A bell is a cup until it is struck

you are a clone. you have all the memories of the original, and think the same way as they do. you are, essentially, a perfect copy of them. now then, if you were to murder the original…

having explained my reasoning, i still feel like a hypocrite. i have a lot of opinions about female characters and ships and the way they are so poorly treated, and i want better for female characters and female ships - but i rarely am the one to put my money where my mouth is and make stuff for them.

i don't know how to reconcile this. i'm sending this ask because i bet i'm not the only person struggling with this issue, and i wanted to support anyone else who feels the same way. loving female characters can be tough no matter how genuine.

look. no one is telling you not to write m/m fics if that's what you enjoy. this is fandom, it's for fun, and this blog is not about making people feel bad for things they like. with that said, i personally really don't agree with the argument that m/m is the only possible refuge from having to deal with misogyny.

writing about women doesn't have to be about misogyny if you don't want it to be. i mean you could make a similar argument that because m/m is about queer men, you necessarily have to deal with homophobia if you write yaoi. but a lot of people don't do that because it's fanfiction. you can write about whatever scenario you want and deal with whatever issues you're comfortable dealing with. you gave the pitt, as an example, right? write about mel and santos having crazy omegaverse sex after singing karaoke together; write an au where aliens exist and mohan and mckay go on a date in a spaceship (look we all have our crack ships, this one's mine, leave me be); write about dana missing collins so much that she moves to portland to be with her. get creative, go crazy. i just really dislike the idea that it's impossible to write women in a fun escapist way.

another issue i have with this idea is that often the male characters being shipped in popular m/m ships are themselves misogynistic. so, for example, the two most popular ships for the pitt, at least according to ao3 numbers, are robby/whitaker and robby/abbot. now robby is a character that i personally really like and enjoy, but i don't think there's any denying that he's sometimes casually misogynistic (and a little racist) in a condescending old liberal white guy way. so when you say writing m/m frees you from writing about misogyny, what do you do about robby or dean winchester or any other beloved male character who is pretty obviously misogynistic. do you only have to deal with misogyny if a character experiences it, but not if a character perpetuates it? i don't really get that logic.

also, i understand if you turn to fanfiction for escapism from real world issues, but speaking for myself, i sometimes like seeing characters deal with misogyny in fic. i think it can be pretty cathartic to see people actively confront the systemic ways they're mistreated. i totally understand that not everyone enjoys that sort of thing, but i must assume that at least some m/m shippers do actually enjoy it, because i know a lot of m/m fic does actually address how homophobia affects its characters. so if we can do that for homophobia, why can't we also do it for misogyny and racism and ableism and other kinds of bigotry?

on the nicer end of the spectrum we can hit em with a "that's not an appropriate topic right now" and on the more dismissive side we should just be like "i hope someone glues hammers to your car and it explodes"

it's Dunning-Kruger in action too, like, people who aren't into a specific kink think they know more than the average practitioner OF that kink??? they think people deep in a subculture have never thought about surface level implications and complications?? ouuuwwwaughhhh.