Any one want to suggest how we perspective writers can minimize this debate while still utilizing this trope? It's good character developing drama (in Little Woman [haven't wanted to watch GOT]) but I wouldn't want the drama to divide the fandom and continue after the book (or other media)
In the endless discussion of female gender presentation in fiction pop culture, I've noticed a slight trend.
When a fictional tomboy and girly girl are portrayed as foils to each other – especially if they're sisters – the majority of fans will claim that the girly girl is "privileged" while the tomboy is the underdog. But a decent number of other fans will backlash against this idea and claim that the tomboy is the real "privileged" one.
I've definitely seen this in discussions of Little Women's Jo and Amy, and if I'm not mistaken, it's common in discussions of Arya and Sansa in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones too.
This is the gist of the debate:
Fans of the tomboy see the girly girl receive the social rewards that are won by performing femininity and ladylike manners, while the tomboy is socially punished and shamed for not being ladylike. They empathize with the tomboy's jealousy of the girly girl, and they resent the girly girl for it, viewing her as the one who has all the luck and gets all the love and respect.
The counterargument is that the tomboy actually receives more love and respect than the girly girl does. If not from society in general, then from family members and friends, especially male ones. They adore the tomboy and find her boyishness and wildness endearing, whereas they judge and ridicule the girly girl for her "silly," "vain" feminine tastes, even if they love her too. They don't give her as much attention or understanding as they give the tomboy, which must be very hard for her, and which the tomboy fails to appreciate.
It's an interesting debate, because there's always truth on both sides.
In a pre-20th century setting, and maybe today too, there is no "privileged" gender presentation for girls. Tomboyishness might be seen as endearing in a child or a teenager, but even among the people who love the tomboy the most, there's an understanding that can only be temporary; as a woman, she'll need to be "tamed" and learn to perform femininity. Meanwhile, girly girls are mocked as "silly," "vain," "prissy," etc., but it's also understood that they're behaving exactly the way they're supposed to behave. Young men in period settings might have more friendships with tomboys, but it's the girly girls whom they usually favor romantically. Both forms of gender presentation are punished in some way or other. Misogyny makes it a no-win situation.
The claim that girly girl characters get less attention from their families than their tomboy sisters is probably subjective, though. I'll let individual readers decide whether or not they think Ned Stark neglects Sansa, the March parents favor Jo over Amy, etc.
We also tend to see the claim from fans of the girly girl character that the author is biased in the tomboy's favor. But that's another issue for another post.
This screenshot from a gardening Facebook group has been on my phone for several years and I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to delete it. Apparently it comes from a British gardening book from the 80s. I know we all joke that the English are afraid of flavor, but I assure you, you are not prepared for this.
GARLIC
Until quite recently, scientists smiled at all the wonderful medicinal powers claimed for garlic, but recent research has shown that there is some truth in a few of the old wives' tales. Garlic, of course, has an important role in Continental but not in British cookery — it really isn't worth growing unless you are a fan.
Any well-drained spot will do. Buy a head of garlic from the greengrocer or supermarket and split it up into individual cloves. Plant them 2 in. deep and 6 in. apart in March. Apart from watering in dry weather there is nothing else to do until the foliage turns yellow in July or August. Lift the bulbs and allow to dry under cover, then store in a cool, frost-free place.
If you are a beginner with garlic, you must use it very sparingly or you will be put off for ever. Rub a wooden salad bowl with a clove before adding the ingredients. Rub the skin of poultry before roasting and then you can try dropping a whole unskinned clove into a casserole or stew, removing it before serving. If by then you have lost a little of your garlic fear, you can try using crushed (not chopped) garlic in meat etc. as the Continentals do.
Thank you I was trying to think what it would take for them to smell like that did that mean they had a layer of bacteria on their skin. This is so much cooler of an idea
Humans are 1000x more sensitive to the smell of petrichor (that smell you get with rain) than sharks are to blood, to no apparent evolutionary advantage. You’re privileged to be a part of the first welcoming committee to meet our new Non-Human arrivals in person. They smell like petrichor.
