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#trans coding
ghostscrown · 5 months
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Someone has to say it : they knew what they were doing with Sora being so transcoded.
You can't just write all of these transcoded scenes in 2023 by "accident" – especially in a show putting random pride flags in the background to be "allies but we won't take too much risks". Intentional coding really feels like something they would do.
We have a character with pink hair who wears fake cat ears (we all remember the trans girls being obsessed with cat ears era, right ?), changed her name for one being meaningful to her, then ran away from an oppressive government and her unsupportive parents to join a found family. Also, her charadesign's color palette is pink, white and blue.
Not to mention the transcoded as heck scenes :
"Who's Ana ??? Her name is Sora !"
"That's my birth name."
"Oh... Well now I feel dumb-"
(Not the exact quote since I watch the show in french, but you get it)
The way Arin just immediately accepted she had a birth name different from her actual name ??? Just like someone who knows you're trans but didn't know what your deadname was ??? Like. Usually in shows, you would expect a big "you lied to me by using a fake name all these years" drama but here, he just couldn't care less. If this isn't Arin being an ally, then what is it ???
People knowing her from when she lived at Imperium calling her "Ana" just to annoy her ??? But even after learning her birth name, none of her friends ever called her "Ana" ???
The scene in part 2 with her parents and all ??? Hello ???
Her admitting she was still influenced by the fact she felt like disappointing her parents ? Then facing them but they didn't change. They were still thinking Imperium was right and all of the bad things they did just weren't true. Tried to convince her to go back after being horrible with her when she needed their support the most, and insisted on calling her "Ana". So she told them one last time her name was "Sora" then left ???
The whole moral being basically "be who you are" ?????
ALL OF THE SCENES. Her whole arc just feels like transcoding. I refuse to believe this wasn't on purpose.
Edit : feels like they're using a not canonically trans character to normalize trans experiences and I'm here for it
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vile-bestia · 3 months
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why mizu is, in fact, not cis
Everyone is very angry at everyone about how to see or not see Mizu’s identity; being unable to shut up, and having fixated on the show a bit, i’m excited to finally join my first to-the-death-tumblr-discourse-battle.
I'm going to use mostly he/him for Mizu, but please read the premise below. This post is long so if you can't bother to read the whole thing (i get you) just read the colored strings of text.
The main argument for Mizu being a woman is that which has as its basis the fact that cross-dressing is for Mizu an external need: for one, it is a need for protection from patriarchal bonds; secondly, it is a need for independence - Akemi’s story is one of independence as well, of feminine independence, and we have more than one woman pursuing such thing; we could go on with an analysis of brothels as a feminine space, but, alas - and thirdly, it is a need of obligation: Mizu needs to maintain the masculine identity in order to attain the object of his vow. 
I find, however, that while the argument stands as perfectly sound (and as canon) it isn’t exhaustive enough of the layered experience of gender in BES.
The trans coding is simply undeniable to me, whether it was intentional or not. I do not mean to say that Mizu is a binary trans man; that would be an approach as reductionist as confirming she is exclusively a woman. However, I find that some behaviours of Mizu’s are coded as dysphoric reactions.
Most of my justifications for this reasoning come from episodes 2, 5 and 8.
In episode 2,
Ringo is vowing to never reveal Mizu’s secret: “I’ll never tell anybody you’re a g-“; and as soon as he’s about to say girl, Mizu is just as ready to slice his throat. Mizu being worried about someone else hearing or witnessing the interaction doesn’t seem completely plausible to me: they’re alone in snowy woods, and, most likely, Mizu wouldn’t have confirmed time and again how readily he’d kill Ringo. 
Then comes episode 5,
which is in my opinion the most layered and the most exhaustive in regards to Mizu’s experience of gender, especially regarding his experience of the feminine. First and foremost, it tells the ultimate teaching: that gender isn’t but a performance, just as the gender roles are portrayed through theatre in the episode. As for the dysphoric reaction, it's the whole thing. Mizu is miserable even when we suppose that the marriage could be a relatively happy time. That's another reason why I suppose the puppet theatre tells Mizu's internal sense of self as well (see paragraph 4).
(And, about gender being performative, see how kabuki theatre was born in the Edo period and how, before being banned from acting, women cross-dressed to play male characters, and men cross-dressed to play female characters. See “professional transvestites” trained to be prostitutes, Kagema being trained from a young age to „act" like members of the other sex; see how by the beginning of the 18th century AFAB sex workers would try to figure out a way to set themselves apart from wakashu, creating an entirely new space for female crossdressers in the adult entertainment sphere; see ukiyo-e representations - chigo monogatari and yukiyo-zoshi literature; stories by Ihara Saikaku that are full of "transgender behaviours" and more)
Back to ep 5:
1. Theme of performance
The theme of performance, which also is the one of Mizu performing femininity for Mikio (in function of the well-being of Mizu’s mother), but being at once unable to suppress masculinity as the only space in which Mizu seems to be comfortable: e.g., it’s a little detail, but Mizu’s only good in the kitchen when cutting vegetables, because comfortable with blades, certainly not with cooking; again Mizu having to perform femininity is when he does makeup to “make-up”, to soften Mikio’s spirit, who feels invalidated by Mizu’s masculinity when it starts to interfere with his pride, and such other details; I even thought of the sword as a symbol for “learned” masculinity: the first time this thought occurred was when it was characterized by sensuality in the scene where the spouses spar: “Unsheathe it. Let me see your blade;” and I interpreted it as masculinity being the only space that allows intimacy as well; then comes the time where Mizu learns he does not need a sword to fight, meaning to me that she can embody masculinity without having to prove it to others. And then comes the reforging of the sword’s meteorite to include “impurities”, and the rite that Mizu performs. I assume that “a sword too pure” is the symbol of, again, learned hypermasculinity to appease patriarchal expectations, and is too pure because it’s Mizu rejecting part of himself, trying to exclude all “impurities”, whether they are being half white, or being half woman. Taigen himself is the one to tell Mizu he can fight without a sword (ep 7, but done in ep 3 or 4 and ep 6 already), and then the situation starts to bear sexual tension, which I directly link to the sensual connotation of the sparring cited earlier up. Possibly, this particular situation could also mean acceptance of Mizu's lack of a native "sword".
