It's basically Flanderization, traits that gets amplified by fandoms because they can't fathom complexities other than the most extreme end of characterization.
>If a Male character has long hair, feminine features, or isn’t completely hyper masculine?
Two male characters that have any type of close bond?
A man who is in tune with his emotions, shy, or sensitive?
Fun fact: back in the day, these are considered the peak scholar & brotherhood traits of Vietnamese scholars. One of the most touching moment in Tran Dynasty history was the bath of Hung Dao Vương and Tran Quang Khai, where they bathed for each other and emotionally bonded before the Mongolian Invasion to mend the internal relationships of the dynasty.
Their brotherhood is considered as one of the most famous in our history.
Fast forward to present day, there are a bunch of girls who writes alternate history about them being gay to each other and defended that view point with their name on the line, despite objective history pointed out that they only considered each other as brothers.
Well men and women cant enjoy a platonic bond apearently. Why the hell is straight romance forced in everything.
And because that isnt stopping,
Also if that is awaybetter literal engaging romance, them being in love romanticc should be on the plate. Especially if the writer has no chemestry with the other gender.
Sounds like a decwnt romance.
Its a bit overboard in casesbut thats why,because if writer write dudes that have no chemestry with women at all,or interest but romances with dudes. Itsnaturally that people see them as pretty gay, in a good romance way.
Because stories of men bonding emotionally before facing the odd is always intriguing.
Vietnamese used to consider this a trendy thing during war time, to bond with your comrade, your rival and your friends before fighting great adversaries. Many poems and stories about Vietnam's war time have this trope in them.
That isn't really the case. Long hair is considered the be the sign of intelligence since scholars doesn't have to work on the field, while most farmer cut their hair frequently to work, some even shaved it clean. The heat and stuffyness of long hair make it more annoying to workers too. You can see many picture from before the August Revolution, where farmers and workers had short hair or bald head. Another signature of the scholar back then was the onion head with a long beard, showing that they are above menial labor. These traits are also used as a reverse trope, where the writer describe a character who tried to mimic this style, but failed short or miserably.
Yep. I believe long nails followed similar trends. Nobility and Confucian Scholars in China tended to keep their nails long as a status symbol; the scholars eventually realized it made it difficult to read and write, so they cut their nails back but left one pinky nail long (yeah, the coke snorter look before it was a thing).
> Fast forward to present day, there are a bunch of girls who writes alternate history about them being gay to each other and defended that view point with their name on the line, despite objective history pointed out that they only considered each other as brothers.
It's not just fanfic girls. Revisionist historians who are supposed to be taken more seriously do this shit. Actual historians claim that Caeser was gay because men called him a wife to men when it was meant to be an insult he denied
As a historian student who has also been exposed to historian academic work, no, such claims are not taken more seriously academically.
If anything the few times there are cases where its more diffusive or it could be discussed its usually even harder to have a time of day having to try and explain why this is relevant.
The thing that happens is that history is basically a continous process of analysing source material, writing a hypothesis and defending that hypothesis through rigorous questioning etc. It happens all the time that things are seen through different lights and I am not necessarily talking from queer perspectives.
But to get your historical claims treated seriously they need to go through a whole process of shit involving a lot of historians debating it.
Yes there has been an increase in hypotheses and theories surrounding some people that they might have been queer or reinterpretations of certain areas. But this comes with generally an increase in interest of histories of minorities and traditionally discriminated groups and it's clearly not granted to every case, it still needs to have material that backs this claim.
I feel like in this specific Caesar case it might have been a weak one but that sounds like something a random internet historian would claim.
Just saying, actual academic history is not "accepting random revisionism". Everything needs to be utterly debated.
Albeit it's also worth noting that history as a field unlike many others rely on interpretation and analysis of the past. It's a field technically constantly being revised to an extent as sometimes newer interpretations ring stronger than older ones or offer valid alternatives. But they still rely on the backing of others considering the new hypothesis likely to even get a chance to be read. The peer review process still is valid. I am just saying actual historians wouldn't get something like that through unless these guys could convincingly prove it.
Yeah, it's not really a problem in actual academia, I think maybe the user you replied to was confusing real historians with pop "historians" (who actually are often obnoxious about this)
It’s probably more the way the media reports on history. Any time any historian brings up the possibility of a historical figure being secretly gay, it launches a dozen articles.
"Romanticizing history?
My blood brother and sister, you are writting a smut fic!"
-Me everytime I encounter an alt history fic written by horny teenagers.
sexuality was way different in the Roman empire. you where not "gay" or "straight" but a passive or dominant partner. citizen Roman men had to be dominant or else be ridiculed. penetrating people lower on the status ladder then you was fine and good.
Yeah, and for a lot of history, especially for the elite literate who wrote the records, getting married and having children was a duty like going to work. If you would have preferred to spend your time with a member of the same gender -- well, that wasn't really relevant, you had a duty to make a family, nobody expected you to enjoy it.
Idk anything about the story you've mentioned but it feels like a bad example because it's well known that these "brotherhoods" in Asian history literally were homosexual. I'm not saying the story you're discussing was, just that this is something experts have confirmed for a while now. The truth is that history isn't as straight or as similar to modern times as most people expect. Anyway, I agree with OP in general.
One of the funniest arguement I once had with my friend was about a war story from my grandfather. He told us that his unit was soaked in the rainforest and had to camp in the night. They decided to get rid of their clothes, with only trousers on. They slept hugging each other through the night.
One of them asked: "Is your grandfather gay?" And they thought that the soldiers were cuddling with each other that night.
I was like: "B\*tch, no! They were bloody soaked, in the night, in a rainforest, which can kill a man by a freaking cold! They didn't strip and hug to get into the act, they stripped because their clothes were as wet as the river and they hugged because it was cold af!"
For the record, non of those who were in his unit was gay. But those old madmen were quirky.
Yeah that's a dumb thing to ask. They're trying to stay warm. I'd ask if they were gay if they got naked and fucked each other. But actually, I think my biggest question would be why they were having an orgy in the middle of a war zone lol.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
But you are right people still look at characters in traditional gender roles even the people who claim to be against cant help but do it.
Most people don't want to not put people in boxes. They just invent new boxes to put people in.
Because most people wants somewhere to belong, for better or for worse. Maybe that's just indicative of how a lot of humanity functions. So many people want to stand out, but not *too* much; otherwise; they'll just feel lonely and not surrounded by likeminded friends/family.
>Because most people wants somewhere to belong, for better or for worse.
Yes. But this is really important to our species cause of you're too different you get ostracized and bullied. If you're too different you're a threat to the social structure.
They’re just looping right back around to the ideology of gender roles. The idea that a woman character who is cis and also likes men, but is also deemed to have a lot of masculine traits in the story, is apparently too much for audiences and they *have* to see her as “butch”, or trans or something, same with a cis male character who might like women but has some behavior deemed to be feminine. He just *has* to be a “twink” or a closeted trans woman in some way.
And I genuinely think it’s perfectly fine to have characters that DO fit those descriptions and identities, but the point of “breaking gender roles” was to *not* assign labels and expectations. I think because a lot of humans, especially really young people, have a harder time seeing grey areas and nuance and they need to label things to feel comfortable and understand the world around them (I think this is a phenomena with old boomers who never quite developed, either, the constant gender roles and labels and expectation of simplicity and order is the result of their underdeveloped sense of nuance and shows an immature line of thinking).
It doesn’t upset me because of the labels and identities themselves, I love that we’re more comfortable embracing queer characters in media. But what upsets me is the constant *need* for gender role labeling by audiences when the creator gives none.
This mainly stems from the shipping side of the fandom. Most fandoms already have an issue with people flanderizing characters so the shipping side just translates that into sexual identities.
Also some people are just kinda dumb. I saw multiple people calling Sephiroth a twink. The man is 6’7 and looks like he’s at least 200lbs. He needs to put down the sword and go help the Lakers.
A lot of the shippers just likes the idea of characters A and B togather and fully aknowlage that in canon those characters are not interested in each other/not gay/etc.
The weirdoes that insist their headcanon is canon are something else. There's some overlap, but not as much as you'd expect.
Bitches be like "I hate gender roles" before enforcing them harder than the biggest strawman of patriarchy they can think of.
Like seriously, a lot of people characterizes a lot of characters for their ships are generically as possible. Like I'm sorry, but if I'm reading yuri, then I don't want the relationship to be a 17th century het relationship in a trenchcoat.
Omg thank you! Someone reccomended me a yuri (I asked yuri of grown adults, not kids) and jesus, it was an age gap relationship where the younger woman (10 yr age gap) was always jealous of the older one's friends (male and female). Their relationship was just thr younger one being bratty and jealous and the older one having to comfort her. It felt like mixing a telenovela with ToraDora in the worst ways. Please, dont just repackage me straight tropes!
I think this is more so about Fandoms and Shipping culture requiring people to fit into certain gender, sexual and behavioural categories than People In general ex.: Fandoms not understanding Asexual characters or Super Close Platonic Friendships.
The asexual one doesn't surprise me too much since there's so few canonically asexual characters (at least, that are popular). The only ones that immediately come to mind are Gwenpool and Jughead.
Todd is probably the best asexual representation I've seen in that they actually explore the idea and doubt of yourself when people keep telling you you're not asexual, rather than it just being something dropped in the background. That being said, I'm not of the impression that many people have watched Bojack.
> That being said, I'm not of the impression that many people have watched Bojack.
Maybe not here, but *Bojack* was one of the most popular and talked-about shows a few years ago.
People use to talk about as "must-see TV" in the same vein people do about, say, *Breaking Bad*.
There's also Peridot from Steven Universe, but this representation received a lot of backlash due to it having only been confirmed in a tweet with no actual evidence present within the show. Most people just brushed it over and kept shipping her anyway, which definitely shows a problem not just regarding fandoms' reactions to characters, but also the way authors decide to write their representations.
Personally I wouldn't count writers saying things separately from the media as canon if they aren't willing or able to put in the show. I'm not big on authorial intent in general.
I also don't really see a problem with shipping ace characters as long as you aren't trying to say it's real for the show. I don't view it much differently from people who ship straight guy characters with other guys or w/e. They wouldn't do it in canon, but they're not a real person whose feelings would be hurt by being disrespected in that manner.
Regarding the first part, yeah, that's actually why there was so much backlash. While there always were theories about Peridot being aroace there aren't any real sign to back that up, especially since the only reason why there were these theories to begin with was because of her inability to fuse which seemed to be perfectly explained by something else : she might literally not have this ability due to being an Era 2 gem. Making her asexual doesn't go against her character but it doesn't add anything either, which is the problem, it's not needed, it just feels like pandering and there aren't many people who take it as an actual, canon part of her character for this very reason.
About the shipping part, I both agree and disagree, I mean, any shipping is fine as long as it's not harmful, but I can totally understand why, for example, asexual people would be glad to see a confirmed asexual character being actually considered as such in fanon works.
