rocky switching between the dry sarcastic tone "i make chain. i make long chain." / you can do that? / *yes.* (like duh. in the book he says "obvious i can do that.")
AND
the slightly childlike "what's that?" tone when grace calls it fishing
AND
full on excited screaming when grace shows him what fishing is. "OOOHHHHH OHHHH!!!"
in the span of literally six seconds is what makes him the character of all time. he is a middle aged nerd mechanic pairbonded with a middle aged nerd scientist and they are scream besties and clock bros together
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AAAAAAA+, I love it! The good shit! The insecurity, the yearning, the misunderstandings (or better yet, serious obstacles like divided loyalties), the racheting sexual tension and longing, and the catharsis when they finally figure their shit out. *chef kiss* Fuck yeah, so delicious, I'll eat it with a spoon. Also beautiful in poly ships, with extra crunchy complications - whether it's all of them pining or an established relationship wanting someone additional.
Treated as a hurdle to a m/m pairing that's not even that interesting. Despite the man she likes being like 30 and her being a high schooler, she's treated as the one who should supposedly know better than to get involved with him. A lot of the fandom likes to put this male character on a pedestal and ignore the fact he was attracted to her even before he knew she was 18.
Her relationship to Laura and Donna is so interesting. She's strong and smart but also can be vulnerable. She has dreams outside of what her little town can offer. My personal favorite twin peaks character behind Laura.
Hen Wilson:
Constantly overlooked by the fandom in favor of men, and when people do focus on her it's all about how she helps the m/m ship du jour get together, or supports them, or guides a man in his sexuality discovery. People outside the fandom are constantly being bombarded with the noncanon ship between two white (passing) men, and never even hear about the Black lesbian main character. The OG animals facts girlie but everyone gives that trait to her (white) male coworker.
BADASS Black lesbian firefighter who joined the crew at a time when it was rife with racism and misogyny. Had to fight three times as hard to earn her place and boy did she! Multifaceted, makes devastating mistakes, lashes out, is sososo compassionate, funny, and the smartest character on the show! And her wife is so hot
Hen is a main character who has been in a lesbian relationship since the very first episode(!!!), and yet it's only when the white male lead comes out as bi that fandom celebrates how wonderfully queer the show is and put his face on all the fandom Pride events and artwork! I guess it's not queer rep until it's a white man doing it…
Hen is brave, kind, has a huge heart, makes mistakes, loves, laughs… She's such a wonderful and vibrant character and she doesn't deserve to be overlooked by both the writers and the fandom!
Fandom turns her into a cheerleader for their fave m/m ship, usually Buddie but sometimes Bucktmmy (the latter being especially crazy considering her history with Tommy). Fans also hated on her for what she said about feeling like no one supported her after Bobby died because Buck made her fill out a grief checklist one time, even though that speech (while maybe not super supported by the previous episodes) had very clear subtext about her being the only black woman at her workplace.
Hen is a friend to all animals and is extremely messy in her personal life, two great qualities for any character.
fandom refuses to give her the same rich inner live her male coworkers have, because she's just allowed to be the mothering, wise, funny black woman. it's not that fans hate her, they proclaim to love her, but everytime she gets a storyline they complain. everytime she behaves like a human being, with flaws, on the show they complain. anyone's guess whether that's misogyny, racism or misogy-noir
Henrietta fucking Wilson, smartest person you'll ever know (except for her rocket scientist wife) is a firefighter/paramedic, she is badass, she's a mom, she's a lesbian, she's a great friend and she has this incredibly dry wit sometimes. she has flaws, she's stubborn, she tries so hard not to burden anyone that it's burdening, she makes decisions and takes the fall for them. she!!!
This is a complicated answer but here's my thesis. Hen (main character) is sometimes (sometimes!) not served that well by the canon, and I think it's because they are (since s1) afraid to let a black lesbian character be too messy. But this is about fandom, not canon. And she does have some really juicy storylines. And what I have noticed is that fans love to hate the show and they like to say Because Hen Has No Story as one of the reasons. And then when Hen has a juicy story, many of these some fans will insist it's Bad Actually and will come up with some of the most convoluted nonsensical reasons the storyline is objectively bad, when they are in fact clearly just upset their fave didn't get more attention that ep, but they can't say that because that would be racist and they are Not Racist, you see. So some really fun and interesting stories gets crickets at best and torn up and discarded at worst and sucks.
