In Defense of Epel Felmier (I Can't Believe I Even Had To Feel The Need To Make This)
Let me preface this by saying that the author of this is the most biased person you could ask about this because Epel Felmier is my absolute fav. I love him so much, his mere presence in a scene absolutely makes my day. And yet when I was originally entering the fandom and trying to learn more about this character who I thought was cool and generally nifty I saw some what was to me, some odd accusations towards this character based on his basic preferences and what was to me unresolved trauma. I checked the scenes, I have the recites! And I found that any hate I saw was...... blown out of proportion to say the least. And so on this the day of our super cool-strong-buff-definitely-not-cute apple's birth, I decided to post this soapbox rant that has been chilling in my drafts for way to long by this point.
A large part of Epel's character growth, conflict, and him and Vil's disagreements, revolve around the concept of Strength and its relationship with beauty alongside Epel’s……. Ok so people keep calling it misogyny and I can’t say I agree. I need to take a moment to get up on my soapbox and defend my boy for a minute.
I’m going off the fan translation of the Japanese dialogue because the kind of insult was changed and the gendering in some of the insults was cut entirely, honestly I kind of agree with that decision to remove gender from the insults, because while it wasn’t ok and I’m glad the english dialed it down, it’s become all anyone can talk about with my favorite character. I swear people who don’t like him try to use Misogyny! The Horror! Le Gasp! As a f***ing golden bullet to explain why I should dislike him, without any deeper analysis into the character! And you know what? I’m getting tired of it! Looking at how Epel interacts with the few female characters we have seen him interact with in events he has been nothing but kind and respectful! He does not treat women with or spout misogynist rhetoric at the characters and audience. He is expressing discomfort with his own body and how he himself and other people perceive it. At least the discussions of toxic masculinity held a bit of thought and nuance. Epel especially is not a static character with a lot of growth from where his character starts in terms of gender identity and acceptance of himself. Vil does debate this with Epel in game and Epel learns to find strength in more feminine expression too, even if his interests lean more towards masculine presentation.
A lot of the gendered insults Epel throws at Vil when they first meet feel……more like Epel throwing insults that have been thrown at him before at Vil. Epel is kind of projecting his insecurities onto Vil and throwing some of the most hurtful things that have been said about himself at Vil. Cause listen, Womanish is definitely a gender description used as an insult, and unfortunately that could be used on both of them, but……. Epel also insults Vil by calling him Feeble along with that and seems to take offence at the idea that Vil might describe him in such a manner. Now associating Vil with the word Feeble? That doesn’t match up. Sorry but Vil has an actually healthy model physique and works out regularly, feeble just doesn’t fit and anyone can tell, but who in that room is described as delicate and fragile looking so often that it’s even in his character description and is often mistaken for a girl by other characters? None other than Epel himself.
Given his bullying situation that didn’t seem to end until he had to resort to getting into enough fights to earn him a nickname that sounds like a legitimate warning (seriously his grandma Marja mentions during the Harveston event that he would come home crying every day after school, that is heartbreaking, I know from experience it takes a lot to get to the point even once and for that to have happened every day for a prolonged period of time is as tragic as it is highly concerning, like no wonder he ended up resorting to outright fighting them to make it stop, and why does no one bring the implications of that up?! Damn I hope Epel has confided in Vil and Rook or the first years off screen, it would definitely connect a lot of dots and be quite the revelation for Vil), and the fact that he seems to have still not actually made a friend his own age until NRC (It’s mentioned that Harveston is a mostly elderly aging population, and there was no one close to Epel’s age in Harveston growing up, so presumably the next closest in age to him were either young adults/late teens and literal toddlers, either way between that and his school situation, Night Raven is his first time actually having friends and being around people his age), we can presume that this was a common insult tossed at him, and probably heard enough that he many have thought it a common insult. He repeats the same insult more than once within that conversation, he is using a limited insult catalogue here and he’s treating it like something generic like calling someone fat but “feeble like a woman” is much more deeply gendered. It’s a misogynistic stereotype but honestly to me it sounds more like a middle school insult than some indication of deeply held bigotry and toxic masculinity, like a 7th grader trying to fit in with the other kids by calling another guy “girly” for wearing a pink shirt or liking a more feminine coded hobby. Heck speaking as a girl us girls do this to each other too.
I used to be a girly girl who would always wear pretty and colorful dresses, tasteful patterns and colors of course nothing too over the top or absurd like a Disney princess dress, just something chill and comfy with a nice pretty skirt. Of course, I still wore my black leggings under every dress for warmth and just in case anyone decided to be particularly cruel to their resident bookworm who never seemed to get the joke and could get worked up over “nothing”. I always admired the girls that were “tomboys” . They always seemed so cool and they always just seemed to know what others were talking about, always in on the joke. Also in hindsight I was painfully gay as a kid…… My parents said the way I acted with my only close female friend at the time, still friends and completely platonic but yeah that was what gave it away to them, also in hindsight wasn’t just me, my friend was also waltzing under the rainbow umbrella.