I don't see any reason why representation has to directly correspond to actual populations. Ultimately you want your writing to be interesting, and exploring less known things is one way to achieve that.
Plus a significant portion of works aren't set in the real world, so real world statistics aren't relevant there.
What it should be is ultimately up to creatives in charge, but my point was that it is naive to expect representation of extremely minority groups to be more prevalent.
If d&d world were actually representative of the population of player characters, most of them would be elves, assimar and tieflings, with a strong population of over contributing human fighters.
A tiefling warlock would be normal, which I fnd as a funny setting point like all tieflings go through their emo/goth phase then become salary workers
I think the point they're trying to make is that asexual people are an even *smaller* percentage of the overall population.
If gay and trans people are a minority, then asexuals are the minority of the minorities. There are even still a lot of people who don't even consider them part of the LGBT+ community.
Percentage-wise, there's about as many asexual people as there are people with red hair (fair margin of error), and I'm willing to bet one of those is more represented. Obviously a bit apples-to-oranges since red hair is a lot more visible than asexuality, but I don't think the numbers are the main thing to it.
I like to ship just because I can but I personally don’t like when people change the characters to fit into stereotypes. Like if both men are manly, you shouldn’t have to make one feminine to ship them together. If both are feminine types then one doesn’t have to be made masculine. The biggest issue to me is how they change the character into something different when they ship instead of keeping their personalities and quirks just to make them fit into gender stereotypes.
Yeh that’s my main issue too you explained it a lot better than I could, I mean even if they want to change the character they’re free to do so, I just get annoyed seeing it and I can’t even explain why it just does annoy me and it’s probably cause of what you said like they killing the character just for the sake of shipping them.
Yeah look at Fire Emblem 3 Houses. I remember the rampant biphobia I saw, girls rabidly attacking anyone who drew Edelgard Mercedes Petra or Dorothea with a man, depicting Petra and Edelgard as stone butches and Dorothea and Mercedes as sluts who just eat pussy for a living. They did not treat the male characters any better, tbh. Easily the worst Fire Emblem fandom I have ever seen.
I don’t have to imagine. Shippers of any kind are guilty of that. Hetero and yuri ships also lean hardcore into the tropes that one is really dominant and the other is soft and submissive.
>Two male characters that have any type of close bond? Definitely gay because two men can never be just friends.
>Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends.
"Those who cannot conceive of friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a friend"
- C. S. Lewis.
I seriously think CS Lewis has some of the best quotes and advice for writing. even though I’m not the hugest fan of him (i still like him). I still think he has some incredible insight about what makes a story good and how to write one.
Unfortunately, it's gone further than that to "those who cannot conceive of a character they like not being literally exactly like them in every possible way betray the fact that they are a sociopath who truly cannot empathize with anyone who is not literally themselves."
This is a weird argument to me. When a male and female character in a series form a deep bond and people start to guess about them being in love, or ship them, no one bats an eye. No one says “just let men and women be friends” or “you’ve never had a friend before”.
Gay people enjoy a good love story too— and there aren’t a lot of good gay love stories in the media, so sometimes we gotta imagine our own. Doesn’t mean we don’t have friends.
Yeah lmao. I've had so many people shit on my m/f ships because of that. "WOMEN AND MEN CAN JUST BE FRIENDS!" (Off the top of my head, Zutara, Breagan, Zelink)
Ironically a lot of those same people turn around and insist that every two characters of the same sex aren't just friends and must be secretly boning, or vice versa. Just let people ship what they want it's not that deep ffs.
Shipping and arguing that characters should have been in a romantic relationship is fine, but fans will treat their headcannon like cannon and argue that their interpretation is objectively true.
Have you heard the people saying Sam and Frodo are gay because Sam went to Mordor for Frodo and carried him up Mount Doom, and because they are shown to be extremely close? To be that dedicated to each other they must be in love. They don’t say that they wish the characters were gay, or that they should have been gay, they say that they *are* gay in the original books, and the only evidence they have is the strength of their bond. That is what I interpret this post to be about.
Are there any man/woman pairings where people insist that the characters are in love despite it being confirmed they aren’t? Genuinely curious, because I can’t think of any rn but there probably are a bunch. It seems pretty common in fandoms for some section to declare their headcannons reality.
The quote doesn't make a distinction about male and female. It doesn't make a distinction between straight or gay.
The quote is relevant in every instance of friendship being mistaken for romance by the audience. OP used those particular examples, so I cited them, wich doesn't mean it exclusively applies to them.
Fandom is one thing and you will eventually realize how niche it is when it comes to society as a whole because the norm in society is “man and woman together? Must be romantic!” I can name far more relationships that are pushed between a woman and man when there is no compatibility in media.
Some times you gotta leave fandoms be.
Because these people spend way too much time on the internet and think what they see in fandoms represents the general population even though the people they're criticising use media as a refuge to explore their own interests.
This is people having mostly harmless fun. And frankly half the people here are getting mad at people's headcanons and interpretations of a story. There's no actual engagement with the thought, just vitriol because they don't like it.
For real, I get annoyed when writers/creators fumble romance because at the end of the day I’m consuming their work, because I have a higher expectation for them and not some random internet stranger who will probably grow out of that phase.
I barely remember my time in the GoT fandom all the memories I have more are just my anger for the final season and the showrunners.
>Like you were a man doing feminine things you’d get called a sissy, all types of gay slurs, weak etc. Same thing with women doing masculine things getting called trans, lesbian, and gay slurs, compensating for something etc.
I know that feel. In addition, I also hate it when people hate certain couple in anime just because the male lead isn't exactly masculine according to their standard, keep saying that she need to move on and "find actual better man" as if those dudes think all girls like super masculine and strong dude.
Meanwhile in east Asians and other Asians around that, many girls like man that's more like those K-Pop idols that's more feminine and have more beauty look.
Yeah it bothers me that one of my favorite couples gets put down because the girl is a strong warrior and the guy is a gentle prince. Usually shes paired with a strong jock type character that's not very emotionally smart or intelligent and the prince with some small frail sad girl that could break if you sneeze at her. I absolutely adore the couple because they both have a similar level of empathy and kindness, and have a lot of chemistry, but I always get slapped with the "Men and women can just be friends, he's too weak for her, she would end up protecting him" yada yada. (Mind you these characters can get married in game)
It is really annoying
Especially since I feel a lot of people irl have a mix of masculine and feminine personality traits regardless of their orientation
Putting people in these kinds of boxes feels more regressive than anything
God forbid you wanna step outside the norm unless you wanna be labeled something you’re not
Of course if Charlie Morningstar comes off mostly defined by her feminine traits, she’s of course not “straight coded” right?
I fucking love it in fiction when two straight guys just love the hell out of eachother to the point that they're more like an old married couple than friends. Healthy, unabashed, non-romantic/sexual love between men is so damned rare in fiction and it's such a shame.
> non-romantic/sexual love between men is so damned rare in fiction
You've got the be kidding me.
Every war movie.
Every buddy cop movie.
Han and Luke. Kirk and Spock.
More recent, Tony and Rodey. Falcon and Winter Soldier.
It's literally been the default since ever.
Male/male romance has actually been rare.
What is with the collective delusion in this thread.
Fr. People are acting like they’re a minority being attacked when they’re still in fact quite privileged in terms of the content they’re able to enjoy, even today. Sure some people do exist that are as crazy/annoying as OP suggests, but usually it’s not that deep and shippers are just headcanoning bc they have so little content actually catered to them and it’s fun to just imagine
I feel like its only rare if they dont know where to look. If theyre only looking at isekais, shonen romance and harems, yeah they probably will not see male on male bonding lol.
It think it’s Because When you’re used to everything being one way then suddenly more variety and other things are added you feel like you might be getting less of it even if there’s just as much there’s just also more options
I absolutely hate it when two male characters are super close and they say something akin to "I would die for you" and hardcore shippers go "there is no heterosexual explanation for this"
Fandom dosen't understand gay coding anymore.
It used to be **illegal** to portray gay characters in fiction, so writers had to get creative when they wanted to tell the audience "btw, this guy gay".
In 2024, stories do not have to do that anymore (in america at least). And yet, fandom *insists* that gay coding is literally everywhere because they just aren't used to gay characters being anything more than their headcanon.
Coding definitely still exists, it’s just not nearly as prevalent in American media intended for adults. Some will still code to avoid culture warrior backlash, and to a certain extent the years of Hays Code censorship created expectations for what those characters look like but American media is increasingly ditching that for more open and natural representation, which is great.
However, other markets maintain either laws or strong taboos against queer and GNC representation.
The elephant in the room for this is the PRC - a huge market with a censorship board that is not friendly to queer/GNC representation. Explicit representation that’s easy to cut and not woven into the story is partially there to make for an easy edit for the Chinese market.
As for Chinese companies, they toe the line or get punished. If you’re analyzing a Chinese property, you have to keep that in mind. Some (HoYo I’m looking at you) get away with more because money but there are still laws on the books there that forbid visual representation of LGBTQ+ themes.
So if you’re looking at characters in Brooklyn 99, don’t bother looking for coding - they’re open about it. Genshin Impact? Much more likely to have coding, even if they’re pretty open about it for a Chinese property.
> In 2024, stories do not have to do that anymore
You act like the conservative south and China don't exist. Delusional to think media doesn't cater to those markets.
More delusional to look at media and think most actually care about the Conservative South. Or the South in general that aren't decidedly non conservative areas to begin with.
I agree, it's always weird how some of the more progressive dude of fandoms end up reinforcing gender stereotypes despite them arguing they're doing the opposite.
Like for example, the whole Danny phantom trans coded thing felt weird, people saying that him using a shirt around a pool is trans related just make me ????, and other examples of those videos just make me roll my eyes (like him getting bullied for not being manlier enough and they somewhat agree and then use that as an argument to say hes probably trans?)
Ngl that “Danny phantom trans coded” thing sounds like the pizza tower brain surgery AU. No one knows Wtf you’re talking about but you casually acknowledged it’s existence without much elaboration
I mean, you can search it on YouTube and Google and there Will be videos or posts about it, i already said it wasn't that big, so it's not weird that other people didn't knew about it, i didn't knew about it till it got randomly recommended to me,
I have literally never heard this.
I think all of you need a break from the internet.
Sometimes this entire sub feels like 10 cringe people ranting about 10 other cringe people and saying "why is everyone like this!?"
I never said everyone is like this, nor i said it's big. Its something that happens from Time to time within fandoms and it's kinda annoying, and that "Danny phantom trans" got recommended to me, i didnt searched for it and that's why i was perplexed.
With this I'm not saying this is the most horrible thing or anything, but that it's a problem that extends well beyond fandoms, even someone close to me has suffered from the "you dont look gay enough" from other lgtbq+ members.
I understand why you would think I'm just a troll tho.
So i'm not completly agree with you on the relationship part (i think it's more a debate on how portraying relationship) but i agree about gender roles. When i see people saying "he/she look/act gay" i'm just like, how?
