Sky - they/she/he - 30s - ID your posts Here there be current events, internet idiocy, and random fandom mess. On intermittent hiatus; when I'm around I'm mostly queue. Please let me know if you need me to tag something. Header is Critical Role art by lomakes, a close-up of Caleb and Nott's faces as they're curled up together, sleeping. Icon is a headshot by strangearte of Izz, a person with light grey skin and white hair in an undercut against a gold background. Their grey, pupil-less eyes are surrounded by a black, butterfly-mask shaped marking dotted with gold freckles. Further freckled black covers their pointed ears and bare shoulders.
Mary Winchester (Supernatural) vs. Abby Anderson (The Last of Us)
Mary Winchester
Abby Anderson
Remaining time: 5 days 2 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Mary Winchester:
The show brought her back to show she has flaws and wasn't a perfect mother and people act like this was a stupid decision and dislike her character for being messy and not acting like a mother to her now adult sons when that is literally the point of her character.
The fandom largely adopts the show’s misogyny towards Mary and all of its female characters. I don’t actually see very much of this first hand because I am good at curating my online experience, but I do know that people tend to think she should have been a better mom and blame her for things that it makes no sense to blame her for. The vast majority of the fandom also just generally takes Dean’s/the show runners’ perceptions of all the events in the show to be accurate, and all of those views that they take to be accurate are misogynistic.
Mary is a fascinating part of the dead girl genre, especially in how similar to Laura Palmer she is. They both had men trying to solve/avenge their murder as the whole plot of their show, but they also were both entirely misunderstood by these men. Nobody knew about Laura’s sex life/drug use/etc. and nobody knew about Mary being a hunter. Considering that SPN drew some inspiration from Twin Peaks, I would almost think that this is on purpose, but the show itself is so misogynistic that I wonder if they could have done commentary on misogyny on purpose. Mary is the most interesting character in the show imo and I’m sad that the fandom at large doesn’t have more intelligent discussions about her.
Hated for her choices, for wanting to be her own person and not babying her adult children
She was a badass, who was thrown into an impossible situation and did the best she could with it
EVERYTHING she gets hate for is something sam and/or dean have also done or would do in the same scenario! she gets hate for making a demon deal to save her (not yet) husband. dean and john both made demon deals to save family members and they don't get hate regardless of the aftermath! (we also see what happened in a world where she didn't make the demon deal and she gets hate for it anyways.) she gets hate for joining the british men of letters, but sam (who was tortured by them) joins them too in the episode following her confession that she joined them! she hid the hunting life from john and sam did the same thing with EVERY PARTNER he had! she left her ADULT sons behind so that she could cope with being brought back to life 30 years in the future and the fandom acts like she's guilty of child neglect. you know who else repeatedly left family behind to deal with things on his own and doesn't get the same level of vitriol? SAM!
She was brought back into a world where everything she knew was gone, her sons were adults (and older than her at this point), after being violently killed, and somehow she’s the bad one for not immediately adjusting and wanting space? Dean throws several tantrums, giving her the cold shoulder and generally being passive aggressive the entire season and then blaming her for dying and his childhood as if that’s her fault. And Sam and the other characters support him and centre the brothers’ pain over hers when again she was brought back into this new scary world with these men who she doesn’t know. Both fandom and show punish her for not immediately wanting to baby these grown men. And she has to apologise and repent by sacrificing herself. And fandom ofc eats it up, at times even calling worse than their abusive father, blaming her for everything that happens in the show and ofc the million bashing fics where Dean gets to yell at her, because SPN fans and writers love when men get to yell at women. Also they shame her a lot for having casual sex with one of the characters, because mothers aren’t supposed to have sexual relationships 🙄
Okay, so there's a scene in Supernatural where Mary tells Dean, her son, "I am not just your mother and you are no longer a child." This is a perfectly reasonable sentiment, as Dean is, literally, 38 years old at this point. It's also an interesting statement for Mary to make imo, because it suggests that both Mary and Dean should grapple with the idea that she was never the perfect wife/mother that her husband and children thought of her as.
