Diego Hargreeves + quotes | The Umbrella Academy season 2
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Diego Hargreeves + quotes | The Umbrella Academy season 2
Rant time: the general atla fandom’s resistance to zukaang highlights a lot of problems in current fandom and fiction. The resistance is about a point around which we refuse imagination and connection. Specifically, we observe fiction as something to gaze at rather than to connect with. So, aang is denied desire because of his age, religiosity, and racially-linked gendered embodiment, which, this conservative portion of the fandom argues, should deny us to relating to or even considering his subjectivity.
“You’re Just A Child”: Aang’s Age
When it comes to shipping aang, suddenly the conversation becomes about the canon–the age gaps, the immaturity, the cultural ties. 12 years old is prime middle school age in the US, the very essence of sexual development. But many fandom members are not engaging with how they felt and experienced that age. Instead, they’re viewing Aang from a separate vantage point and expecting the same mental process from others. These are where the claims of p*do come from when talking about him within shipping. They suggest that engaging with his character is a desire to observe him voyeuristically since many in the fandom are not actually twelve (ignoring the fact that many fandom members are also significantly older than the other characters they adore and offer subjectivity). Their argument continues that it’s not possible to empathize with him. Only objectification is possible, especially in regards to sensuality, as if that is a category has a different process of psychological relating than all others.
But all this becomes most important for these fandom members when putting him in relationship to the other slightly older characters. These arguments must begin by ignoring the fact that most fanfics and art for the zukaang ship and most ships in the atla fandom are simply disengaged from the canonical ages of the characters. A ton of the works are aged up, and those that aren’t don’t discuss the ages because they are working on the assumption that everyone within their fic are at similar levels of maturity to engage with romantic feelings. At the end of the day, most artists and writers are more interested in exploring the dynamics between richly developed character traits that are pretty unrelated to the character’s ages. Still, ships with Aang, and especially Zukaang somehow receive the most attention for tensions due to the canonical ages (despite the creators disinterest in the topic). Even the Toph ships, which have a canonically younger character with bigger age gaps between her and her partners, don’t receive the same pervasive criticism as the Aang ships.
Avatar Aang: Aang’s Religion and Race
One reason is that he’s perceived as the “pure” cinnamon bun of the series; “pure” as in purile and “pure” as in puritanical. Plenty has been written about purity culture in the fandom, enough that I don’t feel a strong need to elaborate. However, I do want to point to Aang’s role as a religious figure, a monk, in the series. Perceptions crafted through the history of Christianity alongside the practices of many other religions associate religion and celibacy, which I think played into further discomfort with allowing Aang a sexuality. If this is your association, it would counteract Aang’s narrative development of wisdom and self-control to believe he might also be developing sexual maturity throughout the series. Of course, Zen Buddhist philosophies, which were majorly influential in developing the show’s themes and Aang’s character, allow for monks to have sex and get married, and they openly address issues of sex and sexuality. The deeply sexually conservative view held by purity culture then forces Aang, even moreso than other characters, into a de-sexualized pigeon hole.
A desexualized characterization is also a claim hefted onto East Asian men at a stupidly outrageous rate by Western culture. They’re allowed to be cute, mannered, wise, even cool, etc. but when it comes to a kind of subjective sexuality, East Asian men are emasculated (stemming from a deep history of Western colonialism/xenophobia and a specific kind of patriarchal ideology in Euro-America). The pacifistic Buddhist-inspired beliefs he practices especially render him as distinct from the rugged individualist of American masculinity and even the elitist intellectual masculinist of Western European cultures. Can masculinity exist without dominance? Can a relationship exist without antagonistic tension? Sure, we get the fluff ships, but where does that blur into and coexist with the erotic? Aang, as a character, forces the audience to consider the reality of his pain, desire, and strength, despite his refusal to demonstrate that in warfare and courtship. Among what manner would someone demonstrate these inner worlds if they won’t exert them on subjugated bodies? It’s a conflict of worldviews that took shape dramatically during the height of colonization, where the colonized were often blamed and maligned for their failures to resist colonization. These beliefs then developed into stereotypes about the masculinity of different races. The stereotypes that have held on from colonialism alongside of unique cultural ideas about masculinity make Aang a hard figure for people indoctrinated into these beliefs to appreciate.