2. Gender roles
But a more sound consideration is (i would like to hope so) the one about the whole marriage being told through puppets, and the puppets themselves. While they are different characters, first of all we see an inversion of gender in the roles: at first Mizu is the Ronin because he performs a masculine role of protection, an “active” role; then, Mizu’s role is reversed in function of his marriage. We see Mizu surrendering (forcibly, being manipulated) to femininity as soon as his mother guilt-trips him into marrying, and the ronin puppet assumes a submissive pose, long before the role reversal.
3. A note:
it yet does not seem to me like the role reversal is, so to say, complete: even after the reversal, the narrator tells details about the ronin that are actually details about Mizu, e.g. when the two marry, and despite the positions of the puppets match the ones of the spouses, it is said that the ronin's loyalty is no more turned towards his "path of revenge," (Mizu's) "but to his bride" - in the perspective explained below, perhaps Mizu's own femininity. Also, i find Mizu might perceive Mikio as the bride, and himself as the husband - as an argument it can't stand alone, or it would bare no strength, but I will use it in correlation with the other points made, until now and later, to argue that Mizu thinks of himself as a guy.
4. Performance of Mizu's sides, assimilable to when she has the vision of killing his white side, shortly before facing the four fangs or whatever their name was
This, and one more tiny detail, bring me to think that not only do we talk about external roles, but about Mizu’s self-perception. I'm referring to when it is said that “for the first time in many years, the ronin felt the storm rage inside him.” The storm is a symbol belonging to Mizu (literally it occurs in the first 2 minutes of the episode), and it is explicit that it isn’t something that happens for the first time, but rather returns. By this point, the gender roles were reversed, and yet it seems to me like it isn’t anymore about the marriage itself, but rather about Mizu’s hatred for and slaughtering of his own femininity, and, of course, the experience of betrayal; with his family (especially his mother, see below), and with his femininity, which wasn’t enough to keep him comfortable or Mikio on his side. (...betrayal which is also about mizu himself betraying akemi, i'd add. Mizu is justified here, but it's important to note the parallels between the two timelines i guess?)
5. That random ass baby
There is, at a certain point, a situation of peace, which I think is represented when one of the puppets is holding a blue baby (supposedly a little ronin) in its arms. I want to suppose that the baby represents newborn love between Mizu and Mikio, before it all fell apart. But the love itself is a masculine love, as we see that it is based on masculine exchanges (fighting, doing fieldwork, taming horses, riding together, whatever) and, it seems to me, assimilable to homosexuality between samurai, which was widespread (insert something about Taigen here). Also Mikio wanted to marry a bro lmao. Aside from that, on the level of Mizu’s self-perception, it might represent comfortableness, a sort of congruence, or, rather, a compromise, that Mizu is able to live in, between natural masculinity and performed femininity - opening up to show vulnerability, love fragile as a creature that cannot defend itself, innocent, naive, trusting. 
6. About Mizu’s mother.
The puppet used for Mizu’s mother before the role reversal is the same that is supposedly used for Mizu after, but I latch onto a detail: the pattern on the puppet’s kimono is the same as the (real life) Mother’s kimono (see for example minute 12:30). I support this by noting the more obvious parallel between the blue worn by Mizu and the blue of the Ronin puppet, but at the same time I'm forced to note that after a certain point the mother has her own puppet. In any case, I see the mother and the feminine puppet wearing the same kimono as being about femininity, and about the mother’s betrayal of her child, rather than about Mizu herself. For one, manipulating him into marrying and abandoning the vow. But also we learn (ep 8) that the woman isn’t Mizu’s mother at all. One could discuss the reliability of Fowler’s statement, but I feel there are more clues regarding the mother’s betrayal: the episode starts with the Ronin, who feels the storm rage inside him at the killing of his lord (Mizu’s actual mother, perhaps) by the hands of a clan whose crest was the Phoenix (which I suppose are the white men, and the curse of whiteness for Mizu). I’ve thought about the four white men dealing guns (Fowler), flesh, opium (and I’m not sure what role “Violet” has in this, but I think they're the opium dealer), and thought that if Mizu’s “mother” was a substitute, the opium she smokes could point to Mizu’s potential father, perhaps even at the surrogate mother keeping contact, and at the surrogate’s betrayal at the same time. But it’s also true I watched the show while stoned, so I would dismiss this.
