@gapewurm female (straight or not) fans in the west too?? i'm more confused why we think a gay character only has gay fans, or conversely a character with het fans can't be gay
@gapewurm isn't that tweet comparing apples and oranges too. the characters sexuality and the gender (&sexuality) of his fans are two completely different things. yes he has a famously massive cn yume fanbase which may be majority het women, he's still gay. but he also he has a lot of
@lionvehs whats strange is they even acknowledge how bad "normal porn" (assuming they mean...porn vids) that features trans men is because yes! it's fetish porn made by cis ppl for cis ppl fetishizing the trans men depicteds' bodies. the point is that a lot of fic does that exact thing.
tis biphobia manifest but i can't even be sure that is the operant motivator here over that lot just being infamously insufferably snooty about either of those characters being paired with anyone else, male or no so all this posturing about erasure rings particularly hollow
dgaf about either ship but "they sent him to a conversion camp" and "they lobotimized him to neuter out the gay" are objectively weird and deranged things to type that have been typed about known mlm character over an implication that a woman might be important to him
@mamaumau129@cogito_yuri incels bringing different genres of homophobia/racism/misogyny to the mix is not exactly warping. 99% of the 'toxicity' you mention can already be rooted in one or more of those things. & personally as a lesbian the ick is no different regardless whose mouth its coming from
@mamaumau129@cogito_yuri most of the crap and toxicity in ALNST fandom already *is* different expressions of homophobia (and racism). either in the form of denying sexualties (most pertinently with mizi's lesbianism) or expecting sanitization of the queer rships which is in itself a form of homophobia-
they were doing this as far back as 3.1 when he was rightfully lauded for his good writing. none of this is mutually exclusive and the wide appeal of this game ~is~ a result of the devs maximizing pieces of the pie which is why either/or discourse in this fandom is always flawed
girl they were always marketing him romantically to the female gaze (iirc it was explicitly said he was designed with fem playerbase in mind) AND coding him to be gay in-universe. those are things they did & are still doing simultaneously this is not new or exclusive to him
AM starting to think hoyo have taken avens popularity as "oh we need to market him romantically to players" and not "oh people love it when we give a character depth and homosexuality"
i do think there is a lil of misogyny/lesbophobia in how people can't rationalize the idea of lesbians engaging with fiction like everyone else.
maybe there is NOTHING special in that male character or that hetship, maybe you like them for the exactly same reasons everyone else.
Guys, I’m so serious when I say having prefs for fixed t/b dynamics for ships is fine but if seeing the reverse makes you physically react especially to a point you send spiteful/angry comments/messages, that is NOT NORMAL and should raise questions about yourself.