#I think she's the only example of a female character being directly sexually predatory to a man that we have on the show

[annabelle--cane]

saw a comment on a livejournal bh meta post from 2013 that sent me on an internal hero's journey about sexual misconduct and gendered power in being human

[yallemagne]

Everyone talking about the new Dorian Gray taking the fuckin Sailor Moon approach to praying the gay away.

Let's like actually dip our queer little toes into this. If they keep Basil's attraction to Dorian, hey what the fuck? Hey fucking dumb cunt writing this stupid adaptation, let me tell you a little something: you are directly comparing being gay to being incestuous. And let me tell you another thing: a difference between being gay and being incestuous? Being gay is neutral and being incestuous is bad. Wanting to kiss people of your same sex? Perfectly neutral but has a history of being condemned as a sin worse than murder. Wanting a romantic/sexual relationship with your family members? Bad! Immoral, even! Inherently toxic and unhealthy! All "consensual" depictions of incest are blatant examples of childhood sexual grooming.

(if anyone wants to say "it's just a story it's not saying anything about gay people" literally in the book the characters are representative of gayness. Basil is a representation of gay men who pine but never indulge, Dorian is a representation of the boogeyman gay that the lawmakers use to justify imprisoning people for homosexuality. the whole fucking book is a commentary on shit in society, it is an OBNOXIOUS commentary. you cannot make an adaptation without taking your decisions into account.)

This is just like the fucking Dorian Gray musical that gender bent ONLY BASIL because they claimed they needed more female characters. The reason they claimed they needed more female characters? They wanted to show more facets of femininity than Sibyl Vane's femme fatale. WHAT? Yeah they called Sibyl a femme fatale. Bitch, the only person this femme is fatale against is her goddamn self. I think they were genuinely trying to squeeze in a Madonna vs Whore complex and assumed that since Sibyl is an actress she must be a whore. Literally just MAKE THE MAIN TRIO CHICKS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

Anyhow anyway, bereft of anything to really spice up the Basil/Dorian thing as Forbidden, they aged up woman Basil to be Dorian's art teacher, using her authority over him to force him to model for her. Wuh. Uh. WUGHh. WHahglsh. "THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WOMEN IN THE OG STORY QUICK MAKE BASIL A PEDOPHILE!!!"

We don't need a modern retelling of Dorian Gray, and modern retellings will aways be trash because the events of that book are moulded by the era is set in. But I suppose if someone has a gun to your head telling you to make a modern retelling, you do know that being gay is still illegal in a lot of places, yeah? So you don't... You don't need to change the story to the point that Basil, one of the only non malicious characters in the story, just flawed the regular human amount and condemned by unjust laws, now deserves to be in prison for a legitimate crime.

This is a ramble.

Netflix stop fucking adapting shit you fucking suck. Every single time you fucking suck. Is this gonna be worse than when they compared vampirism to AIDS and cast people suffering from AIDS in a very predatory light for the Dracula miniseries? Who knows? But I guess there's gonna be an influx of incest kink people in the Dorian Gray tag if that miniseries' popularity is anything to go off of.

[lakesbian]

alright let's break this one down

1. that's not what the term "unreliable narrator" means. a narrator is the person/voice telling the story to the reader. in worm, the narrator is usually taylor. in interludes, the narrator is a third-person narrator (a voice who isn't in the story as a character). an unreliable narrator is when the narrator of the book significantly misleads readers regarding the story. alec is never the narrator, and subsequently cannot be an unreliable narrator.

2. that's not how really anything about alec's brain works. if he had acknowledged the full extent of his emotional anguish as a child, he wouldn't have been able to psychologically cope with it & focus on his survival. subsequently, rather than viewing everything his family did as bad, he protects himself from the weight of his trauma by persistently repressing how bad it really was. this makes complete deprogramming from everything the cult taught him a difficult work in progress for him. for example, he genuinely does not understand that torture or intense revenge violence is always unethical. if he's not even parsing the worst things done in the cult as straightforwardly bad, he's certainly not decrying literally everything about his own life & feelings within it as bad. he absolutely does not have a functional relationship to his own sexuality after years of severe child sexual abuse, but he's not repressing any same-gender attraction, consciously or otherwise.

3. internalized homophobia is when there's homophobia in the environment around you and you subsequently internalize it, or begin to share those same viewpoints. the heartbroken household was certainly homophobic, but canonically not in the sense of pushing the idea that same-gender attraction should be repressed. i could go on at length about the ways it likely did impact his attitudes, but the important point here is that it didn't impact his attitude in the way you're postulating.

4. there's a lot of really bizarre implications and assumptions packed into "written by wildbow is a dumbass or incompetent instead of a malicious person gang." the most notable one is the insinuation that people can only put homophobic writing into their works if they're being intentionally malicious, as if unconscious or unintentional homophobia on behalf of cishet authors isn't not only possible but extremely common. this directly contradicts your prior statement that alec could've "accidentally internalized homophobia," as well. if a bisexual person could accidentally be homophobic, do you not think a cishet person--someone who is taught & materially benefits from homophobia--could be accidentally homophobic, as well?

