Tag: feminist portrayals

In the world of superheroes, because it’s such a melodramatic world with operatic undertones to it, most of the best ones have some sort of tragedy, deformity, or disability that is meant to add depth and poignancy to their heroism, whether that’s Bruce Wayne sobbing over his parents’ bodies or Bruce Banner forced to live a life of emotional repression in order to keep his dark side at bay. You could argue that Peggy’s cross to bear is Steve’s death, but we’d argue right back that she’s mourning him in a more or less normal, human way and her grief seems to be following a healthy evolution. No vows to dress like a flying rat over his grave or anything. She’s just taken what she’s learned from him and letting his memory inspire her. No, her cross is even more basic than that. In order to protect her mission from her co-workers, Peggy has to become the bumbling, ineffective Clark Kent/Peter Parker type, hiding her victories and strength from the very people she so desperately wants to notice them. And because this show is using the patriarchal and chauvinistic attitudes of the day as a backdrop for this story, Peggy’s sacrifice becomes all that much more poignant. She has to pretend to be dumber than she is and take no credit for her work in front of a group of men who already think it’s an insult that she be allowed to work alongside them at all. Peggy Carter’s kryptonite IS the patriarchy.

Tom and Lorenzo on Agent Carter, “Time and Tide” (via clairemactavish)

And yet fanfiction is an inherently transformative work which, by its very nature, strives to address or change some flaw that exists in canon, even if that flaw is “why isn’t there more of this thing?!” Fanfiction has addressed the lack of gay men by making straight characters gay; it’s addressed countless cultural misappropriations with wildly varying AUs; it’s addressed canon plot holes and timeline issues with fix-it fics and crossovers. Fanfic is the show your show could be like, if only you dared to dream.

But for all its transformative nature, fanfiction and fandom still suffer from a real dearth of femslash. Beyond the simple fact that very few girls exist in canon materials, the societal emphasis on the male gaze seems to have affected fanficcers’ creativity to such an extent that even in our own fantasies, we cannot give women a fair shake. Just as the answer to “Why is there so much slash?” cannot be boiled down to “ Well, straight girls are horny”, the answer to “Why isn’t there any femslash?” cannot be boiled down to “Well, straight girls don’t care.” The bias against female characters and female pleasure is an ingrained, institutionalized problem which won’t go away on its own.

Conclusion of Lady Geek Girl and Friends’s fascinating article on femslash and fandom (do give it a read if you’re interested!)

interesting

(via spiralstreesandcupsoftea)

10 Things Agent Carter Did Right

xmenthefanficseries:

The seven tests that Agent Carter passed in two hours, and the three it thankfully failed. (Spoilers)

1. Passes the Mako Mori Test:

  • The Test: “The show has a) at least one female character, b) who gets her own narrative, c) that is not about supporting a man’s story.”
  • Peggy Carter isn’t kicking butt because she’s trying to prove herself to anyone, she’s doing it because she wants to help people. That’s why she joined the SSR back in WWII, it didn’t change when she met Rogers, and it hasn’t changed since she lost him.

2. Passes the Bechdel Test:

  • The test: “The show has a) at least two women; b) who talk to each other; c) about something besides a man.”
  • This is the lowest bar for female representation and not only does Agent Carter pass, but an entire sub-plot is nothing but two females talking to each other about everything but guys.

3. Passes the Oracle Test:

  • The Test: “The show has a disabled character who a) is not there ‘to be fixed’; b) whose narrative does not revolve around the disability; c) does their job while having a disability, not in spite of having a disability.”
  • Sousa is a wounded war vet who may not be able to chase down bad guys, but he has a voice in the group and does his job. He’s not trying to prove anything, nor does he have something to prove. You might even forget he’s disabled because it’s simply a part of who he is, not what he is.

4. Passes the Phryne Fisher Test:

  • The Test: “The show has a female character who a) has a traditionally masculine job; b) does not masculinize herself for the sake of the job; c) uses her femininity to her advantage; d) is not sexualized in the narrative.”      
  • Peggy is allowed to be herself, and that means wearing whatever makes her comfortable. She wears skirts, has her hair done up, and her makeup is on point, for her, not for an audience who might want to sexualize her. And when she needs a day off to go hunt down bad guys without her boss knowing, she has no qualms in using his chauvinism against him. She even threw out that line about ‘until I’m married’ to convince the land lady to rent her an apartment. 

5. Passes the Sexy Lamp Test:

  • The Test: “Can you replace the female character with a sexy lamp? If so, then you’re a hack.”
  • Just because Peggy is the title character doesn’t mean she can’t be overshadowed by her male counterparts. In Agent Carter, Peggy is more likely to hit you with a sexy lamp than be the sexy lamp. Angie also passes the sexy lamp test as the supporting character.

6. Passes the Lottie Test:

  • The Test: “The show has a) character(s) who rival the main character’s job or love interest; b) have reasonable skill in the job or allure for the love interest; c) are likeable or at least respectable.”
  • This fails when a rival is made either a complete idiot or horribly unlikable, but only to make the main character look good. In Agent Carter, Jack is chauvinistic but no more than expected for the time period. He’s intelligent and stays only a few steps behind Peggy who had an advantage over him because Stark confided in her. But this only gave her a head start, Peggy has to use her smarts and wit to keep ahead of him which only showcases how clever she is.

