|they/them|
♌
This is a personal blog, my other blogs are @ohwell-reblogs (where I reblog art, maybe some gifs or animations) @ohwell-itsme-but-danganronpa (self-explainatory, I mostly focus on the ndrv3 tho), outside of the tumbgle hell I have Ao3 under the same username as this blog, focused on danganronpa, mostly Ouma/Saihara or just Ouma
for the people who believe that when we say “american imperialism” we mean vietnam and iraq and thats the whole of it. most of these were massively devastating btw. and the military interventions are only a fraction of all that they have done and continue to do regardless of who is president
It turns out that actually standing by “men and women are not inherently very different” is a reliable way to bother absolutely everyone. Left or right, cis or trans, feminist or misogynist, all cling to the binary for dear life.
as much as I think most people who do color or body analysis just see it as harmless fun and don’t take it all that seriously, I do think there’s something insidious about the way appearance is getting increasingly formulaic. it’s not about wearing what you like or feel good in. it’s about what looks “best” according to a formula. don’t wear warm purple it washes you out. it doesn’t matter if it’s your favorite color. don’t wear turtlenecks they’re not flattering. it doesn’t matter if you love them. it feels like something only celebrities should be thinking about but suddenly it’s common. does this not seem miserable.
I do believe this time around I’m inventing the discourse. I’ve yet to see anything but positive takes on color and body analysis.
and to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it. I just think given social and political patterns and how fashion trends reflect them, it’s worth mentioning that no mathematical formula for “looking attractive” will ever beat wearing whatever makes you happiest. and it is weird that we’re trying to put a bunch of rules on how people style themselves when that’s one of the best ways to express yourself, given the times we’re living through. which could mean nothing.
idk shitting on women for their romantasy ‘read in 2025’ piles……. at some point u ppl are going to have to ask urself why u have this energy for women and their fuckass tiktok books but not men and their self help bs or men and their manga or men and their sci fi or or or like ur always making it about women and the dumb shit they do for fun. idc. that elf porn they’re reading doesn’t effect me and it doesn’t effect u either. go read ur beloved Babel again if it helps
still believe that one of the greatest bits of all time was on January 6th, 2021 when. well. you know. and twitter was understandably an echo chamber of panic and fear and Justin McElroy just tweeted a selfie with a filter that was like “have a delicious national spaghetti day” followed by 3 tweets that were like “fuck. i’m sorry. i don’t know how to delete scheduled posts” and as i type this two years later i’m laughing
a belated delicious national spaghetti day to you all
I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?
Supernatural
Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)
Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)
Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.
A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.
Arguably Game of Thrones.
If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.
In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.
They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.
And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.
It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won’t usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.
Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.
And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.
OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like “Hey folks, this girl’s getting us more viewers, let’s put her in more scenes!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. MEN don’t make sense to me.
The 100 too. I’ll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.
Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”
I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.
Doesn’t stop it from boggling the mind
(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron … 🤔)
Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isn’t the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.
Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.
(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)
Hey folks, for anyone that was interested in the thesis (firstly thank you so much for reaching out I really appreciate the interest) the following is an open access link to download it. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for some reason. Comments are now restricted so can’t put it there, but I hope you see this if you were interested!
I’d also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.
DINI: “They’re all for boys ’we do not want the girls’, I mean, I’ve heard executives say this, you know, not Ryan(?) but at other places, saying like, ‘We do not want girls watching this show.”
SMITH: “WHY? That’s 51% of the population.”
DINI: “They. Do. Not. Buy. Toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show—”
SMITH: “So you can sell them T-shirts if they don’t—A: I disagree, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as f-ing boys do, but, B: sell them something else, man! Don’t be lazy and be like, ‘well I can’t sell a girl a toy.’ Sell ‘em a T-shirt, man, sell them f-ingumbrella with the f***ing character on it, something like that. But if it’s not a toy, there’s something else you could sell ‘em! Like, just because you can’t figure out your job, don’t kill chances of, like, something that’s gonna reach an audi—that’s just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same fuckers who go, like, ‘Oh, girls don’t read comics, girls aren’t into comics.’ It’s all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, ‘I can’t sell ‘em a toy, what’s the point?’
ALT