5. i don't think you know very much about wildbow. the bizarreness of you implying that my discussing the way alec's sexuality is framed is the same as accusing wildbow of being an intentionally malicious person aside: wildbow got so furious about people shipping his female main characters that he wrote a forum post about how they're all straight (except for alec, whose sexuality he described as "hedonist") and inserted multiple shoehorned scenes into the story where all of said female main characters explicitly talked about how very heterosexual they are. wildbow wrote amy dallon--i don't need to explain why she's the worst predatory lesbian trope ever known to mankind--and then spent over an entire decade doubling down on his insistence that he did nothing wrong. like, he is an incompetent dumbass, but "incompetent dumbass" does not translate to "wrote a consciously thoughtful interpretation of how a character interacts w/ their bisexuality after leaving a cult," it translates to "said that that character's sexuality was 'hedonist' on a public forum during a whiny attempt to discourage f/f shipping. because he's a homophobe." if you're "in wildbow is a dumbass gang" then you really shouldn't be ascribing this much intelligence to his writing! your watsonian (term that means 'making an argument about a literary work based on in-universe information') argument about why alec is Like That isn't even consistent with his character in-universe, but more notably, it's not even remotely consistent with the real-life frame worm was written through in regards to sexuality. if you think wildbow is an incompetent dumbass (again, he is) then assume his writing of LGBT characters is incompetent and full of dumbassery instead of inventing incredibly weak in-universe explanations as to why the dubiously-bisexual character he described as "hedonist" doesn't actually act very bisexual.

you can really tell wildbow forgot alec was supposed to be bisexual sorry hedonist because if wildbow was writing that scene consciously viewing him as bisexual sorry hedonist he would have said and or done something wildly inappropriate in response + been portrayed as ultimately in the wrong for it. which to be clear would've been far more accurate to alec's characterization than not saying anything was.

[akari-hope]

Not sure why you think that wlw are more shunned, viewed as predatory, and otherwise demonized than mlm relationships, particularly enemies to lovers dynamics? Sapphics are by and large wayyyyy more well-received than mlm. Sapphics are seen as soft and harmless and lovely even when they’re fighting, while mlm are seen as dirty and emasculated and generally viewed with complete disgust.

i said that mlm are FETISHIZED more in enemies to lovers dynamics than wlw. wlw are more DEMONIZED than mlm in enemies to lovers dynamics. and i gave clear examples of dynamics that reflect this in that post, so i'm not pulling this out of my ass. neither is good. both are bad. they're just different kinds of bad. i'm pretty sure i made that clear but if i didn't, i'm restating it now - NEITHER MLM NOR WLW ARE TREATED WELL IN MEDIA REGARDLESS OF DYNAMIC. THIS IS NOT OPPRESSION OLYMPICS. DIFFERENT PROBLEMS DOES NOT EQUAL BETTER PROBLEMS.

i am, however, a lesbian, and i'm going to be able to speak more coherently and authentically to the sapphic representation and general treatment of women in media than anything else. it's my firsthand experience and it's always going to be easier and more accurate than my musings on the experiences of other groups of people. and given that i have a particular fondness for enemies to lovers dynamics, of course i'm bound to contemplate sapphic enemies to lovers dynamics specifically.

but if we must dance this dance bc you decided to take a bad faith interpretation of my words, women have to do more to be loved in media, and they have to do far less to be hated. this is a fact plain and simple, and if you can't acknowledge that we are not even remotely on the same page. You can look at ANY piece of media and see this is true. the supernatural fandom's treatment of basically any women vs. the kingdom hearts fandom's treatment of kairi vs. the naruto fandom's treatment of sakura. etc. etc. etc. i could name examples all day. these are women who, yes, have shoddy writing, but instead of getting the same treatment of a male character with shoddy writing - immediately getting fleshed out by fans - they get set aside as annoying, bitchy, mary sues, etc. even female characters with GOOD writing will get this treatment, a la lightning farron from final fantasy xiii. male characters with the SAME EXACT TRAITS are often beloved by fans. easy example, see cloud strife from final fantasy vii, who shares a hysterically huge amount of personality traits with lightning farron.

and this is BEFORE we even get into the discussion of being sapphic, or god forbid any other type of minority. traditionally beautiful white cishet women who are feminine and kind are the only women to ever pass for general audiences, and even then it's not consistent. women must be "palatable". versus white men, who are allowed to be dark, messy, gritty, murderers, even genocidal dictators and still be beloved by fans. and yes, the qualifier of white is necessary here - men of color, especially black men, do not get this same generosity from fans, and you bet your fucking ass it goes triple for women of color.

and again, this is BEFORE WE EVEN FACTOR IN BEING GAY OR MENTALLY ILL OR ANY OTHER FACTORS. THIS IS ASSUMING ALL CHARACTERS ARE CISHET AND NEUROTYPICAL.

women are "soft and harmless and lovely" as you put it when they fight...if they're fucking tifa lockhart. if they're feminine and sweet and cute normally, or at least perceived that way. if they look like they're out of madoka magica (and oops not even then, bc you bet your ASS there's insane demonization of miss homura akemi). and also, friendly reminder, that "soft and harmless and lovely" thing isn't a compliment. it's fucking infantilizing at best.

for sheer simplicity's sake, to compare two ships that are on a relatively equal playing field in terms of representation, i'm going to take a look at the general reception of goro akechi/ren amamiya from persona 5 (i'm using ren as his name for simplicity's sake) and madoka kaname/homura akemi from madoka magica.

some brief context for both: both are heavily queercoded, homura is initially introduced as an antagonistic character but it is later revealed to not be the case, akechi is initially introduced as a friendly character but it is later revealed to not be the case, and both homura and akechi have clear and intense struggles with trauma and other mental health issues.

judging by what i've said, from your own logic, surely homura is a widely beloved and not at all vilified character. after all, she's feminine, she's not REALLY a villain, and she's got sympathetic motivations. right? wrong. homura is widely beloved... by sapphics. but even people who LIKE THE SHOW DO NOT ALWAYS LIKE HER. homura was WIDELY hated and discoursed back when the show first aired. you still get people who hate her. and even more frustrating, despite the blatant, you-absolutely-cannot-miss-it queercoding, sapphic fans of the show still have to argue that it's not just "girls being friends". it's not even a true enemies to lovers setup, and you still cannot escape homura being called toxic and predatory.