Even corporate paramilitaries need warships in TTT -- this express freighter has been refit with a much more power-dense reactor and AShMs (lasers weren't in the budget) -- it's actually substantially better than the typical patrol craft fielded by first rate naval powers (and that's the point). It's the sort of vessel that is mean enough to ignore anything short of an actual warship without causing undue concern to the people who do have actual warships. It's also vastly superior to most craft fielded by pirates and criminal organizations.
The reactor refit would've been a no expenses spared item bought off a great power's navy with a lot of concessions and begging. Very humiliating for a huge organization but the results are undeniable.
That was ambiguous. Like, they mostly aren't shipping stuff. It's more like a '''fun''' combination of agribusiness and extractive colonial projects. The East India company was bad enough without a nuclear arsenal as large as USA's [on this vessel alone 24x 500 kiloton warheads and 40x 2 kiloton defensive warheads (dialable down to >.1 kiloton but rated to carry as many as 3x that number]
I am still settling on the exact details but the engines are high end PIT or MPD so there's enough thrust for a decent amount of operational maneuverability to set up favorable fights or run down targets with empty tanks. The missiles themselves are fairly impressive post-revolution designs -- bigger than the standard MBE-pattern AShM and capable of doing between 15-17km/s depending on payload and a sensor suite that supports a long chase. The sort of people this ship is meant to fight are mostly not capable of reaching out and touching somebody from that distance and don't have the tools to engage (moderately) sophisticated submunitions from long distance. People who want to do something about a ship like this will either bring a destroyer, suck up to a bigger friend who can bring one, or try to jump it well inside its reach (probably suicidal but undeniably effective). It's not really viable as a mainline warship but conventional patrol craft fielded by actual states are often NTR/NEP hybrids for similar reasons. They are not very capable warships but are designed to cruise efficiently and (like this ship) meet their targets when they have mostly empty tanks. You don't really use ships like that in a peer war but the space traffic environment in TTT is hellishly complicated so you need to be able to efficiently cover a lot of ground to ensure customs, biosecurity, and access to strategic resources.
This is one of the things that's so great about Tolkien's work, that you look at it closely and it doesn't fall apart instead you find these weird little details that maybe weren't intended but because the story fits together so well are totally true.
Probably one of my favorite random things about LotR is the fact that
a) Pippin did a Gollum impression in the books
b) Pippin had never MET Gollum before that point and never would
c) yet it was an ACCURATE impression, as it startled and was recognized by the orc he was speaking to
d) the only possible explanation for Pippin Took’s accurate Gollum impression is this: Bilbo, while telling stories to the eager children, must have imitated Gollum perfectly
Lol
It’s always exciting to add to the manual.
I'm interested in this. I have a project I want to make in to a big blog
Hey guys now that Tiktok is shit officially, can we go back to making website blogs where we talk about random shit and just follow each other like we used to
But not in a Tumblr way where we have blogs, but legit ones where we just talk and make full posts. People can dedicate them to hobbies and do mixed stuff! There can be a blog with dedicated use of directory where people can submit theirs
I think that it would be a good way for people to bring back an older form of "social media". People have been talking about having another shift because of Meta/X/Tiktok doing shitty things (and I personally don't want to go to Xiaohongshu because I am afraid Americans will heavily disrupt the app)
I will literally make one and teach you guys how to make WordPress blogs/use WordPress is a very basic article how-to. We had to make them for my classes
True
Centaurs! Sorta! …technically a lot of these are ‘half hoofed thing half person’ creature types but ‘centaur’ is easier, let’s not argue the semantics
That post uh… really took off. Wow. Hi, new followers! Thanks for all the messages! Here’s some better sized pics and captions detailing the breeds/species for anyone who’s curious. Also a bonus moose-lady who’s prolly eyeing up a moose-guy’s sweet rack.