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Furthermore, the issues Yasu is struggling with don't just relate to her own gender identity, but to sexism. Like, um... look at the kind of boxed-in, too-narrow definition of femininity that is repeated over and over and over again in Umineko and that damages every character that's a girl or a woman, including Natsuhi, who fits the archetype of a housewife pretty closely anyway but STILL gets backlash and damage for not being perfect. If that's your context for being a woman, it's natural, I think, to wish sometimes that you weren't. And this applies even if Yasu isn't a woman! It's just... a factor, I think.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:38
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Yeah, we definitely talked extensively in thread about that type of toxic, too-narrow definition of femininity, and the gender role policing it's packaged with. There's a lot going on with Yasu and all the other personalities as well as the alternative Fragment Lion. I still don't understand the introduction of Clair.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:53
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Clair was created by Bernkastel as a stand-in for Yasu so that Yasu could speak without revealing their form.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:54
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ProfessorProf posted:Clair was created by Bernkastel as a stand-in for Yasu so that Yasu could speak without revealing their form.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:00
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So appearing on stage during that but would've required Yasu to appear in the flesh, so to say? Why does Bern care?
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Sep 30, 2017 04:04
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PetraCore posted:Because she (in this theory, that I share) realized her body doesn't match that of a woman. Kanon isn't her trying to transition, in this scenario, but is rather her attempting to match societal expectations of her secondary sexual traits, and then being miserable and angry and hateful. It's notable that she projects the emotions and experiences she doesn't want to experience but does on Kanon, and that Kanon is internally characterized by her narrative as angry, unpleasant, and unliked by everyone but Shannon and Jessica. OK that's an interpretation I hadn't considered. That's fair. For my part, I'm not thinking of Kanon as just representing gender issues. In Clair's story Kanon first appears once Battler's Sin becomes so clear that it can't be papered over with fantasy delusion and self-deception anymore, and if fills Yasu with all these negative emotions societal feminine ideal Shannon is supposed to be. (The same narrow definition of femininity you're talking about.) And their gender issues are only a part of that. Kanon isn't just Sayo experimenting with other genders/presentations; Kanon is a core part of who Yasu is. He's just all the parts that are inconvenient or difficulty, all the parts that Yasu wishes didn't exist. Which is why Shannon and Beato are always killing Kanon off. But trying to kill/repress the parts of yourself that are difficult to deal with isn't healthy, and it doesn't ever end well for Yasu. Which is why Kanon's goal in the love duel is so telling; Kanon's victory wouldn't have meant Yasu starts living as a man, it would mean Yasu embraces all aspects of themself and tries to truly love themself. My position, in short, is that as of 1986, Yasu is still in the questioning/exploration phase of discovering their real gender, and so it's too soon say where they might fall. Which is why I use neutral pronouns. And then they die before the can reach a satisfactory* answer. Though depending on where this episode goes that could change, but I'm not holding my breath. *Hopefully we can agree to call any answer that ends in suicide unsatisfactory.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:08
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PetraCore posted:Right, using an old discarded design for Yasu's imaginary friend Beatrice, right? I'm not quite sure where Clair's name comes from. More of a cute nod than actual plot relevance, I think. Van Dine's real life wife was called Claire De Lisle. Given Will's role in the game(and his name being Van Dine's real name, Willard Huntington Wright) I figured the name was just a nod like "Yup" as opposed to any plot significance, but I could be super wrong.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:17
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Well, we know the story won't have a happy ending. It's too late for that. All we cn hope for is some sort of closure for Ange, if it's not also too late for her. We haven't talked about the religious symbolism in this tale for a while, either. We've been in Purgatory for a long time now. Battler took up the mantle and became his own jailer. Beatrice was partially exorcised and remains as an insubstantial, benevolent fantasy. Virgilia and the assembly of demons were blown away as delusions. The unsatisfactory nature of the tale's world just reminds me strongly of the Buddhist take on existence. There's a lot of dread here. All the players and pieces know that the game board is impermanent and eventually the curtains will close. Where that closure leaves everyone seems worse than repeating their dooms over and over. But escape, if possible, seems out of everyone's grasp -- if only for the fact that each character has a strong attachment to something else equally transient, be it another character doomed to die on the island or a shitload of wealth that can't really be obtained or even all-obliterating revenge that solves... nothing. Nineteen people come to Rokkenjima and none of them actually ever leave. There is no liberation. No lessons are learned. There is no love. I don't know what to make of this game supposedly run by Battler. I'm not comfortable calling all this a part of Angie's internal processing.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:24
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PetraCore posted:Right, using an old discarded design for Yasu's imaginary friend Beatrice, right? I'm not quite sure where Clair's name comes from. Pretty sure Clair's name is another reference to Dante's Divine Comedy, specifically this guy, Dante's guide through Heaven.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:25
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:So appearing on stage during that but would've required Yasu to appear in the flesh, so to say? Why does Bern care? it's a plot device to not show sayo's true appearance, okay?
