#and this does not apply to people who speak negatively about their oppressors or abusers

[foreverfalling21]

I truly just do not understand what it takes to hate a whole group of people for made up reasons. Like my brain cannot comprehend the vitriol and maliciousness that people hold for other people who are *checks notes* not at all that different from you. How do you become a person who can hate an unknown human being simply because they practice a different religion or because they choose to live their own life the way they want? How do you become someone who is so angry and upset and not at all concerned with the goings on of your own life that you can just get up on stage/write a book/sing a song/hold a rally specifically to punch down on people who don't perfectly match with your own ideals and beliefs?

Not only are they so preoccupied with these perceived threats, but they're lazy about it! They don't read articles or do their own research or idk TALK to people who may be different from them. They are spoonfed bullshit lies by people in the very positions that they SAY they are critical of and yet just believe shit without any critical thought process happening.

I feel like every time I go anywhere, be it online or irl, I am plagued by the news that yet another person opened their unkind, uneducated mouth and spewed such utter horrible, vile things about people that they don't even know! And I'm sick of it! I thought we all learned the Golden Rule! If you don't have anything nice to say? Don't say anything at all.

[tenderfoot-philosopher]

Anger does not help when you are trying to do morally good things

I´ve been told that I´m an idealist, which is probably true, and I always seek for the most “moral” behaviour when it comes to problems of all sorts. I just want peace, justice, love, and harmony. Nevertheless, I often don´t follow my own rules because my temper takes over and I become angry at others. And that happens often. Anger is practically the opposite of what my ideal is. Showing anger doesn´t solve problems and doesn´t make other people question their opinions. Yet I just don´t have the patience to always be nice when people say stuff that I fundamentally don´t agree with, and that´s an enormous amount of stuff. And when I feel angry, I don´t doubt my emotions because in my bubble of morals I´m on the right side. From an outside perspective, I know I´m not in reality on the “right” side because nobody can ever be and if someone could, it wouldn´t be me. But I know that what I believe in could solve many issues which is why I still follow my principles. So, I persist and justify my anger. One of the principles that I want to follow, in an ideal state of mind, is pacifism. Pacifism means not using violence in any sort of way. When you look deeply into it, people behave violently daily: Wasting, swearing, competition, and anger. And violence ultimately does harm, as Gandhi said:

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

The most I´ve learned about how to apply Gandhi´s philosophy was from a book that was written by one of his grandchildren, Arun Gandhi, Legacy of Love. It´s about how Gandhi taught him how to transform the bad into the good, having self-control over his anger. The book opened my eyes to what I´m doing wrong. While feeling anger is natural and can´t be banned, showing my anger to others doesn´t create peace. My dilemma is that I often don´t know how to point at issues peacefully. I´m scared that if I don´t get angry, wouldn´t do anything really and my disagreement would slowly fade into the background. After all, I believe that anger is always better than nothing. There are two quotes from Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate said that guide me:

“Indifference […] is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative.” (The Perils of Indifference)

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Night)

I don´t want to be one of those that stand there and do nothing. Surely what Elie Wiesel was talking about was a much more massive problem that what I deal with daily, because he was talking about the holocaust. Yet the principle remains the same. I don´t want to be placed on the same moral level as those who closed their eyes when horrible things were happening. So according to Wiesel being angry is better than indifference when it results in something good. Take the suffragettes, for example. I don´t think women would have been allowed to vote for a long time if they hadn´t been so angry. Their violence was directed at objects. And they got what they wanted eventually. Nobody judges them for fighting for women´s rights. If I follow that philosophy, anger isn´t always unhelpful. But is my anger creative? I´d never dream of destroying window fronts or setting cars on fire to get what I want. I´d never scream insult at a police officer. That´s just not my style. My anger only results in what I say. Which brings me to right speech, one of the moral disciplines of the eightfold path in Buddhism. Right speech doesn´t only mean to say things that are correct. Many people believe that hateful words aren´t as bad as violent action (like me). But violent words, thoughts, and actions arise together and support each other. What I say is only criticism and judgement that I express in a loud voice and with sarcastic comments, while shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I don´t tell lies, I don´t use abusive language or gossip, but the way that I speak still creates disharmony and most definitely doesn´t reduce anger or resolve tensions. So, I can´t even justify my anger by saying it is creative. It seems to me that my anger is completely useless. On top of that, it´s negative and disingenuous. And I´ve observed that most people´s anger is like mine, even when they are in reality trying to fight for something good. We just don´t realize it. I´ve met only a few people in my life that weren´t controlled by their emotions like that when it came to things that deeply mattered to them. But they are the kind of people that influenced the way I think and act the most. So, we can at least try to become more like them. And maybe we´ll finally be able to change something.

