I could write a three hour video essay on tutu and gender but I really love how a show in a genre that’s primarily targeted towards girls explores how expectations of masculinity can traumatize young boys.
This is shown with Fakir especially. While the text never explicitly attributes his behavior to his gender, his arc over the course of the show is quintessentially informed by toxic gender roles. This got long and I have a lot of thoughts so I'm gonna put it under a readmore:
Fakir has one unchanging goal for the duration of the show: he wants to keep the people he loves safe. But outside elements twist this motivation into an identity. He is suffocating under the weight of a person he has never been and can never be no matter how hard he tries to mold himself.
Much of his personality is likely a direct result of circumstance. We are shown multiple times that when he feels in his element he’s inclined to a gentle disposition (ie how he acts with Duck as a duck or with Raetsel). As a young child especially he appears earnest and naive, his already innate desire to protect blinding him to the cruelty of the world. However, this sweeter side is near overwritten by the cold, domineering personality that characterizes his early appearances in the show.
We can infer that without the trauma inflicted on him by the story Fakir would have retained much more of this gentler personality as he grew up. Instead, his desire to protect others is twisted and warped by fear, becoming a desire to control.
Even before having his life upended, Fakir wanted to to take the weight of protecting the entire town all upon himself. He sees a true hero as someone who stands on his own without help.
So how does this tie into gender? Fakir deliberately crushes his "weaker" side--the earnest, sensitive young boy in the favor of a tough persona. He particularly views emotions as a weakness. It's notable that in one of the most iconic scenes in the show, Fakir has a breakdown over someone seeing him crying. This simple display of human emotion is enough to completely shatter the image he has constructed for himself. Fakir's harsh, impossible standards for himself are rooted in toxic masculinity, in the idea that men--real men--are never visibly sad or scared.
Immediately after losing everything as a child, Fakir was given a new source of hope and pride: the role of the Knight. He, of course, built his whole identity around this role. The Knight, like the Prince is expected to protect others without fear. This can be read as analogous to how men struggle under the expectation to be the protectors and the breadwinners, expected to take pain and hardship upon themselves so those under their care may live a comfortable life. However, the story's knight is doomed from the start: a failed protector. Fakir is growing up under literal impossible standards. He's meant to give everything and crumble under that weight without achieving anything.
It's worth noting that the Princesses' roles are meant to revolve seeking affection from men while the men's roles are colored by violence. Contrast the Knight and Princess Tutu who are both destined to accomplish nothing and be forgotten: while Tutu gracefully dissolves into a speck of light, the Knight is gruesomely torn apart. Here, masculinity becomes inextricably linked to violence in Drosselmeyer's world.
For as long as Fakir tries to be a knight worthy of the story he is confined by a toxic gender role. A protector relies on the idea of a weaker subset of person--the protected. Even without malicious intent, this strips agency. Fakir ignores Mytho's wishes all for the sake of "keeping him safe." Likewise Duck doesn't' want Fakir's protection. In several episodes she begs him to give up on fighting and search for peaceable solutions.
Even though neither Duck nor Mytho ask for Fakir to fight for them he feels personally responsible for their safety to the point his entire self esteem rests on his ability to protect them. Despite his guarded exterior, two of the three times he breaks down crying are because Duck got hurt --due to his own incompetence in his eyes.
Fakir can only grow as a person when he stops placing everything on his own shoulders. For all he clings to the sword his real strengths are found outside of battle. He only saves Duck by opening up to her in his first display of willing vulnerability.
By the end of the series he has entered a genuine partnership with Duck. Rather than a one-sided relationship where he sees himself as her protector, he writes her story and trusts her to guide herself through it. This is in direct opposition to the masculine ideals he clung so hard to. The knight and the prince --his role models--are both meant to be self-sufficient in the original fairytale. Instead, Fakir is able to be a vulnerable boy who gets scared and hurt--and doesn't need to hide it--but has friends he can rely on when times are tough.
Fakir's arc doesn't involve him becoming more feminine, necessarily, but it does show him breaking free of the standards placed on his shoulders by toxic masculinity. He was never meant to be a fighter; that was an unfair role he was forced into. At the end of the show Fakir was achieved his freedom. He isn't a knight. He isn't a protector. He isn't personally responsible for the lives of those he loves. He's just Fakir.
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Can you do The Menhera au and the Alien Alien au??? I think it’ll he fun!!
anything for you my dear Wivew <333
You would be right, it does look like fun! I think I would use the plot and setting of MENHERAMEN, but the general worldbuilding of Alien Alien. I think that'd be interesting, exploring that world with modern dynamics.
CW: mentions of addiction, abusive relationships, kidnapping, torture, objectification, and death.
William isn't stadtholder or king here, he's a simple Defender hybrid with the same issues he has in MENHERAMEN (addiction and PTSD). When he was younger and in the foster system, he was given a little android friend to cheer him up and bring everywhere, which would be given to a lot of kids here to help them with any issues they may have (therapy substitute, in their words).