Dean responds to her statement with, "I never was." And there's many analyses of this scene out there written by people who use this as evidence of Dean's manpain, and his sad childhood, and how Mary was actually a bad mother all along - instead of engaging with the implications of her original statement and how that makes HER character more complex. She's a nuanced character! She's been through a lot, and that informs the complicated, sometimes good-sometimes bad decisions she makes!! Except many SPN fans are obsessed with hating Mary for "being a bad mother" (read: dying and not getting to raise her children, then coming back to life and not fitting into the perfect motherly ideal her children have constructed of her).
And the thing is: SPN is famously bad with women, right? SPN is like, the Misogyny Show, and the show kind of has a Madonna/whore complex about the female characters where they're either perfect or irredeemable. But I would actually consider Mary to be one of the better-handled female characters on the show? The show starts with her dying, and her husband going on this quest to avenge her death and find her killer, etc etc, and there's this idea that Mary was this beautiful, perfect wife/mother. But the show actually works to deconstruct this idea somewhat, and late in the show we start to see that Mary was never a perfect wife, and she had her own life, and her own secrets, and real interiority. And this really nuances her character! It's interesting!
And yet, even though the writers actually did want (for once) the audience to view Mary as a complicated character, lots of fans STILL refuse to engage with this idea. People want her to be a bad mother to act as fuel for Sam and Dean's (mostly Dean) manpain. It drives me fucking crazy.
God I could yap about Mary Winchester for HOURS. Like we all know that supernatural is misogynistic as fuck but usually it's the writers doing the heavy lifting. But in Mary's case the vast majority of the misogyny is coming straight from the fans.
Like Mary started out as a classic case of fridged woman to drive man pain. Then the writers gave her a little more depth and nuance and intrigue through time travel shenanigans but that was mostly just setting up convoluted parallels and backstory stuff rather than actually exploring her as a character. But then they did something genuinely interesting. They. Unfridged. Her. They plucked her straight out of that fridge, plonked her down into the narrative over 30 years after she initially died, then said have fun. And that is so cool!
Mary comes back to life and she gets to exist as an actual character! She gets to be more than a perfect mother and perfect wife placed on some fantasy pedestal that no one could ever live up to. She gets to be badass. She gets to be messy. She gets to be flawed and complex while still being a genuinely kind person trying to do the right thing in a terrible situation. I mean, from her perspective she literally just woke up one day and her 6 month and 4 year old sons were suddenly older than her! That is an insane situation to be in! Of course it takes her a little time to adjust.
And how does the fandom react to a genuinely complex character in a fairly unique and fascinating situation? Pure hatred of course. Her many "crimes" include: making a dodgy deal as a teenager immediately after her parents and (then) boyfriend were murdered, being dead so unable to raise her children, not magically knowing that her husband decided to neglect and abuse their children while she was dead, taking more than 5 minutes to adjust to suddenly being alive and 33 years in the future and younger than her children, not dropping everything to coddle her two FULL GROWN ADULT CHILDREN (mid & late 30s) WHO. ARE. OLDER. THAN. HER. And talking to the British (yeah that was a whole thing I'm not gonna get into just know that the writing was shit)
As punishment for those truly heinous crimes, the fandom consistently treats her with the same level of disdain as John Winchester (has several documented cases of canon child abuse and over 6000 AO3 fics dedicated to his terrible parenting) if not more. And they will only talk about her to complain.
Oh yeah. And then the writers decided to re-fridge her.
Free all the women in supernatural but most of all free my girl Mary.
