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Genderbending rant
Feb. 10th, 2024 12:06 pmEvery time I see genderbending discourse, I just want to write a post called "When Did Luke Skywalker Become a Man?"
The shortish version is that the assumptions underlying about 99% of the discourse put creators like George Lucas on a very strange pedestal, because apparently it's fine for George Lucas to switch Luke's gender multiple times but for a fan to do it, oh no, such things are not for us peons.
Like, if a female character who was originally written as a male character is not to be considered as a true female character, then was the character who would become Luke actually a man during the period in which she was being officially written, sketched, and painted as a woman? If so, then I guess Ripley and Azula aren't really female characters, either?
Of course, you can say that that was just part of the writing process, and the female version of Luke was a woman while she was being created as one, but the character ultimately ended up as a man, and that's why he's fundamentally a male character and this is essential to his characterization. But that leaves us at this place where creators like George Lucas can switch characters' genders however they like for the sake of ~~~art, but for us in fandom it's somehow problematic to do that, because we inherently occupy a lower position or ... something? But the idea that Star Wars fandom broadly believes in respecting George Lucas's artistic decisions and it's somehow immoral to change a final decision he made back to one of his previous decisions is just ... have you met Star Wars fans? Like, ever?
That's not even getting into the praise heaped on things like Elementary or the new(er) Battlestar Galactica. Is Joan Watson not really a female character? Kara Thrace? Or is it just somehow different, for some reason, when a canonically male character is re-imagined as a woman within a fandom context rather than when it's being driven by powerful people (mostly men!) in the entertainment industry?
The shortish version is that the assumptions underlying about 99% of the discourse put creators like George Lucas on a very strange pedestal, because apparently it's fine for George Lucas to switch Luke's gender multiple times but for a fan to do it, oh no, such things are not for us peons.
Like, if a female character who was originally written as a male character is not to be considered as a true female character, then was the character who would become Luke actually a man during the period in which she was being officially written, sketched, and painted as a woman? If so, then I guess Ripley and Azula aren't really female characters, either?
Of course, you can say that that was just part of the writing process, and the female version of Luke was a woman while she was being created as one, but the character ultimately ended up as a man, and that's why he's fundamentally a male character and this is essential to his characterization. But that leaves us at this place where creators like George Lucas can switch characters' genders however they like for the sake of ~~~art, but for us in fandom it's somehow problematic to do that, because we inherently occupy a lower position or ... something? But the idea that Star Wars fandom broadly believes in respecting George Lucas's artistic decisions and it's somehow immoral to change a final decision he made back to one of his previous decisions is just ... have you met Star Wars fans? Like, ever?
That's not even getting into the praise heaped on things like Elementary or the new(er) Battlestar Galactica. Is Joan Watson not really a female character? Kara Thrace? Or is it just somehow different, for some reason, when a canonically male character is re-imagined as a woman within a fandom context rather than when it's being driven by powerful people (mostly men!) in the entertainment industry?