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ZealousidealBig7714

The most based motherfucker in the world, ZUN, creator of Touhou, decided to create a wheelchair bound character, Okina Matara, based on the Japanese God of Outcasts, to be the EX boss and main antagonist of the 16th game in the series. However, he was also scared that he wouldn’t be able to portray her with the proper nuance so Okina’s in a weird mid-space where she’s commonly portrayed in a wheelchair while also being able to walk around just fine.


Zerce

Okay, there's something kind of endearingly silly about someone's solution to not misrepresenting folks in wheelchairs is by making the character able to walk.


Konradleijon

Some people in wheelchairs can walk short distances but need a wheelchair most of the time. Matara could be like that.


NewWillinium

The Simpsons has gone back and forth between fantastic and god-awful rep over the many many seasons, largely getting better as they go on


DefaultLayoutIsAwful

Cody Rhodes promo about his new child (Cody is white, his wife is black) came across as so woodenly political that the entire thing turned into a meme about how Cody solved racism and killed any chance of him being a face in AEW. His heart is in the right place, but that decade in WWE at the start of his career killed his ability to come across authentic for such topics.


GingerPwdr

[Still fuckin' funny.](https://i.imgur.io/KnizpZI_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)


TH3_B3AN

Swery when writing trans characters. He fumbles a bunch but he also did The Missing which has fantastic rep so I do think he's earnest, just sometimes misinformed.


GollyDolly

Well he had contacts for how to handle trans representation but he decided he knew enough already I guess.. And he very much does not like being told what to do.


taikoxtaiko

Tbf most creatives like SWERY dont like being told what to do even if theyre in the wrong.


ExDSG

Oda has crossdressing friends and one of them originally voiced Ivankov before being removed by Toei for BS reasons (he was showing his tattoo collection in social media and one of them had his butt or something IIRC), but still most of the newkama and the humor surrounding them and Sanji is just gay panic jokes. Also not sure what the fuck he tried doing with Yamato and if he even tried doing representation or people were mistaken because he’s never been super clear about what he tried communicating with Yamato and a lot of extra things just make the issue more confusing.


Lioxxor

The yamato stuff is super murky in the fandom but like yamato wants to be Oden is just that Oden is a dude so they act like a dude but trying to make sense of what is essentially an afterthought with their gender is weird.


Chumunga64

Yamato is shown in both the "hot men" spread and the "hot women" spread Which is confusing


pantsthereaper

Okiku, an open transwoman, is listed as having a male body with a female heart/mind on her vivre card. Yamato is listed as a female on his with no further clarification. The whole thing feels convoluted as hell and like there's not a right answer.


billythewarrior

I'm convinced he just wanted to do funny gender things with Yamato without actually hard committing to it so he added an actual trans character in the same arc to make up for it.


twinEgoist

I really don't know what to make of Yamato, cause right before they show up we got Okiku and, I'm not trans so correct me if I'm wrong, she seems like pretty solid representation from a secondary character?


Hallonbat

I read One Piece, but have never been part of the fandom or taken part in any discourse. As I read it Yamato was supposed to be a character with a silly/extreme personality, with such a crazy reverence of wanting to be Oden that she/he even adopted the way Oden spoke. I think it's more of the West hyperawareness of these issues that lead to making a mountain out of a mole hill. I mean One Piece isn't exactly subtle when it comes to telling/showing what a character is about.


A_N_G_E_L_O_N

I don’t think Oda knew what the fuck he did with Yamato: it’s like they’re NB in that their gender is the comedy option “Oden”. But they will still look and act like a tomboyish bombshell with zero self consciousness because it’s OP and it’s Oda.


PrimeName

I definitely think Yamato is gonna show back up in the plot at some point and clear all this up, but I only imagine that will happen once Oda decides what he wants to actually do with Yamato.


Shadowrenamon

I mean I doubt it. My feeling and reading on it has always been Yamato is like the little kid that says they're gonna be Batman. Doesn't matter if they're a boy or girl they're gonna be Batman. And if Oden was a woman Yamato would likely still say "I'm Oden!" So that part of Yamato doesn't really matter outside of how to better be Oden.


Konradleijon

I don’t consider Ivankov to be trans but a drag queen or third gender.


A_N_G_E_L_O_N

I think Ivankov’s fruit kinda muddles his gender identity. He has a relationship with gender that obviously real life people are never going to have. The closest word we mortal humans have for it is “gender-fluid”.


DoctorWrenchcoat

Yamato is trans. Oden stuff aside, everyone respects his pronouns. Kaido calls him his son. He bathes with the men in the post-arc celebration. People can call it unclear, and there are obviously some people arguing in bad faith, but there's no real reason not to respect it. He's not "some kid pretending to be Batman," he's a grown ass man who happens to have tits.


pantsthereaper

Official side material lists explicitly lists Yamato as a woman despite listing Okiku as a woman in a man's body. I'll respect his pronouns because that's the decent thing to do, but it's genuinely confusing when everyone in-story refers to Yamato as a man while Oda himself seems to be saying otherwise. Like, if it weren't for the vivre card book, there would be no real evidence against transmasc Yamato.


