#fandom interpretation

[rwby-confess]

Confession #1451

[pupmkincake2000]

These people again... Well. Let's break it down.

First of all, comparing Hank and Connor's dynamic to Joel and Ellie's doesn't make any sense from the start.

1. Joel and Ellie are explicitly written as family.

Their entire narrative in The Last of Us is built around a father-daughter arc. Ellie is a minor in a highly vulnerable position, and Joel is a grieving parent figure. Their story is about healing through a parental bond and it’s textual, not subtextual. They are emotionally and narratively coded as father and daughter from the beginning.

2. Hank and Connor are two grown men with no familial tie.

Connor is an android, yes, and he’s written as an adult detective, autonomous and highly intelligent. He isn’t “raised” by Hank, nor is he dependent on him. Even at his most "naive" or programmed, Connor:

Makes his own moral choices

Defies Hank when necessary

Evolves emotionally on his own terms

Their arc is one of gradual trust, conflict, and growth. It’s not paternal, it’s partnership. Any dynamic between them (mentorship, respect, love) is interpretation, not canon.

3. Ellie is a child. Connor is not.

Trying to equate Connor and Ellie based solely on “neurodivergence coding” is… honestly, insulting. Ellie is a literal 14yo who needs protection. Connor, while ND-coded (which is actually a headcanon that is never confirmed), is not a child. He is never portrayed as lacking autonomy, capacity for consent, or personal judgment.

Calling Hank a “father” to Connor because Connor is polite, curious, or emotionally inexperienced? That’s what’s infantilizing. Not shipping them.

4. Joel and Ellie as adopted family is canon.

Hank and Connor as such is just an interpretation. You may see Hank as a father figure. Others see mutual respect. Some see romance. That’s fandom. That’s normal. The problem arises when people like the author of the original post insist their reading is “valid,” and then shame others for seeing the dynamic differently.

The Joel & Ellie comparison only works if you’ve already decided Hank is a father and Connor is a son. But that’s not canon, that’s a personal lens.

And ironically, it’s this rigid insistence on reading them as family that erases the complexity of their actual arc and of fandom as a whole.

You don’t have to ship hankcon. But please stop equating it with a literal parent/child relationship. It’s not the same. It never was.

Also

Sometimes people go beyond “I don’t like this ship” and start psychoanalyzing strangers over fiction. Like:

“You’re an enmeshment shipper… You have serious problems. You don’t have a familial basis of your own… family love is abstract to you. You poor thing.”

Honestly? This kind of take doesn’t even pretend to be thoughtful, it’s just a lazy attempt at sounding deep while insulting someone.

Let’s be real:

You don’t know who people are.

You don’t know their family, their mental health, or their reasons for enjoying fiction.

And even if someone did relate to a dynamic because of trauma that’s not a flaw. That’s literally what fiction is for.

What’s not interpretation is trying to psychoanalyze strangers because you don’t like their ship. Acting like someone must be emotionally damaged or traumatized to enjoy a fictional dynamic doesn’t make you right, it just makes you petty.

If your entire point relies on making up someone’s backstory to justify your dislike then maybe you don’t have a real point.

[hellengellen]

Something that happens a lot with tmr fan content (and why I struggle getting into most ships)٫ particularly fanfic٫ is that it desperately tries to turn these characters' relationships into something they're not.

Like٫ you have extremely interesting character dynamics that are complicated and messy and would just be SO fun to read about/explore but everyone wants the same cookie cutter star crossed lovers where theyre SO in love and fuck every other relationship they have with any other character. At that point what are you really left with? Because do you even actually like the ship if you need to remove all of the substance and pretend other characters don't exist for it to work? Idk I just think it's a shame that the fandom doesn't seem to wanna engage with the actual toxic dynamics in the books while going on and on about "toxic yaoi" and how kinky their au is (and its like. A vampire au)

[seventeenlovesthree]

While I would say that the "Japanese fanon interpretation of Taishirou/Taikou" has been consistent for the most part in the past 25 years (based on the majority of fanart and doujins I have seen/read)... It's still so fascinating to look at that modern iteration of them. I personally really like that slightly angsty vibe their relationship potentially provides during their Kizuna ages, but I am getting ahead of myself;

Taichi is, for the most part, "the dominant one" - at least when it comes to the sexual part, he's the classic "seme", the initiator. On one hand, he is brash, needy and possessive, a smug tease and smut sweet talker who tends to be a bit too impatient and impulsive, rushing forward and appearing reckless, selfish and, dare I say it, even a bit "dumb" at times. On the other hand - he is caring, observant and kind. He may drive Koushirou a little insane with his short-sighted (and also horny) shenanigans, the risky and dangerous stuff - but he genuinely adores, admires and desires Koushirou. He may feel like he's lagging behind Koushirou, who, in his eyes, has grown up to be such a capable company CEO (minus his tendency to overwork and being unable to tidy up when he's in hyperfocus mode). But despite his own insecurities, Taichi is trying his best, he is aware of his own charms, appeal and strengths and of how good he looks in the pachinko parlour outfit. And if everything fails, Koushirou easily pulls him out of his darker thoughts, both intentionally or by accident.

