I’ve been having some Thoughts™️ about the weird meta paradox of gerri kellman’s sexuality. as basically The Older Woman on the executive floor she’s trying as much as is possible to blend in with her male colleagues while also not being perceived to be doing so. muted colours and understated makeup. a competent filing cabinet. her husband is dead and her daughters are nameless. she was sexual once but that’s out of sight out of mind and now it’s just the work. it must be a relief in some ways to become finally unfuckable because you’re over 40. she can finally be taken seriously, but only if she toes the line between being too female and not female enough. trying but not too hard. desirable in the past tense only. an honorary man but still in a skirt. and while the men around her can fuck their much younger assistants and get sports massages and run a sex trafficking ring on a cruise ship, she is the job and only the job and that keeps her safe. for a bit anyway.

the irony of gerri saving the company from the full legal extent of a sex scandal by dating someone from the DOJ??? like i’ll never be over it. even filing cabinets have to flatter and please and fuck when called upon. i genuinely don’t believe any of the other execs could have swung it because they’re not women. she dated laurie (generally unseen unless framed from another man’s possessive perspective) to save the men from going to jail for covering up rape allegations. the irony is delicious. and even though she did that, she’s discarded once she’s framed sexually. Dick Pic Gate was out of her control and yet when confronted with any element of gerri’s sexuality (even her PASSIVE sexuality, even after using it to save his company), logan dismisses her as weak or impractical or failing or whatever other excuse he uses to justify his disgust.

i would argue that roman’s interest in gerri is not in spite of but BECAUSE of her asexual framing. it’s a challenge that he’s never going to win which is ideal for his impotency issues; he can push and push and get the thrill out of it, out of the fucked up power dynamic, but he knows he’ll never have to actually fuck her. it’s all hypothetical: down a phone, through a door, half-joking, covered in sensible skirt suits. gerri’s deliberate lack of sexualizing is counterintuitively a turn-on for roman. and i bet the game of chicken they play is freeing for her too because the fact that she has to be professional and cannot be sensual is part of the fun of it. “roman is weird about gerri”. “it’s fucking disgusting”. not because of their family history, or their professional positions, but because she’s old. because the absence of her sexuality is enough of a presence to be off-putting. shiv patronising her about it as a power play is so weird because she’s talking to her simultaneously like a child and like an old woman, and gerri, agency-less, just has to keep reassuring her “i can cope”.

BUT it’s worse than that because it’s so meta. Because gerri is hot. her actor is attractive and like roman, many people watching find her sexless, no-nonsense framing to be titillating. me included. what if roman likes gerri not because of oedipal issues but just because she’s hot and god forbid we find a woman over 50 hot? but whether or not gerri is hot in the context of the show shouldn’t be a big deal, she should have been able to escape this by now!!! she’s in her 60s she’s a widow she’s tired stop sexualizing her!!! but don’t NOT sexualize her either because that’s problematic too and old women can be hot and old women shouldn’t have to be hot and suddenly i’m making gerri do what waystar does and exist as something sexual and non-sexual at the same time. she has a huge plotline in which she’s essentially a sex object. whether or not gerri is fuckable is talked about as much in the show with mildly-disgusted fascination as it is in the real world!!! she can’t win she’s hot she’s old she’s sexually framed she’s deliberately trying not to be she wants sex she doesn’t want sex she’s covering sex with sex and she’s telling roman to leave her alone so she can just do her damn job because she knows that this is what will bring her down!!! sex scandals historically don’t get men fired but an unsolicited dick pic knocks gerri off her podium in logan’s head forever. even now i’m talking about it at such length because i’ve given it so much thought!!! she’s the only woman in the old guard and she’s one of the most sexualized characters in succession. but only as a joke. in the abstract. never actually. because that would be weird. right?

Listen, can we ever (especially if you count TikTok) stop joking that on Earth 42 Aaron "took" Rio for himself? Because it's not fucking funny and it doesn't fit the character of either of them.