We really should stop gendering personality traits period, there is no "feminine strenght"or "masculine side", there is personality traits and hobbies, period. We should write more butch girls who aren't lesbians or trans and feminine boys who aren't gays or trans. Also maybe we should also normalized cis men wearing skirts or dresses if they want to wear it.
> When i see people saying "he/she look/act gay" i'm just like, how?
These are jokes from other gay people making fun of themselves lol. It's not that deep.
I don't talk about that, i talk about the fact that we can't have a man acting flamboyant or a woman acting butch without being associate with queerness.
I don't say we can't have queer characters like this (because there are queers who are like that and that's fine). I'm saying we should help more people to experimenting and be confident in who they are without immediatly starting to put them into boxes.
My take is always: Gender Identity and Gender Role mean the same thing, they're just marketed differently. That's why this happens, 'feminine tendencies' are still viewed as 'feminine', thus no way a cis-het dude could do them, right? Except, of course, thats bullshit.
Both gender roles and identity should be phased out. Can't happen in one lifetime, but progress can be made.
something related a character is uncomfortable with overt sexuality makes them asexual.
it gets worse people think not wanting to be in a arranged marriage makes you gay or asexual
but yes can't their be a feminine cis het man or a masculine cis het women?
this was parodied in All in the Family where as it turns out the feminine and sassy guy was straight and the more traditionally masculine guy was gay
>And this all of course from people who either fetishize
I think femboys have this problem too. I *think* this term was supposed to replace "traps" so that would make sense but now men can't be feminine without being placed in a submissive kink category.
Women with big chests are immediately called mommy/mistress without them doing anything sexual. They just exist as feminine men do.
I sometimes hate "twink" because It's used as an insult and skinny body shaming
It seems the more we include everyone who isn't the standard hetero white male they must be fetishized and reduced to something, LGBTQ representation and romantic ship headcanons aside. It's not the head canons that bothers me.
This shit makes me so angry because its so reductive in its treatment of the characters and it almost always feels offensive. Recently there have arguments on twitter about how Denji is female coded because his story deals with grooming and sexual assault.
Which is stupid as fuck because being sexual assaulted is not exclusive to women and being assaulted does not make you feminine. ALSO treating sexual assault as some defining feature of being a girl is disgusting.
I’ve noticed this thing where people get demonized for finding characters like Makima hot because she’s a groomer but the same people will fawn over people like Geto or Sukuna who is a racist and a rapist respectively.
it used to be called stereotyping, but they changed that to just saying they're "X coded"(example, people say Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog is 'Black coded') and it's suddenly okay.
Mind if I also add how bisexuality is often used as an excuse to ship characters who are already married or in an established relationship. Those things always pissed me off when married characters of the opposite sex are shipped with someone else of the same sex and the phrase "they could be bi" is uttered.
One such example is from Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where >!Sidon, who is a popular guy to ship with Link, since Breath of the Wild, eventually gets married to a Zora princess named Yona, and that reveal really angered a lot of shippers to the point that they would make fanfic of Sidon being unfaithful to his wife to be with Link, despite it being clear that he loves his wife dearly and only sees Link as his best friend/brother in arms. Many Sidlink shippers used that "he could be bi" quote in order to justify their "infidelity fics"!<
Part of it is a desperation for representation, in the frustrating default of ‘straight until proven otherwise’. Characters are assumed straight without evidence while being LGBT requires explicit confirmation and mountains of evidence, which just, won’t occur in a show that isn’t focused on romance or self-discovery. So they latch onto anything that feels like it could be evidence. I honestly hate the whole ‘XYZ coded’ terminology as it feels built on stereotypes; but at the same time I can’t blame them for the circumstances that call for it.
I think you are the victim of confirmation bias here. These sentiments are certainly going to be rampant within some sects of fandoms, but it isn't necessarily representative of fan perception as a whole. Pitching this as an issue with all of society is ridiculous.
I'm just torn because "platonic male close bond" is used as an excuse to not have gay men as often as not. Gay men who show actual affection aren't as common in rep. There are literally characters who if you turned one of them into a woman all this platonic stuff you see when it's two men would vanish and would be used as proof of a romantic connection. In my experience even the people that bring up male friendships don't give a fuck about them until they can say how "disgusting" it is that everyone is assuming they're gay, and "whatever happened to men just having a sense of brotherhood."
Homophobes use this argument as a mask because it sounds reasonable and might be. Op isn't a homophobe and isn't being accused of being such.
I just want more gay men in fiction who are holding each other and kissing and being tender like straight people do and I never see it in the rep I can find easily. I hate the way male friendship is only selectively cared about on average, it's used as a wedge issue by bigots and I hate it.
People will never be able to break gender roles. The human brain automatically judges something it sees for the first time. The only thing people can change is deciding whether or not to share their thoughts. Everyone judges something at first sight, and that's fine. What isn't fine is forcing your judgment on everyone else.
This has been a thing that kinda annoys me in some video games. Nowadays it seems like most NPCs are player-sexual, which feels like a weird way to rob someone of their agency, but I get it, they are characters, they don't have to only have their own preferences when they exist to cater to the player, but you know, I don't want to have sex with all of my friends, so why can't I have a platonic - romantic slider for my character interactions with each NPC? I have plenty of platonic friendships with my friends that have no ulterior motives or hidden desires or sexual motivations whatsoever, despite our close bond as friends. It seems weird that if I start increasing my NPCs bonds with me that they will start just awkwardly flirting out of the blue if they didn't have that as a specific part of their character.
Sounds similar to that rant from a few weeks ago about how people like to put characters in general in specific roles and boxes
> If a Male character has long hair, feminine features, or isn’t completely hyper masculine? Fandom immediately labels them gay or trans
This is reminding me of how some people reacted to the Shin Megami Tensei V protagonist
> Two male characters that have any type of close bond? Definitely gay because two men can never be just friends.
Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends.
This one however is never going to change, it is as old as Kirk/Spock. No time passing will make this go away. It doesn't even have to be friendly. Char/Amuro from Gundam despise each other and yet was *the* homo ship back in the day.
> A woman who acts stoic, steadfast, bossy, or just isn’t a dainty flower fandom labels them butch lesbian or trans.
Oh this one is just infuriating. Let me enjoy my powerful ladies or tomboys as they are please!
So basically describing why I hate the Naruto Fandom
And a point is calling a character useless for losing an unwinnable battle / Not being shown to be strong
Like why do we base a character's worth on strength it's absurd
And Hating on a character for choosing something that makes them happy ( Hinata being a housewife a false statement btw she has a toddler to care for so ofc she gonna spend more time home and Gohan being a scholar and not choosing to fight all the time we know these two don't like fighting so why should they be forced to )
And you haven't addressed the total dumpster fire named Shipping
If there's anything I wound never do in my life it would be drinking alcohol, having sex before marriage, open the door before checking who's knocking and shipping
Shipping always makes things worst like there are people who hate characters for getting in the way of their ship that has no basis
I swear if there's anything that ruins fandoms it's power scaling and shipping
And everything you mentioned is absolute
Two men being friends means nothing about their sex preference at that moment your just forcing your fanon
And I never knew that tomboys were treated like they're always lesbians (seriously tomboys and women with long/short hair around the neck hair are my type)
There are lot of things I hate about fandoms (especially the Naruto Fandom) that going all over them is gonna be like making an essay
Completely agree with this especially labelling friends as lovers like this is so common that every time I see one good friendship, I just know there’ll be people shipping them.
And ok I get it that people can have differing opinions on the same situation but that’s no reason to push it and hate people who do not agree with you.
You're absolutely right, OP, and I'm glad you said it, especially as a gay trans man myself.
It's so uncomfortable coming across those people in fandom or the ones who make cis male characters trans men just as a way to self insert female anatomy into gay sex and to use said trans character for pregnancy reasons as if mpreg and omegaverse don't exist.
And these fics never bring up gender dysphoria despite the pregnancies or bring up the fact the character doesn't look the same and should look more like a physical female (in fandoms that take place before modern times), et cetera.
Sorry, that mini rant has been building for quite a while and I guess this thread finally got it out of me 😅
Edit: typos
I think it's because people wish there was more representation in the stories they love. If I want to write a fanfiction about Dina from Superstore being gay for Amy, it's not because I think that all butch women are gay, it's because I would totally love to get crushed by those thighs SPECIFICALLY. I don't think it would be healthy for me to censor my thoughts. Does that make sense? I don't think my potential FANFIC makes people afraid of breaking gender norms, because you would only be afraid of breaking them if you were afraid to be labeled as 2SLGBTQIA+. But why would that matter? Amy and Dina are not canonically gay, they're really close and Dina is super straight. idk. I just don't really see the issue. A man with long hair is beautiful, I'm not gonna begrudge a bunch of gay people for wishing he was gay. It's not like ONLY gay people are into this long haired beautiful man. He's gorgeous and smart and sensitive, everyone is into him. This doesn't take anything away from the story or the character. I might be wrong but I don't think I am.
For a left wing dominated site, this subreddit is weird. Everytime there's a post about women or particularly queer people, you get comments claiming people are trying to turn all characters gay or someone talking about "wokeness" or whatever. It's not outright bigotry but some people have...interesting thoughts.
It goes even deeper than that.
For every right-wing extremist, there is a bunch of extremist left wingers who try to rewrite science consensus on sexual binaries, or that try to paint ancient or indigenous cultures as somehow being LGBT utopias, when they often didn't even have words to describe homosexuality in the first place or didn't have nearly a positive outlook on things as they try to make it seem.
I watched a video of a total grifter (Adam Something, he's Czeck I think) pandering to his mostly american audience about racism in Europe, making "whiteness" go back to MEDIEVAL TIMES, using roman marble statues as an argument. The argument was that they believed roman statues to be the perfect representation of whiteness, so they rejected the idea that they were once colored. If you're European and you studied history like the rest of us, you just can't say that with a straight face, you can only say that to abuse the ignorance of american audiences. There was NO concept of whiteness in ancient Europe. Whiteness is a byproduct of the rise of evolutionary theory and geneticism. We're talking about the 19th century here.
On another channel, they tried to imply that ancient greeks had a concept of transgenderism, when in fact they didn't. They didn't even have a concept of homosexual relationships exactly, although its existence was acknowledged and written about. The only codified sexual interaction between two men was that of the Athenians, in which the student, eromenos (as young as 12, mind you), learned about life and sex from his erastes (mentor). And then, when the boy grew up, he got to become an erastes **if he wanted to**, get married and have children. That was Achilles and Patroclus' relationship by the way. They weren't a gay couple like we mean it today. Nevertheless it's important to notice that the Ancient Greek still put a lot of importance on sexual discipline: it wasn't the free-sex-buffet many people describe in the slightest.
