Yeah, I know, it's when people insist that it's canon that they don't, particularly if they reference the trans/NB trolls in the argument. I'm not exactly an expert but isn't transitioning pretty much a declaration that gender DOES matter to you personally?
I’m personally inclined to favor aliens who inexplicably have human-like genders over blue and orange gender. I’ve had too much experience with “why do they need genders” meaning “everyone is male-coded but we refuse to acknowledge that that’s a thing”. I don’t see many blue and orange multi-gender variants that have much to say about gender besides “here is an interesting speculative idea” without mapping onto existing norms. And I do like those stories, but I really don’t think I would have preferred Homestuck to be one of them. I suppose I’m currently in a post-post-gender phase. I used to be in favor of less gender, or at least less of this particular nonsense. But in practice I found that less portrayal of the nonsense often meant less acknowledgement of the ways in which the nonsense persisted. Deserts of nothing but male-coded aliens. And it was harder to discuss because the whole point was to move beyond it, so if you kept insisting on talking about it, clearly you were the one with the problem. So now I really appreciate media that makes no apologies for portraying female-coded aliens. I know it’s possible to write fantastic stories about aliens with a truly nonhuman gender concept. I think it’s much harder to do that and include commentary about gender norms that doesn’t come across as anvilicious. Still possible, but for the most part I feel like I’ve seen a million permutations of ways not to have a direct conversation about gender and I just appreciate when fiction doesn’t try to dress it up as anything else. So that’s my current fictional gender onion.
I don't care one way or another whether the trolls should or shouldn't have gender roles, I'm just baffled by the fact that people in the fandom seem to get actively mad at me for pointing out that they canonically do.
I have, in the past, privately rolled my eyes at how common "fear of thunder" seems to be as hurt/comfort fodder, even for capable adult characters with no obvious reason (or explored-within-the-fic reason) why that might be a trauma trigger for them. That's not really my gripe, though. My gripe is.... look, there are backstory reasons why it makes sense for my personal favorite h/c target, okay??!? (Basically my gripe is I feel like a teeeeny bit of a hypocrite :P )
>manga introduces an explicitly ambiguously gendered character in latest chapter >half the reddit comments are wondering whether they're male or female or just referring to them firmly as one or the other >>>:C Guessing it'd be better on tumblr but I'm trying to stay away from there orz
@The Mutant Ah, I've been meaning to read some other Shounen Jump titles. I guess that'll by my next!
Idk of this is exactly a gripe, more of a sweaty stress thing Like when people do Meta analysis on anime, it can be fun, and queer analysis on anime can be fun But I get nervous thinking about how western viewpoints are fucking different and how there's cultural contexts that neither I nor Americans might know about It's just that I read an interesting read on Reigen Arataka on "being in the closet" and talking about some conversations he's had with another character etc here if you want to check it out I think its an interesting view point but I remember how One(the mangaka) made the Japanese sort or stereotype character of a creepy big muscley man who where's skimpy bikinis or strips nude in One Punch Man (and how one of the guys is a Rapist played for laughs), and a background character like that in an ep of the s2 mob psycho anime (mostly in appearance) And how that's like a Joke about Gay people in Japan (something I read about here.) And idk it just makes me churn with nervousness with applying western analysis onto non western media, y'know? There's just so many ways non western media is informed, with different cultures and different cultural stereotypes Idk, I'm just saying that the queer reading on Reigen that I read was fun and interesting but it also makes me anxious. Gay Trans Reigen #1 in my heart though
Yeah, it’s always annoying when people interpret stuff through their own cultural lens without thinking of its original context. Reminds me of that one post about how pmmm reads as very feminist by western viewers but is the complete opposite in Japan. Also that post about gay stereotypes in Japan is really interesting! I’d gotten some vague impressions of those stereotypes just from anime etc, but I didn’t know the history or the extent to which they were a Thing. Interesting to see the similarities and differences from similar American stereotypes. Also also I don’t think anything in that post would quite qualify as “evidence” except maaybe the umbrella thing but it does make me nostalgic for the days when people would write up those long ship manifestos on lj
I think it's fun reading about people picking what sorts of text to prove their point, correct or not It's like a meticulous engagement of media, and kinda reflects the analysis person and what they want to see
the author is dead and each person reads fiction through the lense of their own knowledge and experience, and reading gay or trans interpretations into characters not meant to be read that way by the author is a time honored tradition in fandom, dating back to at LEAST spock/kirk and probably much, much earlier which is why haruhi fujioka is nonbinary trans thanks for coming to my ted talk
That's true but it is also important to actually consider the context works are created in. Especially if those works are created by poc and especially if the complaints are being made about, say, queer things. Because not considering it at all leads to shit like complaining that bishies are stereotypical gay men in Japan, as opposed to a heteronormative beauty standard. And gods know that while Persona 4's got issues some of the issues people have with it are a result of it dealing with very Japanese themes in a very Japanese manner for a very Japanese audience. Sometimes not everything is for you. And sometimes I feel death of the author can lead to problems. Some that are even offensive towards the people the work comes from. Because if we're just applying death of the author all the time then we run GREAT risk of ethnocentrism. And thus runs great risk of racism.