[cho-sekiei]

The Mom-friend trope in fan fiction and why it is problematic (an essay by me)

@eloarei asked:

So I saw that post about Ignis and the mom-friend trope, and I feel like I get the gist of what you're saying, but I guess I wanted to ask if that means you actively dislike it when people refer to him as the mom-friend? Or perhaps you just dislike that trope? Or maybe you just don't like tropes at all? Personally, I love tropes (esp. mom/dad-friend) probably more than is reasonable, as long people don't reduce good characters to JUST those tropes. (Same as any label; we are more than a word.)

Okay… let me try to organise a bit what I have to say because there are several things here. Also I’m going to take FFXV and Ignis as an example here, but this can be applied to lots of different fandoms where a caring male character exists (for example, Hakkai in Saiyuki would be the same, Shiro in Voltron, Sugawara in Haikyuu, take your pick).

The first problem is language related, the name of the trope itself. Not because of the words themselves but because of what they reflect. Do I have a problem with Ignis being referred to as the ‘mom-friend’? Yes, I do. I’m going to explain why, but, in short, this trope glorifies the existence of damaging gender-roles and I think it’s important to be aware of it and recognise it. I should point out here that while I have a problem with the existence of the trope, this is not an attack on all the stories that use it. They are too varied and numerous for me to talk about them as a whole. So not all of what I say here applies to all stories using the trope.

I know it’s an accepted fandom trope and people don’t mean anything bad by it, but it’s interesting to analyse why we say the things we say and to question whether we should at all. Words have power. They are the reflections of our beliefs and attitudes, they have implications and hidden meanings. But they're not innocuous, they can perpetuate hurtful stereotypes and systems of oppression which is why it's important to recognise the implications behind the words we speak and write. The fact that as soon as a male character is empathic and caring he becomes automatically referred to as having feminine traits or attributes (the mom) is a reflection of the rampant and toxic masculinity that exists in modern patriarchal society. Suddenly, he doesn’t fit with the typical image of a male anymore, he has to be the kind-of-feminine-friend. It’s the same kind of attitude that prevents men from recognising and expressing their emotions, the eternal ‘boys don’t cry’ thing, which is unhealthy and damaging. It’s one of the reasons men are so much more likely to be successful when they attempt suicide, because they are raised in a way that forbids them from expressing / dealing with their feelings without feeling weak and questioning their own worth. It also leads to violence against others as an alternative reaction / outlet as well. And it feeds homophobia.

The second problem is that in a lot of cases - not all - identifying the character with that trope will automatically give them attitudes they might not have at all in canon. The mom-friend often becomes nagging and annoying, the dad-friend is cool and fun. Again, what is reflected here is internalised misogyny (even from female writers… and I’m not saying this as a criticism. I still catch myself every day doing or thinking things that are stupidly misogynistic, because our society raises us to believe a lot of stupid things about women’s character or abilities. It takes a lot of self-awareness and introspection over a long period of time to recognise them). As you say, using a trope doesn’t mean you are going to fall into all the pitfalls that come with it but it’s a dangerous slope since some negative attitudes might be so engrained within the trope that they might seem natural and get integrated in your writing without you even realising it. It’s why we refer to ‘internalised misogyny,’ because it’s all but obvious or conscious.

As a brief tangent (I’m not going to go into it too much because I’ve promised @terra-bunny to write a whole post on the topic of toxic relationships in fandom), using the mom/dad trope automatically creates a situation of power imbalance between the characters with some being in charge and some being infantilised with part of their agency and autonomy being taken from them (again that’s coming from the kind of vocabulary that is being used). Of course, the extent of it will vary with the individual story, some will be a lot more extreme than others in their portrayal of the trope. However, in many cases, it doesn’t stop the two types of characters from being shipped together and it’s often presented as a cute and healthy relationship. I’m afraid it’s not. This is not a case where power exchange has been negotiated and ways out agreed upon as in a healthy D/s relationship. It’s not a relationship where the characters are on equal footing. It’s manipulative and a dangerous glorification of abuse, grooming and pedophilia. What matters here is the power balance between the characters rather than their age. If this sounds harsh, I mean for it to be. Our modern societies are way too comfortable with the romanticisation of abuse and exploitation of vulnerable individuals. Creative content does not get a pass on those issues because it's dealing with fictional characters.