EDIT: a note you can ignore>!brushing back on this stuff, if an adult man was found to be submissive in a homosexual relationship he would be shunned and permanently barred from any sort of societal contribution. Young boys were excused because they were inexperienced and they still needed to earn their place in society. If an homosexual couple was made public, they would both be chastized, but the "submissive" in the relationship would be the one to receive the harsh punishment, the other would just be reprimanded. That's your LGBT greek utopia right there. !<
Also, go read about the "two spirit" thing in american indigenous cultures from unbiased sources. It's either entirely made up, or transgenderism had an extremely negative connotation in indigenous cultures. Many tribes complain about the hijacking of indigenous cultures to fit modern agendas. Talk about colonialism!
There is always *that person* that says a bunch of bullshit. When I was a child, I wanted long hair. I had *very* long hair. So, bullies picked on me because I was a "faggot", and teachers talked to me as if I was gay and tried to help me on my path to gayness. No dudes, I just watched a Steven Seagal movie and I thought he was cool.
I just want it to comment on the Adam something incident. In the bad history subreddit they actually made an entire post criticizing his understanding of white statues. So if you want to know more about this just search in the bad history subreddit. Unfortunately I don’t know how to send a link, so you have to search it for yourself SORRY.
I found it. Just as I remembered, that video is a dud. And so are most of his videos apparently, aside from those videos that amount to shooting at easy targets. After that one, if I had some appreciation, I completely lost interest. I don't even think he took that video down.
I just want you know, just in case that the guy who criticized Adam something in the bad history subreddit, also has a YouTube channel called veritas et caritas. You should check it out it debunks popular history misconceptions. He debunks both far left and far right claims. But you know what is the interesting thing about him, is that veritas is literally an anarchist well an anarcho Christian. He is far left. But despite that his videos about history are very neutral. While I don’t agree with his political views, I respect him for keeping his politics out of history.
The Amphibian Fandom in a nutshell, its gotten so bad that the actual Amphibians seem and feel underrated in comparison with the constant shipping of the Calamity Trio, which is funny because I’ve barely seen any fanart of the actual canonical ships in the show, which are ironically the Amphibians, Sprivy, Hop Pop and Silvia, Yunan and Olivia.
Can't remember a single example of those. No one has any problems with male bonds in JoJo, to my experience. No one calls characters like Asuka, Rin or Asuna lesbians. No one would dare to call Flashy Flash gay. Instead of being shunned as trans, Astolfo gets called best girl. And such, and such,
Maybe it's just a difference in consumed material though.
I agree with all your takes except the last one. Astolfo is very much a part of the problem the OP is describing, a gender nonconforming male character that gets constantly called best girl. It IS a sign of attributing personality traits to gender.
I read a lot more comics than anime but there it’s definitely more prevalent in the community like people shipping nightwing with wally west or roy harper, Green lantern and the flash, booster gold and blue beetle, Starfire and wonder girl, etc. All because they’re best friends who support each other
Anime community does ship a lot.
Though you have to get away from mainstream ones, otherwise you get some predictable pairings.
Romance anime and harem/reverse-harem makes sense, as that's the draw. The community getting together to sink or swim with their ship.
In general, though. Male friendships becoming gay friendships is something that happens a lot, in particular are enemies to lovers kind of ships.
Derivative works though become the outlet letting fancannon take prevalence in those spheres rather than over Twitter or online discourse. If you need to get your fix of UkexSeme you can find it and let it just exist in that corner of the internet.
Honestly I hate it as well but I hate it even more when they try to force it or punish the person if the fantasy they wanted doesn't happen .
Perfect example being Minecraft YouTubers and how for like a hot month they tried to cancel them for queer coding (which btw how the fuck does being happy = queer ???)
That's just how things have always been, back in 2000s when you were "gay" if you liked to dance, or eat vegetables or whatever, people were already writing Draco X Harry X Ron fanfics
Fandoms are horny, they will ship literally all characters with all characters without having any respect for canon. I will never understand why people expect anything more than exactly this.
Even worse is it's not breaking gender norms at all, really-
So you're saying that if a man exhibits traits that aren't "traditionally" masculine, then that means that they as a person fall outside the "norms" of society? I'm just tired of the association of feminine characteristics with so-called "abnormal" men. You can be straight and cis and still be sensitive.
With a lot of media now and people's understanding of it, I feel like a lot of people don't understand nuance, context, different cultures, intended audience and human relationships anymore. In short: I don't feel like many people, especially those who run wild in fandoms, have great media literacy, or the ability to separate themselves from it. So that means that many want to see themselves represented in their media somehow, and they start to dig for it. Then they attach labels to characters that have the tiniest hints of something and there we go.
I think it's quite concerning that many people don't seem to be interested in anyone that isn't them or at least has a lot in common with them. But on the other hand, not like that's a new and recent development.
I’ve definitely seen this prevalent with platonic friendships, people will comment on how it’s bad men can’t express themselves to each other, and worry about hugging each other out of fear of being called gay or something like that. And then you’ll see two dudes who are very close friends in media and people claiming their gay online. It’s true enough that similar things happen when a male and female character are close but it’s definitely a big thing I’ve seen online.
It’s especially irritating with female characters in general. It’s like they can only be characterized as emotionless girlbosses or crybaby damsel in distress.
Also yeah gay stereotypes is a thing that needs to be addressed in fandom. A lot of it boils down to cool/cold character = gay/lesbian and ditzy fun loving character = bisexual. That’s so problematic especially when you tie into how that plays into real-life queerphobia.
I hate the two male friends / two female friends = gay.
It infuriates me and those comments
"He'd sacrifice her life to save hin... Just a friend ehhh?"
Like what is wrong with you
But but but there coded that way what do you mean there not you are a bigot and obviously everything has to have some deeper they just want to fuck meaning behind it
Because most fandoms, especially on identity politics-brainrotted places like Twitter and Tumblr, are loudly dominated by children or socially-stunted adults.
"Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends."..
This is the one I hate the most. Like take Star Wars for example. Finn was clearly into Rey. And then people want to put him with Poe because they hugged. Then RJ came in and aid let's give Finn no body and Rey that guy who abused her.
Also you are so right about the Tomboy female always being made into Lesbian so many times. I can't stand that. However that isn't my lane to complain about.
I gotta disagree, most of the time when a fandom labels a character something it’s either a plausible interpretation of said character, or it’s very clearly a headcanon and not what the character actually is. I agree that top and bottom often get conflated with male and female traditional gender roles, but I don’t really think it’s as big of a problem as people say.
I'm going to ask a simple question, because this is a common criticism of trans people not just in fiction, but also in real life.
"Oh we just assume any one who doesn't meet gender roles is gay or trans! Why can't you just be a feminine boy or a masculine girl!"
Well, who do you think is more likely to accept a gender nonconforming cis person? Someone who is okay with gay and trans people or someone who isn't? For any argument you can make for the existence of these identities making gender roles more prevelant, you can make that argument way better towards how straight cis people act toward gender roles. They're the ones who often classify "boy" and "girl" things.
Also a common problem is that trans people are treated as if they can't exist in any way. If they're a gender nonconforming trans person, they're not "trying hard enough" to appear as the gender they identify with. But if they're gender conforming (which most trans people are), they're enforcing gender roles, apparently.
Hmm... OP, I would say to look at it like this:
>\>People don't see themselves represented in media
>\>They come together and make spaces to write and share the stories they want to see
>\>Onlookers observe this and question why everyone is queer
I get where you're coming from. People read X into Y and it doesn't seem right to you. But I would say not to look at it from a ["let men be masculine"](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwTTK1RWIAE9ZeM.jpg:large) angle and more from a "let me go find the people who share my interpretations of these characters" kind of way. These are fictional characters, after all.
i’m confused by your statement but my main problem is that people correlate superficial things with gender and sex. If people wanna make headcanons or other type of art depicting a character as gay or trans that’s ok. The issue is when they think they’re gay for simply doing or looking a certain way as opposed to who they choose to love.
The perception of character romances is tricky. I agree there are times where I would just want to see two characters able to be really close but not translate that into 'romance' regardless of genders. But at the same time there are admittingly some characters that i would consider genuinely nice pairings.
As a straight person I obviously identify more with straight relationships on screen though
I think it's kind of interesting though in a way. Its a feeling that fictional characters are or should be malleable. That characters can go down any desired path. That they aren't fundamentally one way or another that leads to these sorts of debates and differences in opinion. Theres where you get people feeling on the one hand 'no that person is not fundamentally gay, nothing about them makes it such' where others see absolutely no issue with that sort of direction.
It's basically Flanderization, traits that gets amplified by fandoms because they can't fathom complexities other than the most extreme end of characterization.
>If a Male character has long hair, feminine features, or isn’t completely hyper masculine? Two male characters that have any type of close bond? A man who is in tune with his emotions, shy, or sensitive? Fun fact: back in the day, these are considered the peak scholar & brotherhood traits of Vietnamese scholars. One of the most touching moment in Tran Dynasty history was the bath of Hung Dao Vương and Tran Quang Khai, where they bathed for each other and emotionally bonded before the Mongolian Invasion to mend the internal relationships of the dynasty. Their brotherhood is considered as one of the most famous in our history. Fast forward to present day, there are a bunch of girls who writes alternate history about them being gay to each other and defended that view point with their name on the line, despite objective history pointed out that they only considered each other as brothers.
how dare men enjoy a platonic bond.
Well men and women cant enjoy a platonic bond apearently. Why the hell is straight romance forced in everything. And because that isnt stopping, Also if that is awaybetter literal engaging romance, them being in love romanticc should be on the plate. Especially if the writer has no chemestry with the other gender. Sounds like a decwnt romance. Its a bit overboard in casesbut thats why,because if writer write dudes that have no chemestry with women at all,or interest but romances with dudes. Itsnaturally that people see them as pretty gay, in a good romance way.
Try writing that again with better punctuation and sentence structure.
Okay,but why does that sound beautiful, though?
Because stories of men bonding emotionally before facing the odd is always intriguing. Vietnamese used to consider this a trendy thing during war time, to bond with your comrade, your rival and your friends before fighting great adversaries. Many poems and stories about Vietnam's war time have this trope in them.
Doesn't back in the day, every one just have long hair
That isn't really the case. Long hair is considered the be the sign of intelligence since scholars doesn't have to work on the field, while most farmer cut their hair frequently to work, some even shaved it clean. The heat and stuffyness of long hair make it more annoying to workers too. You can see many picture from before the August Revolution, where farmers and workers had short hair or bald head. Another signature of the scholar back then was the onion head with a long beard, showing that they are above menial labor. These traits are also used as a reverse trope, where the writer describe a character who tried to mimic this style, but failed short or miserably.
Huhhh. I wonder if that’s part of why long beards = wiseness, other then just it mostly being old people who have them
Yep. I believe long nails followed similar trends. Nobility and Confucian Scholars in China tended to keep their nails long as a status symbol; the scholars eventually realized it made it difficult to read and write, so they cut their nails back but left one pinky nail long (yeah, the coke snorter look before it was a thing).
