it just feels like overcompensation and an afterthought at the same time. it esp irks me if their dynamic still revolves around the other male characters, like they’re cheating out of revenge, or they become their emotional support wingman lesbians, or they’re together as to not pose a threat to the main m/m ship, or you can just FEEL the guilty reassurance from the writer in making sure we know that the female character is still happy, like “don’t worry guys, we didn’t forget abt her!” as if she can’t be single and happy. why does she need to be shipped w someone to force her into relevance 😭

The thing is that... look. I get it. Many fandoms do not have very many women in their canon, many of those women are treated pretty poorly by the canon or aren't given as much depth as their male peers, and if you're at all picky the pickings are kind of slim (I would love to be a fan of c!Niki, if I were able to watch six-hour vods, which I am not). It is not wrong that most works with large fandoms are really, really sexist, and the problem is not just in the fanbase!

But come the fuck on. It is not an accident that the DSMP and the MCU and BNHA, all of which are vast-majority male and the female characters are treated terribly, are megafandoms, and Revolutionary Girl Utena is eligible for yuletide. It is not wrong that if you want to see more female-character-focused fanwork you should go to Sailor Moon and not The Untamed, but it is also kind of missing the point to say that and not look at the difference in size between those fandoms. People can say "it's because the male characters are so often more interesting and have more meaningful interactions," and like, sometimes that's even true, I will be the first to tell you that quackbur has more to it than tinarose, but please compare the Clint/Coulson tag to the Utena/Anthy tag and look me in the eye and tell me that's the only thing driving the trend. With a straight face.

And even more there's a thing where— so, I was a mod in the @ao3topshipsbracket bracket. And femslash ships, once they were in the bracket, did really well. Like, absurdly well, like 80% of the f/f ships entered got to the top 16, and the last one was against blackbonnet which was never gonna lose in round 1. You might notice something about that number, though, which is that there were only five of them entered total, because people love to vote for femslash but they absolutely will not write it. And they won't say anything about it either! I was watching the activity feed the entire tournament, and I can tell you, for all of the "let's go lesbians" that populated our notes, nobody would say anything that was actually about the specific characters who made up their ship. I learned a lot about Naruto fandom, modding that bracket; I still know nothing about CW Supergirl, because the only thing anyone would say about it is "it has women in it". Because women are interchangeable. Because women are avatars of Being A Good Feminist. Because clicking a button is easy, and actually thinking about any specific woman and her traits and her internality is hard.

The thing is that guilt over misogyny does not actually fix misogyny. It gets you a lot of people who vote for women in polls, and who say "he's like a woman to me" about their male faves but notably don't have any canonically female characters they talk about, and who say that the only thing they care about in a fic is if it has women in it but will not ever actually say anything about any specific woman, and who never shut up about yuri but apparently yuri is everything and anything except women who have feelings about one another.

But existing alongside it is another prominent fantasy that is rarely subjected to an unfair level of scrutiny simply because it is more socially acceptable: the fantasy of an unproblematic and good guy - the eternally green flag - who won't give you any drama or trouble and who is non threatening, who offers stability and, most importantly, represents security and safety. And honestly, this is understandable because many women are conditioned since an early age that they are to avoid danger and risks at all costs. Protecting them, at times unintentionally, becomes an excuse to keep them confined within the walls of their household. The promise of safety becomes the cage and comfort its furnishings. Yet, even that cage doesn't make women less vulnerable to harm.

This is why fiction matters because it is one realm where there is room for every kind of fantasy. Here, women can be safe and protected till the end of their days. Simultaneously, they can also partake in dangerous relationships and situations and end up victorious. Yet, it is the latter that gets subjected to derision, judgment and policing while the former is not only left unchecked but is arbitrarily imposed on every story.

There is an expectation placed on fictional female characters across genres, and irrespective of background and personality, to stick to safe and 'vetted' relationships, if they are to have a romance at all. In a dark and messed up dynamic with a male character, their only identity can be that of a victim and everything else must cease to exist. It is also expected from creators and audience to not 'romanticize' the said dynamic. It shackles these characters and strips them off their individuality. It turns them into one homogenous symbol and restricts their potential for complexity. Worse is when real women who write and enjoy such stories are punished in a bid to 'protect' the fictional woman who doesn't need their protection in the first place. It is tiresome.

"What if I spin a little lie of a life unlived?"