7. Onryo (note: characteristic in kabuki)
When the birth of the vengeful spirit occurs, I see very well how plausible it is to say that, actually, the rage that Mizu feels is feminine rage, and I agree with that. Mizu’s femininity is his rage, it is heavily related to the mother-daughter relationship, despite the fact that at a certain point the mother has her own puppet. At the same time, however, it is to me the result of the slaughtering of the performed femininity needed to respect the obligation (we remember the wedding was also to ensure the “surrogate” mother safety, especially financial, as well as to keep Mizu bound), just as accepting you’re able to fight with any tool puts an end to the compensatory movement by which you’re trying to prove masculinity to an observer (which, say, Taigen does as well, wanting to prove to Mizu he can beat him - plus, Taigen himself is the one to reassure Mizu on the complete unimportance of it, see how I read the sword symbol a few paragraphs earlier).
In this perspective, the "dye washing away from her kimono" to me means two things: that being what he is is inevitable, and that the feminine rage sets in; Mizu tries to make up for being a "demon", but in the end rejects the obligation towards his husband, and towards her mother; the pattern is not the same anymore, and Mizu is somehow more like his own person, returning on the path of vengeance, strengthened by the feminine, as the reforged sword will be strengthened by the very ritualistic yaki-ire.
--
Episode 8,
I feel, speaks instead for itself,  for the dysphoric reaction is to me extremely clear. Reacting that way to being called a Miss is not a cisgender reaction. You’ll tell me: it’s not a dysphoric reaction! It’s a reaction of disgust to being fetishized for being a woman! And that’s plausible, supported by the “you just keep getting better,” with clear sexual implication, except I think that is also a fundamental trans experience and one cannot limit the way they read the scene to an exclusively feminine experience.
In conclusion,
I don’t think it might be all boiled down Mizu being a masc woman, because of the trans coding. Mizu thinks of himself as a guy. If not a guy, not a woman either. You’ll tell me: “Of course she does, because she’s grown up that way; she was forced to sustain the lie to preserve her life! It's a matter of conditioning!” And while it is true that the initial context points towards crossdressing, and not inherent feelings of gender non conformity or transgenderism, I feel that if Mizu really felt like a woman, he wouldn’t have such exaggerated reactions, and I don’t think they come from his temperament either. And it is disproved that conditioning someone to have a different sexuality or gender identity works in any way - I doubt Edo period Japan or a particular protagonist would make an exception. "But Mizu herself tells Mikio she didn't want to be a man, she had to be one!" Yes, because it is true. But it points to crossdressing. If it were aimed to explain the whole of Mizu's experience of gender in her self, it would invalidate the entirety of episode 5.
In any case, even in situations where he couldn’t be discovered, Mizu does not allow feminine terms or titles, or tries as best to stop them from happening; plus, it’s rather obvious how difficult the relationship with his body is. 
While, once again, reading Mizu as a binary trans man is not enough, I feel like reading him as cisgender isn’t, either. As if, in any case, the feminine experience and the transmasculine one didn’t overlap in many aspects, also during the most tumultuous parts of transition, if pursued.
What is funniest above all is that the whole discourse is substantially useless. The layers of the show open to an infinite variety of interpretations, none of them fundamentally wrong. Mizu’s just quite literally Mizu. It’s a queer unlabeled thing and that’s it. If you take the Lacanian concept of the Real as the hole, properly uninteligible, surrounded by the Symbolic, you'll find that "Queer" is exquisitely representative of the Real, and therefore every label (the Symbolic) is reductive of the perceived experience (indeed the Real). The fundamental lesson about gender that you can derive from the show is that gender is a performative construct. What it pushes you to do is deconstruct your principles, especially if you are queer, since we are all entrapped in the modern western white need for strict labelling; that’s where this whole debate comes from, and it is, once again, pointless.
So, instead making fun of other people because of a set of pronouns, perhaps it would be better to imagine that more options can cohabit together, or that there is no need to label at all. Also be careful about accusing others of a complete lack of media literacy - you should thoroughly examine yours first.
Interesting articles i guess:
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Algoso, Teresa A. "'Thoughts on Hermaphroditism': Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taishō Japan." The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006): 555–573. Algoso, Teresa A. "Not Suitable as a Man? Conscription, Masculinity, and Hermaphroditism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." Chap. 11 In Recreating Japanese Men, edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 241–261. Mostow, Joshua S. “The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire.” In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 2003, 49–70.
taken from this post asking about transgender men in the edo period: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p6x4jk/comment/h9ttgv4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
As a final unrelated note, I haven’t seen anyone praise the MASTERFUL sound design 
bye 🪳🪳🪳🪳🪳
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thevalaxy · 8 months
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sooooo Miles Morales:
doesn't flinch or react with distress when bitten by the spider. Almost as if something sharp puncturing his skin is not startling or distressing as it definitely is for most people. As if it might be routine or something he is used to, perhaps. Like for example, doing injections on himself regularly.