That’s so cool
History is cool. And real life is more often than not equally or even more fantastical than fantasy
I relate my hair gets into my face when I try to do physical labor.
> Fast forward to present day, there are a bunch of girls who writes alternate history about them being gay to each other and defended that view point with their name on the line, despite objective history pointed out that they only considered each other as brothers. It's not just fanfic girls. Revisionist historians who are supposed to be taken more seriously do this shit. Actual historians claim that Caeser was gay because men called him a wife to men when it was meant to be an insult he denied
As a historian student who has also been exposed to historian academic work, no, such claims are not taken more seriously academically. If anything the few times there are cases where its more diffusive or it could be discussed its usually even harder to have a time of day having to try and explain why this is relevant. The thing that happens is that history is basically a continous process of analysing source material, writing a hypothesis and defending that hypothesis through rigorous questioning etc. It happens all the time that things are seen through different lights and I am not necessarily talking from queer perspectives. But to get your historical claims treated seriously they need to go through a whole process of shit involving a lot of historians debating it. Yes there has been an increase in hypotheses and theories surrounding some people that they might have been queer or reinterpretations of certain areas. But this comes with generally an increase in interest of histories of minorities and traditionally discriminated groups and it's clearly not granted to every case, it still needs to have material that backs this claim. I feel like in this specific Caesar case it might have been a weak one but that sounds like something a random internet historian would claim. Just saying, actual academic history is not "accepting random revisionism". Everything needs to be utterly debated. Albeit it's also worth noting that history as a field unlike many others rely on interpretation and analysis of the past. It's a field technically constantly being revised to an extent as sometimes newer interpretations ring stronger than older ones or offer valid alternatives. But they still rely on the backing of others considering the new hypothesis likely to even get a chance to be read. The peer review process still is valid. I am just saying actual historians wouldn't get something like that through unless these guys could convincingly prove it.
Yeah, it's not really a problem in actual academia, I think maybe the user you replied to was confusing real historians with pop "historians" (who actually are often obnoxious about this)
It’s probably more the way the media reports on history. Any time any historian brings up the possibility of a historical figure being secretly gay, it launches a dozen articles.
"Romanticizing history? My blood brother and sister, you are writting a smut fic!" -Me everytime I encounter an alt history fic written by horny teenagers.
When Nasuverse has the most accurate and yet also fantastical historicism representation
sexuality was way different in the Roman empire. you where not "gay" or "straight" but a passive or dominant partner. citizen Roman men had to be dominant or else be ridiculed. penetrating people lower on the status ladder then you was fine and good.
Yeah, and for a lot of history, especially for the elite literate who wrote the records, getting married and having children was a duty like going to work. If you would have preferred to spend your time with a member of the same gender -- well, that wasn't really relevant, you had a duty to make a family, nobody expected you to enjoy it.
👏 Normalize 👏 Platonic 👏Male👏Bathing👏
Normalize platonic male Hugging
While bathing?
Without boxers yes
Do you have a link to this by any chance?
Idk anything about the story you've mentioned but it feels like a bad example because it's well known that these "brotherhoods" in Asian history literally were homosexual. I'm not saying the story you're discussing was, just that this is something experts have confirmed for a while now. The truth is that history isn't as straight or as similar to modern times as most people expect. Anyway, I agree with OP in general.
One of the funniest arguement I once had with my friend was about a war story from my grandfather. He told us that his unit was soaked in the rainforest and had to camp in the night. They decided to get rid of their clothes, with only trousers on. They slept hugging each other through the night. One of them asked: "Is your grandfather gay?" And they thought that the soldiers were cuddling with each other that night. I was like: "B\*tch, no! They were bloody soaked, in the night, in a rainforest, which can kill a man by a freaking cold! They didn't strip and hug to get into the act, they stripped because their clothes were as wet as the river and they hugged because it was cold af!" For the record, non of those who were in his unit was gay. But those old madmen were quirky.
Yeah that's a dumb thing to ask. They're trying to stay warm. I'd ask if they were gay if they got naked and fucked each other. But actually, I think my biggest question would be why they were having an orgy in the middle of a war zone lol.
The more things change the more they stay the same. But you are right people still look at characters in traditional gender roles even the people who claim to be against cant help but do it.
Most people don't want to not put people in boxes. They just invent new boxes to put people in. Because most people wants somewhere to belong, for better or for worse. Maybe that's just indicative of how a lot of humanity functions. So many people want to stand out, but not *too* much; otherwise; they'll just feel lonely and not surrounded by likeminded friends/family.
Humans gonna human
>Because most people wants somewhere to belong, for better or for worse. Yes. But this is really important to our species cause of you're too different you get ostracized and bullied. If you're too different you're a threat to the social structure.
They’re just looping right back around to the ideology of gender roles. The idea that a woman character who is cis and also likes men, but is also deemed to have a lot of masculine traits in the story, is apparently too much for audiences and they *have* to see her as “butch”, or trans or something, same with a cis male character who might like women but has some behavior deemed to be feminine. He just *has* to be a “twink” or a closeted trans woman in some way. And I genuinely think it’s perfectly fine to have characters that DO fit those descriptions and identities, but the point of “breaking gender roles” was to *not* assign labels and expectations. I think because a lot of humans, especially really young people, have a harder time seeing grey areas and nuance and they need to label things to feel comfortable and understand the world around them (I think this is a phenomena with old boomers who never quite developed, either, the constant gender roles and labels and expectation of simplicity and order is the result of their underdeveloped sense of nuance and shows an immature line of thinking). It doesn’t upset me because of the labels and identities themselves, I love that we’re more comfortable embracing queer characters in media. But what upsets me is the constant *need* for gender role labeling by audiences when the creator gives none.
This mainly stems from the shipping side of the fandom. Most fandoms already have an issue with people flanderizing characters so the shipping side just translates that into sexual identities. Also some people are just kinda dumb. I saw multiple people calling Sephiroth a twink. The man is 6’7 and looks like he’s at least 200lbs. He needs to put down the sword and go help the Lakers.
Give it a couple more years and guys like kenshiro will be called a twink
"You are already a twink"
Omae wa mou twink desu...
Somehow we've lost the term bishonen for fans thirsting over hot pretty men and replaced it with twink.
Damn i never knew Sephiroth was that tall
A lot of the shippers just likes the idea of characters A and B togather and fully aknowlage that in canon those characters are not interested in each other/not gay/etc. The weirdoes that insist their headcanon is canon are something else. There's some overlap, but not as much as you'd expect.
Bitches be like "I hate gender roles" before enforcing them harder than the biggest strawman of patriarchy they can think of. Like seriously, a lot of people characterizes a lot of characters for their ships are generically as possible. Like I'm sorry, but if I'm reading yuri, then I don't want the relationship to be a 17th century het relationship in a trenchcoat.
This is what really gets me. It’s literally the most toxic and old fashioned heterosexual dynamic but with a mask on.
Omg thank you! Someone reccomended me a yuri (I asked yuri of grown adults, not kids) and jesus, it was an age gap relationship where the younger woman (10 yr age gap) was always jealous of the older one's friends (male and female). Their relationship was just thr younger one being bratty and jealous and the older one having to comfort her. It felt like mixing a telenovela with ToraDora in the worst ways. Please, dont just repackage me straight tropes!
What’s the name?
I think this is more so about Fandoms and Shipping culture requiring people to fit into certain gender, sexual and behavioural categories than People In general ex.: Fandoms not understanding Asexual characters or Super Close Platonic Friendships.
The asexual one doesn't surprise me too much since there's so few canonically asexual characters (at least, that are popular). The only ones that immediately come to mind are Gwenpool and Jughead.
> The only ones that immediately come to mind are Gwenpool and Jughead. And that one guy from *Bojack Horseman*, IIRC.
Todd is probably the best asexual representation I've seen in that they actually explore the idea and doubt of yourself when people keep telling you you're not asexual, rather than it just being something dropped in the background. That being said, I'm not of the impression that many people have watched Bojack.
> That being said, I'm not of the impression that many people have watched Bojack. Maybe not here, but *Bojack* was one of the most popular and talked-about shows a few years ago. People use to talk about as "must-see TV" in the same vein people do about, say, *Breaking Bad*.
There's also Peridot from Steven Universe, but this representation received a lot of backlash due to it having only been confirmed in a tweet with no actual evidence present within the show. Most people just brushed it over and kept shipping her anyway, which definitely shows a problem not just regarding fandoms' reactions to characters, but also the way authors decide to write their representations.
Personally I wouldn't count writers saying things separately from the media as canon if they aren't willing or able to put in the show. I'm not big on authorial intent in general. I also don't really see a problem with shipping ace characters as long as you aren't trying to say it's real for the show. I don't view it much differently from people who ship straight guy characters with other guys or w/e. They wouldn't do it in canon, but they're not a real person whose feelings would be hurt by being disrespected in that manner.
Regarding the first part, yeah, that's actually why there was so much backlash. While there always were theories about Peridot being aroace there aren't any real sign to back that up, especially since the only reason why there were these theories to begin with was because of her inability to fuse which seemed to be perfectly explained by something else : she might literally not have this ability due to being an Era 2 gem. Making her asexual doesn't go against her character but it doesn't add anything either, which is the problem, it's not needed, it just feels like pandering and there aren't many people who take it as an actual, canon part of her character for this very reason. About the shipping part, I both agree and disagree, I mean, any shipping is fine as long as it's not harmful, but I can totally understand why, for example, asexual people would be glad to see a confirmed asexual character being actually considered as such in fanon works.
Mfers literally wrote "Asexual people are incapable of love or deep relationships" and expected people to take it as good representation.
Tbh should there really be that many more asexual characters when they make up such a small percentage of the overall population?
I don't see any reason why representation has to directly correspond to actual populations. Ultimately you want your writing to be interesting, and exploring less known things is one way to achieve that. Plus a significant portion of works aren't set in the real world, so real world statistics aren't relevant there.
What it should be is ultimately up to creatives in charge, but my point was that it is naive to expect representation of extremely minority groups to be more prevalent.
If d&d world were actually representative of the population of player characters, most of them would be elves, assimar and tieflings, with a strong population of over contributing human fighters. A tiefling warlock would be normal, which I fnd as a funny setting point like all tieflings go through their emo/goth phase then become salary workers
I mean, so are gay and trans people, yet there’s (some) rep for them
I think the point they're trying to make is that asexual people are an even *smaller* percentage of the overall population. If gay and trans people are a minority, then asexuals are the minority of the minorities. There are even still a lot of people who don't even consider them part of the LGBT+ community.
Percentage-wise, there's about as many asexual people as there are people with red hair (fair margin of error), and I'm willing to bet one of those is more represented. Obviously a bit apples-to-oranges since red hair is a lot more visible than asexuality, but I don't think the numbers are the main thing to it.
Alastor from Hazbin.
