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#in general he's a lot more liked by asian fandoms in general
godekubo · 1 year
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now that i'm thinking about it. like. what is supposed to be the appeal about making ekurei just 2 conventional hot guys doing conventional stuff. idk it just feels so boring to me?
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sarasade · 4 months
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One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".
Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.
That's the TL;DR version of this post. 
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ANYWAY here is the long version
Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".
One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.
Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.
It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.
This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.
People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.
I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.
Anyway if you want to read more:
- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info
-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos
-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.
-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa
- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.
-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge
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jesncin · 3 months
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A Failure of Asian Lois Lane: Pt 2: My Adventures with Superman, an honest discussion
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If I had to pinpoint the fundamental problem with My Adventures with Superman's depiction of Asian Lois Lane it's in their attempt to subvert the classic two person love triangle: Lois loves Superman but is indifferent to Clark Kent. In MAWS, Lois insta-crushes on Clark Kent and hates Superman. In the show's attempt to make sense of this dynamic, Lois' Asian identity becomes at odds with a story meant to touch on xenophobia and immigrant themes.
Let's have an honest discussion about a show that made fandom cheer as an Asian character removed the one thing that made her most visibly Asian.
Disclaimer: While I am of East Asian descent, I am not Korean. I'll be discussing general Asian diasporic experiences but the specifics of Korean culture are outside of my knowledge (as usual I can't and don't speak for every Asian person ever, I am 1 opinion). Secondly, I'll be pulling from my personal experiences every now and then particularly pertaining to being a butch Asian person watching this show. It'll be a mix of formal analysis and personal anecdotes. Thirdly, this isn't an exhaustive analysis of MAWS Lois' character. We'll be sticking to what I consider is relevant to themes of Asian identity and immigration. Lastly once more, I do not believe the MAWS crew had malicious intent in any (of what I consider) poor writing decisions. We're here to analyze and challenge these writing decisions.
Please read Pt 1 of Asian Lois analysis that covers the comics, as it provides the groundwork for the ideas expanded on in this essay.
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We need to talk about Lois' design. In the follow up to MAWS' release, people have been speculating on Lois' ethnicity. CBR writes that the show has "some fans believing that she's at least part Asian" and other articles have the show crew confirm Lois Korean heritage via her hanbok outfit in episode 4. The existence of these articles, my own anecdotal experience of streaming MAWS with Asian friends, and comments I receive from people asserting Lois' Asian identity was never explored in the show ("you'd only know she was Asian if you searched up articles about it"), tells me we have a case of an ambiguously designed Asian woman. Tangentially many people had no idea Livewire, the white haired and blue eyed woman, was meant to be South Asian.
There's a lot to be said about art styles that don't properly stylize ethnic features, but for the purposes of our analysis that means the writing has to deliver the heavy lifting where the design fails. This is the opposite case of American Alien: a comic that relied on the art to portray Asian Lois.
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Let's start at episode 3. In it, Lois finally manages to conduct a private interview with the elusive Superman. When she asks where Superman comes from, how his powers work, etc- Superman comes up empty. In this version, Superman can't talk to his Kryptonian father (Jor-El)'s hologram because of a language barrier, so he knows very little about his alien heritage. He leaves Lois, assuring her he's here to help the people of Metropolis. When Clark Kent congratulates her for interviewing Superman, Lois rebuffs him. "Oh, he's [Superman's] a liar." smirking as she says it. This is the start of the Lois Hates Superman For Being a Liar arc.
I'd like you to consider the optics of an Asian American woman interviewing an alien immigrant who honestly told her he doesn't know where he comes from and is still figuring out who he is, only for her to think he's lying. Because she didn't get the answers she wanted. I can't help but think about my own experiences, where I was asked "but where do you really come from?" or "okay but what's your real name?" I think of my Asian American peers who would honestly say they're from Texas or Atlanta and get a vindictive "you're lying" as a response. People want to hear you're from China. They want their biases confirmed. I think about how I honestly can't tell you where my elders hailed from, because of cultural genocide and language barriers. This scene makes me uncomfortable, but let's press on.
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Episode 4 is where Lois is most visibly Korean. In this episode the trio of Lois, Clark, and Jimmy are tasked with interviewing rich techbro Prof. Ivo of Amazo tech at an investor event. It's a prom episode. Lois wears a "hanbok inspired gala outfit" designed by Dou Hong and Jane Bak in a deliberate move to showcase Lois' Korean heritage. Bak comments "I remember feeling strongly about wanting to inject some aspect of her Korean heritage without disrupting her characteristic as a spunky and resourceful intern/reporter." while the wording poorly implies that Korean heritage is at odds with Lois' spunky personality- I do want to challenge a couple of the decisions that went into this design.
I want to acknowledge as an Asian butch that there are many ways to sport traditional garments and it's okay to mix and match to figure out what reclaiming culture (and your comfort) mean to you. However we're talking about the opportunity to showcase culture in an episode of a fictional animated show. I also encourage cultural gender expression that thinks outside of western white people's idea of gender (in both fiction and real life).
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Whenever artists try to do a non-conforming spin on a cultural outfit, I always have to ask: "what standard of masculinity are we basing this on?" It's clear that MAWS is pushing for a "tomboy" Lois, and this gala outfit is an extension of that. But what's the standards of masculinity in a Korean lens? Men wear hanbok too, so why can't Lois imitate how Korean men wear hanbok, by traditionally accompanying her look with baji (baggy and loose pants)? This design notably has tight pants that hug the form, instead. I know the hanbok look has been modernized in and out of Korea in many ways, but in a show where you have the opportunity to showcase cultural non-conformity, I feel more thought should be put into the outfit outside of a potentially western lens- or the idea that cultural heritage of any sort "disrupts" a character's personality.
Now that we've discussed the design of the outfit, let's look into the narrative role it plays in episode 4. While we can celebrate cultural representation in media, I consider it important to ask "what is this media's relationship with the cultures it represents?" and the answer for Lois' hanbok in this episode is: nothing! It's an aesthetic acknowledgement of culture. "Hanbok" or "Korea" are not terms explicitly mentioned in the show. When Prof Ivo offers beautiful women as compensation for Clark to keep quiet about his company's corruption, Ivo looks over to Lois- who spills food on her clothes, and remarks that she's unclassy. She's not judged for wearing othering cultural clothes- which would have tied nicely into Clark choosing to be silent on issues of Ivo displacing a neighborhood, making Clark realize his complacency actively hurts marginalized people. Despite wearing cultural outfits being a political statement in America, nobody reacts to it. It's clear what the actual goal of this scene is: Clark looks cool for defending his "tomboy" crush.
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In a scene blatantly made for fanservice, Lois offers to sew up Clark's ripped tuxedo by undressing her hanbok so she can reach her little sewing kit. Lois never wears her hanbok again afterwards. This scene haunts me. It's a scene that tells you that fanservice is more important than cultural representation. It's a scene meant to set up that Clark gives his tuxedo to Lois later on for warmth. Lois removing her hanbok is meant for not one, but two fanservice scenes.
Lois talks to Clark at the stairwell. She opens up about her estranged relationship with her father, how her mom has passed away, and how she's been an intern at the Daily Planet for a year with no sign of being hired. This makes the narrative decision for Lois to lose her hanbok far more tragic. Lois being a diasporic child with so few familial ties to her culture would mean garments like her hanbok would hold a lot of sentimental value! It's hard enough finding a cultural outfit that fits with your butchess (many of my cultural outfits are hand made to fit my form and gender expression), and yet Lois unceremoniously loses her hanbok. You would think in Lois opening up about being distant from her parents that Clark would be able to culturally relate with the distance he has with his Kryptonian parents. But the narrative opportunity to link their immigrant experiences is not taken, because the show simply doesn't recognize the parallel between the two.
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Instead MAWS pushes for the Lois Thinks Superman is A Liar thing again. A far less narratively substantial and fundamentally flawed arc. This episode starts with Lois calling Superman a liar and has Lois ranting about him "dodging her questions" (remember, he was honest with her about not knowing his heritage) thereby rendering her interview unpublishable. She resorts to conspiracy tabloids giddily provided by Jimmy for information. She rather cruelly says "nobody normal believes in aliens". We are uncomfortably seeing the build up of Lois being allegorically xenophobic towards alien immigrants- a Lois on a quest to out an alien before he's ready. This is their justification for flipping the love triangle. Lois loves cuteboy Clark from work, and hates Superman for not confirming her biases that would help her publish an interview that would promote her at work. What a love story.
To wrap this episode up: Prof Ivo ends up challenging Superman to a fight so he can flex his Parasite suit to investors, only for it to backfire, destroy his reputation, and greatly damage the Amazo building (remember this it'll come back later). The episode ends with Lois discovering Superman is Clark Kent. Anecdotally, I was so frustrated with the treatment of Lois' hanbok in this episode, that I went online to search if anyone else felt similarly. All I was met with was fandom thirsting over the stairwell scene where Clark and Lois were undressing. Consider the optics of an Asian character who removed the most visible signifier of her heritage (the outfit far more culturally specific where her character design was racially ambiguous) and how people cheered because that meant they could see her in her undergarments. They can happily thirst over the body they desired now that the othering cultural garment was out of the way. It's just clothes after all. Diversity clothes. This show continues to be very uncomfortable, and a little too real.
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In episode 5 Lois is passive aggressive to Clark and Superman, trying to get Clark to admit he's Superman and vice versa. She eventually confronts Clark by jumping off the roof of the Daily Planet, causing Clark to fly down and save her. She proclaims she doesn't want to be friends with him anymore for "lying" to her. This episode caused a huge ruckus online as people were divisive over Lois' actions. Some defended Lois, saying that "women should be messy" and "it's not Lois Lane if she doesn't do something crazy for journalism!". Ignoring that opinion's very flandarized view of Lois' character for a second, let's thoroughly discuss how this relates to themes of immigration and Asian identity.
By this episode, Lois had known Clark for 5 days. In that time she's entitled and angry to the point of friend-breaking-up with him because he wouldn't disclose his marginalized identity to her within less than a week. "A secret is another type of lie!" Lois says, regardless of her lying on sight to both Jimmy and Clark upon meeting them at work, and continued to lie in episode 3 (after promising not to in ep 1) about her intentions to interview Superman. Only Lois gets to lie in this relationship. The hypocrisy of her character is never recognized. Clark calls out Lois for having previously admitted to him that she wanted to dox Superman and "publish all his secrets. MY secrets!". Keep in mind that when Clark brings up Superman feeling uncomfortable about his secrets being published by Lois in episode 3, Lois' response was "yeah, but HE doesn't know that's my plan!". She explicitly admits that she would publish private information about Superman without his permission. But when she's confronted by Clark in episode 5 about that, her response is "I would never do that to you, I didn't know it was you until after the gala. How could you think that?" It's only through conflict of interest that Lois spares Superman of being doxed. He's supposed to magically know this. Extremely cool of Asian American Lois to be entitled to an alien immigrant's identity within four business days.
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Episode 6 wraps up the Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc, so let's quickly summarize what happens. Lois and Clark set aside their fight to find Jimmy in an abandoned scientific facility (he's being cared for by Mallah and the Brain). Jimmy admits (very smugly) to having known Clark was Superman all along because he kept breaking stuff. As the trio are chased by killer robots, they emotionally confront Clark for not trusting them with his alien secret- despite neither Lois or Jimmy creating a safe environment for Clark to come out to either of them (Jimmy outed Superman as an alien on his video channel). The moral of the story is Clark should have trusted his friends anyway, because lying is bad. Not once does the narrative hold Jimmy or Lois accountable.
