#i honestly can't with fiona and frank at this point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-apples-were-monitored · 6 months

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female characters are always held to standards that male characters aren't and when they deign to step down from the pedestal they're called bitches and the fandom writes them off as annoying while not giving the same treatment to similar male characters

explain to me why the narrative hated fiona gallagher that much. lip and ian fucked up too but any time fiona was less than perfect the narrative made it clear that she needed to be punished and put in her place. it was treated as justified that lip would get to scream at her any time something went wrong despite the fact that in most cases she was just trying to make a better life for herself. did she fuck up? yes. more than anyone else? no. but we're expected to dislike her and forgive lip and ian for anything they do. lip screaming at fiona and throwing her out of her own house was completely fucked considering he never even expressed concern for her up to that point or tried to help her gently. it was treated as a last straw when she had done so much for those kids and was never given the space to be a person on her own. all the mistakes she made were completely understandable given that she was burdened with extreme responsibility her entire life and never learned healthy coping skills and yet she's a bitch and the narrative wants to see her suffer.

(i'd argue that within the context of the show, the women are always treated as worse for doing the same things. monica is accepted to be worse than frank, i'd argue because people get to foist all their mommy issues on her and she's less funny than frank. they both should be held accountable for their actions and i can't figure out why frank gets a pass and we blame monica entirely. "monica left and frank never did." oh is that so? i'd count leaving them in the park overnight as leaving them. how about the kids just accepting that frank was going to pop in and out and be gone for weeks at a time because of a bender? "He always comes back" so does monica. arguably both of their presences in these kids lives is to their detriment. all the female characters eventually end up reduced to selfish bitches who commit sexual crimes, regardless of how fun they were in the beginning. debbie? rapist and teen mom, derided as annoying and selfish. karen? again, sexual predator, ableist, teen mom, called a cunty slut. i haven't seen the last two seasons yet but my assumption is they're about to do this with kelly too. i didn't see a justification for vandalizing her car after she broke up with her insanely jealous boyfriend and rejected his sister's advances. i think some of you guys are bitter about girls "leading you on" when they're just living a life. so can't wait to see how the narrative makes her into a bitch.)

shameless isn't even the only example of this. i keep coming back to the quintessential girl on a pedestal, buffy anne summers. she's put through so much, so young, and is never given any opportunity to heal without other people coming down on her for being a bitch. there's a large subset of the fanbase (and the writers) who openly think buffy is annoying and less complex than angel and think it's her fault when anything goes wrong. she's the prototypical fiona gallagher - always carrying everything on her shoulders and having everyone shout at her and kick her out of her own house when she's obviously struggling.

honestly think some of you have no empathy for women and need to examine your mother wounds and hangups about past relationships because it's super clear that male characters get away with shit female characters can't and don't pretend that attitude doesn't seep into your relationships with actual real life women

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