciri. But that doesn't change the circumstances.

And the only two to try to escape in any way, Coën and Geralt, the only two who choose to care and fight for something better, who try escaping the role set out for them, together with Yennefer who also tries to escape the influence of the lodge and mages/sorceresses, all three end up dead. Having died fighting in a war against the oppressor, in a pogrom in opposition to racism and social inequality, for love and care over superficial attraction and limiting oneself to having a reproductive duty. (Geralt and Yennefer both being infertile and Yenn staying true to her belief that reproduction is something that shouldn't be taken away from anyone involuntarily like it was done to them both and that everyone should get to make an informed decision, but also accepting that she won't regain her ability to get pregnant, and with Ciri both of them have a kid, someone to care for, someone who loves them, the realization that their self worth and their worth to others isn't determined by their reproductive ability alone.)

[talenlee]

The Magic Circle (The Magic Is Racism)

New Post has been published on PRESS.exe: The Magic Circle (The Magic Is Racism)

One of the few concepts from Games Studies that has escaped into the general atmosphere of people talking about it normally is the idea of the magic circle. The magic circle is an idea mentioned once in the book Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga, which, much like other off-handed comments made by people focusing elsewhere, wound up becoming something that the games studies world spun off into a great big mess of noise, hi there Wittgenstein thanks for making ‘defining game’ into an academic sporting event.

But the magic circle ostensibly, as developed later by Roger Caillois (somewhat, even if he thought Huizinga was a bit stinky) and kind of elaborated on further by Ian Bogost (kinda?) is the notion that a game exists in a space created apart from the general real world; that the beginning of and experience of playing a game involves engaging in a shared separation of reality that everyone involved recognises and accepts has nothing to do with reality and can be therefore, a place for anything to happen.

I’ve talked in the past about how Caillois is kind of a big weirdo, which is a way to divert the conversation away from the fact the dude was a racist and a misogynist and also kind of an asshole even to white dudes as well. In any given conversation about academics from the 1950s it’s not exactly interesting to point out that they were racists and misogynists, you can usually instead direct attention to the few who were exceptions to this trend and that is interesting in and of itself.

In this case, though, Caillois’ vision of games is not atypical for a particular vision of games studies: He sees the games as being disconnected from reality. He also believed them to be unproductive and uncreative; a game by definition could not have a byproduct that was useful or had value. In Caillois’ mind, a game could not ‘create anything of value.’

I’ve been thinking about Caillois as I read CLR James Beyond A Boundary, a dense book full of historical accounting of the experience of playing cricket and playing being a fan of cricket, during a time in which Colonial England offered very few routes for advancement for black people in the West Indies. One of those routes for a limited number of people was cricket. You could use cricket to advance, to position yourself, but, James writes, there’s always material conditions that hold you back. The best black player couldn’t replace an acceptable white player, and the best black player was the lightest-skinned one.

The book has this phrase, early on: Before I knew of politics, I had learned it all from cricket. It’s a history full of reflections on the way that the empire treated its games as this neutral space where everyone adhered to the same rules so everyone got treated the same even as James accounts incident after incident after incident where that was simply not true – there’s even an instance where Australia, another subservient component of the empire, but also, crucially, one presented as whiter, is shown as being positioned as yes, lesser to England, but still very much the white one in a contest against Trinidad.

Australia set a truly eyewatering target of 600. The response came roaring back as the first two batsmen scored over 200 runs. To say that this was a simple value-neutral exchange between parties and that there was no interface of the system of the empire asserting over people is to pretend that people’s feelings don’t matter when they’re engaged with a game; that drive and agency and alertness and all the elements of human exchange are present in the human to be observed, to play the game, but which also, crucially, do not actually exist, because they would make the interplay of the game objects meaningful outside of the game as well.

I have only read excerpts from Games Black Girls Play, which describes a whole range of ways that there are things that I, a white guy, have been taught are inherent to black people but as it turns out are things that the black community being observed practice, through games, and valorise, through good execution in those games. There is no magic circle for these people, in this situation; the real oppressions of the real world melt in to the edges. When a man was shot for trespassing on a country club without realising it because he was playing Pokemon Go, you’re not going to be shocked to hear that it wasn’t a white guy.