We have Black Jimmy Olsen and Asian American Lois Lane being entitled to their white passing friend Clark Kent's marginalized alien identity. A joke is made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry, and Lois clearly doesn't understand why an immigrant wouldn't be forthcoming about his identity to his hostile friends at work. This is how that arc ends.
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I'd like to quickly compare this Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc to my favorite scene in Superman Smashes the Klan. In this story, Superman debuts as a strongman superhero instead of an alien, suppressing his more othering powers to pass as human. He jumps instead of flying. Roberta, the Chinese American girl targeted by the Klan, calls Superman out for not using his full abilities to save people who could've gotten hurt. Yet, as she's calling him out, Roberta understands Superman's fear of not wanting to be othered. She sees the way her father dresses up to pass as an accomplished scientist, how he tells her mom to speak in English, how her brother makes racist jokes at their family's expense to fit in. She's not mad at Superman, she's mad at the world that would be scared of Superman if he flew.
"I wish it were okay for you to fly!" Roberta yells. This is a beautifully empathetic scene that shows a marginalized person frustrated at a systemic problem, instead of blaming the marginalized for being marginalized. It's the empathy and perspective we're missing from MAWS.
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Episode 7 is a metatextual episode where MAWS addresses how their Lois isn't like the other Loises you've seen before. Lois and Jimmy are brought on to a team of alternate dimension Loises to find interdimensional troublemaker Mxy. In seeing the other more accomplished Loises in the multiverses, Lois ends up feeling inadequate about her self worth...in connection to being Superman's girlfriend, of course. Because Superman only loves Lois Lane after she wins a couple of Pulitzers, right?
I'm open to a version of Lois Lane that isn't as accomplished as she's historically known to be. I can like a Lois that's young and idealistic, like in Girl Taking Over. It's hard not to compare this episode to 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once, another multiverse story about an Asian American woman who is the "greatest failure" version of all the parallel iterations of herself. But while that movie talks in depth about themes of generational trauma, expectations, and self potential within Asian immigrant families, MAWS uses the multiverse to say that while their Lois is less accomplished, she's still a good girlfriend to Superman! Why should I bother giving grace to a different take on Lois only to get such a superficial story out of it. This is metatextual-ly frustrating.
Why is it, the minute we get an adaptation of an Asian Lois in something as prominent as an animated show, we get "the worst Lois in the multiverse"? Lois is historically depicted as excelling in her field. She's an award winning journalist, jaded and mean from having to work her way to the top. She owns her sexuality, she's the experienced city girl. Instead of taking the opportunity to inform Lois' jadedness and excellence with her Asian American identity like in Girl Taking Over, instead we have an Asian Lois that's simply incompetent at her job. Why are we now adapting historically accomplished women into adorkable quirky screw ups? She went from being sexually confident to being insecure over sending a text to Clark. Is it more relateable to see an Asian woman that way? Is it too intimidating to see a butch Asian woman who excels at her job? Who's romantically confident? This is what MAWS would rather do than humanize her excellence or her failures.
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Are you tired of an ambiguously designed Asian American woman reporter being xenophobic to Superman in MAWS? Well too bad because episode 8 introduces us to Vicki Vale, voiced by Andromeda Dunker (an Asian actress), with explicit notes in leaked concept art to design this character as "Indian American or Asian American" (as if those are mutually exclusive...) inspired off of real Asian reporter Connie Chung. Vicki wants to write a hit piece on Superman and interviews Prof Ivo's assistant, Alex, for a negative biased opinion on Superman (to Lois and Jimmy's dismay).
This episode is where it's abundantly clear the writers don't know how to talk about xenophobia. They'll make nods to xenophobic rhetoric, but they don't know what the rhetoric means. In response to Alex's derisive opinion on Superman destroying Amazo tower thereby bankrupting the company and putting "thousands out of work", Vicki responds "Superman wiped out good American jobs". This is a misplaced nod to Replacement Theory: the fear white people have over people of color, but particularly immigrants, coming to "their" country to "steal" jobs they're entitled to, ultimately becoming demographically replaced by non-white cultures and people. This rhetoric is also commonly applied to Jewish people.
The problem is, that's not what Superman did in the show. Amazo tech was going to go bankrupt because of Prof Ivo's poor business decisions. Prof Ivo made the mistake of antagonizing Superman and ruining his own image. Superman damaging the building came from his fight with Prof Ivo, not a deliberate attempt to get hired (if anything don't the building repair people have new jobs now?). No one's job is tangibly being taken by Superman. None of this is called out by Lois or Jimmy, who know the full story and were even the ones to attack Alex for helping Prof Ivo (let's be real the writers forgot this happened). In fact, Lois and Jimmy don't react to Vicki's Replacement Theory remark at all! It's like they don't even recognize she said something with racist implications!
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Jimmy and Lois meet up with Superman who learns the people of Metropolis are becoming scared of him (from causing some recent property damage in an attempt to hunt a criminal down) and writing mean comments on social media. A user writes "he should go back to where he came from." This is a transparently xenophobic comment. It doesn't work in the context of the show because of a huge plot hole: Superman never publicly came out as an alien to Metropolis. No verified newspaper has explicitly made this fact known. The only source that mentions this is Jimmy's conspiracy channel, which the citizens of Metropolis are apparently treating as fact- therefore (if we're to believe this is how people knew) this means Jimmy absolutely outed Superman as an alien without Clark's consent.
So how does Asian American Lois respond to seeing her alien boyfriend go through xenophobia? She says "Take a break from being Superman and just try being normal." To be fair, the narrative does portray Lois saying the word "normal" as charged (only here at least, not in episode 4), and when she tells Superman to "take a break" it's because he had been overworking himself after suddenly unlocking the ability to hear when someone's in trouble. But was this really the response Asian American Lois thought to say? To her boyfriend going through such explicit xenophobia? At this point it's abundantly clear that racism doesn't exist in the world of MAWS. Being "normal" is to be human. And to be marginalized- or as the show likes to call it "different" is only reserved for white passing alien man Clark (along with gorilla and robot that was once a white man). Any hope of an immigrant parallel between Asian American Lois and Superman should be fully discarded at this point.
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After the events of the previous episode where Superman is kidnapped by Task Force X, in episode 9 Lois regrets being allegorically xenophobic to Clark. At least I think that's what's happening. I often describe MAWS as a show that's extremely squeamish with getting political- and I believe the vagueness of Lois' Dark Night of the Soul moment reflects that. "I said awful things to Clark. I doubted him when he needed us most. I was wrong and now he's gone..." Lois says as she cries to Jimmy. Is this dialogue implying she shouldn't have told a sleep deprived Superman to take a break? What did she doubt about him? This dialogue is purposefully vague about Lois being xenophobic. They've universalized Clark's immigrant identity to such a point that they can't keep their argument consistent. Was Lois in the wrong for telling her overworked superhero boyfriend to take a break? Or was she being xenophobic for telling him to lay low for a while? Or is she regretful for hating Superman for Being A Liar? How is that possible when the narrative sided with her and Jimmy in episode 6? It's woefully non-committal. Regardless, the intent of this scene is to pay off in the climax of the episode.
In the end Superman has a showdown with Prof Ivo Parasite, who has grown into a large godzilla-esque kaiju creature. In typical MAWS fashion, the show is more interested in a surface level nod to Asian media instead of engaging with the specific themes of nature and post-war trauma kaijus and godzilla serve in Japanese culture. I digress. Using Jimmy's massive social media platform, Lois delivers a hope speech that instantly heals Metropolis of its xenophobia towards Superman.
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Lois says to the people of Metropolis.: "People have told you to fear Superman because he's different from us. But we humans are capable of causing hurt and pain too. [...] Because we want to punish those who don't look or act like us." I mean this in the most polite way possible, but who on Earth thought this line was a good idea for Asian American Lois Lane to deliver when talking about white passing man Superman?? Why did the writers feel the need to specify Superman not looking like us. I simply don't understand how nobody considered the terrible optics of this.
After Superman defeats Parasite, episode 10 is about Clark, Lois, and Jimmy celebrating Thanksgiving at the Kents' house. At the Daily Planet, the trio of interns are promoted to finally being reporters. It only took Clark and Jimmy a few weeks while it took Lois a whole year! Now feels like a good time to remind you that Lois as a character was historically frustrated at sexism in the industry and despised how men were treated better than her (including Clark Kent). Well in MAWS episode 4, Lois has no idea why she isn't getting picked up to be a reporter. According to the narrative, and Perry White's dialogue ("you're terrible interns, so the only thing to do was to make you reporters")- she simply didn't break enough rules yet! Thank goodness she had the help of two men to show her how it's done! This is a pretty clear case of character regression. Keep in mind that in American Alien, at the very least that Asian Lois still underwent sexism, and I gave it the grace that the story could eventually expand to talking about both sexism and racism if it were to continue. But in MAWS? I don't think even sexism exists, let alone racism. Somehow Thanksgiving does, though.
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Half the final episode is spent on Thanksgiving shenanigans where everyone's trying to be polite but they dislike Lois' stoic dad (Sam Lane)- who Clark recognizes as the Asian American xenophobic man who tortured him in Task Force X's government bunkers. A parallel is pulled between Sam and Jor-El, two fathers with different ideals when it comes to protecting their kids. There's a huge missed opportunity to have Lois and Sam speak in Korean with each other, to create a parallel in the language barrier between Clark and Jor-El. Maybe Lois isn't as fluent in Korean as Sam is depending on how culturally connected she is. Oh, but the existence of non-English human languages would imply some sort of minority, who would be marginalized, and we can't have anyone outside of aliens and a gorilla be marginalized in MAWS. Non-English languages in America are political, after all. Oh, but they also got a Filipino actor to voice Sam. Generously Lois could be Filipino-Korean but if we're being truly honest it's clear the MAWS crew think Asians are interchangeable.
Let's talk about Sam. In terms of optics, it's already not great that the main villains who represent the face of America's secret government xenophobia are Amanda Waller and Sam Lane- a Black woman and an Asian man. What's doubly notable is that of the antagonistic villains, Sam and Vicki are the most xenophobic. When Sam tortures Superman, he shouts "When is the invasion? How many of your kind will come through this time?" without a hint of irony. Reminder that historically, Asian immigrants were (and still are) considered invaders in America. They are the perpetual foreigner. MAWS loves making nods to Superman being an immigrant allegory, and yet they can't fathom the human beings that allegory is inspired by.
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It's not impossible to portray people of color or even Asian American characters specifically being xenophobic. In Superman Smashes the Klan, Dr. Lee is initially antagonistic towards Superman but we understand why. We see him trying desperately to assimilate into whiteness, to the point he rejects assistance from his Black neighbors who help put out a fire in their backyard (that the Klan started as a threat). We understand why he's a character who would turn on fellow people of color, or fellow immigrants, in order to fit in. For MAWS, if we had a flashback scene where Sam was serving in the military and fought against Asian soldiers, showcasing his loyalty to America over his own people- that would narratively explain why an Asian American character would be xenophobic. Writing bigotry from within marginalized communities requires specificity. Otherwise, you've just got a diverse villain. In the end, Lois defends her immigrant alien boyfriend from her xenophobic Asian American dad.
