Appreciation for sapphics fictional & real ♡

Helen of Troy:

many people blame her for so much shit she was Not responsible for. the trojan war was not her fucking fault people!!! also multiple translators have made her call herself a slut or a bitch even though she never refers to herself that way in the ancient greek text :/

give my girl a fucking break!!!! please!!!

COSMIC PUNCHLINE TO EVERY JOKE IN LITERATURE ABOTU HOW WOMEN ARE EVIL. AND WHAT IS LITERATURE IF NOT ILIAD FANDOM. ALL LITERATURE

SHE MAYBE DID ALL THAT BUT I LOIVE HER ANYWAY

Talia Al-Ghul:

Consistently sidelined, drawn in a predatory way, and dismissed by the fans for being a rapist bc of one racist writing arc

Catelyn Stark

In a universe full of men who are rapists, murderers, and sadists, the ASOIAF fandom treats Catelyn — a woman who wishes to protect her children and sometimes makes poor decisions when they’re in danger — as if she is the root of all evil. She is blamed for all of the bad decisions of the male characters around her, even if she disagrees with those decisions.

First I feel that people are really unfair to her about the Jon situation. People judge her through a modern lens. She couldn’t just not blame Jon divorce her husband and ride off into the sunset. Her choosing not to love Jon is the only agency she had. I say this as someone who LOVES Jon, the fact that Jon was motherless wasn’t her problem. Ned created the situation it was his job to make sure both Jon and Cat felt at home within Winterfell.

Cat’s arc explores motherhood in an interesting way. She has to balance loving Robb with Robb not saving Sansa…and the rest of his mistakes. She left Winterfell and Theon sacked it, she believes her younger children are dead. She freed Jamie to get her girls back. She also is only a mother to her children she didn’t fall into the warm everyone’s mother trope. She has such a grounded arc and I truly hate it when people compare her to Rhaenys from House of the Dragon. No woman would want her husband’s bastards inheriting over her granddaughters.

She's mean to Jon so she's a monster without empathy and a bad mother to all her kids; instead of a nuanced woman who lives in a patriarchal society and lashes out against her bastard husband's child because he is the only acceptable target in the situation. I am not saying that it was fair for Jon who was innocent, but, even if I understand why Ned lied about it, it was fucked up from Catelyn's husband in a feudal society to except Catelyn to raise a boy she believed to be the prove of his unfaithfulness without having complex feelings (that sometimes became imperfect actions) about it. Got made her a secondary character in Robb's story when actually in asoiaf she's the only pov through which we know Robb at all.

Despite being in many ways the embodiement of a typical high-born perfect feudal lady, Cat is way less passive than the average reader except her to be. She is highly competent, was raised as the firstborn and presumptive heir by her father until her much younger brother was born, so she received a political education that for example Cersei didn't, and this allow her to manage Winterfell for long period of time when Ned isn't here or being her son Robb most important advisor. Despite teaching Robb how to be cautious for the realm's sake, she is very bold and isn't scared to go against each member of House Lannister and personally challenge them. She is also a fairly typical gender-comforming high born lady, raised in a feudal society so she has some ideas and conceptions of the world that are not 100% aligned with a contemporary feminist woman, but through her story she learns to not let prejuduce blinds her- for example, we know she was critical of Arya's gender-not-comforming (which mother wouldn't be in asoiaf, being indoctrinate into femininity since she was a child and comvinced that her daughters woukd need to comform too in order to thrive?) but she learns to feel admiration and full respect for Brienne who is a woman who callenges gender norms in a similaw ways to Arya. Even while comforming mostly to how a lady should acts and speaks, Catelyn has often challenged the male characters ideas that women are meeks or politically incompetent or even more naturally forgiving, by being a full blown political player able to use tacticians but often motivated by rage and a desire for revenge. (Lady Stoneheart!) She is often accused of loving Bran more than her others children, and it is true that he is maybe her favourite because she thinks of him more often and more fondly, but every time she had to choose between Bran and another child of hers she picked the choice that made more sense for the survival of her family as a whole, or the North: like when she chose to follow Robb in battle to help him win and temporarily left Bran and Rickon at Winterfell, or when she choose to free the Kingslayer Jaime despite his admission of being responsable of Bran's fall, in exchange of the hope of having Arya and Sansa back. Her arc is the prove that exploring a female character's feeling around motherhood and her various relationship to multiple children can be genuinely interesting, but also that an adult female character who is a mother and a wife and a widow can perfectly be not ONLY that, but also and especially her own complex person. Go Cat!

Cat makes pretty much the same amount of bad decisions as every man in the series, has realistic flaws and understandable motivations behind this flaws, yet I’m constantly seeing people call her stupid, grating, and annoying for making wrong, emotionally driven moves while everyone she ever loved is torn from her. Criticism of her treatment of Jon is valid, but plenty other characters who’ve done worse get off with way less hate

Cat is a very nuanced take on the mother archetype, and a good view into how Westerosi society informs the views of its characters, especially its women. She’s also kind of an impetuous badass. Just because she isn’t as messy as Cersei she’s still cool. You also got to love a character who comes back as a hate zombie

Carol Sturka

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.

Max:

Ignored in favour of male protagonists despite having one of the most interesting arc. Being stripped of nuances in analysis. Being reduced to a girlboss who "climbed the social ladder" which isn't inaccurate, but her characters and her motivation are way more complex. She is not that much hated on Tumblr anymore (she was back then when it aired), in fact I think she is now one if not the most loved female character in this fandom, but she is often mischaracterized or ignored in favour of others characters, because her story doesn't interwine at all with the one of Flint (main character and a gay man) especially on Reddit. Which is a pity because she is probably the most rich and complete character after Flint himself. Ah! Both her love interests through the show are white women who are bisexual or went through comphet before meeting her, and before had been in relationship with two of the men who are fandom favourite. So Max, an openly gay black woman, got accused in the early days of fandom of manipulating these women, especially the second one, Anne Bonny, with whom she had a very depht and loving ans touching relationship, and "stealing" them from "theirs men" who were beloved by the fandom. Icks. Today, the fact that (in a show like Black Sails that is a lot about queerness) Max is the only character who is openly gay and proud and doesn't hides this fact from others (nor when she is a poor prostitute, nor when she is the de facto queen of the island) is not discussed enough in analysis of the queer themes of the show. The fact that she was being born into slavery by an enslaved mother who was raped and from what we know she had probably a very difficult and traumatic childhood is also not taken into consideration when analyzing Max's motivations and (sometimes, to our eyes, surprising) survival strategies. It is almost taboo even now in fandom to admit that another beloved character, who also had a past and trauma of enslavement in childhood but is a white (?) man with more structural power than Max, was if not completely at least partially responsable of enabling her punitive beating and gang rape in season one.