I Feel I Need To Write My Understanding Of Their Characterization. There’s Always So Much That Comes

The Constant Struggle

Commenting on fics I like is very difficult, because as a writer I want to take the time to write a detailed comment describing all the little things I liked, how they developed the story, and the bits about their characterization I especially enjoyed.

As a reader, I just want to take their face firmly in my hands, lean in close, and say ‘THAT WAS SO GOOD’ while maintaining steady eye contact until they truly understand.

I always loved his voice. It’s so sweet

Jenson: Who was that anyway? Was that an F3 driver or something?

Wanna read this later

furiosa vs. tropes for women in action

This is the second in a series of posts about Mad Max: Fury Road. All contain spoilers.

Read Part 1, a general review of the movie, here.

Read part 3, about Max, here.

Mad Max: Fury Road has already inspired some of the most intense fandom I’ve seen, and been part of, in years. I think it’s partially due to the sheer intensity of the sensory and emotional experience the movie delivers. But let’s be honest. A lot of it is due to Furiosa.

The character has already inspired an outpouring of fan art and cosplay. Even among movie fans who aren’t part of those scenes, people who love her REALLY love her. (And I wholeheartedly include myself in this category.) I can’t remember the last time that multiple, grown-ass adults on my Facebook feed had profile pictures referencing a movie character. Several of them–men and women–have this one:

Art by Hugo Dourado.

Why has Furiosa inspired so much passion? I think a lot of it has to do with the way she blows a giant flaming hole in the standard images for women in action films.

While recent years have given us some fantastic action heroines, they tend to be confined within a few set tropes, with remarkably little variation.

Of course, by far the most common trope for women in action is still to be the person being rescued–to be the prize the protagonist, usually a man, gets at the end of the journey. There are whole franchises built around this concept. I think we can all agree that’s boring and not worthy of a blog post.

But even among women characters who have agency in action movies–as protagonists or as villains–there are still some basic patterns that recur again and again. In particular, there are three basic templates that a large majority of female action characters fall into. The point is not that these tropes, in and of themselves, are wrong. It’s that they’re often all there is.

1. The Girl Hero

This is the default trope for YA. Katniss in The Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent…you’ve seen it many times.

Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games

The Girl Hero is virginal (often unusually non-sexual for a teenager). She’s usually small or skinny, sometimes for a logical reason (Katniss grew up starving), sometimes not so much. She seems like an underdog, but proves to be surprisingly good at violence and/or have some unique skill, and through her bravery and grit takes on foes much bigger than she is.

Tris, Divergent

It should be said that plenty of male YA characters share these characteristics–Harry Potter is also small and skinny, a novice in the world of magic, but unusually skilled at a few things. He doesn’t win his battles through physical strength, but through cleverness and bravery. And there’s an understandable appeal in having a scrawny underdog, of any gender, turn out to be a hero, especially in a book or movie geared toward young people. But with a few exceptions (see: Tamora Pierce) the Girl Hero with these qualities is THE template for young women in action/fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction.

2. The Sexpot

When the Girl Hero grows up, she can be properly objectified as a different trope, the Sexpot.

Lara Croft: poster girl for this trope

You’ve all seen this trope in the many, many superhero and comic book movies that are currently squirting out of the studio pipeline. She’s that one token woman on the team with four guys.

Yeah, that one.

The Sexpot gets to fight–and sometimes even gets artfully bloody and dirty–but she has to do it in a latex suit and while appearing cool and sleek and having a good hair day. (She has long hair, so she can flip it, and so we’re extra sure she’s a girl.) Her fight style is extra bendy and flippy and maybe when we break out the slow motion. She may use her sexiness as a weapon (a la Black Widow) or it may be just a bonus quality. She can be powerful, but only if we can look at her conventionally attractive body move around in tight clothing while it’s happening.

3. The Ice Queen

The Ice Queen is almost always the trope for female villains. She sits at the top of some kind of power structure–a state or a criminal enterprise–issuing commands to her minions but rarely doing the violence herself. She’s probably got a sharp suit or a uniform and a severe haircut. 

Delacourt, the villain of Elysium.

She’s allowed to be older than 35.

President Coin, Mockingjay

The Ice Queen has institutional power but rarely fights; physicality is the low pursuit of men in her world. She may be smart, crafty and manipulative, but she will not punch you in the face. She’ll snap her fingers and get someone else to do it, although she may sit on the edge of her desk to watch.