Aang’s Gender Expression
The fandom is forced to contend with his age, his colonized subjectivity, and, on top of all that, he’s denied the authority socially ascribed to his gender. Toph is the ‘tough guy,’ which Western audiences equate with more maturity, when what it actually equates to in the Euro-American psyche is masculinity. This correlation between masculinity and maturity allows Toph to escape the claims that make Aang an especially dangerous object for fanworks. Aang’s softness and passivity correlate him to femininity in this traditional perspective. Essentially, for the atla fans wearing their purity culture lenses, Aang, if sexualized, is feminine and therefore immature and therefore defenseless to predators. What’s wild is the way the Ember Island Players episode evokes and predicts these kind of reactions with its virginal damsel-in-distress actress depiction of Aang (”My hero!”).
But the zukaang ship really lends a microscope to the matter, because, in every demographic way, Aang’s character is denied the structural trappings of power within the relationship.This means that even those inclined to appreciate softer ideas about masculinity and/or more empowered ideas of feminine and colonized subjectivities can feel reticent to engage with the ship. Within an identity politic framework, the zukaang ship dynamics render Aang submissive: he is the colonized subject in relation to a colonizer; he is the more traditionally feminine partner; he’s more pious; he’s more passive; he is canonically younger. One might go even farther to suggest all of these submissive qualities make him seductive to Zuko in the narrative as he abandons his own nation for Aang, placing Aang in a trope familiar to both gender narratives within Euro-Christian traditions (the Biblical seductresses, like Eve and Jezebel, or more recently, Lolita) and colonial narratives (see, “Indian Princesses” or “Dragon Ladies”). If we go deeper into the archives we’ll also find colonial p*derast narratives (if you have a strong stomach, you can look up Andre Gide, as an example). All these possible features make the relationship especially threatening to modern sensibilities.
Now, I want to emphasize that there are legitimate reasons for the connections that we draw which ignite this fear. The article, “A Modern History of Groomer Politics” by Jesse Walker, lays out some of these complicated and hard-to-read histories, which illustrate how gay and queer rights (especially on the side of those assigned male at birth) became associated with p*dophilia. The Homoerotics of Orientalism by Joseph A. Boone is another read that lays out why people are especially sensitive to age gaps within queer colonial contexts. Suffice it to say, to engage with the zukaang ship requires a deft touch not simply to avoid these histories and tropes but, as seen in many of the fandoms works, to challenge them. Still, the associations trigger reactions for people before they can process any of the actual content.
But even outside the zukaang ship, there is a sense that Aang’s gender expression and sexuality are so much more queer (even the Kataang ship, in its heterosexuality, is perceived as transgressive to the romance genre in comparison to the more traditional Z*tara ship because many people find it challenging to imagine Katara’s attraction to Aang and feel so much more drawn to relationships built around hierarchical colonial relationships rather than relationships that ignore the colonizer entirely). He’s inherently disruptive to the gender expressions that are considered acceptable in western tradition, especially by the hero of the story.
Within the context of the zukaang ship, Aang’s character becomes the most queered, though, and I think that’s deeply uncomfortable for a portion of fandom. They don’t know how to allow someone subjectivity who uses docility as his strength to grow and face the world rather than aggression. Instead, for them, Aang’s docility traps him within a perpetual childhood (or, at most, a eunuch-like domestic role for the queen, Katara). Even as they allow themselves to alter every other aspect of the fiction they love, they are at a loss to handle and develop his character in their works. His youth, his race, and his imperfect saintliness, are all upheld and braided together within the confines of purity culture to argue against the morality of rewarding him romantic and subsequently sexual relationships, and, at its worse, to depict him at all.