7. Passes the Brittle Sword Test:

  • The Test: “Even a warrior’s sword has to be able to bend, otherwise it becomes brittle and breaks.”
  • Peggy is certainly very strong but when her friend is killed, she first kicks a lot of butt, and then takes a moment to mourn and cry. Peggy is not made to look cold and heartless in order to make her appear to be a strong character, she’s allowed to have emotions.

8. Fails the Pantomime Test:

  • The Test: “The female character can be swapped with a male character, with little to no edits, and the narrative still makes sense.”
  • Peggy’s character does follow several tropes typically seen in male led storylines, but her characterization and personal plot points are uniquely feminine. Her fighting blatant chauvinism, her difficulty in finding a safe place to live, and other aspects of her story would not make sense if Peggy was Peter.

9. Fails the Moonlighting Test:

  • The Test: “The main character a) is given a partner or work rival; b) this character is immediately set up to be the love interest; c) and they may be instantly despised by the main character in order to force sexual tension.”
  • Peggy is given a partner, Jarvis, and a rival, Jack. Neither are set up as the love interest. This means that her interactions between them are not meant to further a ‘will they, won’t they’ sub-plot, but to actually further the plot. This serves to give Peggy, Jarvis, and Jack their own identities.

10. Fails the 9 to 5 Test

  • The Test: “The female character a) has no female friends outside of work; or if she does a) she spends over half the time talking to said friend about work and/or relationship; b) the friend does not help to further character development; c) they are only there to bounce exposition off of.”
  • While there is mention of Peggy’s job at ‘the phone company’, she spends most of her time talking to Angie about customers, apartments, and other girls. Peggy’s reluctance to put Angie in danger shows character evolution. Angie gives Peggy an existence outside of her work environment and offers more facets to her character.

allofthefeelings:

montyashley:

allofthefeelings:

teabq:

allofthefeelings:

allofthefeelings:

IN THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE THE AO3 PROBABLY HAS A WHOLE SECTION ON THE CAPTAIN AMERICA ADVENTURE HOUR.

I BET PEOPLE GET INTO FIERCE FIGHTS OVER WHETHER IT COUNTS AS RPF OR FPF

Bucky/Steve was probably the Kirk/Spock of the MCU.

Also? You just know there were little girls who wanted to play and write fic where Betty Carver was a badass lady who worked to take down Hydra no matter what Cap did.

And said little girls were probably told they were doing Betty totally OOC and to stop making her into such a Mary Sue.

HEY SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS BECAUSE THIS IS MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT ADDITION TO ANY POST ON TUMBLR AND I’M INCLUDING THE PERSON WHO DEFENDED THE EYEBROWS-ON-MONA-LISA PERSON BY TALKING ABOUT PARENTS MEETING IN CLOWN CARS IN THIS ESTIMATION.

Because this is it. This is the meta-statement we’ve been waiting for. This is the explicit textual acknowledgment, within the Marvel universe, that some of the earlier beloved stories about favorite characters got things wrong. They misrepresented things. They played up the accomplishments of (say) the dashing straight white man, while minimizing the role of others.

This is the closest we’re probably ever going to get within the universe, rather than within the metatext, to the idea that women as “Mary Sues” is bullshit, and the real truth is that women were amazing all along and the text was biased towards a straight white male perspective.

This is the permission (not that we ever needed it, but good to be granted anyway) that we can look at early comics and movies and say “Oh, I see, this is the part where Pepper or Peggy or Betty or Jane or whoever saved the day but the story had to pretend it was the guy.” By making this explicit within the MCU, they are (perhaps inadvertently, IDK) giving the same permission to us in the real world.

I’m not saying this is actually what was intended, but I would argue this is a valid reading supported by the text.

This reading works really well on the Fantastic Four. The earliest stories tended to concentrate more on the three men, but Sue eventually got “powered up” so she was on par with them. This can easily be interpreted as the stories slowly having to catch up with what was actually happening.

YES.

Some poor comics editor in this ‘verse had to be like “Sir, we have a problem. People are finding these comics unbelievable.” “Is it the man on fire or the man made of rock?” “No, those are fine, obviously. It’s just- seeing how competent the Invisible Woman is on the streets of their hometowns is making them question the Invisible Girl in our stories.”

A misogynist writer, a feminist portrayal and me: why I can’t choose a side

I know there’s a lot of hate about Steven Moffat, and from what I can tell, a lot of it’s justified, but I haven’t really weighed in much on it, because I am incredibly conflicted.

Why?

Because I was a girl in the late ‘80s and early ’90s, and like a lot of girls my age, I found Press Gang. It was such an important, unique, groundbreaking show in so many ways, and it gave me a role model who I still hold in my echelon of favourite female characters. Lynda Day.