now let's take a brief look at akechi and ren. like previously stated, akechi is revealed to be an antagonist later in the story. and when he is, he tries to shoot ren in the head and frame it as a suicide. this is, quite obviously, a lot different from homura and madoka, where homura never even directly fights madoka. surely by your logic, akechi would be widely seen as a villain, unforgivable, horrendously terrible? well he most certainly isn't. he's one of if not the most beloved characters by fans. his relationship with ren is more often than not read as romantic, and it's practically treated as canon by a large majority.

and like i previously stated, i am not saying the mlm example i've given is without issues - akechi/ren is highly sexualized and fetishized. it's just a very DIFFERENT problem from the vilification that wlw characters often receive. and i am not saying that mlm are NEVER vilified. i am simply saying the large, overarching trend in fandom is to be forgiving of men, and unforgiving of women.

i simply do NOT see mlm ships get the same treatment in this regard to wlw ships. sora/riku from kingdom hearts and catra/adora from she-ra have...practically the same narrative in many ways. childhood friends separated by a worldwide conflict, becoming enemies, fighting each other multiple times, arguably with intent to kill, eventually saving each other and finding a way to reconcile in order to emerge victorious against the true villain. riku and catra are strikingly alike, as are sora and adora. but riku is once again a fan favorite character. and catra has received backlash after backlash after backlash. i hardly even post about she-ra anymore and i STILL get people in my inbox talking about catra discourse!!

again, i'm NOT saying the script is never reversed. there's not really anything to be won by making absolute statements like that. i'm just saying that i have never seen it, and even on the odd chance that i do it's never as severe.

once again - yes mlm characters face backlash. no one is saying they do not. but it is different backlash. i am specifically discussing the fan reception of wlw characters and ships bc that is my personal experience. different problems do not equal better problems.

i'm tired of bad faith interpretations of my posts. unless you want to have a respectful and thoughtful conversation (which i AM open to), don't come at me with boldfaced accusations.

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Direct link to Collaborative Learning’s video: HERE

I think this is a strong example of why the absence of women’s voices and the invisibility of women’s experiences has often weakened otherwise interesting analysis surrounding this film.

I’ve always had a very different take on the rose imagery in Hellraiser. A rose is an inherently yonic* symbol. It’s very specifically tied to female sexuality.

Hellraiser is a movie in which the theme of female desire is intrinsic. This is something that often feels erased from men’s analysis of the films; the psychosexual undertones are almost exclusively spoken of in a non-gender-specific sort of way, disengaging entirely from the discussion of how gender impacts these themes. I really cannot separate female sexual and romantic experiences from the core themes of the film.

The blooming roses in my mind do not only symbolize a “blossoming of sexual perception/transcendence.” If you instead view them as specifically alluding to female sexuality, they tie in directly with both Julia and Kirsty’s character arcs throughout the film. 

The blossoming roses of the house represent Julia’s stifled sexuality blooming and awakening from the sleeping, hidden, diminished state her marriage had left it in. 

The rose imagery tied to Kirsty has often also been intertwined with themes of a color shift from white to blood red. If you look to the TV, you can see that the rose there is distinctly pale, different from the rose imagery conjured in her sleeping mind. There is a sense of the pale rose bleeding into red in this whole scene, including with the medical bag imagery blooming into red. I think Kirsty’s floral imagery is representative both of of natural female desire (the white blooming rose) and of sexuality being interrupted and poisoned by predatory violence (the bloody rose). The implication has always been to me that Frank had abused her sometime prior to the events of the film. 

You see this color shift imagery very distinctly again in Hellraiser 2, when Kirsty is in Hell. She goes through a door in hell that mimics the stained glass rose door of the old house, and there she finds bodies of women writhing erotically underneath white sheets. When she pulls a sheet off of one of them, her hair is very similar to Kirsty’s. It’s a very distinct image of female desire, and it’s also more eerie and sensual than it is horrifying. It’s actually rather peaceful and non-aggressive. It is only when Frank shows up and threatens her with more violence that the sheets start bleeding and becoming frightening.

The symbology of the box being rather yonic in itself, and kirsty literally playing with her box during the scene where she summons the cenobites is not lost on me, either. Again, the thing about Kirsty is that her desires are repressed from trauma. The box itself represents the fullfillment of desire. It is while she is playing that the pale rose blooms, as well as shifts in color. It’s interacting with the whole of her experiences.  Women with sexual trauma will often have complicated relationships with their own desires, because the fulfillment of them potentially involves a great deal of emotional fear an distress, a loss of intimate trust.

I think it’s troubling to say the very least to equate the complicated struggle between Kirsty’s desires and her fears/experiences of abuse, and how those things interact with her “doorway” into hell, with her being “awakened to the concepts of pain intertwined with pleasure due to the threat of rape.” Honestly, the implications there threaten to send me into a rage spiral. I’m not gonna say all the angry things I want to say to that. But this really drives my point home about men disengaging with how gender plays a role in this film.

It’s also notable that the box and the cenobites do not behave with Kirsty in the same way they behave with Frank. I’m not saying they aren’t threatening harm towards her, but Kirsty doesn’t get unceremoniously hooked and chained to oblivion at the word go. Her initiation is completely different. Pinhead introduces himself. He lets her plead her case. He explains the situation (vaguely). He quite literally invites her to “enjoy” herself with them. He’s frightening the hell out of her, but not actually interacting with her by mimicking her trauma. He’s not there to just use her any way he wants, it’s not about his desires at all.

