apkallu-in-training

Trinity Santos:

People hate her because she’s prickly and mean but like. If she was a guy she would be the MOST beloved blorbo.

She doesn't have softening feminine characters traits, she's abrasive and cocky, she has sexual trauma and thinks the way to get over that is bury her feelings, so people fucking hate her even though those are traits they LOVE in male characters

All of her character traits (snarky, cocky, brooding but with a secret heart of gold) which would be lauded in a male character are treated as defects by fandom. She also gets hate for reporting the drug abuse and theft of a white male fave (Langdon), who exhibits all those same traits but is loved for them.

She's got it all! A snarky, cocky princess who is putting on a blustering facade despite all her secret self-loathing, and despite how much she pretends to not care, is just brimming with empathy.

She's treated like either the devil for being slightly rude (when the male characters are just as bad), or as the one-dimensional lesbian friend propping up a M/M ship

She's funny, she's smart, she's the jerk with a heart of gold archetype, she's experienced abuse and doing her best to advocate for her patients, she's a lesbian, what's not to love?

consistently called evil and a cunt and had people wish misogynistic violence on to her (ie. wanting a male character to "put her in her place", often violently) for being a woman who has trouble connecting with her peers and is blunt and arrogant and yes often rude due to past trauma

she also does have a softer side, especially for children or people who are left behind by society

she was kinda rude to a guy and also got him suspended (not even fired!) for stealing benzos from the hospital, which he was doing

beautiful butch lesbian and also 1/2 of the only canon ship, which is of course toxic yuri

She gets so much hate for doing the same shit the men do

First of all, both the fandom and the creators center all the men in this show so heavily, to the point where when the women are mentioned it appears so tokenistic. The men get all the depth and the sad sad backstories (fanon more than canon in this case) that explain why they're behaving like assholes for entire seasons while someone like Santos, who canonically has been through her fair share of intensely traumatic situations, is clearly just a bitch. My god, when will she get fired for her attitude? But oh Robby is just yelling at all the women on his staff cause he's suicidal :(( The things that I've seen about Santos are so intensely vile, and on every single social media platform to boot. There's a scene in the new season where we see her pocket a scalpel set, which in conjunction with another scene that shows her sh scars is supposed to show the fact that this shift has been so fucking awful for her she is considering relapsing. Guess what I saw fans focusing on instead? The fact that she stole from the hospital, the same thing she tried to get Langdon fired for. Why isn't she being fired? I think it's the fact that her personality is that prickly and that she has flaws that are that obvious on one hand that has made her so abhorrent to so many viewers of the pitt (when the same personality and flaws turn men into blorbos and favourite "morally grey" characters), but it's also just… Blatantly lesbophobic. The other women in the show, while also victim to a fair deal of misogyny, both don't have as difficult a personality as Santos, but they're also all linked with men in the show. You can flatten out their flaws because you have the chance to ship them with a man. You can understand them better because you can put yourself in their shoes as you ship them with a man. This is something that is just not possible with Santos. I'm not expressing myself the best with this point, but I hope the gist of it comes across (and obviously, no hate to any of the shipping!! It's all in good fun and I support everyone's right to do whatever the hell they want, this is fandom, I just think its worthwhile to consider the implications of things that might not appear inherently harmful every once in a while)

Moderator's note: This ask is also Trinity Santos propaganda but it's really long and tumblr refused to post it, so I'm linking it instead.

Rose Quartz / Pink Diamond:

For quite a while she was seen as perfect bean. When the big reveal happen then she wast just seen as evil dictator abuser who lied to everyone. Also was seen very weirdly in very extreme ways as a body positivity icon.

She was an amazingly complex character who lived a very difficult life but the fandom couldn't handle such a gray character. I love her and thinks she deserve the recognition of being one the best written characters by Rebecca Sugar instead of cringe.

Oh wah wah she used to be an evil dictator who colonised other planets and on an interpersonal level treated almost everyone in her life badly. sorry you can't stand to see a girlboss winning.

For a character who's already dead at the start of the show and who we only ever see through flashbacks, Rose manages to be one of the most fascinating, dynamic, and complex characters in the whole show. It's so interesting getting to dig into her worldview and how her backstory impacted her, and her early appearances are made even more fascinating on rewatch, when they're recontextualised by the twist of her actually being Pink Diamond. Which, by the way, I do think is one of the all time great TV twists - the kind of perfect twist that catches you completely off guard in the moment but in hindsight you realise was obvious all along

people act like she's the true villain of the show like- they'll say she's the worst of the diamonds when all the other diamonds ABUSED her and had WAY more power and influence than she did!! rose did end up hurting so many people around her but that's because she was so abused that she thought anything she did didn't matter at all. to paraphrase rebecca sugar, she thought she was so powerless, that she's actually very powerful. people often point out her arc was shown in reverse, and chronologically, she went from a young immature diamond who threw tantrums, to a rose who hid hurtful truths and did everythint she could to uplift others because she was so inspired by them. she thought she could never change, which is why she hurt so many people, but she DID change! it was this mindset that caused her to give up her physical form for steven to exist, which so many people DON'T UNDERSTAND that it's SUICIDE. they BLAME her for being a bad mother (she never got to be a mother) and for shoving all her problems onto steven (she wasn't aware how her death would devastate the gems or that homeworld would return). she's hurt many people, but she's blamed for things that were either out of her control or the fault of others. she really is the final boss of misunderstood female characters