is startled by suddenly being taller and says "I think I hit puberty". He's almost fifteen. Dialogue afterward further implies insecurity about his development, and thereafter has lines where he pretends he's done with puberty to people his own age, feeling uncomfortable about the attention he draws by seeming new to puberty. Puberty is typically reached before that age in boys and his voice is clearly broken/breaking by how he can pitch it down... but he's also inexperienced with how he can potentially use his voice, as seen in the scene with Uncle Aaron, so it's still new too. So 'I think I hit puberty' is an odd statement for someone his age, right? Unless it's been delayed until recently or presently and is still new rather than something he's been in for (based on the average age it starts) maybe 2-3 years now if he was cis. For example, by medication designed to delay puberty, like puberty blockers... which can be injectable, like T can be. And the number of potential reasons to prescribe blockers to a boy who is 14-15 is quite small, that's well past their use for precocious puberty. hmmmmm i wonder whyyyyy
is uncomfortable at his new school because the people around him don't truly know him or connect to him. He is trying to be himself there, and is clearly shunned for it until he meets Gwen, the heavily trans-coded character. There are several possible components to this; class and wealth, cultural and social background and how social interactions are very clearly established as different, race. None of these prevent potential queerness from being a part of it too. If he was a trans boy, the people around Miles who he grew up with would know, and as his walk through them at the start shows he is clearly on good terms with them and well-liked. So if he was trans, we have on the one hand "i am seen as a young trans man and loved and respected in my community for it", and on the other we have "i am a stranger and none of them know me, and I don't know how to fit in with them, and they don't know I'm trans.". His first friend is Gwen... the trans girl. And then Miles has to hide his identity as the new Spider-Man from the world around him. Which hurts him. Like how being stealth often hurts and isolates trans people by keeping a part of ourselves hidden.
says before getting his hand stuck to Gwen's hair, "You're new right, we've got that in common." and Gwen replies, "Yeah. That's one thing.". On the level of the film in isolation she's talking about the fact that they're both spider heroes and Miles doesn't know this yet. But the second film blatantly ties her being Spider-Woman to a very clear and direct allegory of being transgender. Even in the first film she is regularly framed with trans pride colours around her (e.g. the shot of her drumming in her spoken introduction, almost all of her shots in the first section of the credits), only a little less intensely than how they are used to that effect in the sequel. They're both new, they're both spider heroes, and the latter of these two is a trans allegory in the sequel, a sequel that, despite its messy production and lots of changes, was clearly expected in broad strokes during the production of the first film (hence the last scene and the stinger after the credits). At their age they're not just new to school, they'd be new to transition, new to their new genders. It is entirely possible that the strong trans coding was wanted from the start and left for the sequel because queerness is very hard to pitch to a company right off the bat especially in media for a low age rating (see Korra, She-Ra, The Owl House, this franchise would not be an outlier for intending queerness and only putting it in openly once they have enough of a foothold to not get turned down before even starting production). The creators likely wouldn't say that publicly because it could damage Sony's reputation and *that* would have consequences for their own careers since they work there, so a lack of confirmation doesn't mean anything either way. We have to look at the films together to interpret these intentions.
shakes hands with Gwen and they call each other friends, while the background is soaked in pink and blue. I don't think that's an accidental choice since they very obviously know what those colours can be used to indicate as shown by the sequel. Blue is behind Gwen, pink is behind Miles in the shot and because of the angles he is facing towards the blue side and she is looking towards the pink side, and both colours of light are touching them as highlights. Blue, a colour nowadays associated with boys, literally *behind* Gwen in the frame, while pink is literally in Miles's background in the shot as they look towards the other colour. Gwen wears white, Miles wears black, the former being the centre stripe on the typical trans flag and the latter as the centre stripe on the Black trans flag. As they shake hands before moving forward with their lives, they are looking towards the colours of their gender as presented in the events of the film (girl Gwen, boy Miles) despite their visual background being the opposite colour. Visual storytelling exists; with the context of the second film making Gwen's transness so blatant this is a not very subtle "bonding over their shared experiences and leaving their assigned genders behind them as they move towards their futures" image. See below because i am not making this up I'm literally just describing the shot with the same very basic colour symbolism the creators used so prominently in the sequel:
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looks to role models for how to be masculine (Aaron) and how to be Spider-Man (alt-verse Peter) when the latter is, again, tied to an allegory of transness across the film franchise. Yes, teenagers look to adults as role models for gender, but paired with all the above there can absolutely be a trans angle to that desire for guidance on how to be yourself.
has to make a leap of faith in order to be Spider-Man. No-one else can tell him he is or is not Spider-Man, or that he is or is not ready. He just has to take the leap of faith and do it. And he does take that leap, and he does do it. And, again, transness and being a spider hero are linked extremely strongly through the visual and spoken storytelling in the sequel. No-one can tell you you're trans or not, you just have to live it and it starts with a leap of faith and acceptance. This is not subtle if you so much as lightly wave a trans lens in the vague direction of this movie.
So.
Weaker and less overt trans coding isn't the same thing as it not being there at all. Even if a character canonically looks at the camera and says they're queer, directly, cishet audiences will ignore or deny it. This is a visual storytelling medium; all I'm doing is interpreting the visual storytelling and picking up on some potential implications based on what I know about the sequel and it's more direct trans coding and what that says about its creative intentions.
Miles Morales is transmasc.
That thought occurred to me less than ten minutes in and the rest of the film to follow only strengthened it. I genuinely will ignore anyone who says he's cis, that would make the film worse by detracting from its themes of identity and weakening its symbolism and subtext and actual text. Not every story is improved in narrative and thematic terms by the main character being trans, but this one absolutely is because it ties in so strongly with the narrative and themes on every level.
