for popular vote... why brienne of tarth is actual rep for nonstandard attractive women who tend to be into men and why that actually matters and it's not experiences that are interchangeable or universal: a thread

since it seems like the straight-up argument doesn't work, let's try it another way.

now, try to picture the following: you're six-ish. your favorite color is pink. you favorite dress to wear is actually pink with flowers. you like to sing. you think make-up looks neat.

you never saw anything wrong with yourself. your relatives certainly never did. you think boys are cute in the way you think they're cute at that age. you go to school and you're good at it. suddenly even if your class is small most people in it look weird at you.

it's not just that you're good at school. it's that you're a bit taller than the others, you're don't have the doll face with clear eyes, you're sortofmaybechubby but healthy for your age, but that's not looking pretty™. people tell you without blinking.

'ah, but you're fat, you don't look nice, your clothes suck, your haircut is shit, look at other girls, they're cute, you're not'. you shrug and ignore. you find a best friend who also isn't cute™. you do your thing.

now picture the extra following: there's the cute boy™ in class. he has a pretty face, turquoise blue eyes you still remember thirty years later, blonde hair, looks really lovely. you crush hard. you don't tell anyone, just your best friend.

the bf at some point is angry at you for something. she tells him, he corners you, asks if it's true, you pretend it's not. 'oh, good, because honestly you're so ugly I wouldn't have considered you anyway'.

most of the other girls in class do have that elementary school sweethearts thing going on. maybe you daydreamed about that with him too. you nod and fake-smile. all those other girls are blonde, curly, with large pale eyes, thinner than you.

you swallow that one thing and go on with it. then you go to this guy's birthday party. you bring him a nice present too. you go in a costume for a character that's really really feminine™ and a blonde wig. you liked that costume.

the guy proceeds on laughing in your face and informing everyone of how ugly you look in it in front of your entire class and his other friends. you never wear that costume anymore. you start wondering if you look ridiculous every time you wear pink or feminine things™.

you spend elementary school figuring you're unattractive. whatever. all the movies you watch have protagonists that don't look like you. all the books you read too. each single time a girl isn't standard pretty™ in them she gets a makeover and suddenly she is.

you wonder, 'maybe I'll get better growing up. some of those girls do, after all'. middle school is the same as elementary school. at some point someone asks 'would you go with me on a date', you're surprised for a moment, then remember you're Unattractive™.

'wait', you ask, 'serious?' the guy is a bad actor. 'nah,' he says, 'me and my buddies just wanted to see if you'd fall for it'. you tell him to fuck off. you never quite forget it. meanwhile your bf ends up in the hospital for six months, you visit her every week.

she also used to be chubby, gets her growth spurt while there, she's suddenly standard thin now, and since she obviously is angry about being there, keeps on commenting about how you're so chubbier and less attractive in comparison.

meanwhile, you're thirteen and you're already a D cup. you don't really like that. you try to tell people about how that makes you feel. 'ah but she's sick just ignore her, she has to let it out somehow, she doesn't mean it'. you swallow that too.

in the years following, bf turned out standard attractive will call you every other day to discuss her extremely busy love life. yours is zilch. she asks 'how about you' every time, she says she's sad and she'll introduce you to someone. it never happens.

keep on picturing it: all your friends seem to be blossoming during their teens. they get boyfriends, their first kiss and so on. you don't magically get thinner. you hate your now F-cup and can't find dresses to even buy because they don't exist.

you start only wearing men's shirts and jeans and so on. you really don't want people to notice your chest, they still do. you try diets on diets to lose 10kgs, none of them work to the end because you don't know you have a hormonal problem.

but even when they work, the most comments you get are male friend 1 saying 'ah but if you lost weight it's a needle in a haystack'. you get girls in your class who obviously hate you bc you're good at studying commenting about how you don't do make-up.

you think you look ridiculous in it, so you don't do it. your bff keeps on talking to you about her sex/love life. everyone else is doing it. you aren't. you hate it. at some point other male friend tells you 'ah you're the last in the club' after losing his v-card.

you spent hours of your time being supportive of that person because he wasn't out to his parents yet. you feel like shit. you hate how you look. every time you try to buy a dress it won't fit around the chest. whatever you do, you keep on feeling ugly™.

the closer you go to 'oh this character is relatable for THAT' is carrie white. it doesn't even fit 100%. it's also very depressing. you tell yourself you might not be like other girls™ but maybe someone will like you for your personality one day. they never come.