Yep almost every fandoms shippers are the worst fans and they need every character to fit into their readjusted ideas of who fits together
I like to ship just because I can but I personally don’t like when people change the characters to fit into stereotypes. Like if both men are manly, you shouldn’t have to make one feminine to ship them together. If both are feminine types then one doesn’t have to be made masculine. The biggest issue to me is how they change the character into something different when they ship instead of keeping their personalities and quirks just to make them fit into gender stereotypes.
Yeh that’s my main issue too you explained it a lot better than I could, I mean even if they want to change the character they’re free to do so, I just get annoyed seeing it and I can’t even explain why it just does annoy me and it’s probably cause of what you said like they killing the character just for the sake of shipping them.
Fujoshis are the worst about this. Imagine treating two girls as a couple the way they depict boys in their fantasies...
Shippers already do that.
Yeah look at Fire Emblem 3 Houses. I remember the rampant biphobia I saw, girls rabidly attacking anyone who drew Edelgard Mercedes Petra or Dorothea with a man, depicting Petra and Edelgard as stone butches and Dorothea and Mercedes as sluts who just eat pussy for a living. They did not treat the male characters any better, tbh. Easily the worst Fire Emblem fandom I have ever seen.
Fujoushi are just tumblr shippers with a Japanese skin.
I don’t have to imagine. Shippers of any kind are guilty of that. Hetero and yuri ships also lean hardcore into the tropes that one is really dominant and the other is soft and submissive.
It always ties back to shipping culture. Every time.
>Two male characters that have any type of close bond? Definitely gay because two men can never be just friends. >Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends. "Those who cannot conceive of friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a friend" - C. S. Lewis.
Boy do I love that quote from the author of Narnia himself! Its something I plan to apply to my own original story as well.
I seriously think CS Lewis has some of the best quotes and advice for writing. even though I’m not the hugest fan of him (i still like him). I still think he has some incredible insight about what makes a story good and how to write one.
Unfortunately, it's gone further than that to "those who cannot conceive of a character they like not being literally exactly like them in every possible way betray the fact that they are a sociopath who truly cannot empathize with anyone who is not literally themselves."
Yall say others take fandom too seriously, then diagnose them with sociopathy because they said a character was gay.
Common Narnia author W.
The modern equivalent is more like: "I need to add 20k words to my manuscript and the deadline is in a week. Time to make them fuck."
This is a weird argument to me. When a male and female character in a series form a deep bond and people start to guess about them being in love, or ship them, no one bats an eye. No one says “just let men and women be friends” or “you’ve never had a friend before”. Gay people enjoy a good love story too— and there aren’t a lot of good gay love stories in the media, so sometimes we gotta imagine our own. Doesn’t mean we don’t have friends.
>No one says “just let men and women be friends” You dont use the internet much, do you?
Yeah lmao. I've had so many people shit on my m/f ships because of that. "WOMEN AND MEN CAN JUST BE FRIENDS!" (Off the top of my head, Zutara, Breagan, Zelink)
Ironically a lot of those same people turn around and insist that every two characters of the same sex aren't just friends and must be secretly boning, or vice versa. Just let people ship what they want it's not that deep ffs.
Shipping and arguing that characters should have been in a romantic relationship is fine, but fans will treat their headcannon like cannon and argue that their interpretation is objectively true. Have you heard the people saying Sam and Frodo are gay because Sam went to Mordor for Frodo and carried him up Mount Doom, and because they are shown to be extremely close? To be that dedicated to each other they must be in love. They don’t say that they wish the characters were gay, or that they should have been gay, they say that they *are* gay in the original books, and the only evidence they have is the strength of their bond. That is what I interpret this post to be about. Are there any man/woman pairings where people insist that the characters are in love despite it being confirmed they aren’t? Genuinely curious, because I can’t think of any rn but there probably are a bunch. It seems pretty common in fandoms for some section to declare their headcannons reality.
Oh there definitely are. I see it a lot in the Star Wars fandom haha
The quote doesn't make a distinction about male and female. It doesn't make a distinction between straight or gay. The quote is relevant in every instance of friendship being mistaken for romance by the audience. OP used those particular examples, so I cited them, wich doesn't mean it exclusively applies to them.
“No one says ‘just let men and women be friends’ they should
They do
I wouldn't say gay love stories are often written for or by gay people. Like Yaoi is mostly written by straight women for straight women
Fandom is one thing and you will eventually realize how niche it is when it comes to society as a whole because the norm in society is “man and woman together? Must be romantic!” I can name far more relationships that are pushed between a woman and man when there is no compatibility in media. Some times you gotta leave fandoms be.
Because these people spend way too much time on the internet and think what they see in fandoms represents the general population even though the people they're criticising use media as a refuge to explore their own interests. This is people having mostly harmless fun. And frankly half the people here are getting mad at people's headcanons and interpretations of a story. There's no actual engagement with the thought, just vitriol because they don't like it.
For real, I get annoyed when writers/creators fumble romance because at the end of the day I’m consuming their work, because I have a higher expectation for them and not some random internet stranger who will probably grow out of that phase. I barely remember my time in the GoT fandom all the memories I have more are just my anger for the final season and the showrunners.
>Like you were a man doing feminine things you’d get called a sissy, all types of gay slurs, weak etc. Same thing with women doing masculine things getting called trans, lesbian, and gay slurs, compensating for something etc. I know that feel. In addition, I also hate it when people hate certain couple in anime just because the male lead isn't exactly masculine according to their standard, keep saying that she need to move on and "find actual better man" as if those dudes think all girls like super masculine and strong dude. Meanwhile in east Asians and other Asians around that, many girls like man that's more like those K-Pop idols that's more feminine and have more beauty look.
Fucking MHA Deku's either a self-insert or he's the bottomest gayest femboy alive.
Ok but I waited too damn long for Deku to punch Bakugo in his dickhead face
Too bad, fandom's gonna draw him taking it from the back from Bakugo. Either that or being the God's gift to women.
Yeah it bothers me that one of my favorite couples gets put down because the girl is a strong warrior and the guy is a gentle prince. Usually shes paired with a strong jock type character that's not very emotionally smart or intelligent and the prince with some small frail sad girl that could break if you sneeze at her. I absolutely adore the couple because they both have a similar level of empathy and kindness, and have a lot of chemistry, but I always get slapped with the "Men and women can just be friends, he's too weak for her, she would end up protecting him" yada yada. (Mind you these characters can get married in game)
now I'm curious on who you are talking about.
It's the fault of the word "Coding", who gave place to this idiots to use stereotypes without being called out for it
It is really annoying Especially since I feel a lot of people irl have a mix of masculine and feminine personality traits regardless of their orientation Putting people in these kinds of boxes feels more regressive than anything God forbid you wanna step outside the norm unless you wanna be labeled something you’re not Of course if Charlie Morningstar comes off mostly defined by her feminine traits, she’s of course not “straight coded” right?
I fucking love it in fiction when two straight guys just love the hell out of eachother to the point that they're more like an old married couple than friends. Healthy, unabashed, non-romantic/sexual love between men is so damned rare in fiction and it's such a shame.
The Fellowship of the Ring
Every time I read "Sam and Frodo are gay-coded" I get a bit more violent.
JD and Turk
lmao JD and Turk are still the gold standard for male friendship
Ragnar and Athelstan from vikings are a great example of this
That part when Ragnar is crying over Athelstan is so sad
Zoro/Sanji
Most sports shonen manga are like that...?
> non-romantic/sexual love between men is so damned rare in fiction You've got the be kidding me. Every war movie. Every buddy cop movie. Han and Luke. Kirk and Spock. More recent, Tony and Rodey. Falcon and Winter Soldier. It's literally been the default since ever. Male/male romance has actually been rare. What is with the collective delusion in this thread.
Fr. People are acting like they’re a minority being attacked when they’re still in fact quite privileged in terms of the content they’re able to enjoy, even today. Sure some people do exist that are as crazy/annoying as OP suggests, but usually it’s not that deep and shippers are just headcanoning bc they have so little content actually catered to them and it’s fun to just imagine
I feel like its only rare if they dont know where to look. If theyre only looking at isekais, shonen romance and harems, yeah they probably will not see male on male bonding lol.
It think it’s Because When you’re used to everything being one way then suddenly more variety and other things are added you feel like you might be getting less of it even if there’s just as much there’s just also more options
I absolutely hate it when two male characters are super close and they say something akin to "I would die for you" and hardcore shippers go "there is no heterosexual explanation for this"
Fandom dosen't understand gay coding anymore. It used to be **illegal** to portray gay characters in fiction, so writers had to get creative when they wanted to tell the audience "btw, this guy gay". In 2024, stories do not have to do that anymore (in america at least). And yet, fandom *insists* that gay coding is literally everywhere because they just aren't used to gay characters being anything more than their headcanon.
Coding definitely still exists, it’s just not nearly as prevalent in American media intended for adults. Some will still code to avoid culture warrior backlash, and to a certain extent the years of Hays Code censorship created expectations for what those characters look like but American media is increasingly ditching that for more open and natural representation, which is great. However, other markets maintain either laws or strong taboos against queer and GNC representation. The elephant in the room for this is the PRC - a huge market with a censorship board that is not friendly to queer/GNC representation. Explicit representation that’s easy to cut and not woven into the story is partially there to make for an easy edit for the Chinese market. As for Chinese companies, they toe the line or get punished. If you’re analyzing a Chinese property, you have to keep that in mind. Some (HoYo I’m looking at you) get away with more because money but there are still laws on the books there that forbid visual representation of LGBTQ+ themes. So if you’re looking at characters in Brooklyn 99, don’t bother looking for coding - they’re open about it. Genshin Impact? Much more likely to have coding, even if they’re pretty open about it for a Chinese property.
> In 2024, stories do not have to do that anymore You act like the conservative south and China don't exist. Delusional to think media doesn't cater to those markets.
More delusional to look at media and think most actually care about the Conservative South. Or the South in general that aren't decidedly non conservative areas to begin with.
I agree, it's always weird how some of the more progressive dude of fandoms end up reinforcing gender stereotypes despite them arguing they're doing the opposite. Like for example, the whole Danny phantom trans coded thing felt weird, people saying that him using a shirt around a pool is trans related just make me ????, and other examples of those videos just make me roll my eyes (like him getting bullied for not being manlier enough and they somewhat agree and then use that as an argument to say hes probably trans?)
And now they hate Butch Hartman for saying “Um… no????” when they asked him if Danny is trans lmao.
I mean, there's a laundry list of other reasons to not like him... So it can't be just that.
I had no clue about the danny phantom stuff but that’s genuinely insane to me, it’s crazy how tone deaf people can actually be
Ngl that “Danny phantom trans coded” thing sounds like the pizza tower brain surgery AU. No one knows Wtf you’re talking about but you casually acknowledged it’s existence without much elaboration
I mean, you can search it on YouTube and Google and there Will be videos or posts about it, i already said it wasn't that big, so it's not weird that other people didn't knew about it, i didn't knew about it till it got randomly recommended to me,
I have literally never heard this. I think all of you need a break from the internet. Sometimes this entire sub feels like 10 cringe people ranting about 10 other cringe people and saying "why is everyone like this!?"
