🍼₊˚⊹ ᰔ (x)
a little rant abt anna & her sort of age regression under the cut, & addressing some of the things my #haters say about me / a think piece on femininity, misogyny, and the “infantilization” issue a lot of people seem to have with me… and of course, delving into the beautiful targaryen girls who inspired my anna
i suppose context is needed before i go into this… so, in february, a simstwt account stumbled upon my page and was outraged by the incestuous content of anna and maelor. the tweets she made about me sort of blew up, garnering thousands of likes… which led to hundreds of her mutuals joining in on the fun that was sending me an immeasurable amount of hate, repetitive criticism (including eugenics arguments), spreading misinformation about what it means to be proship (and hiding replies that corrected them), making violent threats against me, mass reporting me, calling me a pedophile (even though ive never depicted children in any manner at all), and so on, which lasted for a little over a week… yeah, whatever.
i didn’t entertain or address any of it at the time, as i felt that would only increase the volume of it, and i didn’t want to give them what they wanted by feeding into it. ive always maintained that fiction is fiction, and that i am under no obligation to justify myself to faceless accounts on the internet who know nothing about me, who i am as a person, my motives for the art i create, and my views on the morality of it. i know exactly who i am, and i don’t believe anyone is entitled to any sort of “proof” from me that i am a “moral and upstanding person” in accordance with their own moral compass.
so i abused the fuck out of that block button, and blocked everyone who had anything at all to say about me. i’ve ended up here:
i found most of the criticisms of me completely ridiculous, baseless, and so out of touch with reality that i couldn’t even dignify them by taking them seriously enough to respond. but amongst those i found one that i specifically took into account… because i felt it reflective of a wider issue, which is misogyny, and the distaste many people perhaps subconsciously have for women who embody a certain form of femininity. the criticism in question is of the “infantilization” of anna in my writing:
the rumors that i take inspiration from lolita are really funny, because i've literally never read that book in my life… lol
but anyways... these claims came at a time after which i had already explained why anna has childish and passive tendencies... she struggles to find her footing in womanhood due to the incestuous abuse that she suffers at the hands of her brother, as well as being because of how sheltered her family has kept her all throughout her childhood (to groom her, to suppress her autonomy, to keep her dependent upon her brother, to prepare her to be his wife and to give him children, to serve him as a passive and receptive womb) and thus, she finds herself more comfortable in a regressed state of girlhood. i've written about that here.
i think it's ironic— the tweets in question take issue with the sort of "infantilization" i've portrayed in my story, but refuse to acknowledge that i've actually fleshed out the exact cause of anna's infantile nature as a direct result of her abuse's severity, even in spite of how many of these users admitted to having stalked my tumblr. instead, they choose to characterize the behaviors that are born from her trauma as disgusting and "sickening” and berate me for choosing to portray that sort of trauma response, thus stigmatizing and shaming it. it's these very same people, by the way, who claim to care about victims.
the reality is that age regression is a very common subconscious (and sometimes conscious) defense mechanism for many victims of severe forms of trauma… and anna is not “gross” nor “icky” for responding this way to the harm that has been inflicted upon her by her brother, and by extension her father, and the history of incestuous grooming throughout her family lineage. ive also described that she is neurodivergent/has a cognitive disability, which plays a great role in her struggle to adapt to the neurotypical expectations of her age— and she is well on the further end of the spectrum. thus, she takes discomfort in many things; she has sensory issues and can be overstimulated by things like loud noises, harsh textures, and physical touch; she is terribly shy and socially awkward; she struggles with change; she’s a picky eater; all of these things and many more may cause her emotional distress, over which she self-soothes by regressing to a childlike state… for her own comfort. i’m not sure why any of this could be considered “sickening,” and to characterize it as such feels insensitive and unnecessary, in obvious bad faith.
the conversation about real-life straight women who self-infantilize for their male partners is one i have no issue partaking in, but this is simply not the place for that, as i’ve been very open about how anna’s story is an exploration of the female struggle under patriarchy, and how her age regression is a trauma response to the incestuous abuse she suffers… though i often theorize that the supposed issue people have with this "infantilization" stems from a deeper distaste that they have for girlhood, and for hyperfeminine women and girls who embody a certain kind of "traditional" femininity— the kind that we, as women, are expected and pressured to emulate, the kind that is favored, the kind that we who do not embody are shamed and degraded for our inability or refusal to perform in accordance with it.
