#that applies to all genders obviously

[transboykirito]

I wish Leafa was nicer to Recon :( He was in love with her and she dismissed his feelings… He was much kinder to her than Kirito or Klein but they’re who she wants to be with, clearly…

i’d rather see her keep trying to fuck kazuto actually

[biracy]

I think it's deeply unfortunate that conversations about "representation" have become dominated by the issue of gay representation and That's It. I'm someone who thinks mainstream gay representation matters, but I also understand why it's easy for so many people to go "well I don't NEED boring lame high school romcoms for LOSERS. The only 'representation' I need is like, idk, weird furry comics made by the fagdykes online! Become unmarketable!" when the only issue on the table for them is sexuality. But I think it's not useful to take that mindset and apply it to "representation" as a broader concept, because in my experience at least it becomes quite different when the issue is less "the only mainstream representation for me is something I find kind of boring" and more "I don't think I have ever seen a person who Looks like me be presented in mainstream media in a positive or desirable light" (which applies to all sorts of stuff including trans stuff, body stuff, disability stuff, race/ethnicity stuff, etc.) Obviously I love subcultures and I love niches and I love Finding Community With Other Freaks or whatever, obviously I love that! But I also, as someone who is of Many Overlapping Marginalized Identities, Kind of want to see people who look and act and live like me be presented as People. Visibly trans characters who have things going on besides just experiencing transphobia or gender dysphoria, openly Latino characters who have things going on besides just experiencing racism or xenophobia, neurodivergent or mentally ill or socially disabled or whatever characters who have things going on besides being Weird or Creepy for the sake of a joke, chubby or fat characters who have things going on besides being demonized or mocked or A Message About Body Positivity. Characters who are People, the way like. normie white guy characters get to be lmao, and not just tools to teach some kind of lesson. "You shouldn't look for that in mainstream media/pop culture" well why not? Why shouldn't a culture's popular media represent the people that make up that culture? Not everyone is an online 20something attuned to the best queer indie art of the decade, yknow, and people who exist outside of our subcultures deserve "representation" too. Ever since I was a little kid I had an affinity for openly Latino characters on TV or in books, and that hasn't gone away. Different kinds of people Exist and deserve to be seen in art that isn't relegated to being "alternative" or "niche." Because while I am alternative, it's not my body or my upbringing or my social problems that make me that way. No human being should be considered a "deviation from the norm." Don't let art and culture forever belong to those who have deemed themselves "the norm" through continued subjugation

[devoted-assassin]

I love leo/need fans because some other unit fans can be pretty cutthroat with each other when it comes to ships, but l/n fans just go “ah all together is good.”

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the whole "Fandom Is An Escape, so why should I have to care this much about misogyny/racism/ableism/transphobia/etc." thing. Idk about the rest of you, but it gets kind of hard for me to "escape" when I keep seeing people say the same vile things about characters who share aspects of my identity that I hear all the time in real life.

[kirbyskisses-main-moved]

shout out to long haired anime blondes who view expressing themselves through feminine clothing, regardless of gender identity, as the highest form of love.

gotta be one of my favorite genders.

[teja-has-puppet-autism]

y'know sometimes I go to make a post on this here webbed site, and I almost always end up deletin it cause I measure it through the "how widely applicable is this" + "how horribly can people twist this" metrics and it just stops my little fingies from typin

(this turned into me typing an essay in the tags cause I very much did need to process some shit lmao)

[urgrossdaughter]

growing up ugly fucks you up, because you have low standards for yourself even though you're hotter now because you used to tie your self worth to your looks because of bullying and now u still see urself as ugly so ur standards are low and everyone around you is like shaking you by your shoulders "why would you date him?!?!"

and yes ofc ugly guys can be good to date, but often they are so insecure about their height or their looks or weight that they deflect their insecurities and treat their girl like shit so its just embarrassing.

[faithfromanewperspective]

can’t wait for the everlasting debate ‘but doesn’t feminism mean you treat women the same so if you’re gonna hit people you can hit women’ to turn to other marginalised groups too. like if it’s okay to call a white person a stupid white bastard we wanna treat people of colour the same right—

[weirdnerdygoat]

I'm doing far too much introspection lately, can't i just go back to calmly reading fiction?

