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it's not what you think.....

Moriarty the Patriot meta:

The Man: James Bonde, Agency and Gender Euphoria

[yuukoku no moriarty spoilers for anime/manga scandal in Bohemia arc] [also this got so long wow who would have thought i had so many thoughts about my best boy]

[he/him pronouns for yuumori Bonde/Adler, she/her pronouns for Holmes-canon Adler]

Everything about the James Bonde reveal is so perfect to me. It’s Holmes-canon that Irene feels comfortable cross-dressing so that would be a fun slightly unhinged direction to take even though it could go so wrong and I was so braced for it to be a Bad Take.

I was so ready to have my heart broken but you beat the odds you stunning son of a gun

But then. Irene/Bonde becomes a perfect transmasculine fantasy, Irene is The Woman and Bond(e), who he becomes instantly and nearly seamlessly, is most definitely The Man, always the embodiment of super cis hetero masculinity, reincarnated forever to fit whatever that means for the times. (We like hairy womanizers because it’s the 70s so that’s who Bond is. We like Conflicted Dark Thoughtful Protagonists because it’s the 00s so that’s who Bond is. Etc.) And now. And NOW. Bond is again THE MAN, perfect masculine sex symbol, evolved from The Woman, a character who was actually a gender symbol to Holmes, and then became a more conventionally-understood sex(ualized) symbol only by repeated reinterpretation, meaning, yknow, lazily written misogynistic takes on Adler.

(I am forever yelling about how No One Understands A Scandal in Bohemia so, quick explanation of what I mean by that:) Adler’s whole (Holmes-canon) deal was taking back agency over her love life and sexual decisions from men who by default didn’t believe she deserved that autonomy. And then basically every adaptation of A Scandal in Bohemia has gone and done that to her metatextually by making her a manipulative criminal mastermind and/or some kind of super famous courtesan and/or serial blackmailer, explaining her behavior the maximally sexy way rather than honoring the (imho) more interesting original motivation to just move on from an old relationship but not believing she’d be allowed to do so without drastic measures. And also her non-criminal background is so much more interesting as a foil for Sherlock Holmes in that she’s not trained over a lifetime to be that foil, she is a regular fairly clever person who just happens to be overlooked by his prejudice, a lesson he explicitly tries to take to heart, making her “The Woman,” his personal model of all womanhood, remembering her as a worthy adversary.

And this version gets the same sexist setup, except that Adler made it up. Sherlock gets to learn the same lesson but Adler is involved in something totally different, and the whole Scandal in Bohemia story was a fabrication — Adler doesn’t just finally get agency back, Adler basically gets authorship of the canon story. (The government secrets situation, the actual tension in this version, is obviously out of Adler’s control but also kind of out of everyone’s hands.) And I think it’s important that Adler plays this role of a woman, The Woman, perfectly, to set up what comes later. I am reminded of a Daniel Lavery essay about the transmasculine impulse to defend one’s prior femininity — “a desire to maintain that one didn’t transition out of necessity but desire: being a woman is hard but I was good at it, I think is the underlying anxiety, nobody fired me, I quit.” The perfection of Irene Adler’s presentation as a woman neatly prevents the idea that transition might be an action taken with a kind of resignation (“I failed to be a woman”) rather than agency and positive desire (“I am and wanted to be a man”), relating nicely to agency and personal choice as a major theme from Holmes-canon Adler.

So then Moriarty the Patriot takes James Bond, The Man, a sex symbol but always in control of his sexuality because his masculinity grants him that privilege, and bestows that identity on a character whose sexuality has always been textually and metatextually out of that character’s hands. And he’s perfect at it, immediately, his transition is instantaneous (and with later argument only from Moran the stock Straight Guy Who Doesn’t Quite Get It, and his status as a man is not even defended so much as stated: it’s a basic, obvious fact confirmed by William as the voice of leadership and Louis as the voice of pragmatism). The transition scene obviously brought to mind another moment that looms large in my personal transmasc mythos, the Disney Mulan fantasy of cutting off your hair and that magically Makes a Man Out of You, except Mulan spends the movie kind of being visibly bad at Man Things and earns her power when she returns to her gender like masculinity was the unknown land on the hero’s journey, and Bonde’s hair cut scene equally set my brain on fire but with the payoff of actually being instant magical transition.

