#I'm better than her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theminecraftbee · 5 months

Text

Etho and Grian are back at base, hysterically laughing over their achievement. Cleo sits inside, staring, as the two of them talk about getting a wither and a warden to fight, and tries to figure out what she feels about it.

In some ways it's not their fault. Task made them do it and all that. Plus--

Well, it's not like she and Etho are losing hearts anytime soon. They've both done a damn good job keeping themselves from dying. A benefit, Cleo thinks, of deciding to team with Etho this time. Between the two of them, they'll largely only do chaos they can recover from. Maybe this is their game. Maybe this time, Cleo manages to stick with someone until the very end. It looks like it. It looks like...

Grian, of course, is the confounding factor.

She wasn't going to turn him away. He needed allies. They needed someone a bit better at actually doing damage than herself or Etho. It's mutually beneficial. And, besides, he's weirdly lovable, in an inherently kind of dangerous way. A little like loving a bobcat someone had accidentally raised as a pet cat until it got a bit too big and stinky and murdery for them. Like, yeah, he shouldn't be domesticated and he's not, really, in any sense of the word, but it's a bit sad to watch him try to survive on his own now, right?

Hah. Maybe that's what Scar managed to do to him. Would explain a lot, really.

Anyway, he's her bobcat now, which is the problem.

See the thing is: Cleo understands Etho. It's why finally deciding to be partners for once felt... right. They're similar flavors of people. Scared, mostly. Survivors, but not in the 'will stab anyone' way that like, Martyn is. Loyal, although Cleo has no delusions that Etho is as loyal as she. And scared. Has she already said that? Scared. It's important to the kinds of things she and Etho are. Like... mountain lions, maybe. Mountain lions that have been around just enough people to know how dangerous they are. Like that.

God, she's only doing cat metaphors. Bdubs really is turning them all into furries.

Anyway, the point is, Grian isn't scared.

And that... terrifies her.

That's scarier than anything else. Because, see, Cleo wants to survive. But more than that, she wants her partners to survive. And she and Etho, the two of them are doing well. Better than most people. They're green and they have so many hearts.

But Grian? Grian's yellow and not afraid and goading Etho into not being afraid too. It's not their fault, exactly, Cleo thinks. They both had hard tasks. They didn't have a choice, Cleo thinks.

But. But.

She doesn't know what to do, if Etho gets convinced the humans down the mountain aren't scary. She doesn't know what to do if he gets too close. She doesn't know what to do if he gets hurt.

Because she--she doesn't think she can learn to stop being scared, anymore.

But she also doesn't know how many times her heart can stand to lose someone.

Did you know--wild cats are social? They have a reputation for being loners, but mountain lions, they're social. They don't do well being alone. They don't actually hunt solely alone. That's the important bit here. They seem independent, sure, but actually...

Anyway. This is Bdubs's fault. For making her a furry, apparently.

She watches Grian and Etho scheme together and sits back and breathes and tells herself that Etho isn't going to stop being afraid anytime soon. That if push came to shove, he, at least, would retreat back, and that maybe the two of them could convince Grian to retreat too. Safe from hunters. Safe from red.

Maybe safe from hurting each other, too.

(She's not so sure about that part.)

#secret life smp #secret life spoilers #zombiecleo #a bee fic #staring in. cleo and the fact she seems to consider dying before or at the same time as her allies as her happy ending #staring in. cleo and the fact that the thing she and etho have most in common is CAUTION.#and then staring at grian.#hm. well. hopefully that ends better than it seems like it might.#ALSO SHOUTOUT TO ME HAVING THE BRITISH PERSON USE METAPHORS USING EXCLUSIVELY AMERICAN WILDCATS #in my defense they're the ones i'm actually familiar with

1K notes · View notes

jukeboxindie · 3 months

Text

quick aloy as a cooldown to finish off the day :)

#two posts in one day i'm on a roll #well they're messy sketches but that's all i have time for rn #better than nothing?#plus i miss her and i wanna draw her #aloy #horizon zero dawn #horizon forbidden west

671 notes · View notes

andiv3r · 2 months

Text

Not to be that guy, but... hey he/they trans guys, I just wanna ask. Do you use "they" because it feels right... because it clicks as part of your identity... or because it doesn't hurt as much as she/her, so it must be okay.

