#chinesegal

So when I discuss how abuse affects men differently than women, I'm not talking about it from a biological perspective but how men vs women construct their perception of the world and how that affects their internal sense of self. This is what it means to say gender is a construct.

So when I look at Angel Dust and the abuse he experiences in Medrano's shows, how he reacts does not feel like it goes further than trope deep. He's every Pretty Woman AU fanfiction you can find where male characters are forced into hyper femme roles in order to be victims. Which has this implication that masculinity cannot be victimized at all.

And the sad part is that many people default to this sort of thinking. In a world where patriarchy is dominant culture - where you can't even provide for yourself without having to take into account how male dominance is going to affect you at a job of choice - it's easy to think all men are solely benefactors of this arrangement. And the hard reality is that men are also victims of patriarchy.

Regardless of sexual orientation or race, men are still victims, but in ways that are more internally impressed than externally imposed. Meanwhile, female oppression is more often externally imposed than internally impressed.

So when I say that Fizzarolli's and Angel Dust's abuse doesn't ever feel masculine, it's because it highjacks female social experiences to make male characters victims. Neither Fizz nor Angel Dust struggled with internalized ideas of what it means to be a victim. Every man in this show who is a classified "bottom" can't even cry without their tears being tainted with black mascara.

One of my deepest grievances in Helluva Boss between Ozzie's and The Circus was how Fizzarolli was distinctly masculine in season 1. His attitude and animation favored this more abrasive, masculine lewdness with small flairs of queer non-conformity. But he still existed on a foundation of masculinity which the second season instantly deflated to making him waifish and small. So much so that Medrano even asserts that any masculine traits are wholly performative while he is actually hyper femme.

Because she thinks victimhood and Femininity are one in the same.

The same thing happens with Angel Dust. And there is something more nuanced to be said about him, because unlike Fizzarolli who was portrayed as very masculine early on, Angel has always been portrayed as an effeminate man. He has always been a flamboyantly gay drag queen, even before the pilot was in production.

But he never felt helpless which balanced out his character. Previously, whenever he was sexualized, Angel Dust was never just a sexual body. Medrano used to balance his sensuality with danger. Even when in drag, Angel would have a wicked smirk and had an aura of control, similar to Fizzarolli's early masculine energy but uniquely textured by the fact that Angel was always portrayed to be a softer person in private while Fizzarolli had the feeling of being an angrier person.

And that's where I highlight the narrative between the two as not just men who are not surrogate women, but also how their masculinity appears. Going back to what I said earlier, male oppression is often internalized. Angel Dust being a softer person in private doesn't make him less manly, but allowed his character to not have those same internalized triggers to his character. He knows who he is and is comfortable with himself, but also exists in a hyper masculine, hypersexual space where people's eyes on him change who he is. He's a man who doesn't conform to the idea of what a man is in a strict sense, but also knows how to play up the persona that will keep him safe, even in his femininity. That's a complete person.

Meanwhile, Fizzarolli does have internalized pressures. Even in Oops and the Mammon special, we are explicitly told Fizz struggles with his own self concept as much as he struggles with other people's expectations. And that is where the concept of masculine expressions of emotion comes in.

Now this is fairly anecdotal, but I do encourage people to look deeper into biology and sociology when writing about other groups of people.

On testosterone, it's well documented to be physically harder to cry. Testosterone affects the production of tears on a biological level, not that men don't cry or shouldn't cry, but crying for masc coded characters should be treated as more narratively impactful and used more sparingly.

But if your masc characters are going to cry less, how do you express emotions as a man? Small acts of service to express affection or desire. Controlling patterns like rigid routines or strategic planning as a means of feeling in control. Shutting down or explosive anger as a means of self-protection. When it comes to sharing emotions, masculine coded behavior will look more like trying to make sense of a problem rather than venting or overt validation seeking.

And these are stereotypical, I will confess. But that is why a character's internal narratives are so important to balance this out from pure trope. It's a starting place, but it's born from social conditioning and in child development, social conditioning is more than just what other people expect you to be. It is the conflict of identity formation as a practice. It is our story as well as the answer to "who are you". It is the core of identity, which is fluid and evolving until we die. So that narrative is what takes the general concept of what we think "masculine" and "feminine" are and change it from gender to personal identity. It's why I highlight that Angel is a soft person behind closed doors but expresses himself as more stereotypically queer masc even when that queerness could be called femme in older depictions.

While female narratives are fundamentally different. Women in society experience femininity through the complimentary role. Conditioned to find pride in service to others, identity in accomplishments and relationships, and the expectations of femininity are hinged more on those relationships with others than with the self. And female victim narratives are mainly about self-empowerment and centering oneself in opposition to the abuse.

But in VICTIM narratives, both masc and femme characters will experience vulnerability as more like a threat. It is a risk to be vulnerable, and the cost of vulnerability is more overt.

The avoidance of emotional vulnerability is a staple of victim stories, but masculine stories are more internalized narratives: Pride, identity, control, expectations of masculinity they individually hold for themselves (what does it mean to them to be a man).

