Fandom and Feeling

how it feels to start your email with "hi [name]":

how it feels to start your email with "hello [name]":

You pass by a small crowd of hungry children, and decide you’d rather 455 apples go rotten than give them to some snotty brat who isn’t your problem.

It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for your 500 apples, or that you aren’t the parent of any of those kids. in the moment you decide to walk away, it doesn’t matter why they’re hungry, or who owes who what.

You had the opportunity to help people, you had the ability to help people, you had the resources to help people. You had everything you needed to make a small, tiny little difference in someone’s life, and you decided not to.

Gollum's the biggest example, of course--he's so repellant but also so pitiable and you SEE that he still has the road to goodness open, but he doesn't QUITE take it, but he COULD, and you WANT him to. But it's true of everyone here.

Grima is offered like five second chances at various points, but he keeps going back to Saruman because that's what he knows and it is, in a twisted way, easier even when it makes him miserable. Saruman is asked by Gandalf to return to them, and it's a genuine offer of reconciliation, and we feel the tragedy when he wavers and then rejects it. Denethor is also given a path back to the light by Gandalf, who tells him he can do his duty by leading his people and dying in battle against the Darkness--and, again, although he refuses, we can imagine him accepting and regaining his honor.

And to accentuate this, we see people who fall and ARE redeemed! Boromir falls to the Ring, and attacks Frodo--but he repents, rejects what he has done, and takes up the right task set before him even though it kills him. Theoden is corrupted by Grima, and spurns Gandalf and the rest--but then he listens to Gandalf, takes up his duties as ruler, and goes to lead his people even though he expects to die doing it.

if your "queer space" doesn't allow cishet men i don't trust you to be normal about and respectful towards (especially pre/early-transition) trans women. some trans women look like men. if you don't let people who look like men in at all, your space is exclusionary towards trans women, and if you don't let them in unless they tell you they're trans women you're forcing girls out of the closet to access safe spaces. stop that

if you’re a trans guy and you’re getting barred from queer spaces for looking like a man, you’re probably far enough along that not having that space (which you totally should still have, just ftr) is not going to actively influence your transition too much, but if you’re a trans girl who is on the fence about the whole thing and you don’t get that kind of support it might actively stop you from transitioning for a while longer or doing it at all

They are both its! One of them is a spaceship! Femme doesn't negate agenderness! Femme doesn't turn them romantic or sexual! Femme doesn't gender them!

Stop talking about femme voices and actors like it will ruin the character and the story for it to be so. You don't need to voice that!

(DISCLAIMER: I do not think it's wrong or bad to speculate or want ART to have a masc VA, if that's simply what you prefer. If your only reason is "I'd just like it" then that's perfectly fine)

(DISCLAIMER 2: I am not implying that people that want ART to have a masc VA are at fault of any of these things I'm about to get into. I am directly and ONLY addressing the population described in the original post)

Non-binary people don't owe you androgyny. A very femme or a very masc non-binary person is still, very much non-binary. Gender presentation does not equal gender identity.

Seeing femme presentations of non-binary individuals as less genderless than masc presentation reinforces the idea that masculinity is the norm and baseline. Overtly masc presenting people are seen as more genderless than overtly femme people, and that is absolutely a double standard. You cannot contest femme presenting non-binary identities as "less non-binary" without implying that masculinity is inherently more "default"

Feminine OR masculine gender presentation/portrayal of ART does not make it any less non-binary/genderless.

I understand the worry about the perception of people that don't understand these nuances. I understand, and it is true, that even knowing that femme non-binary presentation is just as valid as masc presentation, people without these sensibilities are going to intuitively see masc Murderbot and femme ART as "straight coded".

HOWEVER, what kind of standard are we setting by letting that dictate the way we see the bots' real/canon gender identities? I think we should be moving forward in accepting all the ways that genderlessness can be expressed. Yes, even if people don't get it. Even if the general public misconstrues it. We will never progress if we stay afraid of what people who don't understand or are outright blind to the reality will think.

Hell, people keep he/him-ing Murderbot, the general public does it constantly. We in the niche fandom are not hearing it as much because we have purposefully created a space where that is not tolerated. But I bet that if you grab a random person from the mainstream and have them watch the show, they will still he/him Murderbot despite the show explicitly stating that it goes by it/its pronouns.

In fact, I was listening to a podcast interview about PD with Martha Wells and guess what? The interviewer, who seemed to be an avid fan of the books and had read every installment and is familiar with the series, he/him-ed Murderbot the entire time. In front of Martha herself!

So then what? We can't have Murderbot be portrayed as masculine because that's "gendered" and it makes people from the mainstream misgender it?

No! Absolutely not. The misgendering has been a problem this entire time and guess what? We persevere. We keep enforcing and encouraging the usage of the correct pronouns, despite of what the mainstream thinks. We have been doing it since the books came out, and we will keep doing it with the show, despite the attention it gets from people that simply don't want to learn.

So then, why have we, as a fandom, never had a problem with Murderbot being masc presenting?

So then, why would there be a problem with ART being portrayed as femme presenting? Do you see the double standard I'm showing here?