And don't just evaluate this for they/them. Evaluate it for he/him as well. "I'm a guy so I have to use he/him" no the fuck you do not. Plenty of guys use they/them. Plenty of guys use she/her. Plenty use it/its/ve/vir/ce/cir and are still men. If he/him doesn't fit, you don't fucking have to use he/him and it doesn't make you any less of a man. You know that... right?

Also before this post starts an argument I am not pissing on he/they pronoun users I am simply reminding all you transmascs that there is no obligation binding you to those specific pronouns... a post I needed to see myself.

#andiv3r rambles #trans #transgender #trans ftm #ftm #trans male #transmasc #trans boy #trans guy #trans man #pronouns #recently noticed a trend of trans guys using he/they for a while before realizing they really don't fucking like they/them pronouns #and just used them out of some weird sort of social obligation of “well i don't pass as a guy so i'm gonna get called 'they' anyway”#along with “well it's better than she/her i guess...”#and like... guys. you know you are under no obligation to use they/them right?#same for he/him “i reeeally prefer they/them but i AM a guy so... i sort of have to use he/him too lol” no the fuck you don't???#do whatever you want forever dudes.#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbt+#i made this post because i really needed to see it myself a while back but i didn't #had to have the revelation on my own

316 notes · View notes

rotisseries · 8 months

Text

skyward sword was such a crazy insane game to make like ok what if there was a story about a great evil and a goddess. and that goddess locked away that great evil, but she knew it would come back, and it would need to be defeated again. and what if that goddess knew that for this impossible task, she would need a loyal soldier. so she reincarnates. she reincarnates into a human girl, because the best way, the most reliable way, to get a loyal soldier, is love. and a goddess is respected, and idolized, and revered, but a goddess isn't loved. not like a human girl is. so she reincarnates. and she is loved genuinely and wholeheartedly, by her family, by her peers, and most importantly, by her best friend.

and what if there was a story about a boy and a girl. this one boy loves her so much, that when she falls from the sky, crashing to the earth, and into her immortal destiny, he follows her. and she runs, because she has a destiny, because she's finding out she is part of a divine plot, she and the boy are pawns in a goddess' war plans. did she ever love him did he ever love her or were they just being manipulated by the goddess. SHE'S the goddess. was SHE just manipulating him this whole time? "I'm still your zelda" but is she really? does she know it for sure? she doubts it and doubts it and runs and runs and he keeps chasing her. and she locks herself in time to defeat this great evil and he watches her do it. and he fights because he loves her and he defeats the evil and he gets her back and they're happy.

but what if there was a story about a goddess and a great evil. the evil cursed them for the rest of time. their descendants will never be safe there will always be evil to fight and she'll always be running and sacrificing and he'll always be chasing and fighting.

what if there was a story about a goddess and a great evil. what if there was a story about a girl and a boy. what if it was about the innate mortality and humanity of love and the act of loving. ok. at the walls of nintendo hq

#GIRLS WHEN SKYWARD SWORD #the way nintendo released sksw and then botw AND THEN TOTK. BANGER AFTER BANGER AFTER HEARTBREAKING BANGERRR #WHAT THE HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLL #girls when “I'm still your zelda”#guys I'm thinking about sksw idk if you can tell #the control scheme is literally hellish but sksw is such a game and I'd replay it right now if the control scheme wasn't literally hellish #loz #sksw #loz sksw #loz ss #skyward sword #zelink #no but it's crazy like love isn't divine in skyward sword it's the opposite it's an innately mortal thing #it's not holy but it's better than that it's something the goddess needs more than all her divine power

922 notes · View notes

lilbitosunny · 20 days

Text

I've gone full cringe mode but shhhh it's fine

Sun is experiencing Emotion™

Bonus:

254 notes · View notes

tending-the-hearth · 1 month

Text

thinking about how canonically the pevensie siblings are 13, 12, 10, and 8 in "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe"

thinking about how lucy needed a stool to be able to get up onto her throne, how peter's sword is a little too large for him, how susan's bow is a little too difficult for her to pull back, how edmund's shield nearly covers his entire body.

thinking about the pevensie siblings and their first few months in narnia, getting to know their new people, and half the narnians sitting there horrified because WHAT have these literal babies been through to give them such traumatized, old eyes, and the other half of the narnians are preparing to adopt them, no it doesn't matter that they're the rules, they're children who are being put in charge of too many things, and if peter looks at the old man council long enough he's going to cry, so someone needs to give him paternal support while aslan is off doing Lion Jesus Stuff™️ and whoops oreius is being nice and encouraging and now he's adopted his kings and queens they're his kids now he doesn't make the rules.

just the narnians and the pevensies being thrown into it together, and just as the pevensies will do anything to protect their new kingdom, the narnians will do anything to protect their rules, because let's be honest, these children have no sense of self-preservation, and are far too overprotective of each other and their people to take into account their own safety, so a lot of battles it's just one of the pevensie siblings running headfirst into danger with oreius running after them because his kids are feral and don't know proper royalty manners and won't threatening old kings from different countries because they're being assholes and the last time one of them tried undermining the queens susan called him a self-righteous asshole and lucy tried to stab him SOMEONE help him corral his children please

#this started off angsty but now i'm giggling #oreius didn't want to adopt the rulers they kind of just... attached to him #and who is he to oppose his kings and queens when lucy gives him her puppy eyes and edmund looks so sad #and peter just needs fatherly advice and susan looks like she could use a good dad hug #he's their adoptive father they make the rules #oreius is trying his best but his four kids are going through puberty and have bonded with every narnian #and it's not like he's opposing lucy's desire to stab rulers who act like they're better than them #but he can't legally encourage regicide #oreius and tumnus trying to corral the pevensies #meanwhile peter's challenging every ruler who tries to make comments about his sisters to a fistfight #edmund's conning the rulers who peter isn't fighting into handing over their kingdom's #susan's verbally destroying half their enemies #and lucy's running around making pacts with nature spirits to haunt the other half of their enemies #i love that canonically lucy is the most feral of the pevensie kids #chronicles of narnia #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #peter pevensie #lucy pevensie #susan pevensie #edmund pevensie #oreius

218 notes · View notes

melmedarda · 2 months

Text

⸻ 12/? of mel mondays.

#i'm so busy i haven't had time to make new gifs #so here's one from the drafts. she deserves so much better than i can give her #mel mondays #arcane mel #mel medarda #mel #arcane #arcane league of legends #arcane mel medarda #melmedardaedit #arcaneedit

338 notes · View notes

justsomecouscous · 13 days

Text

og write/creator: yeah these two ppl absolutely hate each other, just like pure loathing, that's their arch nemesis right there and they've been actively trying to kill each other since they met like they just genuinely hate each other so much-

A sixteen year old girl with daddy issues and a new hyper fixation: no for much longer they won't :)

225 notes · View notes

starflungwaddledee · 2 months

Note

Oooo starstruck dee has little stars at the bottom of her feet! Are they just aesthetic or would they make imprints into the ground? (like pawprints)

exactly like that! though she's not the only one...

edit: might need to add some additional dialogue to this to make it more clear, but a clarification in the interim; he knows about his own footprints. he's just surprised to see something similar already there when he knows he's only just landed. he lifts his own shoe to confirm that they're not identical (and also to reveal this to the viewer). seems his stoicism beat off the clarity in this one, sorry 😭

