#Also as in: me giving female characters the complexity author doesn't care enough to give them

[kyouka-supremacy]

Gin is such a tricky character. They've got a very good premise and compelling relations with other characters which makes them very interesting to explore. They have near to no screentime which makes everybody have a personal and original idea of what their personality is like with equal canon basis, so that in the end it feels like the fandom is filled with as many different Gin-ocs as people that are in it. I'm forever pursuing the objective, doomed to be unsuccessful by its own premise, of finding a fanfiction that features a Gin characterization that perfectly aligns with my own Gin-oc.

Anyways, meet my Gin-oc:

I already mentioned this, but Gin and Ryuunosuke aren't biologically related. Back in the slums, everyone assumed they were for their similar looks and how they never left each other's side, and they never bothered correcting them; what did it matter anyways? In the end, when all their friends were slaughtered, they ended up being the only family they had.

Gin's quite confident actually: she could cut your throat at any given moment, and she knows it. That's the consequence of always having been quite spoiled by Ryuunosuke: not really with words, but it'd be extremely rare for him to criticize anything she does, and he would let her win on everything more often than not. She is the youngest sibling. The difference in age feels a lot bigger than what it actually is.

Gin's the blunt, sharp type; doesn't talk a lot, but when she does it's sure to cut you. She's similar to Ryuunosuke in that. She's the only one who can speak back to the most feared pm member without fearing consequences... And it shows.

The only thing that intimidates Gin is for people that have only ever known her in her work attire to see her in civilian clothes, or the other way round.

Gin is also a little naive compared to their brother: she doesn't contemplate the endless fight between good and evil or what it means to take a person's life like Ryuunosuke is used to, she just gets her job done. She's younger than Ryuunosuke and, although she's still a feared Port Mafia operative, I think she is fairly more immature than him, also given the fact that, again, Ryuunosuke used to spoil her and always tried to shield her from seeing the most gruesome, terrifying sides of the world. It's not like he managed to keep her blind to everything, she is from the slums too and she did see her family being slaughtered in front of her eyes and she does know how cruel the world can be a thousand times more than your average Yokohama citizen; it's just slightly better than it is with Ryuunosuke, that's it. And keep in mind that to me Ryuunosuke is quite naive too, so they're also close in this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke live together. Ryuunosuke moved them to a little rented apartment as soon as he could when he started receiving pm retribution, and they later moved to a big flat when he got promoted to command unit (the apartment was destroyed after Dazai left the pm because. yeah).

Ryuunosuke was actually against Gin joining the pm too. He never contemplated it being a possibility when he accepted to join himself. But Gin never had any intention to sit around uselessly, and was going to join whether Ryuunosuke liked it or not. He eventually gave in, reasoning the pm would have protected her, so it was all for her to be safe (a little naive thinking on his end, but he was young too).

The one and only time Ryuunosuke ever got mad at Gin was when he found out that she killed someone for the first time. Which like, what else did he expect ever since she joined the mafia? And yet he had thought (perhaps, hoped) that her role would be limited to low stakes missions, and that she would have maintained a low rank (he's a little stupid). He was furious. Which sounds quite hypocrite given the fact that he's killed countless people, but the thing is in his mind he always was the only one supposed to stain himself with sin, never Gin. Despite all the lives he's taken, I have reason to believe Akutagawa still values life and understands what burden it is to take other people's; a burden that Gin should had never known. He's quite the protective kind. But Gin is not afraid of Ryuunosuke (of course, he's her dear brother), and she wasn't afraid to speak back at him; in the end, she did what she wanted, but it was a tough tooth to swallow for Ryuunosuke.

No one has to know they're siblings– no one. Ryuunosuke is dead serious on the matter and mildly obsessed by it; he's tormented by the idea of any of his enemies getting revenge on him through Gin, and that's literally his greatest fear and worst nightmare (not only Gin dying, but also Gin's death being his fault). The only people to know they're related are the executives and Hirotsu; if Ryuunosuke ever found out anyone else knew, he would instantly hunt them down and kill them, no matter who they were. At work, Gin and Ryuunosuke act like they don't know each other; Gin never protested, because she understands just how vital the matter is for their brother, and how it would be impossible to change his mind on this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke love each other more than anything. They're always going to be each other's priority, always, I can't stretch this enough. 50% of the reasons Ryuunosuke joined the pm to begin with was because of Gin, because he wanted to take her away from the slums, because he wanted her to be safe. Yet they just... Have no idea how to help or comfort each other. Both of them are entirely inadequate with words when it's about comforting someone. So their only way to show affection ended up just being there for each other, silently. I can picture, in one of Akutagawa's lowest moments, when months of being beaten up are starting to really feel on his already frail body, and his illness is starting to emerge, him vomiting blood at home; and Gin just being next to him without saying a word– because what could she possibly say? But she's still there, next to him, and she's the most important thing for him; and it doesn't make the world any less cruel, doesn't lessen the pain that's killing both of them, but at least there's some sort of white comfort in knowing they're not facing it alone. I really believe that as much as Dazai worked to dehumanize Ryuunosuke, tried to make of him a mindless killing beast only existing to follow orders, Gin was the only thing left to keep Ryuunosuke hanging to the glimmer of humanity left in him. On that front, I find the relationship between them to be similar to the one Kyouka and Atsushi share in Beast: their life is walking through the darkest of nightmares, but they do so holding each other's hand.