Whenever I bring up how MAWS fails its characters of color but especially Asian Lois, I'm met with people telling me that "hopefully they'll make Lois more Asian in S2" or "they'll just retcon the bad writing in S1" and I hope this thorough analysis on the treatment of Lois' Asian American identity can help enlighten why I personally think that's impossible. The entire concept is flawed from the very beginning. The story MAWS wants to tell is at odds with Lois' Asian identity. In trying to justify an Asian Lois that loves Clark but hates Superman, they never considered what it means to hate Superman. To hate the alien immigrant. The alien other. What it means for an Asian American character to do all that. MAWS is a show that wants to have its cake and eat it too, they want a diverse world without racism or sexism but still want to reap the clout of lightly portraying Superman as "different".
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They'll make the most surface level nods to Lois' Korean heritage- but remove all of the cultural context from them. They can't be bothered to acknowledge the inherit political identity being a person of color means in America, they're too busy doing that with Clark. I'm told "MAWS didn't have the time to go over Lois' Asian identity, it's a 10-episode series that focuses on Clark's alienation", and to that I say the potential of an immigrant love story and time frame was there, they simply chose to go another direction.
When I bring up things like Superman Smashes the Klan, Girl Taking Over, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, it's not to say MAWS should have used those stories as reference when crafting their allegory. All of those specific media were released while MAWS was deep in production already. Girl Taking Over was released the same year MAWS premiered. What I am saying is that we, as the audience, should have higher standards. Because better media portraying Asian American characters already exist. Better media portraying Asian characters relating to Superman mythos already exists. What we're doing when we celebrate the breadcrumbs of representation that is MAWS, is allowing mediocrity to exist uncritically.
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Shows like Wednesday are known in the discourse for their portrayal of Black characters as being functionally white, yet that kind of scrutiny doesn't seem known for MAWS. The diverse reimagining of Lois and Jimmy is so poorly handled in MAWS that it would honestly make more sense if Jimmy and Lois were white here. The joke made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry would be actually funny if it was calling out his white privilege. If, for whatever reason, the writers are compelled to write a xenophobic Lois that unlearns her bigotry and falls for Superman, I'd rather she be white for that kind of story. I wouldn't personally root for that kind of couple, but at least it'd make sense. It's a common joke among DCAU fans of color that we like to headcanon Lex Luthor as Black, or Lois Lane and Terry Mcginnis as Asian. It's a cruel irony that the one time we finally have a canonized Asian Lois in an animated show, she honestly feels and acts whiter than actual white Lois ever was.
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I mentioned in Pt 1 of my essay that Asian Lois and Superman has the potential to be a definitive love story. One that considers both their backgrounds as immigrants, othered in different ways by American society. The story of a jaded but accomplished Asian city girl who finds hope to be herself again in an alien immigrant superhero. One where she gets the courage to wear traditional clothes again, to practice languages she once suppressed. The story of Superman, an alien immigrant, finding hope in someone with a painfully similar experience.
As of writing, we have yet to see this dynamic in any canon DC media. A second season of MAWS will not give us that story.
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hi! loving your art. I was watching your awesome stories/gifs and I was wondering: how did Chang develop his feelings for Tintin? Did he discover them before or after him? How did he react and why? (English is not my first language so if you see a grammatical mistake, I'm sorry. Also, sorry if so many questions made you feel like you were in a philosophy exam)
Thank you so much! As a contrast to the rest of the Marlinspike team I'm writing Chang as someone who makes friends and develops crushes pretty easily!
I imagine he's had a crush on Tintin for some time, possibly from when they first met. He's been at the mercy of his circumstances for most of his life until that point - Tintin basically makes him feel capable of doing stuff.
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He's pretty heartbroken after the Blue Lotus. Tintin doesn't contact him for years. Chang is struggling to adjust to his new family and is failing at school, having missed out on a good education for a few years prior. Until Tibet he feels pretty hopeless, he will never live up to the time when he took down a drug ring.
His near death experience in Tibet shakes him out of this rut. He starts to travel and take up hobbies like dance and photography. Didi trains him in some basic martial arts. Tintin makes an effort to actually stay in touch this time. Chang has some abandonment issues as he's frequently lost people throughout his life, so he's someone who's willing to give people second chances, even if they've hurt him badly. Chang thinks he's well over his crush on Tintin when he comes around to Belgium for his studies, but falls for him again very quickly!
Unlike Tintin, Chang is a lot more comfortable with who he is. He's used to being the odd one out and has generally low expectations for himself, so just goes with the flow.
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Below I talk a little with how I'm going about writing him and the historical context surrounding this, cw for mentions of racism (sinophobia) and queerphobia:
I'm writing Chang as bi, I thought it would be interesting to explore as Asian men were perceived differently in the 30s compared to today. While Asian men in the West are currently heavily desexualised in the early 20th century they were stereotyped as predatory and deviant. In London a lot of Chinese immigrants were male dockworkers, so when they married white women there was a lot of fearmongering about predatory and disloyal Chinese men.
A lot of depictions of Asian men in Western media reflected these stereotypes (and often used queercoding to push the idea of Asian men being animalistic seducers - General Henry Chang in Shanghai Express (1932) was written to be bisexual while posing as a threat to the white leads). Some examples off the top of my head include Hishuru Tori from The Cheat (1915) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Novels frequently depicted Chinese drug lords with borderline supernatural powers in manipulation.
On the other hand I've noticed how fans frequently depict Chang as someone who's submissive, demure and soft, which ignores how ridiculously brave and proactive he is in canon (stealing documents from police officers, charging into a man immediately after getting shot at by a machine gun, I could go on!). It's a common example of Fandom Racism (not accusing anyone specifically, it's just a trend I've noticed.)
When writing Chang I'm kinda reckoning with two different eras. From a contemporary angle I'm writing him as a love interest, which as an Asian guy I rarely see in media today. I also gotta consider his own time and context, how he would navigate being a queer Chinese guy, and how that would affect his relationship with others and himself.
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worflesbian · 8 months
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Klingons & Racialisation - the Long Post
This post is an overview of the racial coding of the Klingons from their first appearance to the present day, illustrated by quotes from Trek writers, actors and crew members taken from the Memory Alpha article Depicting Klingons, with my own interjected summaries and explanations. It is by no means comprehensive (I likely missed some stuff), and does not offer critical analysis of the quotes provided, but nonetheless is intended to demonstrate irreproachably the open fact that Klingons have always been intentionally written and designed as non-white -- something that fandom consistently fails to take into account when perpetuating racist stereotypes and reiterating racist canon content. I recommend reading the whole article for a more in-depth understanding of the subject, as well as seeking out the existing writing of fans of colour. This post is primarily for reference purposes so I've tried to limit my own analysis and opinions, but I do post those in my Klingon tag as well as more general headcanons and worldbuilding and I'm happy to answer any (good faith) questions this post may raise.
As always, if I have overstepped in any way as a white fan in making this post, I am grateful to be informed and will make any required changes.
Content warning for outdated and offensive language under the cut.
The Original Series
"There is some suggestion that the Klingons represent a Cold Warrior's view of China in the 1960s – swarthy, brutally repressive." (Star Trek Magazine issue 153, p. 66) "And I think he was basing a lot of it on the kind of attitude of the Japanese in World War II...." ("Errand of Mercy" Starfleet Access, TOS Season 1 Blu-ray) The script of "Errand of Mercy" introduces the Klingon look by saying, "We see the Klingons are Orientals," "Spray my hair black, give me a kind of swamp creature green olivey mud reptilian make-up, and we'll borrow some stuff from Fu Manchu, and put a long moustache and eyebrows on me." ("The Sword of Colicos", Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Official Poster Magazine, No. 8) "I think the makeup was called 'Mexican #1 or #2.' That was the name of the original makeup foundation – they actually had kind of racist names at the time, like 'Negro #1' and 'Mexican #2' – which was the basis for the original Star Trek makeups." (Star Trek Magazine issue 172, p. 59) "In the original series, all they wore was a dark face and their black hair," Michael Westmore observed. ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) The Klingons' appearance changed within the original Star Trek series; although dark makeup and heavy eyebrows were the norm, the Klingons of "The Trouble with Tribbles" were much lighter-skinned and more Human-like in appearance.... He noticed that they are not only less like Mongol warriors by having less of a swarthy appearance but also by being slightly not as fierce... ("The Trouble with Tribbles" Starfleet Access, TOS Season 2 Blu-ray) "...they were meant to represent the Communist foes of the United States specifically during the Vietnam War, which was being controversially fought at that time. (Star Trek: The Original Series 365, p. 222) "...let us never set up a situation whereby those adversaries of ours [Klingons] give any indication of ever being anything but highly aggressive and self-seeking opponents." (These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Three)
Here it is explicitly stated that the Klingons were based on various Asian cultures, with the USSR also being mentioned heavily in the article. This influence and the use of "yellowface" is covered more comprehensively in this youtube video Klingons & The History Of Racial Coding. However, the video has some notable gaps which I hope to cover in this post.
Post-TOS (movies)
The Star Trek III portrayal of Klingons took inspiration from Japanese history. "Harve [Bennett] had the notion that the Klingons were like Samurai warriors," explained linguist Marc Okrand. (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, p. 27) Robert Fletcher agreed with Bennett, later saying of the Klingons, "I always liked to think of them as authoritarian, almost feudal, like Japan had been." (The Making of the Trek Films, UK 3rd ed., p. 52) Regarding the make-up, Michael Westmore observed, "Until now, Klingons were brown. Some had a bony ridge running down the middle of their foreheads, long black wigs and facial hair." (Star Trek: The Next Generation Makeup FX Journal, p. 28) "I thought it was an ideal way for us to have our closure too, because the Klingons for us have always been the Communist Block, the Evil Empire. It just made sense to do that story." (The Making of the Trek Films, UK 3rd ed., p. 100) "Gene was really bothered by the Klingons in VI [....] [They] were, in his words, 'too civilized, too decent, too much of the good guys in the story.' [....] [The Klingon detente] was not the way Gene would have handled it. He would have reversed it, he would have had the Klingons being the ones who couldn't handle the peace, with the Federation saying, 'Come on, let's try and work this out.'" (Star Trek Movie Memories, hardback ed., p. 289) "The story never explored the Klingon culture the way I'd hoped it would [....] I was hoping for greater insight into the Klingons." (I Am Spock) Nimoy hoped, in specific, that the movie would provide some important insight into why the Klingons had "always been so angry, such nasty, vicious murderers." Nimoy wanted the insightful knowledge to be an intellectually transformational force, changing the thinking of Kirk and the audience. (Star Trek Movie Memories, hardback ed., pp. 287-288) In an interview in the DS9 Season 7 DVD, Robert O'Reilly observed that a long-running joke among actors who have played Klingons is that they do not want to appear in the Star Trek films as, he believes, the only purpose of a Klingon in one of the films was to be killed off.
