spit more facts about malenia. it really makes me angry how the fandom treats her.
[Cracks knuckles] i'll probably just reiterate what the fandom already said about how misogyny is related to why she's hated (as well as the Gamer Dudes^tm being extra butthurt because she's disabled and chronically ill on top of being a woman, so not only did they get whooped by someone they thought was inferior to them, they also got whooped by a buff woman with only one limb left to her name who's whole thing is constantly being in battle with her own body and mind, goddess status aside), but here we go.
Apart from the obvious, I think that the reason why Malenia makes people uncomfortable but Radagon/Marika isn't is because the traditional knight-princess roles are reversed with her and Miquella. With Marika and Radagon, most can voluntarily overlook the fact that Radagon was most likely a shard of Marika that she reabsorbed into herself (see: Empyrean Ranni, he's got her genes, and while its not technically canon, the official manga has blonde Rykard) in favor of simply seeing him as a seperate entity that got melded with her because of magic bullfuckery; the inherent trans-queer narrative going on is something that can be easily tossed aside because despite Marika and Radagon being both very queer halves of one whole, they do so in the most gender conforming ways possible. Marika is a waifish goddess figure who pulls the strings from behind the scenes; Radagon as her male guise was literally her means of fighting on the front lines, though he became his own person over time via the nature of seperation and Godfrey seems to have done the brunt of the dirty work, yada yada yada. But it's very easy for people to ignore that messy fact of them being the same because he's her hound, her inferior self who fights her battles for her, and that is acceptable because he is the knight to her queenship. He wasn't even king- he was named king-consort, so we get the sense that he wasn't ever considered her equal, from the og Marika's point of view. Which makes sense in the cold 'rank of superiority' worldview you'd expect from a genocidal colonizer god-queen, since she is the first and he is a mere shard of her splendor, but the overarching point is that there is still this very gender-conforming idea of Marika continuing to be this waifish delicate beauty in distress and Radagon being the loyal hound who leaps forward to fight her, even if by that point of the game we LITERALLY SEE the transformation happen and know from the lore that Marika herself shows way more overall cruelty and brutality than Radagon, whose sole personality traits seem to be 'love wife' and 'do what Order says without question'. And tbh this gender-conforming queerness really fucking fits Marikagon perfectly, because the whole thing about the Golden Order is it trying to hammer everything in the world into these perfect categories when the reality of it is that it just doesn't fucking work that way and that every living being is better off without that bullshit. So Marikagon is the perfect example of cishet-pleasing preformance, so much so that it just fucking flies over the head of most gamers that the genocidal queen with divorce issues is indeed a bigender bisexual disaster trying her goddamned best (worst) way of pretending that she is anything but.
But that's not the same for Malenia and Miquella- who, as twins, can also be argued to be two halves of one whole. With Malenia and Miquella, Miquella is the delicate, waifish one while Malenia is the brute force who fights for him. And this upsets the balance of it all, because to put it simply, that is not how it is supposed to go in our good little cisheteronormative stories. In our good little cisheteronormative stories, it's always the BROTHER who fights for his delicate little sister, not the OTHER way around. That would be just wrong!! Everyone knows that MEN are the strongest and THEY are the ones who go out to war and get torn up and come home with terrible wounds and ptsd while their sister gets to stay home and weave. That's how it's always been, that's how Marika and Radagon are (playact at), that's how it SHOULD be.
