Latest Posts by derkuningas - Page 4
Link tto some of the leasebound dissertions you mentioned? Or even just where they can be found? I appreciate it!
First of all: very sorry about the late reply!
Second: the majority of people on the leasebound tag on tumblr have come up with amazing stuff regarding leasebound!
One such account is @micah-write , who makes great criticisms of the webcomic in depth, and who I was largely referencing with that line! Their criticism of Rusty's skin lightening over time was spot on, and I laughed so hard at the "Patricia" line.
Another is @fluffytimearts with their incredible art! They've done amazing redraws and redesigns!
@l0veraven has a ton of cool dissertations and criticisms, such as their criticism about Riley linked here: https://www.tumblr.com/l0veraven/763359106662809600/we-dont-talk-about-riley?source=share
They're also working on a fic to rewrite LB in its entirety! It's available on AO3.
@angelmelon is pretty famous in the Leasebound community, and is working on a sort of redraw of the entire comic! They're wonderful, and their ideas are interesting to hear out.
@codabound has so many good ideas that I wish I posted first, and they're all very well phrased and well rounded. They've also got great art on their account!
And finally, @chrysalis-the-butterfly has this amazing Blaire text that inspired me to write my initial Blaire post:
https://www.tumblr.com/chrysalis-the-butterfly/748965078657908736/blaire-hopburn-my-favourite-character-from-my?source=share
That's all for now! Check these blogs out!
a boy cant even manipulate and lie and abuse his best friend anymore without people calling him evil and a psychopath smh
ok
I think something that especially irks me about Rusty's portrayal of Kai, and specifically their inability and disliking towards speaking to cisgender women, is that this could've actually been an avenue to explore with his character, given it's not actually out of the realm of reality for "cis women" like Kai to not want to speak to other cis women.
Because surprise, surprise! No, women are not perfect flowery little angels with the only evil women in the world being trans women and any woman supportive of them. In fact, given I had to suffer through 3 years of middle-school (I guess technically 3 and a half because quarantine started mid-way through the 8th grade), as well as just generally growing up as a young autistic girl, I've had first-hand experience of how genuinely nasty and terrible other girls can be.
I myself often isolated myself from other girls my age, specifically because they were girls, because oftentimes, those were the people who were the absolute worse to me, for no other reason than the fact that I wasn't a conventionally attractive and sociable person like everybody else. It took me forever to basically unprogram my brain from the extreme anger I felt towards the female gender (and honestly the male gender too, I basically just hated everybody back then) because I genuinely just couldn't find myself entrusting anybody who identified or was born a girl because of the treatment I had to endure.
So honestly, I really relate a lot to Kai and his issue, and I'm kind of irked that his issue is downplayed and actively mocked as "evil idiot gendie slut who deserves nothing but the worst for daring not to be who we want him to be"
Sounds a whole lot like what I had to constantly hear growing up autistic...
Coda's right; Josie isn't a boy mom.
Josie simply does younger sibling syndrome and tends to baby Jacob. I won't be surprised if you factor in her trauma too, and see her as sort of "giving a better life" to her late husband, who Jacob is named after.
In fact: Jacob's kind of messed up AS WELL as Jaden.
Even if Jacob wasn't parentified and made to basically raise himself (Jaden did that for him), Jacob was born right after his father died and even named after him. He's then said to look like his dad.
That's...kinda scary. I'd be scared if I were me. It's like some ghost I don't even know is following me, and everyone can see it, but they won't save me from it if it tries to engulf me.
Honestly, considering Leasebound is supposedly meant to be about strong and "well-written" female characters, and does so with the motherly characters within the story, I feel like a missed opportunity would be touching upon THOSE kinds of "boy moms".
I'm not talking about favoritism, like Josie with Jaden and Jacob, I mean...
Those moms on tiktok who post videos talking about how their sons are their entire world, and if their sons weren't their sons they'd be DATING them, meanwhile they avoid talking about their daughters like the plague, act like having a daughter is some sort of curse or punishment, the ones who view their daughters as "competition" because they envy their daughters youth or see their daughters as trying to "steal" the attention from their husbands, and make it obvious that they'd happily throw their daughters under a bus for their son. THOSE kinds of boy moms.
But knowing Rusty and how she handles a lot of heavy topics in her work, she'd probably write something like this in all the wrong ways. Especially considering this would force her to have to actually write a female character who's actually flawed if not downright a horrible person, and the closest she can seem to get to writing an "evil" female character is a woman with dyed hair and pronouns and a homophobic Christian mom.
