Fandom Gripe #23: I know that fandom is in some deep denial about its treatment of female characters that are canonically involved with fan favorite m/m ships, but do y’all realize that when you disappear female characters from the narrative wholesale to push the idea that your canonically straight fav was “secretly gay all along!” you’re making several bad implications? That 1) bi men don’t exist, 2) bi men do exist, but those who have genuinely loved a woman before cannot genuinely love a man after that (therefore bi men don’t exist in practice), 3) women cannot inspire genuine love and devotion in men, therefore any relationship with a woman is “lesser” than the one they later have a man (see previous parenthesis), or 4) to acknowledge the existence of a lovable woman who isn’t a terrible person, where if a relationship previously existed, it did not end because of “incompatibility,” is enough to destabilize the present relationship between two queer men?
Because why is the tgcf fandom allergic to acknowledging that He Xuan had a whole ass fiancée that he loved? Why does no one ever seem to remember that the kidnappings and murders of He Xuan’s sister and fiancée were the final straws that sent him on his rampage, and he still keeps a shrine to them in the present-day of the story? Why is her entire existence and significance to He Xuan as a man, character, and to his character arc disappeared in favor of pushing Shi Qingxuan—the brother of the man responsible for his fiancée’s death—into that same role, as if to say that her impact on He Xuan is significant... just not when it's from her? Why does He Xuan’s life in fandom essentially begin not just after her death but because of it?
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as yr favorite local jason todd fan sometimes i get so fed up with the apparent inability of most dc comic writers to write a class conscious narrative about him.
and yes, i know that comics are a very ephemeral and constantly evolving and self-conflicting medium.
and yes, i know they’re a profit-driven art medium created in a capitalistic society, so there are very few times where comics are going to be created solely out of the desire to authentically and carefully and deliberately represent a character and take them from one emotional narrative place to another, because dc cares about profit and sometimes playing it safe is what sells.
and yes, i know comics and other forms of art reflect and recreate the society within which they were conceived as ideas, and so the dominant societal ideas about gender and race and class and so on are going to be recreated within comics (and/or will be responded to, if the writer is particularly societally conscious).
but jesus christ. you (the writer/writers) have a working class character who has been homeless, who has lost multiple parents, who has been in close proximity to someone struggling with addiction, who has had to steal to survive, who may have (depending on your reading of several different moments across different comics created by different people) been a victim of csa, who has clearly (subtextually) struggled with his mental health, who was a victim of a violent murder, and who has an entirely distinct and unique perspective on justice that has evolved based on his lived experiences.
and instead of delving into any of that, or examining the myriad of ways that classism in the writers’ room and the editors’ room and the readers’ heads affected jason’s character to make sure you’re writing him responsibly, or giving him a plotline where his views on what justice looks like are challenged by another working class character, or allowing him to demonstrate actual autonomy and agency in deciding what relationships he wants to have with people who he loves but sees as having failed him in different ways, or thinking carefully about what his having chosen an alias that once belonged to his murderer says about his decision-making and motivations, you keep him stuck in a loop of going by the red hood, addressing crime by occupying a position of relative power that perpetuates crime & harm rather than ever getting at the root causes, and seesawing between a) agreeing with his adoptive family entirely about fighting nonlethally in ways that are often inconsistent with his apparent motivations or b) disagreeing and experiencing unnecessarily brutal and violent reactions from his adoptive father as if that kind of violence isn’t the kind of thing he experienced as a child and something bruce himself is trying to prevent jason from perpetuating. because a comic with red hood, quips, high stakes, and familial drama sells.
it doesn’t matter if it keeps jason trapped, torn between an unanswered moral and philosophical question, a collection of identities that no longer fit him, and a family that accepts him circumstantially. it doesn’t matter if jason’s characterization is so utterly inconsistent that the only way to mesh it together is to piece different aspects of different titles and plotlines together like a jigsaw. it doesn’t matter if you do a disservice to his character, because in the end you don’t want to transform him or even understand him deeply enough to identify what makes him compelling and focus on that.
and i love jason!!!!! i love him. and i think about the stories we could have, if quality and art and doing justice to the character were prioritized as much as selling a title and having a dark and brooding batfam member besides bruce just to be the black sheep character are prioritized. and i just get a little sad.
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you know what really gets to me. is how jack loosens up david’s morals. like how david starts off as a staunch pacifist because of the Optics and strategy of it all, but then later he kicks a cop in the face and threatens him with a swing + tries to punch jack when he scabs. and both instances occur specifically because he cares so deeply about jack. But also there's this tidbit from the 91 script
it's like. up until now, david's interactions with jack have largely consisted of david being openly skeptical/confrontational whenever he detects any kind of bullshit. and while he immediately clocks that all this stuff about santa fe is a lie, for the first time, he decides to let it go. Because there's a kernel of authenticity to the statement, though the authenticity doesn’t lie in factual truth, it’s in how jack desperately "wants it to be true". because. this is david's first time seeing the soft underbelly to jack. because david IS charmed by jack despite not really trusting him
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Thoughts on Finrod and Amarie’s relationship
All purely headcanon based, since we get like, a single sentence about her in Silm.
> Her family are vintners who moved to Tirion for business opportunities.
> She and Finrod met when they were quite young (~5 years old by human standards). Amarie had already started presenting as a girl at this time.
> They became good friends quickly and throughout childhood and adolescence, sort of flitted in and out of having crushes on each other, sometimes at the same time, sometimes not, but nothing ever came of it
> Eventually as young adults they admitted they simply couldn’t imagine marrying anyone but each other
> Sappy. So fucking sappy. Obnoxiously sappy. Unironically calling each other “sweetie” in regular conversation. Making uwu eyes at each other in public. “You hang up first uwu” “no you hang up first uwuwu” “no you--” etc.
> They’re very good with communication. They talk things out very well. This is the biggest reason why they don’t really fight, and the lack of fighting is baffling to Finrod’s entire extended family. They had a disagreement at a party once and everyone was ready to see them actually argue for once but it ended with them crying and apologizing to each other and then making goo-goo eyes at each other for the rest of the party.
> “Why aren’t you going into [x room]?” “Finrod and Amarie are in there” “valid”
> As happens with families, the jokes about how obnoxious they are escalate into their relationship generally being a family meme. As a result, no one takes it very seriously, even after they announce their engagement.
> Thus, Finrod’s grief over leaving Amarie was significantly overlooked, and led to the conversation between him and Galadriel about why he wouldn’t marry in Middle-earth, because surely he can’t still be hung up on Amarie.
> They both felt pressed apart by family. Amarie stayed in Aman on her parents’ wishes; Finrod left to follow his family.
> Amarie’s parents were not happy about the whole “rebelling against the Valar and leaving Aman and on the way out killing a bunch of people.” The whole family left Tirion and moved back into Vanyar territory, and Amarie’s parents put a lot of pressure on her to publicly end her engagement with Finrod, which she refused to do.
> When they reunite in Aman, whether or not they stay together (I like to imagine they do but I know a lot of people don’t), there is definitely a period of re-learning each other because they have both changed as people since they said goodbye, but there’s also a lot of joy in getting to see each other again.
> Whether as friends or lovers, it’s quite scary for Amarie to see how traumatized Finrod returns from Middle-earth. It isn’t until she goes herself with the Noldor forces during the War of Wrath that she catches glimpses of the beautiful things Finrod had described to her and understands a bit why he was so fond of this place. She brings him souvenirs when she comes back to Aman.
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