even before the transphobia came to light— jkr’s writing can be sooo cruel towards woman & girls for as much as she used to be celebrated as a ‘feminist’

like ginny is introduced as ron’s kid sister who has this big girlish crush on harry. this is mostly just very embarrassing for both of them. it’s fine, they’re middle schoolers.

then ginny has to be the damsel in distress for the second book finale which means she has to be vulnerable, she has to be manipulated (by voldemort’s diary), she has to do bad things (while possessed), and most of all, she has to be helpless and she has to be saved. this is some harrowing shit for an 11 year old to go through, but we don’t get much about it from her perspective bc it’s mostly there so harry and ron can be heroic and strengthen their friendship. ginny is still in the role of damsel by the end of this book.

a couple books later jkr decides to start setting up romances, so harry has a crush on cho chang bc she’s good at sports (which is cute). unfortunately for him, cho is dating harry’s cool seventeen year old crush friend & competitor, cedric digory, so harry is just crushing away, and cho doesn’t have much to do except for politely turn him down. ginny isn’t really important this book, irc i think she goes to magic prom with neville. ron and hermione have their own issues, but this book is mostly set up (both relationship wise & in the greater voldemort plot).

then in the fifth book, their relationship comes to fruition bc cedric died so now cho is single. she’s drawn to harry bc he was friends with cedric & he was there when cedric died , and she hopes that they can process their grief together. unfortunately, harry is having a lot of difficulty processing his grief, so he reacts badly when cho cries or wants to talk about cedric bc it reminds harry of his own feelings he’s trying to avoid. this would be fine on it’s own, except the fandom didn’t recognize harry as an unreliable narrator and began characterizing her as being “whiny” and “weak” and “annoying”. and it would seem like a fandom issue & not jkr’s misogyny, hermione even stands up for cho (although much of that grace is lost when cho/her friend narc to umbridge). meanwhile, ginny is getting cooler and cooler— joining the quidditch team, joining dumbledor’s army, dating boys to let us know she’s moved on from her childhood crush  on harry, and most importantly, joining harry & co at the climactic fight against voldemort, as a hero this time rather than a damsel. why is this a bad thing? it’s not, we love to see a girlboss winning.  but they way jkr writes romance puts these girls in opposition to each other.

in the sixth book, harry realizes he has feelings for ginny, and she is everything cho is not. actually, cho is what ginny used to be, and vice versa. to make sure we know ginny is no longer the vulnerable, emotional, “weak” girl harry saved in the second book, jkr gives these traits to cho instead, as she’s incredibly emotionally vulnerable after losing her first boyfriend, and was hoping that harry would be there for her when he couldn’t.  in dating cho, harry realizes that the reality of being in a relationship with someone is very different from crushing on them from afar, and while cho may be pretty & nice & good at quidditch, she isn’t someone he wants to date (again, mostly because they have incompatible ways of dealing with grief). which is fine, they’re kids, they’re still learning about themselves and other people.  except the fandom/jkr didn’t really delve into that complexity, and it was almost always reduced to saying that cho was “wrong” for harry and ginny is “the right one”.  she does this, proving one love interest is “right” by showing another as “wrong”, in an even shallower way with hermione, ron and lavender brown.  it’s exponentially worse because cho, and lavender in the first five movies, are non-white characters. 

harry starts to catch feelings for ginny, which has significantly more depth than his crush on cho because he’s known her for so long, but he still admires things like her skill at quidditch (lol), and how cool and popular she is, as well as her strong will and sense of humor.  but in order to be valid as a love interest according to jkr, ginny has to shed the traits that characterized her as a damsel in distress in the second book, ironically, a role that is often filled by the love interest.  this is actually kind of subversive, but not necessarily in a good way– rather than rejecting patriarchal lens of reducing women to “damsels”, jkr simply pushes this lens onto cho, (not with a rescue plot, but with character traits), saying that damselization is bad, not because it’s bad to objectify women, but because some women are badass and cool and “don’t need to be saved” and the ones who are weak and emotional and do need to be saved are worthy of derision. this pushes the burden away from the male gaze that sees women as damsels and onto women and girls who must reject “damselish” or “feminine” traits.  harry realizes his feelings when he sees how different ginny is now from the girl who had a huge crush on him, the girl he had to save from an evil snake, the girl who was sensitive and helpless, because she isn’t those things anymore.  but cho, from harry’s perspective, is. harry avoids her like he avoided ginny in the first few books bc their emotionality makes him uncomfortable. to be fair, harry doesn’t hate cho for these traits anymore than he did ginny early in the series, but the fandom certainly did (i use past tense bc the fandom now is… idek) and i believe jkr does too. 

by the end of the series, harry has cool, tough, funny, pretty, quidditch star, ginny weasley, and to be honest he really doesn’t share a lot of vulnerability with her.  even when he’s worried about being possessed by voldemort, he doesn’t think to ask ginny what that was like when it happened to her, because he “forgot”.  in the last book, harry even breaks up with her for several months “to protect her” rather than taking her on a dangerous camping trip with ron and hermione. this is reasonable enough, and i think it’s good that the series ends with the same trio it started with, but it does deny harry and ginny’s relationship opportunity to develop because they only really see each other at the very beginning and the very end of the last book.  so ironically, a lot of people don’t like harry and ginny as a couple (especially in the movies) because jkr was so sparse with vulnerability in their relationship.  both girls, both relationships, suffer from this “sensitive” vs “resilient”, or more shallowly, as it tends to be perceived, “weak” vs “strong” contrast between cho and ginny.  but ultimately, ginny is rewarded for shedding her girlish emotional sensitivity while cho is punished, not just for her own but for ginny’s as well, because she’s taking over ginny’s role as “emotionally sensitive girl” so ginny can rise to the “cool girl” pedestal now that someone else is being looked down upon for having feelings.