She’s not in that situation because the threat of rape awakened an interest in pain. Fuck that noise entirely. I don’t think that’s necessarily what the vid maker was trying to say, but whatever it was they meant could have been framed a lot differently to be honest.

Also, I don’t like Frank being equated with a cenobite. A cenobite is a figurative being that represents the destructive fulfillment of the box-opener’s desires. They are a dark mirror. A cenobite is not the literal equivalent of a human predator, who inflicts their own desires upon others. 

*yonic = the opposite of phallic; it’s a symbol similar to a vagina.

[soprone]

Some notes on my characterisation of Teddie

retreading some old ground from previous blogs but hopefully it’s better than before because i’m always getting better grasps on my muses as time goes on so pwease read with an open mind  .✫*ﾟ･ﾟ

So while my characterisation is mostly based on the english localisation of the games and anime because that’s what i’m most familiar with, i feel like teddie comes across differently than may have been intended due to dub changes. i kind of viewed him the way i do when i first played, learning about the dub changes mostly just confirmed some things about my interpretation. like of course i changed my mind about some things but so you know where I’m coming from

So something that didn’t translate very well was Teddie’s humor. He’s constantly making bad jokes that the rest of the Investigation Team doesn’t respond to. This isn’t because they’re uncomfortable with his jokes, even when they’re a bit perverted. He’s not a jerk who keeps making bad jokes that make people uncomfortable, and the Investigation Team aren’t jerks for not explaining to Teddie that it’s not okay or anything, since he’s new to human customs. It’s because he’s looking to bring others into his comedy routine with any kind of reaction, positive or negative, and the only way to discourage him is to not respond. When someone makes a bad pun, groaning and complaining about it is part of the humor they’re going for. It’s like that.

The reason this was translated poorly is because Teddie was specifically mimicking a Japanese comedy style. I kinda always saw it as dad jokes kind of humor, but learning about the original intentions made it click.

This isn’t to say Teddie never does anything perverted. Almost, honestly maybe every, Persona male acts like a pervert, contrives scenarios to provide fanservice to the player/viewer, sexually harrasses female characters for comedy or just because the writers think it’s normal. What I’m saying is, this isn’t a Teddie problem. It’s a Persona problem. I’m not excusing his actions but I don’t think he should be held to a different standard than other characters who do the exact same things. I also really hate when people call Chie (and/or the other girls) an abuser because she physically hurts the boys, because again that’s not a Chie (or other girl) problem, it’s a Persona problem with how the comedy tries to be this slapstick thing on occasion. Like I hope where I’m coming from makes sense when I say that?? No I’m not say it’s okay for Teddie to try to grope Rise, or for Chie to kick Yosuke, and similar moments. I’m acknowledging that these moments are part of the game’s humor, they’re anime characters engaging in anime nonsense in an 11 year old game. It’s bad faith criticism to judge a single piece of media or a single character by ignoring the tone of the work they’re in, holding them to the standards of the real world and also ignoring the same problems exist within similar works (for example w/ persona 4 you need to consider it within the context of other anime, other video games, all forms of media that may have directly influenced it, the state of the world (politically & pop culture wise) at the time (2008), etc., persona 4 does not exist in a vaccumn) and that exist in other characters within the same work. It’s not helpful in explaining why their behaviour and/or why making light of it/normalising it can be harmful because you aren’t examining why it’s written the way it is. Oof this bullet point got long sorry

Teddie’s character arc is not linear. He doesn’t consistently get better, and he is in fact at his most obnoxious in my opinion during the Yasogami High Culture Festival. Since his arc is about maturity, this is like his ‘rebellious stage’ where he’s a brat before growing up more, after having grown up a lot in the months before the festival. However, I can’t accept his characterisation in Persona Q. He’s pushed too far and ‘flanderized’ ike a lot of the Persona characters are in spinoffs. I adore his group date marriage event (&accept him believing he fell for the protag at first sight as a headcanon (it’s just a crush, not ‘true love’/’destiny’, though)), think the love potion quest where he downs some love potion believing it will make girls love him only to fall for Akihiko is hilarious, but that’s about it. I haven’t finished Persona Q2, but his characterization in that game is a lot better from what I’ve seen.

I believe that Teddie went through the events of Persona 4 believing that when the investigation was over, he was ‘supposed’ to go live in the midnight channel permenantly and say goodbye to his friends. A lot of his antics during the year are him pushing for some cliche high school fun experiences in order to make some memories to hold onto (he’s kind of like a player avatar in that way ?? this kind of thing is why the latest 3 Persona games are set during high school over just one year, right??). His perverted antics can be explained with the idea that he doesn’t actually expect any of these girls to fall in love with him, if he wants anything he wants a movie-style ‘summer romance’ so he doesn’t really take them / flirting with them seriously (I’m not justifying it, only providing a possible explanation). He may have just gotten lonely and came back to visit anyway, but his intention really was to leave the human world for good at the end of the game. It’s only when the IT laugh off the suggestion that he realises he was the only one who believed this, that they really think of him as part of the team and weren’t just humoring him this whole time. 

I headcanon that his perception of his friends changes and he starts to respect them (+Yosuke’s wallet) better over time after this. It’s gradual (old habits die hard!) but noticable if you pay attention. Naoto notices his maturing during the game, she’d probably be the first to catch on.