Does that mean you can’t write about it? Of course, not. Writing is awesome because you can write whatever you want if it fits your story. What you shouldn’t do is pretend it’s a healthy model to follow. If you write about those topics, then you should be aware and explore the problems that they raise and how those can be resolved (i.e. by restoring / creating a healthy balance of power) or not; and if they cannot be resolved then you should definitely question whether that relationship should continue. Not doing so is passively condoning it as okay. As Desmond Tutu would say 'if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' Now I should point out here that the smart way of addressing problematic situations is through a clever plot rather than a moralising author's rant.

You can see the tendency of glorifying that kind of unbalanced relationships in fan art as well, with the physical size difference between the characters being over-emphasised, the less powerful character being more slender and given a more youthful face than canon, etc. I have been made very uncomfortable recently by some of the Gladio x Prompto fan art on my dashboard. Without knowing the characters and their age, it looked like pedophilia. It felt very wrong and it is a problem. I don’t think we can pretend it’s not just because it’s part of the fandom. Fandom can be problematic and we should speak up about it.

Now, obviously, I know some people are going to wonder why I get so worked-up about those things. After all, we’re talking fan works, as part of a fictional universe. It’s entertainment, it’s fun, why would I drag all those issues into it? And my answer is because the stories we tell matter. They reflect what we believe in and they might also send some messages to our readers - some of whom might be in vulnerable situations - that might either reinforce their acceptance of or lead them to question problematic attitudes. Being aware ourselves when we write of why we would portray a character or a situation a certain way is the first step towards questioning whether we should. One story won’t change the world, but words have power. The other reason is that you can learn a lot about yourself by looking at what you write and how you write it. Who doesn’t want a good journey of self-discovery? :) And this might end up changing how we act and the problems we recognise in real life as well.

Parenthesis about tropes in general: Not all are problematic. And they’re often part of the fandom life (coffee shop or flower shop AUs for example). We’ve all read them, we all love them. Tropes that give characters stereotypical behaviour (mom-friend), I have more problem with because they tend to lead to paper-fine, somewhat OOC, portrayals of complex characters. But obviously, that depends on the individual writer.

I guess my view on non-damaging tropes depends mostly of what a writer is trying to do. If it’s filling a fandom need, have fun with a stereotypical story, then most of the time they’re fine. Fandoms are interesting because no-one would read twenty novels about people working in a coffee shop… but then we’ve all probably read that many fanfics about it - if not more. I also think tropes are useful to help inexperienced / beginner writers get started. From that point of view, they can be very beneficial.

Now, if you’re trying to write a more nuanced and original story, tropes can actually be dangerous. They will simplify the characters and the plot, they might make them caricatural, less alive and credible. They might rob you of your own creativity. You can use tropes as a tool to get started, but for a more ambitious piece of work, it’s good to stop and think about how you can subvert or move beyond the scope of the tropes, and whether problematic situations in the story should be addressed at some point (as previously mentioned, I’m not talking of doing this in a moralistic way, more in the plot itself).

@eloarei asked:

Anyway, sorry for rambling in your inbox so incoherently. It's hard to explain my feelings about this in so few words. But to get to the honest point of the matter: I'm actually writing a fic that sorta revolves around Ignis as the "mom" type (not /exactly/, but you know, that's why I use quotes), and I'd hate to think that someone I admire (you) would find it distasteful. So if it's something you have strong feelings about, I'm happy to take advice on how not to be tropey about it, at least.

First, let me blush like mad. 😳 ‘Admire me?’ 😳 Why would you do that? 😳 I’m honestly a badly put together mess. Nothing to admire here. 😝 It’s hard for me to tell you if I’d find it problematic without reading it. I just want to emphasise here that I have no problem with Ignis being a caring (sometimes a bit overbearing) character. That’s canon, that’s who he is. The problem is not that Ignis is caring, it’s how it is often portrayed. I often write Ignis telling others what to do because he’s a bossy jerk who thinks he knows better (and he often does) and he cares deeply about his friends and tries to stop them from getting into trouble. I guess the question to ask is whether the way you write him falls into any of the pitfalls I’ve described above (does he get feminised or appear weak for being caring? does he come across as more nagging and annoying than in canon? does he respect other characters’ agency and autonomy or not? and if not, is it acknowledged as problematic at some point in the story? etc.). You could even push this further and subvert the mom-friend trope by engaging with the character’s experience of his own identity and how a toxic vision of masculinity might hurt him and make him feel vulnerable even as he tries to come to grips with his caring nature. But obviously, that’s a much more engaged and deeper kind of story.

I hope this makes what I meant a bit clearer. I probably think about that kind of thing too much, but I can’t rightly ignore it either. Also stop saying ‘sorry’, you have no idea how much I love talking about all that stuff. ^ ^’’’ If you want me to expand on anything, let me know. ;)