Koushirou, who is, for the most part, "the responsible one" - even though he, by his own words, has "grown up to be more greedy than I used to be", displaying a tendency to be possessive and forward himself, he still always ends up as the "uke", the classic "receiver" (and/or powerbottom at times). On one hand, he easily gets in hyperfocus mode, prioritizes work and projects over the majority of basically everything else, thus he may become ignorant, lose his sense of time - and is unable to tell when exactly his boyfriend becomes too needy and impatient. However, as mentioned above, he has developed a sense of possessiveness and neediness too - even if he has a hard time expressing that. Sometimes, it may come through unintentionally by his words and actions - sometimes, he actually tries to initiate, to make time, to put his naturally grown authority to the test. Because he cherishes and desires Taichi just as much, if not more - despite often seeming in denial or reluctant (or even defensively annoyed) about it, he not only considers them to be equals. He's also prone to lose his composure completely once Taichi gets serious. And when he thinks that nobody is looking especially after having been apart for months and let's be real, even if he has to "save" Taichi from himself sometimes and remind him to be responsible, Koushirou is just as prone to get himself into weird situations as well. And apparently, that includes sexual shenanigans, preferably in his own office.

I love how they are depicted as each other's weak points - even IF they drive each other nuts, there is so much trust and... Showing each other sides of themselves that others do not ever get to witness.

I know it's an idealized, yaoi-fied version of them, there are tropes and stereotypes attached that do not exactly align with their canon adult depictions (and Kizuna onwards). But it's still a lot of fun and very dear to my heart.

[gnithmodnar]

Tbf I do think the show gave us some mixed messages. I mean, Robert said he was scared of Kev, and then they made it seem like if Robert wanted to break up, Kev would put him in the hospital. Aaron and Vic both assumed the ambulance was for Robert, so i get why people thought kevbert was coercive.

A lot of people pointed out that Robert seemed docile and not himself, but I think he was just being awkward he didn’t want to act all lovey-dovey with kev in front of Aaron and his family and rub it in.

But yeah, people really convinced themselves that Kev was behind the beatings and he's some malicious monster, and it seems like they just can’t let that go.

Robert said something like "..if I'm still alive", but people say that all the time as a joke. That's how I understood it, partly joke, but partly also real fear that Kev wouldn't take it well, though I didn't really get the vibe that Kev would beat Robert up. I guess we will see how Kev reacts soon.

I just think that from Day 1 on, people interpreted every little thing Kev did in the worst possible way, like for example Kev touching Robert's hair. People were speculating that Robert was triggered by that, obviously, because he closed his eyes, and that the reason for this would be explained in the prison episode, like something must have happened to him in prison. And yes, I also thought Robert was more awkward than anything else and I didn't see the submissiveness and dissociation. Kev's references to sex were interpreted as bad and surely they must mean something that will be revealed later. Basically, people were thinking that Kev and Robert's relationship was so deeply and darkly abusive that only Aaron would be able to notice that something was wrong and free Robert from the clutches of an evil Kev.

[tempoaryblogformightyjensblog]

I am trying to get back in to sympathetic takes on Chara because I do really like them and the new anniversary stuff def gave good stuff for it. I love stories that involve it and such. I just dislike how many of the more extreme believers of that push it on people who depict or like more sinister takes on Chara. And it got to a point where its almost hard to enjoy it because of that stuff giving a bad taste in the mouth.

[klaineharmony]

On Jack Kelly and Fandom Interpretation

Or, Don’t Assume that Someone Sees a Character the Way You Do.

This post about Jack Kelly came up on my dash yesterday, and I found the discussion troubling on a lot of levels, partly because of what were clear miscommunications in the conversation, and partly just because of how much people were assuming. 

@jellyfishyishy, if I read the thread correctly, was saying that they have a hard time seeing stage show Jack as gay. I gather they saw the stage show first, and watched 92sies later, and so their primary conception of Jack is from the stage show. Later on in the thread, they also explicitly said that they view 92sies Jack as gay. (Feel free to correct me if you are reading this and I got anything wrong. :) )

However, a lot of people in the thread took the original comment to mean that 92sies Jack isn’t gay or bi, and took offense. I think this is primarily because Jack’s red bandana is a primary piece of his costume in 92sies, and there is that screenshot in the original post of the historical tidbit about red bandanas being queer coding. I was quite upset about the tone of a lot of the comments, because there are so many layers behind the reading of Jack as queer by the fandom, and not all of them are immediately accessible to every fan. 