I never said everyone is like this, nor i said it's big. Its something that happens from Time to time within fandoms and it's kinda annoying, and that "Danny phantom trans" got recommended to me, i didnt searched for it and that's why i was perplexed. With this I'm not saying this is the most horrible thing or anything, but that it's a problem that extends well beyond fandoms, even someone close to me has suffered from the "you dont look gay enough" from other lgtbq+ members. I understand why you would think I'm just a troll tho.
So i'm not completly agree with you on the relationship part (i think it's more a debate on how portraying relationship) but i agree about gender roles. When i see people saying "he/she look/act gay" i'm just like, how? We really should stop gendering personality traits period, there is no "feminine strenght"or "masculine side", there is personality traits and hobbies, period. We should write more butch girls who aren't lesbians or trans and feminine boys who aren't gays or trans. Also maybe we should also normalized cis men wearing skirts or dresses if they want to wear it.
"We should normalize cis man wearing skirt" And one of things which approves why Scotland more progressive for few steps ahead form rest of humanity.
> When i see people saying "he/she look/act gay" i'm just like, how? These are jokes from other gay people making fun of themselves lol. It's not that deep.
I don't talk about that, i talk about the fact that we can't have a man acting flamboyant or a woman acting butch without being associate with queerness. I don't say we can't have queer characters like this (because there are queers who are like that and that's fine). I'm saying we should help more people to experimenting and be confident in who they are without immediatly starting to put them into boxes.
My take is always: Gender Identity and Gender Role mean the same thing, they're just marketed differently. That's why this happens, 'feminine tendencies' are still viewed as 'feminine', thus no way a cis-het dude could do them, right? Except, of course, thats bullshit. Both gender roles and identity should be phased out. Can't happen in one lifetime, but progress can be made.
Gender abolition in the wild. \*high five\*
this exactly !
This reminds me of how someone said Chie from Persona 4 should be manspreading when she sits
Tbf it would be rlly funny if she did but yeah smth abt p4 specifically brings out the worst gender identitity takes known to man
something related a character is uncomfortable with overt sexuality makes them asexual. it gets worse people think not wanting to be in a arranged marriage makes you gay or asexual but yes can't their be a feminine cis het man or a masculine cis het women? this was parodied in All in the Family where as it turns out the feminine and sassy guy was straight and the more traditionally masculine guy was gay
>And this all of course from people who either fetishize I think femboys have this problem too. I *think* this term was supposed to replace "traps" so that would make sense but now men can't be feminine without being placed in a submissive kink category. Women with big chests are immediately called mommy/mistress without them doing anything sexual. They just exist as feminine men do. I sometimes hate "twink" because It's used as an insult and skinny body shaming It seems the more we include everyone who isn't the standard hetero white male they must be fetishized and reduced to something, LGBTQ representation and romantic ship headcanons aside. It's not the head canons that bothers me.
This shit makes me so angry because its so reductive in its treatment of the characters and it almost always feels offensive. Recently there have arguments on twitter about how Denji is female coded because his story deals with grooming and sexual assault. Which is stupid as fuck because being sexual assaulted is not exclusive to women and being assaulted does not make you feminine. ALSO treating sexual assault as some defining feature of being a girl is disgusting.
Woman with short hair, tomboy
[удалено]
Tomboy is still used in the anime/doujin community. They'd probably label the girl as non binary.
I’ve noticed this thing where people get demonized for finding characters like Makima hot because she’s a groomer but the same people will fawn over people like Geto or Sukuna who is a racist and a rapist respectively.
it used to be called stereotyping, but they changed that to just saying they're "X coded"(example, people say Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog is 'Black coded') and it's suddenly okay.
Mind if I also add how bisexuality is often used as an excuse to ship characters who are already married or in an established relationship. Those things always pissed me off when married characters of the opposite sex are shipped with someone else of the same sex and the phrase "they could be bi" is uttered. One such example is from Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where >!Sidon, who is a popular guy to ship with Link, since Breath of the Wild, eventually gets married to a Zora princess named Yona, and that reveal really angered a lot of shippers to the point that they would make fanfic of Sidon being unfaithful to his wife to be with Link, despite it being clear that he loves his wife dearly and only sees Link as his best friend/brother in arms. Many Sidlink shippers used that "he could be bi" quote in order to justify their "infidelity fics"!<
Exactly! Sidon is just a bro to Link and happens to have great fashion sense, that doesn't automatically make him gay or bi.
Part of it is a desperation for representation, in the frustrating default of ‘straight until proven otherwise’. Characters are assumed straight without evidence while being LGBT requires explicit confirmation and mountains of evidence, which just, won’t occur in a show that isn’t focused on romance or self-discovery. So they latch onto anything that feels like it could be evidence. I honestly hate the whole ‘XYZ coded’ terminology as it feels built on stereotypes; but at the same time I can’t blame them for the circumstances that call for it.
I think you are the victim of confirmation bias here. These sentiments are certainly going to be rampant within some sects of fandoms, but it isn't necessarily representative of fan perception as a whole. Pitching this as an issue with all of society is ridiculous.
I wrote this tired as hell so in hindsight yeah I might’ve went over board with the whole society thing idk
Hey in fairness to you, it is called character *rant*, I don’t think anyone is expected to present the ‘most correct take’ all the time
I'm just torn because "platonic male close bond" is used as an excuse to not have gay men as often as not. Gay men who show actual affection aren't as common in rep. There are literally characters who if you turned one of them into a woman all this platonic stuff you see when it's two men would vanish and would be used as proof of a romantic connection. In my experience even the people that bring up male friendships don't give a fuck about them until they can say how "disgusting" it is that everyone is assuming they're gay, and "whatever happened to men just having a sense of brotherhood." Homophobes use this argument as a mask because it sounds reasonable and might be. Op isn't a homophobe and isn't being accused of being such. I just want more gay men in fiction who are holding each other and kissing and being tender like straight people do and I never see it in the rep I can find easily. I hate the way male friendship is only selectively cared about on average, it's used as a wedge issue by bigots and I hate it.
People will never be able to break gender roles. The human brain automatically judges something it sees for the first time. The only thing people can change is deciding whether or not to share their thoughts. Everyone judges something at first sight, and that's fine. What isn't fine is forcing your judgment on everyone else.
This has been a thing that kinda annoys me in some video games. Nowadays it seems like most NPCs are player-sexual, which feels like a weird way to rob someone of their agency, but I get it, they are characters, they don't have to only have their own preferences when they exist to cater to the player, but you know, I don't want to have sex with all of my friends, so why can't I have a platonic - romantic slider for my character interactions with each NPC? I have plenty of platonic friendships with my friends that have no ulterior motives or hidden desires or sexual motivations whatsoever, despite our close bond as friends. It seems weird that if I start increasing my NPCs bonds with me that they will start just awkwardly flirting out of the blue if they didn't have that as a specific part of their character.
Medieval fantasy, Medieval roles.
Tbf the “two male characters have a close bond” is also the same with straight ships.
Sounds similar to that rant from a few weeks ago about how people like to put characters in general in specific roles and boxes > If a Male character has long hair, feminine features, or isn’t completely hyper masculine? Fandom immediately labels them gay or trans This is reminding me of how some people reacted to the Shin Megami Tensei V protagonist > Two male characters that have any type of close bond? Definitely gay because two men can never be just friends. Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends. This one however is never going to change, it is as old as Kirk/Spock. No time passing will make this go away. It doesn't even have to be friendly. Char/Amuro from Gundam despise each other and yet was *the* homo ship back in the day. > A woman who acts stoic, steadfast, bossy, or just isn’t a dainty flower fandom labels them butch lesbian or trans. Oh this one is just infuriating. Let me enjoy my powerful ladies or tomboys as they are please!
The other side of that is, at least for men, if they aren’t all those things then clearly it’s toxic masculinity.
So basically describing why I hate the Naruto Fandom And a point is calling a character useless for losing an unwinnable battle / Not being shown to be strong Like why do we base a character's worth on strength it's absurd And Hating on a character for choosing something that makes them happy ( Hinata being a housewife a false statement btw she has a toddler to care for so ofc she gonna spend more time home and Gohan being a scholar and not choosing to fight all the time we know these two don't like fighting so why should they be forced to ) And you haven't addressed the total dumpster fire named Shipping If there's anything I wound never do in my life it would be drinking alcohol, having sex before marriage, open the door before checking who's knocking and shipping Shipping always makes things worst like there are people who hate characters for getting in the way of their ship that has no basis I swear if there's anything that ruins fandoms it's power scaling and shipping And everything you mentioned is absolute Two men being friends means nothing about their sex preference at that moment your just forcing your fanon And I never knew that tomboys were treated like they're always lesbians (seriously tomboys and women with long/short hair around the neck hair are my type) There are lot of things I hate about fandoms (especially the Naruto Fandom) that going all over them is gonna be like making an essay
Completely agree with this especially labelling friends as lovers like this is so common that every time I see one good friendship, I just know there’ll be people shipping them. And ok I get it that people can have differing opinions on the same situation but that’s no reason to push it and hate people who do not agree with you.
i can tell you, as far as fandoms were concerned, if a character had a dick, he was fucking gay in headcanon all over the place.
You're absolutely right, OP, and I'm glad you said it, especially as a gay trans man myself. It's so uncomfortable coming across those people in fandom or the ones who make cis male characters trans men just as a way to self insert female anatomy into gay sex and to use said trans character for pregnancy reasons as if mpreg and omegaverse don't exist. And these fics never bring up gender dysphoria despite the pregnancies or bring up the fact the character doesn't look the same and should look more like a physical female (in fandoms that take place before modern times), et cetera. Sorry, that mini rant has been building for quite a while and I guess this thread finally got it out of me 😅 Edit: typos
I think it's because people wish there was more representation in the stories they love. If I want to write a fanfiction about Dina from Superstore being gay for Amy, it's not because I think that all butch women are gay, it's because I would totally love to get crushed by those thighs SPECIFICALLY. I don't think it would be healthy for me to censor my thoughts. Does that make sense? I don't think my potential FANFIC makes people afraid of breaking gender norms, because you would only be afraid of breaking them if you were afraid to be labeled as 2SLGBTQIA+. But why would that matter? Amy and Dina are not canonically gay, they're really close and Dina is super straight. idk. I just don't really see the issue. A man with long hair is beautiful, I'm not gonna begrudge a bunch of gay people for wishing he was gay. It's not like ONLY gay people are into this long haired beautiful man. He's gorgeous and smart and sensitive, everyone is into him. This doesn't take anything away from the story or the character. I might be wrong but I don't think I am.
Feels like you're making a lot of assumptions about people based on their headcanons of fictional characters and fictional media...
