The whole framing of Lestat as the sole symbol of patriarchy that fandom is so desperate to put him in doesn't work unless you deliberately ignore how he was also a victim of rape and abuse before he was turned. People want him to be fit into this strict role of "father figure/violent husband/perpetrator" that is only that and not even a whole person, and in doing so they need to push aside the fact that despite being his family's provider, he was also pushed into that role when his father forbid him from joining a monastery or gaining an education that he wanted. Lestat wanted to run away with a theater group as a kid, and actually managed to do so once Gabrielle gave him her blessing and monetary support in order to go to Paris. He didn't always want to be the provider, he was forced into that role and became despondent when he thought he would never get a chance to leave his home.

His new life prior to being turned is pretty much the antithesis to the whole "Lestat is a manly man who would sooner throw up than be compared to a woman" spiel: he lived with another man in Paris while also being an actor, having left his family and "responsibility" to them. The only family member he was ever close to was his mother, all the other male members shunned or ridiculed him. Add onto that the fact that his turning firmly placed him within the role of the damsel/victim: he's kidnapped from his bed by a stranger, taken into a tower and left to rot while being fed on for a week, before then being raped and violently turned all while never even being asked if he would consent to it in any normal circumstance. But you of course have to ignore all of this if you want him to only represent the aggressor/patriarch while Louis is the helpless unhappy matriarch of the family.

My issue isn't that I think Louis isn't a victim, it's that it's not unrealistic for Lestat to be an aggressor/abuser while also displaying traits that aren't regularly assigned to stereotypical depictions of male characters. He's abusive to Claudia while also having been a victim of abuse from his own family. He's not a good maker/teacher, but he also didn't even have one when he was turned. He's the provider/attempted protector of the family and seemed to like being that, while also having run away from his own family prior to this to act in a theater in Paris. He's a rich white man while also being obviously effeminate in public spaces, even to Tom's own bigoted humor.

Like Louis' own complicated story with being his family's benefactor and provider, you can't firmly place Lestat as being one thing or another in terms of gender ideals without deliberately ignoring parts about him that don't fit this. And I don't think it's an absolute necessity, when even in Louis' own story, Lestat isn't stripped of his effeminate mannerisms or behavior while also being the abusive maker/father/lover.

finally finished the priory of the orange tree after putting it off for like a year, and putting aside the fact that it's insanely boring, way too long, and the romance is lackluster, it certainly was a choice to, in a book at least in part about finding common ground and coming together, basically go "religion a is correct and good and its believers can continue on their merry lives, but religion b is a 100% incorrect wrong bad lie founded by a wrong bad misogynistic lying liar, and everyone who believes in it should convert and in fact we're going to end the book by heavily implying that the recently-converted queen is going to slowly but surely pressure the entire country to convert because their faith is wrong and bad". like that was certainly a decision that samantha shannon made.

There's a point at which disliking Rebecca just falls into vastly tired women-hating tropes lacking any nuanced thought and part of this fandom's definitely made it there

i know hoyo is setting up rhine to have good intent and whatever in her trying to 'save' khaneri'ah or whatever; but i REALLY hope they stay with the cruel persona thats been built up for her. because it would be so wonderful to see a character who had good intent in the beginning just get absolutely corrupted; with the inability to ever go back to that prior state purely because of what had happened. also because there is NO way in her turning back after all that shit

repeat after me: if you are the descendent of colonizers living on stolen land, you do not get to judge the methods of decolonial resistance movements.

