meridian_rose

I used to have an icon uploaded of MTV's Daria with her famous quote 'I didn't even like kids when I was a kid' which I can identify with. Daria was subversive and cynical, a real alternative to other animated females, but I wouldn't call Daria mainstream. And while many people rec Lackey and Pierce and I may well read them at some point and enjoy them, I don't think they're truly mainstream either.

Mainstream media is where we're beaten over the head that women are bad, and sinful, or they're angelic mothers or they exist only for a man's pleasure; the virgin/whore dichotomy. It plays out in movies, on tv, and in video games, and it might be more forgivable if it didn't happen all the time. I want mainstream characters who exist outside the norm, and women who aren't evil who don't want children. Women who don't change their minds to please a loved one. Women who stay childfree without resorting to barrenness which requires angsting over.

What especially gets me about these novels is that they're written by women for a teen audience and what message that is sending. I don't even get why they include these shitty epilogues that are hated by large portions of the audience. I've seen the HP ending described as 'bad fanfic' which to me it is, where everyone couples off and has babies named after all their friends. Why not just leave things open so the audience can imagine their own endings. On the other hand I know good fanfic has given us alternative endings and gay characters and slash pairings rather than the token 'Dumbledore was totes gay, I just never mentioned it in canon'. Where mainstream media does fail, fans can subvert the tropes and tell stories where they can recognise themselves and their loved ones. But we shouldn't have to keep subverting mainstream media to find characters we recognise, who are asexual and gay and bisexual and genderqueer and polyamourous and childfree and atheist and all the other 'abnormal' qualities we embody.