#cabashira | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

0w0tsuki · 8 months ago

Text

I think it's important to note Death of the Author and Authorial Intent when discussing the transness of Chihiro from daganronpa. I've talked about it in reblogs but I wanted my own post. A lot of people confuse the two and in the case of old school Chihiro transmisoginists purposely create a new definition.

People seem to be under the impression that death of the impression a lot of the time that Death of The Author means "If I don't like what the author has to say I can just ignore it and say it didn't happen or Miku wrote it or something" which is a true statement but it's not the definition. And people who still comment "him*" on any fan post that uses she/her for Chihiro in 2024 define Authorial Intent as "The creator of every work writes with a specific intent and if you disagree with anything the author says you are WRONG and NOT a TRUE fan!" which not only isn't true but doesn't account for if the author's vision is even worth defending.

This is why there was such a nuclear meltdown over Bridget's trans confirmation and why it took them so long to get out of the translation conspiracy retcon bad ending phase before they moved on to trying to co-opt leftist language to make it about "femboy representation". Because it was the first time the author of one of their darling femboys didn't agree with them and they couldn't use "facts don't care about your feelings" to harass trans positive people.

But actually Authorial Intent is just a term to refer to "what did the author mean when they wrote this?" and is actually a part of Death of the Author which means "No matter what the Author says they approach every work with their own biases and that affects the work. So in order to understand the work you must understand the author so you can understand how their worldview bleeds into the work."

When people talk about Death of the Author in reference to H.P. Lovecrafts racism they don't mean "Well HP was a racist so you can just ignore him and write Cuthulu however you want." they mean "HP's racism is very prevalent in his works and viewing how he describes the monsters in his world gives insight to the times prejudices.". HP's works are actually a very effective tool in learning how bigotry affects horror.

Now to see where I'm going here is that Kodaka is a massive transmisogynist. Not only is there everything that is going on in DR1 chapter 2, but there's also his newest work which depicts a male character who dresses up as a girl for the explicit purpose of tricking girls to and sexually take advantage of them, there's Sakura who's in the same game as Chihiro whose character design the Spikechunsoft team initially didn't approve of but Kodaka got through under the guise of "body positivity" only to turn around and make her the butt of "woman who is ugly because she looks like a man" jokes for the entirety of her screentime, hell the only character who ever displays any positivity for trans women (which is transmed at best) is Tenko Cabashira who herself is a standin for Kodaka's misogynistic/lesbiphobic idea of "Man Hating feminazi Dyke".

Chihiro is a trans woman not because the work literally says she is which is what the criteria is for transmisogynists. She's a trans woman because she represents what trans women are to Kodaka. To Kodaka they are at best confused boys who just don't know that they are "allowed to be feminine", at neutral they are good jokes to get a quick laugh, at worst they are predators who prey on young girls, and anyone who supports them is a raging feminazi who probably grew up in a cave.

It's why after we had the incredible uncomfortable corpse investigation every student automatically switched to he/him without so much as a discussion to how Chihiro would want to be referred is because to the author there is no discussion. To the author your genitals are your gender (See also the "transmed at best" Tenko final FTE where will be cool with Suichi as long as he becomes a girl which of course involves getting The Surgery™) and Chihiro's genital reveal is instead this harsh truth of reality that the characters are supposed to feel exposed and lied to about, even the character who is the target of Kodaka's transmisogynistic humor.

This is why it requires a real stretch of the imagination to pull Transmasc Chihiro out of this story because Chihiro is not barred from masculinity in any way, shape, or form. Masculinity is actually expected of her and she is punished with bullying for not performing it. Chihiro does not feel pressure to present feminine, Chihiro is pressured to perform masculinity and her feminine presentation is written as an easy escape from that expectation. Because to Kodaka, Chihiro represents the trans women he views as failed men whose motivation for transitioning is a convenient escape from having to meet the rigorous standards of toxic masculinity. When the secrets are threatened to be revealed, Chihiro does not pursue masculine presentation out of some desire to finally be seen as a man, but out of desperation to not be seen as weak and exploitable when her secret is exposed.

I don't know how to segway from that into this so I'm just going to say. The next time some femboy fascist tries to butt their heads in to "Um Akctually" about a trans woman's existence do not attempt to argue "well actually she IS a trans woman in canon" because unless the character in question is specifically Bridget Guilty Gear, chances are the author is going to be on their side. And even in the case of Bridget, the ones that are still arguing for "canon femboy" Bridget are the ones who never moved on from the mistranslation conspiracy stage of denialism. No amount of pointed official interviews, dialogue, or official wikis is going to convince them because in their mind Daiuske is a turbocuck who is either capitulating or has been brainwashed by the woke West and has forcefully taken the reins to retcon the true author's authentic vision.

If you're going to engage with them which by the way I don't recommend you doing. But let's just pretend you have to. Let's just pretend you're a popular YouTuber which never presented that you have progressive views who unknowingly drew in these people into your fanbase who had a very vocal transmisogynistic reaction to a transfem headcannon. So in this completely imaginary scenario you need to challenge them on their transmisogyny. Ask them why the "correct" interpretation of the work is worth defending and harassing people over.

As the Bridget denialism has shown, these people are VERY dependent on the work agreeing with them because it allows for them to argue correctness without having to deal with such silly little complications as "morals" or "values". They are completely unequipped to defend their transmisogyny because they are so used to using their idea of "Authorial Intent" as a rhetorical crutch and most of the time DO NOT WANT their transmisogyny to be called out as such. It's why when left with no convincing way to deny Bridget's trams existence the ones that DID pivot decided to pivot to taking leftist arguments and swapping some of the words out to make their arguments SOUND progressive. Because they felt that if they couched themselves in leftist sounding language then that would be enough to convince people that they weren't violent reactionaries but were instead GNC men who were expressing loss over valuable representation. Which is just bullshit considering it's just the transfem version of "we're losing our tomboys!" transphobic arguments that people are pretty quick to pick up on but since targets of these arguments were trans women we had genuine queers who were sympathizers and parroting talking points of "While you can't be mad over new Transfem representation you can't fault them for expressing sadness over losing a positive role model for GNC cis men"

Just don't play the "well actually" game with fascists if you can avoid it

#daganronpa #tenko chabashira #chihiro fujasaki #sakura ogami #transmisogyny #the author is dead #authorial intent #bigotry in fiction #trans chihiro #trans bridget #bridget gg #bridget guilty gear #guilty gear bridget #guilty gear

52 notes · View notes