Since I started on Games Studies, one thing I’ve often argued with in Man, Play And Games is the position that ‘games are uncreative,’ that they cannot create any value. To me, the idea of mandela patterns and playful meditation experiences which can leave you with an artistic product struck me as fundamentally against this idea; either they’re not games or they’re not creative, or Caillois’ idea doesn’t work.

The thing I didn’t really consider there though is that my immediate, easy and convenient example of a playful experience that has a creative output was something from a non-white cultural space. And that’s not to say ‘western games are like this, eastern games are like that.’ It’s more that if you approach games from the perspective of the magic circle, and assume that idea works, you have to start shaping things you see in order to make them collaborate with that idea; they are part of the conversation.

And look, the magic circle is not an idea with zero explanatory power. It’s absolutely an idea you can use to describe the way that when you’re in a game, you can tell you care about something and then after the game is over, that thing has no value to you. It’s not like once the game is over you have a reason to care about having a five of clubs. I think that this can be handled by Suits’ idea of a lusury attitude, but the magic circle is a term that can be connected to ideas of theatrics and narrative design.

But it’s kinda hard, when you sit the distinct difference in who gets to be aloof and who has to be involved alongside one another to not see that the Magic Circle is just another way to describe privilege.

Oh and Caillois hated clowns, obligatory mention.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[saintadeline]

I sent you this question about doctor in clinic of Bloodborne. Thanks for the answer! I was very nervous about it but I'm relieved. I've learned a few more things on this issue since yesterday after I did a post and someone also answered. There was evidence that, and doctor also, was Vileblood, what sounded very curiously. I'm now convinced on this theory too, at the same time I don't believe she was pregnant anymore. I forgot to say this in a previous ask that I thought that she described writhing and Oedon Writhe. But I am not confident anymore .Bloodborne has many horrible things happen with women, like just you wrote. Looks like because every Great One loses its child and years for surrogate, they use human bodies like factory. I understood your mind that another female character can just have more autonomy without being removed from this, at the same time I understood some fans just think that because false doctor can be Vileblood, it makes Oedon assault her too. I noticed that some people fuel even more horror to a story when it's already the most dark thing that isn't limited to be against women. It is such awesome idea to uplift the doctor instead of damning her too, like everyone else. We always notice that no one can have a happy ending, but we can change it with how we choose to interpret the story. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. I'd like to make a separate post on this that comes from different angle than saying someone is misogynistic, but I'm not even too familiar with using English language yet. There is no way to come to a complete agreement with sides, because different people want different things to write. So I think that some people here not hold ill intention to make one more female character reduced to just surrogated mother, but they want even more horror. Everything else in the post that you wrote was easy to understand and I had no more questions! Looks like everyone agrees that nobody wants to be evil and simply thought of what is better for the story and I love to see this in the fandom.

Yeah i definitely understand what you mean! In the end, bloodborne and fromsoft in general are games about coming to your own conclusions and thats part of what's so great about them. I think we can be mindful of what we theorize could mean in a narrative context while still being able to form our own takes on the lore. Also yeah agreed on the "vileblood"/cainhurst thing, without getting too much into it right now because this isnt my theory post LOL but i definitely think their relation to it added to their role and storyline in regards to oedon, it's really interesting to think about. I feel like i should clarify i dont necessarily want to accuse people of being outright misogynistic when theyre making that sort of theories! We all can unwillingly participate in misogyny that way without wanting to, because so much of it is internalized, and im not immune from that happening/having happened to me as well

Also your english is great !! Thank you for taking the time to write this and talk about it with me i really appreciate that :)

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I think there's a possibility with the Pilates thing that's maybe being overlooked, which is just that the Pilates studio is run by some nice people who are generally kind and lovely but grew up and exist in a society steeped in misogyny and so have internalized a lot of misogynistic ideas and not fully interrogated them, and that when they asked Harry about using that clip of him he either didn't get a chance to see the ad copy past a general 'it'll be about how pilates isn't just for women!' (or most likely, someone who works for him saw it rather than him personally) or he saw it, wasn't comfortable with it, but didn't want and/or feel like it was his place to educate his Pilates instructor on misogyny and gender theory.

