Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
Thank you for always tagging me!! @casperthefuckinghost
I'm everyone's blorbo now. It's canon now and 🫵🏻 you can't change that 😈
I'm gonna tag @fluffykittenbutch @barebackindisgrace @illneverownatownhouse @b0rderlinebvtch @rios-prettiest-butch @thckskulll @hectichayes and anyone else who wants to join in! Have fun and as always no pressure!
Thank you for tagging me @karmasuccubus (the tag still hates me but we roll with it)
And I will need the fanfics on my desk STAT. I need to know who I’m being shipped with and what the headcanons are pronto lmao.
Absolutely no pressure tags, tbh I have no clue who to tag when I do these I feel like I’m annoying the masses but it’s okay <3 lmao: @forcewound @alexaarcana @butchselkie @fauville @a1are @lelianasbong
I was unaure whether or not I wanted to make this analysis, purely because I worry this will be controversial, but the thoughts grew too loud to silence, and I saw someone talking about how awful it is that Tabitha dated all those miners, which got me a little riled up, so here we are. A warning for non graphic discussion of coerced sex/rape.
Tabitha Scarlet. My (along with many people's, I'm sure) favorite wet cat girlboss cousin. Where does the girlboss part come from, you may ask? Well! You ask her what she does for a living on day one, she says she runs a coal mine, and you have the option to say "#Girlboss" in response! This line just pisses her off, but it's a funny line, and she can even recall it later on far more fondly, plus, the irony of calling a woman who actively hates her life and is managing a failing business 'girlboss' only heightens the comedy.
But I think the irony of the line goes further than that. Because #Girlboss, as a term, is one rooted in feminism. The notion of a woman doing work for herself and reclaiming her independence in a society aiming to subjugate her. But Tabitha? Tabitha does the opposite of this.
Tabitha works in the mines because that is what she's been told to do all her life by her family, an indoctrination, a duty given to her that she supposedly 'must' carry out for the good of the town. Tabitha's family has assigned her a false guardianship over people who do not want her in charge to 'protect' them.
Now, this in and of itself is what women have been told throughout history—They need to sacrifice themselves for the enrichment and protection of others. They have a duty to throw away their own lives for the sake of the greater good. A woman is to do, unquestioningly and obediently, what the authority figures have determined is her duty—in this case, it's the women of the Scarlet family who are expected to make the sacrifices that Enoch determined.
I specifically mention the women doing this, that this is something borne from misogyny, because of one particular aspect.
The production of an heir.
The Scarlets' curse, after all, is more than just their ties to the mine. It's more than just one person lying in a basement to rot, as what happens in the often compared to Omelas.
The Scarlets' curse requires a replenshing supply of people with each and every generation: One to 'bear the burden', as Tabitha so euphemistically puts it, and one to run in the mines. Meaning that each generation of Scarlet women is required to produce at least two children. And as the population of each generation declines, the Scarlet women have felt more and more pressure to produce children. Tabitha herself, in fact, has clearly attempted to make heirs—as we can tell from her dialogue when you talk to her about the events that occurred in the mines on the drive home during Tuesday.
Tabitha: "[...] It's not fair."
MC: "Do you want kids?" (With Street Smart: "It seems like that struck a nerve."
Tabitha: "Lots of people want kids."
This dialogue tells us that she wants children, and that she's tried to have children hard enough to grow resentful of her failures. This, obviously, involves sex. With men.
These men are likely miners, as we learn from pressing about Sam Wayne's previous relationship with her.
Smith: "Lots of heartbreak in that woman's history. Lots of jilted ex-lovers, if you catch my drift."
Tabitha dated miners, and from our line about her trying to have children, we can also pretty reasonably conclude she had sex with them in an attempt to make heirs. I am repeatedly underscoring this point because—
Tabitha clearly has little attraction for the miners. Compared to her sheer guilt and blatant lingering attraction when it comes to Stella, the only character about whom she feels anything resembling this for is Sam Wayne (Who, notably, Pearlanne also disapproved of). At no point does she have anything to dwell on or ruminate on regarding these men. Considering just how deep her feelings go for her high school ex-something, the only possible explanation for this I can think of is that Tabitha had no feelings for any of these men.
Pearlanne has pressured Tabitha to date men. The dev comic "Promeries" has Pearlanne supervise to ensure Tabitha isn't getting too close to Stella, and has her say the following:
Pearlanne: "Tabitha, that boy is checking you out. Go dance with him."
Tabitha's expression in this is notably disgruntled, but not surprised, indicating that Pearlanne pressuring Tabitha to talk to men is something she's used to.
And all of this combined paints a very gut-churning picture for me: Notably, that Tabitha was pressured by her mother into dating and having sex with countless miners with the intent of producing heirs.