I haven't seen Across The Spider-Verse yet but like... the first film stands on its own as a less overtly-coded trans story, but still a trans story.
Author intent doesn't necessarily match audience interpretation. It's very clear that the people who made the second film intend the audience to interpret Gwen as trans. If you turn that lens on the previous film, there is absolutely space to interpret it like this. Even if the creators initially intended for Gwen to be trans but not Miles, that doesn't really matter when you look at the films they ended up making.
I'm honestly not even joking with this post, not even with the interpretation of why the spider bite doesn't produce a significant response from him. Nothing prevents Miles Morales from being able to be a trans man. And him being trans only adds to the themes and imagery and character arc of the first film.
I will not be entertaining argument on this topic. I am autistic about this and therefore my interpretation is correct. (okay that last sentence is a joke but seriously i am actually correct about this. don't be upset. it's okay for you to think he's cisgender, it's okay to be wrong. 😇)
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heliojip · 11 months
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this is a clusterfuck but thinkign about this convo i had with @verminty about re-animator and trans coding 1/2
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chippedtoons · 2 months
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i feel like we need more compilations of characters being incredibly trans coded because if i saw that one Lake video early on in 2020 i would have had a lot less questions about myself that needed to be answered.
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cheetahf · 1 year
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My god this episode showed that hunter is really trans coded like
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maxiemumdamage · 2 years
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I know I missed the initial hype, but I had a thought about the “Viktor Hargreeves” reveal and the fact that…if they decide to do a full exploration of that for the character instead of just slipping it in first episode without explaining, Vanya already very much had a Trans Narrative going on.
(For the sake of clarity I’ll be referring to the character as Viktor for seasons 1-2 events, just because calling the character by the in-universe dead name as I discuss his trans coding feels weird.)
Viktor was always separate from the rest of the family, for something he had no control over and couldn’t even really identify. He struggled to express himself, often having poor self esteem as a result of never being able to match the image of his siblings. Viktor gradually learned to express himself, to take control of his own life.
And then in season two…the fact that Viktor so easily fit into this woman’s family, filling in for the child’s absent father and taking over more paternal aspects of care easily. The fact that woman’s husband was so threatened by Viktor even without knowing anything. The fact Viktor specifically was helping out with a kid who had special needs and often struggled to communicate, and was able to connect with that kid so easily.
Like, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, and I’m not articulating it very well (this was easier when I said this out loud to some friends) but to me Viktor Hargreeves feels like a culmination of Vanya’s existing character development!
The specific loathing their father had for “number seven,” the fact he never explained to “Vanya” what she was doing wrong and just tried to isolate her and stop her from “corrupting” the rest of the Umbrella Academy, her relationship with Allison always overshadowed by this feeling that they can’t quite understand each other, the fact that all these kids literally chose their own names, Viktor included…
Viktor was already a little bit of a trans character, even before Elliot came out. This is just a perfect conclusion for it.
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skrunksthatwunk · 1 year
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i think it's so so so funny that my main transmasc hc character literally Is The Way He Is bc he's amab. like hiei's one of approx 3 characters ever whose asab is actually relevant and having it otherwise is impossible in the text. ridiculous.
is what i thought, but it's actually wayy way more complicated than i previously gave it credit for!! plus there's a LOT more queercoding than i first thought. lemme explain:
[tw: eugenics, fascism, queerphobia, self harm, suicide mentions]
[yu yu hakusho spoilers/meant for ppl who've seen yyh but probably understandable to ppl who haven't]
[ft too many uses of the word queercoded and my mushy feelings about hiei's arc and the queer experience]
hiei is literally thrown out of his home as a baby for being born male and that's just INCREDIBLY queercoded on its own, but specifically a lot of this is presented with the fact that he's a fire demon. this could just be a trait he got from his father, or it could be tied to the ice maiden species. i think it's a stretch to say gender/sex present the same across all demonkind, much less that it resembles our own. frankly, binary sexual classification doesn't really work for a lot of species (and it really doesn't work for humans anyway, because intersex people exist). his maleness is associated with it, and this creates a potential sexual dichotomy that, in this species, females present with ice powers and males present with fire powers. (i understand this has a very goofy "girls are cats boy are dogs" energy to it but let's roll with it for now). so hiei could have been born with what humans would consider female sex characteristics, but the ice maidens would look at him and go "oh he's on fire get this little man outta here". (this could also be where the idea that he'll destroy them comes from, if all males are, y'know, melty).
some of my initial thought process on this came about because i figured "oh if they reproduce asexually they've probably got all xx chromosomes, and that's how they only have xy kids when the parent has sex with someone outside the village", but even if that's the case (assuming chromosomes work the same for demons), there's still a ~50/50 chance hiei ended up with xx chromosomes anyway. perhaps fire is considered the primary sex characteristic that determines one's asab in the same way genitalia is for humans. so, to a human audience, we'd see his traits and go "oh he's trans", which i think counts for biological coding.
