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Dec. 6th, 2018 03:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raesoflight Re-watching Tiger and Bunny, and I know Nathan as a character ruffled a lot of feathers in the LGBTQ community because at first glance he's this horrid stereotype of a queer man, but most of that idea came from looking at him through a Western queer gaze, not an Eastern one. LGBT culture in Japan is informed by a very long, complex history of what you do behind closed doors being your business and no one else's, so the idea of being visible and open is still being figured out, the same way we had to figure it out here.
Either way, Nathan has always been one of my stand out favorite characters because his backstory is so beautifully told (mostly in the OVA) where he knew from a young age that if he wanted to be who he was, and be visible about it, he'd have to sponsor himself as a hero because "selling" a black, gay, non-binary hero would be challenging even for a corporation who was sympathetic to him and his perceived place in society--marginalized because of his race, sexuality and gender presentation on top of being a NEXT.
So he did the only thing he could, and worked his ass off to market himself, hamming up all the "flaming" jokes he could because that flamboyancy was part of his personal brand, and excuse me for being a raging progressive but it's so important to me that Nathan stands as not just a hero in his own right, but as a representative of people like him--the hyper-marginalized members of society, the ones who need a voice the most.
And goddamn if the creators didn't do their research, and give the audience a character who was the voice that community deserved.
Either way, Nathan has always been one of my stand out favorite characters because his backstory is so beautifully told (mostly in the OVA) where he knew from a young age that if he wanted to be who he was, and be visible about it, he'd have to sponsor himself as a hero because "selling" a black, gay, non-binary hero would be challenging even for a corporation who was sympathetic to him and his perceived place in society--marginalized because of his race, sexuality and gender presentation on top of being a NEXT.
So he did the only thing he could, and worked his ass off to market himself, hamming up all the "flaming" jokes he could because that flamboyancy was part of his personal brand, and excuse me for being a raging progressive but it's so important to me that Nathan stands as not just a hero in his own right, but as a representative of people like him--the hyper-marginalized members of society, the ones who need a voice the most.
And goddamn if the creators didn't do their research, and give the audience a character who was the voice that community deserved.