male friends of former bf, when seeing you at her birthday party having tried to dress nicely, tell you that it's useless that you're trying, you'll never look as hot as bf. you say nothing. you stop wearing floral belts for the rest of your life.

keep on picturing it: throughout this, you're into guys. you really are into guys. they won't look at you. at most you're 'a good friend', you're never someone they'd consider attractive. other than your few good female friends, most other girls you run into >

basically sneer at you for not wearing make-up and dressing like a reject from an 80s bon jovi concert. it's not like they wouldn't laugh if you dressed differently. you shrug and move on. you can't perform correctly whatever it is, so what's the point?

(cntd I'm out of tweets)

you would like to do make-up/dresses/wear your favorite color. every time you do it's a disaster. if you don't you're weird. everyone else is at their second/third relationship. you keep on wondering if you're just that not desirable and conclude that most likely you are.

two guys hit on you on your first post-high school vacation with other nice friend you're with. you laugh in their face because you're sure they're leading you on. they weren't. one was cute. ops, you've blown it. but you still can't buy that. why would he mean it?

picture feeling like this all the damned time and thinking that hey if you show everyone that you can be useful and helpful maybe they won't drop you even if you're a punch in the eye! spoilers: ain't useful.

eventually you stop wanting to put effort into 90% of your friendships because you feel like it's just you putting effort. no guy who tries to hit on you twice shows up. you end up in therapy in your early twenties for how bad this entire shitshow got.

just after you start, GOT comes out. you ignore it until you go like 'well guess I'll read the books and start the show later if I like them'. until now you didn't really like fantasy outside of lotr. you really did like éowyn (and faramir), though.

she was one of the three female characters you read up to that point where you felt a half-kinship. not totally. but they weren't Not Like You Completely and they didn't feel like the Other Girls Who Caused You Issues. you pick up the first book. you like it. you get the second.

you're enjoying your catelyn chapter and then bam, brienne shows up. 'what's more unfortunate for a woman than being ugly', catelyn thinks. you REALLY feel that down in your soul. (maybe that's when you finally 100% get on board with liking cat.)

and then it keeps on going on and you go, 'oh'. this woman isn't standard attractive, is into pretty guys who don't gaf about her, is basically used and thrown away every other moment, but still keeps on doing her thing. she's also nice. she also looks angry-is abt her lot.

the more it goes on, you're like 'oh, oh, yes, that's it, that's getting it'. seeing catelyn NOT being an ass to her and respect her is honestly refreshing because FINALLY another girl™ who doesn't think shit of an ugly™ girl on principle.

the you get to asos. you end up failing an exam because you can't put it down. 'oh,' you think as brienne's sl OBVIOUSLY vires towards *she's going to make out with jaime lannister at some point*, 'is this guy setting them up together PLEASE LET IT BE IT'.

jaime was always in your top three characters from the get-go. he's... kind of your type literarily. you can see why she'd be into him. you can't believe you're seeing the ugly™ girl/hot™ guy thing happening where she won't get makeovers. you finish asos in five days.

you read affc. you get to the first brienne pov. 'oh,' you think for the umpteenth time when you actually read her voice, 'this sounds like you'. then you find out about the bets/ronnet connington/the fact she absolutely doesn't think anyone she can find her attractive.

'that's it', you think, going ahead, 'THAT'S IT NO ONE ELSE GOT IT BEFORE'. you go on. you read her last affc chapter crying on a bench in a park in july. you end up with a burn because you didn't notice the sun being that high. it doesn't somehow matter.

you close it and you can't believe it. here she is, someone who maybe doesn't LOOK like you (she doesn't) but has your life experiences and the same background and is the kind person at all costs you strive to be and the narrative isn't obviously punishing her for it

because the narrative is saying okay she's suffering af now but just you wait she's getting what she wants later. and you can't believe that because WHEN has that ever happened? every other ugly™ girl gets a makeover or dies at the end. you have a feeling this one won't.

you go online to find other jb shippers. ofc there's people who relate to him and others who just like the dynamic. each single person who sees herself in brienne, though... has the experiences in common. all of them. same as yours.

either the bets or the humiliation or people constantly commenting on how you can't be good enough to perform femininity™, might not be all but there's a good part of that checklist. oh, you think, other people get it. it's a novelty. usually they don't.