Alucard and his father
Trevor Belmont: Himbo Extraordinaire
Huggles all the way
After seeing this I finally know what it is I want in a man. Darkness ✨🖤✨
when people shit on characters that you love and identify with for the exact reasons you love and identify with them
Know your worth
Happy birthday lesbians this means trans lesbians and butch lesbians and femme lesbians and masc lesbians and lesbians who had to be comphet and aro lesbians and ace lesbians and lesbians of color and disabled lesbians and lesbians who have that as their only connection to womanhood and lesbians that fully embrace loving other lesbians/sapphics. i love you
iconic!
this is the plot to mama mia
cinematographic parallels
The way that we learn about Helen Keller in school is an absolute outrage. We read “The Miracle Worker”- the miracle worker referring to her teacher; she’s not even the title character in her own story. The narrative about disabled people that we are comfortable with follows this format- “overcoming” disability. Disabled people as children. Helen Keller as an adult, though? She was a radical socialist, a fierce disability advocate, and a suffragette. There’s no reason she should not be considered a feminist icon, btw, and the fact that she isn’t is pure ableism- while other white feminists of that time were blatent racists, she was speaking out against Woodrew Wilson because of his vehement racism. She supported woman’s suffrage and birth control. She was an anti-war speaker. She was an initial donor to the NAACP. She spoke out about the causes of blindness- often disease caused by poverty and poor working conditions. She was so brave and outspoken that the FBI had a file on her because of all the trouble she caused.
Yet when we talk about her, it’s either the boring, inspiration porn story of her as a child and her heroic teacher, or as the punchline of ableist, misogynistic jokes. It’s not just offensive, it’s downright disgusting.
the reason the story stops once hellen keller learns to talk is no one wanted to listen to what she had to say
how’s that for a fucking punchline
Another part of the story that is often conveniently omitted is that Anne Sullivan, the “miracle worker” in question, was also a visually impaired woman (and abolitionist) who faced her own struggles finding accessible education. That was why she was able to teach Helen Keller and connect her with resources that would allow her to flourish in academia. When Helen Keller was railing against poverty-induced diseases that caused blindness, she was talking about things like trachoma which was what had caused her friend’s vision loss.
The fact that Sullivan is often portrayed as able-bodied in retellings of their story is indicative of the narrative that is most comfortable for an ableist society: that accessibility and equality are gifts bestowed upon the disabled by able-bodied heroes. Disabled children are never taught that they have the power to lift each other up, and that’s a crying shame.
i truly, genuinely think fandom shit has caused irreparable damage to some of yalls ability to think critically
like i dont think fandom shit is just annoying, i think the fact that so many of u have made consumption of various media franchises the cornerstone for your personalities, your conception of what constitutes activism, your moral framework, your lens through which you view real world events, has really, truly ruined your ability to think
you heard in passing “no ethical consumption under capitalism” and took it and warped it into “any consumption of any kind can be morally justified if its something that i personally enjoy”
you heard “separate the art from the artist” and took it to mean that you can enjoy any piece of media so long as you say publicly that you denounce its creator (which does, what, exactly? what material effect does your denouncement have). that the creators bigotry inevitably seeps into their work is immaterial to you
you say “ill just pirate their work then” but you continue to publicly create fanwork for their media, you continue to promote it, you continue to defend constant widespread engagement with it. you act like the only support that matters is financial support so you can absolve yourself of any guilt when you continue to engage with works that you know are dripping with bigotry from every fucking word
youve internalized these media franchises as core parts of your being to the point where any criticism of them or, even worse, anything saying that this or that franchise is inseparable from the harm it causes is a personal attack on YOU, so you get defensive, you come up with a million flimsy moral justifications for why its imperative that you continue to prop up such and such multimillion dollar media franchise
its genuinely pathetic, and i would feel sorry for you if i wasnt preoccupied being angry and utterly fucking dumbstruck at how fucking deluded you are
lemme just be a fandom grandma for a sec:
you’re allowed to just - not like a thing. be it a show, a plotline, a character, a pairing whatever. you just be like “i do not Vibe with this” and move on. you don’t need to explain your preferences, you don’t need to discover some way in which you can call the thing “””problematic””” to justify you not liking it. if something doesn’t spark joy within you, that’s absolutely valid enough.