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Sep 30, 2017 04:31
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:We haven't talked about the religious symbolism in this tale for a while, either. We've been in Purgatory for a long time now. Battler took up the mantle and became his own jailer. Beatrice was partially exorcised and remains as an insubstantial, benevolent fantasy. Virgilia and the assembly of demons were blown away as delusions. Watch the next update have every last one of them join the Halloween party.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:31
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Tired Moritz posted:it's a plot device to not show sayo's true appearance, okay? This level of reasoning is possible for Furudo Erika. What do you think, everyone?  I hope that's not seriously the be all end all of that particular choice by R07. ZiegeDame posted:Watch the next update have every last one of them join the Halloween party. As long as I don't have to see rifle themed Playboy bunny girls again. 
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Sep 30, 2017 04:35
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I don't know what to make of this game supposedly run by Battler. I'm not comfortable calling all this a part of Angie's internal processing. To me, it feels very consistent with the Battler we've gotten since the beginning. Remember that this is the guy who got so disgusted by his family (okay, mostly his dad) that he up and left them wholesale for 6 of his teenage years, yet when he comes back, he still spends a significant amount of time being easily bamboozled by a witch because he refuses to believe a single one of them to be capable of murder despite mounting evidence to the contrary because, at his core, he believes them to be, at their cores, fundamentally good and kind people, regardless of what their life experiences have warped them into. He's probably not even wrong. This is why I've been finding this whole episode thus far to be very sweet and very, very sad.
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Sep 30, 2017 04:40
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Possibly relevant to why Bernkastel would deliberately hide Yasu's true face during EP7:ProfessorProf posted:
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Sep 30, 2017 04:49
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"I'm mean, so I won't give any more hints than this. There are no witches who don't think. After all, witches who don't think either die or turn to seaweed."
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I don't want to become kelp.  my fishes...
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Sep 30, 2017 04:58
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:This level of reasoning is possible for Furudo Erika. What do you think, everyone? I've actually thought about this one. The fact that the story of Yasu is told by Alpha Beatrice is a reminder that this story is still being told by someone who, when forced to choose between escapist fantasy and harsh reality, chose fantasy every time. Which is why Kanon feels like such an afterthought in that story, and it doesn't include any of the really bad stuff. Yasu doesn't want to acknowledge any of the bad stuff, they just want to make it all go away with 900 tons of
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Sep 30, 2017 05:20
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ZiegeDame posted:My position, in short, is that as of 1986, Yasu is still in the questioning/exploration phase of discovering their real gender, and so it's too soon say where they might fall. Which is why I use neutral pronouns. And then they die before the can reach a satisfactory* answer. Though depending on where this episode goes that could change, but I'm not holding my breath. Bitterness and loyalty and isolation and a deep hidden kindness feel more real to me, even though it's just as much of a mistake to discard Shannon as it is to discard Kanon.