Jeanine, the villain of Divergent

Maya, Zero Dark Thirty–an Ice Queen protagonist, sort of

The point here is not that there’s no variation on these themes. And there have been iconic female action characters who stood totally outside them before. Alien’s Ellen Ripley and Linda Hamilton as the original Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, doing pull-ups on her mental hospital bed frame, come to mind as the most obvious.

But it’s striking how often the women that do exist in the thriller, action, sci-fi and speculative fiction film universe fall into one of these three boxes. Which is why any character who doesn’t map onto one of these templates is so exciting.

Here’s Furiosa.

She fights a hell of a lot. She does not flip her hair.

She’s intensely physical, but you never get the sense that her fights are choreographed to perform her sexuality for you. They’re choreographed for her to fucking win.

When Max shows up, they have a knock-down, drag-out fight with each other. Max doesn’t pull any punches. Why? Because he makes no assumptions that she’d be less lethal to him than a man. They beat the shit out of each other in a big, messy, grunty, scrabbly fight.

For significant portions of the movie, Furiosa is driving a truck, which means Charlize Theron is essentially acting from the biceps up. You literally cannot look at her boobs. You have to look at her face.

She gets to be dirty. Really really dirty. This picture alone highlights how weird it is that all the other women above are so clean.

She gets to be ugly and make weird faces in the middle of fighting.

She gets to yell and be angry the way one might be in the middle of a nonstop road battle when you’re full of adrenaline because you’re fighting for your life.

In short, she gets to look like an actual person who is actually fighting, instead of a statue that can do a back walkover with the help of a wire rig.

So it’s hardly surprising that she’s racked up a lot of fans. She takes all the images of clean, pretty, carefully sexualized women we’re used to seeing, even in action, rips them to shreds, sets them on fire and then drives over them with an 18-wheeler.

This is all even more remarkable given that Furiosa is played by an actress who is very feminine-presenting in her everyday life. Charlize Theron is one of the very few actresses who’s been allowed to pick roles where she radically changes her gender presentation.

Here she is in Aeon Flux, playing about the most Sexpot-y character imaginable:

Here she is in Monster:

I think there are a lot more actresses out there who could take on these kinds of transformations, radically altering the way they look, move, and perform their gender, the way male stars do all the time. But the equivalent depth and diversity of roles for women just doesn’t exist in Hollywood right now.

Furiosa’s popularity shows how starved we are for images of women who are actually powerful and physical in the same ways that men get to be in blockbuster after blockbuster after blockbuster. It’s not that all the images of women in action have to look like this–it’s just that we hardly ever see a female fighter who looks this way. Furiosa reminds us that there is so much more out there than we’re getting in terms of what women can do and look like on screen.

An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support

[Part 1][Heroin/Addicted]New BTS footage pics/videos

! The uploader is 砍姐儿, not really sure how she got these footage stuff but she's been a fan of YZ since 2016 (or maybe she was a staff of Addicted film crew??) !

• Vid 1: Interview for Men's Uno magazine - March 2016

(You guys can search for the official video with Engsub on YouTube. Tumblr only allows 1 video per post so I will upload the 2nd video on another post)

• Trans: "Nowadays the way films with double male leads choose actors are suitable for the sentence 'Those who have dreams/desires are remarkable'.

So in the future may I see Addicted 2 with the original cast before my children get married..."

• New pics again:

• Trans :"Yinzi's handmade (scarf). There are really many holes ~

Dahai's bicycle... Still fine after being thrown many times, but got lost right after 1 day being left outside."

Save The Blogs!

Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.

Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.

(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)

I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there. One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.  

This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress

I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.  To break it down, just in case:

 Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go. On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.

Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.

It will tell you if that option is still available for free.

Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.

Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr! The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.

Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers”  at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.

Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically. You’ll have to allow Wordpress permissions on your blog.

Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.

Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!

ALSO!!

I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.

This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access. To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick. tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.  I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.

@gallusrostromegalus @kaciart @lena221bee @deadcatwithaflamethrower

@norcumi @deandraws @morn-art, @thebisexualmandalorian @kristsune @marloviandevil @punsbulletsandpointythings @protagonistically @cris-art @elfda @fish-ghost @godtierwonder @heartslogos @haekass @iesika @incogneat-oh @itispossibleihaveissues @jaegervega @jhaernyl @the-last-hair-bender @kleine-aster @latenightcornerstore @lectorel @medievalpoc @mgnemesi @me-ya-ri @myurbandream @peskylilcritter @cywscross ,@cheshiresense @varevare @victoriousscarf @whatsmeantobe @swpromptsandasks @gabriel4sam @stonefreeak @brighteyedbadwolf @pumpkin-lith @puzzleshipper @suzukiblu @myurbandream @lacefedora @jademerien

There are a whole bunch more, but that’s a start. Please reblog the hell out of this, so people are aware of this one simple option.

a more personal post

this tumblr has been, for most of its existence, just a way for me to reblog privately any posts I wanted to keep for myself, of any fandom I've been part of through the years, with a very poor (read, non-existent) tagging system.

