fox mulder yaoi hands

Shiori Takatsuki:

You would think in a fanbase for a show about patriarchal violence there would be more sympathy for a tormented lesbian character. But surprisingly, people are cruel to her and fail to offer her sympathy. She is a victim of misogyny and homophobia, both internalized and externally, and while she does bad things (that frankly read as self harm) the fact remains that I have actively seen people say that the literal rapist pedophile character is more sympathetic to them than Shiori and I am not joking. She also gets thrown into the "toxic yuri" box aka people say that for brownie points and have nothing to say about her otherwise. She's not as hated as some other characters and its gotten better but the fact remains I have spent years defending her and encouraging people to be more sympathetic to her and youtube comments talking about how evil she is pop up all the time. Ugh.

Shiori is a complicated but compelling character. She does mean things, but its so easy to see it comes from fear and self loathing. Her relationship with Juri has both sides doing wrong, but Shiori's side is harder to understand, so people dont think about how dehumanizing it can be to be idealized or for Juri to be upset with her when Shiori is just as tormented by her own internalized homophobia.

InfiniteDrift:

Gabi Braun

SHE WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD. SHE WAS A VICTIM OF PROPAGANDA, JUST AS MUCH AS THE GROWN ASS MEN IN THE SHOW, INCLUDING HER GROWN ASS MAN COUSIN WHO GETS WOOBIFIED TO HELL AND BACK!!!! 'Oh she's annoying and loud and selfish and-' SHE IS A MIRROR, A DIRECT PARALLEL OF EREN. DID I MENTION SHE WAS 12? FLOCH DOESN'T GET EVEN HALF THE HATE AND HE'S A FULL ASS ADULT, AND A FASCIST. LIKE. ARE WE FR???? Justice for Gabi my GOD.

She was a child soldier who directly witnessed the literal end of her world as she knew it but she still saw the error of her ways and strived to do better. UNLIKE SOME CHARACTERS-

Furina de Fontaine

The fandom loves to take her complexities and make her so 2D, while similar male characters (cough cough Aventurine) get their every word analyzed

Miss Pauling:

because she's (one of) the only female characters in tf2, there is unfortunately a LOT of shitty blender porn of her. i was looking up a model of her for reference to make her as a Mii, and one of the first images that popped up was of a model you can download to use to make blender porn with her. she is also confirmed to be lesbian, yet people love to ship her with male characters (and make M/F blender porn with her, but that's sort of a side of the fandom that isn't necessarily on tumblr. this i see A LOT on tumblr.) everyone gets up in arms if you dare ship a woman with medic, who is not confirmed to be specifically gay but just heavily implied to be achillean or in love with heavy, but literally no one cares if you ship pauling with scout or any other man. then it's all "what abt bisexuality??" when she is stated to be a LESBIAN. it's lesbophobic double standards they don't put onto gay men. the fandom also just changes her character a lot from the comics or games, and make her less inept i feel. yeah she's stressed and anxious, but she's also badass and basically running TFI by herself.

SHE'S AWESOMEE and i love the tf2 fandom but it's overrun by people only interested in the male characters and not one of the best, realest, most grounded characters who still doesn't feel out of place despite tf2's weirdness. also she's being overworked and abused by an older woman and she's exactly where she wants to be 💖

Lizzie Lafayette:

she's often paired off with another female character in the background of fics about the most popular m/m ship in the fandom. she's relegated to being one of the men from that ship's older sister because they grew up together. as a Black woman she's also often portrayed as aggressive, and has been subject to some pretty odd sexualization from both canon (in a now-scrapped design) and fanon

original unused memory vault (hq render by @cadoized !)