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chiefmysticmia · 2 years

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Why I Read Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat as a Lesbian

(p.s apologies if the formatting is awful on here I honestly don’t know how to do it properly HAHA)

Hi! So I’ve been getting into Mortal Kombat recently and a character that particularly caught my eye was Cassie Cage. I’m not sure why but I absolutely adore her character and whilst reading into her backstory, the story modes of MKX and MK11 (which I have yet to finish) and her intros, I have noticed a lot of her traits relate to both my own and other’s experiences as a lesbian.

For context I myself am a lesbian, and during my coming out journey I have discovered many things about myself that I originally thought were universal experiences until I started reading up on lesbianism and the experiences of other lesbians in discovering their identities. I could just be reading into Cassie’s character a bit too much (or projecting onto her), but I think one of the reasons I find comfort in her character is because of these traits.

So! I’ve decided to make a post going into more detail about this because it’s pride month and I have nothing better to do with my time, plus I love talking about my interpretations of characters.

(Just as a disclaimer, I’m absolutely not saying ‘“all these things mean that Cassie is a canon lesbian and any other interpretation is wrong!!!”. Nor am I forcing anyone to agree with me. Her sexuality isn’t confirmed at all. This is just how I, a lesbian, interpret her and I am open to other points of view. Any lesbiphobia and general LGBTQphobia will be deleted)

Cassie in Mortal Kombat X

To start with, I want to discuss how Cassie was presented in MKX.

I read this post the other day, and it put how I felt about Cassie in MKX versus MK11 very well. Unfortunately, queer/queer-coded characters are often full of stereotypes, and MKX Cassie fit in pretty well with the typical stereotypes lesbians face, i.e her lack of traditional femininity and her cocky attitude. Also, the fact that when Johnny said he was worried when she started dating, Cassie responded with “Afraid I’d come home with someone like you?”, with no gender specified. The fact that she shows no romantic interest in men whilst sporting those stereotypes speaks volumes in my opinion. I believe that in MKX, Cassie was intended to be queer-coded, but NRS backed out in MK11 after fans started to pick up on this.

Of course this doesn’t mean queer characters who fit into the stereotypes are inherently bad. I absolutely love characters who are lesbians and are portrayed similarly to Cassie.

I’m gonna use this opportunity to talk about the link (or lack of) between lesbianism and womanhood:

Due to the severe amount of misogyny and sexism in history, womanhood has almost exclusively revolved around empowering men. Thankfully, this is nowhere near as bad as it was years ago, but it still impacts all AFAB people and transfem people in one way or another

Lesbian is the only sexuality that doesn’t involve men at all. In a society where men are considered ‘superior’ to women, this makes our experiences in the LGBTQ community unique to others. All sexualities experience their own unique problems, discrimination, prejudice etc, and ours tends to revolve around the fact that we are non-men who are not attracted to men. Therefore, having a female/non-binary character who does not show any signs of attraction to men makes that character somewhat relatable to lesbians. Growing up, almost all the female protagonists and supporting characters we see in media end up with a man or are at least attracted to one. We lesbians had barely any characters whom we could look at and see ourselves in.

Obviously I am not saying that the discrimination lesbians face is worse or even comparable to the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m just stating how it affects us in society.

How does this relate to Cassie, you may ask? Well:

Like I mentioned before, MKX Cassie doesn’t show any sign of being attracted to men, unlike a majority of female Mortal Kombat characters (Kitana, Sonya, Jade etc). Obviously this alone did not mean she was inherently a lesbian, but that along with the typical ‘masculine girl’ stereotype gave an implication that she was meant to be queer. Whilst I do not fully identify as female (I do not label my gender but I go by she/they pronouns), I am much more feminine than masculine in the way I present myself, yet I was still able to see aspects of myself in Cassie because of this.

Obviously, not all lesbians are ‘masculine’ and not all straight women are ‘feminine’. It’s just unfortunate that stereotypes play a big part in queer-coding.

tldr; Cassie’s lack of traditional femininity and attraction to male characters, despite being stereotypical, gives us lesbians something to relate to which we don’t often get in media

I think that’s all I have to say for this section, so let’s move on!

How Cassie changed in Mortal Kombat 11

Unlike the huge time skip between MK9 and MKX, the events of MK11 take place soon after those of MKX. However, Cassie’s character changed significantly; she became much more ‘typically feminine’ (long hair, makeup, painted nails etc). Whilst I love both versions of her, it is clear that the reason NRS changed her was partly due to the rumours of her being a lesbian for a number of reasons.

Now obviously if she was intended to be lesbian-coded, this could be a good thing as she would no longer represent as many stereotypes as she did. However, NRS added in a random boyfriend (or ex, we don’t know) who has absolutely no plot relevance, which leads me to believe that the only reason Dylan (or ‘Bob’ according to Sonya) was added into one intro between Cassie and Sonya was to combat the rumours that Cassie was a lesbian. Obviously lesbians can have dated/been attracted to men in the past, that doesn’t mean we’re any less valid, but the fact that Dylan was mentioned makes me think it had something to do with players picking up on Cassie being queer-coded. I’ll touch on this intro later on in the post because I have some things to say about it (not necessarily negative).