and i come from an open place of understanding when i confront this sort of distaste that people have for this kind of femininity, as i myself have always struggled with The Feminine. i hesitate to share too much about my own experiences on social media, but... this is something i consider important. personally, i have struggled all throughout my conscious years with trying to escape the perception of passive innocence that is associated with girlhood well before i even encountered womanhood. especially as an east asian woman who is very often assigned the stereotype of submissiveness, i have tried to denounce the qualities associated with the traditional concept of femininity— of a nurturing, docile and soft nature. for many years i deliberately leant in the opposite direction, into aggression and hostility as a form of retaliation against men, and against the men who have harmed me, but in doing so, i became resentful of other women who were able to keep those parts of themself that are compassionate and gentle, who are naturally soft, sweet, and shy— as i have instead always been characterized by men as bitter and vindictive, the "nasty woman," and loathed myself for it, and thus projected that contempt onto the women who are favored for their gentleness, rather than towards the men who set the standard i felt i could never meet.
in writing and developing anna, though, i find that i am constantly trying to confront that internalized misogyny within myself, to embrace rather than envy the women and girls who meet this standard of femininity— which is why i have pushed myself full-force to lean heavily into those gentle, girlish, and docile qualities with anna. i am trying to accept that while not all women embody this form of femininity, there are women who do, and that does not make them any less worthy of the same kind of empowerment than those of us who may actively defy the traditional standard of femininity that we are expected to meet.
what opened my eyes to this was reading transfem author Julia Serano's Whipping Girl manifesto, where she says:
Instead of attempting to empower those born female by encouraging them to move further away from femininity, we should instead learn to empower femininity itself.
In a world where masculinity is assumed to represent strength and power, those who are butch and boyish are able to contemplate their identities within the relative safety of those connotations. In contrast, those of us who are feminine are forced to define ourselves on our own terms and develop our own sense of self-worth. It takes guts, determination, and fearlessness for those of us who are feminine to lift ourselves up out of the inferior meanings that are constantly being projected onto us... In a world where masculinity is respected and femininity is regularly dismissed, it takes an enormous amount of strength and confidence for any person, whether female or male-bodied, to embrace their feminine self.
— Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, by Julia Serano.
i want to be someone who loves and embraces all forms of femininity regardless of the supposed “advantage” one kind may have in a patriarchal society over another (even that advantage may very well be a myth—although a passive and docile woman may be favored over an outspoken and disruptive one, simply by existing in her femininity she is undervalued, underestimated, suppressed, subjugated and dehumanized by the patriarchy, because that is the place femininity has in our society—it would be obtuse to suggest otherwise). i want to feel nothing but love for women and girls who are feminine in the sense of being soft, gentle, quiet and shy, and to share that love too with the women and girls who are feminine in the sense of being fierce, bold, brazen and confident.
one thing that i so deeply admire about a song of ice and fire is that we are shown this spectrum of femininity in its entirety, as well as how patriarchy interacts with that spectrum. targaryen women like visenya, rhaena, and rhaenyra display to us the austere, harsh and emboldened women who, regardless of their attempts to take their autonomy into their own hands, are supplanted, relegated or sidelined in favor of their gentler sisters like rhaenys and alysanne or their male counterparts like aegon ii. saera, too, is an example of how a woman’s attempts to claim autonomy over her own body do not go unpunished. i relate to these women more myself, but i find that i am more intrigued with the stories of the softer, gentler targaryen women and girls whose passivity and timidity betray them and instead serve the interests of their male family members to suppress and exert control over them. these girls seem to make up the most of the female targaryens we have seen, and their subjugation is such a common theme that i don’t think it should be surprising in any form that anna, who descends from their blood and is made up of their flesh, embodies their characteristics and is alike to many of them.
starting with of course, naerys, whose gentleness falls into the wrong hands and becomes a means for her brother-husband to exert control over her:
Queen Naerys—the one woman Aegon IV bedded in whom he took no pleasure— was pious and gentle and frail, and all these things the king misliked. Childbirth also proved a trial to Naerys, for she was small and delicate.
Naerys was said to address her brother thus: "I have done my duty by you, and given you an heir. I beg you, let us live henceforth as brother and sister." We are told that Aegon replied: "That is what we are doing." Aegon continued to insist his sister perform her wifely duties for the rest of her life.
