the genre has other parents too and I do not want to hog all of the credit but equally for a most of last year I practiced being very self-effacing about it and the primary result was lots of people erasing the fact that I, as an author, even exist in order to peddle transmisogynistic narratives
that whole trend of people on tumblr mocking WARHOUND/mechsploitation as the product of an amorphous mass of stupid, horny, trans girl AC6 fans convinced me of the importance of standing up and saying 'no, I wrote this, I am a writer and it is the way it is because of my craft and creative choices'
If that were to be a valid argument, we would have to disregard A LOT of art throughout history. Most importantly, that would apply to Mazinger Z with its boob rockets, removing the entire "piloted robot" genre from existence.
That is a shame and you do not deserve that kind of scorn.
You're always the first name that comes up in any discussion I've ever had of the genre; you're the one every other author of the subject brings up as inspo in the first place.
At the end of the day, the fact that you’re moving units and most of them likely don’t even publish is a good balm.
I encourage as many victory laps as you want to take
i’m not even into the genre (just edited wardog 10 and beta’d the rest) and i think that shit is totally fucking insane and disgusting. fuckin anti-ass fancop dogshit garbage rassum frassum
Even if you pretend WARHOUND doesn’t exist and mechsplo is just AC6 gooners you end up admitting that by sheer popularity of fromsoft, the most recognizable mecha work is in fact about a skullfucked pilot hound and a “you’re disposable and I don’t see you as a human but I still kinda care” handler.
Kinda hard to argue mechsploitation isn’t core to mecha if in your mind its a spin off from the most successfully mainstream work in the genre
At the same time WARHOUND very much *is* the origin of mechsplo. Gun to the head (🤤) I’d list AC6 as the bigger inspiration for my stuff and yet, tellingly enough, I only actually started writing after reading WH. Something about it being both well-written and shameless makes it a very special.
idk, the pre-existing ancestral zero-hours were Helicopter Story and Psycho Nymph Exile. Helistory influenced enough Japanese SF that it came through in AC6.
is there anything to attest to that? it strikes me as very unlikely ngl
No, I feel it in my bones. Its hard to qualify. Consider it a sentimental moment of weakness on my part.
There's something there and I can't quite connect the dots.
Its pretty maddening.
Its probably convergent, given we see strings and whispers of it going all the way back to Chohei Kambayashi's Yukikaze circa 1986.
💜
Those kinds of transmisogynist sludgefests really piss me off, especially when it starts to be paraded as a "woke" thing for incomprehensible reasons. Ah yes, the true engine that spurs the military industrial complex forwards, hypno porn.
The amount of people I've seen be incredibly smug about "Mecha was NEVER about all this gross dehumanization stuff" are so goddamn annoying.
yeahhh, I try not to engage with it at all at this point, even via vagueposting, but it definitely got under my skin for a while. I really do not like the way I get talked about by those weird scolds
Boiled my blood the most when Incredibly Horny Kinky Transwomen (Different Kink Genre and Phylum) joined in on it too. Severed a friendship over it.
that's very bleak ugh :/
I have never played an armored core in my life
when I wrote WARHOUND, neither had I!
Yeah I did the math, it checks out.
💜💜💜
There's a *wiki*?
Soon!
I'm just sitting over here with the book on my nightstand and not really engaging with fandom beyond our server and what (amazing!) fanart scrolls through my bsky. IG no matter what, at a certain size anything will attract hateful weirdos. Hold your head high, it should be stacked with crowns!
ehehe, thank you so much!! 👑💜
Yeah this repeatedly makes me really mad on a functional level. It was such a bad faith genre of takes! From people who really wanted nothing more than to prove they were better than the gross trans women they looked down on.
Sorry but being around for that and seeing them brush off being transmisogynists fucking boiled my blood.
me too although a lot of that was equally from trans women who have built their brands on being hypercritical hot take havers and constantly providing scorn to a receptive audience of mean bitches. so it goes :/ although it's still transmisogyny if it's pandering to transmisogynistic tropes, imo