There was also the instance of Cassie apparently stealing Jacqui’s prom date, which I honestly cannot see Cassie doing out of genuine spite. Going by my lesbian headcanon, it seems more like an unobtainable, unrealistic crush, which a lot of lesbians experience and hold on to to try and convince themselves that they aren’t lesbians.

Cassie also had barely any interactions with female characters who weren’t her mother or Jacqui (who is technically family to her). If what I’ve theorised so far is correct, this could’ve been done to avoid fans shipping Cassie with other women (shoutout to Frost x Cassie shippers, y’all have an admirable amount of willpower).

tldr; The changes to Cassie in MK11 seem like they had something to do with the rumours that she was a lesbian amongst fans, leaving me to believe she was originally intended to be queer in MKX but NRS backed out of it in MK11.

There’s more to add, but I’m gonna break them up into different sections. Moving on:

The Intro referencing ‘Dylan’

(FYI: This part is more of a headcanon/me projecting rather than actual canonical evidence)

Like I said above, in one of the Cassie versus Sonya fight intros, a character called ‘Dylan’ (AKA ‘Bob’) is mentioned and implied to be either a current or previous romantic interest of Cassie’s.

Dylan has no plot relevance and, like I and others have theorised, exists to combat the rumours of Cassie being a lesbian.

However, what Sonya says about him (“Why learn his name if he’s not sticking around?”) implies that the relationship between him and Cassie is doomed. This line implies that Cassie has a history of relationships that end poorly, to the point where Sonya doesn’t know the name of her daughter’s current love interest. Obviously this could mean that Cassie struggles to keep stable relationships (possibly due to her parents’ divorce when she was young, which I can relate to), but since this is a lesbian headcanon I’m going to take a different interpretation.

A lot of lesbians experience ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, AKA comphet. This is term, originally coined by Adrienne Rich in her essay ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’ is used to describe the idea that in a heteronormative society, lesbians subconsciously devalue their relationships with other non-men, as AFAB people and even transfem people’s existence has majorly revolved around men in the past. Comphet comes in many forms and can feel like expecting yourself to date a man to feel worthy, forcing yourself to have crushes on men and many other ways that I cannot list on here because we’d be here all day.

Cassie being unable to keep stable relationships with men could be seen as comphet; dating men but not actually feeling a proper connection to them, leading to the relationship ending in disaster (another example being Cassie stealing Jacqui’s prom date). Considering NRS seems to have no problem confirming characters as bi, I’m sure that if Cassie had dated women in the past they would confirm that, which leads me to believe that all Cassie’s past relationships have been with men.

Again, this could just be me projecting onto her, but I find a lot of comfort in headcanoning Cassie to have comphet. It makes sense to me.

I was actually talking about this with my friend the other day and we came up with some funny hypothetical dialogue:

Cassie: “No woman really has any connection to the guys they date right? Like it’s all just for show, right you guys?”

The rest of the Kombat Kids: “…Um…”

*Takeda eyes Jacqui, who is profusely shaking her head to assure him that that is not, in fact, how most women feel*

tldr; Cassie’s relationship with Dylan was comphet because I experience comphet and I said so (/hj)

“But Mortal Kombat has confirmed Kung Jin, Mileena and Tanya to be LGBTQ+, why would they avoid doing the same with Cassie?”

This is a fair point: if there are confirmed gay and bisexual characters in MK, why would they not confirm a character to be a lesbian? Well…

As I previously stated, lesbianism is the only orientation that men cannot be involved in at all. In a society where men have power over non-men, lesbians are often excluded even by our own community (speaking from experience).

Sapphic relationships are often idealised and not seen as ‘proper’ relationships. I have seen many lesbians + other sapphic people who go through awful breakups be shocked because of how they’re always made out to be ‘perfect’. This is deeply rooted in misogyny, as AFAB people have always been seen as ‘dainty and fragile’ and in need of a man to complete them. This deeply affects transfem sapphics, too.

Considering Mortal Kombat is a series of fighting games, confirming a character to be a lesbian could make the character seem inferior to the rest of the fighters due to the fact that they wouldn’t need a man to ‘complete’ them. This is probably why NRS backed out of Cassie’s queer-coding after MKX; if they continued with it, people would expect her to end up in an idealised sapphic relationship, which could change how players, especially cishet men, view her and make her much less popular amongst fans.

Whilst Tanya and Mileena are confirmed to be WLW, they’re both bisexual. I’m so happy this series has really good bi representation, but unfortunately a lot of media is afraid to include lesbians due to backlash from certain cishet men who fetishise us and/or get unnecessarily angry when their favourite media includes lesbian characters.