He’s bisexual and nonbinary. Though, his feelings on gender maybe can’t be compared to a normal human, he takes on an androgynous male body because he wants to be loved rather than because he feels like a man, dresses as a girl because again he wants to feel pretty and loved rather than because he feels like a woman... In Persona Q2 he volunteers himself and Chie for the power team despite struggling to lift the weights that team needs to, because Chie is insecure about being the only girl on the team and he wants to comfort her. So he’s not exactly bigender or gender fluid, he’s nonbinary and presents whichever way feels right at the time, and what feels right is based less on his own feelings and more what will hopefully make him loved or sometimes help/comfort his friends? He did not grow up like a human in a society of binary gender, it honestly doesn’t mean much to him.

He believes Kanji is attracted to him (which I see as untrue aha I sort of ship it but if he’s got a crush it’s not in the way Teddie thinks), &mimics Yosuke’s attitude about it, not seriously scared of him being predatory or anything (not realising the problem w/ Yosuke’s homophobic comments, which Yosuke quietly gets over later &is probably embarrassed about his own behaviour so he’s not gonna explain), just thinking it’s a funny way of teasing him, seeing Kanji denying him (or not knowing what the fuck Tedd’s talking about) as being tsundere. I feel like this would die down as he gets older

His one-sided rivalry with Akihiko in the Q games (ahh I know they have a hostile relationship in the Arena games but I haven’t played them so don’t know if I wanna make that canon to my Tedd, it seems like they’re too hostile) is because Akihiko is hot, has lots of fangirls, but it’s not just jealousy, he’s swooning too

I think he flirts with Goro in PQ2 because he’s told Goro is a detective prince like Naoto, it’s kinda similar to Akihiko, he follows the crowd and fangirls too. But also, Goro is a Wildcard, he doesn’t know it at this point but he may subconsciously sense it? I’ve always headcanoned him having an attraction to Wildcards, of course the P4 protag is his #1 but he’s pretty flirty with the others in the Q games

that’s it for now because this has gotten SO long, if you made it this far I love you. if you didn’t i still love you because i love humanity as a whole but i’m a little disappointed because i crave attention not gonna lie.

[thedeadflag]

Hi I just want to thank you for being there yesterday I was having a bad time coping. Reading so many dismissive attitudes about things like the g!p issue knowing it boils down to most people as don't like it don't read it. Just bc its tagged doesn't mean it isn't doing harm. So many are supporting writers who know better but blatantly use it in a public forum makes me feel like i can't even be here sometimes. 1/2

2/2 I was thinking what if there was a popular genre that involved depicting/fetishizing black women with large breasts and small brains? What if that was a thing? Would ppl stay quiet bc its tagged? Wld ppl speak out? Thinking of all the things that ppl never speak up over but pretend to be allies? This performative allyship? It makes me sick. THIS is the toxic side of Tumblr. Thank you for being here.

It really is an issue of performative allyship vs actual allyship. Lots of people with “No TERFs” on their blog headers, folks asserting up and down that trans women are women and are “obviously” included in women’s spaces.

But then they fill those spaces with cissexism and transmisogyny and trans fetishization, and all sort of attitudes and behaviours and words that make it clear to us that we’re not truly accepted and seen as women, that we’re only welcome on their terms and that our voices don’t mean anything. So who are they supportive of? Who are they welcoming of within the spaces/communities we’re supposed to be able to safely exist in? It becomes intensely conditional. We’re accepted and welcomed so long as they get to demean us, misrepresent us, expose us to (and sometimes encourage) harm and sexual violence and social hostility, see and treat us like cis men in dresses they can put on a pedestal every once in a while for ally points. 

If trans women are only conditionally accepted in women’s spaces, then our womanhood is being treated as conditional. It’s that simple. And it’s really clear that’s the case among those reading and writing those trans fetishistic works. 

As for your example, I don’t need to use anyone else as a barometer for what’s acceptable in fandom, or how folks would react. Racial fetishization is distinct from trans fetishization. 

But I do have a strong feeling that if Amber Riley had been thinner, if she’d fit the fetishized “thick girl” figure…I guarantee that we would have seen that sort of thing blow up in the Glee fandom. She was already treated as shrill, loud, and brainless/small-minded (misogynoir at play). Being fat disqualified her from being treated as a viable character for most sexual works (classic fatphobia), but yeah…if she’d been a “thick” girl with large breasts, yeah, absolutely people would have treated her character as a mindless sex receptacle. I’m not even sure anyone would be so kind as to tag their works with anything specific, outside of maybe the shudder-inducing “eb*ny”, since that seems to be the norm of how black women are treated in sexual media. 

I doubt much of anyone aside from black women would speak out, or do anything about it. Hell, you’d probably get a bunch of folks who’d think it was positive rep. You’d get her paired up with all the white male leads in pursuit of pregnancy fics with mixed baby fetishization. And you’d get a slew of g!p fics in femslash portions of the fandom, with her as the ‘voluptuous’, ‘primal’, ‘aggressive’ partner with the BBC to ravage and fill up all the nubile, innocent white female leads. The fandom mostly shoehorned in Santana to fit that role, as the predatory mindless sex pot, but I don’t doubt that they’d have jumped on the possibility of using Mercedes if they’d seen her as viable. And fandom would have done nothing about it, because they didn’t do anything about it with Santana, dismissing criticisms left and right, and even trying to use canon material to justify twisting her character that way. Latinx fans were vocal as hell, and were roundly ignored and dismissed.

