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#alan wake #alan wake 2 #tom zane #thomas zane

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Desperate, crying, agonizing Insane Alan from Alan Wake Remastered (DLC)

some Mr. Scratch vibes

some reaction gifs

#alan wake #alan wake remastered #ilkka villi #alan wake dlc

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we ALL needed it, okay?

And also some options with AWAN!Scratch/AW2!Scratch as a bonus С:

#alan wake 2 #alan wake #mr scratch

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Scratch sticker I am almost done with. Gonna list these on my Etsy soon :)

#alan wake #mr scratch #alan wake’s american nightmare

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Champion of Light/Herald of Darkness?!

Sketch + the lineart is under the cut :)

#alan wake 2 #mr scratch

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I told you I was psycho~

#alan wake #alan wake american nightmare #mr scratch

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Erm...where do I even start...Soooo..Persephone!Alan/Hades!Scratch anyone? Well, we just discussed this silly Alan-Persephone AU idea and I quickly sketched Persephone!Alan, just to see how he'd look like dressed in all this greek stuff. I wasn't even going to do anything with this AU but after this sketch…I just…FUCKING COULDN'T HELP MYSELF??? So I said fuck it and did the whole ass picture with them xD. I know nobody asked for this, I know it's stupid af but this scene was stuck in my head for God knows how long so I'm just happy to finally get it out of my head ¯_(ツ)_/¯

#alan wake 2 #mr scratch #alan wake

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#alan wake 2

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tsum is done with yo bullshit

#resident evil #albert wesker

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Reflections

#resident evil

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movie poster style illustration for alan wake 2 ❤️

#alan wake 2

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You KNEW he was a psycho. I mean, he DID tell you he's a psycho. REALLY, he's a psycho.

•

Silly idea of Scratch murdering his own Tamagotchi via @firstaidspray <3

#alan wake #mr scratch #alan wake 2

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Overlap

#alan wake 2 #alan wake

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I like to think I'm funny

+ bonus because the official discord demanded I made a happy version

#alan wake #alan wake 2

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AW characters as major arcana

#alan wake 2 #alan wake

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A Queer Reading of Wesker

This is a sorta-teaser for my the queering RE post I might make, but I wanted to do a bit of a deep-dive on Wesker and the apparent queer coding of his character. Wesker being "queer coded" is something I've seen tossed around in the fandom a lot, and while I agree since there's quite frankly a lot of evidence that supports the theory, I think there's also a lot of important factors that get left out of these discussions, especially since it's seemingly not well-known information.

Terminology and Background:

Before we can start the queer reading of Wesker, I think it's imperative that we establish some general background knowledge and history of queering media. The term "queer reading" or "queering" is born from Queer Theory, which took rise in the late 80s and 90s. The theory proposes using the term queer as a verb to analyze or otherwise question the perceived heteronormativity of a piece of media. Queer coding took rise in the early years of Hollywood and the film industry as a whole. The Hays Code, also referred to as the Production Code, was a set of rules the film industry had set forth as a form of self-censorship.

The Code was especially harsh toward any portrayal of anyone that was not cishet, white, male, and christian, even outright prohibiting specific groups of people from being portrayed at all. One of these groups were queer people, as queerness was considered "sexual perversion" and thus was "unfit" for public viewing in media. While there was no law saying that filmmakers had to follow the Code, their movies couldn't be shown unless they had the Code's stamp of approval (which was comparable to a rating by today's system), and if you can't get your movie shown... well... you get the point. But, despite the efforts of the industry, queerness still existed because queer people existed within the film industry. Queer coding was developed as secret signifiers embedded in a character or story that would only be understood be queer people, thus going over the heads of the censors and allowing the movie to be shown.

So queer coding is not a character having "gay vibes" nor is it queer people "projecting." It's a well-established, well-researched thing that was created to combat queerphobia and bigotry. Even in 2024, queer films are still censored. For sake of not making this post even longer, I won't go into much detail about this specifically, but I want you all to think critically about how queerness is portrayed in current media-- how many queer shows get canceled after 1 season? How many queer movies are given higher ratings than straight movies that did the same things? How many "first gay characters" does Disney have? etc.

Applying This to Wesker

His Voice

Wesker's "accent" is something I've seen debated a lot in the fandom as well. A lot of people have said it sounds British, some say it's similar to a Transatlantic accent, and others have just called it "posh". I think we can rule out British on the account that Wesker is American haha. The Transatlantic accent was meant to be a posh, upper-class accent that blended British and American English pronunciations and it was especially popular for TV and radio speaking parts. However, the accent had died out almost entirely after WW2 ended in the mid 40s, and considering Wesker was born in 1960, no one would've been speaking like that so he wouldn't have picked up the accent.

But rather than this being a Wesker thing-- as in, rather than there being an in-universe explanation for his speech patterns, I do believe it was a voice acting decision, potentially subconscious and/or conscious across the various VAs.