Does 42Rio look like a person who would look for someone after her husband's death? I mean, yeah, things happen and everything takes time, but did you see HOW she reacted to every mention of Jeff from Miles' mouth with or without context (the "Miles, please" scene)? She's clearly not handling Jeff's death any better than Miles G is, and so it's very unreasonable to think that she would really find a new man in such a short time, especially when it's her dead husband's BROTHER.

With Aaron, things are even simpler. In the scene where they talk, he clearly presents himself as Rio's "family," a kind of family friend who will help out in a difficult situation and help whenever possible. Plus, on his part (because even though he had a difficult relationship with his brother, he really loved and appreciated Jefferson), dating his dead brother's widow is at least strange, at most not very ethical. Believe it or not, despite all of Aaron's dark past, he (and especially his 42 version) is a GOOD MAN with certain principles and morals.

"But this is just a joke-". Yes, it is. And that's the worst part. You can't reduce the characters' grief to "haha, they're together now". You see the characters solely as sexualized objects and that is NOT a reason for jokes or pride. One more joke about how "I'm hitting on 42Rio because she doesn't have a man anymore" and I'll go bang my head against the wall.

Please see characters a little further than pretty figures with nice faces.

"no don't transition! please stay a dysphoric teenage 'girl' forever that's when you're most attractive to me! " 🤢 like SOMEONE is acting predatory here and it's not trans people 🤦

I knew legit nothing about paper girls going into it but I love it so much?? I’m having a great time

Phase four of the MCU really said we’ll do girl power....through female characters invalidating male characters trauma. 

People be like "oh cartoon characters have hardly any outfits" but you know who is really out in the trenches? Characters on the CD covers of 2000s-era audio drama who exist only in their outift from tv show in the 70s with an uber strong colour overlay filter.

One of the many things wrong with P5′s portrayel of sexual abuse and harassment is that the game tries, tries so very hard, to have Ann, who has experienced pretty terrible things in that specific way, as a sexy-dominatrix and honeypot character against her express wishes.

Like sure. I can see what you want. It’s stupid that this is the one recurring job at least one woman on the team has, but I don’t care. Make her a classic femme fatale with seduction as her job. But at least make her be okay with it!

community is so funny when theyre like oh my god look how sexy this character is acting etc, and it's just a young woman in form fitting clothes covering most of her skin.

people: RE3R is so bad they don't have Jill's sexy mini skirt and tube top as part of it people: Jill is not sexy enough in RE3R capcom: makes the licker scene capcom: is Jill and her tank top sexy enough now?

it makes me sad sometimes that jane seems to always be reduced to only the "mommy" survivor by people in the fandom, or a mentor figure to the others, and part of me worries that it has to do with her body type ( since as we all know, larger women are often relegated to "motherly" roles ), and while nobody in the rpc specifically has made me feel this way and you're all amazing for the most part i want to say this about my portrayal;

jane is a deeply complex, but also deeply broken woman. even prior to being taken by the fog she was suffering with stress that caused her to act erratically and with hostility, even when she seemed to be at her peak. yes, she wanted to be a role model to those around her, but at the state she's in emotionally upon her arrival to the fog, she's probably not a good one.

she's empathetic, kind, and diplomatic, yes! she's also willing to bodily attack a killer from out of a locker. she's used to fighting for the things she deserves, whether it's with carefully chosen words or a more literal manner. one of the biggest emotions she was feeling when she was taken was anger that she'd supposedly been lied to her whole fucking life, only to be treated like an idiot for it in front of millions of people.

do u ever think abt how og nibelheim flashback tifa's top wasn't a crop top but became one in like every later adaptation. even 15 yr old tifa is stuck with crop tops

aoi asahina for the ask game!! :]

She is so adorbaol :)))

Thank you for the ask!

İt's funny how sexualised dust ist. And how she is always pretty and sexy like yeah she is etc. But she is in modesty. She wears an niqab. Whole point is being modest and not attractive.

Like even with hijab you always need to be careful like your tunic is not too short or your curves are not so recognisable , your things are not too tight and she is drawn always like body latex suit but add skirt.

I even saw someone say to her her niqab makes her mysterious and sexy like this is so???