Rae is probably the gayest anime character I've ever seen, but I do feel like a lot of yuri/yuri-adjacent stuff is male-gazey and deliberately shies away from confirming whether characters are actually gay (see: the Witch from Mercury debacle). I assume this is partly for marketing purposes (het dudes aren't going to buy as many figurines) and partly due to Japan's regressive LGBT rights.
The Witch From Mercury is crazy cause they're literally two wives who got married. Canonically. In the show. Zero room for interpretation. But yes, if you give yourself a lobotomy like Bandai asks you to, then sure I guess it's vague.
I've seen people claim that Yuri and Victor in Yuri on Ice weren't gay. They kiss on screen, they give each other rings and everyone immediately congratulates them on getting engaged, and they very explicitly spend the rest of their lives together
sometimes, but i do think sometimes it's literally textual on screen and people just pretend it's left ambiguous. wfm, something like revue starlight or utena (before the movie), etc.
Transphobes continued to deny when Bridget was explicitly stated by the creators to be trans. I agree that things shouldn't be left too ambiguous, but there's no way to get through to these types.
i just now realized that i somehow accidentally blocked you? you were the only user on the block list, that was why i was replying to you with my lemmygrad account on the touhou post, idk how that happened
anyways yeah it's fucking ridiculous. have you seen that clip of one of the dub voices talking about having to prove to the production team that juri was gay?
some people reject word of god retcons, but supposedly they're claiming the plan was always for her to character develop this way.
i'm not very read up on fighting game story, but wasn't she amab and then immediately reassigned female shortly after birth (RFSAB) because of lore? that seems kinda icky for trans rep, like that botched circumcision kid.
The story is that she was AMAB, but raised as a girl because of the village's superstitions about male twins. In the earlier games she identified as a boy (but wore feminine clothes anyway) and lives that way for awhile. But then, in the recent game... I'm just going to quote the wiki on this bit
Sometime after the G4 Summit, Goldlewis Dickinson locates Bridget and tries to add Roger to his cryptid collection, but she resists and Goldlewis backs off. When he casually calls her "li'l lady", Bridget corrects him by listessly saying she is a boy. Goldlewis deduces that she is anxious, product of hiding her true self, not having told her parents yet. Conflicted, Bridget seeks Ky—who has admirably gone public about Gears—out, and he encourages her to decide for herself how she wants to live. Her conversations with Ky and Goldlewis lead her to: in one path, think some more about her own happiness; in another, admit to being scared of losing what she has but no longer wanting to lie to herself, and asserts that she is a girl; and finally, find the strength to live as her true self no matter what others think, and Ky invites her to come visit Dizzy sometime.
So when she first leaves the village she tries living as a boy for awhile, but eventually decides its not how she wants to live and realizes that she is in fact a girl. Some chuds say that its a shitty storyline because it means "the grooming was successful" but I think that takes away all her agency in the situation. She's deciding for herself that she is, after all that, a girl. It is kinda funny though because it could be semi-joked that she's amab but also a cis girl because of her origin story. I'd stay she still functions as a trans girl within the greater world though, that would really only apply in her home village.
just have a normal trans character ffs anime games can't do anything simple.
is this a reaction to the reaction thing where we're ignoring the conversion therapy angle and deliberately ignoring the absolute disaster of the time somebody actually tried raising an amab kid as a girl because it's more funny to make the hogs mad?
It's awkward writing trying to do some sort of justice to a character they introduced 20 years ago with little forethought. To quote wikipedia:
Bridget was created by Guilty Gear Daisuke Ishiwatari, wanting to create a "cute character," initially presenting her as a crossdressing boy, a detail that was kept secret to most staff members.[4][5] Ishiwatari "wanted something unconventional" to differentiate Bridget from other fighting games' cute characters; he and staff members decided it "would be interesting to make the character a guy."[5][6]
Following speculation about Bridget's gender following her addition to Guilty Gear Strive, Ishiwatari and Strive director Akira Katano confirmed that Bridget self-identifies as a woman and uses "she/her" pronouns.
Following speculation about Bridget’s gender following her addition to Guilty Gear Strive, Ishiwatari and Strive director Akira Katano confirmed that Bridget self-identifies as a woman and uses “she/her” pronouns.
noooo what do you mean japanese people can also be woke, stooopppp, you're literally ruining my reactionary fascist ethnostate fantasies, it's clearly westerners who pushed and forced this shit and threatened to cancel them if they didn't put a trans character in the game 😭😭😭😭
it's not a conversion therapy thing, they made a transphobic joke character and the only way to make bridget not a transphobic joke was to make her textually trans
from the watsonian pov she lived as a boy separate from the village and it's customs for like a decade before sorting her shit out, there was no conversion therapy and even when she lived in the village they weren't trying to convince her she was really a girl, they were very open about it being a disguise to her
Yeah I mean. I dont actually know that I believe that having her decide she's a girl was "always the plan" like they claimed because the narrative seems a bit messy if thats the case. But I am indeed willing to support and love this character and rep her just because it makes the hogs mad lmao (also because I love her design). And I appreciate the creator for putting his foot down saying "no she's a girl deal with it" against all the attempts to pretend the narrative isnt what it is and be chauvinistic about Japan.