Although, those moments of connection became always less frequent as time passed and both of them grew up. The more time Ryuunosuke spent working for the pm under Dazai, the more he was reluctant to show himself vulnerable, the more they grew apart. Ryuunosuke was going through a very hard time and for him it was of vital importance that Gin had nothing to do with it. On Gin's end, it was draining to have to powerlessly, passively witness her brother slowly destroy himself and his own humanity without being able to do anything about it, and ironically that led to her distancing herself from Ryuunosuke in turn. In a funny, cruel way, seeing Ryuunosuke so pained without being able to do anything about it activated the fight or flight response the slums installed in her: since there was nothing immediately tangible she could fight against, her instinctive response was to run away from the situation. I just feel like powerlessly having to see a dear one suffer so deeply without being able to do anything has the potential to be even more painful than having to bear the suffering yourself, and I can see how she would have wanted to distance herself from it. Gin and Ryuunosuke didn't move away or anything, but the time they spent together significantly decreased to the point they were both actively avoiding each other. Ryuunosuke was constantly moody and angry at the world and although it was never - ever - directed at Gin, can you really blame her if she didn't want to spend time with him? It's hard for me to explain this without making it sound like Gin didn't care about Akutagawa, wasn't aware and suffered from his pain, didn't want to help him; because she really did care, and was concerned for his suffering, and wanted to help. It's just something really hard to deal with on daily basis when it drags on for several years, and there's so little you can do, especially if the person you want to help would rather die than let you help them.

It got better, though. I feel like Ryuunosuke touched the bottom when Dazai left the pm. But his and Gin's relationship got better after that. Very slowly, very gradually, but it got better. I like to think something switched in Ryuunosuke with the Moby Dick fight, and he started to change. And if he had to change, he decided to start from his relationship with Gin, because she's the person he cares about the most. He tried to be there for her more often, tried to spend more time with her, and it made her so happy. It took a while, and it was a little awkward at first: after all, Ryuunosuke is still his brooding self, who will tell her “It's been a while // Let's go home” with a frown on his face; but even despite that, what matters is that he's still there where he wasn't before, he's there wanting to spend time with her, and Gin is overjoyed by it, and she smiles sweetly to him. They're fixing their bond together, and I think they will get there! I think they will get their close-to-normal siblings relationship.

Differently from Ryuunosuke, Gin actually grew to quite like her job, especially after the Black Lizard was born. Hirotsu soon enough became the closest to a father figure she could have ever wished for. And she has lots of fun with Tachihara– in a way, they share much more of a siblings relationship than she and Ryuunosuke ever had. They constantly jab at each other, they have inside jokes; they threaten each other's lives on the daily but unfailingly have each other's back in battle. Gin eventually opened up a lot to Tachihara, who she felt like was the only one who could really understand her; she had found a solid common ground in their shared experience of having a distant older brother they struggled to connect with. And she trusted the sentiment was mutual, that Tachihara opened up to her as much as she did to him, completely oblivious to his half-truths. When she found out he was a spy– when he told her he was a spy, it broke her. She felt deeply, thoroughly betrayed; it changed her. She's not much the forgiving type. (talked about the Black Lizard dynamics some more here)

[wasted-women]

Interesting you talk about the two ways that one can fridge a character, I personally don't always mind the first one, because female characters also have characters they care about die in their backstory for their character development, or male characters can die for other male characters, I think it's only a problem if the work has a pattern of only having female background characters be the ones who die for male ones' motivations, especially if there aren't many female characters in active roles of importance in the story to balance it out. And also how it can become a cliched motivation that is sometimes used in cliched ways in general (like parents dying is overused, whether it's a mother or father and whether the character affected by it is male or female), or a spouse dies and instead of really exploring the complexities of grief and how it affects the character it just becomes one-dimensional brooding or desire for vengeance. So it's overused and in certain works it's a way that female characters in particular are objectified and targeted but it's not inherently bad.

But killing a female character who was important and did have her own story, or at least was being set up to be/had the potential to be that way, in a way that clearly shows they don't care about her potential as a character and only care about the male characters' arcs (and often not even anything interesting in the male character's arcs, just a cheap flash of angst to show how in pain they are and the world revolves around them), that is always bad and never fails to bother me. I hate when the author shows such little care for the story of a genuinely interesting character except as instrumental, and I will definitely be voting for characters like that preferentially.

Hi! Thanks for sharing your thought process. You reference the two ways that a woman can be fridged that I mentioned in my original post (shown below for anyone reading this that doesn't remember)

While I do agree that the second one is worse, I still think the first way is really bad. I mean, the character death that coined the term "women in refrigerators" falls more in the first category than the second. You say you don't think it's a problem unless it becomes a pattern or there aren't enough living female characters to balance, but like... that's sort of the point. There are A LOT of pieces of media where THERE IS a pattern and THERE AREN'T a lot of female characters.