And I think it's a perfectly reasonable criticism to say that no, he should have either taken the time to educate the person responsible or he should've pulled his permission to use video of him in the ad, but also... I'm sympathetic to the fact that life is complicated, and there are plenty of people I have good, functioning, but very limited relationships with in life who I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to educate. Especially if, as could very well be the case with Harry, in trying to explain and educate I might reveal something about myself that I wasn't ready to share with that person.

But in the end, like I said, I think the most boring scenario is most likely - Harry goes to that pilates studio, they asked if they could use video of him in an ad, he generally likes them so he said sure and then forgot all about it, some random person from his team is the one who got an email with the ad copy to approve and said random person signed off on it. I think there's a solid chance Harry has never even read that caption.

Oh anon - I feel like there's a lot here I could respond to, but I think where I want to start is this: Do you really think the way it works for use of Harry's image is that people ask him if they can do it, if he generally likes them he says yes, and the details don't matter?

Harry is a massive business proposition and his image is a very, very valuable commodity. Random people are not signing off content for Harry. The people who sign off content for Harry are doing so with an understanding of what matters to him and what he wants to see.

We have no indication that he's casual with how his image is used - quite the opposite. When was the last time he endorsed a business? Harry knows lots of people who he thinks are nice and could benefit from his image.

It's also worth noting that a two site Pilates business that has got coverage in Metro, Telegraph, Timeout, Telegraph and Bazar - isn't leaving it's marketing to the instructors. The idea that this is about Harry's personal relationship with his pilates instructor - completely ignores that this is a business deal on both sides.

I know this is a fraught thing to do - but I'm reading a lot of anxiety in this ask. The combination of the need to emphasise how great all the people involved might be and also that you've created this very specific scenario where in order to not have his image used Harry would have to educate people he had a personal relationship about why things are wrong. That's worry isn't about Harry, or anything we've seen about how he lives his life, or has any relationship to any publicly available information about how either industry works - and that does suggest that it's about you.

So I want to say to you - no is a complete sentence. If something makes you uncomfortable then you don't have to educate everyone around you as to why you don't want to do it (or even know yourself). Unlike Harry you probably can't just get your team to do it for you and never even have to have the awkward conversations. But you're much more important than Harry - and learning a good way of navigating the world for you is much more important than whatever dumb shit Harry is doing.

[lesucremygic]

The Moon, PMS-ing and Us

There are times when you’re almost on your period or during it, you’d always feel like trash, a sad excuse of a human being, unworthy of anything good or the world just really tiring. 

You want to cry from the sheer frustration for not being able to stop feeling like that even though you knew, positive things still do exist in your world. 

Even though you understand and realize being grateful is important in times like that.

Actually, letting the emotion happen, is way more important than hating yourself for not being able to stop all of that from happening.

But, you have no idea how to brush off the weight of helplessness everytime those feelings grace your presence, because it’s almost impossible to not feel them sometimes. 

Ever since I got my period, more than a decade ago, I have never been prepared for these huge changes in my emotional state, or even physiological beings. I’m way too underprepared and it made me all over the place. 

I think a lot of us women and girls still feel extremely frustrated whenever we’re at a loss when something is happening to our body and there’s very limited information about what to do when those things happen. 

Most of the time, we almost always find countless baseless misinformation which are actually harmless for us instead. 

That is, foul, to be honest. 

It always makes me wonder, how exactly does the world view us women?  

I didn’t know that my emotional state is going to be so… wildly untamed when I’m PMS-ing. No women in my family told me that I’m going to experience that every month, that I’m going to be irritated with everything, even my own self. 

But overtime, later in life, once I somehow slowly let go of misogynistic views about myself, women and girls in general, re-learning and re-educating myself on my own biological condition and needs, I understand that these things better to be felt. 