Heh, I was halfway through writing a comment on that exact example. I absolutely support people's right to headcanon whatever they want, but I've absolutely been made uncomfortable on more than one occasion by Woke(TM) analyses that I know just enough to know are doing things like this. (And that's a DISNEY version of a non-Western legend, even! It's already been filtered through layers and layers of Americanism, and it's still possible to end up being super-racist by ignoring the cultural context and intent of the source material.) Or, like, one of my friends has a pet peeve about how the English-speaking fandom for Tiger and Bunny have collectively decided Nathan/Fire Emblem is canonically non-binary and canonically uses they pronouns and you're transphobic if you use he/him. But he's an onee. He's speaking Japanese. He's a character created in and aimed at an audience within a cultural context that doesn't draw the same lines in the same places re: gender expression as American left-wing fandom, and it's honestly pretty ethnocentric and insulting to ignore that fact.
fandom meta literally is for "me" of course a lot of characters arent intended to be gay, and their behavior is in a different social context in their source material's origin country, but its not racist to say a character gives you gay vibes? what the actual hell? like of course theres people who are assholes abt their headcanons/readings and tumblr intensifies authoritative hot takes but that doesnt make gay readings offensive unless u think interpreting something as gay will offend the author....... which, frankly, means im ok with offending them
I mean... I can think of a few gay readings that are offensive on the merits of the characters themselves. (“The Joker is secretly gay and his Foul Homosexual Urges towards Batman excuse the violent abuse he heaps on women” is certainly a gay read that manages to be incredibly offensive even if the existence of BatJokes as a ship isn’t, like, inherently badwrong.) In this case, I think part of the issue with ignoring the cultural context is that it gives the author too much credit. Like, I can talk about how Saitama/Genos has a lot of tender, intimate moments in canon, but saying it’s deliberately coded when the PuriPuri Prisoner is a literal, existing, deeply homophobic character archetype in OPM is... well, it’s ignoring authorial intent in entirely the wrong direction. ‘These characters are gay-coded, this is a fantastic example of a closeted gay character’ is a statement that needs to come with the caveat ‘to a Western audience’ because anyone who’s familiar with the particular homophobic stereotypes that crop up in Japanese media is going to get absolutely blindsided by them when meta like that just... blankets over that fact. Like, I’m sorry. I’m more than willing to be on the “they’re gay and trans cuz I say so” train. But once that train pulls into the “and here’s the canon evidence behind it, which relies in part on authorial intent in the framing of these scenes,” just straight up ‘death of the author’-ing past the bits of authorial intent that are actively bigoted (or worse, vastly misinterpreting authorial intent because of the biases coming from a Western read) doesn’t work anymore. That cultural context does actually matter.
Oh my god, does this have anything to do with this character using 'watashi'? Because I once (thankfully only once) saw the same take in my fandom that a male character absolutely cannot be referred to with he/him because whenever he refers to himself he uses 'watashi'. (Which is a quirk taken from the real person he's based off of, and it seems the real person did that in his writing because he believed himself to be removed from humanity but HHHH whatever its fine people in my fandom can be wrong.)
I'm talking about works of fiction themselves. So, no, not all works are for everyone. Some things do have times and places and those times and places do in fact matter. I also didn't say that it's racist to say that a character from a foreign work might be gay. There are sometimes when I feel like these readings are definitely offensive, but I did not say that these are, carte blanche, racist. I simply pointed out that, yes, there is an importance to context at times. Especially as it pertains to works from cultures other than one's own. This feels very pertinent to bring up since the gripes being responded to were ones about, say, the sexism and misogyny inherent to PMMM. Death of the author is useful, but it's a tool and tools can't be used for everything. And one of the main weaknesses of it as an analytical method is that it can ignore the voices of minorities or cultures besides whichever the analysis is coming from. Which is a bit of a problem when we have people complaining about how something is a harmful gay stereotype when it's not really, and the actual stereotypes that harm the people that live in these countries go under the radar.
??? Afaik watashi is a fairly gender neutral pronoun and is way more commonly used in day to day society then, say, ore, which would come across as rude in a lot of cases
