really one of my favorite types of characters in the world it seems is. well i dont know how else to describe it but “losing the idgaf war” but theres at least 2 genres of this that ive noticed I Gotta Make an Image hold on
its like this. even better when a character has the range to be both
More and more often these days, in what is surely a sign that everything is just absolutely fine, I find myself recalling the wise words of the prophets written on the subway walls:
among my least favourite conversations i regularly experience in media analysis is when you interpret something as potentially alluding to an “uncomfortable” topic and people immediately start trying to defang it. “this reads like a rape scene” “umm actually it’s not rape, it’s just a very intimate act of violent assault that violates the victim’s sense of safety and bodily autonomy with NO 🙅 sexual connotations or elements”. you do realise that’s neither any better nor functionally different, right?
“this relationship resembles a traditional abusive marriage between a husband and wife” “well they’re not married or heterosexual so you’re wrong and an insane bigot for comparing them to such a horrible thing also” HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF A FUCKING METAPHOR???
For anyone keeping up with the Stranger Things “secret good finale” conspiracy (yes, it is just the Sherlock “secret good episode” thing with a new show.) the current theory is that tomorrow, in place of SNL, the actual finale of Stranger Things will air. They are presenting this as something plausible, and not something that Lorne Michaels would have beaten the Duffer Brothers to death over if they even suggested it.
The stranger things finale is going to drop on Martin Luther King Jr Day because Stranger Things embodies the values of MLK
in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.
Stop me if you hate the concept: short, fat, hairy lady gets isakai’d into a high fantasy, and instead of “oh look at all these ethereal elves woe for I am but a flawed mortal” routine she lands in Dwarf territory and is immediately revered as the most enchanting and desirable maid in all the land. This immediately becomes a zesty romantic drama. Thoughts
This myth is probably one of the oldest examples of brodudes, in this case Hellanicus of Lesbos, inventing reasons why women can’t do stuff men can without really thinking it through. Hellanicus also, in grand brodude tradition, tried to make amazons sound horrible but made them sound cool as fuck.
300 years later, other brodudes like Diodorus Siculus were writing fan fic to explain how it worked rather than just picking up a bow and trying some archery for themselves. The history that people cite to claim women were never warriors, is full of this kind of nonsense.
Ultimately though, the history and warfare is the history of innovation in the fields of harming others and avoiding harm. Just as boobplate was never really a thing, because it didn’t help anyone - warriors always found gain advantages over their opponents without self-mutilation or otherwise handicapping themselves.
Many of these innovations were things as simple was “wear a breastplate”, “use a bow”, “use a longer spear”, “use fire” and “set traps”. War is rarely about being fair to your opponent.
Also, a lot of assumptions people make about combat, just aren’t so, particularly when it comes to women in combat.