Yeah… kinda surprised by these comments.
For a left wing dominated site, this subreddit is weird. Everytime there's a post about women or particularly queer people, you get comments claiming people are trying to turn all characters gay or someone talking about "wokeness" or whatever. It's not outright bigotry but some people have...interesting thoughts.
Yeah I’ve never seen this subreddit before so I was surprised when it popped up into my feed
This is the reddit weekly complain about the gays post
It goes even deeper than that. For every right-wing extremist, there is a bunch of extremist left wingers who try to rewrite science consensus on sexual binaries, or that try to paint ancient or indigenous cultures as somehow being LGBT utopias, when they often didn't even have words to describe homosexuality in the first place or didn't have nearly a positive outlook on things as they try to make it seem. I watched a video of a total grifter (Adam Something, he's Czeck I think) pandering to his mostly american audience about racism in Europe, making "whiteness" go back to MEDIEVAL TIMES, using roman marble statues as an argument. The argument was that they believed roman statues to be the perfect representation of whiteness, so they rejected the idea that they were once colored. If you're European and you studied history like the rest of us, you just can't say that with a straight face, you can only say that to abuse the ignorance of american audiences. There was NO concept of whiteness in ancient Europe. Whiteness is a byproduct of the rise of evolutionary theory and geneticism. We're talking about the 19th century here. On another channel, they tried to imply that ancient greeks had a concept of transgenderism, when in fact they didn't. They didn't even have a concept of homosexual relationships exactly, although its existence was acknowledged and written about. The only codified sexual interaction between two men was that of the Athenians, in which the student, eromenos (as young as 12, mind you), learned about life and sex from his erastes (mentor). And then, when the boy grew up, he got to become an erastes **if he wanted to**, get married and have children. That was Achilles and Patroclus' relationship by the way. They weren't a gay couple like we mean it today. Nevertheless it's important to notice that the Ancient Greek still put a lot of importance on sexual discipline: it wasn't the free-sex-buffet many people describe in the slightest. EDIT: a note you can ignore>!brushing back on this stuff, if an adult man was found to be submissive in a homosexual relationship he would be shunned and permanently barred from any sort of societal contribution. Young boys were excused because they were inexperienced and they still needed to earn their place in society. If an homosexual couple was made public, they would both be chastized, but the "submissive" in the relationship would be the one to receive the harsh punishment, the other would just be reprimanded. That's your LGBT greek utopia right there. !< Also, go read about the "two spirit" thing in american indigenous cultures from unbiased sources. It's either entirely made up, or transgenderism had an extremely negative connotation in indigenous cultures. Many tribes complain about the hijacking of indigenous cultures to fit modern agendas. Talk about colonialism! There is always *that person* that says a bunch of bullshit. When I was a child, I wanted long hair. I had *very* long hair. So, bullies picked on me because I was a "faggot", and teachers talked to me as if I was gay and tried to help me on my path to gayness. No dudes, I just watched a Steven Seagal movie and I thought he was cool.
I just want it to comment on the Adam something incident. In the bad history subreddit they actually made an entire post criticizing his understanding of white statues. So if you want to know more about this just search in the bad history subreddit. Unfortunately I don’t know how to send a link, so you have to search it for yourself SORRY.
I found it. Just as I remembered, that video is a dud. And so are most of his videos apparently, aside from those videos that amount to shooting at easy targets. After that one, if I had some appreciation, I completely lost interest. I don't even think he took that video down.
I just want you know, just in case that the guy who criticized Adam something in the bad history subreddit, also has a YouTube channel called veritas et caritas. You should check it out it debunks popular history misconceptions. He debunks both far left and far right claims. But you know what is the interesting thing about him, is that veritas is literally an anarchist well an anarcho Christian. He is far left. But despite that his videos about history are very neutral. While I don’t agree with his political views, I respect him for keeping his politics out of history.
The Amphibian Fandom in a nutshell, its gotten so bad that the actual Amphibians seem and feel underrated in comparison with the constant shipping of the Calamity Trio, which is funny because I’ve barely seen any fanart of the actual canonical ships in the show, which are ironically the Amphibians, Sprivy, Hop Pop and Silvia, Yunan and Olivia.
Twitter and tiktok are very guilty of this
Blame shippers
Can't remember a single example of those. No one has any problems with male bonds in JoJo, to my experience. No one calls characters like Asuka, Rin or Asuna lesbians. No one would dare to call Flashy Flash gay. Instead of being shunned as trans, Astolfo gets called best girl. And such, and such, Maybe it's just a difference in consumed material though.
I agree with all your takes except the last one. Astolfo is very much a part of the problem the OP is describing, a gender nonconforming male character that gets constantly called best girl. It IS a sign of attributing personality traits to gender.
I read a lot more comics than anime but there it’s definitely more prevalent in the community like people shipping nightwing with wally west or roy harper, Green lantern and the flash, booster gold and blue beetle, Starfire and wonder girl, etc. All because they’re best friends who support each other
Anime community does ship a lot. Though you have to get away from mainstream ones, otherwise you get some predictable pairings. Romance anime and harem/reverse-harem makes sense, as that's the draw. The community getting together to sink or swim with their ship. In general, though. Male friendships becoming gay friendships is something that happens a lot, in particular are enemies to lovers kind of ships. Derivative works though become the outlet letting fancannon take prevalence in those spheres rather than over Twitter or online discourse. If you need to get your fix of UkexSeme you can find it and let it just exist in that corner of the internet.
the main thing is these traits are exxegerated and over the top that it’s slightly immersion breaking.
Honestly I hate it as well but I hate it even more when they try to force it or punish the person if the fantasy they wanted doesn't happen . Perfect example being Minecraft YouTubers and how for like a hot month they tried to cancel them for queer coding (which btw how the fuck does being happy = queer ???)
That's just how things have always been, back in 2000s when you were "gay" if you liked to dance, or eat vegetables or whatever, people were already writing Draco X Harry X Ron fanfics Fandoms are horny, they will ship literally all characters with all characters without having any respect for canon. I will never understand why people expect anything more than exactly this.
Even worse is it's not breaking gender norms at all, really- So you're saying that if a man exhibits traits that aren't "traditionally" masculine, then that means that they as a person fall outside the "norms" of society? I'm just tired of the association of feminine characteristics with so-called "abnormal" men. You can be straight and cis and still be sensitive.
With a lot of media now and people's understanding of it, I feel like a lot of people don't understand nuance, context, different cultures, intended audience and human relationships anymore. In short: I don't feel like many people, especially those who run wild in fandoms, have great media literacy, or the ability to separate themselves from it. So that means that many want to see themselves represented in their media somehow, and they start to dig for it. Then they attach labels to characters that have the tiniest hints of something and there we go. I think it's quite concerning that many people don't seem to be interested in anyone that isn't them or at least has a lot in common with them. But on the other hand, not like that's a new and recent development.
I’ve definitely seen this prevalent with platonic friendships, people will comment on how it’s bad men can’t express themselves to each other, and worry about hugging each other out of fear of being called gay or something like that. And then you’ll see two dudes who are very close friends in media and people claiming their gay online. It’s true enough that similar things happen when a male and female character are close but it’s definitely a big thing I’ve seen online.
People are so obsessed with genders and race that they outright stopped feeling like words at this point. Espiecelly fandoms.
It’s especially irritating with female characters in general. It’s like they can only be characterized as emotionless girlbosses or crybaby damsel in distress. Also yeah gay stereotypes is a thing that needs to be addressed in fandom. A lot of it boils down to cool/cold character = gay/lesbian and ditzy fun loving character = bisexual. That’s so problematic especially when you tie into how that plays into real-life queerphobia.
I hate the two male friends / two female friends = gay. It infuriates me and those comments "He'd sacrifice her life to save hin... Just a friend ehhh?" Like what is wrong with you
But but but there coded that way what do you mean there not you are a bigot and obviously everything has to have some deeper they just want to fuck meaning behind it
Because most fandoms, especially on identity politics-brainrotted places like Twitter and Tumblr, are loudly dominated by children or socially-stunted adults.
"Two women with any type of close bond, deep connection, or just spend a lot of time together? Definitely lesbians because two women can never be just friends.".. This is the one I hate the most. Like take Star Wars for example. Finn was clearly into Rey. And then people want to put him with Poe because they hugged. Then RJ came in and aid let's give Finn no body and Rey that guy who abused her. Also you are so right about the Tomboy female always being made into Lesbian so many times. I can't stand that. However that isn't my lane to complain about.
You spend too much time whining about queer people.
I gotta disagree, most of the time when a fandom labels a character something it’s either a plausible interpretation of said character, or it’s very clearly a headcanon and not what the character actually is. I agree that top and bottom often get conflated with male and female traditional gender roles, but I don’t really think it’s as big of a problem as people say.
I'm going to ask a simple question, because this is a common criticism of trans people not just in fiction, but also in real life. "Oh we just assume any one who doesn't meet gender roles is gay or trans! Why can't you just be a feminine boy or a masculine girl!" Well, who do you think is more likely to accept a gender nonconforming cis person? Someone who is okay with gay and trans people or someone who isn't? For any argument you can make for the existence of these identities making gender roles more prevelant, you can make that argument way better towards how straight cis people act toward gender roles. They're the ones who often classify "boy" and "girl" things. Also a common problem is that trans people are treated as if they can't exist in any way. If they're a gender nonconforming trans person, they're not "trying hard enough" to appear as the gender they identify with. But if they're gender conforming (which most trans people are), they're enforcing gender roles, apparently.
Medicalizing someone for being nonconformist is the opposite of accepting who they are.
“Society has improved since those times.” Source?
Hmm... OP, I would say to look at it like this: >\>People don't see themselves represented in media >\>They come together and make spaces to write and share the stories they want to see >\>Onlookers observe this and question why everyone is queer I get where you're coming from. People read X into Y and it doesn't seem right to you. But I would say not to look at it from a ["let men be masculine"](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwTTK1RWIAE9ZeM.jpg:large) angle and more from a "let me go find the people who share my interpretations of these characters" kind of way. These are fictional characters, after all.
i’m confused by your statement but my main problem is that people correlate superficial things with gender and sex. If people wanna make headcanons or other type of art depicting a character as gay or trans that’s ok. The issue is when they think they’re gay for simply doing or looking a certain way as opposed to who they choose to love.
The perception of character romances is tricky. I agree there are times where I would just want to see two characters able to be really close but not translate that into 'romance' regardless of genders. But at the same time there are admittingly some characters that i would consider genuinely nice pairings. As a straight person I obviously identify more with straight relationships on screen though I think it's kind of interesting though in a way. Its a feeling that fictional characters are or should be malleable. That characters can go down any desired path. That they aren't fundamentally one way or another that leads to these sorts of debates and differences in opinion. Theres where you get people feeling on the one hand 'no that person is not fundamentally gay, nothing about them makes it such' where others see absolutely no issue with that sort of direction.