His android, Bentinck, grows to be much more protective here than he is in Alien Alien, in a sense going down this path of bloodshed and darkness because of his own insecurities and uncertainty of what his destiny should be. In the original MENHERAMEN, he's never found any joy in his life other than when he is with William, and never shows himself any respect because he believes that's up to William to decide. In this AU, that's amplified by...a lot, considering he was quite literally made just for William. He follows Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics with pride, but he also won't hesitate to switch his First and Second Laws should William be in any danger.
Something added to his insecurity in this AU would be his worries that William may no longer need him once he grows and recovers from his trauma. Normally he wouldn't mind, in fact he takes pride in the fact that William decides when he dies...but oh, no. He's in love with his master, he doesn't want to leave him, he wants to be here to protect him forever.
So, of course, the overdose happens, and Bentinck kills Charles as he does in the original MENHERAMEN. From there the story would be pretty much the same as the original (for those of you who've read it), with just a few added dynamics that I think would be interesting to explore.
In MENHERAMEN, Bentinck is portrayed as a killer who has no idea what he's doing. He wanted Charles' death to be painless, but he just couldn't stab the correct artery...!! Things like that. Here, however, he uses his database to figure out how to make it as painless as possible...and by the time he kidnaps Marly, he can also know how to make it as painful as possible.
On that note, there are so many new ways a robot could mess with a biological being. In MENHERAMEN, he has a little fight with James, and that happens here too, of course. James tries to bite him, infect him with his venom, but there's just no way to make Bentinck back down. In addition, he wouldn't need to smack James on the head with any old stick-- he could just use his fist as it is, and if he swings hard enough, it can kill James. Also, of course, tail-snapping!! In Alien Alien, Bentinck accidentally breaks James' tail, but there's nothing accidental about it here.
When Marly is in Bentinck's possession, he can scream and fight all he wants, but a huge metal hand over your mouth is better than any average gag. He's also insanely strong-- a little human can't do much against that massive metal creature. The size difference would be a fun thing to explore, as well.
The romance between Keppel and Bentinck could also be fun! Keppel wouldn't be as much as an expert with robots as he is in Alien Alien, but he'd know some stuff here, enough so that Bentinck feels unsettled by just how much Keppel knows about how his body works.
But Bentinck wouldn't be the only one unsettled here. Keppel's aware of just how big and dangerous Bentinck can be, but he doesn't dare believe it at first-- Bentinck's the sweetest robot he knows, a gentle giant. Slowly, though, as Bentinck turns his violence against Keppel, he realizes that every time they're alone, he is in so much danger. Of course, that's a dynamic in the original MENHERAMEN, but here, just looking at Bentinck's hands sends shivers down Keppel's spine.
In Alien Alien, Bentinck considers himself inferior to the Asterothiriots. But in MENHERAMEN, he grows to consider himself superior, a hero, to everyone around him. What if I work with that dynamic here? While his confidence in his identity is shattering, he comes to believe himself superior to these nasty, feral little creatures-- he's smarter and stronger than they are, after all. Is he, then, not justified in doing what he pleases to them just because he can? After all they've done to him?
Add that to the Hansijoost dynamic! Humans are the most inferior species of all. Keppel doesn't deserve respect from Bentinck.
M&W would be interesting! Bentinck is not only threatened by the love Mary shows William, but by her species as well. She's fucking HUGE....and with a single bite, she could end William. Ironically enough, Bentinck's afraid that because of the inclinations of her species, she may snap the same way he did. He sees her as a far more plausible threat here than he does in MENHERAMEN and seeks to eliminate her as soon as possible.
Another threatening factor are her visions of the future. Not everyone has visions as precise as hers, thus she was the one who knew immediately, even before anything happened. But she held onto the hope, the thin thread where she stops him...sometimes following the dark paths where Bentinck ends her life. Later on, she's consumed with guilt over the knowledge that there were many times where she feels she could have stopped him, but didn't, all because she wanted to follow the unlikely timeline where she maybe could have stopped him and maybe everyone would have been safe.
In Alien Alien, there are times where something unexpected, but very small, happens and throws Mary's timelines off. By the time it's happened, she doesn't know what it is, because she can't look into the past. But...the day William overdoses, she just feels a twinge...something is wrong, and she notices immediately when William starts acting off.
Oh, and another thing I just thought of: she could have known the night Charles was going to die. She wanted to tell him, but she knows how dangerous Charles is (and by addition, his terrifying brother), so to protect Bentinck, perhaps she follows him downstairs and tries to talk him out of it. Ooh, yes, in fact, why not make that a dynamic? She knows, and he knows that she knows, and they play around with that until their final confrontation.
By the end of it, Bentinck is supposed to turn himself in. But there is no prison for androids, only deactivation. By that time, he thinks it's more than he deserves, as he's always believed death to be a more of reward for him rather than anything to be afraid of. But he doesn't complain. As it is, androids have no heaven.
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