She marches to the beat of her own drum. She's compassionate and kind and brilliant. She's Judging You. She is SUCH a good friend. She is constantly celebrating people and making sure they feel appreciated. She had a really cool villain foil in s5 and nobody ever talks about how good it was. She loves animals. She's had to carve out her place wherever she goes. She has excellent intuition and she's daring and kind of egotistical about her ability to save lives with risky ad hoc medical hail marys. It's hard to sum her up, she's been here 9 seasons. In some ways the family dynamics of the team started with her.
Martha Jones (Doctor Who) vs. Hornet (Hollow Knight / Silksong)
Martha Jones
Hornet
Remaining time: 5 days 2 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Hornet:
Every fourth fucking art is people sexualizing her im going to. kill someone
Martha Jones:
She was the first main Black companion on Doctor Who…I'll just talk about the fandom racism/misogyny itself and not the racism/misogyny in the show itself. She was subject to overt and subtle misogynoir from the fandom, especially since she came after white fan-favorite companion Rose Tyler. People disliked her for having a crush on the Doctor, which Rose also had, and was unfavorably compared to Rose. There's a lot more, but I don't want to write a whole essay.
She's a medical student, and incredibly smart and capable! In her stories, she's incredibly compassionate to those around her, and offers emotional as well as medical assistance. Also, she has incredible style!
Martha gets absolutely shafted by the fandom, most of whom cannot seem to forgive her for not being Rose Tyler. That she dares to leave the Doctor and live her own life is apparently an act more evil than any the Daleks could dream of. A lot of fans insist that Martha's race has nothing to do with why they dislike her. A lot of fans are fucking liars.
Martha is competent and intelligent and screams way less than usual for a companion so she is clearly excellent.
I think fandoms been very racist and misogynistic towards her, relagating her as some spineless woman always pining after the doctor instead of a badass MD who saved the day many times
Not only misogyny but racism too. Martha is an incredibly smart and brave character who doesn’t get half the credit that the Doctor’s other (WHITE) companions get. She gets dogged on by the fandom for a lot of reasons that are overlooked or forgiven when Rose Tyler does a lot of the same things.
She was the only RTD companion who wasn’t given superpowers in order to save the day. Girl saved the world with nothing but gumption and a good pair of walking boots.
coworkers - A, I love it! Given my love for teams, crews, found family, partnership, procedurals, and competence, yeah, stories about coworkers are often very in line with that. I love people being good at what they do with other people who they care about who are also good at what they do (or learning how). If you mean in relation to ships? It's not essential but can be a good setup.
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Ooh, an A, I love it! Time loops are delightful and satisfying (and if involving trying to save someone from dying, angsty and traumatic in a non-tragic way, which I love), time travel is fun in both directions, and I have a weakness for time-travel fix-its especially. I think the latter mirrors my love for canon divergence AUs - the what if, the 'for want of a nail' ripple effect, tracking down the crucial inflection points for character and plot, etc.
- alternate universe, not whatever the main people's job is
friends to lovers - Hmm, so when people cite this trope they usually mean 'childhood friends' or 'best friends' which is a D for me. For example, I was not really interested in Steve/Bucky until after CATWS, when their BFFs dynamic evolved into 'back from dead with decades of trauma and amnesia' - MUCH more my jam, lol. But on the other hand I like my ships to be friends as well as romantically involved. I'm just less interested in the 'we're really really good friends for ages but I'm terrified to confess bc what if it ruins everything' dynamic that what I associate with this trope - probably because it's happened to me, I didn't return the feelings, we talked it out, and we're still friends, so like. All the angst just doesn't really hit for me.
arranged marriage - C. Lives and dies by the author's skill at setting up the premise and maintaining whatever dramatic tension they've created as the pairing progresses from arranged to actually in love (at least, that's the usual trope). So this trope can fucking amazing and fraught and delicious! Or it can be contrived and weird/boring about gender roles and predictable.
alternate universe, not whatever the main people's job is - D. A hard sell for me. I have a huge passion for competent characters and as soon as you pull them out of their original setting that aspect becomes difficult to preserve. I certainly have and do read mundane AUs, but I'm more likely to enjoy AUs where they're still highly capable in some way. I rarely save 'they were monster hunters in canon but now they're modern high school students/baristas/etc', but 'they were monster hunters in canon and now they're spies/detectives/doctors/etc' is more likely to intrigue me. Still a hard sell, but more likely.
