#queercoded villains
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#manhunter 1986#francis dolarhyde#hannibal#movies i watched in 2024#this movie was soooo obsessed with heterosexuality lmao#queercoded villains#freddie lounds#michael mann#manhunter#stephen lang#horror
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How do you see Gortash as queer coded?
Oh, it would be my genuine delight to explain.
Alright, so I have several lines of reasoning, so I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit first.
Gortash’s obsession with his appearance
Okay, so we all know about Gortash’s eccentricities when it comes to the way he looks. He wears an ostentatious villain coat, bedecked with golden bits and bobs, matching pants, and a matching shirt (that he wears provocatively low and can’t seem to ever lace properly). He also clearly styles his hair, which given its length, takes a non-significant amount of time each morning.
Now. Am I saying these things on their own make him queer? No, of course not. The assumption that gay men take more care with their appearance is a stereotype, though I would argue that there is a subset of people for which this is true. However, stereotypes also form the context for which we interpret characters and situations, and that social context is very real (even in cases when a stereotype is not), which is why I don’t discount these details either.
Additionally, when it comes to the Netherstone, Gortash could have easily stuck it in the middle of a suit of armor like Ketheric and called it a day. But as a politician (and someone who likely doesn’t see a lot of combat), I get that a suit of armor wouldn’t be his first choice. Nonetheless, the option he goes with (and presumably takes the time and effort to craft and construct himself) is the pair of gauntlets, which are essentially ornate jewelry. Jewelry that’s functional and dangerous, yes - but also needlessly beautiful. And he really only needed one of them, but - again - his attention to detail with appearances drove him to build a matching set to become part of his Signature Look.
Cool. So let’s move on to:
Gortash’s political career
Alright, so I like to view Faerun as a fairly equitable place in terms of gender distribution in positions of power (at least compared to reality). From what I can find on forgotten realms sources, it seems like the Council of Four was composed of 2 men and 2 women (at least until Stelmane is murdered); therefore, I think it’s not a stretch to assume that power is pretty evenly divided. Great - love that for Baldur’s Gate. Which it was true out here as well.
Even still, that means that 50% of the high-ranking government officials and patriars that Gortash is charming and manipulating as part of his rise to power are men. As a devout follower of the God of Tyranny, I find it hard to believe that he would just pass up on the opportunity to use sex as a form of manipulation with men, when we have canon evidence that he uses this tactic to gain power with women (hello Lady Jannath). Why would he - someone who views ascending in power as a holy mission - suddenly be squeamish when it comes to seducing (both literally and metaphorically) the other 50% of his targets?
Also, like I mentioned earlier, although Faerun may be a veritable gender utopia, the social contexts that influence us in reality don’t suddenly go away when we boot up bg3. The writers of the game as well as the consumers - us - are very much bound by the social contexts within which we operate, meaning that certain character traits can be queer-coded for us, even if they wouldn’t necessarily look that way to someone who lives in the world of the game (if they suddenly became sentient and engaged in discourse).
What does that mean? Okay, so we live in a society that is highly patriarchal and run by men (read: politicians as well as all other highly influential positions of power). Within these circles, men are forced into “compulsory relationships” with other men (because remember, women don’t hold the clout they desire, and therefore don’t matter) in order to exert and obtain power; relationships such as “male friendship, mentorship, admiring identification, bureaucratic subordination, and heterosexual rivalry” (Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet) characterize these spaces. Now, as Sedgwick - one of the mainstays of queer literary theory - explains, men enter into these “male homosocial” relationships because they must if they wish to gain power and ascend the ranks; however, the very necessity of these close, male relationships (to the exclusion of, or in superiority to relationships with women) also puts men in the dangerous social position of making it easy to become too close with other men and therefore jeopardizing their access to the very power they sought. This is the foundation of her argument about forces that keep men in the proverbial “closet.”
Okay. So back to Gortash. Gortash is not driven by fear of stepping over that line - he seems utterly unbothered by professing his connections to whoever he views as influential, regardless of gender (see: default Durge, which I’ll get to later). He is not scared of stepping beyond this larger, societal “closet” that most men get defensive about in order to protect their relative power. Sure Faerun is less homophobic than our reality, but again, the coding of these characters doesn’t change drastically based on the in-game setting, because it is ultimately people in our reality who are interpreting and interacting with the game and its characters.
Also, I make a distinction between Gortash being “queer-coded” and not “gay-coded”; if anything, examples from the game would have me characterize Gortash as bisexual - if he even conceives of sex as an identity factor and not just a means of gaining power over someone, which is a big assumption. I definitely view him as someone who thinks more along the lines of the latter - and wouldn’t it benefit him, in that case, to be an equal-opportunity manipulator?