However, over the past few years, I have been going through a rough patch with an important person in my life. This person was someone with whom I could discuss things, fandoms yes, but also just anything in my life. As the rough patch has been quite continuous, I find myself needing to exteriorize some of those musings and thought processes. I started writing them down in my journal, but then they are quite random and not deep by any means, and thus seemed a bit incongruous with the rest of the journal. I therefore decided to experiment on this blog (I also can't deal with the admin of more than one account, so it will all be here).

I don't expect to have much of those, but if anyone following would prefer not to have these ramblings on their feed, I will tag these posts with two tags: bubreherro and bubreherro thoughts. Feel free to filter them out.

That being said, I feel this will lead to some written analyses as part of my current fandom, Formula 1 (specifically Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr, with some other drivers too).

voilà

Also, I guess it will finally be time to figure out tumblr.. years after the fact ^^;

I feel like I’ve discovered the best thing, learned that it’s been going on for 4 years (albeit more) and it’s stopping before I get to understand it.

Wait. This is exactly what happened

BAHRAIN 2022 | Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz celebrating their 1-2 with Lewis Hamilton on the podium.

She's amazing!

Sensei on Twitter

“Lately I’m trying to bring out Doumeki’s masculine side more. We know him as this sweet and pure guy who sometimes blushes … But he is a man after all. And the recovery of his manhood probably has quite an impact on his hormonal balance.”

Feb 8, 2017 / Source

Yoneda-sensei Replying to Questions on Twitter

Sensei replied to some fan questions through the Marshmallow app which is a popular way among manga artists to interact with their fans on Twitter. Let’s hope she makes a habit of it. ;)

Questions from June 11th, 2018

Q: Would you be interested in drawing a sequel to any of your finished works?

A: After a work is finished I wouldn’t mind drawing an additional bonus story if it’s short, but I’ve never thought about a proper sequel. A spin-off though, set in the same universe as the original story seems doable … I guess. In case of Saezuru I could imagine making Ryuuzaki, Misumi or Amou the protagonist [of a new manga/series].

Q: I love Ryuuzaki’s one sided love towards Yashiro. About the scene where Yashiro got tossed out in the snow naked: I headcanon that Ryuuzaki probably returned to the mahjong parlor around the time his friends placed their orders at the yakiniku restaurant, but Yashiro wasn’t there anymore (because Misumi had taken him with him). What did really happen?

A: I think Ryuuzaki probably passed in front of the mahjong parlor alone on his way back from the yakiniku place, but since Yashiro wasn’t there anymore, he was left with an uncertain, nagging feeling. During that time the two of them had that June feel to them.

Q: You are drawing for josei magazines as well as for seinen magazines. When did you properly start thinking about your career? You also said that you used to work an office job in the past. Did you think about becoming a mangaka during that time already?

A: I never really thought about anything … I’m not very good at making plans for the future. Working as an office assistant was a good experience for me personally, but there are many artists out there who draw interesting manga without any experience in a regular job. About my becoming a mangaka … To me it feels a lot more like I was allowed to become a mangaka rather than that I decided to become one.

[I can’t say how exactly she means the last sentence of course, but maybe it means that she had the financial freedom to choose an unsteady job, because her husband makes enough money for the family, or it could mean that she was given the chance to publish a manga in a proper magazine which is not something all doujinshika achieve, or … ]

Q: Do you prefer coffee or black tea?

A: I often drink black tea in winter, and iced coffee in summer, but my everyday drink is green tea.

Q: You said before that you wouldn’t tell us Yashiro’s first name, but could you maybe give us the first letter only, or another tiny hint?

A: I received a lot of questions regarding Yashiro’s first name, but it’s the same as with sex: If I only insert the tip it won’t stop there. So would it be okay if I didn’t? LOL

Also, Sensei’s favorite character from Golden Kamuy is Ogata.

You can send me questions if you want, in case Sensei decides to do another marshmallow round in the future. I’ll translate the ones I like and throw them at her. My mind went blank for a few minutes when I saw her tweet the other day, so I want to prepare a few questions in advance just in case, because we don’t often get the chance to ask her something. ;)