Similarly, Kung Jin is confirmed to be gay. I think he is one of the best gay characters I’ve seen in media, because it’s not his whole character development; he just happens to be gay and I think that kind of representation is something we need more of for ALL members of the LGBTQ+ community. However games like Mortal Kombat tend to have a male-dominated fanbase, and many will see themselves in certain characters. I’ve seen many cisgender straight (usually homophobic) adult men treat female characters like objects (doesn’t help that they’re often hypersexualised, especially women of colour) and get extremely defensive if someone sees a female character as queer. Again, this could be why NRS changed Cassie in MK11; they could lose a lot of their male audience if those men could no longer ‘ship’ themselves with a confirmed lesbian, though this wouldn’t stop them fetishising her.

Speaking of Kung Jin, I love how he and Cassie are frienemies. They give off gay/lesbian hostility energy and I love it.

tldr; Because of misogyny, lesbians are fetishised, slandered and not seen as valid by straight men who want to gatekeep female characters, which is why lesbian rep is hard to find because companies want to keep their male audience. Therefore, it’s easier for them to make a sapphic character bi/pan/etc rather than a lesbian.

Other Things That Aren’t Totally Canon/Relevant but I Think Should Be Mentioned Anyways

This section is just gonna be various things that I think are amusing and will use to back up my headcanon.

First up, we got this MK11 Cassie skin:

Apologies for the atrocious quality, but this skin reminded me of the colours of the lesbian flag so I colour-picked them. This is proof that she’s a lesbian /j (Ik the colours are kinda off but I promise this is is meant to look like the sunset flag and not the lipstick flag. Pls do not use the lipstick flag, it’s transphobic)

Secondly, this line during one of Cassie’s intros with Sheeva (PS I am absolutely not implying that I ship them, I’m just pointing out this line and nothing more):

I know this is meant to be a pun, but it makes me cackle so much. ‘Girl Crush’ yes totally straight /s

I’ve reached the image limit unfortunately, but her and Frost’s fight in the MKX comics was insanely homoerotic, too.

I think that’s it so far, but I may add to this section in the future.

Conclusion

Phew, that was a LOT,,, Once again this is just for fun and I’m open to all other interpretations of Cassie and her character. I just like to analyse and relate myself to my favourite characters, lol.

I do hope that one day lesbian characters are more common in media like MK, but we still have a lot of work to do in order to make that happen.

Thank you so much for reading if you made it this far! <3

#mortal kombat #cassie cage #number 1 lesbian cassie theorist strikes again #lesbian #lgbtq #mortal kombat 11 #mortal kombat x #character analysis #lesbian coding #izzie’s rambles #sonya blade

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meridaism · 2 years

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I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a difference between lesbian-coding and a character that’s just a lesbian. Lesbian coding is when a character is sub-textually written as a lesbian but it’s not explicitly stated. Merida is explicitly written as a lesbian; Brenda Chapman stated that she created Merida in order to break that mold of the stereotypical princess whom always needed a prince or romance [in relation to men] as a means to be complete and whole. She was literally created with the intent to seperate men from her identity and her sexuality altogether.

Her creator left the implications of love for Merida in the future ambiguous, explicitly never specifying the male gender when talking about how she wanted Merida to find love of her own choosing and to not be forced into something she didn't want to do; Merida explicitly didn't specify the male gender either when she said “My mother believes that we should be free to write our own stories, follow our hearts, and find love in our own time” in Brave.

With the addition of Merida having a canon nonbinary love interest in her canon sequel to Brave, Bravely, confirming her to be nblw, and with the addition of her homoromantic and homoerotic undertones throughout the book towards her best friend Leezie and her playlist created by Disney containing songs where she sings from her heart including love songs exclusively towards women and female-aligned people, it's really hard to believe that Merida is a “subtextual” lesbian.

Is Merida explicitly saying outright that she's a lesbian? No, but she's explicitly opposing and defying heterosexuality and heterosexual practices such as marriage in her universe, explicitly disinterested in romantic and/or physical attraction towards men altogether. She explicitly showcases heavy sapphic undertones towards her gal pal Leezie. She explicitly expresses her love for her nonbinary lover, explicitly disregarding the male human body in which he is inhabiting altogether, stating that she doesn't care about what physical form he takes because she cares for who he is internally: the genderless, air-like being merely inhabiting human bodies. She is showing her lesbianism, not telling it.

Merida isn't lesbian-coded, she's just a closeted lesbian character (+ this isn't meant to hate on anyone calling her lesbian-coded, because yes Disney has never outright stated her sexuality [because they're raging homophobes] BUT they still very much own every piece of media that has all of the canon confirmation of her being a lesbian so it is still canon regardless of whether or not they state anything.)

A lesbian character shouldn't have to jump up, wave up and down at the viewers and yell “I'M A LESBIAN!!” for you to respect them and the lesbian community in which said character represents.

#merida #brave (2012)#bravely (2022)#maggie stiefvater #disney #pixar #canon lesbian merida #canon lesbian character #canon lesbian #lgbtq representation #lgbtq characters #lesbian princess #disney lesbian #lesbian #lesbianism #lesbian pride #princess merida #lesbian coding #f/m merida shippers and m//rricup shippers don't touch this post leave her alone she's a lesbian

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