Basking in my Mediocrity

She/Her. Sporadic tumblr user. Occassionally posts about Leverage, hhg, Doctor Who and anything that strikes my fancy

[teaboot]

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, and she’s getting engaged so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves two more, and those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of ‘em’s young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

[unfavorableinstigation]

Mary Bennet:

[teaboot]

Did I forgot about Mary… yes. but in my defence Mr. Darcy probably did too

[firedragon1321]

Me who never read the book- Oh what he did couldn't be that bad, then-

Fuck you could've just...not bragged about your money? Or maybe revealed your knowledge of this seasons-long soap opera a bit earlier?

Where are the zombies? Do they come in after this part? Isn't it right there in the title? I never learned how to read.

[oviids]

i’m screaming Xena caused the Ides of March

[caparrucia]

God FORBID women do anything!

[jovialgnomejpeg]

Shout out to the next generation of yuri warriors

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"People have a right to decide what to do with their body after they die."

Leverage Redemption S03E03 The Scared Stiff Job.

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"That's what you was about to say?"

Leverage Redemption S03E03 The Scared Stiff Job.

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Man, this is a weird party, Sophie, okay?"

Leverage Redemption S03E01 The Weekend in Paris Job.

[soberscientistlife]

[elfwreck]

Context:

The original video, for anyone who hasn't seen it:

And the relevant album cover:

Sessler was a teenager when "We're Not Gonna Take It" it was on the charts. Probably had MTV so he saw the video.

No fuckin' idea how he thought it was in support of "traditional American values."

[t4t4t]

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

Never not reblog. Dee Snider is iconic and queer as fuck for a cishet man.

-fae

[kamikaze-kumquat]

No one disrespects my man Dee in this house.

[a-wonderful-use-of-server-space]

Never forget when he sat in front of a congressional hearing about Lewd Music Corrupting the Youth and completely shut that shit down in the most professional manner that no member of that committee expected from a hair metal musician. They thought they'd get easy points off of a dumb metalhead and this man not only knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about, he tore their arguments apart.

[teaboot]

DUDE THE VIDEOOO

[olderthannetfic]

For those unfamiliar with this ICON

[kyraneko]

This is why my working definition of queer is "queerness is that which accepts queerness."

It encompasses a radical welcome and celebration of things that deviate from "the norm" and a fierce willingness to defend them from people who think mere deviance is worthy of vicious and violent bullying.

[imasithduh]

Dee Snider is the embodiment of "Queer as in fuck you."

[brykilo]

I love seeing this post make the rounds

[madlori]

dee snider is a fucking icon, man

[leveragecentral]

The Weekend in Paris Job (S03E01) LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION (2021—)

[prokopetz]

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

[veteratorianvillainy]

#friendly reminder that I once put my statistics degree to good use and did some calculations about ship ratios#and yes considering the gender ratios of characters#the prevalence of gay ships is completely predictable (via sarahtonin42)

[persephoneshadow-deactivated202]

I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.

[prokopetz]

Totally.

A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.

(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)

Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:

Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36

TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66

Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.

The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?

[observethewalrus]

YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!

[ainedubh]

Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.

[slitthelizardking]

I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.

[lierdumoa]

This doesn’t even account  for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well. 

But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.

[destinationtoast]

Yay, mathy arguments. :)

This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.

In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het).  (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.

[olderthannetfic]

All great points. Another thing I notice is that many shows are built around the idea that the team or the partner is the most important thing in the universe. Watch any buddy cop show, and half of the episodes have a character on a date that is inevitably interrupted because The Job comes first… except “The Job” actually means “My Partner”.

When it’s a male-female buddy show, all of the failed relationships are usually, canonically, because the leads belong together. (Look at early Bones: she dates that guy who is his old friend and clearly a stand-in for him. They break up because *coughcoughhandwave*. That stuff happens constantly.) Male-male buddy shows write the central relationship the exact same way except that they expect us to read it as platonic.

Long before it becomes canon, the potential ship of Mulder/Scully or Booth/Bones or whatever lead male/female couple consumes the fandom. It’s not about the genders involved. Rizzoli/Isles was like this too.

If canon tells us that no other relationship has ever measured up to this one, why should we keep them apart? Don’t like slash of your shows, prissy writers? Then stop writing all of your leads locked in epic One True Love romance novel relationships with their same-sex coworkers. Give them warm, funny, interesting love interests, not cardboard cutouts…

And then we will ship an OT3.

[kyraneko]

I’m going to bring up (invent?) the concept of subjectification.

As in, people gravitate to the characters given the most depth, complexity, and satisfying interactions for their shipping needs, because those characters are most human, and we want the realest characters to play with.