No sympathy for Josephine Anderson.
Don't get me wrong, Rusty Hearts can be good at writing. It's just that sometimes she forgets that too.
I want to focus on the two big mothers in the comic so far: Shez's mother, Meriam, and Jaden's mother, Josephine. There are several key differences in not only the way they are portrayed, but also in how they're perceived and intended to be perceived, especially the surprising deficit of sympathy the narrative gives Josie while Meriam is awarded "mother of the year" by everyone.
TLDR: Josie is allowed to be human. Meriam is a saint.
Josie is called out on her shortcomings as a mother, from parentifiying Jaden to favouring her younger brother, Jacob. Josie is allowed to argue, fight, and act unfavourably towards her daughter, and the narrative rightfully shows Jaden and Josie's relationship as strained.
That can't be said the same for Shez and Meriam.
Rusty Hearts has Meriam's trauma be "higher" "more painful" than Josephine. Because Meriam is an abuse survivor, she can do no wrong and isn't a bad mother when she does the EXACT SAME THINGS Josie is criticised for!
But because Josephine's suffering is supposedly lesser, she's open to criticism and being called a "flawed mother". But not Meriam. Meriam is the greatest mom of all time.
Let's compare:
- Josephine favours Jacob over Jaden. That's a parenting Flaw.
- Meriam favours Shez over all her other children. That's correct. Shez deserves to be favoured.
You could argue that Jacob never put himself in the line of fire between an abuser and his mother, and that's why it's unfair of Josie to favor him. And I'm not disagreeing with that. Shez did a lot for her family, and deserves to have recognition for her sacrifices. The problem is that how Meriam does it...sucks.
Meriam is willing to shut her third-youngest daughter out, comparing her to Shez. The rest of her daughters can walk out, as long as Shez is alright. This is an example of "hurt people hurt others", and how Meriam is slowly propping up Shez as this beacon of protection, one all her daughters should look up to. That's objectification: Shez is losing her identity as a human to be the great saviour of Meriam.
Interestingly, Josie's pedestal on Jacob is an interesting foil to this dynamic. Jacob is, like Shez, a sort of reminder of the trauma suffered by her. Jacob was born on the day Jacobus, Josie's husband, died. Jacob is said to look like Jacobus.
Josie simply favours Jacob on principle. Not only is she a boy mom, but he's the ghost of he husband she lost early. His face bears the similarities of the love of her life. that's fucked up, dawg.
And I'm not denying it's fucked up! It is! Very much so!
....so why doesn't she get any sympathy for it?
There's sympathy for Meriam being hurt, and as a result pedestaling Shez, but there's no sympathy for Josie being hurt, and therefore using Jacob as a way to reflect that grief by showering him in love.
...why?
Either way, their siblings get hurt. Rocky sees her family fall apart as Rissa walks out and Tina loses one of her sisters on a past she was too young to remember. Jaden gets more labour, emotional and physical, because her mother can't let go of her dead father.
But there's no sympathy for Josie.
And here's my theory as to why.
Rusty's view on straight relationships is, to put it lightly, very flawed. She sees men as horny, violent, aggressive villains that women should stay far from, and in several cases that's true and shouldn't be ignored.
That's why no women who knowingly and willingly has a healthy relationship with a normal-ass man who knows women are humans (who do exist, surprisingly, my dad is one) will be portrayed as "good women". They're "flawed", they're criticised, they are bad to Rusty, they need to be saved, which is PRIME VICTIM BLAMING, RUSTY. THATS NOT SOMETHING A FEMINIST DOES.
Rusty does a lot of things that feminists don't do. One of them is transphobia. The other one is prioritising victims, the way she does it.
Again, a comparison:
- Jaden is parentified by Josie because Josie has no resources outside of her mother to take care of their house after her husband DIES.
- Shez is parentified by Meriam because she's the eldest daughter, and of course the mother is too weak to escape her abuse without the help of her CHILD.
But Meriam isn't allowed to just be a hurt person with depth, she's the great mother who was hurt by men. She's Rusty's ultimate radfem victim. There's no depth to her abuse- it's just something she should have expected, partnering with a man, but she's a great mom for teaching Shez to never, EVER, associate with men. It's Rissa's fault for being straight. Tina is being brainwashed. Meriam is the greatest mother, and anyone who disagrees is in favour of domestic abuse.