So yeah, in your given example, that’s exactly what would happen. Had racial fetishization been done in canon material, fandom would have maybe rallied a bit against that harmful rep (they did a few times in Glee to events.portrayals in canon, certainly), but when the finger’s pointed at them? Nope. Fandom, by and large, would not give even half of a shit. But they would be vocal here and there about being against racism, of how there needs to be more support for woc, especially in wlw fandom. Calling out #BlackLivesMatter while gleefully fetishizing black women is something I absolutely suspect would be common.

There’s a lot of issues in fandom. Trans fetishization is just one issue among a great many others. It’s the one I focus on, because it affects me directly, and I can speak on it and educate on it, but there’s absolutely racial fetishization in fandom. It’s rampant. And fandom spaces for LGBT+ fandom really do tend to mirror real life spaces. They’re white-centric and cis-centric for sure, to name a few pertinent issues. 

And they don’t think they’re transmisogynistic. They don’t think they’re racist. Many of them can’t even get a sniff that there’s anything wrong with the works they love that fetishize and dehumanize real marginalized groups of people. And there’s all that toxicity right under the surface, and too many aren’t willing to do anything about it.

“It’d cause too much drama for my liking”

“I don’t want to rustle feathers”

“I don’t want to get anon hate”

“I don’t want to upset anyone.”

“I don’t want to lose any friends”

“I come to fandom to escape and have fun, not to argue”

Except for those of us being dehumanized and fetishized and excluded, we don’t have the luxury of dipping into fandom all peacefully and comfortably. We don’t have the ability to just ignore the harm being done to us and move on, nor should we have to. 

Like, in real life, when folks see transphobia, or racism, and they do nothing? That can at times be understandable, if unfortunate. But online? There’s zero real risk/danger. There’s always, always ways to help. But people still shy away. When there’s practically an epidemic of people not commenting on fanworks, who’s going to put in the effort to fight these fights that isn’t already directly affected? Hardly anyone.

And I’ll admit there are times I could have done better, done more. I need to do better, there’s always room for improvement. 

I just need to hope there’s enough out there trying to make things better for some sort of positive change to happen. It’s just hard sometimes, as you know.

I’m here if you need me.

[elusianknight]

hello! i only played dragon age inquisition once but i'd like to know what's the beef with cullen and why people dislike him, or if you could maybe point me to a post that explains it? i'd be grateful, thank you for your time :D

@dalishious​ has written much on this, and much better and more concisely than I (im SORRY THIS IS SO LONG), so definitely check out her literal CULLEN MASTERLIST here.

Long post incoming, my friend!  Here’s my personal explanation, but check out that link too for more examples / concrete evidence lol.

Okay, here’s my honest opinion on the subject.

So the first game, Dragon Age: Origins.  You can pick from six (seven) origins, and two of those are the Mage origin--the only difference between them is that you can play as either a human, or an elf.  All the other origins are dependent on race (dwarf commoner, human noble, city elf, dwarf noble, Dalish elf).

I chose an elven mage on my first playthrough, and you start out in this Circle of Magi--so like, the big tower place w the mages.  Specifically, Kinloch hold, aka the place Cullen was at.

As you play through the origin story of your character, if you’re a girl, it becomes clear that he has some weird crush on your character.  Some people thought this was cute, but that’s overlooking some real, uh, problems with it, to say the least.  He says that he would, literally, kill you if you failed the Harrowing (a test every mage has to take to evolve from being an apprentice to a full Circle mage).  BUT, he says he’d rather not.  So I guess people think it’s sweet that he’d regret killing you, despite doing it willingly...?

Later in the game, you come back to the Circle, and shit’s well and truly fucked.  Demons everywhere, lots of dead mages and templars all around.  But toward the top of the tower, you find Cullen in some weird magic circle thing.  He’s just sitting there, hunched over and mumbling to himself.  Apparently he’s been ~tortured~ as he says in DAI, but all it seems is that he was shown visions.  

And if you’re playing a female mage, those ~visions~ are of your character.

He says they’re “taunting [him] with the one thing he always wanted but could never have, using [his] shame against [him]... [his] ill-advised infatuation with her, a mage of all things.”  Now, I honestly don’t remember if this is just me imagining things or if this actually happened, but I’m rather sure he ALSO will make an additional comment about how she’s an elf, too, as in, just another thing to be ashamed of.  But I think the rest of the dialogue speaks for itself.

The woman who wrote the origin, Sheryl Chee (she wrote Leliana, too, in all games) was confused when people thought he was cute (back in the days of DAO, way before DAI).  She said the only sort of romance Cullen would have with the female mage Warden would be something “quick and violent” and just “to get her out of his system.”

One of the possible ending slides in Origins will mention that Cullen killed three apprentices back at the Circle before he left Kinloch Hold.  This is the ending slide that I got on my first playthrough of the game.

So that clearly colored my opinion of him, but also, when I played DAO i was struggling w my sexuality a bit.  Like, I think I knew I was gay, but I was dealing with homophobia from myself and my family, and I certainly didn’t feel good about it.  The romance with Leliana and my warden honestly brought me to tears at parts because it was so wonderful to see a relationship between two women portrayed as something so sweet and normal (well, as normal as it could be. considering they’re fighting to save the world and all that stuff).  So Cullen’s creepy comments were definitely NOT appreciated.  

And that's aaaaaaaaaall just in Origins.

In Dragon Age II, regardless of what ending you got in DAO, he moves to the city of Kirkwall (where Hawke goes to) and is somehow promoted to the Knight Captain... the second-in-command of Meredith Stannard, the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall.  And if you thought Kinloch Hold treated their mages bad, then hooooo boy, do you have another thing coming!  Because the Circle in Kirkwall is literally called “The Gallows.”  And rest assured, it lives up to its name.