— A World of Ice & Fire
princess daella, too, is a great source of inspiration for my anna, a girl who perhaps has a cognitive disability and is severely shy and sensitive:
Princess Daella, the next oldest, was delicate and shy. Easily frightened and quick to cry, she did not speak her first word until she was almost two...and even thereafter she was tongue-tied more oft than not. Her sister Maegelle became her guiding star, and she worshipped her mother, the queen, but her sister Alyssa seemed to terrify her, and she blushed and hid her face in the presence of the older boys.
— Fire & Blood
and the princess jaehaera, a sweet but frightened young girl whose demise is brought from the chaos of the postwar environment that surrounds her:
It was Lord Larys who decreed the fugitives should part company as well, so that even if one were taken, the others might win free. Ser Rickard Thorne was commanded to deliver two-year-old Prince Maelor to Lord Hightower. Princess Jaehaera, a sweet and simple girl of six, was put in the charge of Ser Willis Fell, who swore to bring her safely to Storm's End. Neither knew where the other was bound, so neither could betray the other if captured.
Jaehaera was a lonely child, prone to weeping and somewhat simpleminded, yet she had seemed content in her own chambers with her maids and ladies, her kittens and her dolls. What could have made her mad enough or sad enough to leap from her window onto those cruel spikes? Some suggested that Lady Rhaena's miscarriage might have made her so distraught she did not wish to live.
— Fire & Blood
there is also the princess gael, a gentle but doomed girl:
Princess Gael, a sweet, shy child of seven, became the queen's constant shadow and support, even sharing her bed at night.
— Fire & Blood
and then, of course, there is daenerys stormborn of house targaryen, mother of dragons, breaker of chains, the unburnt… who reads children’s stories for comfort, and dotes over those tales:
“I’m cold," Dany lied. "Bring me the book I was reading last night." She wanted to lose herself in the words, in other times and other places. The fat leather-bound volume was full of songs and stories from the Seven Kingdoms. Children's stories, if truth be told; too simple and fanciful to be true history. All the heroes were tall and handsome, and you could tell the traitors by their shifty eyes. Yet she loved them all the same. Last night she had been reading of the three princesses in the red tower, locked away by the king for the crime of being beautiful.
— A Storm of Swords, Daenerys VI
dany, who so often doubts herself, who gazes in her reflection upon the little girl she still is:
Jhiqui helped Missandei bathe her while Irri was laying out her clothes. Today she wore a robe of purple samite and a silver sash, and on her head the three-headed dragon crown the Tourmaline Brotherhood had given her in Qarth. Her slippers were silver as well, with heels so high that she was always half afraid she was about to topple over. When she was dressed, Missandei brought her a polished silver glass so she could see how she looked. Dany stared at herself in silence. Is this the face of a conqueror? So far as she could tell, she still looked like a little girl.
— A Storm of Swords, Daenerys VI
dany who fawns over her male lover like a girl with a crush:
And ... I will have no more need of you this evening. I shall be safe with Daario. Oh, and send Irri and Jhiqui, if you would be so good. And Missandei." I need to change, to make myself beautiful. She said as much to her handmaids when they came. "What does Your Grace wish to wear?" asked Missandei. Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario's delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. When first they met, the captain brought her flowers every day, all the way from Yunkai to Meereen. "Bring the grey linen gown with the pearls on the bodice. Oh, and my white lion's pelt." She always felt safer wrapped in Drogo's lionskin.
"I did not say that. I only ….. see that you keep your eye on them, that's all." She felt foolish saying it. She always felt a little foolish when she was with Daario. Gawky and girlish and slow-witted. What must he think of me? She changed the subject. "Will the Lamb Men send us food?"
— A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys VIII
and in AGOT, before she is reborn in the pyre with her hatchlings, we see dany as a timid, frightened girl, one who is soft, saddened and dreamy, who longs for her childhood home, who is loving and merciful, who is forgiving enough to remember her brother viserys for the moments of his kindness towards her rather than his atrocious and violent abuse of her.
admittedly, when i first encountered this series, i was less fond of daenerys, as her gentle, soft, and docile kind of femininity in the first book (and in season one of the show) confronted that deep-seated discomfort towards girlhood within me, and forced me to grapple with it. but i am so grateful that it did, as i have grown to unlearn and relinquish that underlying resentment, and now i instead feel nothing but love for girlhood and for women and girls who are traditionally feminine. daenerys and all the other targaryen girls i’ve mentioned inspired me to create anna and portray her in a way that to me is reminiscent of those sweet and shy princesses, all of whom i’ve developed a very protective sort of maternal instinct over.