Abby Anderson:
Abby exhibits all the same flaws (incredibly central to the overall story of the game) as Joel and Ellie do, but Joel gets a pass 'cause he's the beloved man and Ellie barely gets a pass because she's at least at "our" side. Meanwhile Abby is afforded no such grace. Her being muscular only makes things worse because looking "unattractive" to a general boring male audience is a crime even worse than killing their blorbo (while said blorbo can surely kill whoever he wants and the theme of the narrative is just irrelevant I suppose). Plus those same muscles lead to any femininity she has (and she has notably more than Ellie) being denied to her, 'cause. Booo, muscles. Manly.
Abby starts as a traumatized revenge-obsessed girl much like Ellie then becomes in turn. As the plot goes on she displays actual compassion over and over. She shows that she's not a monster. The way she helps Lev and Yara, the way she takes Lev under her wing. (The way she's never transphobic to him either). The way she ends up sparing Dina despite narratively having every "right" to take that life(s) for a life(s). She does that growth before the other people in the narrative do. And she deserved so much more grace, if not love, than she got.
Death threats to the actress, massive temper tantrum online, endless debates about how her physique isn't realistic, compilations of her in-game deaths going viral with comments all saying how much they hate her….. People will straight up be so smug about how "wow the game is telling me revenge is bad I already knew that" and then bullied several actual human beings as revenge for a fictional character's death. Like maybe y'all do need to have someone sit you down pre-K style and explain that revenge is bad ¯_(ツ)_/¯
A) she's jacked as hell B) her gameplay is amazing C) yeah she killed everyone's favorite meow meow but I support women's wrongs ❤️ D) I don't even need to support women's wrongs she was kind of right
For Abby Anderson, they didn’t just send death threats to her actress, they also sent death threats to her husband AND HER INFANT SON. She literally had the company she worked for consult her on how to protect her in case the more aggressive “fans” wanted to approach her.
The alt-right backlash towards TLOU2 was pretty much entirely started because she was (incorrectly) assumed to be a transgender woman.
ran out of good pictures of my fiancée so here's what her paperwork looks like
This is the third post in a series I am now calling REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED, otherwise known as The Ongoing Medical Crisis of Roomie (Ember). The first and second posts are linked at the end.
Health — Doctors have officially ruled out POTS after the tilt table test came back normal. They have run out of avenues to pursue and have referred us out to other specialists with a waiting list over a full calendar year long. This is incredibly bleak for us and honestly we're not sure if it's worth pursuing further. Because of this, our focus has shifted to a secondary issue that's been going on for over a year and is only now able to be addressed. Ember has been having severe gut pain and other problems that doctors believe may partially be attributed to her thyroid but regardless definitely know she needs a colonoscopy. She has the procedure scheduled for next month and will get labs done about her thyroid at the end of this month. We are hoping something comes of this and will be grateful for the improved quality of life if even one issue can be resolved.
Finances — As you may know, we acquired a new roommate and partner a few months ago. Her help is bridging the 500$ deficit I talked about in my previous post. Starting August, I will also be bringing in an additional 100$ a month. This was a great stress relief to calculate and I was going to shut down the gofundme page until I learned some terrible news. Ember's insurance will not cover the gastrointestinal doctors. We have to self-pay every visit and procedure. The initial consultation was 200$. We spoke with the billing department about the procedure they said we would need to pay half (1000$) upfront. If nothing else goes wrong, I will be able to save up maybe 600$ before the procedure.
What We Need Now — By August 13th, we need 400$ so the procedure will be done on time. After the procedure, we know there will be at least one follow-up plus the rest of the payment plan. That's an additional 1200$ needed. Anything received after that amount would be used for future appointments and the many other medical debts already mounting.
Thank-you again for all the support for Ember already and please share and donate if you can. 💜
something i actually just realized on call w some friends recently is how crazey it is that your online friends are as many as thousands of feet above or below u right now. like if you teleported to their location without changing your height above sea level, well your fucked in some way basically
ran out of good pictures of my fiancée so here's what her paperwork looks like
This is the third post in a series I am now calling REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED, otherwise known as The Ongoing Medical Crisis of Roomie (Ember). The first and second posts are linked at the end.
