I'd have been all over the deathnote posting if you caught me about 10 years ago but alas the little me inside of me shares your excitement
literally i could've been into death note 12 years ago when @rcg told me about it and showed me the manga but i was too busy being autistic about warrior cats and toontown online and homestuck
2 notes
·
View notes
An example of queercoding in Alhaitham and Kaveh's relationship: Madam Faruzan edition
Due to the rules in place for game development in China, the possibility for queer confirmation within Genshin Impact is denied, which therefore renders the usage of characters alluding to the potential romantic connection between two same-sex characters as impossible. However, the same insinuation can be made by omitting specific language which strictly conveys romantic sentiments, such as ‘couple’. Instead, the idea of secrecy or something unmentionable can be drawn upon as indicators, as this draws parallels to the taboo of homosexuality practiced within certain cultures and media forms, which the real world audience can identify.
For example, Alhaitham and Kaveh as secret housemates. This can be used to convey an idea of ‘taboo’ as Kaveh desires to protect his reputation by concealing his shame of having to live with Alhaitham. In-game, the context here is that Kaveh wants to uphold his reputation of a successful architect, but within Alhaitham’s Story Quest, upon the player’s discovery of Kaveh living with Alhaitham, this context is omitted for some time. This prompts Paimon to question what exactly Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship is, with Kaveh denying that the two used to be friends but are not anymore: “I wouldn’t say ‘friends’ exactly”.
This tactic of double entendre can be seen again in A Parade of Providence when Paimon almost reveals Kaveh’s living situation to Faruzan.
Faruzan’s can be observed to resort to a thinking pose, in comparison with Layla, when Alhaitham is mentioned in relation to Kaveh wanting to buy property, as Paimon almost ‘outs’ the truth, that Kaveh resides with Alhaitham.
She then seemingly dwells upon the subject, as she returns to it after Kaveh requests for a change of topic later in the conversation. Here, Faruzan follows up on whether Kaveh lives alone, which he fails to deny.
Here, it can be seen that she has already began associating Kaveh and Alhaitham, possibly speculating that the two live together. When Kaveh fails to supply an answer, therefore not denying her theory, she explicitly ties the two together, and asks if the two are “hiding” something.
This question evokes a physical reaction from Kaveh, as he denies this question out of fear of being revealed, with Paimon opting to leave in order to cover her role in revealing Kaveh’s predicament.
A deliberate potentiality has been created here in regard to what Faruzan has inferred, as her phrasing of “are you two hiding something from me?” is non-specific. Rather than asking: “are you two living together?”, she asks a question which holds multiple connotations. Due to the ambiguity of her meaning, her question can be observed as a non-explicit version of the: “are you two a couple?” question.
On the surface, this question is a reference to their situation as roommates, however, her phrasing is non-specific, and hints to another cause for “hiding” something. For Faruzan, Kaveh’s blatant evasion of the topic and dismissal of Alhaitham’s name, could easily be inferred as “hiding” a romantic connection – which is something that the player, too, can pick up on from her gesture of suspicion, her inquisitive questioning, and her excitement when piecing together the clues. The ambiguity of her question generates multiple meanings as to why she has surmised the two could be “hiding”.
This overt secrecy in Kaveh’s living with Alhaitham, another man, prompts the player to generate associations between this in-game secrecy and real world queer shame. In this, there is an implication of the need for Kaveh to confirm the status of his relationship between him and Alhaitham. Not only does this scene connotate an ‘outing’, in which a queer character has their queerness forcibly revealed to a heteronormative audience, but this creates a sense of secrecy, which, again, can be interpreted by the player as ‘taboo’.
Kaveh does not want to tell anyone of his living situation out of preserving his stellar reputation, however, Faruzan is missing this context. She relates Alhaitham and Kaveh together in the phrasing “you two”, coupling them together in a secret that they “hid[e]”. The player understands this as indicating to their living situation, however, this creates a separate context which Faruzan has interpreted and that, we, as the audience are not privy to, but can interpret based on her allusions to cohabitation between two men being a secret.
Whilst this is not explicitly romantic within Genshin’s world of nameless sexuality, Faruzan’s ambiguous questioning here draws parallels between real world understanding of sexuality and the connotations of queerness which stems from two men living together in secret.
(Update: For more analyses like this, the essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)
181 notes
·
View notes