Also in my opinion, it happening in the first place is enough to make my eyes roll. When I reading or watch a piece of media made by a man, or, am going through a medium that already has a lot of misogyny issues (such as comic books), even if it happens once it's enough. Because whether someone does it to one female character or twenty in a story, it is still a show that they treat their female characters are inherently more disposable than their male characters. Even in pieces of media that kill off multiple characters of different genders, the death of male characters are given more narrative weight. (Ex. Think of Batman. Both of his parents die but a vast majority of works that display him grieving his parents either show him grieving them both as a unit, or they specifically talk much more about his father Thomas Wayne. They will give Thomas Wayne a whole relationship with his son, a whole career and personality, and Martha Wayne will... kind of be there. Not in all Batman media, but in most)

I'm sure there are examples of things that count as fridged that aren't as bad as others, but the fact that it's happening in the first place sort of continues this idea of female characters being disposable. "What will motivate the hero? Give him a dead mother/girlfriend/sister/whatever! Who cares that we create women just to hurt or kill them!!!!"

Not to mention, in my opinion, killing characters to motivate other characters/make them sad, no matter the gender, is just lazy writing.

Of course, when voting starts, you are free to vote for whichever fridged women that you think were wronged by the narrative. That's the point of a poll tournament!

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Series Thoughts

I've been mulling over Attack on Titan's ending and how I'd rate the whole story from all kinds of angles and I've reached the conclusion that above all else, the ending is really fucking annoying.

A great or a terrible ending would help me make my mind up much more easily.

If it's great, it's great. If it's terrible it's a good story with a terrible ending.

But instead, it is a mixed bag: there are things about it I like a lot and things about it I don't like.

It is a very common belief that the ending is paramount to a story's quality, but I've found that this is not really true for me. My favourite anime ever pretty much doesn't even have a proper ending. My needs for an ending basically encompass some sort of sense of closure and that's about it.

Especially longer-running series often either make the journey worth it just by being as long as they are (so a pretty generic ending is okay) or fall off in quality long before they are done. But AoT is neither of these for me.

AoT in this sense is complicated for me because I can't decide whether the ending impacted the quality of the story or not depending on which aspect of the ending I focus on.

Some details make it immensely satisfying to me and some details sour it a little bit.

I think right now the good and bad things balance out so in general nothing changes about how I view the story overall.

In basics, I really like the emotional core of Attack on Titan, but I've always found it flawed on the technical level.

I'd give the story a 10 just for how much it emotionally engaged me and made me care. This story is the reason why I started this blog and I became active talking about media in the first place.

For a time I was losing the sense of fun of being a fan: people just became really hostile when discussing stuff.

But this past week or so has been incredible in my inbox, reminding me of the highs of being a fan, with so many wonderful messages.

Other stories have made me more angry, made me cry more or laugh more, but AoT made me feel the biggest spectrum of feelings.

No other story has made me do this, at most I only became a member of various forums as a random member; I didn't create a blog with the aim to talk about one.

From a technical level, I would give it a 6-7 depending on the section of the story.

The foreshadowing for various twists is pretty loose from start to finish, there is a bunch of redundant scenes all over the story and the pacing can be really uneven. It is not nearly as *well-crafted* of a story in my eyes as I see people praise it to be.

The art is a pretty huge mess at points, too.

I think sometimes the fact that this is the author's very first actual long-running story very much shines through. I think only a beginner would dare to employ historical imagery as bluntly as Isayama did, too, for example.

But to me the emotional core is magical.

The average of these two aspects, emotional and technical, would be around 8-8.5.

But at the same time, when I finished that last chapter I felt like I couldn't rate it and this has rarely happened to me.

I've kind of slowly distanced myself from number ratings in general because consuming media is a very emotional and personal thing and exploring it via positives and negatives feels much more apt.

From that perspective, I think the story is incredibly emotionally intelligent and understands humanity really well.

Stemming from that in turn, I think themes are the strongest aspect of the story next to characters. While I think the story faltered in a some instances when it came to characters, I think the themes mostly stood tall all the way through.

I think it ended up giving answers to and looping back to ideas it started with: seeing the good in the cruel world, facing humanity's unending desire for conflict and need to survive, living without regrets, learning to see the world in more complex shades of gray rather than black and whites and learning to do the right thing when needed.

As a mystery box, it does answer pretty much all of the big mysteries of the story and I think I don't really take issue with any of the big answers except maybe one very specific one. The numerous twists throughout the story range from absolutely genius to fairly typical. Again, the foreshadowing gets a lot of praise when it comes to this story, but I think a lot of the story actually isn't planned. Isayama just uses some details in clever ways to make it seem like it was planned.

I think that is a skill in itself that never gets nearly enough credit, but in the end, I think that is the weakest part of the story along with the world itself.

I like the walls themselves and I really like some of the Titan designs, but other than that I never had much interest in the world of AoT on its own. It always has to be connected to characters or themes for me to care. The crystal cave, time sand dunes and certain Titan skeleton are the most interesting settings in the story for me in that sense.

I think it does also fall in the pit of some pretty frustrating dark fantasy tropes, most specifically with a certain blonde female character who had one of the best character arcs in the story that was kind of just thrown under the bus.

