#just girly thoghts

[v-207]

[polaroidcats]

Starbucks is so fun but it would also be super inconvinient for tagging 😹

I knowww!!!! But I was a queerplatonic starbucks shipper and aroace Sirius truther before I knew what any of those terms ever meant, before I fell head first into the wolfstar trashcan 10 years ago and haven't come up for air since. And back when prongsfoot was mainly called starbucks (at least on my dash?) I also WAS a starbucks girlie and thoght of them every time I got my caramel hot chocolate or chai tea latte on my way to class. Starbucks as a shipname is pure nostalgia for me, but I feel like there's so many more people actually shipping them now, or it might just be that I can finally find the posts with the #prongsfoot instead of #starbucks so you're absolutely right about that 😂

[gascon-en-exil]

I've seen a recent trend of supposed feminists on twitter dogpiling on people for liking Dimitri and preaching about how Edelgard is the new Lightning (the Final Fantasy character). While I don't want to ruin anyone's fun if they want to see CF as lesbians vs. the patriarchy (led by a woman but shut up), I find this funny since Edelgard is a feminist nightmare if you try to apply any form of critical thoght. Of course, as a gay man, I'm not allowed to apply feminist theory in media.

You can apply feminist theory if you wanted, in the sense that one of feminism’s broader goals is the questioning and deconstruction of patriarchal social structures which is applicable to men of all sexualities and queer men especially. I don’t do it because I don’t have the academic backing to feel confident in that field, but that’s me. Even so I know enough to realize that Edelgard is hardly the feminist icon her less critical fans build her up to be.

What I find disingenuous about the us vs. them nature of this particular debate is that, as I and others have pointed out multiple times and as I think the fandom at large is slowly starting to understand, Dimitri is hardly the pillar of heterosexual patriarchy that he’s being made out to be. He displays multiple conventionally feminine character traits, all of them portrayed positively in contrast to the (self-)destructive masculine influences of his Crest, his prolonged physical and emotional isolation, and his revenge motivation. Now, AM as a whole is absolutely not a feminist-friendly narrative despite having some themes in common with conventionally feminine narratives like family and learning to forgive, open up to others, and love yourself. It’s a tale of men supporting each other against a succession of deceitful women, and if you play as f!Byleth and S rank Dimitri then it then turns into the standard heterosexual fantasy of a troubled man being healed by the love of a good and honest woman. (Of course, if you play as m!Byleth or just ignore Byleth’s presence in the story entirely which is fairly easy to do for AM then it all ends up looking rather gay...which is probably why (M/F!)Dimileth seems to have such a following even among fans who don’t actively ship it, come to think of it. It’s the tale as old as time “expected” narrative trajectory for the route.) 

Dimitri doesn’t deserve to be dismissed as “the patriarchy” though, because that strips away his deliberately constructed femininity as well as his layered queerness. You could even go inter-textual with that, turn him into a commentary on the often-maligned “girly” male lords of past FEs - Marth, Seliph, Eliwood - and how they measure up to their more conventionally masculine counterparts which is a character type Three Houses notably lacks. It’s not Claude for a number of reasons, and if anyone comes close it’s Dimitri himself at his worst, his most violent and unreasonable and self-loathing.

[v-207]

I want to cut up my face and rip it off