And I appreciate the creator for putting his foot down saying "no she's a girl deal with it" against all the attempts to pretend the narrative isnt what it is and be chauvinistic about Japan.
this seems like the best part of it all to me, yeah. Credit to present-day Ishiwatari for that.
Tbf, Utena is ambiguous before the movie. It's got a lot of gay vibes going on but literally no one ever expresses any attraction toward anyone of the same sex at any point. The gay stuff is all in the vibes, symbolism and whatnot.
that just isn't true! this is what i'm talking about, as a society we need to be able to understand when queerness is just textually on screen even when the character never says out loud "i'm gay" or kisses their same sex love interest.
juri is a lesbian. that's the text of the show, the other characters discuss her queerness openly. kozue and utena both kiss anthy on screen!!!! kozue in the car crash and utena in the second ed. just because their mouths are blocked doesn't mean it's not obviously the text. miki fantasizes about being in bed with touga with touga's shirt seductively unbuttoned, and is constantly blushing in the same way he does around anthy when being close to other men. nanami says out loud with her mouth "i prefer girls" in a bit that is technically subtext but i mean come on. it comes in the same episode where she turns bright red after utena feels her face for a fever in a scene that has no heterosexual explanation, and it immediately starts touga on a homophobic rant, in the same arc where he (again technically not onscreen, but like. if it was a man and a woman literally no one would argue something else was going on) is constantly having sex with akio and saionji.
if you wanted to argue those last few are subtext i guess so, but not any more subtextual than, say, akio having sex with utena. that's not shown on screen either, and yet i've never once seen someone say it didn't happen. when you get into actual subtext you have to add the entire rest of the cast to the mix. mikage, shiori, wakaba, tsuwabuki, basically no one in this show is straight
See, when you say stuff like this, you give people the wrong idea about the show and then they go watch it and end up being really disappointed. That's my experience
i'm sorry that you were disappointed but everything i mentioned is in the show, on screen and in dialogue. when you say no one expresses any queer feelings outside of subtext that is untrue.
i suppose you could somehow watch the show and ignore most if it if you were dedicated to the idea that it didn't have gay people in it, but even then there's juri!!!! who is explicitly stated to be in love with a woman!!! it's the focus of every episode she's in!!! and also kozue makes out with anthy on screen, and utena kisses her in the end credits! you would have to watch with blinders in not to find at least some textual queerness on the screen
Rae is probably the gayest anime character I've ever seen, but I do feel like a lot of yuri/yuri-adjacent stuff is male-gazey and deliberately shies away from confirming whether characters are actually gay (see: the Witch from Mercury debacle). I assume this is partly for marketing purposes (het dudes aren't going to buy as many figurines) and partly due to Japan's regressive LGBT rights.
The Witch From Mercury is crazy cause they're literally two wives who got married. Canonically. In the show. Zero room for interpretation. But yes, if you give yourself a lobotomy like Bandai asks you to, then sure I guess it's vague.
I've seen people claim that Yuri and Victor in Yuri on Ice weren't gay. They kiss on screen, they give each other rings and everyone immediately congratulates them on getting engaged, and they very explicitly spend the rest of their lives together
Fellas is it gay to get gay married?
lying on my death bed, with the love of my gay life holding my hand
"no homo lmao"
dies
historians: "a deep platonic friendship"
Yes those people are in denial, only an anime reeducation camp would fix them
just guys being dudes
sometimes, but i do think sometimes it's literally textual on screen and people just pretend it's left ambiguous. wfm, something like revue starlight or utena (before the movie), etc.
Transphobes continued to deny when Bridget was explicitly stated by the creators to be trans. I agree that things shouldn't be left too ambiguous, but there's no way to get through to these types.
"he's (daisuke ishiwatari) been pressured by the woke mob to make bridget trans!"
"bridget only comes out as trans in the bad ending!"
"bridget isn't trans in the japanese version!"
and so on
none of these are true either, just a deliberate misinterpretation on their parts
yeah, people tried to argue for years that everyone in utena was straight.
i hate this so fucking much, how fragile and insecure can cishets get?
i just now realized that i somehow accidentally blocked you? you were the only user on the block list, that was why i was replying to you with my lemmygrad account on the touhou post, idk how that happened
anyways yeah it's fucking ridiculous. have you seen that clip of one of the dub voices talking about having to prove to the production team that juri was gay?
ah, i didn't think it was you lol
though... did i say or do something especially wrong to get blocked? being the only person at that too ;;;w;;;
no!!! i must have misclicked
i see ;;;w;;;
;;;w;;; i'm sorry!!!!
it's okay, all's forgiven
(/;w;)/some people reject word of god retcons, but supposedly they're claiming the plan was always for her to character develop this way.
i'm not very read up on fighting game story, but wasn't she amab and then immediately reassigned female shortly after birth (RFSAB) because of lore? that seems kinda icky for trans rep, like that botched circumcision kid.