It can't quite escape the pitfalls of that genre and it just so happens to be my favourite genre of story, so I constantly see excessive shock value rape, forced pregnancy and gay erasure happen in stories that I think are great otherwise. It's frustrating.

I hoped AoT would be better than that because for so long it was, but it didn't end up being as such.

But at the same time, I think most of its female cast still ended up being pretty great and did some pretty fun archetype-defying stuff. It's a pretty strange dichotomy. It is actually much better than most dark fantasy, but not quite there yet.

This is actually true for the male cast, too, I think. It does some fun playing around with all of the character archetypes.

The story's action scenes are thrilling and some of the action setpieces are really memorable. The final arc really shines in that sense to me. As a horror spectacle it is especially excellent.

Despite sometimes coming across as narmy/unintentionally funny, it still somehow manages to make the Titans a credible threat and this is true throughout the entire story, for different, evolving reasons.

I think the Titans have become iconic for a reason and never lost the luster throughout any of the story.

Along with that, my final point is that it is one of the few stories that sets up a kill 'em all setting that actually kills major characters with substantial focus and commits to it. It also doesn't kill too many characters where no character ever gets to actually develop.

So, considering all of what I listed above, what would my general thoughts be?

I think it still is a story worth checking out.

Personally I obviously love the story as a whole.

But I think any fan of dark fantasy/sci-fi could get a bunch of entertainment out of it: above all I think it is an extremely digestable series.

It's sometimes a very dense read, but I never felt it was a "hard" read. It's a very dark story with a lot of horrible things happening, but I never felt it was difficult to get through even in its darkest of moments.

My favourite characters ended up being Gabi, Reiner, Eren, Pieck, Armin and Annie. Zeke and Hange get a shoutout, too.

My favourite chapters ended up being 71, 82, 100, 122, 131 and 137.

Who are you guys' favourite characters and what are your favourite chapters and why?

Send me an ask explaining why for fun! (Or ask me for my reasonings?)

[tiergan-vashir]

as someone who genuinely doesn't understand, why is it specifically that liking futa/gay stuff is so bad? some people are assholes about it sure, but there're plenty of people who aren't. what makes it so specifically much worse than liking straight stuff? especially given that futa/trap are 99% of the time not being used for/as actual trans people.

H’okay. I’m going to naively assume you actually want to know why, but I’m also going to shove all of this shit under a cut, because it’s going to be very, very long I’m pretty sure people are likely tired of seeing this by now and it might even be triggering for some folks.

The TL;DR of it all is that:

Fetishizationdoesn’t exist in a bubble - it propagates harmful stereotypes and ideas that hurt living people. So even though you’re probably using those words and phrases to describe your ERP video game smut character and not a living, breathing trans or intersex person - by helping keep those words commonplace and in use by others, you’re helping spread stereotypes and ideas that harm real, live people.

Even if you - yourself - are not using the word to describe actual trans folks, you’re normalizing it’s usage and some other dumb fuck you may have been interacting with WILL use it to describe an actual trans person.

All people want is Respect. Respect for their bodies. Respect for their life experiences and struggles. Respect as fellow humans. If you can’t give them that over some shit you really really want to use for your ERP cat girl smut in your japanese vidya games, then you’re honestly just a dick. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Massive trigger warning for me talking candidly about all of the above.

Fujoshi and the “gay stuff”

A quick disclaimer.  I’m not a gay man.  I’m a pansexual nonbinary person.  I don’t feel super comfortable speaking as any kind of authority figure at all on a topic that veers so closely to gay male experiences.  I’m going to speak on what I’ve heard, directly, from actual gay men I’ve spoken to and what I’ve seen with my own two eyes.  However, other gay men might have different opinions than what I’ve written here and if it differs from my words,  those words have more weight, because … ya know, this is their lives.  They’re the authority on their own life experiences.There’s next thing I want to get out of the way is that not “gay stuff” that’s bad.   There’s nothing wrong about being gay.

People explicitly mention fujoshi, because they’re essentially yaoi-super-fans.  Yaoi in particular gets a bad rap, because while I’m sure some exist that depict healthier, more realistic relationships - a whole lot of them simply reduce gay men down to sexual objects for the pleasure of straight women (it’s written by and for straight women after all) and often comes packaged with A LOT of harmful ideas on gay relationships that don’t actually have anything to do with what real gay relationships are like.

It would be one thing if every single woman in the universe looked at Yaoi and had the immediate understanding that “the shit I’m seeing in my japanese anime mangos about two slender effeminate men categorizing themselves by uke and seme while doing the horizontal mambo with pretty questionable consent practices and having hands WAY too large to be human is pretty divorced from the reality of what actual gay male relationships are like. I should not bother any actual living gay man with this stuff and I should respect them as people.”

But again - fetishization doesn’t exist in a bubble.  While some consumers of yaoi have enough awareness not to be gross about it, there are WAY too many others who get very accustomed to seeing gay men and their bodies purely as objects for sexual gratification - not people to be respected.  Some of them even still consider gay men and gay relationships “sinful and forbidden” - and their yaoi characters as their “sinful gay babies!” that are only acceptable within the confines of spank-bank material.

This is where people get pissed.

