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Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

firstly, i think that people who find issue with his appearance are misplacing their discomfort at the idea of being attracted to a trans man. literally by definition, him being a trans man means he was born in a female body and where ever he lies on the spectrum of expressing his gender and changing his sex does not change his gender identity. you dont have to be fully transitioned to be trans and given yamato's story it really wouldnt make sense for him to be transitioned as he would not have access to those sorts of resources. him not being transitions is an element that feeds into telling his story but all of that nuance is dismissed because male fragility wont allow them to acknowledge both that he is a man and they find him hot.

the second main way people dismiss yamato's identity is that they believe that him identifying with oden meant that he was never really trans but simply wanted to be oden but i think that this stems from a fundamental issue misunderstanding of the narrative. yamato claims to embody oden but the arc of his story is literally about how he was using that identity as a crutch to deal with his situation and his journey as he comes to realize his own identity and separate it from oden, but at the end of his arc he still identifies as a man. him being a man was never even questioned.

apart from the way that the opposition to yamato being trans being bull, i think that yamato is actually a pretty good example of intertwining a characters trans identity with the narrative. him being trans is not the focal point of the tensions or conflicts but rather is identity is interwoven with his story arc and colors his interactions and experiences differently.

i heard someone once say that the trans representation in one piece is especially notable among representation because of the number of characters and different experiences because no one single character needs to embody all of the trans experiences. yamato does not feel like some token trans character just slapped in but rather he feels like a fully developed character with his own compelling and interesting story to exploare. it feels like the narrative treats him as a real person just like everyone else and where being trans just one part of his identity and experiences

king of nothing