This is getting long, so I’ll jump to my final point:
Gortash’s devotion to the Dark Urge
Whether you read the past relationship between Gortash and the Dark Urge as sexual/romantic or purely a business dealing, the fact remains that Durge is the one character Gortash views as his equal. And yes, you can customize Durge’s appearance and gender, etc, but the default origin character is male, so a certain amount of “canon”, I believe, can assume at least the possibility of a male Durge. Gortash - the Chosen of Bane, who loves nothing more than domineering over others - wants to willingly share his Empire with Durge, once he’s conquered the city; that is not a level of devotion that you could expect Gortash to hold for anyone but his “nearest and dearest.”
And from the letters you can find, it’s apparent that Gortash specifically sought Durge out - tempting him with information about Bhaalist artifacts that had been “stolen” and displayed in a museum in order to form a connection. This, combined with his desperation to regain Durge as a partner in Act 3 (to the point he’s weirdly forgiving of insult and refusal), offer queer subtext, if not text-text, confirming his particular interest in Durge as a person. After all, he only “tolerates” Orin, who, despite her own eccentricities, is only trying to accomplish the will of Bhaal, just like Durge presumably was as well. In fact, most of the characters dismiss Orin as just some “crazy bitch”, which I find hard to believe isn’t rooted, at least partially, in sexism - especially since people forgive Durge very easily for similar crimes. (I could write my own dissertation about Orin, but I’ll save that for another time).
In conclusion, there is enough queer-coding between Gortash’s appearance, habits, career, known manipulation tactics, and special relationship with the Dark Urge to at least make the case that he isn’t super straight. Even without the letter in which he wrote his penpal Franc that he loved him for bringing “wet, slithering malice” into the world.
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Random thought, but do you know how "villain because queerness" is a prevalent trope with every letter of the LGBTQ+ umbrella? Has anyone ever tried to put them together, and see what the difference would be?
So, like, a villainous gay, a transgender mass murderer and an aroace criminal mastermind all have their queerness linked to them being evil, but they are still very different character archetypes. Has anyone ever really tried to explore that?
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Maxwell Caulfield as Roy Alston The Boys Next Door (1985) · Horror · Crime · dir. Penelope Spheeris
#lol a queercoded swotty classmate basically called him a blockhead & the entire class had a laff & he surprisingly didnt try#to gaybash him to assert his heterosexuality & thats what I call queer solidarity fr - cheers to the writers for that#filmedit#horroredit#the boys next door#the boys next door 1985#maxwell caulfield#film#movie#penelope spheeris#1980s#queer horror#queer#lgbt#queer media#queer characters#queer villains#gorgeous#beautiful#male beauty#muscle#arms#beautiful men
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Eggdad time:
Metal Sonic keeps overheating due to just how strongly he feels positive emotions when Eggman treats him well! And Eggman doesn't know what to do- he's really quite liking this whole father-son thing they've got going on, but he doesn't want to cause Metal any damage to his system. . .
But then, Metal starts. . . twitching in rhythmic patterns? Bouncing his leg? Rubbing his hands together?
And Eggman facepalms himself because of COURSE Metal is autistic HOW DID HE NOT FIGURE THAT OUT. I mean for chaos's sake look at his dad! Dr. Ivo "Autistic" Robotnik! Special interest in robotics and carnivals, anyone??
So Eggman teaches Metal how to stim and now they flap their hands together whenever they're having father-son time.
(Sage, meanwhile, just looks at them and remarks "having a body must be strange". Then she goes back to her little corner of the network and sorts 1.2 million bytes of data into a pleasing pattern to soothe herself.)
#(she will not be diagnosed for another six months)#'they can't be autistic they're robots' SILENCE. EGGMAN CODES HIS ROBOTS AS AUTISTIC.#please forgive me but I'm so normal about eggman being autistic. it's like villainous queercoding but probably worse#full disclosure that I am autistic myself#it's so rare for me to make good dad eggman posts on this blog. just pretend this is another universe or something#sth#eggman#eggdad#eggman is a good dad#metal sonic#sage robotnik
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yeah the more I think about it modern norse mythology adaptations' complete refusal to address lokis femininity is genuinely infuriating to me. My girl did not spend eight years getting railed in a maid dress and get called a faggot like five different times in one poem so you could write her as a cishet man
#even the versions of her that are villains!#you had the opportunity to queercode that motherfucker to high heaven and instead you made her a wife-beater. for. some reason.#ratatag#new rule if you write a loki that's a straight-up villain she has to wear high heels and get at least one musical number#also she and sigyn have to be a villain couple. sigyns been through enough already let her fuck shit up with her wife
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who told him to do that gayass lean
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#obey me nightbringer#mammon#asmodeus#no bc he'd be perfected for your everyday overdramatic queercoded villain
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*Slowly backs out of the room*
I think... I think I'm at the wrong Villains meetup... I skipped queercoded and went straight to queer. Heh.
