-|life is infinitely stranger|-

for DC, if you read the comics you’ll actually find that women are included a lot in the source material and even play pivotal roles in fan favorite storylines, and then strangely get left out more in fanon than canon. as sexist as DC is in canon, what with the frequent hyper sexualization and demonization of the women in this series …….. for the love of god at least women exist there. to many batfam writers it’s like the worlds population flipped from being a 50:50 gender ratio to being 99:1 and women are an endangered species being preserved in some conservatory somewhere.

women play a WAY bigger role in batman comics than most of you care to learn. huntress is pivotal in several arcs, so is catwoman, so is oracle. some fics will even specifically go out of their way to reference some of these arcs — and then leave out the women like they were never there! and it’s impolite to ask writers or artist where the missing women are so i just click out and move on, but like, seriously? every time? that’s not even counting the amount of AUs where by the writer’s full control, women who had been critically important to these men just straight up don’t exist.

you guys expect women to just be cool with being in fandoms that go out of their way to write us out of the narrative? you think we’re just going to have a fun time?

this was also about Zelda. the zelda series proper has countless pivotal, important, plot relevant, iconic women, and their presence and choices, particularly zelda, often genuinely impact the storyline of the game. sometimes in huge ways like, the story wouldn’t have happened at all without her. women were actually so central that a way bigger portion of all major NPCs tended to be women; 4 out of 5 of the sages you save in Ocarina of Time are women, and even Sheik is actually Zelda in disguise!

but fandom sexism has been around a long time in zelda too. an old popular theory had fans pretending sheik was a separate character to zelda entirely — to the point we had people in the fandom with this headcanon literally saying “ugh oot zelda was so boring she didn’t do anything” when she was literally sheik and had one of the MOST central, active zelda roles to not only the story but even the combat! people let a sexist headcanon make them forget what women actually did!!!!

but this criticism is more lobbied at a particular fan circle who have, truly a genuinely creative idea — what if all the links met? though they also weren’t the first to have the idea (in my earlier zelda fandom experience there was a similar AU), but this group has majorly popularized it. but this has led to a shocking amount of erasure of the women depicted in fan creations. in what was once a fandom that would reliably depict women in a meaningful and story central way…. now a huge portion of fan works are just …dudes. now the portion of fanworks about women are way smaller. and to see zelda play a meaningful role in a narrative it’s mostly some flavor of shippy. zelda fanworks have tilted from once being a pretty woman positive and woman centric fandom … to overwhelmingly ‘zelda & related works’ being about dudes and their relationship to other dudes, both platonic and romantic. and i can’t stress this enough, 90% of these guys never met in canon. writers are going out of their way to bolster relationships between fictional guys instead of exploring link’s relationship to the many women he’s known, or depicting the relationships between these women. thank god though this is still a better fandom than batman because at least there’s still an exceptional handful of writers still writing zelda epics where she’s the main character. whereas in DC, there is an extremely noteworthy absence of ANYTHING where women are the main character. i genuinely can’t remember the last time a girl was the central character of a narrative, let alone for a work that got extremely popular the way fics about men can. and at least in zelda, we can filter out most works relating to this AU (though it’s pretty tough to content filter as it’s only 2 letters long (LU) and there’s a whole lot of words that get filtered with it. &many on Ao3 don’t tag it properly)

anyway. all this to say.

this isn’t me saying “don’t make what inspires you” or me trying to force writers at gunpoint to write more women. it’s me saying like… make what speaks to you — but why does ‘what speaks to people’ usually mean large groups of men and no women? why is this dynamic invented even when women are there and important in canon? why is ‘what speaks to people’ the idea to diminish the roles of women in media specifically to prop up men instead?

tl;dr:

in my experience, the source materials’ original authors DO usually include women.

Welcome back one and all to our eleventh annual Obiyuki Week! Our theme this year is:

The Poisoner's Garden

Inspired by the poison-mediated murder mysteries Shirayuki has been sent to solve at Shinsu's estate, each prompt for this week will be inspired by a plant-based poison. We encourage participants to think as laterally about these prompts as they would like, but we will also include additional themes for each day that can be used to inspire new works or continue existing ones. This ship week is open to all Obiyuki works, so even if a submission does not quite fit the day, please feel free to post and join in!