To rip from a previous post of mine:

I have heard stories from gay male RPers about how fujoshi RPers were super down to RP yaoi shit with them …right up until they found out WHOOPS, wow you are an actual gay man and not a fellow straight woman? No. Sorry. I can’t RP with you. Your lifestyle is sinful and wrong.

Or they see two gay men kissing and cuddling and start talking about those two living, breathing men as though they are some yaoi-comic stereotype with an uke and seme instead of… just regular, actual human beings with complex romantic and sexual lives of their own.

In 2017, a really beautiful animation came out about a young school boy struggling with his budding crush for another boy.  

The joy of seeing really adorable animation showing a rare depiction of young, innocent gay love was temporarily tarnished by the fact that in the beginning there was a flood of comments was about “omg YAOI. IT’S SO GREAT SEEING YAOI.” “ANY OTHER YAOI FANS HERE?” (the comments section has since cleaned up a lot, thankfully, but it definitely happened).  

Any decent human being would’ve seen the animation for what it was - a really sweet animation depicting young love that LGBT folks could actually relate to.  Fujoshi on the other hand had become so accustomed to seeing any romance between two boys or men as material for their sexual fetish, that they couldn’t even turn it off when looking at an animation about one underage minor having a crush on another, two little school boys in a romantic, non-sexual context.  

In those folks’ eyes - those two boys were not seen as sweet characters representing budding gay love that lots of LGBT folks could relate to - they immediately became objects for sexual consumption.

This is not to say that anyone who is writing a character that doesn’t align with their own gender/sexuality is an immediate shitlord.  

I’m a pansexual nonbinary person writing a pansexual cis male dude in a very LGBT FC.  I don’t really write or draw Tiergan in too many sexual or romantic contexts to start with, just because of the way his character is. 

When I did do so however, I noticed I was fine drawing or writing heterosexual romances with my character, but when it came to anything remotely approaching Tiergan being intimate with men - I was intensely anxious about making any of my gay/bi male FC-mates uncomfortable.  My FC-mates are awesome people and their feelings are important to me. I wanted to honour those feelings and their life experiences.

I ended up just talking to folks to see how they felt, what I should do, how I should treat everything.  Of course gay/bi men are all different, because we’re all human and may have different perspectives or feelings on the matter so someone else may feel differently, but what I was told by everyone in all my discussions was that it boiled down to Respect. Treating gay/bi/pan men, their relationships, and their life experiences with the respect they are due and not simply as tools for getting off.

Fujoshi are often not respectful of gay men beyond their use as sexual objects - so why should anyone give them respect in return?

“Trap” and “Futa”

I’m going to go on a limb and assume you’re here because you read this post here.  Where I mentioned the Trans Panic Defense and how actual trans women find the word “trap” triggering because they get beaten to death IRL by cis straight men for “trapping” them.

If that really wasn’t enough, please look at this video by ContraPoints, which gets into more detail about why the word “Trap” is so hurtful from the words of an actual trans woman.

If you actually humored me and watched that video instead of blindly digging in your heels about how bad you want to keep using a word, it should be incredibly clear by now that the word “trap” is really hurtful to trans women and reminds them of the fact that they literally get killed by people just for walking down the street and making some cis dude’s dick tingle in his pants.

To put things in a different context, this is an extreme example, but there was a time the N-word was used regularly.   But now, you likely never do, because you know it’s offensive and hurtful to black people.  What’s the big deal though - right? It’s just a word.

But much like “trap” reminds trans women of the possibility that cis straight men might beat them to death in a fit of “trans panic” and the long history of trans women being viciously murdered even today for “trapping” men with their “trickery”.  The N-word reminds the black community of a long, vicious, painful, hateful legacy of racism, slavery, and oppression. That’s why civilized adults don’t use that word, even as an insult.

If we want a way less extreme example than the N-word, we have words like “Negro” and “Oriental” which are dated and offensive terms for Black and Asian communities respectively in the United States, because in the US it reminds those communities of painful, racist histories.

“Trap” reminds trans people of really bad fucking times. It reminds them that they can be murdered. Just stop using it.

Futa/Futanari, as mentioned in my previous post, literally means “hermaphrodite” which both intersex and trans folk find offensive to be referred to as because it doesn’t actually describe them.  So regardless of whether you’re using the word to describe a trans female character or an intersex person - it’s still offensive to either group, because that’s not what they are.

I’m assuming when you say you don’t use it on actual trans/intersex people, you mean you’re just using Trap/Futa to describe your character falling into a very specific anime hentai bucket.  However, every time you use the word “trap” or “futa”, even if you’re not talking to an actual trans woman - you’re normalizing the idea that it’s totally okay to keep using this word.  And even if YOU are careful not to blurt it out in front of an actual trans person, and use it only in reference to your pretendy-times triple-dicked cat girl character, you can’t count on all your buddies to do the same. Or your buddies’ buddies, or your buddies’ buddies’ buddies - etc.

If you ACTUALLY CARE about the feelings and comfort of trans/intersex folks, then you’ll not use the word “trap” or “futa” anymore, so that it stops being commonly, casually used.  All folks want is respect. Give that to them.

If after all of this, you still at the very least don’t see why using the word “trap” is no bueno despite the history of literal death behind it, I don’t know what to tell you other than that you’re placing greater importance on a singular word to describe your fap material before human beings, and that kinda makes you a dick.