Although these last three quotes may not seem relevant, I believe they highlight an important facet of the racialisation of the Klingons. It reads as though Gene Roddenberry was against depicting the Klingons in a more sympathetic light than the Federation, and considering that the Klingons are intended to be non-white, refusing to give depth or motive to their anger in favour of keeping them "nasty, vicious murderers" comes across as fairly racist, especially when these kind of reductive and harmful stereotypes could've been challenged as Nimoy suggests. The treatment of Klingons as disposable villains is also concerning in this context.
The Next Generation
African-American actors were often cast as Klingons in TNG and subsequent Star Trek productions. This practice wasn't racially motivated but was instead carried out because it lessened makeup time, as the performers already had a brown complexion without having to have their skin painted that color. (Stardate Revisited: The Origin of Star Trek: TNG, Part 2: Launch, TNG Season 1 Blu-ray) Tony Todd, who portrayed the recurring Klingon character Kurn, stated, "I don't look at the Klingons necessarily as African-Americans, but it's about tapping into something–they're certainly an alienated people, so maybe that's why African-American actors can identify with those characters. But that doesn't mean it's exclusive to them." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 116, p. 54) Michael Westmore actually changed the Klingon facial design in numerous ways, though. He stated, "I added a Shakespearean style of facial hair and a forehead bone structure based on dinosaur vertebrae and I was able to modify motion picture Klingons for television." (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 59) In "A Matter Of Honor", the Klingons were intended to be used to shed some light on a common social problem prevalent at the time of the episode's making. This was, namely, what it was like to be the only person of either white or black skin coloration while surrounded by people of the other color. The Klingons were selected to illustrate this theme as a spin on the usual arrangement of a predominantly Human crew serving aboard the Enterprise-D alongside Worf. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 176) Two historical societies, the Samurai and Vikings, served as other inspirations, Moore perceiving about Klingon culture, "There was the calm, elegant reserve associated with the Samurai but there was the 'party-down' like the Vikings." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, p. 58) "I stopped thinking of the Klingons as the Cold War adversary," he explained. "I didn't think it fit [....] The place where the Russians were when I was doing the Klingon shows just wasn't as relevant any more." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 19, pp. 64-65) "The Klingons are not evil, tyrannical pirates bent only on pillage and plunder. They have a strict, almost unyielding code of ethics and honor and take their responsibilities as rulers seriously." Following a description of the Klingon homeworld, the memo continued by saying, "Klingon society could most closely be compared to that of Sparta or feudal Japan." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) Having recently seen the film Malcolm X, he imagined the Klingons in the "Birthright" duology as metaphors for black people. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 274; Star Trek: Communicator issue 105, p. 16) "There's a certain way you have to carry yourself. You have to really be able to project the violence and the anger [....] All you have to do is think of the Spartans. They say, 'They'd rather have you come home dead on your shield than come home a coward.' [18]
This is where I feel the video essay previously mentioned falls short -- in the next gen era, Klingons are now explicitly black-coded. While some Asian cultural influences are still cited, they learn more towards the historical and are intermixed with other historical European influences (Spartans, Vikings, Shakespeare) rather than being fueled by contemporary prejudices towards the political enemies of the US as they were in the TOS era.
Deep Space Nine
Fields also generally based the Klingon group on American Western prototypes from the film The Magnificent Seven or, to a lesser extent, Japanese prototypes from The Magnificent Seven's movie source material, Seven Samurai. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (pp. 131-132)) "So, the hair [...] was permed. So, it had more of a curl instead of the straight type look, and by perming it, they were able to kind of give them larger, bigger hair, so it was more like a mane." ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) "I don't know how you could equate Klingons with what's going on in the world today," he admitted. "I think the intention was to make them like samurai. That hairdo they gave them is very much a samurai hairdo. A lot of the fight sequences, the moves with the bat'telh, are very much taken out of the Asian martial arts [....] It's very romantic you know, these three old guys, the Klingon over-the-hill gang." (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine issue 15, pp. 17-18) "It was different for them to get into this makeup, because [...] [the makeup was more elaborate and] the beards were bigger, and they were greyer, and they had curls to them, and the moustaches, they had the Fu Manchu look to them. So, they weren't used to sitting that long to be a Klingon." ("Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Two", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) For recreating some old-style Klingons in "Trials and Tribble-ations", the Klingon-playing actors had to be made up with the same swarthy, shiny brown makeup as used in the original series. (The Magic of Tribbles: The Making of Trials and Tribble-ations) ...he had them unite in song, thinking this was "just the kind of thing that Klingons do" because they are, in his opinion, similar to Vikings. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 449)) "I always saw the Klingons as a combination of Japanese Samurai who haven't had their morning coffee (or tea!) and African Zulu warriors." [25]
In DS9 the only inspirations cited seem to be historical, once again leaning towards feudal Japan and the Vikings. Interestingly although the Klingons here are predominantly dark-skinned, I don't think that J.G. Hertzler, who is white, had his skin significantly darkened to play Martok (at least, not compared to the obvious brown makeup worn by other white actors playing Klingons). Having a white actor play a Klingon without dark makeup could've set a precedent decreasing the use of such practices later on, but no one seems to have picked up on it.
Enterprise
The Klingons of ENT: "Sleeping Dogs" were based on the crew of the Russian submarine Kursk. "For me," said Dekker, "the point was to acknowledge the Klingons as 'people' – to find them in a clear position of distress [....] The idea to 'humanize' their plight was mine, and it wasn't anything I thought about as far as canon. It just seemed right." (Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, issue 41, pp. 10-12) In the final draft script of "Affliction", the altered Klingons were initially referred to as "fierce-looking aliens" and were further described thus; "The aliens have a swarthy complexion, and dark facial hair... they could easily be mistaken for Humans. We'll eventually learn these are Klinqons... but their cranial ridges have disappeared."
At this point in time it seems the Klingons had essentially done a 180 from one-dimensional villains to sympathetic fan favourites, while still retaining the skin-darkening aspect of their makeup and "barbaric" characterisation. Although this is not mentioned in the article's section on the Abrams films, the images provided do demonstrate a level of skin darkening for the Klingons' brief appearance in Into Darkness.
The final section of the article is incomplete, meaning I don't have a lot of information for Discovery's redesign of the Klingons. The sources I can find cite ancient civilisations such as the Byzantines as well as Islamic architecture as inspiration for the set design, with a baroque influence on the costumes. I have heard rumours that the crew of Discovery have cited North African cultures as their inspiration for the Klingons but I can't currently find a source for this. Despite the lack of direct quotes, it's visibly clear that the Klingon makeup is still darkening the skin of white actors, although this time also to non-human blue and purple colours, as well as altering certain features in a racialised way. To elaborate: Mary Chieffo, who plays L'Rell on Discovery, is white and has a very thin nose and small lips, but in costume these are broadened in a way that seems imitative of African ethnic features.
As of the making of this post (early August 2023) I haven't seen any of Strange New Worlds, but from some cursory research its latest episode (Subspace Rhapsody) seems to have put a white actor (Bruce Horak) in brown makeup to play a Klingon. I am deeply disappointed that on a television set in 2023 people can still be darkening an actors skin like this without questioning the racial implications of what they're doing.
Thank you for reading to the end of this post. Please feel free to link to it if you found it useful enough to cite in another context. I would like to reiterate that I am white and while this is an issue I care deeply about it is not one I have an emic understanding of, and if anything I've said here is inappropriate I would be very grateful to be made aware.
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yuikomorii · 3 months
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Ever since some people joined this fandom it’s getting worse. Ayato isn’t even that hard to understand come on now 😵‍💫😵‍💫
// The fandom is getting more immature day by day. Like, I thought we solved these type of things last year??
They say Ayato stans are bad but I’ve never seen one openly slandering a character as much as he gets slandered in the Western fandom. Ok, he’s not your favorite, we got it, but if he’s such a problem to you, open the Notes App and vent there your frustrations. It’s not that hard.
I just find it ironic how this type of behavior is only coming from Western fans. East-Asian fans are way more respectful and chill. They know how to respect the role given to Ayato, without discrediting him or bringing up their favs against him. Most of the people there enjoy Ayato, even if he isn't the main bias for some or the most complex character. They like him because he has a lot of heroic attributes and is DO-S, which adds "spice" and makes a good balance in a game for masochists.
The whole “Ayato stans treat Ayato like the main character too much” is such a boring take. How are they supposed to treat him when Rejet writes such stuff about him to begin with??
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I will also never get why people see him as such a threat for that but okay, I guess. I mean, the other characters still get routes and merch, so it’s not like he’s more “privileged” than the rest.
And I swear, Ayato stans are not rubbing it in your faces when saying that Ayato is the most successful character. It’s true that he’s very impactful, but you should also keep in mind that such a thing doesn’t only benefit Ayato as a character, but also DL as a franchise and Rejet as a company. Given that he sells so much, the good amount of money allows Rejet to generate more content for ALL of the characters. Furthermore, when he appears somewhere outside the DL fandom, him getting attention will automatically result in the franchise getting attention as well.
Last but not least, the entire "he's overrated," "he's not that cool," "he outshines other characters," "x is better" opinions and favoritism claims make me WHEEZE (not in a nice way). Ayato Sakamaki is a FICTIONAL character. This is not a kpop group where actual people are being mistreated; it is simply a WORK OF FICTION. When individuals see a character who gets a lot of attention and is adored by a lot of fans (for example, Gojo, Natsu, Todoroki, Bakugo, etc.), they will find a way to whine about how much they suck, how they don't deserve those compliments, and so on. This is referred to as being ✨insecure over pixels✨. You are free to dislike anything you choose, but keep your negative opinions to yourself or only share them with your friends. Remember: fandoms are supposed to be fun, not battlefields.
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olderthannetfic · 2 months
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https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/739683077572395008/kids-in-my-anime-adjacent-fandom-discoursing-over
Reminds me of the time I found out that most East Asian BL writers actually have a set bottom/top dynamic and that switching is very very rare. I think the author for MDZS/The Untamed said that the main couple shouldn't be switched, and that the Chinese Danmei fandoms do follow that for the most part. As in, most Danmei fandoms do not switch the dynamics of the top/bottom in general, nor do they do much switching at all? Which makes it absolutely hilarious how the Western fandoms keep insisting certain Danmei boys to be switches or switching their dynamics and claiming it's canon. TGCF/Heaven official's blessing seems to be such a case, from the same author as MDZS. Author says Red dude is the top, and White dude is the bottom. Western fandom starts arguing dynamics because there's no porn in the books. (Apparently Chinese censorship bc one of them is a God.)
And just to be clear, I'm just sharing what I got told, so if you don't like it, that's not my problem. If I'm wrong though, I'd welcome the clearing up.
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Sighhhhh.
Anon... Yes, this is roughly correct, but it's also just tonally kind of wacky. It's like if someone sent me an ask going "Apparently, some women ship m/m, but don't quote me on that".
If I don't like it, that's not your problem?
Really?
What a whiny bitch-ass thing to say in someone's inbox, dude.
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Anyway, on the actual topic, yes, 100% strict top/bottom roles have been the norm in many Asian fandoms and, to some extent, foreign fandoms for Asian media.
That doesn't mean nobody ever likes switches there though. There are terms for that. It's just not as common and doesn't sell or get clicks as well.
Yes, you can generally tell from BL/danmei canons exactly who the top and bottom are even if there's no sex. It's like reading a Regency romance novel and figuring out which love interest is "the rake" or whatever. It's more than just who sticks it in: It's a whole constellation of character cliches that go together.
