Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:06 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

I know the dolls in Geldoblame's room are meant to play on the "predator" trope, which is disgusting, but I say, I choose to give it a different interpretation, which isn't the intended one, obviously. I don't like that he plays on the ambiguously gay predator, at all so... (1/?)

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:09 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

Geldoblame is, in origins, revealed to be someone who was valued by his youth and beauty, before he is discarded (and that's its own can of worms, because the subservient ambiguously gay man -a.k.a. the Smithers- is also another bad trope) BUT (2/?)

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:11 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

He may be someone who sees dolls and pretty things as a way of a) preserving a beauty that's not tarnished by time like he was and b) a way to holding to his own happy memories of the past (3/?)

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:14 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

Melodia also *looks* like a porcelain doll, and she's externally naïve and pretty as he once was, so I feel his projecting also extends to how he treats her. Like, not that he's sympathetic, because he's still a megalomaniac fascist but

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:16 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

At least his fixation on "dolls, pretty things and young people" can be explained as related to how he himself was discarded, and the court life of the imperial palace, instead of the usual and broad "haha villainous effeminate man" they were aiming for. Which I think is nicer.

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:22 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

Still, not excusing a) bad tropes from the writers b) any of the stuff he does, the empire was already full blown evil when he was young. But I think that, viewing his aesthetic choices in this light, makes it make sense in a way that's just not "effeminate is bad".

Baten Kaitos Posting (The Malpostio) @BatenPosting · 12:30 AM · Dec 16, 2020 Permalink

I was going to bed, but I decided to re-check. He's literally called "a toy" in origins, with those exact words!