[ SECRET POST #3961 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3961 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.
(fandom: My Brother, My Brother and Me)


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03.
[Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens"]


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06.
(Minami, YoI)


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #567.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/MTV8n5L.png
[Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens"]

[(Anonymous)]

that... doesn't seem especially laughable to me?

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed.

It does seem earnest, but not special snowflake to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure what it is you're seeing that I'm not, but to me it looks like someone who is trying very hard not to be obnoxious and still articulate what their issues are with making a particular character agender.

Re: It does seem earnest, but not special snowflake to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I can sort of get OP's point because to me it comes off as slightly "I'm all for nonbinary representation in media BUT OMG NOT IF THEY'RE A BAD GUY!!"

Re: It does seem earnest, but not special snowflake to me.

[(Anonymous)]

but the point they're making seems to be about non-human characters, not just that Pollution is one of the Four Horsemen

Re: It does seem earnest, but not special snowflake to me.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean. It's Good Omens. Half the characters are non human, so if you have a NB character, the odds are high they're going to be non human.

Re: It does seem earnest, but not special snowflake to me.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

The thing is, when there's enough representation of gender (or race/ethnicity or sexuality), it's fine for the character to be whatever, but when you only have a very few, any negative characteristics or othering stand out and are sometimes associated with that gender (or race/ethnicity or sexuality).

[(Anonymous)]

I know what you're talking about OP, and I don't disagree, but I'm not sure that the specific thing you posted was the best example of it?

[(Anonymous)]

It's not really laughable but it is SUPER obnoxious. When will people learn that a person in fiction is not representative of ALL people like that person IRL? (Answer: Probably about the time they realize writing about something does not mean endorsi g it on a moral level absent pages and pages of rebuking it.So...never.)

[(Anonymous)]

The person asking the question doesn't seem to think that Pollution is representative of all people like that IRL, though? They specifically refer to a more general trend (of agender characters being non-human), not something that's just happening in this one instance. So I'm not sure how well your point applies here.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't really see how this is, "the worst kind of special snowflake"
The fan kinda had a point and they were pretty polite and civil about it.

You're the only one who comes off bad in this situation op, lol sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the asker is looking in the right place to relate to someone with dysphoria. I've not read this but I'm assuming that the alien has been described as agender because it is not human, and this person is asking 'why would you describe the alien, who does bad things(?), with this term that I use in all seriousness to describe my dysphoria, to represent Me? Are you saying I am bad and not human?'

And Gaiman is replying with something along the lines of (in the askers eyes) "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at because the characters aren't bad but stick around for future instalments."

I feel kind of bad for both because the asker is having personal issues and looking for guidance and Gaiman doesn't seem to understand what he's dealing with because he's used a word used on tumblr often to mean dysphoric (having further implications of negative experiences/negative influences on the self relating to some kind of trauma and lacking confidence) in a context to mean something which isn't that. There could be many reasons for not knowing that however I'm going to put it down to not being a girl/young woman experiencing her early years of life on the internet hahah.

I've noticed this often actually, a few kids programmes in the UK made one of their characters "nonbinary" or "agender" because they notice kids calling themselves that without realising the backstory to why those kids started calling themselves that in the first place. They think it's to do with fashion or style mostly.

Having been one - a nonbinary - and being friends with many like it because we all got along and liked each other for once, it is usually due to trauma that caused us to not want to be 'us'...if that makes sense. Normally a sexual trauma like abuse, harassment, or rape that we had experienced and sort of repressed from when we were younger. Other times it was because we were told we couldn't do things if we were female by authoritative members of our family or role models we trusted, or a combination of both. So it felt like a kind of detachment from ourselves by calling ourselves nonbinary or agender. On top of not really having any one to talk to about it because we all kind of had dysfunctional families, tumblr and Twitter felt more like home but were very 'enabling' environments that encouraged us to stay depressed and not really question why tf we were so determined to be anything but ourselves. For reference this happened when I was 16-19 and I'm 21 now.