The only reason Western fans can't tell is 1. bad translations that lose the flavor of the original, 2. n00bs not knowing the tropes, 3. willful blindness.
It's like that post from a while back about shizun-fuckers. Yeah, there are tons of ships where the older partner is the top, but this trope is about reversing that, and it's so unbelievably unsubtle.
I've heard that Yami no Matsuei's set of leads is so wacky because the author changed direction on who was the main lead and who was supposed to read as more of a bottom and thus this one dude doesn't read as quite the trope he was probably originally supposed to be.
(Cue reheated zombie wank about who's the bottomiest bottom out of all of the abused woobies in YnM.)
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Re Chinese censorship, it has varied over time. I'm no expert either, so people are welcome to chime in, but basically, a lot of horny stuff is straight up illegal on the mainland and they've been cracking down in recent years in a way they didn't a while back.
A lot of danmei novels will have the less censored version printed in Taiwan.
It's not just about some character being a god: it's about the entire concept of pornography being illegal.
Some decades, you can push the boundaries a lot; some, you can't.
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cardassiangoodreads · 8 months
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There are some good things about The Discourse (TM) today and one of those is that if Firefly came out now, it would be ripped apart and... yeah, okay, I'm someone who has long (not always, but for a long time) thought that show was overrated. But the "social justice" criticisms of it were largely right. Don't make your culture inspired by China and then have zero major Asian characters, just a bunch of non-Asian people badly pronouncing random Chinese words. Don't base your noble-rebels-against-the-evil-empire space western on the actual Confederacy (for a long time I thought the similarities were just Firefly adopting the broader western genre trope of "soldiers on the losing side of a recent war as heroes" which means, while not excusable [if you watch a lot of westerns you know that war in question is almost always the U.S. Civil War, and you should recognize the implications of that especially if you're American] that the Confederate-coding might not have been intentional... but no, Whedon very intentionally based the Browncoats on Confederates). "Sex work is a legitimate enterprise with workers in control in the future, but the sex worker still gets constantly slutshamed by my sympathetic main character who is secretly in love with her" and "it turns out the submissive housewife is actually a con woman taking advantage of how much the supposedly 'enlightened' men in my universe all Really Want a woman like that!" aren't actually feminist, empowering statements! "Objects in Space" is extremely racist! I'm glad we no longer live in the era of the Internet where pointing out any of these basic basic things would get you mocked and told you were ungrateful for the One True Progressive Show. Part of that's because we just have more options now, more shows that are more genuinely progressive and also just thoughtful about these issues more generally — and because, lbh, more recent revelations about Whedon have made it harder and harder to argue that he is beyond reproach especially re: women — but also because it's become more acceptable to talk about misogyny and racism in media in more places. I feel like people focus so much on the downsides of the mainstreamization of social justice lingo and critical-theory-based media analysis that they forget how things used to be. How things still are, in fact... because especially if you log off Tumblr, in a lot of fandom spaces this is still considered out of the norm. You still run into a lot of “Browncoats” who get ultra-defensive if you suggest their show is anything less than perfect, especially in how it treats women and minorities. We still have a very long way to go. But it used to be so much worse.
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dreemurr-skelememer · 6 months
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Greetings Kia!
To give a broad context, I have been a fan of UTMV since 2020. Even though I certainly have a certain level of difficulty in the English language, I will try to express myself in a cohesive and clear way.
As I previously expressed, I have been an active fan of the UTMV community since 2020 when the new Ink!Sans design was made available to the public. The design itself was simply wonderful in my eyes, whose unfamiliar with the original source, so I ventured into the community and simply loved the creativity contained here. So I decided to make my home on this place and have been present ever since
Therefore, something that caught my attention in the design of Ink!Sans was its clear inspiration from Japanese culture, and as a Japanese person with a Latin American nationality, I loved this detail that was so obvious to everyone's eyes (I say this due to the amount of comments in the original post recognizing Ink!Sans as one of Japanese origin). So I recognized this character as an Asian 'person' ever since, due to his *literal* East Asian origins (Although it might have been because of my self-identity, i still have concrete proofs to why he's such).
But recently I have observed a certain flow of people who refuse to recognize and draw Ink in this previously mentioned way, when I say about refusal' I really do mean it that way, one day I was meet with an 'I don't care' when explaining this matter to someone on this community. There are also 'redesigns' people made of his new design that completly erases this aspect to replace for 'French' ones.
I do understand that people can have their own headcanons and such, but going as far to erase that part of his character just really rubs me the wrong way.
Other than that, i've also witnessed cases of people who, after discovering that Ink has French nationality, try to argue that this rules out the fact that he's Asian, or worse, that he's*less* of an Asian because of that.
As an appreciator of cultures and human ethnic diversity, I'm extremly aware that having this line of thinking shows how stupid a person is since Asian people can live outside of Asia. But as a second generational immigrant of Japanese parents, this level of thinking really does affect my own self indentity, putting in mind how often Asian immigrants are considered outsiders because of their race (when they're living outside of Asia of course).
I'm sorry if this sounds stupid or rather too emotional for the matter, putting in mind how this is all about a silly skeleton boy. But this distorted vision on what makes someone 'more' and 'less' of an Asian really does affect me, since it already happened in real life. You don't need to answear my plea but i just wanted someone to talk too about problems in Fandom.
Take care!
i completely see and understand where you're coming from, anon!
it really is a bit of a problem, there's a lot of issues in the fandom when it comes to race and it really sucks to see erasure like this
thank you for telling me your thoughts abt this anon <:) i hear and see you.
it's so frustrating to have your representation be erased simply in favor of factors that don't make sense. you deserve to be seen even in little ways!
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39oa · 4 months
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nhl x f1 fandom survey results
hello there! about two months ago, @andreisvechnikov and i posted a form meant to gather data from fans on tumblr of both f1 and the nhl so we could take a look at demographics, trends, and then subsequently share interesting corresponding insights.
in total, our form received n = 102 responses — honestly not that great of a sample size for stratifying data by teams when considering that there are 32 nhl teams and 10 f1 teams, so a lot of findings come with a large caveat, but hopefully this post will be interesting to you anyway! (of note is also that all of this data was collected before the nhl regular season began, so hopefully we can rerun this experiment sometime next year when the seasons are running concurrently and see how results have changed then.)
unrelated to our survey, @sergeifyodorov also polled hockey fans on their favorite teams a while back; his results will be referenced as well throughout this post! he was extremely kind and generous enough to send over his data so that we could play around with it on our own, so thank you again for that!!! one last time, please note that our results are not easily comparable because of different sample sizes and team/blog reach (for example: the leafs were heavily underrepresented in our data, but i'm pretty sure it's because the form simply never made its way to that corner of hockeyblr and not because leafs fans are statistically less likely to enjoy f1 LOL...)
without further ado:
DEMOGRAPHICS
"Where do you currently live?" + "How old are you?"
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out of 102 participants, an overwhelming amount — 85.3% — live in north/central america or europe, and most respondents were also between the ages of 18-25. since the nhl is based in north america and f1 teams are (mostly) based in europe, i was curious to see how fandom trends varied across these two demographics specifically.
EUROPE VS. AMERICA
"Do you consider yourself more of an F1 or hockey fan?"
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interestingly enough, 2 in 3 of the european respondents said that they like or follow hockey more, with only 15.15% preferring f1. asian and north/central american fans were a little more evenly split, with 38.9% north/central american fans saying they liked f1 and hockey about the same. however, altogether 89.2% of global respondents said that they prefer hockey OR that they like both sports about the same, so it seems that fans in our survey skew more toward hockey in general.
"Do you follow any top-division hockey leagues outside of North America?"
again, since f1 is primarily based in europe and since europe boasts a huge hockey market outside of the nhl, this question was aimed at understanding interest in other top-division hockey leagues outside of north america. more specifically — not anything like the ahl or ncaa but instead leagues like the shl and liiga.
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the majority of the respondents who said they followed top-division hockey outside of north america were, unsurprisingly, based in europe, with over half (54.5%) claiming to follow other leagues and 1 in 4 (24.2%) preferring these to north american hockey.
as for north/central american respondents, a large majority — 85.2% — claimed to not follow any leagues outside of north america. here were the leagues mentioned at least twice:
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"Do you follow professional leagues for any of these following sports?"
for this question, we gave several multiple-option choices of obvious sports and also allowed respondents to submit their own answers if we missed any. here were the most-commonly followed professional sports outside of f1 and the nhl, filtered to at least 2 responses:
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interestingly, football and baseball were on par at 26.5% — or about 1 in 4 — each, although the most common response was actually none; 37.3% of respondents said they only watch hockey and motorsports for professional sports. the sports that received one vote each were: volleyball, tour de france, swimming, pro wrestling, gymnastics, figure skating, cycling, climbing, and australian rules football.
TEAM POPULARITY
NHL STATS
"What is your favorite NHL team?" + "If you like multiple NHL teams, feel free to name any others below." (&lt;;- capped at 3)
in order to rank each team — despite different voting methodology and sample sizes from both surveys — i normalized a popularity score based on a weighted value, composed of how many people voted for it as their favorite team and then how many people mentioned it in the "other teams i like" question. each team was then graded relative to the top team, in our case dallas and in cody's case pittsburgh.
in the table below, the numbers in purple correspond to our survey and the numbers in grey show cody's results as reference. as you can see, toronto is very underrepresented in our data, while dallas is considerably more popular and tops the chart. 3rd-place vancouver was also our most commonly mentioned "other" team with 19 votes, despite only being 6 people's favorite team.
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does this mean that fans of both f1 and hockey are statistically more likely to enjoy dallas than your average hockey fan? or does it just mean that i'm primarily a dallas stars blog and this was the audience i accidentally reached when sharing my survey? (most likely the second) the world may never know!!!
another way of looking at the popularity differences across both surveys is with a little scatter plot. same data, just different presentation!
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F1 STATS
"What is your favorite F1 team?" + "If you like multiple F1 teams, feel free to name any others below."
not much that needs to be explained here — mercedes and ferrari were far and away the favorites, but red bull and mclaren were also fairly popular! the least popular team of all was haas, with only one person mentioning it as a team they liked and no one voting for it as their favorite team.
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interestingly enough, 1 in 3 (34) of respondents said that they had no favorite team at all, with this response scoring higher than any single team (mercedes only had 21 "favorite" votes, although it had 36 total responses). this was a large contrast to the nhl results, where only 6 people answered none for their favorite hockey team — meaning that 94.11% of respondents claimed a favorite nhl team!
(perhaps this means that f1 fans are less likely to be loyal to a team and instead prefer to follow drivers' individual careers, or that team allegiances are simply stronger in hockey fandom. or maybe not! who knows.)
something else i was curious to see concerning the most popular teams was another location distribution, although this time i didn't want to simply calculate percentages straight-up since we already know that the global distribution skews mainly toward north/central america and europe. because of this, i filtered only teams that had n >= 10 votes and calculated the difference for each percentage from the global average, so i could see which teams were more biased toward a location than "expected."
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for f1: ferrari, mclaren, and red bull all had slightly higher american interest than average, with red bull especially skewing lower on the european side.
for hockey: dallas had higher than average interest in oceania, with pittsburgh scoring higher in asia and seattle being especially strong in north/central america (and thus less so in europe). toronto, carolina, and florida also had higher support in europe.