the ice maiden society is also incredibly restrictive in terms of gender and sexuality. they consist entirely of (ambiguously determined, as discussed above) women who reproduce asexually. one is not allowed to leave the bounds of this society, nor perform sexual taboos, such as sleeping with outsiders. hiei was only born because hina acted outside of the strict sexual norms of this society. people's queerness is sometimes chocked up to "poor parenting" (often based in sexual/gender/religious/otherwise traditional nonconformity) of parents. and even though hina loved her son and didn't want to see him, y'know, thrown off a floating island, the society as a whole still deemed him an outsider and a problem to be eliminated and left him for dead for the greater purity/"protection" of the culture. it's serving fascist eugenics tbh. (and hiei doesn't destroy their culture like they and he had expected, subverting their expectations of him and his "kind", though the idea that that subversion matters more than preventing further harm is one I'd disagree with. the choice to cut them out of his life entirely to me is somewhat more justifiable to me given a familial view over a community/cultural one, but i digress). regardless, this is reminiscent of societal marginalization in general, but especially categories that can show up in isolation in families (i.e. queerness, neurodivergency, disability, etc) in a way that other things (i.e. race, religious affiliation, etc) generally don't, and can thus be painted as rooting out abnormalities or defects in individual, bloodless, mundane cases (as opposed to the broader elimination that we associate with genocide)
there's also yukina, who left to find hiei, and who hates the ice maidens (presumably at least partially because she knows what happened to him). think of this as them trying to find each other after familial fallout.
this is all to say that if we view maleness/fire demonness as an equivalent to genderqueerness in the ice maiden society, hiei's story maps onto queer experiences incredibly well. so he's got that cultural/queer experience coding too.
we also see hiei topless all the time (he's actually incapable of keeping his chest covered. when he doesn't take it off it burns off or whatever like he can't fight covered up. can't even make it through the intro with it covered. whore behavior <3). "but he's got male presenting pecs, so he's amab," you might say. but he is (key to his character and returning home) well acquainted with a plastic surgeon. he literally has a body modification done as part of his backstory (specifically one he had to tell this story to to receive treatment!!!). transcoded asf. and frankly him being topless all the time is very reminiscent of lots of transmasc ppl who've just gotten top surgery. like they paid too much not to show it off. (this was actually the first thing that made me go "omg,, he's trans lmao. that surgeon guy totally gave him a 2 for 1 deal" and then it just. kept piling up. he's also quite short (4'10") and has a relatively high voice (definitely masc, but in a very in-the-throat way that a lot of afab ppl use), but neither of those are that compelling).
he also has a somewhat more flexible view of his body than the others, getting drastic invasive surgery, beating his arm when it disobeyed him(????? ok babe), and willingly sacrificing parts of it to learn fighting techniques (specifically a fire technique, so more gender stuff). this could be tied to genderqueer people's greater willingness/need to change their bodies, or potentially harmful practices (such as improper binding) to alleviate dysphoria.
queerness is featured a few times in the series and implied in others. we encounter a canon transfem demon named miyuki during the yukina rescue arc. karasu and itsuki are both distinctly mlm demons. hiei even acknowledges this in the eng dub, calling itsuki "lover boy" when he's doing his whole "omg sensui,, i want him to be evil so bad he's so hot" speech. the derision in this case seems to come more from hiei's dislike of him/the situation than disgust at itsuki's queerness (or else he could have just called him disgusting or perverse or whatever). kurama also makes a joke near the end of the series implying hiei is interested in him, which hiei refutes by clarifying his intentions, rather than saying smth like "ew nasty I don't swing that way", which is more standard in anime. I'm gonna gesture wildly to mukuro but we'll skip her for now. all this is to say that the only characters we see exhibiting signs of queerness are demons (other than the people we see atsuko hang with for a single shot). this is almost certainly a case of villainous queercoding (a detriment to the series that does rustle my feathers a good bit. the treatment of miyuki in particular makes my blood boil), but we could also read this as demonkind having different understandings of gender and sexuality in general. perhaps the reason we see this queerness in demons is more because the way their bodies work, the ways they present, and the ways they're attracted to others, to us, look queer.
hiei, throughout his backstory, is consistently demonized by the people around him (some of which is deserved bc he keeps killing people, but some isn't, like the thrown-as-an-infant-off-a-cliff thing). and while his arc throughout the show is about him becoming more able to let people into his life, there's always a distance there. he almost always pushes them away. he's always been treated like a monster, so that's all he tries to be, and it's part of his justification for further distance (i.e. using his criminal status as a reason not to "burden" yukina with the knowledge that they're related). for a lot of queer people (especially before the internet and in places without queer spaces like gay bars), you have no way of meeting people you can trust won't hate you for being queer (even queer spaces have transphobes or nb-exclusionists, etc), so you harden yourself and let very few people in. his trauma reads like a lot of queer ones, especially older american ones. this arc culminates with his relationship with mukuro, and his decision to stay with her indefinitely.
firstly, mukuro's referred to as a king and with he/him pronouns by the cast for a while, before it's revealed that she was hiding her true identity as a woman, and the characters' references to her switch to feminine ones. already tripping wires there. and the first time we learn this about her is when mukuro sees hiei's (queercoded) past and goes "you're just like me" and sheds her clothes (mukuro's backstory doesn't feel that queer to me, but she did have to run away from abuse and dehumanization, potentially for her body/the way she was born as well, so it's not insignificant). hiei's unconscious in one of those green anime healing tubes, but their shared nudity (and thus vulnerability) has a very intimate vibe to it. these fundamentally tightly guarded characters are letting each other in a bit in this way, and that backstory/vulnerability being connected with their bodies/genders, especially when you consider all the other queercoding surrounding them, feels very much like queer solidarity. meeting strangers who have been disowned for birth circumstances and immediately sharing your deepest secrets with each other because you feel some deep similarity to them and bonding over that experience (especially when it relates to asab/agab roles) in a way outsiders can't breach is very queer. (note that hiei didn't want mukuro to know his backstory, but was effectively outed, and she came out in kind). and eventually hiei helps her work through that trauma, and she gives him purpose and a home. a found family with a better fit, something more suited to him, than the main cast (as much as I want them to mesh perfectly).