...But that's not how it is with the twins. Miquella, the chosen prince, was cursed to forever youth- to forever be small and delicate and fragile, better for studying and spellcraft and the arts than ever lifting a sword. Malenia was cursed to bear the scarlet rot, and in turn has been in battle with herself since her birth, a battle against not just her mind, but also her own body. Malenia is the fighter, the battle-winner, the blade, while Miquella is the soft-featured sweet thing hidden away in the tower pulling strings to get what he wants. Malenia, the princess, is the one who lost almost all her limbs to her own personal war, the divine swordmaster who has never known defeat, the scarred-over warrior who strikes with terrifying strength and brutality and does everything that Miquella says, because she is his personal hound. They're a subversion of their gender roles in behavior as WELL as in what a man and a woman is supposed to 'look' like, and that makes people with fragile egos feel uncomfortable, which in turn makes them lash out. Malenia gets far more hate than Radahn does DESPITE filling the same niche as beloved honourable commander who lost their wits to the scarlet rot bc Radahn fits the definition of his gender role, while Malenia defies it. This isn't at all new to Fromsoft games- gender has almost no consequence in their stories and never has- but Malenia is by far the most blatant, as well as the only phsyically aggressive female character who doesn't have explicit lore pointing to a softer side that she might have hidden away, as the others have had (which again, isn't a gender thing in Fromsoft titles, I can give many male examples of warriors with soft sides, but that is 'essential' to wamyn. So). Malenia is who she is with the same amount of confidence and general overdramatic jackassery that all the other members of her family have, and that pushes the discomfort at 'buff woman acting as a hound to effiminate man' even further, from mild discomfort to flat-out anger. Add in the fact that her fight is considered to be the hardest in the game, both in terms of raw damage output and technical skill, and that makes people even madder. OP gigachad characters who can curbstomp all other bosses are always cheered upon, but Malenia? Nah. Just rage.
And honestly, I think Malenia and Miquella fully embracing this genderqueerness while their parent(s?) hid it makes sense. Because as much as I hate to make a trans allegory to them both, considering the fact that its been used to justify Mohg + Miquella in the past (which, if thats how you see it fine, but DO NOT generalize transmasc fans in here please ESPECIALLY since Miquella's whole problem in canon is his body literally being altered without consent), but Miquella and Malenia are both pretty damn genderqueer, in presentation if not in spirit. Like I said, Miquella being stuck pre-puberty with long hair means that he's got the high voice and soft features that gives children that gender ambiguity despite him having the mind of a full-grown god, and Malenia's body is pretty darn masculine in shape- or at least, not traditionally feminine. But both also do not care about conforming to those gender roles outside of their own physical and mental health concerns, and they've extended that way of mind to the rest of the Lands Between as well. The Haligtree welcomes all that the Golden Order rejects, and since the Golden Order is a pretty blatant reference to crusader-esque Christianity attempting to genocide all that they considered impure...well. The queer metaphor is obvious there. Marikagon might have sucked the GO's dick and literally split in two to fit heteronormativity, but the twins unapologentically do not. Like, that's literally their wholeass thing- they do not want the throne or title of Elden Lord, they're just out there doing their own thing, even if they're kinda failing at it atm. Insert intensely jealous closeted gay Morgott joke here. Also I just realized that this layout literally makes Malenia a social justice warrior, which is ANOTHER reason why insecure men hate her, sjfjfjss
So the only other thing left that I can think of is terfs- aka conservative white women- being mad at her getting naked in phase two, because that's 'sexualizing women' and blah blah blah other braindead prude nonsense. Which doesn't make sense, because if you look at the smutty fanart on the internet, you'd KNOW that most boring fans clearly aren't sexually attracted to how she is in-game, since they have to make her waifish and small-waisted and big-breasted to be able to jack off to her successfully. Like, I genuinely have not seen porn art of her depicted as she is when she's naked in-game, because she's not only wide-shouldered, small-hipped, and barely-breasted, she's also just not designed to be sexy to begin with. She's designed to be terrifying in an ethereal, artistic sense, and it fucking WORKS. Because believe me when I say that Malenia's second phase form does not inspire lust in me, as Morgott or Ranni or Marikagon does, it inspires fear- fear, awe, and the desire to both stare and fucking run. And that's saying something, considering the fact that my bisexual ass is specifically deeply sexually attracted to pretty boys, buff women, and just women in general. Malenia ticks more technical sex boxes for me than fucking Morgott does, but the sight of her tits inspires battle-panic, while his make me sneak up behind him in Leyndell to see if I can get a look at his ass and thighs. So yes, she gets naked, but no, it's not for fanservice, it's for artistic merit, because surprise surprise, nudity isn't inherently sexual. Not that you'd expect that level of nuanced thinking from a terf, but still. These are tits of terror, ladies.
(And again. Godfrey strips in his second phase to fight you. Morgott was naked the entire three times you encountered him, because that cloak does NOT cover as much as he thinks it does. Genichiro stripped in Sekiro to get stronger. There's a reoccuring trend/running joke of the strongest players being the ones running around buck naked with a greatsword, which is so well known that it's in the official joke manga. Getting naked to get kronked in these games def. isn't a sexual thing, it's just a Fromsoft thing)
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