(note again that these are very small sample numbers, especially for teams with less than 20 votes!)
+ just for fun, here's how the top 4 other sports (football, baseball, american football, and basketball) skewed location-wise.
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probably not much of a surprise here, although interestingly europeans were more likely than americans to say they only followed motorsport and hockey.
PLAYER / DRIVER POPULARITY
"Who are your favorite NHL players?" + "Who are your favorite F1 drivers?"
when it came to calculating the most popular players, we asked that survey respondents list up to three of their favorite players, then assigned 3 points to the first player, 2 to the second, and 1 to the third. using this weighted count, i ranked drivers and players using a normalized score.
86 unique nhl players were mentioned for this question. out of them, 84.9% (73) are still actively playing in the nhl. the most popular active players were sidney crosby and quinn hughes, while the most popular inactive player was paul kariya, with 2 mentions and a score of 11.76%.
using the same process, 39 unique f1 drivers were mentioned for this question, this time with 95% (19/20) of the current grid being represented — the only driver not mentioned a single time was nico hülkenberg. the remaining 20 drivers were either retired or reserve drivers. lewis hamilton was far and away the most popular driver in this survey, while the most popular inactive driver was 3rd-placed sebastian vettel with a relative score of 61.18%.
here are the top 25 for each sport alongside their corresponding teams:
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as you can see, the most-represented team in the nhl top-25 is dallas, with 4 players (robertson, hintz, heiskanen, oettinger) making the cut! other teams to have at least 2 athletes in the top 10 are edmonton for the nhl and alphatauri for f1.
F1 X NHL CROSSOVER
this was the main reason we created this survey in the first place. our burning question was: Which F1 teams do fans of certain NHL teams tend to like — and vice versa?
in order to calculate this, i mapped all the nhl teams each respondent voted for to all the f1 teams they voted for, assigning 1 point to each. so if someone had a favorite team and named three "other" liked teams for each sport, that would be 8 points on the matrix altogether. i then filtered out any nhl team that had less than 20 total tallies for f1 teams and created the chart below:
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i also removed "none" votes since i was more interested in the distribution of interest strictly across f1 teams. finally, i filtered out the f1 teams with negligible amounts of votes and created another percentage chart relative to the global average (since we "expect" mercedes and ferrari to be most popular overall):
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some summarizing thoughts:
DAL and VAN fans were both less interested in red bull and ferrari and more interested in mclaren and williams
NJD and PHI both voted less for mercedes; the former preferred ferrari and the latter red bull
CAR didn't have huge discrepancies across the board, but skewed a bit toward red bull and williams
COL had the lowest relative interest in mclaren of all teams, while SEA had the highest relative interest in williams
again, these sample sizes were pretty small so maybe it means nothing at all. i'd love to run this survey again with more responses and maybe also restrict the team choices to only 1 favorite + 1 other team per sport in order to really drill down into people's preferences, but hopefully this is interesting anyway!
FANDOM ORIGINS
i always love learning about how people got into a fandom, so we also asked respondents how they got into f1 and hockey, with the following options being provided:
Grew up around it/Family
Hockey or F1 RPF
Introduced by friends (online or IRL)
Discovered individually through fandom content (gifs, YouTube, podcasts, etc.)
Hockey books & romances (Hockey)
Drive to Survive (F1)
Other films, documentaries, etc.
3 respondents clarified that they specifically discovered hockey through reading the webcomic check, please!, but i decided to implicitly include this in the "hockey books" category. a few of the "other" options for hockey also specifically mentioned the olympics.
here was the distribution of responses, noting that the question was multi-option so there is overlap:
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i also made a side-by-side bar chart to note differences between f1 and hockey origins. in this case, i paired "hockey books/romances" with "drive to survive," since i see them as the two biggest respective examples of mainstream media movements for each fandom (around social media/rps spaces i should say), the former being mainly based in booktok.
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as you can see here, a considerable amount of fans got into f1 through dts (1 in 5). in terms of fanfiction, hockey rpf was a lot more influential in getting people into hockey than f1 rpf was in getting people into f1 (23.7% vs. 11.3%). lastly, hockey was also slightly more common as a childhood/family sport than f1, although only by a few percentage points — 28.9% of fans grew up with hockey and 23.2% grew up with f1.
of course, i couldn't end this question without doing another location analysis, which gave some interesting results:
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for f1, the overwhelming majority of european respondents said that they grew up around f1 or were introduced to it by family — 51.5%, or over half (the chart says 44.7% because of multi-option overlap). in contrast, only 24.1% — or 1 in 4 — of north/central americans said this. their results were much more evenly split in general, with drive to survive and fandom content ranking considerably higher.
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for hockey, the distribution actually looked quite similar between north/central americans and europeans, although americans ranked a little higher in terms of growing up around the sport. it's pretty much the same though — the main difference is that a good chunk of the "other" votes for the europeans specified getting into hockey through the olympics. altogether, respondents from asia, oceania, and south america mostly discovered hockey through a mixture of rpf and hockey books, although these are very small sample sizes so not fully reflective of overall experiences.
OTHER MOTORSPORTS
"What other motorsports do you follow?"
we were also interested in knowing what other kinds of motorsport people liked.
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interestingly, north/central americans had the smallest proportion of f1-exclusive respondents, with 37.7% saying f1 is the only motorsport they follow. here were the series that received at least 10 votes:
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indycar was by far the most popular "other" motorsport series, with motogp, nascar, and general feeder formulae (f2, f3, etc.) faring well too. unsurprisingly, you can also tell at a glance that there is overwhelming american interest in indycar and nascar compared to other series!
CONCLUSION
that's about all we've got at the moment. if there's anything else you'd like to see more of, or anything you're confused about/think doesn't make sense, feel free to reply to this post or shoot me an ask :') thank you again for reading and i hope you enjoyed this little post!!! 🥲❤️
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maningning · 2 years
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In a recent episode of the podcast Busty Asian Beauties, me and Crystal finally got to discuss asian fetishization in supernatural. We went into a pretty long discussion on how asian fetishization came to be, and why it is bad and why Supernatural pushing it for as long as they did is actively harmful to many asian people both inside and outside the US. At first, I honestly had apprehensions on whether this discussion was even necessary because I was under the assumption that everyone was just aware of these things, but apparently not!
If you are one of those people still wondering why asian fetishization is actively harmful, the portion of the episode linked above where we discuss it goes from 54:08 - 1:15:09. I have included a transcript of this conversation under the cut.
Note that we are not academics on this matter, and most of what we say are from our own readings and personal observations. Still, I would appreciate if you use this discussion as a starting point to your own awareness into why asian fetishization in supernatural is bad, and why you should work on making the fandom a more inclusive space for us asian people, as well as other people of color.
Here are some further readings that we included in the episode description as well.
White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory of Asian Feminist Jurisprudence by Sunny Woan
Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment by Sumi K. Cho
"My Body Was Not Mine, but the U.S. Military’s" Inside the disturbing sex industry thriving around America’s bases by David Vin
G: We're here.
C: So Sam opens his laptop. And he goes like, "Were you on my computer? Because, like, it's frozen now. On bustyasianbeauties.com!" [laughs] Okay. So-
G: Yeah.
C: This is like- this is a pretty like, fleeting mention, but it definitely- it starts a trend throughout the show, so we are gonna like, talk about it in depth here.
G: I would say Busty Asian Beauties is the longest and biggest running gag in the show.
C: Yeah.
G: So yeah. This is gonna be quite long. Well, I mean who cares. Strap in, though. [laughs] We're gonna have a discussion about Asian fetishization.
C: Yeah. Oh god, how do we start? We have our Google Doc, but I don't know who's starting. [laughs]
G: You can start.
C: Okay, so, Asian fetishization is a pretty common thing in the West. And generally, like, most of the literature out there and most of the anecdotal evidence out there is more about East Asian and Southeast Asian women, so generally, when people talk about Asian fetishes or "yellow fever," like, it's about that. There are like, different issues that other like, Asian groups face. But yeah, so generally, white people have fetishes for Asian women where, like, the traits that they generally think are common to all Asian women or find attractive in Asian women are like, ideas that they're docile or submissive, but like, really good at sex.
G: Yeah.
C: There's like, stereotypes about like, Asian women having like, really tight vaginas or something? And then, like, the physical traits that they often hone in on are like, daintyness or pale skin, and like, things that sort of verge on like, hairlessness and things that are more common with like, prepubescent women. So yeah, that's like, generally, what the fetish is.
G: Yeah. I would say that leans more on the East Asian side. In the Southeast Asian side, like, it leans more on exoticism, right? Like, "Oh, this is an exotic woman who can do exotic things." Yeah.
So let's do a little view on the history of why this is. Like, why is Asian fetishism a thing? It all comes back down to imperialism, you guys. [both laugh] This is where it all comes back to. And, I'm using like, broad terms here. Like, "the West," "the East," but basically, like, I'm talking like, white European and, later on, like, white American and American people view like, Asian people as like, a conquest, right? Like, there's a lot of instances of military attacks and conquest in the Asian geographical area. And with war, there usually comes a lot of like, violence against women, specifically. Because women are seen as spoils of war, and women are seen as like, the reward, in a way, for like, men who go and conquer places. So the idea of, you know, violence against women and rape and imperialism all go hand-in-hand. And this is further exacerbated by a lot of colonialism being based on the idea that, like, the white man is helping uncivilized people. So it comes off from that idea to like, "we're actually doing these people a favor by doing these things to them."
C: Yeah.
And yeah, a lot of this- like, basically a lot of like, American and like, Western anxieties about military power in Japan and other parts of East Asia. Like, as a reaction to that, there was like, this feminization of the East where, like, in order to feel like they could conquer it more easily, they like, emasculated Asian men- which actually like, led to like, a new wave of homophobia in China, like because they were like, "We have to show that we're not sissies!" But anyway, like, back to the general thing- yeah, so emasculation of Asian men and then like, oversexualization of Asian women, because, as you mentioned, like, women are considered spoils of war. Like, dominating a woman, like in Asia, through rape or through like, some kind of consensual sexual intercourse is considered like, domination of like, the men who like, own her or whatever. I mean, you see this concept in like, the "I'm gonna fuck your wife" jokes too, right? Like, that's the way you show your dominance over like, an enemy force.
G: Yeah, you use their women.
C: Yeah. There are a lot of examples of this throughout history. For example in World War II, I feel like we've all heard about like, Japanese comfort women, which was when the Japanese army would either like, deceive women and girls into like, joining brothels or like, literally kidnap them from their homes. And these were like- they could be like, like, 13-year-olds, you know? And like, force them to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. What isn't mentioned as much as that is US soldiers in the area also like, used these stations, like, they would pay to rape these women as well. And like, there's like, in general- there has been like, a lot of like, thriving sex industries with like, people who are like, coerced into being there that are like, still near military bases today. And, I mean, yeah, so like, a lot of that shaped- like, that shaped like, Western perceptions of Asian women as like, always being willing, and it also- people were also more willing to do those things because of previous conceptions of Asian women that were formed through like, literature.
G: Yeah. For example, in, I guess the United States, one of the most prominent portrayals of geisha culture in Japan is the book Memoirs of a Geisha, which is a book that was written by a white man. And the research that he did on the book was he interviewed this woman who worked as a geisha in Japan. And she actually sued him.
