Leasebound Slander - Blog Posts

Love the inherent "I'm not like other girls" attitude present in all TERF media. Like you'll call yourself a supporter of all women but mock women who wear makeup and dress feminine?

Femininity has been influenced by patriarchy and patriarchal standards, but we have platforms to break down those patriarchal standards by redefining feminity on our own terms. Mocking feminine women won't do shit.

I think being "not like other girls" is something very in line with TERFs, such as JK Rowling's worst villain being incredibly feminine and Lavender Brown and Cho Chang being villainised for being normal teenage girls in a relationship.

(hot take: Harry Potter was a shit boyfriend to Cho and Ron was a shit boyfriend to Lavender)

But Rusty's brand of "not like other girls" involves her ideology and being in the know. She often portrays other women who aren't butch or radical feminists as "brainwashed" and "victims". It's a very patronising way of viewing women who just don't identify with the TERF view of "good women".

And don't even get me started on queer women who are ace, trans, and many more that don't fit in their LGB label. If it's not a woman they can sexualise or fantasise about, the LB TERF crew will mock and belittle them.

TERFS are surprisingly intolerant of other women, even though they say they aren't.

Talked very briefly about this in the Leasecord server, but the portrayal of Faith has always pegged me as sort of odd considering like...

・She is so sheltered from the idea of men that she doesn't even understand why a man/boy would be in a household

・She hasn't been written, at least not as of yet, to have any friends her own age, not from school or anywhere else, in fact the only interaction she's had at all with another kid is the kid she beat up. All of her friends are the grown adult members of Yonqiue, basically being raised by them

・She's somewhat pushy and clingy and it kind of seems like she doesn't understand boundaries in relations to other girls, especially Jaden, who she has a crush on. While it's completely normal for a young child to have a crush on an adult, it is a tad bit weird how much the other adults around her sort of encourage how clingy she is towards Jaden.

・It's honestly doubtful that she'd likely EVER make friends in a real world scenario, because the way she's being raised is just setting her up for other kids to think she's a bully. She's being raised by incredibly judgemental TERF women who have raised her on the idea that men and being effeminate are completely terrible and a failure of a woman, so she'd basically be the equivalent of a "I'm not like other girls" girl, only at a much earlier age, and much meaner. It's fine for her to be a tomboy/masculine, it's not fine that this'll probably be used as a catalyst for her to bully and harass other girls because that's what she thinks is justice. And even if she were to find some TERF friends who are like her, what are the chances that they'd even tolerate her considering they might just also hate her for being lesbian or black, or even just hate her for being a tomboy since, surprise surprise, being a TERF usually comes packaged with being bigoted and hateful towards... Literally anything else. In fact, Rusty and this comic are the one and only time I've seen TERFs actually advocate for women being more masculine or tomboyish considering every other TERF media I've seen will literally scream that a woman is a man in disguise if she's not walking around built like Jessica Rabbit.

Soooo... TL:DR

Yonique kind of runs like a cult, and I feel incredibly bad for Faith. Let's just hope she never gets unsupervised internet access like most of us did and finds websites like Amino, because I'm sure her grown adult TERF friends and Rusty would never even consider the idea that women can also be child predators.

Getting some real Caleb and Sophia vibes. Can't wait for the TERFs to rip me a new ass for this one.

Talked very briefly about this in the Leasecord server, but the portrayal of Faith has always pegged me as sort of odd considering like...

・She is so sheltered from the idea of men that she doesn't even understand why a man/boy would be in a household

・She hasn't been written, at least not as of yet, to have any friends her own age, not from school or anywhere else, in fact the only interaction she's had at all with another kid is the kid she beat up. All of her friends are the grown adult members of Yonqiue, basically being raised by them

・She's somewhat pushy and clingy and it kind of seems like she doesn't understand boundaries in relations to other girls, especially Jaden, who she has a crush on. While it's completely normal for a young child to have a crush on an adult, it is a tad bit weird how much the other adults around her sort of encourage how clingy she is towards Jaden.

・It's honestly doubtful that she'd likely EVER make friends in a real world scenario, because the way she's being raised is just setting her up for other kids to think she's a bully. She's being raised by incredibly judgemental TERF women who have raised her on the idea that men and being effeminate are completely terrible and a failure of a woman, so she'd basically be the equivalent of a "I'm not like other girls" girl, only at a much earlier age, and much meaner. It's fine for her to be a tomboy/masculine, it's not fine that this'll probably be used as a catalyst for her to bully and harass other girls because that's what she thinks is justice. And even if she were to find some TERF friends who are like her, what are the chances that they'd even tolerate her considering they might just also hate her for being lesbian or black, or even just hate her for being a tomboy since, surprise surprise, being a TERF usually comes packaged with being bigoted and hateful towards... Literally anything else. In fact, Rusty and this comic are the one and only time I've seen TERFs actually advocate for women being more masculine or tomboyish considering every other TERF media I've seen will literally scream that a woman is a man in disguise if she's not walking around built like Jessica Rabbit.

Soooo... TL:DR

Yonique kind of runs like a cult, and I feel incredibly bad for Faith. Let's just hope she never gets unsupervised internet access like most of us did and finds websites like Amino, because I'm sure her grown adult TERF friends and Rusty would never even consider the idea that women can also be child predators.

Getting some real Caleb and Sophia vibes. Can't wait for the TERFs to rip me a new ass for this one.

This ain't even slow burn at this point, this is responsible fire handling 😭

You gotta commend Rusty for never putting a lit candle where a curtain is. And by that I mean wasting time rather than developing her main characters.

We got an entire chapter for a side character who had only a dozen of lines before getting her own chapter. The only mc we know about is Jaden, and Riley is as interesting as a wet paper towel used to clean up the milk I spilt this morning.

Leasebound's main plot is just uninteresting, can't wait for Jaden and Blaire to kiss at the Ballroom and then dance together.

Decided to scourge through the comic a little, and here is a compilation of the few times where there's some actual romantic chemistry that's written between Jaden and Riley.

Yep. You're seeing this right. Only 5. Only 5 actual moments that I have counted between these two who are supposed to get together by the end of this comic that actually consist of romantic chemistry between them. Made somehow kind of worse that 2/5 of these actually consist of Jaden kinda sorta reciprocating feelings, while the rest are just Riley pining and Jaden just being like "so cool bestie :)"

Wonder who that rat is....

POV: You made the mistake of being a TERF on tumblr

If anyone understands this joke, I applaud you.

so true gendie

POV: You are sent down into Tumblr hell for your TERFism crimes and have to confront the 6 horsemen of genderism.

In order of everybody in this photo, we have:

@fluffytimearts

@angelmelon

@theboogierat

@l0veraven

@micah-write

And me!

If you're looking for some good ass Leasebound critiques, redesigns and artwork, all of these blogs are just what you need! Go show em' some love 🩵

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.

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.