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Sep 30, 2017 05:25
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PetraCore posted:Yeah, fair enough. And Kanon definitely represents more than gender issues. Yasu seems to stuff any emotions that don't fit into the perfect feminine Shannon into him, at least if they can't go to Beatrice instead. And those emotions and reactions are important and necessary. Bitterness, anger, loneliness, isolation, those are all things that Yasu really feels and things that it's important are expressed and acknowledged. And even though Yasu seems to be really hard on Kanon in my opinion, Kanon is also deeply loyal to people he feels have earned that loyalty, he's gentle with Jessica, he's smart. He's actually one of my favorite characters, and I actually like him a lot more as a person than Shannon, because Shannon scares me as a representation of what a woman is supposed to be, a representation of something that I'm never going to fit despite being a cis woman. She's absolutely got good aspects, but there's something stepford wife-y about her, especially when you learn more about Yasu and thus can realize that Shannon is supposed to be the ideal submissive woman. Though sadly for Kanon Yasu seems to favor Shannon as well. As shown by the duel back in episode 6. Yasu mentally does seem to view the alternate selves as ultimately a hindrance. But for the most part is indecisive about it. At least until the end. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 06:58
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MonsterEnvy posted:Though sadly for Kanon Yasu seems to favor Shannon as well. As shown by the duel back in episode 6. Yasu mentally does seem to view the alternate selves as ultimately a hindrance. But for the most part is indecisive about it. At least until the end. Although right after winning Shannon collapses like a puppet with cut strings and disappears from the story. So all picking Shannon ever leads to is leaving a pretty corpse.
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Sep 30, 2017 07:09
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ZiegeDame posted:Although right after winning Shannon collapses like a puppet with cut strings and disappears from the story. So all picking Shannon ever leads to is leaving a pretty corpse. Yeah though that seems to more or less due to Yasu being suicidal.
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Sep 30, 2017 07:14
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Actually in EP3 Yasu ends the game as Kanon and doesn't kill themself. They just have a nice chat with Jessica while Eva goes and sets off the self-destruct. And since there was theoretically a chance that Eva wouldn't flip the switch, choosing Kanon is the least suicidal Yasu ever gets.
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Sep 30, 2017 07:40
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ZiegeDame posted:You realize this is a common experience for a lot of trans people, right? And that all too often it doesn't have a happy ending? Do you understand why I think what you just wrote is so supremely hosed up? I wonder if you're not interpreting that as I intended. I'm sorry, but it was my understanding that it's not exactly common that trans people are unaware or mistaken about the gender they were assigned at birth, only slowly figuring out in late puberty that what they have isn't actually a vagina. I guess I shouldn't have been as vague as I was trying to be. Kanon is often seen as a personality Sayo adopted as an attempt to act as the "correct" gender, trying to seek happiness that way but ultimately resulting in just even more misery. Kanon's character was broody and angry, an outlet for negative emotions, modeled after the men in Sayo's life rather than a more "organic" personality. I'll agree that it is kind of a reductivistic view of Kanon, as Sayo clearly wanted him to be just as valid a person as Shannon in the end. But I dunno, usually trans people aren't very happy about the implication that Sayo would've been better off as cis after all.
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Sep 30, 2017 09:54
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tiistai posted:I'll agree that it is kind of a reductivistic view of Kanon, as Sayo clearly wanted him to be just as valid a person as Shannon in the end. But I dunno, usually trans people aren't very happy about the implication that Sayo would've been better off as cis after all. Speaking as a trans person, I can understand why people would feel like that, but speaking personally, yeah, I think they would have been, dysporia's awful, and I don't think they would have felt it without being CAFAB, (not physical dysphoria at least) Part of that is me being a trans man and projecting some of my 'raised as a girl when I wasn't and got a bit hosed up from it' on to Yasu, and part of it is my knowledge of the David Reimer case and how this sort of thing typically goes. Also, the majority of Yasu's issues with gender seem to come from them being pushed of a cliff and the "corrective" surgery done afterwards, in the flashback quotes they talk about that as being why they are in a body that can't be loved, and Lion certainly doesn't seem to be bothered by their body, and while it's definitely possible to hide that, I read Lion as an androgynous guy, and that influences my opinions on Yasu. Graylien fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 11:07
