ff xiii battle system apologist

was musing the other day that I can't think of a lot of Coward Characters who are women. I can think of female characters who are afraid, anxious, and conflict-averse, but not a lot who are really Cowards. my current hypothesis for why this might be is twofold: 1. if a man runs screaming and crying away from something the automatic response is "what a coward" but if a woman runs screaming and crying away from something the automatic response is "what a girl;" if you want a Coward Narrative about a woman then you have to put in extra legwork to try and make it not come across like she sucks because of her gender. 2. I think "cowardice" is seen as kind of the worst defect for the masculine gender role in a way it isn't for the feminine role. comparable sins against femininity are more about being un-loving and un-beautiful, and there are a lot more Narratives about female characters centered around those. basically what I'm saying is that we need more girlcowards and also probably more boycinderellas.

honestly one of my favorite things about fanfic is when you can see the canon influences come out in really subtle ways. like a canon line thats mentioned once as a throwaway is suddenly the entire premise for a fic or it influences the characterization or something. its just so cool to see how people weave their ideas around a source material, especially if its not a detail i'd thought about before

some of the best tropes: divorce, cheating, cucking, weird love triangle, breaking up making up, breaking up never making up, pining for your ex, pining for the person you're nominally in a competition with for the third end of the triangle, infidelity, emotional infidelity, fucking someone and imagining they're someone else, toxic soulmates, toxic codependency, proxy sex, exes with benefits, cheating, divorce

love when the mutual takes the mutual bait. yes that post was for you. yes it was about our lil guy. thanks for falling for it. I love you