Tabitha was made to suppress her attraction to other women, suppress her own desires/dislikes, and make heirs with men she seems to hold nothing but distaste for.
The more I think about it, the more sickening it is, especially considering how intimate the act of sex is, and how violating it is to have it forced/pressured upon you. And I really do think that is what she experience: Not by the miners, obviously, but by her mother.
And it occurred to me that, as sickening as it felt... This is very much what women have went through historically. Tabitha's circumstances, from this angle, are a reflection of the historical expectations on women with a supernatural twist.
Women have, thoughout centuries, been expected to sacrifice their happiness and commit themselves to producing heirs, regardless of their own desires. Relatives have pressured women into unwanted relationships and unwanted sex as well with these intentions—There was even a historical tradition of watching wedding consumnations!
What Tabitha goes through—really, her entire life—is the upholding of a misogynistic system that uses women as tools to produce heirs. Her position is inherited, not merit-based, and it's not a particularly desirable position to be in.
More than anything, really, Tabitha's story reminds me of women in nobility during historical times. Though granted many privileges over lower classes, and often perpetuators of the systems keeping people oppressed, they too were often subjugated in their own right. Tabitha is both a coal baron who underpays and mistreats her workers and a woman who has been raised to believe she has a duty to produce heirs and push down all her actual desires for the sake of propping up the town. A woman forced to suppress her queerness because it wasn't conducive to producing kids, a woman coerced into dating people she didn't like and then shamed for it by people unaware of said coercion.
And overall, Tabitha is both a victim and a perpetuator of a deeply flawed and misogynistic system that keeps her oppressed—the opposite of a #Girlboss, suit or no suit.
- when hei-ran is recovered enough to hold coherent conversations she at first cannot stand the healer assigned to her. the woman is pushy and full of herself and so rough around the edges it offends every one of her sensibilities
- but atuat grows on her, mostly because they find a mutual favorite topic of shitting on all the stupid men who have doubted their power
- hei-ran tells her a lot of avatar kuruk stories and especially enjoys that the bawdy ones make atuat lose her shit. she delivers all of these with a straight face and crisp tone which makes atuat laugh harder
- hei-ran, like her daughter, secretly loves to have her hair played with despite (or maybe because of?) the taboo. atuat doesn’t know about the taboo (well, she does, but she doesn’t care and hei-ran doesn’t need to know that) and one day hei-ran is woken up from an intense healing session by atuat carding her hands through her hair to pull it back from her face in a braid.
- hei-ran doesn’t have the heart to get atuat to stop because she’s in unbelievable pain everywhere else and those rough hands feel so good
- this becomes a daily routine. neither of them mention it
- rangi notices that her mom’s hair is braided every time now when she comes to fetch her from the healing center but she doesn’t comment. hei-ran only makes her undo it and put in a topknot if they’re going to have visitors
- during the long months hei-ran searches for things to do to distract herself and actually learns to cook sea prunes (which are atuat’s favorite, of course) an activity made appealing by the fact that the cooking is done in a large pot over a low fire and she can stay seated
- she does have fire nation spices imported though, and she makes up new recipes combining the two cultures’ culinary traditions and forces atuat to try them
- hei-ran absolutely refused to cook anything while she was traveling with kuruk and jianzhu. she hated the expectations that she, as the only woman companion of the avatar, would be in any way domestic. the first couple times jianzhu suggested it she nearly burned his stupid little beard off
- hei-ran tries to get rangi to join her - she may have to travel alone with the avatar, after all, and should know how to look after the avatar in all ways - but rangi spends most of her time sparring with the waterbenders (rangi of course is unbelievably pissed off that they only train men to fight here and after four months she can kick the ass of every single student in the academy, to her great satisfaction)
- hei-ran also spends time learning everything she can about non-waterbending-based healing from the city’s massive library and the oral traditions in the healing center and rangi grudgingly accepts to help her transfer important information to scrolls to take back to the fire nation
- atuat does like to tease hei-ran about her uptightness and it isn’t until two months into the healing process that she realizes that hei-ran’s eye crinkles are the equivalent of her bursting out in laughter at atuat’s antics
- her fave antic? bothering rangi. that girl is so easy to tease and once they realize that the amount she talks about kyoshi is because the two are romantically involved, atuat takes every opportunity to slip filthy innuendos into perfectly normal conversations. this gets really bad when atuat starts to have dinner with the two fire nation women on the regular. hei-ran is in hysterics (meaning her eyebrows twitch and she has a slight smirk). rangi turns red and storms out most evenings, cursing her mother’s injuries and that crazy doctor of hers
Before the Avatar’s arrival at the garden party when the party crowd was still thin, some partygoers caught a brief glimpse of the normally stoic former Headmistress giving her doctor the smallest of a brief smile as they spoke…
stormborns
2087
titsay
amandla
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