Josie is a flawed mother. She made the mistake of partnering with a man rather than fulfilling her education, and then said man...died. What a horrible father. Dying.
Josie is wrong to compare Jaden and Jacob, even when Meriam does it. Josie is wrong to parentify Jaden, even when Meriam does it. Josie is wrong to scream at Jaden, Josie is wrong to still love her husband, Josie is....human.
And that's the true tragedy of Meriam, in my opinion. She's not allowed to just...be hurt. Make bad desicions. She's the fantasy of saving an abused mother, and that makes her this...victim, completely stripped of anything than her victimhood and her role as "mother".
Josephine, Jaden, and all the Andersons are Rusty's best characters, but she can't imagine, at all, an actually good story that doesn't perpetuate her politics. It's all wasted potential on a writer who can't even write, and surrounds herself with an echo chamber of her own yes-men and dickriders, never taking criticism for an option.
So yeah. That's it. That's all.
There is no sympathy for Josephine Anderson, according to Rusty Hearts.
No sympathy.
Stop pointlessly attacking people who didn't ask for your opinion.
It's a waste of everyone's time.
they'd be the best lb couple aside from jaden and blaire
they love eachother your honor
Christine Taylor deserves the world.
I love her just as much as Jacob does
Tina <33
Parniya deserves better
We've been seeing almost zero of her independent to Shez lately. Give parniya her chances too.
She's nothing more than Shez's girlfriend lately. Give a girl some character damn!!!
not to be abnormal about them but i am abnormal about them to the point of writing a fic
jacob's her loser weirdo and tina fights for him
"TAKE MY FLOWER" "i got ur flower bby"
they so <33
These two would be really cute together if Rusty and her fans didn't have a really creepy viscious hatred of Jacob.
new chapter
Meriam is not a well-written mother, sorry.
It's not a surprise, either. Meriam isn't the saint of a mother constantly portrayed in Leasebound, and I argue that the narrative does her injustice several times by not letting her be a person.
Shez's backstory is far from a shounen hero arc. It's sad, and it's a prime example of Rusty not capitalising on potentially great story arcs for her characters.
To begin, Meriam's story starts when her first husband abandons her in Austalia. She gets a job as a cleaner (and takes off her hijab), as well as takes care of Shez until Chris comes along and acts super creepy until he convinces her to marry him. And then chapter 12 happens.
Chris-era Meriam I will not call a bad mother. She was a young woman stuck in a horrible situation, and had to do what she could to help her daughters and her to survive the conflict.
My biggest gripe with chapter twelve is that Rusty calls it a "shounen" arc. Her portrayal of Meriam and her situation accurately does not look like a shounen arc; it's a serious abusive relationship that they need to escape. Meriam, I'd argue, was treated as 'motivation' for Shez and her backstory at best and a figurehead for why women shouldn't partner with men at worst. Rather than treating Meriam as a character, she's often portrayed as a sobbing mess at the mercy of her husband and then later a poor victim who finally got the life she deserved after escaping.
Since the story is a recollection from Shez, you could argue that's why Meriam is portrayed this way. Shez sees her mother as someone in constant need of saving- it's why she thinks that Meriam never had a life outside her kids and her abuse.
But I doubt rusty would write that. The narrative shows Shez as a great hero who inspired her mother to take action because her mother can't defend herself without her daughter - HER FOURTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER- having to step in for her.
(This moment is particularly apalling; how could anyone see this as a power fantasy?!)
There are almost no healthy mother-daughter relationships in Lease Bound, which is really weird for a so-called feminist comic. Josephine and Jaden. Alexis and HER mother. And yes, Shez and Meriam.
Meriam is a deeply flawed mother. Meriam was married at a young age, had to take care of Shez alone in a foreign country, and then got abused. She will make mistakes, and she's made many, because she had no support from the outside and ultimately all she had were her daughters. That could make a strong, protective, fierce Mama bear....
...but she isn't. She's a **victim**. She's hurt, and she needs Shez to save her. She begs her ten year old daughter to help her after her daughter fights a battle for her. She needs her daughter to train to fight Chris for her. That's not something admiring, that's not a power fantasy. That is fucked up.
And that doesn't mean she needs to be rewritten! This can be good! This can be amazing, even! Meriam could be an actually interesting character, going in-depth on how her abuse didn't MAKE HER A STRONG PERSON! HER ABUSE WAS ABUSE! ABUSE DOESNT MAKE YOU STRONGER! IT TRAUMATIZES YOU! IT MAKES YOU NEED SUPPORT, AND THERAPY, AND YOU ARE HUMAN AND- GOOD GOD!
