SPOOKY MONTH 7 SPOILERS // why aspen matters - as a girl 🧵

SPOOKY MONTH 7 SPOILERS // why aspen matters - as a girl 🧵

aspen moore is the first female antagonist we have in spooky month, which is already a win, but the real victory isnt just "oh look a woman can be evil". i believe she is so much more than a token female character/villain, i really want to express just how special she really is.

it happens everywhere- not just cartoons, but other forms of media as well. movies, books, tv shows, etc. women are just treated Different. i will mostly be focusing on cartoons in this thread but just know that this is an issue that affects every type of artistic medium.

APPEARANCE --- you see it all the time, so much so that it becomes normal, accepted, expected, even. the female character in a cartoon, especially if the main character is male, will be smaller. softer. lighter in color. typically docile and quiet and dainty in her femininity.

think about sexual dimorphism in cartoon animals. tom and jerry, bambi, rio, cats don't dance, the list could go on for miles. even human/humanoid animated characters have very strong gendered appearances. think of how women were animated in older cartoons. im sure in your mind

you have an image of a women that is slim, maybe with curvy hips and chest, soft facial features, makeup, tiny hands and feet, probably light skin, and fitting the same silhouette as just about every other female character. not much has changed even now honestly which is sad.

for example, shrek, a movie about accepting the parts of you that society might not find conventionally attractive, has the female monster looking much less monstrous than the male. more humanoid, more beautiful and acceptable to the audience than if fiona looked just like shrek.

there are a lot of posts criticizing game design for having the male version of a monster or alien be creatively designed, animalistic, unusual, you know. while the female version of the same monster will be a woman with body paint and maybe a few animal/monster traits.

even when characters are generally drawn in the same style, both male and female, the male characters will often have a variety of silhouettes and diverse features, while the women will be very similar in design. they will mostly be attractive and slim and share similar traits.

spooky month itself does also have this problem to an extent. most of the female characters share these traits: skinny, round faces, eyelashes, round/soft facial features, lighter clothing/hair colors, more 'normal' voices. many characters break from at least one of the molds,

such as jaunes mouth, patty being fat, even carmen being curvy gives her a more unique silhouette than most other women being a rectangle. theyre all drawn as regular people for the most part. i wouldnt say theyre a caricature of a woman. theyre all just normal.

which is kind of the problem. when so many male characters get to have different body types, it is disappointing when the women are so similar. dexter (evil happy fella), moloch, bob, zach hadel, candy dealer, frank, are all very unique, varied, creative, and fun designs.

ooga booga is really the only exception that comes to mind, and shes supposed to be ugly. which is okay and she is still great but shes meant to be a joke. IMBALANCE --- now, yes, the reason why so many of the male characters have those unique designs is because theyre monsters

or villains. which is also a problem that cartoons have. males are sort of the default. if a cartoon creator wants to make a character, a lot of the time, choosing for them to be female has to be a conscious decision. there are a lot more male characters than female,

and i dont think that much would change if a lot of male characters were female. its just sort of assumed that they will be male, unless they need to be female. men are the default and so if you need a villain, it's probably going to be a guy, unless a lady would work better.

which brings us to TREATMENT --- a lot of people treat female characters as if they are very fragile and delicate. think about cartoon violence and slapstick. it tends to be male characters duking it out or having the anvil falling on their head. they get the 5 inch lumps.

female characters tend to be there as love interests, and/or are uninvolved in such silly cartoon tomfoolery, and/or just magically happen to avoid anything too bad happening to physically harm them. you also see this with female villains, especially if theyre part of a m/f duo.

the man will be harshly punished, beat up during a battle, have his own weapons explode in his face, while the woman gets a slap on the wrist in comparison. im not saying that women should be hurt more in cartoons, im saying that they shouldnt be infantilized and treated

like a delicate glass flower that will break if a gust of wind blows a little too hard. women are people and yet people are men. the longstanding tropes that girl characters face and is accepted by everyone needs to go it's 2026 we dont need any more of this misogyny

and being scared of women being "ugly" or taking up equal space in equal fields or getting roughed up when needed. it is so tiring that even in the most subtle of ways sexism works itself into every crack of life and prevents women from being treated the same as a man.

ASPEN MOORE --- GODDDDDDDDDDDDD you have no idea just how refreshing and dear to my heart aspen is. a villain, an insanely wacky character, a genuine intimidating threat, a unique looking character in like 50 billion ways... all while being a woman!! wow yes really!!!!

she has a weird design!! she has big hands and feet and a sharp face and she moves and talks at a zillion miles per hour! shes loud and unabashedly unashamed and she takes up so much space all over the room and shes pointy and rough and she hits people and she gets hit

and really. it means everything to me that shes so fucking silly. she shapeshifts into the funniest possible form for a gag. having a million fingers or looking like a pinup model or turning into clippy. she blows herself to smithereens and melts the colors off her body

and her eyeballs fall out and she gets a piano dropped on her and no matter what the situation is she will become the funniest possible thing and respond in the craziest way imaginable. she is so free and wild and unrestrained by any sort of standards of society!!!

she diverges from conventional beauty but guess what everybody still wants her so bad because shes still beautiful in a unique and new way and her personality stands out so much and you can never forget her! you never know whats shes going to do next! she is so new!!!

reached the limit but im not done here. i almost am but not yet. you have no idea how much it means to me how unpredictable and fluid and WEIRD she is she is a WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD GIRL and that is so important to me that she is unusual and strange and offputting

ive been in and out of tears all day just from how wonderful she is and how special it is to see a female character being treated as a cartoon first and a woman second, if that makes sense. the priority is to make her fill the role of the goofiest character in the whole show

and by god did they succeed. shes so funny and weird and unusual. theres nothing wrong with a woman being usual. but it is wrong when all the women are so usual. i really do like the female characters in spooky month but when you take their similarities and compound them with

all the similarities with just about every piece of media youve ever consumed in your entire life, all the tired and outdated tropes about how women should be, it can weigh on you as a girl. like literally theres been tears in my eyes bc aspen is so special to my heart

and even better is that other people love her too. its so amazing to see a woman being universally beloved by a fandom, everyone likes her and thinks shes the best villain, which is true, but still somehow shocking to see acknowledged. and it's also very clear

just how much love the team put into making her. huge huge huge shoutout to her va, the composer for the amazing score, the animators for all the love put into the episode and aspens references, the script was also so well done. really this episode is just undeniably the best

hit tweet go comm my bf

Yali/Roy ! 🦴🎳 Ko-Fi Open! 🖍️@yali_bat · Oct 2, 2026

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