Let me frame this a little bit. I am a Gransie in this fandom. I’ve been watching 92sies since it was released. I was 12. I grew up in a Midwestern town with absolutely no visible queer community, no activism, no pride parade, and in 1992 Will & Grace was six years away from airing. There was nothing to tell me that a queer life was even possible. I knew what the the words gay and lesbian meant, but that was all. There wasn’t anyone out at my schools, or anyone that I knew who I could clearly identify as queer, and I certainly didn’t see myself as queer then, or for quite a long time afterward.

So, did I grow up thinking 92sies Jack was any form of queer? Absolutely not. I shipped him with Sarah - I still ship him with Sarah, among other ships, and the conversation about why Sarah and Jack’s relationship is actually healthy on a lot of levels is a different discussion (which I wrote about here). That said, did even 12-year-old me realize that Jack and Davey were different? Absolutely. See this post that I wrote in response to Sarah Marshall’s article about Newsies and and female fear, and representations of caring, and masculinity. 

But let’s talk about the things you need to know to read 92sies Jack as queer, and how accessible those things are really, to people who aren’t totally immersed in fandom, theater, Hollywood, or all three.

1. Kenny Ortega, the director of 92sies, is gay. He’s been openly gay for a long time, but as a fan, it was a very long time before I realized that. I would say somewhere in the last ten years (maybe when he was directing the HSM trilogy?), I realized he was gay. Without the benefit of the internet (which was only really accessible to me once I hit college) or YouTube, without being able to see interviews with Kenny and without much money for magazine subscriptions, there was no easy way for me to find that information until I was much older. Do I understand that Ortega absolutely was creating subtle queer representation in a decade when there was very little? Of course. Did I know that the first time I watched 92sies? Not at all. I would say I didn’t know that until I had watched the film several hundred times. And it can still be challenging to find those primary sources on the making of 92sies, even if one lives in a place with open internet access. I can’t imagine the challenges if one is in a country with any kind of restricted internet.

 2. The red bandana = gay coding. Again, without the benefit of the internet (and I have no idea where that screenshot in the original post is from), how are most people going to find out that red bandanas were a gay male signal in the 1890s? Or the other signals that gay men habitually used a century ago? I read George Chauncey’s Gay New York in grad school, which is a doctoral-level history text with a pretty hefty vocabulary requirement, and it might be particularly challenging if one’s first language is not English. (On the lesbian side of things, I read Lilian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers and To Believe in Women, which have the same disclaimers.)

3. The same might be said about the history of cowboys being gay and gay-coded. That’s a very specific subset of history, both American history and film history. You have to have good internet access or a really good library.

4. “Masculine” behavior, or “straight” behavior, or “gay” behavior, is not coded the same in every culture. In many Arab, Asian, African, and Southern European countries, men hold hands as a gesture of friendship and respect. Cheek kissing is used in much the same way in many countries. Those are just a couple of examples. That 92sies Jack’s affectionate behavior with Davey and with the newsies signals queerness (to varying degrees, depending on the viewer) is a very American/Western European assumption. And, what we see as “gay” in the 21st-century U. S. almost never overlaps with what would have been seen as “gay” in the late 19th-century U. S.

It’s possible to read Jack as straight, or bi, or gay, depending on one’s knowledge base, access to historical information, cultural background, and personal inclination - and all of those are fine. The beauty of fandom is that we can create a multiplicity of meanings from one piece of media. Jack (and Davey, for that matter) means a lot to a lot of queer people, because he was queer representation in an era when it was desperately rare, and because (I would argue) he’s still something of a unique queer character even in our modern media landscape. However, that does not mean that the only way to read Jack is as a queer character. People are allowed to interpret a character, and find joy in a character, in many different ways.

I have a very specific mental conception of bisexual Jack who is sometimes with Sarah, and sometimes with Davey, and sometimes in a poly vee relationship with both Jacobs siblings. Is my way of seeing Jack everyone’s way, or a way that everyone would enjoy? No. I also read Jack/Kath, and Kath/Davey, and Jack/Kath/Davey, and every author that I read creates Jack in a slightly different way (including a Jack who is sometimes heterosexual and madly in love with Kath). That’s a beautiful thing - it’s part of what makes fandom beautiful. We all love Jack, even though we don’t all read him the same way. 

I have other thoughts about the ways that the Jack Kelly of the stage show in fact does read as much more straight than 92sies Jack, and I can talk about that if people are interested. In short, though: Be kind. Don’t assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge that you do, the same access to knowledge that you do, or the same cultural background, or the same assumptions about sexuality. And celebrate the fact that we all can love a character who has so many possible iterations, all of which are wonderful.

[lucdoodle]

Connor in the game: You can't kill me I'm not alive

dbh fanbase interpretation: I'm a bad bitch, you can't kill me !!!