u/BetPrestigious5704

Here you see a TV dad's heart break over his TV son having the worst take, knowing he fictionally raised him wrong.

Vince Gilligan wanted the audience to sympathize with Walter White in the beginning, but assumed he'd lose the audience over time. HE stopped rooting for his character fairly early on.

>Even though it’s a show ostensibly about a man dying of cancer, metaphorically speaking, Walter himself is cancer. Walt is the malignancy at the center of the show that affects others to their detriment — his family first and foremost.

Now, I don't have an issue with people rooting for the bad guys. I'm here to say I support a woman's rights and their wrongs and in fiction you can vicariously be emotionally bankrupt.

However, it confuses me when viewers (or readers) don't own this and instead try to pretend the bad guy is good and that the people who oppose them are the problem. You can want Walter to break bad, you can want Skyler to epically fail to rein him in, but it's incomprehensible to me to argue Skyler is the villain.

She had normal reactions until she was pulled into the madness and, in a mirror image of Walter never losing the fans, she was almost always despised. Women, as we know, must be infinitely maternal and yet even as a mother who realizes her husband put their whole family at risk as he lead an unfathomable secret like, she was just the shrew.

Skyler was inherently unlikable to a portion of the audience no matter what. Killjoy or complicit, she wasn't going to win. Bad mother, not wanting her kids to be financially set. Bad mother, putting them at risk. And bad wife, telling her husband no, ever.

And this animosity spilled out into the real world towards Anna Gunn.

Breaking Bad ended in 2013. And in 2026 Isa Briones has to tell people it's not okay to heckle her during Broadway shows. We're here because you still can't have a measured discussion elsewhere on women characters unless you build a community yourself, post by post.

What I like about our community is that we enjoy analysis. We can have problematic favorites without trying to deny the problems. We can have balanced and nuanced takes. We can handle complexity, We don't want saints for women characters, but we also don't want women to be vilified for choices that make men heroes or beloved antiheroes.

TW/CW: Mention of racial violence, sexual assault.

I've felt a great heaviness the last few days over, oh, the state of the world and of the United States. The Nolan Wells case, of course, so very much.

But also the story about a woman being gang raped at Cornell in 2024. Her assailants broadcast their intentions and no one helped, which is a common twist on the story these days. Not all men, but a man can tell a large group of other men he's going to rape someone and ask if they want to join, and not a single man intervenes to help and it's a slow night at the local police precinct.

And, of course, people are asking why she went there, even though she thought she had a trusted friend there.

But here are some books I've read over the years that have helped me contextualize, that has taught me more about misogyny and rape culture, that have put words to my sorrow and rage. I would love for others to add to the list.

I'm going to start with a book that ties in, for me, with season 2 of The Pitt.

The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story, by Pagan Kennedy.

Did you know the inventor of the rape kit was a woman named Marty Goddard? They were called Vitullo kits for the man who rejected her idea, but then took credit. Credit wasn't important to her.

The author says the rape kit seems to come from an alternate feminist universe, that it's like Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth and it's impartial. It can convict a rapist, but it can also free a wrongfully accused man.

If you test the kit.

The author also grew up in the same community as Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh.

"I felt as though she was telling my story, too. I had gone to the same high school as she had at around the same time. Though I hadn't known her, I had worn the same blue tartan uniform she had. I had hung out at the same kinds of parties, and feared the same kinds of boys. Like her, I had been a privileged girl who swam at the country club, and -- like her -- I had been the collateral damage. The future presidents, generals, CIA operatives, lobbyists, justices, had to learn how to dominate. How to be ruthless. And so when we were young they trapped us in a lovely room in a suburb like Bethesda and practiced their craft on girls like us."

***

Moxie, by Jennifer Mathieu. YA

Moxie is YA fiction and a little lighter in tone that any of the other suggestions. Amy Poehler made it into a movie that was a little lackluster for me.

The story is about a teen girl learning to align with other girls to address groping football players and patriarchal power structures.

Everyone cheers again, and soon we’re dancing, our bodies moving, one big mass of girls having fun. As I watch Lucy spin and knock her dark curls around, and as I listen to Claudia laugh and sing along (badly), it occurs to me that this is what it means to be a feminist. Not a humanist or an equalist or whatever. But a feminist. It’s not a bad word. After today it might be my favorite word. Because really all it is is girls supporting each other and wanting to be treated like human beings in a world that’s always finding ways to tell them they’re not.