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Graylien posted:Speaking as a trans person, I can understand why people would feel like that, but speaking personally, yeah, I think they would have been, dysporia's awful, and I don't think they would have felt it without being CAFAB, (not physical dysphoria at least) I think whether or not you interpret Yasu as being trans even as Lion, the narrative does not treat the 'corrective' surgery and the hiding of such from Yasu as a good thing. Yasu might have been raised as a woman, but they clearly don't feel like they have the body of a 'real' woman, and them learning about the surgery years later seems to just confirm this for them. And part of the issue for them is, I think, the years of deception that went on even as they were struggling massively with body image issues. And even if Yasu is a trans woman, the fact remains that Nanjo would have had no reason to know that at the time the surgery was done. Whatever he did cosmetically was far over the line of what he should have done morally.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:26
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Wow, the thread's turned lively again! I think all of this discussion regarding Yasu/Beatrice's true gender is great and important to have- I never quite considered the "trans woman" angle before, for example- but I would like to pose a question if I many. Many of you seem to think that Yasu identifies as female, once and for all... if you don't mind, could you point out when they indicate that within the story? Because I can't find any such part. Hell, I can't even find the parts where Shannon and Kanon identify as female and male, respectively; much like Beatrice, they assume the trappings of male and female identities, but their chief definitions in the story from their perspective (that's important) are their clothing, the demeanor they project and their love for their respective partners, George and Jessica. Any gender they might have is assumed to them and they just don't contradict it- that isn't quite the same as identification. So why go with one gender here? I'm not asking to take anyone to task, I'm genuinely curious as to what the clincher is for you; gender is a weird and wonderful thing after all (even if I think it's tyranny in my heart of hearts :shh:)
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Sep 30, 2017 15:38
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I don't know anything about gender and I fear that thinking about it might lead to a rabbithole but I can say that we can all agree that Sayo has terrible taste in men.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:47
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resurgam40 posted:Many of you seem to think that Yasu identifies as female, once and for all... if you don't mind, could you point out when they indicate that within the story? If you're asking to point out to a specific scene or moment where Sayo proclaims "I identify as female" then of course that never happens or it would've been brought up already. As I alluded to in my previous posts, whatever pronoun you use is something that people have mostly drawn from Yasu's circumstances, the subtext and/or their own preferences. Using she being... I guess you could say the "commonly accepted" position naturally gives it its own momentum, for better or worse. Well, it also helps that the manga goes into more detail about Yasu's life and thoughts than EP7 did. Not so much as to be conclusive, but close enough for enough people, I guess.
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Sep 30, 2017 15:57
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tiistai posted:I wonder if you're not interpreting that as I intended. I'm sorry, but it was my understanding that it's not exactly common that trans people are unaware or mistaken about the gender they were assigned at birth, only slowly figuring out in late puberty that what they have isn't actually a vagina. I guess I shouldn't have been as vague as I was trying to be. I think there's a slight misconception here I ought to correct: If Yasu had decided in 1983 to throw Shannon away and live as Kanon full-time, they would have been a trans man. Yasu is AFAB. They were literally assigned by Genji/Nanjo the gender female at a point close enough to birth that all their memories and social interactions were influence by that assignment. (Figuring out during puberty that you aren't the gender you were assigned at birth is the common trans experience I was referring to.)
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Sep 30, 2017 16:29
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tiistai posted:
The manga was also ambiguous enough that it's still up in the air, at least in my opinion, but we'll get there when we get there, AND that depends on whether one should acknowledge the manga at all in this case (there's been some Death of the Author on the manga in the fandom too, iirc).
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Sep 30, 2017 16:33
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ZiegeDame posted:I think there's a slight misconception here I ought to correct: If Yasu had decided in 1983 to throw Shannon away and live as Kanon full-time, they would have been a trans man. Yasu is AFAB. They were literally assigned by Genji/Nanjo the gender female at a point close enough to birth that all their memories and social interactions were influence by that assignment. Yeah, this. A lot of people don't realise assigned gender isn't just a pc way of saying sex.
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Sep 30, 2017 17:47
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Tired Moritz posted:I don't know anything about gender and I fear that thinking about it might lead to a rabbithole but I can say that we can all agree that Sayo has terrible taste in men. Yasu needs the internet so that way they can have a better idea of what romantic options are like outside of their own bloodline.