Mages are hunted down and turned Tranquil (made into empty husks devoid of emotion)... illegally.  If a mage passes their Harrowing, Chantry law apparently states that they can’t be made Tranquil, at least without a very good reason--it’s considered a last resort, of sorts, because it leaves the mage alive but unable to use magic (or dream, or have emotions).  But in fact, it’s not a mercy at all.  It’s used as a form of control and widely abused in Kirkwall.  This leaves open room for any number of abuses, because Tranquil are all about ~logic~ and no emotion and what that boils down to is them doing anything, anything, that Templars tell them.  And of course that’s taken advantage of--demonstrated by the fact that a Tranquil mage in Inquisition will tell the Inquisitor that she wouldn’t want to be cured, because she didn’t think she could handle what happened to her while she was Tranquil.  

Anyway, back to Kirkwall.  Meredith keeps up a horrendous system of abuse of mages, such that if you walk near the gates of the gallows you hear people being tortured, like whip lashes and, iirc, screams of pain.  At the end of the game, Hawke can side with mages or templars, and if you side with the templars, Meredith will kill Hawke’s mage sister unless you explicitly stop her.  

And in the end, Cullen sides with Hawke against Meredith, because she’s lost her mind to Red Lyrium... but here’s the thing.

He’s her second in command. He could have prevented some of the abuses in Kirkwall--or if anyone could have questioned her authority, naturally, he could have.  But he didn’t.  Not until the last moment, when he sides with Hawke at the end... as in, sides with the unstoppable force (Hawke and co.) that’s torn through the city anyway.  If he stood with her, he’d have been cut down for sure.  

Finally, Cullen doesn’t even get over the mage warden EVEN in DAI.  If the Warden romanced Leliana, and if he didn’t romance the Inquisitor, he will ask Leliana about the Warden.  The first part makes sense, but the second part kinda confirms that he is literally still thinking about the Warden in such a way.  Which is at least kind of creepy.  It’s been ten whole years.

In the broader scheme of things, a lot of this boils down to the fact that he is a Templar infatuated with a mage.  He held direct power over the mage in question (literally tells the mage warden he’d kill her but feel sad about it???) so there’s not really any way for their relationship to have ever been equal, even if it wasn’t predatory to begin with (her being his charge directly).  

Because, as we know, Cullen can romance a mage in Inquisition.  And it is creepy as hell.  Like, “you’re okay because you’re not like other mages” kind of creepy--calling her an exception, rather than an example, of her people.  There’s other things in DAI--like how he never ACTUALLY apologizes or takes any sort of blame for what he did in Kirkwall--but check out the link because I avoided him as much as I could in DAI lol.

[words-that-form-a-rainbow]

Pantomime, and the problem with (Hollywood) diversity

Title of book: Pantomime (Micah Grey, #1)

Author: Lam, Laura

Would I recommend: Yes

Synopsis (From goodreads.com): Gene's life resembles a debutante's dream. Yet she hides a secret that would see her shunned by the nobility. Gene is both male and female. Then she displays unwanted magical abilities - last seen in mysterious beings from an almost-forgotten age. Matters escalate further when her parents plan a devastating betrayal, so she flees home, dressed as a boy. The city beyond contains glowing glass relics from a lost civilization. They call to her, but she wants freedom not mysteries. So, reinvented as 'Micah Grey', Gene joins the circus. As an aerialist, she discovers the joy of flight - but the circus has a dark side. She's also plagued by visions foretelling danger. A storm is howling in from the past, but will she heed its roar? 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As if it wasn’t clear from the first two book reviews I’ve written on this site (Which you should totally go read and share, by the way), I tend to read books that include a lot of representation of all sorts, both LGBT+ and otherwise. And though I like to be optimistic the majority of the time, I am, as everyone should be, critical of them, because if the mainstream catches on to all this, would you rather them see some beautifully crafted, incredibly written prose about our struggles and lives, or that one gay sonic fanfiction you wrote when you were twelve? Yeah, me too.

But even if you are a lot more casual in your enjoyment of media (Which I wish I could be, at this point), it isn’t hard to notice to different levels of diversity certain minorities get over others. Now, I’m not trying to start any kind of war, because even the most represented groups are horribly outweighed by the straight whites of the West, but come on. There’s nothing wrong with effeminate gay men, or (Usually dead) lesbians, or sassy black women who say “Aw hell naw” like it’s the only thing keeping society as we know it afloat (Which isn’t wholly from the truth, actually), it can get a little tiring after a while, especially when you see another series or book written by someone who either a) has never actually met a gay person in their life, and/or b), is horribly fetishistic to a certain group and completely excludes literally anyone else, like those women who think gay men are their taboo sinners, yet find Sapphic women and trans folk predatory (They’re so gross).

And to be honest, I’m tired of it. And I know a lot of other people are, too.

And that is why I was (Very happily) surprised when I read Pantomime, the first of the Micah Grey trilogy, by Laura Lam. And do you know what it has? A queer main character who is neither gay nor perfectly attractive, and whose identity isn’t the only facet of their character! Oh boy, I felt like a kid in a sweet shop. And then I felt a kind of sadness, that we, as a community, were celebrating the fact that a character was, y’know, an actual character and not just a walking stereotype. This is the bar we’re setting for ourselves. This is the bar the mainstream has made us set.

And hell, I’ll shout from the rooftops with praise for any kind of media that raises it. Even if it’s by just a little.

So a big part of what I liked about Pantomime was the main character, Micah Grey (Also called Gene in some parts of the book, but as they almost exclusively choose to use Micah to refer to themselves, I’ll use that), who is, one of if not the first intersex character in a novel, or at least is certainly the only one I know about. Now a lot of you may be going, “Oh, gee, Scotty, I know all about them Ells and Gees and Bees, but what the hell is an intersex?” And that, is precisely the problem.