Day 1: Wolfsbane

Aconitum lycoctonum (folknames: wolfsbane, monkshood, devil's helmet, blue rocket) is one of a genus of over 250 herbaceous and mostly toxic plants that grow in the moist soil of mountain meadows. Historically used both as a medicine and a poison, it is purported to have earned its name for its use in wolf hunting, often used by the Greeks to coat their arrows and javelins. Its reputation as a treatment for lycanthropy is a modern invention, rather than one from Antiquity.

Themes: Persistence, Chivalry, Shapeshifters, Purple

Day 2: Deadly Nightshade

Atropa bella-donna (folknames: deadly nightshade, belladonna) is a toxic member of the nightshade family, which also includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant as well as other well-known poisons, mandrake and henbane. Native to Europe and Western Asia, its foliage and berries are both extremely toxic when ingested, causing delirium and hallucinations as well as death. Its name, "belladonna" is thought to have come from its use to dilate women's pupils, an effect historically considered attractive and seductive, though prolonged usage typically resulted blindness.

Themes: Delirium, Seduction, Silence, Black

Day 3: Foxglove

Digitalis purpurea (folknames: foxglove, witch's glove, dead man's bells) is the best known species of the genus Digitalis, which takes its name from the Latin word for finger, as the German folkname for this plant meant 'finger hut' or 'thimble.' Its folkname's origin has been obscured by myth, though it is said that they were once thought to be worn by foxes to silence their movements while hunting prey. Historically used as a purgative as well as a treatment for epilepsy, herbalists eventually abandoned such treatments as the threshold for proper dosage remained too narrow for reward to outweigh the risk.

Themes: Insincerity, Feeling Your Heartbeat, Fae, Pink

Day 4: Hemlock

Conium maculatum (folkname: hemlock, kill-cow, fool's-parsley, snakeweed, winter fern) is a hollow-stemmed, herbaceous plant often mistaken for other edible wild plants, such as wild carrot, parsnip, or members of the parsley family. Hardy and with deep, penetrating roots, it is a tenacious grower that has wildly extended beyond its natural range. There is no part of the plant that is not poisonous, but in high mountainous regions where winters were long, it was often used as a spring food-- after careful cooking. The Greeks were known to use it to poison condemned prisoners, most famously the philosopher Socrates.

Themes: Tenacity, Desperation, You Will Be the Death of Me, Green

Day 5: Strychnine

Strychnos nux-vomica (folknames: strychnine tree, poison fruit, semen strychnos, quaker buttons) is a tree native to India and southeast Asia; its fruit well-known as the natural source of the extremely poisonous strychnine compound. Though used in Traditional Chinese Medicine as a treatment for many ailments, it was commonly used as arrow poison, with many accidental deaths occurring from simply breathing in the powder or absorbing it through the skin. Most famously, it was used to assassinate the last ruler of the Southern Tang dynasty while kept captive by the Song, the powder of its seeds mixed in a goblet of wine sent to him as a birthday gift. Despite its introduction to the West as a rat poison, it became a popular stimulant around the turn of the 20th century, used by scholars and Olympians alike.

Themes: Competition, Betrayal, Bitterness, Orange

Day 6: Oleander

Nerium oleander (folknames: oleander, rose laurel, be-still tree, rosebay) is the only species in its genus, so widely cultivated that the origin of it remains unknown, though it thought to be somewhere in the Mediterranean Basin. Despite its known toxicity, there are very few cases of accidental poisonings due to its unpalatable bitterness, though there are often anecdotal stories of people being poisoned by inhaling the smoke of its burning branches, or ingesting food that has been cooked on skewers made with its wood. It is rumored that oleander is the plant responsible for the trances of the Oracle at Delphi, either by inhaling its smoke or chewing its leaves.

Themes: Providence, Prophecy, Intoxication, Red

Day 7: Death Cap/Free Day

[A free day for any obiyuki work you would like! If you are looking for a prompt for this day, you can use the prompt below!]

Amanita phalloides (folkname: death cap, destroying angel, stinking amanita) is a poisonous fungus known for resembling several edible species of mushroom. Not only is it the most poisonous of all known mushrooms-- containing enough toxin to kill an adult human in only half of a single toadstool-- it is the deadliest worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year. There is no way for the poison to be neutralized enough to eat, either by cooking, freezing or drying; one of its most notable casualties was of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, who ate a dish of sauteed mushrooms and died 10 days later, leading to the War of the Austrian Succession.

Themes: Accident, Mistaken Identity, Succession, Blue

Dates: September 20th-26th Tag: #obiyukiweek26

[Guidelines beneath cut]

Heather flowers along the mountain stream - Isle of Skye, Scotland, August 2025

photo by: nature-hiking