She was strong willed.
She was ruthless.
She didn’t care about fashion.
She had ambition.
She advocated for herself and her profession with all her might.
She wasn’t perfect, and at times, she was just plain wrong and unlikable.
She was never punished for her sexuality.
She was willing to use that sexuality if it got her what she wanted, but she was never a slave to it.
She was hard and even cruel to people around her on a daily basis, but she would fight for their job security and for their freedom to tell the truth in their articles.

As a girl who’d spent her life abused, manipulated and shamed into conforming, Lynda Day showed me that you didn’t have to make nice, you didn’t have to play by the rules, and you could carve your own path. And without Steven Moffat, she never would have existed.

I’m not saying that everything I’ve changed about my life and become since is owing to him. It’s not. It’s down to me. I did all that, myself, and I earned all the kudos. I’m not that scared, shamed, traumatised little girl any more because of a lot of reasons. But one of the first female characters I latched onto, that set my feet on the path to being something better, was Lynda. And I can’t wish for a world where she didn’t exist.

But I agree with you. It bothers me that I’m always told that I do strong female characters. When in reality, I look at my characters and I feel like they were all broken. They all came from a very devastating past. They were trying to achieve something, they had hope, and they wanted to get someplace, like everything other character that has a meaningful and relevant arc in the story.

It’s because we don’t really know women. We don’t write women accurately. We don’t see women the way that we should see women as a society, as a human race. When you see a real woman, you shouldn’t be saying she’s strong, you should be saying she’s real.

I’m not saying that Gamora is an exception, but you look at my character in Columbiana, and she’s stealthy, she’s agile, she’s physical. But even if I wasn’t physically agile, she would still carry the baggage of whatever happened in my childhood. And I handle myself in the way that I feel a woman should be. I don’t create it. It’s just something that comes natural.

So when people think they are paying me a compliment, in reality what we are saying as a society and as an art society, is that we need to focus more on the real aspect of what a woman is, and not the superficial cosmetic features of a woman as a muse to inspire us to create calendar girls. To create bombshells. To create serviceable characters, beautiful paintings of the girl with a pearl earring: if there’s nothing there behind it, it’s just her face – what’s the story?

Zoe Saldana, speaking to Den of Geek. These musings in particular are so wonderfully expressed. (via pixiegrace)

What were your inspirations, especially since [Tauriel] is a completely created character; what brought you to bring that power because there were a lot of ways you could have played that role that would have been along the lines of what we usually see for a girl in an action movie where she’s not in the adventure, she’s the prize…?

venitinmentem:

hawkeyforthecup:

gallifreyanconsultingdetective:

dianeraeb:

siriuus:

do action movies know they can have more than one female character

Someone should make an action movie with all girls except for one guy and have no explanation or mention of it in the movie and then pay all of the actors to act surprised like they’d never noticed when they get the inevitable storm of questions. 

This one male must have a shower scene, be saved by the protagonist at least once, and fall in love with a lead female.

also these women all need to be capable of both kicking ass and killing people with guns as well as cleaning up nicely and doing recon at a charity event while the one male character seduces a rich person.

I petition this male character is played by Jeremy Renner.

Maybe have a scene of him working out, shirtless, with the Chrises, but all they do is talk about their identity as it relates to women in their lives.

jabberwockypie:

wolvensnothere:

kalimayablack:

Announcing TOWER! The game of a Princess tired of waiting.

A retro-styled top-down fantasy adventure-story game. Scheduled for release 20 July 2014.

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Starring a Princess taking control of her own destiny, and a magical cat with strong eyeliner game.

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Based on an original idea by Rachael Roach, made with love and lots of swearing by Kali Black.

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Things this game definitely includes:

  • flexibility for different play styles
  • trope subversion
  • feminism dragons
  • a level shaped like a butt
  • chainmail banana hammock
  • underdressed dudes
  • references to Zork, The Princess Bride, The X Files, and more
  • meme

Things this game definitely does not include:

  • metal bikinis
  • doomguys
  • damsels in distress
  • manpain
  • women in refrigerators

System requirements

Windows 2000 or better
1.0 GHz Intel Pentium III equivalent or better
256MB RAM
400MB available hard disk space

seriously this will run on just about any computer made in about the last 10 years no trouble

PREORDERS? YES PREORDERS!

20% discount for preorders (preorder price US$3.99, price at release $4.99).

No signup required. Secure payment processing via Stripe. Checkout and automated delivery via GetDPD.

PREORDER HERE

Note: please make sure that you provide a valid email address, as your download link will be sent to the email address you use during checkout.

Another note: If you use a script blocker, you only need to allow dpdcart.com

Final note: if for any reason the above link doesn’t work, it may have been updated, so try this page:http://kalimayablack.tumblr.com/tower

Hey. Can I be straightup with you, for a second? You want this game.

It is fun and it is funny and it is creepy and scary and trippy and wonderful and, again, fun.

You Want This Game.

Reblogging because this sounds AWESOME and I’ll buy it when I can afford to (after car stuff and all that).

The person who wrote up the list of things the game includes clearly knows how to get my attention!