Very Santos and Mel at karaoke!

***

The Nowhere Girls, Amy Reed. YA

The Nowhere Girls is a darker Moxie. Three girls join together to avenge a rape.

Eric Jordan stares out at the waiting area, his eyes blank, unreadable, gone. He sees a wall of young women, his classmates, the girls he has hit on and catcalled and demeaned for years. He sees them as he has never seen them—a group, solid and formidable, and so much bigger than him. Not just bodies, not just skin and softness, not toys or tamable creatures. He neither wants them nor hates them. He doesn’t know what he feels. He has been raised with the privilege of not being accustomed to fear.

***

Asking for It, Louise O'Neill. YA

Set in Ireland, the popular girl is assaulted by the popular jocks and it's filmed. Of interest to the group is that Emma isn't nice or kind, she has dismissed assaults on other girls using the words that will be used against her. Pretty bleak and devastating, honestly.

"When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop . . .’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.”

This is a great quote, but I'm aware that calling period cramps essential to womanhood hasn't aged well.

***

Girl Made of Stars, Ashley Herring Blake. YA.

These days, Ashley Herring Blake writes adult sapphic romance, but this is personally my favorite of her novels and has tons of queer rep. I think it also covers some ground that I think should be explored more.

Mara is extremely close to her twin brother, Owen. A girl from their friend group accuses Owen of rape. Mara has her own trauma she has been keeping from her family. She comes from a liberal household where Believe All Women is taken seriously, but obviously that's going to be put to the test.

That's really interesting to me, when values are put to the test. Mara torn between love and considering that her brother hurt someone in a way that touches on her own experience.

When I opened my eyes, my mother was in my room, sitting on my bed and rubbing circles on my back. Neither one of us said anything. She just kept smoothing her palm and fingertips over my shoulders until I fell asleep again. In my dreams, I told her things. Why I’d been so distant for the past three years, why her lack of faith in Hannah felt like a lack of faith in me. What happened to her daughter in a quiet classroom.

***

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, by Jon Krakauer

Missoula is a book that has stuck with me for years and has definitely been on my mind a lot in recent days. I mentioned it over on Threads and a lot of people said the same.

It's about a series of rape cases at the University of Montana, which is powerful enough, but also speaks to campus culture(s), which clearly isn't improving. These are the men who will go out into the world! Yay?

***

Know My Name, Chanel Miller

This is one of the most important books I've ever read. Chanel Miller is the woman assaulted by Brock Turner at Stanford. She writers beautifully about an experience that never should have been hers and how the system only prolonged her pain. (She know writes middle grade books! Rumor has it, Brock goes by Allen and lives in Dayton with his parents.)

It seemed once you submitted to walking through fraternity doors, all laws and regulation ceased. They were not asked to adhere to the same rules, yet there were countless guidelines women had to follow: cover your drink, stick close to others, don’t wear short skirts. Their behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. When did it become our job to do all the preventing and managing? And if houses existed where many young girls were getting hurt, shouldn’t we hold the guys in these houses to a higher standard, instead of reprimanding the girls? Why was passing out considered more reprehensible than fingering the passed-out person?

and

When my sister met a guy in her neighborhood with a dog named Broccoli, the owner explained, Well at first his name was Brock, but have you heard of the Brock Turner stuff? My sister nodded. It hurt my dog’s brand, so I changed it.

***

Dismantling of Rape Culture, by Tracey Nicholls.

This is my current read, which I've barely started, but it already introduced me to the concept of Safety Work, along with a paper I tracked down on the topic. Public is treated as male domain, Private is female domain. Safety Works if the continual mental and physical labor women (and other marginalized groups) do in public to be safe. This is often unnoticed or misinterpreted by the people who are quite safe. (See the Chanel Miller quote.)

Even though I didn't have words for it, I believe this is the key to knowing if a woman is written by a cis man, because he's going to have her doing without thought some things women don't routinely do. A woman writer, and some other designations, might make those character choices but they know it's a statement or a subversion to do so.

Buffy was inherently a subversion, but Whedon was fluent in feminism, and always had women in the writing room. Part of the fun of the character is that she got to say Screw Safety Work. Well, if she knew the term. "I'm just going to walk in the cemetery in a miniskirt!"

Who wouldn't want that?