C: Yeah, she sued him for breach of contract and defamation of character.
G: Even in media portrayal, like, for example, in movies or television, there's a lot of portrayal of Asian women being, like, submissive or such. A very specific thing that's happening is, for example, portrayal of robots as like, specifically Asian, like Asian women. At the top of my head, like, Ex Machina does this, where an Asian woman is a robot and she is basically like, she has no lines, and she's used for sex and for services. Meanwhile, like, another robot that is a white woman actually has agency and shit. You know, s tuff like that.
C: Yeah. And also back to your point about like, white people viewing themselves as civilized and viewing themselves, like, going after Asian women as like, civilizing the uncivilized, I think we see this in, like, Madama Butterfly and like, Miss Saigon, which is based off of that. Where it's like, "Oh, this poor languishing Asian woman who wants- like, she's in such a bad situation, and then this white soldier, like, comes over and like saves her for a little bit, and then he abandons her and she kills herself." [laughs] Like- it's- what a narrative. [G laughs]
And, okay, yeah, so Miss Saigon is set during the Vietnam War, during which there were like, a lot of relations between American soldiers stationed there and Vietnamese women. And, you know, like I'm sure some of it was consensual, but you know, the power dynamic of you being like, a white soldier stationed in this country where like, you know you could like, do anything you want to these people and, like-
G: Yes.
C: - the courts are not gonna go after you for it is just- it's not good. Yeah, I think this is where I'm gonna recommend When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, which is a memoir written by a woman who was like, around during the Vietnam War, and there's a movie called Heaven and Earth that's based off of it, which I watched in class, and I thought was like, pretty good. It's just about her experience. It's like, a semi-autobiographical thing about her experience during the Vietnam War, where she does end up like, marrying an American military contractor, and it doesn't deal directly with Asian fetishes, but I think it gives you a good idea of sort of the environment that these women were in during the time and the ways that even a relationship that seems like it's good and is like, "saving" you from this war-torn country can like, be very bad for you as well.
I mean, so like, all of this has had lasting effects. Also, going back to sort of before all this wartime stuff, something that people don't know about very much in US history is that before The Chinese Exclusion Act, there was the Page Act of 1875, which was a reaction to Chinese immigration into the US, but specifically like, immigration of Chinese women. I think the text of the act itself was just like, "Don't let, like, undesirable immigrants in," and that's defined as- the only part of that definition that got enforced was like, East Asian women who they suspect were coming over to do sex work. And, I mean, this was sort of just based off of the idea that, like, the Chinese women coming over were immoral, they were going to like, lead white men into sin. There was also, like, people saying that they carried like, different germs and diseases that like, could infect the American population. And the whole process of like, inspecting a woman to make sure she wasn't coming over to work as a sex worker was like, extremely invasive, and they didn't- they basically didn't let anyone in. And I think this shows both, like, the already existing concepts that like, these exotic Asian women, were super sexual and were like, just here for you to do whatever you want with them-
G: Yeah, it shows you that the way Asian women are treated is bad, both for outside of the US and inside of the US, which is a trend that is still present to this day.
C: A few examples of this, like, continuing into the modern day that you can see is, for example, I know there have been studies that have shown that like, one-third of like, porn in the "torture" category features, like, a white man torturing an Asian woman. And like, there's like, a really big sex tourism industry in some Asian countries, such as Thailand, so like, there are like, white men from the West going there to have sex with like, people who might have been coerced into being there, might be underage, etc. And like, yeah, generally, like, the idea that Asian women are submissive, you can do anything to them, and like, that's why they're attractive has also shown up in like, some studies done on dating apps that show that, like, basically, every race of man besides Asian men, like, have like, a marked preference for swiping yes on Asian women. And then, obviously, I think the most recent, like, big thing about this was the shooting in Atlanta in 2021 of like, several people at Asian-owned massage parlors, specifically done by a man who said that he was doing it because he had like, a sex addiction that went against his religion, and this was his way of fucking coping with that, I guess? Like, I don't think that it's a coincidence that he was targeting like, Asian massage parlors, especially because he's mentioned that in the past, he's gone to massage parlors for like, sex when he was like, breaking his like, celibacy or whatever, and like, a lot of these massage parlors are operated by Asian people and, like, involve like, sexual favors.
G: To wrap this up, I want to talk about the- not as recent as 2021, but this was from 2014- it was a case in the Philippines where a US marine soldier murdered a Filipino trans woman who he was having sex with. And it's a very significant case because it was the first homicide case that was actually, you know, pushed through, and a guy was convicted for. I mean-
C: An American soldier-
G: A US soldier was convicted for after like, a visiting forces agreement was signed back in 1998. And the agreement, basically, is that, like, soldiers can come into the Philippines- American soldiers can come into the Philippines and do trust exercises with our soldiers from the Philippines, and all that, which, you know [laughs], is a sign of US imperialism that- Overall, the case was very significant for many reasons, including that, and also the fact that Jennifer Laude was a trans woman, and the guy used that fact to lower his sentence from murder to homicide and all that. But, basically, he was convicted, but last year, or was it 2020? But pandemic era, he was released by our government. And, of course, they don't say this explicitly, but everyone knows that he was released because it's a good bargaining chip. Because, you know, pandemic time is very difficult, we need those vaccines, I guess, let's let the American man out. And also, like, throughout this entire process of getting this guy convicted, the US did not want to give him up at all, and it was like, a real battle to get him convicted, so the fact that it was- like, he was just given up back to the United States- that's the reality of the situation. Like, imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, sexism, racism, these are all tied up together, and these are not things that we can extract from each other, and Asian fetishizism- is that a term?
C: [laughs] Sure.
G: Asian fetishism adds on to that, like, contributes to that, and is caused by that. So yeah. It's a complicated topic, and we've talked for a while, but we will still be linking some things in the description if you want to read more stuff about this.
C: Yeah.
G: It's just a conversation we wanted to have, especially with the title of our podcast, and-
C: [laughs] Yeah. I guess, just to to mention one more thing, if you guys are like, "How is- like, you've gone, like, way too far from the topic. How is this related to Dean's Asian fetish?" Remember when John Winchester volunteered to fight in the Vietnam War?
G: [laughing] Yeah!
C: 'Cause, like, when we're talking about like, these atrocities, and like, these stereotypes coming from like, US involvement- US military involvement in Asia, like, John Winchester in the world of Supernatural was part of that. He either did those things or was friends with people who did those things. And also like, Sam and Dean were both born pretty close to the Vietnam War era as well. So like, if you think that John wouldn't have passed those ideas down or that the general environment they grew up in wouldn't have passed those ideas down, like, you're wrong. Like, yeah, no [laughs], this is like, really directly related to like, Dean’s Asian fetish, actually.
G: Yeah. A couple episodes back, you- Crystal- you said, like, "I wonder, like, where did Dean get these ideas of Asian fetishization? I wonder what kind of magazines John had under his bed?"
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tbh you are so real for talking about the misogyny targeted to mei & other women in the lmk fandom. in general its like people only value mei as: a: the wingman to some basic mlm ship or b: macaque 2.0. its honestly crazy how so many male side characters overshadow her in the fanbase despite not even having a FRACTION of her screen time. idk chat i feel like the reason people dont care about mei but care about some random male side/background character is less because they're inherently more likeable but because some of you view women as inherently less likable. and everyone is always like "mei is so girlboss pussy cunt slay shes the only reason theyre still alive because she keeps them safe from their silly boy shennanigans shes their ultimate wingman shes so badass shes their lesbian best friend i totally paid attention to her when i watched this show LOL" and even ignoring the obvious misogyny here (ie. how people reduce her to being the male characters babysitter) its like... okay... i know mei is cool & badass already... could you name literally ANY other character trait she has. like people just value her as being "the braincell" who can get red son and mk together or something stupid and its like are we having fun still is this still fun. literally every day i go into the mei tag its like "look at mei shes red sons wifey and shes vaguely in the background of this drawing of red son and mk staring into each others eyes #trafficlighttrio am i right oh look shes macaques niece now this post is about ao lie why is it in the mei tag"
and thats literally JUST talking about mei and it doesnt even begin to cover the other female characters. chang'e constantly gets reduced to being red sons aunt/mom/big sister despite them like. not having any actual interactions in the show. lady bone demon constantly gets overshadowed by her minion who has like 2 seconds of screen time, or she gets made into a cartoonishly abusive madwoman who people call lady bitch demon. just in general people act like shes a horrible person for like. being a villain. liks yeah the trying to destroy everything was bad but also she was an antagonist and thats what antagonists do LOL. spider queen gets completely ignored. princess iron fan gets made into a cartoonishly abusive mother so that way red son can have a poor angsty backstory and some male character (usually nezha, macaque, swk) can take care of him.
(also theres just a great deal of ethnocentrism in the lmk fanbase? like im white so take what İ say here with a grain of salt but so many people will misconstrue aspects of chinese culture for their own personal hcs. people will say male characters are transfem or nonbinary while completely ignoring the time period/culture their from where thats the norm. like yippee youve implied that an east asian man is feminine/emasculine because he has long hair. how do you not see the negative connotations with this. people also turn pif (& lbd to an extent) into a dragon lady which obviously has negative racial connotations lol.)
anyway this is where my unhinged rambling ends have a good day have a good night İ had more to say here but İ reached the text limit. İ dont see a lot of people talk about the misogyny thats prevalent in the lmk fanbase so İm glad youre pointing it out lol.
Yeah, I totally hear you. The lmk fandom has plenty of issues with misogyny and, like you said, ethnocentrism. It's definitely something worth having a discussion about, along with these issues in fandom as a whole.
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rikeijo · 7 months
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Hello! :) Hope I don’t seem like I am trying to cause drama. 😅 I would like to ask how different and / or similar is the YOI fandom in Japan compared to the English fandom? Another thing I’m curious about is how do Japanese BL / GL fans view view Western shows with LGBT+ characters? For example does The Owl House have a lot of GL fans or do they not really care about the show?
Hello! Thank you for the message!
I don't think that it's trying to cause drama... In case of YoI and all the very unusual things that happened with this IP, if we try to understand why it happened, imo, it's impossible to see the whole picture without taking into consideration how Jp anime industry&fandom perceive LGBT+ related stuff.
The main difference is that, in case of anime like YoI, in Jp, majority of people think "fujoshi" when they see it, not "gay representation/ LGBT".
This is a quote from an article I happened to read recently (link) that answers a lot of your questions. A person, who works for a company that specializes in BL marketing, talks about Jp and Asian BLs.
"In Japanese BLs there is a lot of settings and cliches expected to appear in the story. There is so much that I'll only give you an example here, one that is difficult to explain in words - for example, the seme (the man that leads in the romantic relationship) is cool and the most popular person in the class, and on the other hand the uke (the man that is led) is more plain, and a bit of an natural airhead - this pattern is one of the classics. In BL, part of the culture is to enjoy those settings and story templates.
(...)
Of course, in the West, there are also BL stories called M/M, which portray romantic relationships between men and they have a lot of fans in Jp. But according to Tsutsui: "In the West, those stories are created more in the context of LGBT and are of a different kind that Japanese and Asian BLs."
(...)
Also, in BLs there is a lot of taboos, called "jirai, landmines". If you detonate those because you lack understanding [of the BL culture], users will immediately go away.