I'm not saying that will always be the case but it was a common theme with my group and pretty much all other friends i made like it (I hope they're all okay because I'm not friends with any of them anymore). Referring back to the post, I can imagine it must be weird for a teen on tumblr to see some random alien be called agender when it's nothing like the kind of thing you'd expect when you hear the word.

It's like watching a conversation happen between two people who are misunderstanding each other because they are talking about two different things.

Anyway even if it's not related to that I hope I've shed some light onto why people call themselves those terms at least and why they are confused when it's not what they expect.

Thank you for reading if you got this far.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

FYI, there are AMAB nonbinary people and nonbinary people over the age of 30. And nonbinary people who found out about it within the LGBTQ community and not tumblr.

[(Anonymous)]

^ This. Not to speak of the many different nonbinary and agender characters that Neil Gaiman has been writing since the 80s. The man is not a saint, but I personally find no problem with him when it comes to LGBTQ representation.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, well, delusions exist in all generations.

[(Anonymous)]

Uh my understanding was that nonbinary/agender people were literally referring to themselves as such because they didn't feel they fitted into the male/female paradigm, without necessarily it being a "baaaad" term to only describe horrible self-feelings.

[(Anonymous)]

You did for me, anon. From the Ask alone I thought the asker was reading into it too much - made sense to me that a manifestation of pollution, while being mostly a result of human activity, wouldn't necessarily see itself as either a guy or girl. Maybe they'd be curious why humans label themselves as a guy or girl so often? Granted, I know nothing of the series or if the other Horsemen are similar...or, really, agender or nonbinary...anything.

So thanks for opening the blinds a bit for me on this subject. It's disconcerting something that can come from a place of perceived limitation and/or pain was pinned down as fashion by entertainment.

[(Anonymous)]

iirc Death is pretty much the same Death from Discworld (whom I think is male), Famine is also male while War is female. Those are just how they represent as human-looking figures because they're not human. Pollution (who took over from Plague and therefore the new kid) chose to present themselves as nonbinary. That's all there is to it.

Not to speak of the fact that angels (and therefore demons) don't have gender to begin with: angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort. That makes the two main leads Aziraphale and Crowley agender, even if they look male and use male pronouns when the story started.

What I'm saying is, there might be pain coming from the person who sent Gaiman that ask but to ask 'why make Pollution agender?' in a novel that's basically full of agenders who just present themselves as part of the gender binary kinda makes me think they didn't read the novel before reacting to Pollution's casting.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Gaiman was at the front of getting LGBTQ people into popular urban fantasy. The British Invasion's willingness to deal with the subject in the 80s and 90s was miles ahead of what DC and Marvel are willing to do now. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think anyone is even accusing him of doing anything bad!

[(Anonymous)]

I've seen worse behavior on tumblr and this seems fairly mild, IMO. It's worthy of a small eyeroll, maybe. Sometimes messages about how an author is handling representation are really passive aggressive, i.e. people expressing "concern" that an author just isn't doing representation the "right" way. THAT can be pretty insufferable!

That said, I think if you see the Four Horsemen as bad guys, you're not entirely getting the full point in Good Omens.

[(Anonymous)]

This. I really liked Pollution and I'm glad they're NB because I'm also one. But I guess it's all a matter of tastes.

[(Anonymous)]

I think some of it is age... then again, there are more people in my age group on tumblr then there are teens so there's no telling.


Like Mr. Gaiman, I'm very fond of the horsemen. Pollution was my favorite, in reading the book (maybe a close second to Death, but then, GO Death is so much like Discworld Death...), so I'm entirely pleased-- as someone who's nb-- to see this. But I can understand the whole 'how come it's always non-humans who have non-binary representation' feeling, just like as much as I love robots and aliens, it's tiring not to get to relate to more human autistic characters.

The problem in my mind isn't having nonhuman representation, but in having only nonhuman representation. But that's not Neil Gaiman's problem to fix-- that's not any single writer's problem to fix. The fact that Neil is adding explicit non-binary-ness to a character who was identified as male in the book is still something.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh hey, as if I needed any more reason not to watch this.