If I were to answer the question scientifically, an intersex person is one who is not born entirely male or female, biologically. They make up around one percent of the population, (Which is around 80 million people, and about twenty percent more people than the entire population of the UK, so don’t even dare try to tell me that it’s too small of a number to care about), are not the same as trans people (Which is all about gender identity), and yes, exist, either as having both sets of genitalia (Like Micah does), or any other mix, for example being born with XYX chromosomes, wrong amounts of hormones, etc…

But you don’t care about that, right? You wanted a book review, not a biology lesson. Fair enough. But my point is, this is the representation we need. An actual character, with unique identities and struggles and strengths that many people go through and can relate to. Because fuck political correctness, diversity within media just straight up makes it more interesting, as well as eliminates the feeling of many, many people feeling excluded from the little penthouse party Hollywood have got going on for any kind of shithead, as long as you’re cishet and white and can make a lot of money. Just fuck the rest of them, right?

Sorry, I just… the Harvery Weinstein thing happened this week, and though I’m not a huge film guy generally, I knew this guy was at the top of the food chain. And the fact that it happened for years… let’s just throw the whole Hollywood out, to be honest.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. Back to Micah.

What I liked about the way Lam portrayed them is that she struck a nice balance between the aforementioned, “Let’s make their identity the only part of their personality/development,” and the even less accurate idea of them having no struggles with other people and, just as importantly, themselves. Throughout the book, they find themselves torn between their given identity of wholly female, and the identity they chose as male at the circus, which is where most of the story takes place. And although the main reason for them running away from the circus is to avoid corrective genital surgery (Which, yes, is a real thing, and also yes, is done on a lot of people without their consent, usually when they’re much younger than Micah), and even after their intersex identity is found out by some of the other characters, they still use the same name, they never directly state if they strictly identify as one or the other, (Bearing in mind this is only the first book of three, I’ve only just started reading the second), which is also why I choose to use they/them pronouns throughout this review.

It’s done well, really. Generally speaking, the more conflict and challenges the character faces at the beginning, the more satisfying the overcoming is at the end, and their feelings never felt out of place, or rushed. Good job, Lam.

The bisexuality of Micah is also an interesting talking point, particularly how it develops not only their sexuality but also their gender identity. Their first real love interest, Aenea, not only makes them realise their bisexuality, but also questions the masculinity within them, highlighting an interesting talking point about a subconscious idea in society that, even within the LGBT community and/or people who completely negate labels of gender altogether, we still conform to the traditional, heteronormative ideals we try to break away from. There’s always the question asked of who’s the man and woman in the relationship. There’s always the assumption that trans people are straight. One of the girls always has to wear a suit and a dress at the wedding. It’s stale, you know?

And while some people might criticise this arc for perpetuating that idea, I would argue more that it shows the way a lot of LGBT people do still think, subconsciously, including me, even though I, like many others, know the whole idea is stupid and archaic. It shows how ingrained heterosexuality and heteronormativity is in us, no matter who we are.

It also shows change in Micah - that their identity in every sense is constantly changing and evolving to fit new people and situations, that gender is a fluid sort of concept to them that isn’t really one hundred percent labelled by them, which can be and is what many people choose to be. And to be honest, that’s just plain nice to see in a queer character, since most stories begin at the point when the character has finished that kind of emotional journey, or play it off like they’ve known precisely who they were all along (Which is another ridiculous stereotype, by the way. Stop expecting kids to be able to figure that out by themselves, or even care about it. There are more important things to them, like getting hyper off of ridiculously sugary drinks and making sure they catch that Pikachu.)

I like it a lot, can you tell?

One criticism I have (Which isn’t really one, but more of a concerned prediction), is that it’s a particularly concise story, meaning, generally, it doesn’t leave a lot open. Yes, Micah is on the run from the police with a character called Drystan, (Who is a gay man who conveniently explains what being gay means, but he’s somehow made clowns seem a lot less scary to me so I’ll allow it), which is an intriguing enough continuation, but apart from that, there’s not a whole lot to go on. We haven’t had much development of any of the other places, every character we got to know is either dead, (Sorry Aenea, I did like you), vaguely left at some point in the novel, or is too minor to really give any kind of mention. I’m scared that Lam will either waste her time for a few hundred pages by treading water in the shallow end of the pool, or try to set up a whole new roster of characters while completely abandoning the old ones, essentially destroying the relationships and need for a lot of the interactions in the first book, (Which, if we’re going with the swimming pool analogy, would be like getting out of the water and jumping out of the nearest window into the Mariana’s Trench with bricks tied to her legs).

But we’ll just have to wait until I read it, won’t we. Hopefully not long, eh? (No, not long, is the correct answer. You can at least try to humour me, you know. You’ve read the whole review so you must like me a tiny bit. Tiny tiny bit? Maybe?

Hm… I hope she does do the second one, to be honest… or surprises me with some kind of magical third option, but I’ve learnt that you get brownie points on the internet if you’re constantly cynical. Not that it matters. The inevitable passage of time will consume and leave us all behind, eventually, letting us to fester wondering, was it all worth it? Were my shitty book reviews a valuable contribution to human society, in comparison? And what even was the point of this system in the first place? Why do we even bother to try to be more than savages, or even calculate that yes, we are living, when it will do nothing but further realise the emptiness and complete loneliness of the vacuum of space? Or what if-

Sorry. It’s been a rough week. See you next time.)