was thinking about official playstation magazine raiden again (y'know. dig these child-bearing hips raiden) and how those ppl were simultaneously so disgusted by raiden and so horny for him and it led me to thinking about modern fandom (specifically the tumblr/AO3 portion cause that's a lot of what I interact with) and I was thinking about characters like raiden and cloud ff7 and shinji neongenesisevangelion (to name a few prominent examples but these aren't the only ones of course) and how fucked up it is that so many people in online fandom look at these characters who are vaguely effeminate and generally feel deeply alienated from masculinity, the main thing they do that's like. traditionally masculine is either a persona they put on or something they've been forced into or both, and it makes them miserable - for this kind of character it also often leaves them vulnerable to grooming - and this alienation and failure to properly perform the masculinity that's expected of them is frequently noted both by other characters within the text and by audiences outside of it reacting to them homophobically/transmisogynistically, and these online fandom people will look at these characters and be like "omg trans man spotted!" it's like. a degree or two separated from how fucked up it is when people headcanon characters like chihiro danganronpa or gwyndolin dark souls, who are obviously trans women but written in canon as fetishized disposable femboys, as transmasc, but like. only a degree or two