What makes it worse than Straight Stuff?

Let’s do a quick exercise.

You have 10 seconds to think of one commonly used, popular term with the same ubiquity as trap, futa, or yaoi that encapsulates a harmful, fetishistic sexual stereotype specifically about cis straight white relationships.  You can even use Google if you want.

I specify white, because things like “yellow fever” have explicitly to do with race and thus don’t count.

If you can’t think of jack shit, it’s because “cis straight” is considered “normal” by our society - and anything that deviates from that is considered “exotic” or “different” and gets fetishized.  

If you’re a straight person, you likely have NEVER had to deal with someone fetishizing and objectifying you simply for your straightness, because it’s “normal”.  What is there to fetishize? They might objectify you for other reasons, like your gender, your race if you’re PoC, your weight (aka fat fetish), etc.  But being objectified through your straightness - if it happens at all - is so minuscule in comparison to what LGBT folks have to go through on the daily that it is insanely unbalanced.  It’s worse than “straight stuff” because LGBT folks have to go through it WAY, WAY more often than straight people do.

[c-is-for-circinate]

so what you're saying is you only like ace representation when autistic ace women are being thrown under the bus because our representation doesn't matter and our attempts to create our own representation (because if we don't we don't get any) are bad and ableist so we should just sit down, shut up, and be content with never seeing ourselves in fiction. got it. sorry we keep forgetting our place and being so fucking inconvenient with our wishing to be allowed to exist in stories.

Okay.  Okay, we’re both going to take a deep breath and maybe get a cup of tea here and have this conversation–or at least I am.  You can if you like.  I suggest that you might want to, because you clearly seem to care a whole bunch what I have to say on this topic, for some reason, even though I’m nobody on the internet with all of 200 notes on a post that doesn’t even say the thing you seem to think it says.  You care enough to be very upset in my inbox, so it seems like you might care enough to want to have this discussion.

Cool.  I’ve got shit I’m putting off doing this afternoon.  Let’s have this talk.

For starters: yup, I can see that you’re really angry.  I get that.  If somebody were telling me to sit down and shut up about representing myself in fiction, I’d be real angry, too.  And yes, I can see how the thing you initially saw (which I’m assuming was this post, without any of the later additions to it) might sound that way to you, and I apologize.

Still not sure why the opinions of one random person on the internet are worth your time and your words and your rage on this level, though you do you–not that ‘somebody thinks I shouldn’t exist or see myself in fiction’ isn’t worth raging about, but this seems like a pretty small corner to have this anger-fit in.  Like, you clearly know that many people DO believe the things you think I believe, all the time, every day.  This wouldn’t have hit such a button if that weren’t the case.  I would get really exhausted fighting this fight all the time, if I were you.  Which I’m not.

Which begs the question: if I’m saying “let horrible shit go on the internet, life is too short to fight every battle,” then why am I taking the time to start this question with one very angry anon who might not even bother coming to my blog to see my response in the first place?

Well.  For one, because I obviously hurt you, and that sucks.  Whatever I meant to communicate, you read a thing that clearly hurt.  As a decent human, it behooves me to acknowledge that if I can, and to try to address it if I can.

Also because I clearly hurt you by phrasing and explaining myself poorly, and that sucks in a whole different way.  And maybe if we have this conversation here, other people WON’T have the same misunderstanding.  That’d be pretty great.

(And also because life is so short, and the internet is so angry, and I am so tired all the time.  Everyone is always so angry here, so cruel and so hurt and so furious.  Maybe I can be a little bit kind.  Maybe it will matter.  Maybe somebody else on the internet will take a deep breath at their reflexive rage.  It could happen.)

Alright, now, to the meat of your complaint: you believe I have said, “ace autistic women should not be represented in fiction, it’s ableist and bad.”  You believe that this is a pretty shitty thing to think because ace autistic women actually exist in the actual world, and they/you would like some actual representation, or at least to be allowed to represent themselves.

That is a pretty shitty thing to think.  It’s good that I don’t think it.  It sucks that it sounded like I do.  You might want to re-read the version of the original post that I linked above, with several additional comments on it.  You might want to read this post, where I clarified my point of view.  You might want to read it again.

Here’s what I actually think: in our culture of stories, especially in fandom and also in published media, romantic storylines are held up at the center of fiction all the time.  Romance and romantic interest are used to create tension, to create character depth, to add complexity and interest and signal to readers ‘hey, over here, these characters are important, the story is here!’

And that’s fucked up.  You already know that, if you’re on the internet looking for stories about ace representation.  But it’s a fact.

Here’s the other thing I think: many authors, mostly in fandom and also sometimes in published media, use the idea of asexuality–not its reality, not its complexities, not the intricate intersections of asexuality and aromanticism, not anything true and real–use the idea of ‘oh, this character just isn’t interested in anyone ever’ as a way to sideline specific characters out of that romantic narrative.

The people fandom wants most of all to sideline out of its stories?  Women.

(Yes, even in het fandoms.  Maybe especially in het fandoms.  The rage and hate against an ‘other woman’ is terrifying to behold.)