i think part of why hiei is suicidal in the beginning of three kings is because of that distance and isolation. he'd fulfilled his mission of meeting yukina, but resolved not to tell her of their relation. he feels he can't tell her this big secret of his that might change how she views him, or views her home. it's just before the fight where he tries to die that his surgeon's condition that he could never tell her is revealed. the only thing allowing them to meet is keeping that secret, and the bodily change is what causes it. and he says he wouldn't want to tell her anyway. so he has nowhere to go. he doesn't want to destroy humanity anymore (as evidenced by his assistance in the previous arc and destruction of the chapter black tape), he can't get closer to his home or his sister, and there's still that distance between him and everyone else. (in case it needs to be said, all of this is crazy bonkers queercoded). but in the end, after he and mukuro grow together and bond, he tells kurama to tell yukina her brother's dead, to give up hope, to cut himself off permanently. kurama says he won't, because he believes that hiei will return and tell her they're related someday. and hiei begrudgingly agrees. someday he will tell her. when he's ready, and when he feels safe enough to. and from that change in the beginning and end of the arc, we know he's found that safety in mukuro, and may finally begin to really pursue his own happiness and authenticity. because he met someone like him, he now has hope. he can be loved and he can be enough, and he can look forward to it.
so, to sum up, hiei:
1. was disowned as a child for being the wrong/unexpected gender/sex in an incredibly homogenous society (in which it is ambiguous how they classify sex/gender)
2. has a medical and unusually personal history with a magical plastic surgeon and is topless all the time
3. reacts neutrally/without notice to other characters' queerness (when he is rude, it's for other reasons)
4. is a demon, the only group shown to exhibit canon queerness
5. forms a very deep bond with someone over their shared isolating (queercoded) experiences (with persistent body imagery and a social transition on mukuro's part)
basically, he's transcoded <3
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crappycheese · 6 months
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A samurai does the sword thing but instead of someone dying it’s perfect top surgery
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rjalker · 7 days
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I'm just copying and pasting this whole thing lol.
"Yes. Gender is a social construct. Gender affects your position and role in society. It is not just Chime's phyiscal changes -- growing wings, getting taller and skinnier -- that have changed, it's his position in society.
He is trans coded because his situation mirrors the situation of real trans people in real life, not because Martha Wells purposefully wrote him as trans.
Being transgender is not just about the physical aspects of your body, it is about the social roles that go along with gender. That's why it's called a social construct. If you erased everyone's memories, no one would know what a man or a woman was or why they should behave differently or do different jobs or like different things.
Mentor is one gender within the Raksuran society, because it is both something you are assigned based on your sex -- Arbora, in this case, as well as your social position within their species' society.
With the Raksura, "sex" does not just mean the actual physical characteristics required for having sex or reproducing. It is a combination of all of the various physical traits each caste has.
Queens, female warriors, and female arbora might all be considered female, but other than that, they are vastly different in terms of how their bodies are shaped, function, and behave. Female warriors aren't even capable of reproduction, for one thing!
Queen is a different gender from female Warrior, is a different gender from female Arbora, which still again is a different gender from female Mentor. They have different physical characteristics that the Raksura measure, as well as vastly different positions in society based on those physical characteristics. This is what makes them different genders, rather than just being women who look different from eachother.
Warrior is another gender, that is both assigned at birth, and comes with its own defined role.
Being trans isn't just about not liking specific parts of your body, it is also about how you wish to be seen and treated within society. You could give everyone the magical sex changes they want, physically change their bodies to match what they want. Trans men could have flat chests, trans women could get breasts, and nonbinary people could do whatever they wanted.
But they’d still want to be referred to with different pronouns and gendered terms than the ones they were assigned originally.
It's not just about the body, it's about how you interact with society.
Chime is not just trans coded because he physically changed shape to gain wings and a new distribution of body fat. It's also because, as you said, he no longer fits into the role he had before. He's not treated like a Mentor anymore, even though he still has all that knowledge and skills, because no one sees him as that gender anymore.
All they see him as is the new gender and sex that were magically forced upon him: Warrior, who can’t help with anything, and isn’t to be trusted around books or anything important. (Remember how another Court refused to let him in their library because they see him as a Warrior and don't trust him the way they would if they saw him as the Mentor he actually is? That's society's perception of him conflicting with his own view of his gender identity, before we even get into any of the bigotry that's baked in about how Warriors are treated).
I'll again link to a free book that I think would be helpful and educational if you would like to learn more."
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fatestayyuri · 3 months
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ghostscrown · 4 months
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Ah, yes. My favorite game. Is this character trans coded / autistic coded on purpose and they didn't say it so the transphobes / ableists wouldn't get mad, or are cis / allistic people really THAT oblivious even with their own creations ?