#meta knight #starstruck dee #have had this one sitting around for *months* while i bit my nails on posting it #and then i thought maybe i *shouldn't* during the shipaganza bc it's not a direct prompt; though i do think you can read it that way #and for ~Reasons~ i needed to post this one sooner rather than later so i had to bite the bullet.#though meta knight has understandably been the second most prompted. they do indeed have the Funnest Possible Dynamic for it #stoic guy and the bug eyed little Creature he doesn't really trust as far as he could throw her (long long way)#so just to clarify this one is NOT for the shipaganza but you can read it that way if you want to #this is just a canon scene between them from her storyline. this is just something they canonically share. starry eyed idiots.#also fwiw i think i probably picked up the shoe-patterns for the knights from postitnotes7 #been a headcanon in the back of my mind for a long while but i'm pretty sure i osmosis'd it from their work #especially after drawing post's designs so much for the hnkss. i temporarily forgot how i used to draw their armour ngl #and also btw starstruck deetectives psspsps #i'm planning a much better post about this later (probably in march) but i'm going to start using this tag for Important Posts for y'all #🎀🔍#<- for the starstruck deetectives when there's something significant in the post.#i worry about making it 'too easy' but also want stuff to be accessible. it's just for fun? the OC lore game! ARG but it's just my oc.#that would be fun right? maybe? is that too indulgent? i could probably pull it off if folks were actually interested enough to participate #anyway!! go to bed starflung #also if you read this far: anon is open again! still open for shipaganza prompts but i'm not gonna be finished them in february 😂

190 notes · View notes

akai-anna · 1 month

Text

it's been a while on my rewatch, but i'm watching the fake wedding case and... can we just talk about how shinichi's reaction is so different in the anime compared to the manga?

bland. boring. WHERE IS THE FEELING IN THIS. just. No.

THIS THO

SMITTEN. BESOTTED. A TRUE SIMP. JUST LOOK AT HIM. HE'S A BABY YOUR HONOUR. BABY IN LOVE!!!!

bonus: shinichi peeking at ran with a blush on his face at this bit (and ran blushing too, pretty please)

We Were Robbed.

#detco posting #detective conan #anime #manga #shinran #my beloveds #detco watching #la junk talks #the images are from ep 449 and chapter 535 for anyone who wants to know #i'm OBSESSED WITH SHINICHI JUST. HE'S SO IN LOVE?#HE FREAKING BLUSHED JUST IMAGINING THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE IN A WEDDING DRESS???#me just thinking about his face in topical land as he imagines confessing to ran AND ABOUT TO KISS HER IN HIS DAYDREAM?#NOW THAT IS A BESOTTED MAN. SMITTEN. HEAD OVER HEELS.#it feels like we were ROBBED #sometimes i think the anime does a better job than the manga #but not in this particular instance #the fact that you cannot tell at a glance how much of a simp shinichi is for ran is a crime A CRIME!!!#me on my current reread: i will so make a collage of all his simp moments. I SO WILL. *GNAWS ON LAPTOP*

155 notes · View notes

cosmichawk · 5 months

Text

It's that time of year again so here are xmas harbingers edits by yours truly

bonus:

#unfortunately signora passed away last xmas bc of her recklessness with the fireworks :'((((( rest in peaces queen <3 #scara was blamed for it so he is not on this party either :(#pierro looks so upset bc he knows once this is over he will be the one to clean zapolyarny palace up #maybe arle and cap will help if they're sober enough #also bc someone used party popper near him and now there is confetti in his food #pantalone looks like someone who will wear tinsel around their neck like let's be real #cap loves string lights trust me bro i'm his armor #removing pulchinella's hat and editing sandrone's robot was... fun #i don't like the one w/ arle bc unlike others it's close-up of her face #it ruins aesthetic!!#however face that arle makes is so me #feel free to use #tho i have no idea where the fuck you would use robot santa #this is my magnum opus i won't be able to create anything better than this #genshin impact #fatui harbingers #fatui #pierro #capitano #dottore #columbina #arlecchino #pulchinella #sandrone #pantalone #tartaglia #ch - shitpost

351 notes · View notes

varilien · 4 months

Text

three of them :)

drawing with pen being easy and fun was unfortunately shortlived so i guess i gotta do something else now dhfgjkd

