what’s the one culturally-saturated narrative trope that you kind of really incredibly hate and how would you subvert it and make it new and delightful
Anna said she hates the girl vs. girl fighting-over-a-boy trope, and I definitely agree, but I want to pick just a piece of that, specifically the idea that the narrative arc isn’t over until the girl who is mean / ambitious / manipulative / pushy / confident / promiscuous / independent is suitably punished for her sins. I love vicious girls, and I think we ought to celebrate them more. Tell a thousand stories about girls who murder for power, girls who kick hard-working deserving men out of the way for their own gain, girls who refuse to be cowed or beaten, girls who like their hands best when they’re bloody — or, conversely, girls who are super into delegating the dirty work to their devotees.
Sirens who lure ships onto the rocks. Medusa who turns men into stone. Female tricksters, female destroyers, ladies who want to sweep nice’s knees out from under it and kick it til it’s spitting blood. Yes. Yes. Women who like sex and have as much of it as they please. Women who don’t like sex and are never made to have it when they don’t fucking feel like it. Women who enact excellent vengeance and feel fantastic about it after. Women who are cruel for the greater good. Women who steal other people’s lovers. Women who want what they cannot or should not have and find a way to take it anyway. Women who go forth in honest battle and win. Women who stab their enemies in the back or use poison. Women who steal things.
Self-serving women. Straight women, queer women, asexual and/or aromantic women. (Tell me about all the women who don’t need or want to fall in love. Also tell me about the women who do, but don’t let that stop them from making planets explode.) Cis women, trans women, people who are women sometimes but then sometimes not, people who don’t know what they are. Women in heels, women in combat boots, women in ballet slippers, barefoot women. WOMEN OF COLOR. Women with tattoos and piercings and scars. Fat women. Thin women.
ALL THE WOMEN YOU HATE. :D
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Hey there! I'm a modern twist on Pride and Prejudice!
- Me: Oh, cool! I'll totally watch you!
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Awesome! Here, have some Lizzie doing some fun costume theatre!
- Me: Hooray!
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Have some Fitz, he's the coolest!
- Me: Oh, good, finally a show I can get into and not have feels about!
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Oh wait, I gotta take this ship you ship back, sorry.
- Me: Wh-what?
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Let's have Lizzie and her younger sister have a huge fight.
- Me: I-I wasn't expecting this.
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Let's have the younger sister date an emotional abuser.
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: While I'm at it, let me just burn everything you love.
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: And rip your heart out of your chest.
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: And throw you into the flames of hell.
- Me:
- Me:
- Me:
- Lizzie Bennet Diaries: *cheery end screen tune*
I am so sick of the systematic sexualisation of violence against women.
Walking into a DVD store, and seeing a terrified, half-naked woman crawling away from some masculine antagonist on the cover of every second horror movie.
Seeing how men talk about sex with us as “pounding”, “breaking”, “beating up” our bodies.
Seeing haute couture houses releasing billboard ads with frail-looking women with dead eyes in positions suggesting they have been murdered.
The voyeuristic, detailed coverage of cases involving mutilation-murders of women.
Perpetrating violence against our bodies is not ok. Packaging violence against us as sexy, for male consumption, is not ok.