In a lot of media, the most depth gets handed to male characters.

And, oftentimes, even when the screentime and depth and interactions are granted equally well to female characters, there can be a level of, for lack of a better word, dis-authenticity to those female characters: they are pared down, washed out, or otherwise made slightly less themselves than they could be, in the interest of making them decorative, or likeable, or “good,” or keeping them from upstaging or emasculating their male companions, or just that the writer whose job it is to write them doesn’t know how to write women the way they write men.

And you get the characterization equivalent of that comparison chart where so many animated female characters have the same facial features because the animators and designers are so worried about not letting them be ugly.

When you have a group that’s allowed to be themselves, warts and all, and another group that has to be decorative at all costs, the impression given on some level is that the decorative quality is making up for a shortcoming. That they wouldn’t be enough in their own right.

And sometimes that cost is authenticity. The interesting, striking, awe-inspiring, bold and glorious unapologetic selfhood that draws the viewer most particularly to those characters who are unapologetic in their particular existence, standing clear of the generic and bland and unchallenging “safe” appearances.

It is authenticity, not beauty, which powers subjectification. The love for a character, not because they are perfect, but because they are them.

They can be pretty, sure. They can be sweet. But being pretty and sweet is not a replacement, and too many female characters have been written by writers who think it is, while the interest—in appearance, in personality, in interactions, in plot development—goes to the men.

And when that happens, well. Surprise, surprise, that’s where the shipping goes.

[whetstonefires]

Yeah I don’t really ship but I do write a fair amount of fanfic, and in most franchises working with the female characters is a chore.

You have to do so much of the work yourself, because the canon left them unfinished, with huge gaps or unexplored contradictions that you have to somehow resolve. Every female character you decide to integrate into your fanwork in some major role constitutes an undertaking in her own right as you patch together an understanding of her sufficient to model a consistent set of reactions and priorities &c.

The dudes just get handed to you. Even the ones whose canon is a mess have properly developed character cores.

That you don’t have to unearth and piece together like some sort of volunteer archeologist coming up with theories way more complex than the available artifacts truly support.

[headspace-hotel]

Guys read this this is an amazing breakdown of it

[totallysilvergirl]

ALWAYS reblog.

[esuterunokitsune]

And then you can compare it to a show that has actually well written female characters and

Huh. First three spots are taken by F/F, M/M and F/M in descending order. Afterwards are platonic ships.

Just so we have the stats, what are the top 10 most written characters?

Wow. A perfect split, five to five. And the top three are women. (By about 200 fics to Jayce and Viktor, the runner ups, might I add)

That’s out of 29,590 works.

So about third of those (very roughly) are CaitVi.

[allgarbo]

Greta Garbo in Anna Christie (1930) directed by Clarence Brown

[eagans]

ether as severance + “the courtship of kier and imogene” (relationship parallels)

(just so we’re clear, while the kier-imogene dynamic is clearly paralleled with helena and mark, it is also reiterated in cobel and mark, dr mauer and gemma, and even burt and irving to some extent; season 2 has also made it a point to show us that helena and cobel are both victims in their own ways while being perpetrators. it is not a black and white situation and misogyny will get you blocked.)

original threads: (x), (x)

[pablodemon-6]

neal caffrey not being able to let go of his vices (being a conniving little man) is so entertaining but equally painful to watch. like neal please take a look around. you have a great life given the other option is being in prison. WHY ARE YOU PUTTING THAT ALL ON THE LINE? but also its wonderful because yes don’t give him a redemption arc, he will always be a con man, he can’t help it. its weaved into his being. i love it and hate it all at once.

[and-fishing-equipment]

imagine being real rashid and you work for these weird gay vampires and one day they come to you like hey rashid we're gonna give you a little holiday! armand will take over your duties for the time being, for a cool disguise during my interview, not a kink thing :) and you're like okay these are my weird gay vampire bosses so it probably is a kink thing but who am i to judge. and then you find out they are roleplaying this weird exhibitionist slash master/servant scene with your own real actual government name. fuck interview with the vampire, interview with rashid WHEN??

[millyxando]

for me all of real rashid and his weird exhibitionist boss is extra funny when we remember bally gill and assad zaman are long time friends

[zizicat]

[louxosenjoyables]

Always.

[millenari]

do you ever re-read your own wips like 'damn the bitch that wrote this oughta finish it'

[nerdmutant2]

happy bi-visibility day from Lestat "toxic & problematic representation" de Lioncourt

[alphacrone]

currently my interests include idiot tough guys who think they’re tragic lone wolves but are actually social butterflies willing to be adopted by a family at the drop of a hat