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Sep 30, 2017 18:10
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ZiegeDame posted:I think there's a slight misconception here I ought to correct: If Yasu had decided in 1983 to throw Shannon away and live as Kanon full-time, they would have been a trans man. Yasu is AFAB. They were literally assigned by Genji/Nanjo the gender female at a point close enough to birth that all their memories and social interactions were influence by that assignment. Oh, alright. I didn't realize someone who identifies as male in a male body would be trans if they were assigned female. That makes the terminology a little more confusing to me, but I guess it makes sense in that context. Anyway, you make a reasonable assumption, but aside from Nanjo and Genji not going out of their way to inform Sayo until much later on, as far as I can remember there's technically no textual evidence of them choosing one gender or another, or rather of any corrective surgery; just a mention that Nanjo did whatever he could to save the baby's life which I imagine meant just... patching up the wounds, basically. They were amazed Yasu even managed to live through that, so I don't think sex reassignment was a priority. But yeah, it could also be that Genji told the orphanage that the baby was to be raised as a girl. He could have told them nothing. Who knows. I can't really make judgement calls on this subject, particularly because clearly I'm not too sure what assigning actually completely entails, but if letting a child draw their own conclusions based on their ambiguous sex is as good as assigning them a gender, then alright. I guess even assigning yourself a gender is still being assigned one. And yeah, I understand that, but I figured it's usually more of a mental realization than a physical one, if that's an alright way to put it. I dunno. tiistai fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 19:07
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tiistai posted:Oh, alright. I didn't realize someone who identifies as male in a male body would be trans if they were assigned female. That makes the terminology a little more confusing to me, but I guess it makes sense in that context. e: Ok that was overly simplistic and not quite right, it's a really goddamn complicated subject. But it isn't uncommon for a person to be perfectly comfortable with themself and then puberty hits with attendant secondary sexual characteristics and going "Whoa hey, this is all wrong, what the gently caress body" You're right that it's never explicitly stated, but somebody had to give that baby the name Yasuda Sayo. I've been assuming it was Genji but it could have been whoever ran the orphanage I guess. (I want to say Sayo is explicitly a girl's name but I'm not actually fluent enough in Japanese to say for sure, but I'll press froward regardless.) Giving a child a feminine name is the same as announcing to everyone they meet "This is a girl." That and and the clothes they choose are the primary ways parents assign a gender to their baby. And given everything we know about that orphanage, I'd be surprised it they went through the deliberate effort to let tiny Yasu pick their own uniform. ZiegeDame fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 19:35
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Yeah I don't think Nanjo chose a gender for the baby. He just did all he could to save it's life and in the end it was not super clear what sex the baby used to be. Genji and or the Orphanage decided to go with girl.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:36
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah I don't think Nanjo chose a gender for the baby. He just did all he could to save it's life and in the end it was not super clear what sex the baby used to be. Genji and or the Orphanage decided to go with girl. Nanjo delivered that baby, he knew what their genitals looked like before the fall.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:42
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ZiegeDame posted:Nanjo delivered that baby, he knew what their genitals looked like before the fall. I know that I am saying I doubt Nanjo had any input on the gender choosing area.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:45
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah I don't think Nanjo chose a gender for the baby. He just did all he could to save it's life and in the end it was not super clear what sex the baby used to be. Genji and or the Orphanage decided to go with girl. This doesn't change the fact that Nanjo and Genji probably had nothing but good intentions. As the thread has discussed previously (or maybe witchchat discussed it and I'm not remembering right, but still), sex assignment despite ambiguous genitalia, or surgical modification in order to disambiguate one's sex organs, was and likely still often is a common part of the intersex narrative. Nanjo almost certainly thought he was doing what was best for Yasu. The fact that both Nanjo and Genji continued believing this up to the night they brought Yasu up in Beatrice's dress to put on a redemption performance for Kinzo is really what damns them in my eyes.
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Sep 30, 2017 19:58
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Yeah the big problem with Genji's actions isn't doing a thing that I'm 99.99% certain was done to literally every child born in Japan on that year. (That's a whole other can of worms way outside the scope of this thread.) It's that he never sat Yasu down and told them what happened to them until after they'd already figured out something was wrong and let those feelings fester into a great big pile of self-loathing. It's that he knew the difficult situation this kid was in and failed to provide any emotional support to speak of.
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Sep 30, 2017 20:38
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ZiegeDame posted:You're right that it's never explicitly stated, but somebody had to give that baby the name Yasuda Sayo. I've been assuming it was Genji but it could have been whoever ran the orphanage I guess. Right, now that you mention it, Genji does seem more likely. Kinzo of course knew about the baby too, so maybe the girl name was like... an added layer of obfuscation Well this is all depressing enough already so I should just focus on the nice and happy EP8 from here on
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Sep 30, 2017 20:39
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Tired Moritz posted:I don't know anything about gender and I fear that thinking about it might lead to a rabbithole but I can say that we can all agree that Sayo has terrible taste in men. Yasu/Jessica OTP.
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Sep 30, 2017 20:46
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