Those irritations are, I think, a byproduct of bottling everything up everyday. Thinking that you’ll handle those emotions later because you don’t want to be seen as overly sensitive by people, or that you’re weak for not being able to handle them and not being able to smile every time inconvenience occurs. 

The burden of smiling. 

The burden of always appearing pretty and collected. 

The ridiculousness makes me want to rip my hair out. Everytime. 

Despite all that however, I’m slowly making peace with them even though it’s still difficult for me not to take my anger out on people who irritate me so much when I’m in that period of time. Because even when I tell them I'm sensitive and trying to regulate my emotions, they will mostly take that as a challenge to be so annoying. 

Blaming me in the end for being overly sensitive when I blew up.

I always warn them before they challenge themselves and be stubborn. But alas, they brought it upon themselves. 

Periods are difficult for me. Even with the constant diet change, being more active in windows where I’m supposed to be active and resting when I’m supposed to be resting, period will always make me feel like a total shit. 

Dealing with emotional ups and downs is one thing, dealing with the pain, cramps, and headache that will always follow after is another. 

That’s how sometimes I envy girls who barely feel pain in their body whenever they’re having periods, or that it’s easier for them to navigate through life. 

Good for them, truly, because if I could, I want all girls to have it easier dealing with periods. 

It’s just sometimes, I’m envious that I can never feel light for a long time when periods are coming.

Being girls with a built-in pain inside their body is not easy, it’s too hard to make men understand the great burden we have to endure every single month. It’s too hard to make them understand that we will never get used to it. We will never get used to the pain. So most of our irritations are totally valid to begin with. 

There are those who were raised by their parents right and could empathize with us, I’ll always appreciate those men, even though that’s a total bare minimum… but the ratio of those who understand and can empathize with those who will always think it’s natural for us to be like that and to just suck it all, is way too phenomenal.

Not to mention when they already have a sticky false upbringing about women and menses in Islam, a religion that I believe in,  women and menstruating somehow became a really taboo topic for a discourse in most Islamic communities, which is another horrendous foul thing to ever occur.

So it sucks.

Period is sucks, not having periods also sucks… 

It’s just how we’re built, I understand that. 

What frustrates me the most is when the society gaslighted and guilt-trips me to not feel any of these irritations even though we have to endure a long excruciating 7 days with pain and being stuck in discombobulation. 

I just want them to be more understanding, if they can’t empathize that is…and more discourse about it so a wide range of people, women and men alike, can understand more about healthier approaches and education about menstruation. 

In the hope that in the end, it would make them kinder…

In short, I just want a break. 

L.

---

Dedicated to all women and those who menses, because sometimes, we just want a freaking break.

[intobarbarians]

i saw someone say jjk is fundamentally about intergenerational trauma and without getting too into it i think the series simply does not work on this point

much of shounen (and shoujo, too, for that matter) push back against traditional confucian ideas which really fuck over young people. adults need to listen to you when you are the only one with the power to stop the world from ending.

this is one of the reasons the ending of naruto sucks. they grow up to be the adults making bad decisions and not pay attention to their kids.

with jjk, you can say oh these kids suffer from the weight of their inherited techniques, from the politics their elders drag them into. but by and large, none of the families are fleshed out.

even the emotional effect of maki’s triumphant revenge against the zenin is hobbled because we don’t know jackshit about 99 percent of her relatives. we just know VERY broad strokes: they suck. they hate twins and are misogynists. i think akutami tried to amp it up by drawing parallels to toji and emphasizing that this is what he would have wanted too is lacking. megumi doesn’t have any connections with them either.

we don’t know shit about the gojos. we know a little bit about the kamo. we don’t know about the inumaki. we know nobara has a grandmother.

even without the jujutsu families like. how does nanami relate to his family when he’s a sorcerer and they’re not? that he goes to school where people learn their shit from an elder and they all have connections and money and the potential of his technique is essentially the limitations of his imagination.

we simply have no solid characters to compare new and old generations. everything becomes a fight scene in two pages. it’s just underwhelming