We cannot let the mainstream determine what are and aren't the bots' canon gender identities. If they want to be willfully ignorant, educate them. If they don't want to be educated, let them be and distance yourself.

We have dealt with this for years with Murderbot's masculinity, why can't we do the same with femininity?

BESIDES, EVEN THEN, it's voice we're talking about, just voice. ART does not have a canonical human-form body or presentation. It is a giant spaceship. How much more genderless do you want to get?

So, if Murderbot being masc in a traditionally human-form way doesn't negate its genderlessness, why would ART's sheer voice negate its otherwise genderless physical appearance?

People have, do, and will misgender the bots in these books/the show. We cannot prevent it from happening. We just have to do the right thing and encourage usage of the correct pronouns.

If ART gets a masc VA, people will he/him it. If ART gets a femme VA, people will she/her it. It's inevitable. We cannot let mainstream take the joy out of our beloved media because they are not educated enough to understand what genderlessness is and the usage of it/its pronouns for people.

Now, on the topic of shipping. (If you are sensitive to the topic of shipping in the TMBD fandom I advise you to skip to the part that says "Shipping discussion over" or proceed with discretion)

I have three arguments to present:

(MBG AND MENSAHBOT SHIPPERS I LOVE YOU PLEASE KEEP DOING YOUR THING THIS IS NOTHING AGAINST YOU. IF ANYTHING I AM USING YOU AS A GOOD STANDARD EXAMPLE. ILY GUYS)

The show introduced character dynamics of two out of the three ships that were most popular in the fandom even before the TV show came out.

I reiterate, MBG/Murderathin, Mensahbot, and ARTMB/Murderhelion have all been a thing well before the show came out. In fact, they have been a thing ever since the first four books were released. Murderhelion wasn't invented when NE came out.

So, to address "People will ship them if they see Murderbot and ART as straight coded!"

People already do ship them. (Hi! By the way.) Not because they're "straight coded", whatever that means, but because we like the characters and we like their dynamic. That's it. Also, plenty of Murderhelion shippers are masc4masc, and plenty are masc4androgynous (hi again) In fact, some of them are femme4femme! With more femme leaning interpretations of Murderbot Masc4femme presentation has never been the issue, or the reason.

Murderathin shippers exist despite it being masc4masc. In fact, most in-fandom shipping across media has favored same-gender presentation shipping since the dawn of time. If you think straight ships are more common than same-gendered ones, you haven't been on the internet long enough (the M/M tag has the most amount of fics posted on AO3. This isn't a matter of being shipped because of "straight coding". Also, Murderathin is tagged as Other on AO3 anyway).

Mensahbot, a ship between a non-binary/genderless person and a woman, not a femme coded genderless character, a woman, is somehow not "straight coded" in comparison to our hypothetical masc4femme Murderhelion? It is not "straight coded", by the way! It is a ship between a non-binary person and a woman, it physically cannot be straight. Yes even if Murderbot is masc presenting. It is not a man or a woman, therefore Mensahbot is not straight despite Mensah being a woman. So, if a ship that includes a character that is explicitly a woman isn't "straight coded", why would a ship with a genderless femme presenting character be?

Both Murderathin and Mensahbot had some heavy implied subtext in the show. We already have an implied masc4femme ship in the show. This isn't new.

What I mean is, if your concern is "I don't want people to ship Murderbot and ART because of them being portrayed as masc and femme respectively", you're missing the point, by a long shot.

If you have a problem with masc4femme ships being "straight coded", that means you have a problem with Mensahbot as proportionally as you do masc4femme Murderhelion. And BOTH are perfectly valid non-binary ships, because one or more of the characters are explicitly, canonically non-binary.

Also, psst, Murderathin is also a non-binary ship. It is not a gay men ship, it's still non-binary in nature :)

(If you have a distaste for shipping in general, then that's a different thing. This post isn't about you.)

(If you dislike any of the ships mentioned above just because, or out of personal preference, this post isn't about you)

If mainstream wants to ship Murderbot and ART because they are masc4femme? Sure, whatever, flawed logic but there's nothing we can do about it. I'm just asking that you hold ARTMB/Murderhelion to the same standard as the other ships. If masc4masc and a masc4femme ships already exist, Murderhelion will exist regardless of ART's gender presentation.

Shipping discussion over. CONCLUSION

If you think making ART femme presenting, or just having a femme VA will make ART less non-binary/genderless, I advise you to please, please, check your biases.

I, out of sheer personal preference, would like ART to have a femme VA. HOWEVER, if it doesn't, I'll still be happy if they get its character right. I care about it enough to not care about the gender presentation of a canonically genderless character.

Thank you for reading this if you have. I needed to get this out before it eats me alive. I appreciate your attention

M/M ships are usually the most popular ship in any fandom, even in fandoms where there's canon F/M

AO3 ship fics for Captain America and his canonical female lover interest:

6,155

AO3 ship fics for Captain America and his male best friend:

60,505

Okay, cryptkeepers, let's do a super well-planned demographic survey.

me ask out loud “Damn, when did

Calvin transition?”