it's still the first time you actually read a thing and felt seen™. the show was the show but it was obvious gwen read the material and tried to pass the basics and that She Got It. and yet, you end up spending years reading

hot takes about how if brienne's ugly she and jaime can't be together/she doesn't want to wear dresses/she just wants knighthood/etc. 'but she wants the dresses and the romance,' you say/think, 'that's the entire fucking point.'

somehow it's a point that's not grasped outside certain circles. then you have to hear that if you think she and jaime should be together you're some kind of misogynist/homophobe because ofc brienne can't be straight (in spite of only ever looked at men in canon)

and if you think she is textually and accept no other opinion you're a bigot, and you're like 'but she's like me. that's the damned point. can't you relate to a character who's like me without making her into something she's not and accepting her sl?'

apparently no, because if she gets to perform femininity™ and being with a guy she loves then she's suddenly not relatable or revolutionary or whatever. and I'm saying *me* because that's ME, but it's an argument that's generally used against people into jb at every turn

and like, sorry but feeling seen for ONCE and then seeing people undermine how THAT is relevant to a character to attach to her things that aren't text starting from dnd to fandom (and people saying she should be with the dude who bet on her v-card...) is disheartening

because you might have thought, 'now that this is on page, maybe people will get it! maybe I won't have to explain it to get blank stares and *is being called ugly really so bad* replies!' and no. that doesn't happen. it's either ignored or brushed under the rug

along with brienne's femininity that gets erased by both fandom and show at every other moment. same as your own issues with performing femininity and hating your looks were brushed off as not so important by most people you met.

(cntd I'm out of tweets again)

and like... again. it's a bunch of people relating to her like THAT. and actually most of us aren't THAT unattractive, we're just not standard. and we all have the same experiences. THOSE experiences. so... why can't people accept that brienne's there for THOSE people?

because that's the thing: those experiences are specific. very specific. it's not a general tick list. and it's not a list that gives you everlasting trauma and shit if you're not THOSE things. someone not into guys wouldn't gaf about some boy treating them like shit

because why would they care? someone who's standard attractive doesn't get asked out on a joke. but no, it's always 'ah you just want to project on her to bang the hot guy how pathetic' if someone recognizes that you find brienne relatable. hm. maybe we want one of us to succeed

without getting a damned makeover or perform to society's ridiculous standard attractiveness rules. and what's so wrong about that? assuming that not standard attractive™ women can like guys who can like them back? how terrible and out of turn!!!

thing is: brienne is there for ALL OF US who had those shit experiences. saying BUT SHE'S NOT THAT is basically being the same as everyone else who went like AH BUT IT'S NOT SO BAD and YOU SHOULD SETTLE FOR THE FIRST GUY WHO LIKES YOU YOU UNFORTUNATE PERSON

and honestly no one would presume to take someone else's rep and change their basic characters to accomodate their hc if it's REP (ie: no one's ever going to write renly as bi or straight if they have some decency) so the fact that 'it's for non attractive straight women' >

gets CONTINUOUSLY pushed under the rug when guess what she's there FOR US is honestly a bad take and it's old and we're all tired and y'all should realize that since THERE'S NO OTHER MAINSTREAM CHARS LIKE BRIENNE THERE'S LITERALLY JUST HER THAT'S POPULAR LIKE THAT

maybe you should consider a) letting us have it b) have whatever hcs you like but stopping calling people bigots if they tell you that's she's textually THAT when she is, c) learn that you can relate to chars that are Not Like You In Every Way if they're someone else's rep

I spent years relating to male characters for obvious reasons when we didn't certainly have THAT backstory in common. never thought of saying they were something that they weren't to feel like they were more like me or anything. it's easy. you can do it.

so maybe realize that you CAN relate to a nonstandard attractive straight woman for whatever you want WITHOUT making her anything else/without saying she can't be THAT, because some straight women do actually need the rep.

if I read asoiaf at sixteen, I'd probably be a way more confident person today. I'm glad I read it when I just started going to therapy because you don't wanna know how seeing THAT helped me figure my shit out. I'm a way healthier person today. it wasn't thanks to people

minimizing shit or telling me I should have toughened it up. seeing brienne on page was liberating. consider that for some of us that shit's important same for other categories in need of rep. and consider letting us have it. thanks and I'm done.