It's Been A Long Time Coming, But. . .

it's been a long time coming, but. . .

enough is enough. i think i've moved in relative silence when it comes to some of the more odd things that occur in this fandom, but one instance in particular is giving me pause. this honestly feels like something better suited for a substack essay, but i'll hold off on that since i think everyone in this specific sub - tumblr ( ? ) should hear this first.

i feel like so much of the call of duty fandom is trapped in a constant woman - hating epidemic.

and i don't just mean 'oh, there's barely any female character x reader content, there's nothing for the girls who like girls'. that's an entirely different issue i may or may not bring up later.

i'm talking about how a good majority of the writing i read in this fandom is so geared towards men. and i don't mean that there's a surplus of male reader content, because there really isn't. i mean that there's so many fics i read that are drenched in the light of 'doe - eyed, pouty, submissive woman who is always eager to please her man, and the idea that the man may be eager to please her in return is such an incredibly radical concept'.

i click on any 'x reader' tag in this fandom, and i'm met with a tidal wave of two specific archetypes;

the doe - eyed, pouty, submissive fem reader who is always eager to please her man and gets off on him essentially treating her like property, or. . .

a reader who has no character. no structure. no personality. a reader who is meant to be vague enough to where the actual reader can neatly insert themselves into their shoes, but at the cost of any innate substance or realness. a reader who is essentially just a placeholder in words.

somehow, inexplicably, it's more often than not the first.

write and read for this fandom long enough, and you'll see what i see in droves. the attention that is lavished on writing within this fandom is relegated to the specific archetype of the tradwife who knows nothing but to cook for her husband and be a willing conduit for his post - deployment stress relief.

and what truly infuriates me the most is that it will be these kinds of writers who are so adamantly against the idea of tradwives. yes, you say you're against it, but can your words hold up when your writing is essentially tradwife propaganda in disguise?

and it just irks me so badly when these mentalities infiltrate the characters themselves. today's specific instance of this was when i was scrolling through the könig x reader tag and i came across this one headcanon list that advertised itself as "loser!könig". nothing innately malicious, of course, but then i saw the tags.

'but also, he's a sucker for the wife, which makes him a loser. say it with me now.'

i want to make it known that i mean no ill intent towards the original author of this specific headcanon list. i don't want any vitriol to be directed at them because i'm speaking my mind about this fandom as a whole. it most likely was meant to be an affectionate, "haha, he's such a malewife loser"-esque endearment. but this set of tags just. . .baffled me.

. . .because when did it become loser - like or a loser - adjacent trait to be a sucker for your wife?

this isn't even the first instance of this. i've seen it before, the way this fandom—sometimes subtly, sometimes unintentionally—pushes this narrative that has been setting us back decades. the idea that there is not only a beauty standard that women must live up to in order to be considered desirable by men, but there is also a mentality that a woman must have in addition.

there's another fic that i read, a 141 x reader one if memory serves me correctly. it featured a reader who was insecure about her appearance, which is absolutely nothing to frown upon. what startled me, though, was the fact that the author themselves referred to the reader as 'ugly'.

the reader is a single mother. she is stated in the fic to have love handles, breakouts, and a thick waist. she has messy hair and wears baggy clothes and has dark undereye circles. she required the love and special attention of four conventionally attractive men who moved in next door in order to feel beautiful.

she is said, by the author in the precluding note, to be meant as a way to 'show some love to readers who feel ugly, instead of petite girly readers'.

as if people with these traits should feel ugly. as if people with these traits cannot be girly.

i understand i may be reading too much into this. i may be making a mountain out of a molehill. but i'm angry about this and this is my blog and you've read this far, so clearly you want to see where this goes.

and this is where it's going.

i spoke about this briefly in a server i'm in and am extremely fond of—shoutout to the shitheads.

i said, quote: "are you nothing but a slave to the whims of a patriarchal society’s dictation on how someone must present in order to be considered desirable? or are you willingly feeding into this at the risk of the self image of so many beautiful people who cannot recognize their own enchanting presences because of people like you howling at them in your sweetest voice that they are anything but?"

i also said: "have you considered the reason for that might be because she’s a recluse and doesn’t go outside apart from making sure her child is getting sufficient vitamin d and is thus making assumptions about what people will think of her on the basis of one bad man’s words to her?"

maybe she doesn't feel ugly because you think the traits she has are ugly. maybe she feels ugly because she doesn't socialize. maybe, instead of just leaving that in the subtext, you should have started with that.

the writer, if i recall correctly, was a woman. by the way. which makes this worse.

it is so difficult for me to understand how the women in this fandom can be so cruel to each other, even implicitly. from the way we're written in reader - insert fics to how we react to each others' ocs and creations. . .it's just so disheartening.

more than anything, it makes me wonder how someone like me—a lesbian who exclusively writes women for women and tries to veer away from the reader and the character falling into any one archetype—is going to find any sort of platform in this fandom.

the bottom line is that there is so much casual misogyny in this fandom. frankly, i'm a little sick of it.

one might think i'm making a big deal out of this. i know. i'm being a killjoy, i'm being a hater, i won't let anyone have any fun. but we need to remember a couple of key points here:

art is always political because there is no way to create something without a modicum of bias.

the politics promoted by the art in this fandom—specifically, the writing—are pushing an agenda that has been consistently used to strip women of their rights and needs for decades.

most of these writers are women themselves.

obviously, there's nothing wrong with a submissive woman. obviously, the characters in call of duty that are most featured in reader - insert content are canonically framed in a lens that makes it seem like they would be the kind of men to only enjoy this kind of woman. obviously, not everyone in this fandom indulges this.

but it occurs enough. and it sets us back.

and i'm sick of it.

thank you for reading this far, and for hearing out what i have to say. i promise i don't do this often—but i also promise that i absolutely should. i love you.

kiki x