#hades #hades game #hades supergiant #hades fanart #megaera hades #thanatos hades #zagreus #i tried to line the megs so they'd photograph better and just completely fucked them up i'm so mad FHKDJHFKDJ #anyways i think her employee of the month photo with her hair down is really cute :) than also removing his hood for it is cute :)

253 notes · View notes

godofsmallthings · 4 months

Text

i wish i could take the time to parse through my taylor swift is/isn't a gay icon thoughts on here but i fear people on this website don't know how to behave

#like she isn't a gay icon. but she is a lesbian icon? but like in different ways than gay icons have historically been gay icons #basically what i'm trying to say is that her status as a lesbian icon has literally nothing to do with her interactions with the lesbian #community. like i don't feel particularly revered or nurtured by her in the way someone like gaga has taken the time to #actually sit with and deliberately cater to gay culture for example #like it's different.#and almost entirely fandom-led #whether taylor is actually queer is also irrelevant to this #am i making any sense?#like okay i think you could argue she did a little bit of it in 2019 but we all know how that felt/came across #she's better at being a gay icon when she's explicitly not including the queer community in her work or acknowledging them in any way #because it's literally not of her own volition #and i'm honestly not convinced it's an aspect of her art or fanbase she considers #sometimes it feels like it actively makes her uncomfortable #and yet she really has become entrenched in modern day lesbian pop culture iconography in these last few years #anyway this isn't me Saying Anything. i'm just thinking about it #vi is typing...

192 notes · View notes

purplesoup-lad-le · 4 months

Text

sometimes i wonder if one of those couple name generators would do better than what we've come up with.

I don't have to wonde anymore

198 notes · View notes

comradekatara · 18 days

Note

I saw your toph+katara gender post and honestly... thank you for being one of few ppl i've seen who actually do a deeper analysis of toph? Most people tend to just go "i love toph she's cool <3" and while that's fine, its so nice to actually see someone Get Her. Esp wrt her gender expression and relationship to femininity. She's always been v imporant to me, like when i was like 12 i used to watch youtube clips of the toph+katara spa day scene on repeat and have Feelings abt it (still think its a super interesting scene??). Imo, while a lot of her expression is def rebelling (+overcompensating) and doing the oposite of her feminine upbringing, a lot of it is also a genuine JOY at being covered in dirt/burping/being loud and crass and tough? Idk i just feel like a lot of her contemporary "tomboy" characters were more defined as "ugh i hate Skirts and Dresses", but tophs brand of gnc joy and complex relationship w femininity always hit closer For Me? Like. She's loud and crass and rude and badass and cool, she does find it fun to dress girly but as like an Activity with a buddy, she's overjoyed at being portrayed as a big buff dude ("that's exactly how i would cast it!"), she's actually very spiritual and perceptive when not in Loud Mode, she keeps her fancy hairstyle but adds messy bangs, idk she's just. Character of all time. I'd love to hear if you have more thoughts on toph+gender (or just toph in general), and thank you for actually Understanding Her <33

YES!!!!! i have so many thoughts and feelings on toph. she is one of my absolute favorite characters i truly love her so much, and like you said, i hate when people dismiss her even as they claim to love her. "she's so badass" like okay, and?

toph is also just very important to me as her disability informs so much of her arc. and that disability is also inextricable from her gender and her family and all the factors that shape who she is, her strengths and her insecurities. you cannot separate her parents' abuse from her gender, class, or blindness. it's the combination of being an aristocratic blind girl that informs who she is and how she's perceived, especially by her family. she's an only child in a family that would clearly desire at least one son, and you cannot help but wonder whether they stopped at one for eugenicist purposes, whether they couldn't bear the "pain" of risking having another disabled child. and also because they clearly consider having a blind child such a handful that any other child would draw their attention away from her dire, pressing needs. so they completely smother her, but they also dismiss her, trivialize her desires and ignore her feelings and treat her more like a fragile porcelain doll than a person.