[cliveguy]

such a genre of tme people on here who actually do not care about transmisogyny at all until they use it as an excuse to be extremely weird towards trans men

[yandereocs]

Honestly…your yanderes but with like horror.

Elijah sewing on some rabbit ears to his darlings skull so they’re more like his sister

Villain bonnie sewing her darlings eyes shut so they have to blindly follow her

Forgotten bon just…making her darling go insane from the void and their body warping into something indescribable

karro.

hehehe

* This is absolutely horrifying and I love it

* WHERE'S THE MORE FUCKED UP ASKS PEOPLE ‼️‼️

* But this is

* AHHHH

* I wish I had like a canon Darling design so I could DRAW THIS

* LIKE THE ELIJAH ONE??? THAT'S SO TERRIBLE AND HORRIFYING?? WHICH MAKES IT SO AWESOME?? LIKE BRO WOULD DO THAT

* He's such a creep. He'd definitely make his Darling look more like his sister. Force them to have long, curly black hair and sew the ears on. EUGH HE'S A CREEP AND THAT'S SO FUN TO IMAGINE SCENARIOS FOR

* AND VILLAIN'S ONE OH MY GOD SHE'S ACTUALLY INSANE AND BRUTAL ENOUGH TO DO IT

* She would sew her Darling's eyes shut and then lead them around on a little leash, like the pet she treats them as. So much easier now that you have no choice but to ACTUALLY blindly follow her

* AND THE FORGOTTEN BONNIE ONE BROOO SHE'D DO THAT JUST SO SHE ISN'T ALONE

* The void warps people. It destroys their mind and makes their bodies into former husks of what it once was. It's what happened to her. She'll comfort and guide you through it, she promises

* And I love how the last one just says 'karro.' like yah so true bestie you popped off

[catgirlknighted]

certain blogs: women do not interact

certain other blogs: men do not interact

me: jokes on y’all, I’m neither & this shit doesn’t apply to me 😎

[cruelsister-moved2]

butch is literally not part of any gender binary and there is absolutely no compulsion on anyone to like ‘fit in’ to a binary of butch/other in fact there will always be overwhelmingly more pressure on butches to be just a little bit less butch so thinking you can transpose progressive takes about men onto butches e.g let butches wear makeup or theres no way to look butch or whatever is literally just regressive like, understand that unapologetic embrace of butchness feels like home & freedom for some people, and no one is under any compulsion to live up to some standard in the way men are under a compulsion to live up to a standard of masculinity and women to femininity. so if it FEELS like youre under pressure to live up to a standard it literally just might not be a useful term for u thats all* * w the caveat that like butches can be short and trans and fat and disabled and not white etc and may often have their butch identity questioned for these reasons and held to the standard of a thin rich white abled cis butch w a sharp jawline BUT thats obviously a v different thing from like... i really want to wear winged eyeliner but i feel CONSTRAINED by OPPRESSIVE butch expectations or like wow SMASHING GENDER ROLES by depicting this butch character in a dress!!11!! which is clearly giving, u directly conflated ‘man’ and ‘butch’ in ur mind which is literally just misogynistic and stupid and now u think ‘let women wear dresses and makeup 🥺🥺🥺’ is a take

[cutemeat]

i haven’t been keeping up w the podcast lol. what’s charlie saying?

I haven't been keeping up as much either tbh but even before the podcast charlie's take on "politics" has always annoyed me. ofc I don't know him personally or privately, so I can't say what kind of person he is. but the kinds of things he has said publicly have been off-putting to me. like he comes across as a hard centrist, but in the particularly annoying "I'm not into politics!" or "that's none of my business..." way, even when he seems to have an opinion he wants to assert.. which is just not something I really admire lol. but again this is all my reading of the situation, idk.

[rottingsick]

I don't understand ppl who complain abt how they feel that bein in a relationship with a man is such a chore and bothersome like...... just don't date one then? ngl it's kind of shit of you to date someone who cares for u and loves u and u just think they're a piece of shit chore idk lmao

[suzannahnatters]

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!