The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a “feminist” dystopia. On the surface, it invokes a delicious power fantasy — the sort of vengeful female world that misogynists fear — but in reality its power is another trap, luring rebellious girls into even greater restriction and oppression. Back to the 1950s Greendale is a highly traditional and […]
Free Choice (To Kill Feminists) in Red Dead Redemption 2
Last week, Youtuber Shirrako uploaded a series of videos centered around torturing a Suffragette character in Red Dead Redemption 2. In the videos, with titles like “Beating Up Annoying Feminist” and “Annoying Feminist Fed to Pigs,” Shirrako found inventive ways to torment the campaigner for women’s votes, including throwing her down mine shafts and feeding […]
Night in the Woods
Until the final chapter of Night in the Woods, I was convinced I was going to give it a rapturous review. The game follows the daily life of Mae, a girl who just dropped out of college for reasons unmentioned and returned to her small hometown. It’s mostly a slice-of-life visual-novel-with-minigames, as you explore the slowly […]
Quick Questions from the Search Terms
An idea stolen, with much love and appreciation, from Captain Awkward. Why Cersei is not a feminist hero You can take your pick, really. She murders people. She expressea a lot of internalised misogyny, explicitly hating pretty much every woman who isn’t herself. She tortures people. She killed Lady! She murders people. You can argue that […]
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Struggling with Sexism in East Asian Dramas
When it comes to “problematic things I enjoy anyway,” my biggest guilty pleasure is East Asian dramas. Typically Japanese ones, as that’s the language that I (sort of) speak, but now I’ve started to study Chinese, I’ve added those to my viewing line-up too. Most recently, I’ve been watching a very silly Taiwanese drama called Miss In Kiss, which is a […]
The Legends of Catherine Howard
It’s almost impossible to find fiction (or even non-fiction) about Catherine Howard that doesn’t paint her in an extremely negative light. The historical facts, in brief, are like this: the teenage Catherine came to Henry VIII’s court as a maid in waiting to the new queen, Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Henry married Catherine very […]
Tangled: Before Ever After
Disclaimer: Tangled is my favorite movie. Not just my favorite Disney movie. My favorite movie. So when Disney announced they were making an animated TV show, I was very excited and very skeptical. I couldn’t wait to watch it. So, was it good? The short answer is yes. If you like Disney and cuteness and badass female characters, […]
Twenty Years of Buffy
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the start of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is not the twentieth anniversary of me watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because I was a wimpy eight year old at the time, and when my parents watched the show, I would run through the living room with my hands clamped over my ears […]
Unlikeable Rory Gilmore
When I was a teen, I loved Rory Gilmore. She was one of my biggest fictional role models, along with Hermione Granger and Veronica Mars, a smart, driven, ambitious bookworm who wanted to learn everything there was to learn and then go out and change the world. So it’s weird to rewatch the show’s later […]
Crazy Ex Girlfriend, the Non-Romantic Comedy
Crazy Ex Girlfriend is not here for your Rom Com nonsense. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how Crazy Ex Girlfriend is the best show you’re not watching, but to fully get into why, we have to dig deeper into spoiler territory. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is hilarious, heartbreaking and groundbreakingly feminist because of […]