One example of a landmine is when seme and uke swap places, called "reverse"."
Of course, YoI isn't BL, but fans of YoI ships have exactly the same mindset: one uke, seme(s), enjoying our fantasies, not interested in LGBT. Obviously, it's not 100% of the fandom, but the vast majority is really like that.
VicYuu (Victor seme, Yuuri uke) is the most popular ship (seme the coolest character x uke the main character "I'd like to read shojo manga, but they have women there and I hate those" template is the most popular fujo template for every story - for example, in case of JJK, the most popular ship is... Gojo Satoru x Itadori Yuji (15) with almost 700 millions views in total on pixiv). So, that Yuuri doesn't look uke enough and Victor looks like a "fa*got with fake eyelashes" (that's a quote), when he should be a masculine seme, in a lot of arts is one reason why fujos started to hate members of YoI staff. Just like that person in the article said - for fujos, it's a landmine. I've talked about it a few times before - one of the most hated YoI staff member is Mitsurou, and there is plenty of reasons why she was targeted, but one is that the way she draws Yuuri and Victor is more similar to how "YuuVic" fanarts are drawn (and often you can basically tell the ship by how the person draws the characters)...
I don't know a lot about The Owl House, but of course, it has fans in Jp as well - only, I think that those fans (of Western LGBT shows in general) are more from the progressive side and there is little overlap with classic fujos (so a kind of BL/dojinshi fan). Another example, the Witch from Mercury was also popular with the progressive people of Jp twitter and they were also bashing the IP holders because of the marriage controversy... Of course, more progressive people read BLs, too, but many are against being labelled as "fujoshi"... That's generalization, but fujos are those people who labelled and still call heterosexual love "normal love" - I think that says a lot.
In my observation, YoI's Jp fandom is in majority fujo-fandom (2016 was a few years ago...). In 2023, however, more and more people are more open and know more about LGBT+ stuff, so there is also growing "progressive" population of fans on twitter etc. and those people gravitate towards different shows/have different interpretations compared to classic fujos.
So yeah, generally & simply speaking, in Jp, fujoshi, BL =/= LGBT. And btw, as I was labelled fujo-hater in the past, I don't think it's "bad" that fujos like to feminize their uke so much to self-insert and fantasize about the masculine seme(s) loving them, effectively making the ship into a heterosexual ship, because that's what they prefer (although when a grown-up woman is fantasizing about a tiny teenager having sex with a man twice his age and size, well... I'm not sure it's healthy) but I just don't think that it has much to do with LGBT rights and being allies or anything like that, and that it's something that should be acknowledged, too.
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celestiarambles · 6 months
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Hey so I found this one meme and honestly I think it does kinda sums up how the fandom treated Angela imo-
But what do you think?
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Honestly this made me laugh a little because as an Angela stan, I would really defend her like that (I mean, I even wrote The Pedestal because I was HEARTBROKEN with the revelation and I wanted to be delusional for a little xD)
But yeah, I still acknowledge that she did some bad things; murder, corruption, and bombings are inexcusable. However, Angela didn’t deserve much of the hate she received from the fandom due to the circumstances she had.
Imagine losing your parents at the young age of 8 and taken under the wing of a huge criminal organization. She may have told Lars that she wasn’t brainwashed, but of course you wouldn’t know for yourself if that was the case because you were well… brainwashed. Even during The Darkest Hour, Baxter didn’t immediately tell the Bureau that he aided in the kidnapping because SOMBRA was controlling him. Whether she was brainwashed or not though, imagine the effect of growing up in a criminal organization would have to you.
Looking at this too in an Asian and cultural perspective (because I’m Asian, but I’m not generalizing ALL Asian countries, this is just based on what I’m aware of growing up), Angela has mentioned that she is loyal to SOMBRA because they had practically raised her. One toxic trait in Asian cultures is that you are guilt tripped to “give back” to the family/people who raised you, no matter how big or heavy their requests may be. It could be as simple as letting them live in your house, maybe buying them their own house or other material things, or it can be as big as giving them hefty sums of money or treating you as their retirement fund or something. (In our country, it’s called utang ng loob.) Since the orphan recruitment schemes are prominent in Asian countries, they must’ve then gaslighted and guilt tripped those orphans in that way, hence that’s why Angela felt what she did.
Besides, the only time she had disobeyed SOMBRA was when she married Lars. You can’t tell me that SOMBRA would easily let that slide, especially since she was ranked quite high in their hierarchy. They had probably gaslighted and threatened her about it many times, until she had no choice but to stay loyal just to keep her family safe.
That’s why I find it absurd when some people would portray her as this black-and-white evil villain who’s abusive and possessive, because the only thing she wants is to keep her family safe.
Some people don’t actually hate her because she’s a SOMBRA agent and she killed Lavinia, they hate her because she broke Lars’ heart. Yes, it is wrong, but it isn’t really that easy to confess to your husband that you’re a part of the criminal organization your team is investigating. Admitting to it won’t be that easy either; it could potentially harm her family. SOMBRA’s a lot more deadly and complicated organization that had the power to. She and Lars could’ve gotten killed because of SOMBRA and once they’re gone, they could’ve easily taken the triplets away, thus continuing SOMBRA’s long and deadly cycle. She never wanted her children to get involved in their crimes, in fact she was trying to break the cycle. That’s why she’s so protective. That’s why she also stayed in the Bureau even though it was dangerous for her.
She was also pretty much hated in the same way Karen was hated; Chief King and Frank Knight were “redeemed” by the fandom just because they did it for the family, while she and Karen got hate even though they were also doing it for the family.
Pretty Simple also lacked in terms of fleshing out her character, causing multiple misinterpretations. She had so much potential to be more complex instead of being boxed as that “traitor with no remorse”, but yeah the remaining cases weren’t enough to do that I guess? It’s up to further analysis then!
So yeah, Angela’s not a perfect character, and it’s okay to dislike her for the crimes she did. This is not a character analysis of some sort because this is mostly based on my interpretation and perspectives regarding her, but yeah I just really love her because well, Asian representation and she’s just so complex. I don’t like it when they would paint her as a complete monster though.
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peetapiepita · 11 months
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My Issue with the Concept of Casting Actors Who Look Like the Book Characters & Why Peeta Doesn’t Have to be Blonde and Blue-eyed to Do It for Me
I’ve never understood why it’s so important to some fans that the actors have the exact same hair color and eye color as the book characters.
I thought this issue was long solved in the THG fandom because Suzanne Collins herself was so against this idea she responded to the controversy surrounding Peeta’s casting by saying, “If Josh had been bright purple and had six foot wings and gave that audition, I’d have been like ‘Cast him!’ ‘We can word around the wings!’ He was that good.” Does it sound like she cares about an actor’s eye color, hair color, height, or even skin color?
I’m very much against adapting the original trilogy again so soon after the movies, but if it happens, I wouldn’t even mind if they cast a good Black or Asian actor as Peeta. As long as he can act and embody Peeta, he will be good for the role and I’ll support him.
Peeta’s essence as a character is not in his hair color or height. He’s Peeta because he’s genuinely kind, gentle, and canny when he needs to be. I don’t think he needs to be blonde and blue-eyed and taller than Katniss to be all of those things. Do you?
My two favorite literary characters ever are Peeta and Will Parry from His Dark Materials. It just happens that both were played by brilliant actors who got so much shit for not looking like how the fans pictured the characters to be. I’m so fed up. His Dark Materials fandom is generally not that racist compared to some huge fandoms (which isn’t to say a lot), yet some people still acted insane when they cast Amir Wilson as Will just because they always pictured Will as White, even when it was never actually specified in the books. Will has straight black eyebrows and fierce-looking eyes. That’s the extent of his physical description in the books. And people had the nerve to act offended when they cast an actor that fits that description word-for-word, just because he’s Black.
And it pissed me off so much that there are still people asking for Alex Pettyfer and Alexander Ludwig as Peeta because they’re both blonde and tall.
First of all, Peeta was never tall. He’s medium height and stocky. Those two guys don’t fit Peeta’s description as well as some people seem to think. I wonder if some of them are just projecting the traditional standards for male attractiveness on Peeta, which is ironic because Peeta is the opposite of those things, that’s part of the beauty of his character.
Second of all, casting for movies is not like picking cosplay models. Maybe consider the possibility that acting skills are more important than hair color??? I’m not going to rant about this again because Suzanne already did it. I’ll just say Alex Pettyfer or Alexander Ludwig would never give a performance as brilliant as Josh Hutcherson did in any of the movies. I know some people have a hard time telling bad acting from good acting, but I don’t, I can totally tell when an actor is good or bad, or mid. And Josh was brilliant as Peeta. I seriously don’t think there could’ve been another actor out-acting him in this role to this day, but I look forward to being surprised if they ever do another adaptation.
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angelsdean · 1 year
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What's interesting about even the busty asian beauty thing is that he never says anything like that about asian women in reality/outside of porn. Like it doesn't make the 'joke' ok, it's definitely still gross, but it's porn, it's 'fantasy'. Despite sam saying he confuses porn and real life I think dean separates the two in his brain and his actions towards real people don't really align with sam's comment. Dean isn't perfect but some corners of fandom really make him sound way grosser than he is
First off, just need to point blank say, the BAB stuff is horrible and gross and always made me super uncomfortable whenever it would pop up on the show. And it's VERY much a writer problem. The writers either had to be extremely unaware or just didn't care abt how gross and fetishizing that magazine is for it to keep recurring like it did in the show. This is one of those instances where, yes, you could absolutely do a critique of Dean + fetishizing asian women and that would totally be valid because it is canonically in the show, but for me I just can't get past it being such a glaring writing issue and it doesn't feel aligned w/ a lot of Dean's character.
But god do I have a lot to say abt Dean + porn in general from a Dean studies perspective. I've wanted to make a proper post abt this for a long time but I want to provide more specifics so I gotta wait until I'm further along in my rewatch. But the gist of it is that for me and in my interpretation, the majority of Dean's porn consumption is very much clearly separate from reality. He tends to prefer over the top, borderline cringe and cheesy productions. Like those Casa Erotica films. And if you read Dean as someone who likely did some form of sex work for survival (very possibly underage as well) I think it makes a lot of sense for Dean to prefer these very obviously staged films instead of some kind of amateur thing.
Like, no doubt there are huge problems in the porn industry, not arguing that, but from Dean's perspective these over the top staged performances feel safer. These women are clearly performers and less likely to be some vulnerable person being nonconsensually filmed or forced to do these acts. I think he likes that it's fake. Even his love of anime and tentacle porn like, those things are so clearly fake. And in this case, they're animated! There is no real person that could potentially be a victim. There's a distance between reality and fantasy for Dean, and again this is purely my own headcanons and interpretations, but I think for him, if he had a traumatic history with sex work (which again, likely was more for survival and therefore not really a 'choice' or something empowering for him) then this sort of cheesy porn would feel very safe and comfortable for him and less likely to trigger past trauma or other uncomfortable feelings. Even when he meets that porn star, he's very star struck in a "fan" sort of way, which again highlights that he views those films as well, films, and he recognizes that it's all fake. I'm pretty sure he even like, compliments her on her talent and performance. Because he knows it's a job and an act. But yea there's just so much more that could be said about this.
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