#but there are abt 3 different metas in this post i am not bothering to type

[ssaalexblake]

Somewhere in the bau the ghost of Strauss is laughing at Emily for her using one of her agent's girlfriends as a spy against a man trying to move in on her turf as section chief.

👀

[meggannn]

@theherocomplex said: 

I missed out on the contest because I came to ME post-contest, but that is a steaming pile of bullshit to begin with, BEFORE the heaping amount of erasure/sexism/racism on top of it. This is such a cogent write-up of WHY.

I just got into ME last year so I completely missed out on all of this too and I’m definitely coming to it five years too late haha. so I’m sure this has all been said before. but sometimes it feels like I have five years’ worth of anger to catch up on

@al-spudnik said:

I totally grok this, even though I'm the hypcrite who writes about a default white redhaired "default" shep, arguably because of some shallow self-projection as a white, red-haired fan (I am not proud), but I own that. And GODDD you are right on every point, and I felt all the same discomfort in that beauty contest and her subsequent, like... guhgaghgh sexing up??

In my core though, I really strongly believe there is no "default" shep. It is SO important that this character - as she or he functions in the game - be a lens through which the player may project themselves, and thus, connect with the characters and universe. "canon" interepretations just fuck that up, and all that gets further complicated in fan works, which take on all their own rules and regs depening on what fantasy is being fulfilled.

I completely relate to the urge to have one “default” character to use consistently for the purpose of fic and art, even if your playable character is different (like it is for me -- I usually use Marian in fic/meta but further break down her character in “my headcanon realm” and turn that Hawke into my OC) but somehow even knowing that it’s always default femshep that I just can’t get over lmao.

there are some things that I do think make the most narrative sense for some of these protagonists to be, based on narrative and contextual clues of the story: Hawke as a mage, Inquisitor as a human (who else would embrace the Herald of Andraste thing so easily) or an elf (with all the elf history and Solas stuff). and that’s absolutely not to say OCs who don’t fit that are wrong (like, rogue!Hawke is my all time favorite class and background). but there’s a lot about Shepard that opens itself equally to all of the six backgrounds they make available, and of course you could headcanon one or a combination make the most, but ultimately they don’t have much influence on the story or the depth of Shepard’s character (save except for Arrival, if you had colonist and/or ruthless background). anyway all of this is to say I agree with you, though I would be willing to fight BW in a dark alley over my belief that it makes way more sense thematically, if not within the confines of their own world building, for Hawke and Shepard to be moc or woc

@dpdmstla said:

mmMMM also tbh bioware's thing abt how in the future everyone's more racially diverse always bothered me? like I personally love it, but w/o the actual in-game support/worldbuilding like w/ default shep, it just seems like a way to cop out of actually srsly engaging with race and whiteness etc. and kinda seems like that thing where white ppl "want" to be "oppressed" or be the minority, and also kinda harkens back to racist/eugenicist fears of the white race dying out??

that is a really good point and now I’m surprised I didn’t connect these dots sooner, but now that you mention it I’ve been thinking a lot about how human centrist movements almost undoubtedly stem from white supremacist movements (not just in the sense that the BW team copies their language to write Cerberus propaganda, but also in that I literally believe white supremacists would’ve started human-first movements in the ME ‘verse, and it makes complete symbolic sense to me that Cerberus is being run by an old-fashioned older white man with a genetically-engineered-to-be-perfect white woman as his right hand). running with that, I’d think that puts POC!Shepard’s relationship with Cerberus on thin fucking ice (especially if they’re a sole survivor like my Shep) and to me that’s another avenue to explore, like, what does it say about Shep that they agree to work with them anyway? but also, POC!Shep is now put in an infuriating and compromising position working with terrorists, that would undoubtedly color her relationship with TIM and probably also Miranda, at least until she gained her trust or defected.

on one hand I can understand preferring to cover this in codex entries and side notes in a video game because the main plot is an alien race attacking, not human sociopolitics, but also... if you present a status quo for the human race that differs from today, you should engage with it a bit. like, in one codex entry in kasumi’s loyalty they mention a second american civil war being fought over the usa expanding to include canada and mexico. i guaran-fucking-tee you a major trigger for that war would’ve been due to confederate loyalists and racism against mexicans. and yet we don’t see it mention of it ever again, lol.

as for BW using that canon as a cop-out, that’s true too. it always seemed to me that ME1 had more poc NPCs, and even though we got more with Sam and Steve, by ME2 and 3 the NPCs you don’t interact with were mostly white again. I feel like they addressed this somewhat in Andromeda but as it is it’s mostly inconsistent.

[kaedekayano]

hi so i kind of stalked your entire blog and liked all your metas n more (they're all so good aa) lmao sorry bout that but can i just ask for specifications of sexism and other problematic things in assassination classroom? i remember being like "yikes did they really just say/imply what i thought they did" but i can't really remember exactly what it was and it's been bugging me. thanks n keep being cool!!

ayy hahaha i don’t mind the stalking (thanks for keeping my activity alive, though). i’m sorry for taking so long to answer this, only to give this answer: but i don’t feel wholly comfortable with discussing this in depth.

this is because the way sexism, gender, representation etc. is viewed very differently in japan (not always in a worse way, although of course there’s lots of fucked-up things going on there). i’m not japanese and i’ve never been to japan, so i don’t think it’s my place to talk abt this. quite frankly, i don’t even have much experience with anime (as mentioned in this post), let alone japan as a whole.

that being said, i do complain a lot about the shit in assassination classroom and here are some of the things that bother me, although really, this is just surface-level commentary because like i said, i don’t feel comfortable discussing it in-depth.

sidelining of the female characters: probably one of the first things i noticed about the show. the boys constantly get more screentime and attention than the girls. this pretty much seems to be the norm in shounen manga. still annoys me, but it’s not like i read manga so it sticks out to me more than it should. also, i’m officially renaming rio nakamura Better Isogai and Better Karma because i can. kataoka receives Better Ikemen.

kayano kaede/akari yukimura: i talk every single fucking day about how bitter i am over her writing, which is a trainwreck. she got interesting for about 30 seconds, then became even worse than before because girls can only exist in relation to male characters haha am i right. i have a pretty long in-progress meta post on this topic, so look out for that in the future if you’re curious, although it’ll take a while to finish it. it’s lying in my drafts for now.

also, aguri yukimura: you know, that character who could’ve been really cool but just existed in relation to kayano, yanagisawa, and korosensei, because haha, female characters can’t be their own person and korosensei needed a love interest for no reason when he was already a solid, well-developed character.

treatment of irina jelavic: no one talks abt this (and it seems like she might’ve been treated better in the manga, but i only watched the anime) but like. most of her character in the anime is boobs and comedic humor that relies on sexist jokes. also “bitch” is smth you probably shouldn’t call a woman, let alone so casually.

actually the romances are just bad: this is more shitty writing than anything but ships like nagikae, koroagu, karairi, etc. (no offense to the shippers) felt super forced and seemed a lot like “well haha there’s gotta be straight romance because Why Not.” in several instances, those characters had better chemistry with characters of the same gender.

a note on representation: doesn’t seem to be much of a thing in anime in general so i’m just gonna leave it out.

anyway! my opinion on assassination classroom as a whole is that it’s a garbage show, sexism and other problematic aspects or not (but the problematic aspects worsen it by a lot). there’s tons of problems with continuity, characterisation is often flat and leaves much to be desired, etc., etc. i’m just here because i love the characters, especially the 3-E kids, they are my children and i would die for them and i find them #relatable.