***

Again, please feel free to add books or your thoughts!

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

~Emily Dickinson

Patricia from Widow's Bay, played by Kate O'Flynn

I've never related to anyone more than Patricia. I've been Patricia all my life.

-the high school girl who wants friends and is bullied instead.

-the bookworm.

-the person who tries to do the right thing.

-the woke woman in any crowd that annoys people with "Spirit animal is appropriative" but can't seem to help herself.

-the middle-aged woman who sees through male bullshit and men know it.

"Was she attractive?"

"I-I didn’t notice one way or the other."

"How old was she?"

"She was… She was age-appropriate."

"What an odd way to describe someone who you’re just giving a ride."

My love of Patricia seems to be shared by a lot of people, but I find myself wanting to know if men see her as a hero or as the butt of the joke.

I mean, she's clearly flawed, but so is Tom. She's clearly prickly, but so is Wyck.

Heh, Patricia and Wyck.

Wyck: [chuckles] Seems he coveted the captain’s young bride.

Patricia: How young?

Wyck: Sixteen, I believe.

Patricia: How old was he?

Wyck: Fifty-three. What? She loved him.

Patricia: How can you possibly know that?

Wyck: [chuckles] Is an old man not worthy of love?

Patricia: Are the older women dead in this scenario?

Wyck: I don’t follow.

I'm interested in seeing the discourse when the first wave of admiration for the show is over and people stop arguing over whether it's a comedy.

Patricia, Widow's Bay, played by Kate O'Flynn, standing her ground.

_

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I am a huge Buffy fan. I'm not a huge Joss Whedon fan.

If someone told me I had to immediately speak without notes for 20 minutes, but I got to pick the topic, I might talk about Buffy and Giles and how the show took it's time establishing him as Buffy's dad and how that's my favorite thing about the show. Well, one of them.

Giles starts out as a father figure. An authority. Buffy's boss. The Watcher's Council IS the Patriarchy.

However, the show takes it's time, I'd argue not until Innocence in season 2, for Giles to be not Buffy's father on an intellectual level, but on an emotional one. In season one, if he found out Buffy was sexually active, it would have been awkward, but by Innocence it was awkward by tenfold. And this meant so much more:

Buffy: "You must be so disappointed in me.

Giles: "No, I'm not.

Buffy: "This is all my fault.

Giles: "I don't believe it is. Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? I know that you loved him. And he has proven more than once that he loved you... If it's guilt you're looking for, Buffy, I'm—I'm not your man."

And then Buffy goes in and has a birthday cupcake with her mom and juxtaposition is intentional.

The show earned the emotional payoff of the moment by earning the emotional payoff, by taking the time to show the growing trust and care. By showing Giles being there and becoming the most important platonic man in Buffy's life. Once it does this, it doesn't turn back,

When Hank Summers cancels taking Buffy to the Ice Capades -- Helpless -- our heart breaks when Buffy tells Giles about it and says a Watcher could maybe take his Slayer, but he is too distracted to HEAR her. In fact, in that moment, he is letting her down on multiple levels. After it plays out and Buffy discovers Giles wasn't acting in her best interest, you wonder how she will EVER forgive him.

Quentin, higher up in The Watcher's Council, says the thing that allows for forgiveness.

Voice dripping with disdain, he proclaims to Giles in Buffy's hearing that Giles has a father's love for Buffy. And you see Buffy soften. This moment in season 1 would have played false, or made you shrug and take their word for it. Halfway through season 3? You know he has a father's love and Buffy has a daughter's love.

And then he gently cleans her wounds and she lets him.

Helpless, Season 3, Episode 12

The Pitt does wrong what Buffy does right. It writes Robbie like we all agree he's dad, or at least the clear Mentor. The man you not only have to impress, but the one you want to impress because his good opinion means something. The sage oracle. The guy who is always right, except when that damned McKay messed with his head and a poor innocent boy had to suffer. Samira isn't cut out for the ER, just like he indicated in season 1. He knew on sight he couldn't leave his pit with Dr. Al-Hashimi, and guess what?

Noah Wyle and the writers clearly know who they want Robbie to be, but they haven't done the work of making me believe him at that level. In season 1, it was okay because we were stepping into an existing place and willing to believe he had been that guy. But now I'm just resentful.

In short -- too late -- he's not my real dad! (Also, I'm technically older than him. Ugh.)