it's why, by the time of "the chase," she gets inordinately defensive over katara's suggestion that she pitch in when setting up camp. i see a lot of people claim that toph in this episode is acting like a spoiled brat who refuses to do manual labor because she's too wealthy to understand, but that's not actually the case. toph is fine with doing manual labor (she literally spent who knows how long working in an underground wrestling ring, she's not unaccustomed to work), but she's averse to helping others. as she says, "i carry my own weight." she's establishing, erroneously but understandably, that her idea of affording others respect is assuming that everyone behaves on an individual basis. she's never had friends before, by her own admission, and so in her mind, the only model she's ever seen for "helping others" is smothering them, denying their agency, and deciding everything for them.

toph thinks that katara is a bitch because katara is suggesting that toph meddle in other people's affairs, instead of respecting their own business. and katara thinks that toph is a bitch because she does just straight up assume that toph is a spoiled brat who doesn't understand the value of community. and while toph isn't a spoiled brat, learning the value of community is indeed integral to her arc. and more than simply communal values of helping and sharing with others, she also learns to rely on them in turn. she learns how to embrace her vulnerability, and let others carry her weight for her. her apotheosis in the finale is literally hanging onto sokka, who is holding her entire weight with one hand, for dear life. putting her complete faith in him to carry her and protect her as he always does.

that ability to embrace her vulnerability among the people she actually trusts to not only love and support her, but also to recognize her as a human being and care about her as a a peer, is so crucial to her identity as someone who has learned from years of ableist stigma to put walls up and present herself as someone uniquely powerful and invulnerable. and it's not that she isn't uniquely powerful, but her strength is also largely a projection. it's why she's so delighted to be portrayed by a big buff man, because that's the kind of person she wishes she could be, so that she wouldn't have to be underestimated and belittled and oppressed by people who dismiss her and coddle her and disrespect her and, quite literally, put her in a box.

so if toph's experience with disability is informed by her class and her upbringing, then let's now turn to her experience with gender, which is equally informed by her background. katara often balks at toph's less feminine presentation, because despite her incredibly righteous crusade against limiting patriarchal standards, she nonetheless has her own hangups when it comes to gender. but then again, so does toph. just as katara disdains toph's masculinity, toph finds katara's femininity offensive because her only real model for femininity in her experience is that of aristocratic wifehood. poppy beifong, to be exact, who is not exactly a girlboss (let alone a revolutionary, like katara is). and when katara tries to shove toph back into a box, toph resists because of course she does, that's who she is. she's not going take what she experiences as violent repression lying down.

toph is wrong in "the runaway" to exclude katara from their fun, and she is wrong to call compare her to a mother, but it's not out of nowhere. there is an obvious precedent to these actions. katara is a genuinely feminine girl who loves to boss people around and dictate how they should live their lives. to toph, this is the most egregious sin imaginable. katara, through her femininity and authoritative attitude, is positioning herself, in toph's eyes, as her mother. and toph calls her out for being overbearing and claims that katara hates fun and wants to boss everyone around for this reason, even though sokka is obviously the primary fun-hating, overbearing member of the group.

however, sokka never dictates how toph should act or dress, sokka never made fun of toph for being blind (which is a thing that really deserves its own post, if we're being honest). sokka makes them spend their vacation time at the library and enforces his color-coded schedules on them and generally brings down the vibe what with his neuroticism and severity, but he also laughs at toph's jokes and banters with her in a way that treats her as a friend and not as a rival. and unlike katara, whose desires and commands seem completely arbitrary to toph, sokka's commands are grounded in a logic that toph can understand. so even if from an outside perspective, toph's claim that a revolutionary teenage girl who loves to cause trouble and seeks adventure and joy around every corner is trying to be the overbearing mom of the group makes no sense, it makes perfect sense to toph, based on her history with femininity, overbearing mothers, and feminine overbearing mothers.