Anyways one tomboy, she had wavy orange hair and the prettiest name, in hindsight she was probably a minor crush of mine, but she was so grumpy and cynical even I didn’t really talk to her outside of group projects in class, anyways one day in choir class she talks to me and tells me that my dresses are girly and something that rang to the tune of Seriously? Dresses nearly half the week? That's really girly, grow up you're so immature, you shouldn’t be wearing stuff like that anymore, it’s weird and nobody is going to take you seriously like that. She said it so casually in her usual pessimistic tone, like I was annoying and in the wrong for wearing the wrong clothes to school. It felt like a slap to the face, no it was worse than a slap to the face. Frankly I wish she had slapped me, that would have felt better than what she did with her words. The choir room felt separate from reality. A piece of me was wrong and the school code of social decency demanded I smother the wrong parts of myself with a pillow and smile and go along with everyone's absurd and cruel demands to play along and bury myself alive bit by bit lest I find myself surrounded by nothing but cruelty and silent rejection……….. I didn’t wear many or practically any dresses after that cruel comment said to me like an annoyed parent bluntly telling their kid for the tenth time they can't eat food in the bedroom, like she was trying to do me a favor. Like she was telling me something obvious she shouldn’t have had to say out loud.
Before that it was other female classmates agreeing that even girls shouldn’t wear pink because it was too immature and too girly. No self respecting girl admitted pink was their favorite color, and before that being more of a girly girl than a tomboy was honestly kind of an insult. And I live in the relatively progressive suburbs, my high school had an LGBTQ+ Alliance, this wasn’t in the more traditional countryside. In summary yeah, I think Epel was just trying to not be the one on the outside this time. If girly things can be too girly even for girls in middle school, I honestly don’t want to think about what Epel had to deal with. Heck I had to deal with this in a pretty non-gender norm accepting community growing up, not in the rural countryside like Epel.
Gendering things is common among middle schoolers and feminine things are often looked down upon in many age demographics sometimes even among girls themselves. I’m glad Vil actually helped Epel through it. I honestly wish someone had been there to encourage me and make sure I wasn’t making social mistakes and reassure me when it wasn’t my fault that something was beyond my control. I see so much of my own struggles with gender envy and feeling like my face and body were wrong and off and on some days I still feel like my body is weird and gross, and I still think far too much about what others must think of me, what hurtful words will be said to me or behind my back. All of this I see in Epel at times.
I see how far he has come in this regard and it makes me happy for him and myself. Like Epel I found people who care and I have a family that I know will have my back. I still feel self conscious sometimes. I know that wearing hot pink won’t automatically make people sling all sorts of cruel words my way but it’s still hard to separate the years long threat of further social isolation for doing anything too weird. Still, I feel confident enough to wear some actual pink again. I like pretty gothic lolita style dresses with ruffles, frills, and lace, and poofy skirts, and wearing sparkly jewelry and since I have glasses now I can wear those pretty eyeglasses chains, younger me would love the glasses. I can appreciate girly things again and admit I like it without shame, but I can also wear an old leather biker jacket over a sweater tank if I want to feel cool and rad as heck! I can do both and it actually looks and feels amazing. And when I don’t want to deal with gender at all for a day I can just wear a hoodie with a funny pun on it and just kind of…… exist. It’s nice to feel the freedom to just wear neat stuff that I like. It took me a lot of high school to start to feel like I could actually wear pretty things I like and maybe just try to ignore anyone who’s being weird about it, to get what gender envy was, to come out as pan to my supportive parents, to cry and vent about my frustrations to my little sister, to reach out and try to make new friends even if we might drift apart, guess what I befriended the cool girl who was bold enough to wear a cosplay from a game I like to school and who I still meet up and hang out with, and start to look at a pretty girl in a fancy dress and go from wishing I had the guts to wear such a pretty outfit near other students to just wanting to know where she got it from so I can get one myself. I want Epel to know that it does get better, he’s essentially a high school freshman and I know that he’s going to grow into someone amazing not even a full year for him and he’s already grown and healed so much. Figure out what cool is to you and find some love for yourself where you're at.
I don’t want to write Epel as misogynistic or whatever in my fanfics because I genuinely don’t think he is, he’s just lashing out with hurt at the start to try to avoid being hurt again. Instead I’m going to play with his relationship with gender and thoughts on trauma surrounding his experiences growing up, but I’m not going to turn my fanfic into yelling about how he shouldn’t have his own personal style and gender expression preferences when he is literally at the age where people are figuring exactly that out. In short stop hating on my fav for having a character flaw that he is actively working on overcoming and has already moved past anything worth complaining about. It’s good writing let him have a character arc in flipping peace!