Ok goodbye have a nice time good luck on your date :)
do you think a dude ever had sex with another guy
#villaincore#henchperson#evil#henchman#evil henchman#villain#evilposting#mwhahaha#queercoded villains
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favorite batman villain is those queercoded women who dress as an angel and a devil respectively and are arm candy for two face in batman forever
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Rewatching the scenes with Pinocchio and Honest John for an ask (hi oya <3) and my ass got mesmerised by the fox WHY IS HE SO FRUITY
#okay I know why#insert video about classic villains being queercoded or whatever#but John is so KZJSJJQZJ0QZ0JAZ yknowwwwww#man do I really have a thing for this 40s disney villain#perhaps#harry's rants
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I personally think Luke should get to be more dramatic, flamboyant and feminine. You know, give my boy some villainess queercoding. Why are some people making him so deeply heterosexual? If you going to make him a moustache twirling villain at least let the boy keep the queercoding that was typically attached to it in the past.
#all I’m saying is queercoded villain Luke would be great fun#hoping the tv show will deliver on this#(half serious as in#it would be incredibly fun and nice if they did. But I’m realistic and know that they likely won’t)#luke castellan#percy jackson and the olympians#pjo#my stuff pjo edition
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Okay so... Not saying I agree with the decision the letters, because that first letter gave us one of the best, most unhinged lines in the game "business proceeds like a parent saving their drowning child, swimmingly".
But considering the amount of queer content in the game and the vehement allyship (and also queerness) of the Larian team, I feel that it was most likely a decision of "Oh, someone pointed out that we followed the trend of queer-coding villains, which has historically associated queerness with evil, maybe we should roll that back a little".
Again, not saying I agree, (especially because Gortash is queer-coded in so many other ways that this change doesn't mitigate that). So I say: let him be gay and evil. We, as fans, can handle that.
i'm dehydrated and sleep deprived so someone's gotta tell me that changing the franc letters isn't like.. not homophobic, but i'm looking the word up in the dictionary and glancing down at it 🤨 and glancing back up the screen 🤨
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WOAH, HE'S BIGENDER? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!
#hey. hey. im just saying. he LITERALLY 'transed his gender' in a diagetic bit in orange. and if that wasnt enough.#in blue he disguised himself as squid jenny specifically with larry's powers (the only thing hes done with them on screen)#got caught by his god-assigned roles-obsessed caretaker. and was given the label of being something intrinsically unescapably deceitful.#while 'pretending' to be trans girl.#like. if i wasnt pretty sure it was all an accident i might even call the allegory here slightly heavy-handed.#with the nccts emphasizing a theme of 'youre not just what people say you are#you can be more than one thing at the same time' with crim#i think crimson can have boygirl swag. some bigender pizzazz. i think he deserves it.#is it REALLY a cpu kerfuffle arc without a subversive narratively relevant gender-transing.#am i supposed to believe the spirit of deviance himself is cis? get fucking real. grow up. /silly#also a lil crimtoinette in there. just for flavor. because i cant help myself.#also sidenote the nccts have given him this cute lil tendency#to tip his hat down to hide his face when hes trying to be Genuine or Thoughtful or Poignant. and i enjoy that little touch#i maybe like this guy a little too much. hes most of what ive drawn for months.#but what do you want from me. i read him as a queercoded villain deconstructed at the metanarrative level.#am i just supposed to be normal about that.#me and zia talked about this in dms and discovered. we came to a lot of the same conclusions. completely independently. lmao#cpuk crimson
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via tiktok (filmlaundromat)
#it's where i wanna be🗣️📢👍👍💖💖💖💖#interview with the vampire#doctor who#glee#our flag means death#jennifers body#killing eve#everything everywhere all atonce#rocky horror picture show#santana lopez#jobu tupaki#rebecca#rope#ursula#gus fring#kimpossible#shego#bodies bodies bodies#breaking bad#villains#evil#gay#queer#lgbtq#queercoded#queer villians#jennifer coolidge#bisexual#queer characters
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The Master wore a dress with heels, multiple times, 15 years ago, but they couldn't have Fourteen wear Thirteens relatively gender neutral clothes??? Cowards
#and this is on queercoding villains#doctor who#doctorwho#the doctor#the master#fourteenth doctor#dw
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