*sighs in black girl*

lol so many bi radfems argue like reactionary manipulative queerio tras and liberals when they're called out for homophobia or told of their privilege ://

NARINES 4EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what if there were two guys that not only hated each other viscerally on a personal level but also everything they individually stood for and they tried to kill each other and there's no universe where they both make it and they have a hundred differences and a thousand similarities and they both die for drako and this started as a joke but why does narines lowkey go hard

narines will be an absolutely banger #Problematique rarepair when you're famous

i've been trying to figure out what the hell "fat" means to people lately because i discovered this is apparently much more highly subjective than i thought. to the point that using "fat" as a descriptor to a character almost gives no actual details except to say "not lean" because ideas of what people think is fat is either a large range of bodies that cannot be described as skinny or muscular, or specifically someone who is larger than a certain size (that excludes some people who are objectively considered plus-sized)

i have asked a few people close to me if they consider me fat and got a resounding "not even close?" if you look at the fanart i reblogged of Carrie, though, there's a few people i saw in the notes referring to her as fat. she has the EXACT same body as me! the proportions are almost spot on to mine!

anyways, i don't know what to do with this information but if anyone would like to offer me clarity, i'd love some.

I'm going to tattle on my coworker tomorrow wish me luck o7

like, I still think it’s sort of weird that Shonda Rhimes bought the rights to the Bridgerton novels, did a mediocre job at adapting the material and also kinda ruined one of the most popular pairings from the books in the process, and then proceeded to hyperfixate on her own OC to the point of creating a spin-off in which the central romance is about two members of a very white, slave-owning, racist and imperialist institution that could only maintain power through the exploitation of people of color all over the world, but now the protagonist is a black woman who’s about to end racism in 1700s Great Britain through the power of Love

I actually think that these claims that making fun of men is biphobic because bi women sometimes like men or even misogynistic (because I guess liking men is inherently part of being a woman) are actually themselves biphobic and misogynistic. the men a woman dates/likes are not an extension of her, and her personhood is not vested within them. there are unsettling implications here about women's agency in the process of who to date. I resent the assumption that having a mockable (and potentially genuinely awful) boyfriend is an unavoidable part of being a woman and therefore a protected characteristic???

This paper is actually going quite well.

Too bad it's complete bullshit.

Idk if you have watched she hulk but I wanna know, do you think they sexualized her a lot. I can’t help but think that

i think once you accept that she-hulk as a concept is supposed be an otherwise conventionally hot giant green woman (be she a mediocre cgi lady or a comic book lady), she's not really.... more sexualized than any other woman in the MCU? like i think you could argue making a "female hulk" a ten foot woman with perfectly coiffed hair and a ""yoga body"" and luscious carefully cgi'd eyelashes is like. you know, goes into that shitty "all females of the humanoid fantasy species are Sexy, even though the men are not" trope, which I'm not a big fan of. but i kind of like jennifer walters mostly scuttling around in an oversized suit and/or her PJs, and i did kind of dig she-hulk's first big "fight" being NOT a bunch of black widow-style sexy flying take-downs, but rather a ridiculous sibling wrestling match with hulk (i may have also been drinking with my own sibling when i watched it lmao).

like there IS an entire episode about how men on a dating website think she's hotter as she-hulk than as jennifer, but that was mostly played as social commentary (not necessarily GOOD social commentary, mind you), followed by an episode where she's forced to trot out all her dates in front of a judge, which I have mixed feelings about. and i guess there's a comedic bit where she twerks? so i'm not saying she's NOT sexualized, just that it doesn't really feel super egregious compared to some other media

i mean this amongst the material where we were Ever supposed to be at all on the same page about axe & wendy's nightmare quasiromance including that it was after the vicious pettiness stalking & relationship sabotaging from axe that we got the warmest & fuzziest rather than wendy finally reaching a breaking point, or know that it's not great if prince goes around taking advantage of young employees his kid's age but we would never disrespect that person by calling them a victim and also we can't even think too badly of him until he outright confirms (rudely!) he feels entitled, and then we also will actually do nothing about this save for eventually saying actually it looks bad if his wife also has sex outside the marriage, which would defy his entitlement

"But I don't want to see a movie about a toxic relationship where they're both fucked-up and do fucked-up things to each other" Cool, don't watch the "they're both fucked-up and do fucked-up things to each other" movie, then.