Health — Doctors have officially ruled out POTS after the tilt table test came back normal. They have run out of avenues to pursue and have referred us out to other specialists with a waiting list over a full calendar year long. This is incredibly bleak for us and honestly we're not sure if it's worth pursuing further. Because of this, our focus has shifted to a secondary issue that's been going on for over a year and is only now able to be addressed. Ember has been having severe gut pain and other problems that doctors believe may partially be attributed to her thyroid but regardless definitely know she needs a colonoscopy. She has the procedure scheduled for next month and will get labs done about her thyroid at the end of this month. We are hoping something comes of this and will be grateful for the improved quality of life if even one issue can be resolved.
Finances — As you may know, we acquired a new roommate and partner a few months ago. Her help is bridging the 500$ deficit I talked about in my previous post. Starting August, I will also be bringing in an additional 100$ a month. This was a great stress relief to calculate and I was going to shut down the gofundme page until I learned some terrible news. Ember's insurance will not cover the gastrointestinal doctors. We have to self-pay every visit and procedure. The initial consultation was 200$. We spoke with the billing department about the procedure they said we would need to pay half (1000$) upfront. If nothing else goes wrong, I will be able to save up maybe 600$ before the procedure.
What We Need Now — By August 13th, we need 400$ so the procedure will be done on time. After the procedure, we know there will be at least one follow-up plus the rest of the payment plan. That's an additional 1200$ needed. Anything received after that amount would be used for future appointments and the many other medical debts already mounting.
Thank-you again for all the support for Ember already and please share and donate if you can. 💜
& honestly there's no debate to be had the zendaya earrings are orders of magnitude worse than kim kardashian wearing that marilyn dress. yes that piece was a one of a kind unique textile made so specifically for marilyn monroe she had to be sewn into it. at the end of the day it was a ~70 year old usamerican cultural artefact being repurposed by an american for an american cultural event and everyone involved knows exactly where the dress came from + what happened to it + where it went afterwards. zendaya is wearing the looted (or forged) cultural heritage of a people her government is currently bombing & whose lives they have been deliberately making unliveable for decades to a movie premiere that has fuck all to do with iran. we don't know where those discs came from where they were found or by whom & we never will. AND the jeweller appears to have altered them substantially from their original condition. destroying a people's cultural heritage at the same time you destroy their country + their lives so you can look good on a red carpet One Time i want to fucking hurl
The earrings, worn by Zendaya at The Odyssey press tour, are believed to be 2,000-3,000 years old and come at a time when the US is bombing
An archaeologist quoted in the article says "the point of these earrings is not to showcase legitimate ancient artistry, it is to fetishize the past, to be a commodity, stolen from the elite, circulated illegally, and immorally…this is about class signalling."
I'm pretty sure earth doesn't have people 4x my age or more.
I don't think I currently have any friends 1/4 my age; I stopped going to the community events where I met young people during COVID and those events haven't started up again.
catherine might be the first game changer player who understood the assignment, immediately failed the assignment, figured out the assignment better, told everyone else the assignment, and then failed multiple times cause she truly cannot describe pictures (or name songs). player of all time. i love seeing someone who clearly gets and loves game changer and is just plain bad at games. representation for all of us.
shadowheart abandons shar and selûne goes ‘yayyy mine again <3’ and after a tenday or two, shadowheart has to force herself to go to isobel at camp like ‘okay something is seriously wrong, i feel weird, my voice is croaky and i’m hungry all the time and-’ and isobel says :) yeah selǔne knows you’re a boy lol and shadowheart goes ‘what.’ and isobel says don’t even worry about it. it was crazy for me too when i woke up girlstyle. there are many advantages to being a cleric of the moonmaiden.
hey guysss so unfortunately the rumors are true and im leaving the narrative. Buttt the good news is my absence will create such a gaping hole in your lives that it will become a sort of presence itself, and so in a way it will kind of be like i never left! But i am. Leaving just to be clear.