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unitedstates0fdakota · 3 months
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At some point a gal has so many posts labeled “Harry Du Bois coded” saved on her phone that she starts to think she might be the problem
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thevalaxy · 8 months
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Miles Morales is a trans man.
I'm not meme-ing and I'm not going to argue or accept any arguments. If you disagree with the idea that he's trans, sorry, but you're not actually watching either movie. The visual language of the first film implies it especially with the context of the second, which practically screams it.
ATSV knows what trans colours mean because it has two literal in-universe trans flags in it (above gwen's door, and beside her dad's badge). Those are in the movie, this is not something you can debate. So no, they didn't oopsie into saturating the scene where she reconnects with her dad and is accepted in nothing but white, pink, and blue. They know what those colours mean because they show that flag twice, they know what pairing that with spoken statements about hiding her identity and how it hurts is doing thematically and symbolically. It's a film, visual storytelling is occurring in every shot, this is not an accident, this is visual storytelling. Gwen is trans. End of. The film says so.
Miles never says "I'm an artist. I like painting and drawing.". It is shown with his sketchbook and his graffiti and his mural. It shown with visual storytelling, through his expressions and emotions and interactions with others.
Hobie never says "I'm punk". He does say "I hate labels" though xP But if you watch the film and get that Hobie, with his background music and his clothing and how he describes the music he makes and his politics and his blue shoelaces (which are punk code that he's killed a cop, and when Miles turns to him regarding the subject of cops being killed by falling rubble Hobie says "Eh? What of it?"), is very very obviously punk...
Congratulations, you can pick up what visual media is putting down, well done, now use those brain cells come on <3 <3
If you can look at ITSV and ATSV and get that Miles is an artist and that Hobie is punk, you have enough ability to comprehend visual storytelling to get that Gwen is trans.
And that Miles is also trans for the same reason.
Because the films both use the same colour symbolism for Miles too.
At the end of ATSV, Miles's face is coloured by blue light. The room's dark, but there's blue light catching on his face. Prowler Miles though? Pink light. They already showed you a handful of minutes ago that they know what blue and pink can mean and are overtly using the two colours as a symbol of transness. In the trans flag the blue represents masculinity, the pink represents femininity, the white (or black in the case of the black trans flag) represents people who don't identify with that binary or are pre-transition (and the disproportionate discrimination and violence faced by black trans people).
Miles was according Miguel's canon, "not meant to be Spider-Man". On a meta-commentary level that is absolutely about the racist backlash to the existence of Miles as a character, but a storytelling moment can be incorporating more than one theme at a time. Just like how Miles's growing up and wanting to be grown up is explored at the same time as him wanting to be Spider-Man, "you weren't supposed to be what you are" can be doing two things at once. The racism is the overt subtext made very blatant by the context of Miles being black and currently being hunted by an institution of power that maintains the status quo. The gender stuff is Gwen's more overt subtext, but that doesn't mean it's absent for Miles, it's just less focal. Which is fine, a lot of the themes Miles explores as a character are ones Gwen, a white girl, cannot.
Miles was 'meant' to inherit the mantle of Prowler, to follow in his uncle's footsteps. Miles was 'supposed' to be the one wreathed in pink light. Miles 'wasn't meant' to be Spider-Man. Miles 'wasn't meant' to be in blue light.
And in that shot, he is. The two selves are contrasted. Who he was meant to become, pink (the colour of femininity)... and who he is. Who our Miles is, the one we know, the one we love, in blue (the colour of masculinity). Which the fiml's creators know those colours can mean because of the trans flags and Gwen's scenes. The room is dark, they could have picked any colours of light for them, they could have had them both in the same colour, but no. Blue for our Miles, who says "I'm a man now!", who when he's told he shouldn't be who he is responds by declaring his name, who is an 'anomaly' by being himself, whose existance is something that Miguel (the enforcer of the ultimate status quo, no matter the cost) seeks to destroy.
When Gwen and Miles shake hands and call each other "Friends" at the end of the first film, blue is in Gwen's background and pink is in Miles's background, and each is looking in the direction of the other (and therefore the other's colour). Gwen looking towards pink, Miles looking towards blue, both of them moving forwards as people and as heroes and as friends. ATSV shows they know what those colours mean.
I don't think ITSV oopsies into it either.
Miles gets trans colours. Gwen's yell I'M TRANS. Miles don't quite; they say "I am a man", just like he does.
Before I saw ATSV I already read Miles as trans but oh wow this film is genuinely not subtle about it.
Miles Morales is a trans man.
And again, this does not replace, overshadow, or undermine any of what the films do with Miles's identity as black. It does not erase or lessen it. It only adds an additional dimension to interpreting the themes and imagery of the films. Media can have more than one theme at a time, even in the same scene.
This is visual coding. Maybe you could have said ITSV was coincidental about it. That argument crumpled the moment ATSV released.
You can't decide he isn't trans. All you can say is that you're ignoring the film's own storytelling even when it makes it so overt that it saturates the entire screen.
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ruporas · 1 year
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tri-trans! happy#tdov 💘
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themostuselesspotato · 2 months
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Made this a while ago, but I now have fandom access!! Hello Danny Phantom fandom 👋
Anyways yeah I have design ideas
Edit: This has gotten a shit ton of notes?? Hello??? Thank you so much!
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