uh oh

It is when it ISN’T as common for that to happen to a male character, and the main characters are all male, and female characters don’t last long or aren’t important or rapidly start to suck because the writers can’t be bothered to write a decent character who happens to be female… you get the idea.

Or did you forget that THE origin of the phrase “stuffed in the fridge” came from a really lame GL story?

Stop and think what it would be like to have NOBODY, at first, even matching your gender as a hero character, let alone an important one… and then suddenly, there is one! Or even more than one! But then all that crap happens to them. All that crap happens to them, without it really being “about” them; it’s all about the character of the opposite gender who hogs all the story time.

And imagine that that’s all you get of characters that happen to be the same gender as you. Imagine that nine times outta ten, the other gender gets all the cool stories or all the long-running stories, or all the attention IN stories. Imagine that your gender’s characters are written to suck or worse, just written to die in some way that’s supposedly traumatizing to somebody who isn’t them.

Imagine that IS all or most of what you get.

Imagine that “character of the same gender as you who happens to be a good character who gets good stories consistently and for a fairly long run because the writers actually care enough to make it good and the publisher cares enough to actually promote it” ISN’T common, it’s … “refreshing”.

Imagine you have to use the words “refreshing” with that. Imagine that that isn’t common, it’s UNUSUAL.

That is what it is like to try and read comics as a woman.

Yes, there are comics that buck or seem like they will buck that trend – like Marvel’s Runaways, or Batwoman over at DC- but that’s the thing:

THERE IS A TREND TO BUCK.

It’s not like I can’t enjoy a story that happens to be about a male character. It’s just that, you know, ALMOST ALL OF THEM ARE. And when they aren’t, it’s usually disappointing. And when they are, it’s “for a change”, it’s “suprisingly good”, it’s… “refreshing”.

I wanted to believe that nowadays it had improved, or was improving… and then they fucked up Starfire in “Red Hood”, and I just said “fuck it” to anything other than Batwoman.

Because Batwoman is… Refreshing.

Sadly.

I would SO read that.

And then I googled it.

Most of the “indigos” I’ve seen have definitely been more blue – in fact, a quite lovely shade of it – but apparently “electric indigo” and “deep indigo” are pretty dang purple, as is the HTML version.

Soooo… apparently indigo is “anything you freaking feel like that is somewhere between baby blue and ultraviolet”.

I learned something today. Something kind of annoying, but something.