The people fandom wants even more than that to keep out of the spotlight and also particularly out of romantic storylines altogether?   ND/autistic women.

Using asexuality as a way to keep autistic women (as a way to keep women, as a way to keep autistic people, as a way to keep anyone) out of a narrative is fucking bullshit.  This I believe.  This I absolutely believe.  And it is shitty, shitty representation that is not worthy of the name.  It is lazy and exploitative writing that uses ‘representation’ as an excuse not to actually explore or represent anyone at all.

I wrote that original post because of the overwhelming majority of the Persona 5 fandom, which downright screams about how Futaba Sakura (one of the most legit autistic characters I’ve ever seen in fiction that wasn’t specifically about ‘hey look at this autistic character’) can’t be shipped with anyone let alone the protag, she is the little sister and she doesn’t like to be touched anyway she probably just doesn’t want anyone.  I wrote it because I just spent like a month devouring Voltron fic and you can’t find good poly-fic that isn’t ‘just the boys fucking each other’ for love or money–Pidge likes robots more than people and that means she’d never be attracted to or fall for anyone, at least if you need an excuse to keep her out of the group sex.  I wrote it because Parker/Hardison/Eliot is the OT3 of all OT3′s.  I wrote it because I was in Glee fandom for years and I fucking remember what fandom said about Brittany S. Pierce.

I would love to see more ace representation in fiction.  I would love to see so much more fiction that centers ace characters, that explores the fact that asexuality is an identity rather than a lack of identity.  That lets ace characters fill lead roles and doesn’t even make their sexuality an issue.  Ace characters in romances.  Ace characters with their own plotlines and intense character development who never want or need romances.  And yes: that includes autistic or otherwise neurodivergent female asexual characters.  Any one of the characters I just listed above, give me a story about them navigating their own sexuality or navigating their world, their most important non-sexual non-romantic relationships, their selves, and let them be as not-neurotypical as all hell.  I will read it in a fucking instant.

You want to see you in fiction.  I want to see you in fiction.  What we’re getting ain’t it.

Take some deep breaths.  Talk to a friend who knows you.  Hug a dog/cat/person, if they’re available and hugging’s your thing.  Maybe don’t scream at strangers on the internet.  We’re on the same side.

[carnegiestout]

Book or Movie? “Warm Bodies” review

If I know I’m going to see a movie based on a book I usually read the book first, knowing full well that the movie will probably not live up to my expectations. However, I saw Warm Bodies in the theater before reading the book, so I had no preconceived notions about casting or characterization. In fact all I knew about Warm Bodies was that it was a take on Romeo and Juliet, but with zombies. I went to see this film with a group of friends who also happen to be co-workers. Of the six of us who went, only two of us really enjoyed it. So, she (Allison) and I decided to review the movie and book, which we read later.

The Movie "Warm Bodies" Directed by Jonathan Levine. Starring  Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry &  John Malkovich

Amy: I don’t care what anyone else said, I loved Warm Bodies. It was funny, sappy, and a little bit gross. Exactly what one might expect from a zombie romcom. Allison: Thank you! I loved it! It was exactly what I wanted it to be - funny, cheesy, with only a few bits of horror! I also really liked how short it was - I’m sick of three hour long epics! Amy: I'm totally with you there. The thought of sitting in a theater for three-plus hours makes me dread going to the movies. Another thing I loved about Warm Bodies was R’s inner monologue. It was just funny and kind of sad. Yes there were parts that were kind of stupid, but again, it is a ZOMBIE romantic comedy.

Allison: Yes! A similar movie, Shaun of the Dead, was marketed as a romantic comedy with zombies, although that one was more about the living people than the dead. But the idea is the same - this isn't a gore-filled Romero movie. Yes, there are horror elements, but that’s not the crux of the story. While we’re on the subject, one difference between the movie and the book is the outfit R wears. In the movie, he wears jeans and hoodie (setting up a great joke) but in the book, R wears black dress pants, a white shirt and a red tie. I like to think this is a hat-tip to Shaun of the Dead, since that’s the same outfit Shaun (Simon Pegg) wears. Amy: Also, it was leaps and bounds better than Twilight. People need to stop comparing it to Twilight. Allison: I admit that I haven’t read Twilight, but I was forced to see the movie version and I agree 100%. It’s unfortunate that every movie with supernatural elements that centers on a romance is now, apparently, doomed to be lumped together with Twilight. I think many people who would really enjoy the movie haven’t or won’t see it because of that false association. Amy: Another thing I loved about this movie was the relationships between the main characters and their BFF’s. M stood by R when the rest of the zombies wanted to eat Julie and Nora stood by Julie when the rest of the humans wanted to kill R. Allison: Rob Corddry really stole the show as M; some of the best lines were his, whether they were funny or frightening. Both he and Nicholas Hoult expressed more in a grunt or a gesture than most other actros could. M’s character in the book is a bit different (at least physically) than how Corddry portrayed him, but the loyalty, humor and hope are there in each version.