A: Love it! I don't think I "spend my time combing AO3 for it" so much as I get into fandoms where the trope is baked into canon, and then read voraciously. Special fondness for close-knit teams or (space)ship crews becoming family (my early exposure to Firefly, Stargate, and other canons to blame for that), though I'm loving the Lone Wolf and Cub trope's popularity in recent years - The Witcher, The Mandalorian, my current blorbo The Gray Man, etc.
I do prefer when people keep the 'family' messy and freeform rather than trying to shove everyone into a nuclear family role - like, this character is The Dad, this one's The Mom, The Little Sister, etc. Just a 'we're family' vibe is good for me - though specific characters having a specific dynamic is normal, of course. When the role gets generalized to the whole group it can feel a little... bland? simplistic? heteronormative?
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I'm re-reading the Vorkosigan Saga for the first time in a long time (I think it's been maybe 15 years since I read the earlier books) and I remembered how much I liked them, but I forgot how feral they made me. sorry to anyone in my general orbit for the next 12-14 months.
Lois McMaster Bujold really did go: here have space opera shenanigans paired with an exploration of societal upheaval and intergenerational trauma, told from the perspective of a family composed entirely of people who are deeply unhinged. A+, no notes.
I think Tumblr is sleeping on Aral Vorkosigan tbh. fascinating set of life experiences that HAS to fuck one up in new and inventive ways.
witnessed most of his family being murdered at age 11 and two years later his new emperor hands him a blade to help chop up the old emperor who ordered it. obsessed with honor and yet is constantly either flung into situations that force him to override it or lapses in his attempts to strive for it. bisexual and almost certainly weird and repressed about it at first given Barrayar's general cultural milieu, his upbringing, and his first(?) boyfriend turning out to be a sadistic sociopath. kills his first wife's two lovers in impetuous duels and twenty years later confesses this to to the next woman he proposes to within days of meeting her. repeatedly escapes consequences for the times he genuinely fucks up - and he knows this! - and gets ripped to shreds for things he tried to prevent. keeps getting handed increasing levels of political power and he hates it so so much. there are several things wrong with him but crucially I don't think they're the things he thinks.
and we never get his POV directly. 10/10 guy to me, I want to study him under a microscope.
Cordelia kind of wins the award for Most Normal by default, but a) the bar is on the floor, and b) this is also a woman who has, in order: risked her own life to help resolve an attempted military overthrow of an enemy commander that she met like a week ago, left her entire former life behind in part to protect the political secrets of a planet she had one single personal connection to, charged into an occupied city in the middle of a coup for a guerilla raid with THREE people to rescue her kidnapped son, ordered the extremely mentally unwell guy who follows her every order to chop off the head of the guy who did it, and tossed the head in the middle of a conference table to make a point.
I do not think Miles got his impulsive streak from Aral, is what I'm saying.
Often in books, especially with a younger/teenage protagonist, there's an inciting incident, something external that either gets the narrator into trouble or gets them involved with the plot. everything that happens in Warrior's Apprentice is the direct result of Miles just deciding of his own free will and with zero provocation to do the most bonkers shit imaginable. yeah I'm gonna go rescue this random drunk-off-his-ass pilot I've never met who's holding an empty ship hostage so he can keep flying. he has diplomatic immunity now. yeah I'm going to mortgage my family's irradiated land to buy the ship. yeah I'm going to take a cargo run and now the client thinks I run a real mercenary outfit. at no point will I correct him.
this does make sense for him as a character because he has a complex family legacy to live up to AND a girl to impress, however. the entire plot of this book happens solely because of who this ADHD 17-year-old is as a person, and that is kind of beautiful.
#nothing captures dean's familial relationships better than when he calls John in a moment of desperation #and the voicemail message just tells him to contact himself (via @skylightangels)
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really nice gift for Specifically Me when the character has an immediate and violent panic response to being held down / physically restrained. especially if their affect is usually cheerful or relaxed or reserved and this is their one "sicko mode (wildly uncharacteristic)" button.