Meanwhile male conditioning already centers men.

So if female victimhood is all about finding oneself and deconstructing the conditioning that facilitates the victimization and oppression of women, then male victimhood is the tension between the internalized narrative of masculine identity being deconstructed or exploited against their will.

And I think that gendered difference shows up best in the difference between how Brandon Rogers writes Blitz and how Medrano writes Stolas. Look at how Blitz processes his emotions in Ghostfuckers vs how Stolas processes his emotions in New Moon and Apology Tour. One is distinctly a masculine experience (projection, deflection, escapism, control) and the other is cookie cutter feminine (emotional disclosure seeking validation, expression over structure, control is more abstract and externalized).

And I don't mean to say these are the only ways to express masculinity, nor is this an exhaustive explanation, more a general beginning idea on how to approach something like gendered expression in media. Just like gender in real life, it is a complex and unique patchwork of internal and external relationships between the self, the other, and expectations. And the important part is to center the character's relationship with and expectations for themselves over what is stereotypically or traditionally seen as masculine or feminine.

It isn't uniquely masculine to seek to remedy fear with control. But the ways men and women attain a sense of control or define control are going to be different, if not in definition they will experience different external (or internal) barriers to obtaining that control and that is how they will feel more feminine or more masculine in behavior.

The last sticky point I can think of is how all the Kindred characters are supposed to have a "deathly pallor," especially if they have lower Humanity. Deathly pallor can muck up skin tone wonderfully. I think Strauss would be the best example. He's an older Kindred (LA by Night states he was at the Convention of Thorns in 1493) and made a gargoyle (which involves torture), so he's definitely on the lower end of the Humanity scale. According to VtM's lore, Strauss has trouble maintaining a lively, human appearance. Some fans interpret him as white and often point to his white voice actor, Jim Ward. Others remark on Strauss' resemblance to Morpheus from The Matrix Trilogy, cite the deathly pallor lore, and interpret him as a Black man with graying skin. As in, Strauss looks closer to what a Black man's corpse would look like. The deathly pallor factor allows for this interpretation, and in the gap can nicely fit Cuthbert Beckett. He's an Elder Kindred and has had periods of low Humanity. Maybe he's brown and has been through the wringer.

VtM has a tenuous relationship with history, but if you want to check in with it, real life history doesn't obstruct an interpretation of Beckett as Black or brown. British people have had black or brown skin since forever, as you referenced. The oldest Englishman, Mesolithic era Cheddar man's skin is possibly darker than the reconstruction suggests. Ya gotta remember that white skin came to be because people weren't getting enough Vitamin D. If Beckett is descended from the indigenous Celtic Britons (unlikely but possible), his ancestors might not have been malnourished and lived somewhere the sun could penetrate the mists of Avalon.

So like, given all the above, you can definitely argue that Beckett's a Black or brown British guy. Whatever floats your boat.

That wasn't exactly your question, however. You asked if Beckett's meant to be a person of color or white. This implies you want to know the devs' original intention with the game, which I guess at being Beckett as a white man.

Beckett has been described as white in past White Wolf publications. Or rather, not described, because white is default skin tone in so many works, very unfortunately. In the Victorian Trilogy, much is made of Halim Bey, Theo Bell, and Hesha Ruhadze's black skin, but Beckett's skin tone gets no comment. He's "a long-haired man" with a "wolfish grin one might imagine on a privateer from a past age," (The Wounded King, pg 123-125). Someone describes him as "a pauper's version of Buffalo Bill Cody," (197). When his lover Emma disrobes him, the text notes "his feline pupil slits [and] amber irises," (pg 204). Special attention is paid to Beckett's hands: "dark hair, slick like sable covered the back of his hand, fading to a more human-seeming growth on his forearms" and "His fingers were longer than a man's should be, and the nails were hard and thick like a dog's," (ibid). In Year of the Scarab Trilogy's Land of the Dead, he describes himself with "lean, muscular physique [with] round smoked glasses [hinting] at a pretty boy slumming," (pg 101). By the absence of skin tone description, by the unfortunate reality that white skin is seen as default and therefore unworthy of comment, we can infer that Beckett is white. That's to say nothing of the Vampire: the Masquerade - Beckett comic, which depicts him as white. I wouldn't give the VTMB developers the grace or credit to suddenly deter from this character history.

After all, these are the same devs that failed to come up with a story with Chinese people that wasn't Yellow Peril drivel, created a white PC with "locs," declined to brown Nines' skin, and made Skelter imply that Black Americans make up their own oppression. Just like, all of Chinatown is hard for Chinese and Japanese players to get through. Even by 2004 standards, it's real shitty. With these other missteps, it's hard to imagine they'd have the creativity to re-design Beckett as brown or Black. I think they meant him to be interpreted as white.

But you don't have to! Death to the authors! In your fan art, fan casts, picrew, fanfic, chronicles etc, he can be brown, Black, indigenous, or whatever ethnicity bees your knees. You create the Beckett reality in your Beckett-loving head.