TOMATO and CARROT for the ask game
From this neat ask game :))
Just like the last one, I'm choosing one OC to answer all the asks for. Feel free to submit the same fruit/veggie twice to hear answers for other OCs!
This is for Auretta/Zephyr from Vigilante (because both these asks fit her SO WELL—)
🍅 [TOMATO] How misunderstood is your OC? In-universe or IRL.
So... What you need to understand about present day Auretta is that she escaped a place where they kept Extra-Ordinaries (people who get superpowers after surviving a near death experience) away from the public under the guise of safety for them and others but really... it's to find out how they work—or to get them to work for the organisation. Unfortunately, most people don't know this. In the public eye, Zephyr is a villain who must be stopped from wreaking havoc on cities and forests. She is a walking windstorm.
After her... snap... Auretta just became more... unhinged, to put it lightly. She's very much at war with herself. She misunderstands herself tbh. Part of her wants to be alone—alone forever so her brother never sees what she has become. Another part desperately wants to see her brother again. She still feels like a little girl who could cuddle with her brother and watch a movie with hot cocoa. Another part wants bloody revenge on the people who dared to ruin her life. If the guy who was her catalyst event wasn't watching the news when she broke out and promptly went into hiding... he would be toast. Toast flying away in the wind.
TLDR: She maintains the I AM WICKED AND EVIL AND YOU CANT STOP ME persona well enough that no one cares to stick around long enough to hear her whisper I want my life back. I want my brother back....
🥕 [CARROT] How tough is your OC against certain situations? How weak are they against others?
Auretta post EON kicks ASS!!!! She doesn't hold back on her powers anymore. She will wreck everything to get what she needs. In a physical fight with her powers, she is one of the strongest. There were do-gooder types who initially wanted her on a team, thinking she needed some good purpose. She blew them all away lmao. Having survived essentially torture, she's jaded and cynical and lives by "me first".
However....she would still do anything for her brother, even if she thinks he hates her. That was used against her very effectively. She will always be weak when it comes to her brother. Unless Zephyr finally manages to convince herself that she (quite literally) pushes people away whether she wants to or not and that she doesn't need ANYONE (which will likely never happen because Zephyr is still part Auretta), she will always be weak against someone threatening her brother or Cass.
TLDR: Auretta is really good at pushing the limits of her powers and fights smart when she isn't being goaded. Problem: she is very easily baited. Especially when it comes to her brother.
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the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.
women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.
what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.
i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.
fuck, man. write better material.
a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.
god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.
this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.
we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.
i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -
it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.
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"Dude," Steve says, pressing on his eyes because he feels like he's about to cry. "What the fuck."
"What?" Dustin squeaks, alarmed. "What? Steve, you're freaking me out!"
"Good!" Because Steve just worked eighteen hours and it's past midnight and he got thrown up on twice and there was a bed pan incident and even though he showered at the hospital he probably smells awful and it rained and he lost his keys so he had to take the bus and he's sweaty and tired and wet and cold and Dustin's DnD friend is hot. "I can't believe you'd do this to me!" Okay, maybe Steve's feeling a little delirious.
"Do what??" Dustin is full on shrieking right now. His hot friend is standing in their apartment looking more and more worried and hot.
"You didn't tell me he was hot!"
The expressions that go across Dustin's face is impressive, before they stop and he settles on a flat glare. "Seriously??"
Hot guy is now blushing and Steve will collapse if he doesn't keep with the righteous fury.
"I've been TRYING to get you two to meet for months now!"
"You didn't tell me he was hot, though! Dustin!!"
"I don't know what guys are hot, Steve!" Dustin says indignantly. "I thought you didn't like nerds!"
"Dustin!"
"Um," says hot guy. He looks like he's panicking.
Dustin's face changes again. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you're right."
"All this time!" Steve says and he really is close to tears. "You've been nagging on me all this time to find my soulmate, and you had the perfect guy right here?? You had him in my home??? Dustin!"
"Whoa," whispers hot guy.
"I'm sorry," Dustin wails now, just as distraught. "You love nerds, all your favorite people are nerds, I don't know what I was thinking, oh my god!" He whirls on hot guy. "Eddie, give Steve your number right now!"
"Okay," says hot guy Eddie, immediately. His face is super red and his eyes are wide, and he looks scared out of his mind as he fumbles his pocket for his phone. "Yeah-Yep-Absolutely. This is a thing that's happening."
Steve, tears burning in his eyes, watches as Dustin punches his number into Eddie's phone. "Okay," he says a little nasally, wiping quickly at his face. "Okay, I'm going to shower and then sleep for two days, and then pretend like this never happened so I can look hot guy in the eye when he asks me on a date. Sound good?"
"Sounds great!" Dustin says, all cheery now. Behind him, still looking vaguely scared for his life, hot guy gives him a shaky thumbs up.
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