Do You Love The Color Of The 413?

Gordon/Barney/Alyx is really really funny to me conceptually bc it's like, two hot geniuses in their 20s who look at the 40-something smartass who hangs around and go 'yeah that guy. we both want him carnally'

hotel manager

having shut downs for two days in a row, decided to feel my feeling through jpegs

so yeah here is Astarion struggling after being captured (and saved) from cazador or smth, everything i knew is still random cutscenes with him recomended by youtube, but i love him anyway

(why is he fat - because)

May I request a vampire world Marcy?

you may. (I threw in a little vamp world Bonnie for you as well 🦇)

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

Can anyone who posts about stardew

Stop tagging their hate for a spouse in the spouse's main tag????

Literally it's so annoying trying to enjoy the npc I like and it's just getting spammed by people who hate the character.

It's literally called a salt tag or hate tag for a reason. Learn about it and stop filling up the main tag with your distaste for the character cause other people don't feel the same way.

We get it. Not every npc is going to be your taste. Just move on and stop spamming.

KP ANNIVERSARY week 2: Favourite Supporting Characters [1/?]

Big

in which ann takamaki is there

So I know I’ve made a bunch of points already but this one just occurred to me. At the end of season 1 (mentioned by Nancy is season 2) after the teens fight the Demogorgan, Nancy says she waits for Jonathan, and when he doesn’t give any indication she should be, Steve is there and they reconcile and get back together.

Now something about that I didn’t notice back when I first saw season 2 and am really putting together now— Jonathan is annoyed that Nancy didn’t wait for him when he needed time with his family after Will was saved. And it’s understandable that the Byers needed time after all that they went through in season 1, but Jonathan is annoyed with Nancy when she tells him she waited for him, “Yeah, like a month.” Meanwhile….. Nancy lost and is still mourning Barb! And Jonathan doesn’t acknowledge that at all when he complains about Nancy not waiting longer before getting back together with Steve.

But Steve was there for Nancy as much as he could be after they reconciled with Barb’s death. He obviously messed up by being unwilling to break the NDA they signed to tell the Hollands what happened to Barb and from Nancy’s perspective and place in mourning feels unsupported by him because of this but let’s rewind a little.

What we are left to infer between seasons 1 and 2 is:

Nancy AND Steve are having regular dinners with the Hollands

Although Steve is somewhat reluctant, he still goes and is a polite and pleasant dinner guest

Nancy and Steve seemed to have an overall good relationship until the anniversary of Barb’s death was creeping up

They were planning couples costumes, going to dinner with the Hollands, Steve spends Christmas at the Wheelers house, they drive to school together, Nancy has been helping Steve with his admissions essay, they’ve been talking about their future, etc.

And when I was thinking about all that they’d done together after season 1, I considered how it might’ve gone if Jon was in Steve’s place.

Would he have gone to regular dinners with the Hollands? Would he have wanted to expose the Lab and everything with the Upside Down if Will hadn’t gotten pulled back in?

Just how annoyed he was when he said she only waited a month for him— while he was reconciling with his lost brother…. And Nancy and the Hollands were still mourning Barb who had died?

I’m not faulting Jonathan for needing time with his family after everything that happened, of course he did.

And I’m not saying Steve was #1 Boyfriend of the year just because he went to dinner at the Hollands' with Nancy

But I am saying that Jon gave next to no thought about how badly Nancy was doing after they fought the Demogorgan in season 1. And while she was mourning and needed someone by her side to face the Hollands and lie to them while mourning with them, Steve was there while Jon wasn’t and I think Jon probably wouldn’t have been if Nance had waited longer for him.

It’s a theme you see throughout this show, a little bit before but especially after Nancy finally blows up and gives Steve the “thump on his head” that he later thanks her for— Steve is there, Jon isn’t.

pov them looking down at the mortals' questionable creations

bonus vv

them finding out about heimtreus ship

'they're so cute together' i find a bullet through my head more cuter than a kid shipped with an adult 😍

Going back to my roots and just blatantly drawing Zeph in whatever mcyt series I'm currently obsessed with. I think this is the closest I've gotten to actually explaining anything that's going on with them in my head in years

i travel across skies and seas of endless possibilities and yet you've caught my eye like how stars exist to die

my brain was joking about how wells and gin would be a good couple bc they both have scars over their eyes. then i genuinely thought abt it.,, and one thing led to another

wells is my oc gin!sans belongs to @dreemurr-skelememer

found out while putting together matthias's oc page that his name has the exact same etymology and meaning as theo's name...

i’m sure this is information matthias is very normal about…