Look at him!!!!! That’s the man!!!!!!!!

I don’t know how other people feel about the name situation (certainly at least a little unusual to not choose one’s own) but I personally love the idea that Bonde is granted a shared first name, a brotherhood, and gets to choose his last name and discard the patronymic, breaking with patriarchal tradition but fitting into a new kind of family that has some of its own customs which he gets to be a part of. (This also fits the queer life pattern of learning about queer identity and culture by horizontal/peer association (brotherhood) rather than vertical/family association (fatherhood). Or more simply, hey look Found Family Trope.)

And this interpretation feels so joyous to me. Amidst all the crime drama we get a relatively positive and bright and uncomplicated character who is taking visible joy in his new identity, strutting around town being The Man, late to important mission meetings because he wants to try out a new car, flirting and winking all the time because now he gets to be in charge of that kind of interaction, inventing new drinks that sound pretty terrible, being playfully over-familiar with everyone he meets. I love that some of this borrows from who he was as Adler, and some of it manages to re-cast the sort of icky James Bond tradition of reveling in masculine power into simple fresh gender euphoria — arguably the performance of Bond’s hypermasculine persona was always a certain kind of gender euphoria, but too often at women’s expense, and now it’s not, because this Bonde is explicitly a little protective of women’s boundaries, taking the bar fight opportunity to get someone out of an uncomfortable situation, and being only reservedly flirtatious with Moneypenny (again we use Moran for Slightly Confused Straight Guy contrast here).

And this choice of Bonde’s origin also feels so generous to me, a gift for my little gay heart. “James Bond is yours now, transmascs,” says Moriarty the Patriot, “it’s your time to be The Man.” I just. Love this series so much. It’s always the opposite of queer baiting. It’s a subtle invitation to a queer feast, with a family who would happily and immediately call you brother if that’s what you ask.

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😝 this strain is called "the mithraeum" 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don't feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear I just saw Cytherea’s corpse under the bed

My fellow lyctor Mercymorn pacing: god is lying to us

ROUND 1: RIGHT SIDE

bro imagine you are fukuzawa and your Son comes in hand in hand with the weird racoon boy that you swear was your enemy like,, a week ago and says 'we are dating' and ur like okay! sure i can let that slide since we did kinda, sorta defeated the Guild, but then your agency doctor goes 'yeah i kiss that redhead mafia executive good morning AND good night every day" and you just gotta smile and move along bc okay okay she was originally from there okay, sure. but THEN dazai "kunikida shoot him on sight if he becomes even slightly more goofy and silly than he is now" osamu struts in with a ring and its like 'yeah so abt that Other redhead executive- ' and as you are writing your vacation notice your anxiety personified, wet cat of an employee walks into your office all shaking and goes 'i gotta tell you something but dont be mad and could you maybe please please hear me out please -'

in honour of twitter violently lowering itself into a pit of lava, i’ve started saving some of my favourite tweets from my twitter account in case it all goes down. i guess i’ll start posting them here on tumblr in chunks - the ace attorney ones go here, though i know i haven’t been all that active lately!

this is also a heads up that i’ve made a new general blog @corviiids for all the yammering that’s been on twitter up until now. if you’re INTERESTED in yammering, you’re very welcome to come over and follow me there too.

i dont want to get out of bed to draw this but i gotta write it:

Aki: I’m going on a…… date

Power and Denji: Ew a date? who would date you? is it a boy? Are you gay?

Denji: If you’re dating girl she should dump you and date me. But its probably a boy cause you’re gay

Power: Yeah you’re a [wildly offensive 90s gay slur]!

Denji and Aki: That’s so fucked up. Power what’s wrong with you? That’s so offensive.

Power: [cries and throws a fit and flushes all the vegetables in the house down the toilet]

Aki: [has to reschedule his date because thats the only time the plumber can come over]

I open and close this app like it’s the fucking fridge

ok but if at some point of chainsaw man part 2 denji is asked for his full name and he says ‘hayakawa denji’ i would literally cry my eyes out, it would be my last straw fr

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line