M (Rob Corddry) and R (Nicholas Hoult) in deep conversation at an airport bar. Via Filmofilia.com

Amy: I think Rob Corddry had about five spoken lines in the movie and I absolutely agree that he stole the show. I read somewhere that the cast studied with Cirque de Soliel to get the zombie movements down. I think they did an excellent job. Amy: Speaking of best friends, Julie's best friend Nora says during a dream sequence that if she could be anything in the world she wanted to be a nurse. As we were leaving the theater several members of our group were commenting that it was sad that she said nurse instead of doctor. I realize that being a nurse is considered to be a "typical" female profession but I think being a nurse is a truly noble profession. I have several friends that are nurses and they worked incredibly hard to get their degree. So, lets not disparage a woman for wanting to be a nurse instead of doctor in a film, especially a film about zombies. And now I will get off my soapbox. Allison: Yeah, I know some viewers really objected to that! In the book, Nora goes on to explain that she doesn't think that civilization will around long enough for her to finish medical school. Nora’s character is a bit different in the book - she’s older than Julie and a bit wiser - so her reasoning sits well with me, at least. Amy: I’m choosing to ignore the really terrible CGI from the movie because I don’t think it took anything away from the story.

One of the many "bonies" that menace the Living and the Dead. Via IMBD.com

Allison: I was pleasantly surprised that the CGI wasn't as bad as it could have been given the film’s budget. It reminded me of the mummies from the 1999 movie The Mummy - good enough for the purposes of the movie. And honestly, I thought they were pretty damn menacing! Allison: One last thing about the movie - Richard Roeper (of Ebert and Roeper) gave the movie 3 ½ stars. In his review, he says that he preferred Warm Bodies over other zombie movies and TV shows (The Walking Dead, etc.) because those zombies are predictable. A mutual friend who saw the movie with us took exception to that, and thought that Warm Bodies was no less predictable than other zombie fare. While I can see why someone might say that, I think Roeper meant that the movie didn't follow the usual formula of zombies being your standard unfeeling monsters, devoid of any humanity. Having zombies that retain or regain their humanity (as well as a human falling in love with one) deviates from the standard horror formula, where the story isn't at all about the zombies, but only about the human survivors, and the zombies can easily be replaced with aliens, giant robots or whatever. You're not going to find any multi-dimensional zombies staggering around in The Walking Dead. The Book "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion (Fiction Marion)

Amy: My first thought about the book is that while the movie could be considered YA, I wouldn't classify the book in that way. We have it shelved in adult fiction and I believe that is where it belongs. Allison: Agreed. The writing style is more complex than what you might find in some YA - the use of terms like "Escheresque" and "vertiginous" might throw younger readers off. A good portion of the book is spent with R describing what life as a zombie is like and R’s thoughts on what caused the dead to rise. In these passages the author, I think, is using zombie life as a metaphor for depression - the alienation, the lack of interest or ambition, even the dulled senses of the Dead. Of course, this isn't a theme restricted to “adult” literature, but some younger readers might become bored with R’s continuous ruminations. Amy: At the end of the movie you get a sense that everyone will live happily ever after. At the end of the book you get the sense that although things are getting better, it will take years and years before life returns to pre-plague conditions. Allison: One of the key plot points that happens very differently in the movie and books - and which we can’t really talk about since it’d be huge spoiler - definitely contributes to that. Without giving too much away, what ultimately happens with General Grigio (Julie’s father) in the book as opposed to the movie sort of sums up the ultimate message of each. Amy: Allison mentioned that in the book the character of Nora is different, older and wiser.  I liked both characterizations of Nora.  I liked her sense of fun and humor in the movie and how she was wise beyond her years in the book.  Maybe it is because I saw the movie first, but I think I liked the movie better. Allison: I’m having a hard time deciding which one I liked best, since they’re both so different in tone. The movie is much lighter and the focus is on the romance between R and Julie. The book delves deeper into the inner lives (such as they are) of the zombies. We hear a great deal more from R on subject other than Julie and learn that there is even a zombie society. The zombies hold worship services, have sex, marry and raise children. At the beginning of the novel, R meets and marries his wife and later they are given two zombie children to feed and teach. There’s much more world-building in the book than in the movie, which works really well. If the movie had too much of that - aside from R’s introduction at the beginning - it would have been bogged down and much too dark. One section I really enjoyed and illustrates the side of zombie society we don't see as well in the movie was R's (internal) explanation of why he dislikes being called a "corpse" or a "zombie." When Julie first calls R a "corpse" R thinks, "...I realize she can’t possibly know the sensitive cultural connotations of the word 'corpse' …" R also dislikes it when Julie refers to herself as "human," as opposed to a corpse or a zombie. R thinks of himself as human; a Dead human, but human nonetheless. Amy: Marion did an excellent job giving his characters depth and making the reader feel that the "Dead" were also human. He also did a great job relaying that both the Zombie and Human populations were dead in the sense that there was very little hope that either population would survive.  That being said, I would tell people to read the book and see the movie in any order they choose. Allison: Absolutely! After I read the book, I found the short story that inspired it, I Am a Zombie Filled With Love online. I'm also planning to read the prequel Marion is writing, The New Hunger which right now is only available as an eBook from Zola Books, but you can read an excerpt on Entertainment Weekly's website here. And if you can't get enough of romance and/or zombies, click here for a list of similar books and movies! ~ Amy and Allison, Adult Services