toph presents masculinely as compensation, as a way to make herself seem strong and tough instead of dainty and submissive as she was always made out to be. she associates masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness because that's the paradigm she grew up in. it's why she's always teasing aang about his supposed femininity and calling him "twinkle toes" (which, as sokka points out, isn't manly). in their first interaction, aang beat her in a fight and humiliated her in front of all her adoring fans, and avatar or not, toph's gonna make him pay for that by undermining him in turn, by using his presentation as a monk to mock him. even if aang isn't gay or even gender non-conforming (within the assumptions of his own culture), toph is still employing the logic of sexism/homophobia to undermine aang when she makes jokes about him being "more in touch with [his] feminine side than most guys." and of course, the nickname "twinkle toes" is also deeply affectionate, and aang (bless his heart) never actually takes offense to it. but toph is trying to establish herself as more powerful than him due to the humiliating knowledge that he could beat her in a fight, easily.

toph's masculinity is inextricably tied to her invulnerability. she wants to be taken seriously and treated as a human being, which is respect that has been denied to her due to her status as a blind girl, save for her blind bandit persona, which superficially empowered her and made her feel strong. it's not coincidence that her rival earthbender is a guy who is essentially a parody of masculinity. toph wants to position herself as equivalent, if not directly superior, to the Most Masculine Man, because that's how she'll be afforded respect, in her mind. but she is a girl. and there's a part of her that likes being a girl, and wishes she could explore her femininity more than she's allowed herself to, beyond the confines of the beifong mansion. she keeps her hair long because she still loves her family and holds out hope that maybe one day they can accept her (she comes from a culture modeled off of tang dynasty china, so her long hair is likely a product of her adherence to confucian values). and once she embraces it, she genuinely does get into being made over at the fancy lady day spa.

femininity has been a genuinely harmful and repressive agent in toph's life, and it's understandable that she would internalize some misogynistic notions surrounding girl/womanhood as they were foisted onto her her entire childhood. but femininity isn't ontologically harmful. femininity isn't ontological, period. i think as toph gets older, and her friendship with katara grows deeper as they both come to be more honest with each other, she would grow to embrace her masculinity in a more organic and less compensatory way. less of a "i'm not like other girls" complex (which itself is not something that girls should be mocked and punished for, but rather a product of a patriarchal system that oppresses and alienates women, thus leading many less gender-conforming girls to attempt to assert their agency and individuality in any way they can, even if it means putting down others in the process), and more so genuinely coming to embrace her butchness. (you don't necessarily have to read her as a baby butch, of course, but considering that being a masculine girl is important to her, i think that's a really lovely and beautiful synthesis of her relationship to gender as a character.)

i think toph would learn stop pitting masculinity and femininity against each other, and instead embrace whatever aspects of either (or neither) she desires, while nonetheless respecting everyone else's deal in turn. i think she would also, in a key turning point, realize that even if she loves her parents, she doesn't have any obligation to be the daughter they expect her to be, and cuts her hair. and as she grows more secure in herself (which comes with age, no twelve year old is truly confident in their own skin), she would stop feeling the need to put other people down to feel big, and be comfortable embracing her desires. and, credit to her, she's clearly already on her way. the progress she makes being vulnerable, especially around sokka, even in what is chronologically a matter of months, is huge.

toph isn't just "badass" because she's strong and powerful. but rather, what makes her so powerful, at least to disabled viewers who see their struggles reflected in hers, is her ability to grow with her environment, allowing herself to admit help, and letting herself be loved. if you couldn't already tell, toph is incredibly important to me.

#smultronviol #asks #toph #analysis #katara&toph #sokka&toph #aang&toph #poppy beifong #god she just means so much to me.....#i was trying not to make this too personal but like. baby disabled dyke. god she is so important.#not that i'm butch. but i think she is :)#also some of those links are better than others but i included all of them anyway lol #realizing now that i actually talk about toph a lot...#anyway. thank you for this ask #i really really appreciate it and took a while responding specifically because i wanted to have time to be thorough #not that this is like. The definitive toph essay #but i hope what i wrote here resonated #because like i said. she means a lot to me and i truly do feel like very few ppl understand her fully #she is so important blind bandit numero uno campeon del mundo

120 notes · View notes