Why is she portrayed as the mother who can do no wrong because she got abused?! Why isn't she treated with a sliver of more nuance than "the victim"?! Why isn't Meriam seriously challenged, deconstructed, analysed, as anything other than "Shez's mom who got abused and made her hate men?"
That is bad writing! Framing abuse as a continuation of your political agenda instead of seriously exploring abuse and a person's psyche and how it affects someone!
And...well...that's how Meriam is written. That's how Rusty wants us to see her. And it's frustrating because sometimes- sometimes- Rusty gets it right.
This moment is poignant. It's my favourite Meriam moment because she's self- aware, and challenged by Shez. Rusty can do it- she just abandons it in favour of five hundred more pages of "trans bad men bad".
So...we explored all that. We tackled the surface of my feelings towards Meriam. What now?
I can't say more, because I feel like a broken record. In fact, go read up several other posts by incredibly talented Leasebound content creators who have made several dissertations on the story, and they will tell you that Lease Bound is, in fact, badly written, and that Rusty Hearts needs to do more with her story.
Thanks for reading! More about Meriam and Shez is coming soon, and I'll update this post when I finish writing it!
Some coda appreciation because they're @codabound (go read their works!!)
Some Jasper appreciation for @theboogierat!
what are your thoughts on controversial figure, greg heffley
used to like him back when I had no reading comprehension.
now I think he needs to be jailed for his war crimes
THIS IS SO REAL THATS WHAT IM SAYING
Just remembered another thing that I find irksome about the comic outside of the obvious, so apologies for this second rant!
There are so many actually interesting plot points that Rusty has written within Leasebound, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with. And that really bothers me. I think what makes it so bothersome in that Rusty has gone on record to say that her story is meant to be about "interesting female characters" and like-
They aren't. Because you don't actually write about them outside of making them deal with the horrors of women who have more body hair than outside of their legs.
It generally prickles my pruddles the amount of times that Rusty has actually written parts of the lore that have substance, and then cooked them into nothing burgers.
Jaden having immense guilt over her fathers death, both because there was nothing she could do about it, and because she eventually dropped and gave up on her objective of going to medical school and becoming a doctor in his memory?
Nothing burger. I don't think we've literally ever come back to this plot point since it was introduced
Riley and her turbulant relationship with her family, specifically hinting to the idea that they flat out disowned her/don't associate with her anymore?
Nothing burger. I don't believe we've ever circled back to this plot point either. It was hinted at in the first few chapters and in behind the scenes of the original story, but I haven't seen it mentioned outside of that
The turbulent relationship with Karrisa and how she feels unwelcomed with her relationship with her boyfriend, because of her family's past traumas and distrust of men due to said trauma?
I'm taking a wild shot in the dark that they're likely never going to come back to this. And if they do, it's not gonna come back in a particularly satisfying or good way.
Nothing burger. And that sucks! Because this should be the shit that should actually be expanded upon! These are good avenues in a story to explore, and she just does nothing with them!
The saddest part about Leasebound as a concept and comic is that it actually has so much potential to get really interesting, but Rusty does nothing with what ACTUALLY makes it interesting in favor of acting like she's stuck in the 2016 anti-SJW era.
hi
: >
it's my epic fanfic
straight ship??? On the leasebound tag???
It's more likely than you think!
I think about she daily
Bonus:
this was supposed to be a sprained ankle but ig assume she just took a nasty spill down the stairs and jaden panicked
Bonus blaire
its so hard working @ the unhinged ask mines.. everyday i lift up my little broken fingers (they are broken from the transbian butch faes that break into my home everyday) as i shiver from the new strand of rabies (just invented it)
max verstappen
just for that im now gonna invent a entire religion purely to shame mac n cheese periods thou shall not bleed when covered in cheese amen
why vro
wouldnt it be even more fucked up to bite into a piece of mac n cheese n u see its BLEEDING
don't shame it for it's time of the month
are women real :( ive been locked inside a little bird cage by they might be giants after i insulted their flood album for the past 30 years and i finally crawled out of there with my bare hands and ive forgotten so are women real
women are uh....
*checks notes*
Featherless biped
when the scrunkly blorbo hits
Love these animals
The pancakeshipping