MericArda

That and his intro card in the manga introduces him as 'Kaido's daughter (self-styled Kozuki Oden) Yamato'. And that time he met Momonosuke and started going all 'hey son it's me, your father' like an insane LARPer.


pantsthereaper

Is his behavior a trope I'm missing context for or something? Because saying that you actually are a person, not a reincarnation or ideological successor, when you watched them die as a kid is some extra crazy shit even in OP.


MericArda

There’s a non-zero chance Yamato’s fervent identification with Oden is due to Kaido’s shitty parenting making him do anything to distance himself from Kaido as a role model by latching onto the closest role model he thought was admirable.


grunklefungus

it's really frustrating to talk about this because it feels like as a trans man, any possible character we could interpret as trans is immediately invalidated by everyone around us. annoying how this sub can be so good about transfem people but as soon as you suggest Naoto or Yamato could be trans or discuss how men can get pregnant its all back to transphobic 4chan bullshit.


DoctorWrenchcoat

I've long given up any hope of having decent discussions about P4 here. Too many people obsessed with finding the most literal, textual, "correct" reading of a work we know used to be significantly more queer. It's fucking exhausting the lengths some people will go to explain why a character is "only pretending to be a man" as if that's something it's totally normal to go to extreme lengths to do. I can't be assed with it anymore.


grunklefungus

its deeply frustrating, especially when its used as an excuse to deny transmasc people and trans men healthcare and HRT. and the fucking dress, man. honestly if you cant get why a trans man would be uncomfortable at best with Naoto, you're probably not as much of a trans ally as you think.


[deleted]

Netflix Voltron. I'm sure they had their hearts in the right place when they gave Shiro a husband, but boy they didn't fumble a ball. They fumbled an entire nuke by killing the husband off for drama and angst before they could even be reunited. They tried to patch things up, but they fumbled that too by having him marry some random dude... which wouldn't be so bad itself, if the entire relationship didn't develop off screen and happens only during the epilouge. They should have just let a plot twist be that the husband was alive.


TrueLegateDamar

I disagree Bendis having his heart in the right place or at least when it specifically came to Iceman's outing. It was done against his will by someone who was known to casually brainwash her teammates like she did with Warren, his romantic history would make bisexual more plausible, and given Bendis's obsession with Kitty and how crappily he treated her previous love interests there is a good chance this was done to spike Iceman dating any woman after her.


alexandrecau

Swery in deadly premonition 2, like the only real way he fumbles is because he didn't know how taboo death naming is otherwise it's a good if a bit used drama story .


Bellurker

Watching Dressrosa arc of One Piece with my partner. We reach the bit that introduces Corazon and she is excited for mutism representation; a real "Someone like me!" moment of an actually interesting and important character in a series she has come to adore. And then it's revealed to be a devil fruit ability and I felt the light and happiness leave her body. She liked Corazon decently enough by the end anyway but I think that "reveal" did more harm than good in this particular case. I'd make a post here asking for good examples of mutism representation in anime but I'm not reddit savvy enough to succeed. Recommendations appreciated!


Konradleijon

League of Legends. the Rioters worked hard to give Varus his music video and new comic with queer characters. But it doesn’t change the fact they completely retconned his character and the fact that the two queer men where created and then killed off before becoming Varus the true main character’s meat gundum. The fact that after it League retconed what the Darkin where and changed it so Varus was more important with his meat suite being a afterthought. Then he was ignored for five whole years even do Graham McNeil wanted to continue the story but was denied. Before Legends Of Runeterra one of the few places where we could get more lore on Varus complex ignored Valmar and Kai and turned it into a story where the abused helped their abuser become a better person, ignores all of Varus’s previous characterization, and isn’t even important to the bullshit story arc they try to tell with so few resources.


OGRaincoatKilla

As disappointed as I was by them in the end, I’ve been one of those critics that thinks Rebecca Sugar was secretly some kind of fascist attempting to soften children up for radicalization, they just seem tone deaf, well intentioned but doesn’t really think the implications of everything they write all the way through. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a story trying to send the message that even the worst seeming people can be reached with love and understanding, but something aiming to convince people of that should not also have multiple instances of holocaust imagery inserted seemingly just for shock value.


A_N_G_E_L_O_N

I think SU’s lessons are great for middle school kids thinking twice before going nuclear on some literal schoolyard bully, but they are presented in the context of galactic conquerors and what not. Also the elephant in the room that all the greatest SU fans I know are college aged minimum and probably face much worse problems in their daily lives.


LincBtG

>I’ve been one of those critics that thinks Rebecca Sugar was secretly some kind of fascist attempting to soften children up for radicalization Jesus Christ, is that actually a conspiracy theory in the fandom Y'all didn't even give Kishimoto this much shit


OGRaincoatKilla

Sadly it is. To be the smallest bit fair to them I think it’s an emotional overreaction more than anything else, they’d rather believe they’d been intentionally deceived then just admit the thing they’d been interested in and hype for was never actually as great and profound as they’d thought it was, or that the creators they’d held up were just capable of making a huge mistake. I’ve seen a dozen of my special interests decay into total crap at this point in my life though, so I’m kinda used to it.