The story is that she was AMAB, but raised as a girl because of the village's superstitions about male twins. In the earlier games she identified as a boy (but wore feminine clothes anyway) and lives that way for awhile. But then, in the recent game... I'm just going to quote the wiki on this bit
So when she first leaves the village she tries living as a boy for awhile, but eventually decides its not how she wants to live and realizes that she is in fact a girl. Some chuds say that its a shitty storyline because it means "the grooming was successful" but I think that takes away all her agency in the situation. She's deciding for herself that she is, after all that, a girl. It is kinda funny though because it could be semi-joked that she's amab but also a cis girl because of her origin story. I'd stay she still functions as a trans girl within the greater world though, that would really only apply in her home village.
just have a normal trans character ffs anime games can't do anything simple.
is this a reaction to the reaction thing where we're ignoring the conversion therapy angle and deliberately ignoring the absolute disaster of the time somebody actually tried raising an amab kid as a girl because it's more funny to make the hogs mad?
It's awkward writing trying to do some sort of justice to a character they introduced 20 years ago with little forethought. To quote wikipedia:
noooo what do you mean japanese people can also be woke, stooopppp, you're literally ruining my reactionary fascist ethnostate fantasies, it's clearly westerners who pushed and forced this shit and threatened to cancel them if they didn't put a trans character in the game 😭😭😭😭
it's not a conversion therapy thing, they made a transphobic joke character and the only way to make bridget not a transphobic joke was to make her textually trans
from the watsonian pov she lived as a boy separate from the village and it's customs for like a decade before sorting her shit out, there was no conversion therapy and even when she lived in the village they weren't trying to convince her she was really a girl, they were very open about it being a disguise to her
Yeah I mean. I dont actually know that I believe that having her decide she's a girl was "always the plan" like they claimed because the narrative seems a bit messy if thats the case. But I am indeed willing to support and love this character and rep her just because it makes the hogs mad lmao (also because I love her design). And I appreciate the creator for putting his foot down saying "no she's a girl deal with it" against all the attempts to pretend the narrative isnt what it is and be chauvinistic about Japan.
this seems like the best part of it all to me, yeah. Credit to present-day Ishiwatari for that.
Tbf, Utena is ambiguous before the movie. It's got a lot of gay vibes going on but literally no one ever expresses any attraction toward anyone of the same sex at any point. The gay stuff is all in the vibes, symbolism and whatnot.
that just isn't true! this is what i'm talking about, as a society we need to be able to understand when queerness is just textually on screen even when the character never says out loud "i'm gay" or kisses their same sex love interest.
juri is a lesbian. that's the text of the show, the other characters discuss her queerness openly. kozue and utena both kiss anthy on screen!!!! kozue in the car crash and utena in the second ed. just because their mouths are blocked doesn't mean it's not obviously the text. miki fantasizes about being in bed with touga with touga's shirt seductively unbuttoned, and is constantly blushing in the same way he does around anthy when being close to other men. nanami says out loud with her mouth "i prefer girls" in a bit that is technically subtext but i mean come on. it comes in the same episode where she turns bright red after utena feels her face for a fever in a scene that has no heterosexual explanation, and it immediately starts touga on a homophobic rant, in the same arc where he (again technically not onscreen, but like. if it was a man and a woman literally no one would argue something else was going on) is constantly having sex with akio and saionji.
if you wanted to argue those last few are subtext i guess so, but not any more subtextual than, say, akio having sex with utena. that's not shown on screen either, and yet i've never once seen someone say it didn't happen. when you get into actual subtext you have to add the entire rest of the cast to the mix. mikage, shiori, wakaba, tsuwabuki, basically no one in this show is straight
See, when you say stuff like this, you give people the wrong idea about the show and then they go watch it and end up being really disappointed. That's my experience
i'm sorry that you were disappointed but everything i mentioned is in the show, on screen and in dialogue. when you say no one expresses any queer feelings outside of subtext that is untrue.
i suppose you could somehow watch the show and ignore most if it if you were dedicated to the idea that it didn't have gay people in it, but even then there's juri!!!! who is explicitly stated to be in love with a woman!!! it's the focus of every episode she's in!!! and also kozue makes out with anthy on screen, and utena kisses her in the end credits! you would have to watch with blinders in not to find at least some textual queerness on the screen
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Oh fuck that's what I meant