Even today, a lot of media containing queercoded characters still reflects the queercoded tropes of the classical hollywood era. Any man who was seen as "posh" or "fashionable" was coded as gay in this era since fashion and stylishness was equated with femininity and feminine men were seen as gay. Now, of course, we know that "gay men are inherently feminine" and "all feminine men are gay" are just problematic stereotypes, but that was not the attitude during this era.

The "gay voice"-- and it goes without saying that this is just a stereotype upheld by straight people's assumptions about queer men-- is a combination of characteristics like strong enunciation, the placement of the "s" sound, nasally-sounding tones, melodic speech patterns, etc. And all of those qualities are the same qualities of the "posh" tone and intonations used to code male characters as queer in the classical hollywood films. In other words, the "accent" Wesker has is, at least from my viewpoint, very much reminiscent of how people think gay men sound, especially with regard to the old hollywood portrayals of it-- and this is especially true for Wesker in RE5. The "Chrisssss!" meme comes to mind. His voice is more nasally, the "poshness" comes through even more, and Wesker's VA (for 5) used David Bowie as part of the inspiration for his Wesker voice.

And notably, Richard Waugh, who voiced Wesker in CV, stated in an interview that he thinks sex isn't "gender specific" for Wesker.

Original Inspirations

In an interview with Crimson-Head, Oishi, the original character designer, confirmed that Wesker was inspired by Roy Batty from Bladerunner. Yes, this Roy. He proceeds to blind that guy with his thumbs after they kiss, by the way.

He's "not used to escorting men"

For those unaware, this is a voice line from the original RE1 that is noticeably absent from the redubbs and remakes. The full line is given as "I'm sorry for my lack of manners, I'm not used to escorting men," and Wesker tells this to Chris after asking Chris to "come with [him]" to see his Tyrant. The line has been memed and used as a joke for Wesker being gay a lot on the internet, even in spaces like Reddit which are notoriously not very welcoming of queerness. Yet, the line being "suggestive" is pretty universally accepted in the fandom. "Escorting" is usually a form of sex work where someone is paid to spend time with someone else, which typically (but not always) involves sex.

Interestingly enough, the entirety of the original RE1 was translated directly from Japanese to English, which is why some of the dialogue sounds so clunky. But this also means that the "escorting men" line was not the result of a mistranslation, rather, the joke in both languages was Wesker wanting to "escort" Chris-- an innuendo since he is physically escorting Chris via a holding him at gun point and telling him to come along as well.

His Mannerisms

I've already mentioned the "tropes" for how queer coded men spoke in movies during the classical hollywood era, but speech patterns and "style" weren't the only form of coding. Mannerisms, such as talking with your hands, was considered flamboyant and associated with femininity, therefore being labeled queer during this period in time. It's especially noticeable in 5, but Wesker has a bit of a flare for the dramatics. He talks with his hands (especially around Chris), he wears a black trench coat that sort of functions like a cape aesthetically, he's jumping off the damn ceiling and doing Neo-esque moves that aren't really necessary, he just wants to show off. And given the Oxford Dictionary definition of flamboyant, I think that'd be a fair descriptor in this case.

Now, this is simply a queer reading of Wesker, not me saying he's canonically queer-- apparently this is something we queer people have to explicitly state (as if the term queer reading wasn't enough) now for fear of upsetting the straight people in this fandom who take personal offense to people "daring" to suggest a fictional character might be gasp not straight. While this is just my personal interpretation of his character based on what I've learned in my academic studies and personal research into this subject, I'd say the evidence makes a pretty damning case.

We've got people who worked on the games saying he was inspired by a character who kisses another man on screen, one VA (partially) basing his voice on a well-known queer man, and another talking about how he feels Wesker doesn't "see gender" for sexual relationships. I didn't even get into his "rivalry" with Chris, but I think it's safe to say Wesker is arguably pretty queer coded.

Whether or not this queer coding was intentional is up for debate, however, considering Lady D was also queer coded and it was later revealed that people working on the game had done that purposefully because they saw her as a lesbian, queer coding definitely exists within the production of RE. And if we take into account that RE is the same franchise that named one of their only canonically queer characters after fucking Don't Ask, Don't Tell (Crispin Jettingham aka Dee-Ay from Operation Raccoon City), I can't say I'd be surprised if their idea of representing our community is just relying on tropes of queer men in other media.

And before it get misconstrued, I already stated this in the above paragraphs, but with regards to certain characteristics like his speech patterns and mannerisms: obviously we know that the idea that all gay men speak a certain way or gesture in certain ways is untrue and problematic, however, these games I'm referencing were made at a time when these stereotypes were generally accepted and a lot of that is the direct result of how queer characters were coded as queer historically.

#albert wesker #queer reading

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Red

#dimension 20 junior year #fantasy high #fantasy high junior year #fantasy high ​cassandra #kristen applebees