just saw a post about how Bolaire is 'representative of the struggles of queer people in a society that doesn't accept them and [Thjazi] treats them like a "thing" and uses him as a tool' so I guess we have this campaign's version of Imogen representing the plight of the white rural queers!! I wasn't watching live for c2, I know people got all heated over beaujester but was there this level of projecting involved??
So for Campaign 2, not that I'm aware of, though I did not go into the tags at that time so the people I followed may have protected me by not getting involved. There were some pretty nasty ship wars that you allude to, but the phenomenon you describe for Bolaire and Imogen is relatively new, and I'm going to talk about that specifically.
The issues are broken metaphor and the centering of a nonracialized queer experience to the exclusion of allowing one's self to embrace any perspectives other than one's own, at times in a story that is explicitly about those other perspectives.
For broken metaphor, I'll let Bolaire's actor tell you himself:
(It's a short video but if you cannot watch or if it gets removed, Taliesin at the ALA 2011 conference, in discussing comics, talks about metaphor in fantasy. He provides an example of a good one - Buffy the Vampire Slayer equates the work of slaying vampires to the high school experience - and then a bad one. True Blood Season 1 treated vampires as being gay - meeting in sketchy bars, being hated by a bunch of people in the south - but failed to address the fact that the vampires were in fact killing people constantly to drink their blood, which is a pretty decent reason to dislike someone.) I think the equivalence of Bolaire to vampires is pretty obvious. More generally, you cannot have a metaphor for oppression that is based in something that actually is a threat to people. Trans people in real life are not, despite what bigots will tell you, a threat. If my neighbor comes out as trans, this does not change anything about my life other than that my neighbor is trans now. But if my neighbor needs to wear a body that he obtains via goading someone into attacking him and might be looking at my friends when they come over to see who's got the right approximate proportions and could be his next target, or if my neighbor knows my innermost thoughts when I've had a terrible day without the context of knowing I've had a terrible day and develops a judgment of me based on that, or, you know, if she knows all my passwords, those are both things that reasonable people might take objection to.
And that's the problem: when you use that broken metaphor, the people you are trying to paint as bigots actually seem very reasonable and relatable. Sometimes this is accidental or poor writing (True Blood and to some extent Ruidusborn in Exandria, but also not, because if you do interpret it that way and the Ruidusborn ALSO just literally go around killing, you turn into an even more Yikes case of Imogen being One Of The Good Ones). When it comes to fan interpretations, however, while I have a number of ideas as to why fans do this and none are flattering, I can only say that the most generous read of said fans is just a poor understanding of the implications, and hopefully that video will help illustrate said implications.
Now: regarding the centering of the queer, usually white, and usually middle class experience, I've talked about that a lot, and I am both tired and busy and feel like I'd be preaching to the choir for the most part so finding those posts from me is an exercise for the reader. I'll otherwise keep this high level and hopefully brief but probably not.
There are many reasons why one person might not like another person, or why two same gender characters might not get together, and queerphobia/homophobia or really any form of bigotry are one of many options. Sometimes, people do not like a character because of what they do, such as kill people or read minds or are an asshole. I think it is important to internalize this and realize that sometimes, in the the real world, people are glaring at you on the bus because they are homophobes and you are wearing a rainbow pin, but sometimes it's because you are eating a tuna sandwich and watching tiktoks out loud on the bus and you are a massive sensory nightmare and nuisance to everyone. I think this comes up a lot with people always assuming that tension between characters and their parents is always queerphobia; like, to give another example, I don't think Raimond cared that Julien fucks men, I think he cares that he's going to brothels and getting drunk all the time and is a fucking asshole to everyone and also that he disobeyed him during a pivotal war.
Making everyone who opposes someone a bigot (or bigotry metaphor I suppose) is a really easy way to not have to think about that character's flaws or their opponents' virtues. It destroys nuance and complexity in favor of a narrative of "Thjazi was a homophobic asshole equivalent and everything was a lie" which is far less interesting than "Thjazi was a brutally pragmatic dissident who was willing to exploit someone in order to get what he wanted or needed for a greater cause, which is, in a fascinating way, not dissimilar to what Bolaire does to survive, and his worries about Hal's safety were not necessarily unfounded, and it was not a good thing of him to do to Bolaire, but Bolaire's response is also very interesting and imperfect."
Tumblr is very white, very queer, very Western, very culturally Christian, and very raised middle class whether or not they are now [note: other than culturally Christian, I am these things myself], and often reject anything that does not center that highly specific worldview. What does it say that Bolaire is welcome in the circles of nobility whom Thjazi opposed? Why is the first thing I wrote this sort of essay about, Candela, a story very much about class, and people on the Gay Communist Website got mad because Brennan decided to play someone whose life and whose family were destroyed by the rich instead of someone whose kissed Marion in the end? Why does this and many other AP fandoms with similar fanbases love to talk about capitalism as the BBEG and then the second a character who is a genuine revolutionary isn't 100% perfect towards their blorbo, turn them into a horrible villain? (Thjazi, get behind me with Rashinna; both of whom have some interesting racial coding going on as well). Like, why, whenever the issue becomes one of race or class privilege or lack thereof, does someone have to go "but is it gay though?"
I am leaving these questions unanswered, because, again, I would like to think that people simply haven't stopped and thought through the implications and are not neglecting perspectives outside their own narrow viewpoing deliberately, but I will admit this is part of a longstanding pattern that I grow weary of extending the benefit of the doubt to.
