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putting "agency" on the high shelf of words banned from feminist literary analysis until we learn to use them correctly. right next to "male gaze"

mythalism

there is a massive and crucial difference between a woman character having narrative agency as a character versus having literal physical agency within the story world. the former is important for a work to be considered "feminist" (though what qualifies as feminist literature is a source of endless debate, and there is no real criteria, and it is an endlessly nebulous term that im only using here for simplicity and not because its even that meaningful in practice). the latter is not because there are stories that will be told where the women in them simply do not have agency in that setting. when we talk about women characters lacking narrative agency as a character in their story we are talking about characters like the classic early 2000's action movie love interest. she lacks narrative agency in the sense that she does not exert influence on the narrative. she may exert influence on the world around her, she could easily be a #girlboss with lots of money and power and maybe she even steps on some guys throat and shoots guns and drives cool cars like an expert, but she does not exert influence on the narrative. it's not her choices that shape it, or her internal experience that is explored by the story. she is pushed along by the plot rather than doing the pushing. the leading man is often the one doing the pushing, and she is along for the ride. these are your manic pixie dreamgirls and bond girls. she has physical agency but lacks narrative agency. the narrative is not concerned with her experience and thus her experience does not influence the narrative. there are, however, women characters who lack physical agency in their setting but have narrative agency. if physical agency was a prerequisite for all feminist literature, we would have very few stories to tell, because for much of history, the experience of womanhood has been synonymous with lacking agency. the narrator of the yellow wallpaper has absolutely no physical agency because she is quite literally locked in a room for the entirety of the story. she cannot exert any influence on the world around her because her husband thinks she is hysterical and has locked her literally inside of a room. but to imply that as a result, the yellow wallpaper is misogynistic because it has stripped it's main character of all agency would be absurd. she has narrative agency because the story is concerned entirely with her experience of lacking physical agency, and her experience creates and forms the narrative. the same could be said about offred in the handmaid's tale. she has literally been stripped of all political and physical agency, and lacks agency over her own body. when offred does (perhaps) escape, she only is able to do so because a man in gilead that still has physical agency helps her do so. still, you would not say that the handmaids tale is a work of misogyny because it stripped offred of all agency and had her be rescued by a man. because offred has narrative agency. the narrative revolves around her experience. her experience shapes and forms the narrative. these are just two examples that im using because they are some of the most well known and widely acclaimed works of feminist literature that are centered around the experience of women without physical agency, but i could keep going literally forever. we have to be able to differentiate between narrative and physical agency in our analysis of a story's treatment of its women characters. if we cannot tell stories about women who have been stripped of agency because they are supposedly inherently misogynistic, we will have very few realistic and resonant stories about women to tell.

oddandalarmingsexualfeelings

they should invent a headache that goes away the second you drink any water at all

thealogie

"A homoerotic Vietnam War thriller starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe is headed our way.

The film, entitled Trust the Man, was helmed by non-binary writer-director Will Graham"

I don't have much experience with fever dreams, but I feel like this succession of paragraphs is a pretty close approximation. WILL GRAHAM??

The universe really said my child you have suffered so much sit down here in the shade and enjoy your Daniel Radcliffe Jonathan Groff homoerotic Vietnam war thriller

thealogie

Daniel Radcliffe’s fujo gf when he gets back from set: how was it

#do people even understand the merrily we roll along broadway revival implications of this #<- prev!!!

insomniac-arrest

I think we should figure out what age we’re living in now so we can say how it’s collapsing to each other

insomniac-arrest

Our age of plastics is collapsing

insomniac-arrest

Our age of information is collapsing! *remembers generative AI, nods to self* our age of information is collapsing.

ehlihr

adding songs from musicals to character playlists is so stupid like yeah this works just ignore some of that really specific stuff

enba-and-luka

witchstone

your weird obsession with having a fully formed white picket fence found family who all speak like they've inhaled their therapist who you subconsciously want to be adopted into is ruining your ability to interact with the source material

nightlysleeper

#canon #star trek

eraserheadadult

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

rubysapphrald

sharing a wikipedia page is romantic

rubysapphrald

my favorites

infectiouspiss

the only bmi i care about is bagel mmmyummy itsgotcreamcheese

woman-respecter

suburban women on september 15 1967 tuning in to star trek and seeing fuck-or-die mode spock getting in a sweaty man fight with captain kirk in amok time

#star trek

cutecipher

as a feminist i support recreational abortion

roycohn

inspired by a rant i was going on elsewhere bc someone tweeted something very stupid and uninformed about hamlet and it got my back up as someone who took two single-text-focus english literature courses in college and they were on wuthering heights and hamlet, i now put it to all of you on here:

what's "your" shakespeare play?

hamlet

macbeth

the tempest

merchant of venice

midsummer night's dream

twelfth night

richard iii

othello

julius caesar

king lear

another not listed (specify in tags) (i really just put my own top 10 here nbd)