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sillyguyhotline · 4 years ago

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yttd and themes of parental failure; how the adults in our life disappoint us

alternate title: how everyone in your turn to die has mommy issues, daddy issues, or both

I’m not the first person to talk about this, nor will I be the last, but there are a lot of themes sprinkled throughout YTTD’s story and one of the themes that isn’t talked about much is the theme of how parents (or more broadly, adults) tend to fail us. Throughout the game, we see children and adults being placed in the same deadly situation, and are disappointed time and time again as the adults prioritize their lives over those of their children... often perpetuating the cycles of abuse that they themselves have suffered. I don’t think this theme encompasses the whole story by any means, but I do think that, in some parts, YTTD attempts to tell a story of irresponsible adult figures, failing as parents, and the ways cycles of abuse are perpetuated.

I think it’s best to start with Sara, the main character and the most visible victim of the adults’ failings in the death game. Despite being a teenager, she’s elevated to a position of leadership partially by circumstance and partially by the machinations of others. I think it’s pretty clear that her being a leader is more crucial to the story than it initially seems to be, but for now it’s evident that she, as a child, has been deemed stronger than the many adults beside her in the game and has thus been made a leader. It’s acknowledged that she is the person who makes the majority of the crucial decisions, she is the person the others look to in times of turmoil, and she’s tasked with shouldering many of the heavy burdens of the group’s failures. This certainly doesn’t come without consequences; much of Sara’s grief comes not just from Joe’s death, but from regret over the countless people she’s failed to protect and the obligation she feels to prioritize their lives over her own. While many of the adult characters (Q-taro, Keiji, Shin, Alice) have the opportunity to sit back and make more selfish decisions for their own survival, Sara never has that liberty because she’s been thrust into a role where the group’s wellbeing is worth more than hers and every group failure is felt by her more than anyone else. This is most evident in the aftermath of the Kanna/Shin decision, specifically in the Kanna Dies route; Sara is the one who is tortured and meant to feel the most pain for Kanna’s death because she, as the leader, felt obligated to take the decision into her own hands... and nobody stopped her. From Russian Roulette (where Kai, the least underhanded out of all of Sara’s adult protectors, tried to stop her from becoming a leader) to Chapter 2′s Main Game, the effects of Sara’s leadership are heavy. She’s still a child who’s been given power, and the other adults in the game choose to either profit from or resent this power instead of challenging the fact that a child has been entrusted with it.

This is where Kanna comes in, another child who’s been failed by the adults in the game. When she entered, she’d lost her most important mentor figure (her sister) and as a result was left incredibly vulnerable. At first, a few of the characters tried to help her (Nao and Reko), but ultimately she was left vulnerable for too long and Shin used that vulnerability to coerce her into going along with his plans, putting her life in jeopardy by claiming she had the Sage. It’s likely that Shin reminded her of Kugie, which motivated her to stick by his side, but there’s no doubt that his manipulation influenced her to continue supporting him throughout chapter 2. Kanna is another character who felt obligated to provide protection and support for adults who didn’t provide all that much of it, which is made evident as she continues to insist he’s a good person throughout ch2 and, of course, demands that everyone vote for her to die in the main game because she thinks Shin is not only good but much more useful than she is. She, like Sara, continues to prioritize the well-being of the group over her own as a result of the position she was forced into and of the failure of the adults around her to do anything about it.

This aspect of Kanna’s character ties into another point I want to make, about cycles of abuse and protection. I believe that Shin is one of the biggest in-game examples of how abuse victims can be pushed to perpetuate those cycles upon the people they’re supposed to love and care for. Shin definitely cared for Kanna; he wrote the message in the phone to boost her spirits and fought for her to survive even knowing that if she got the Sacrifice she wouldn’t pick him to escape with. However, a lot of his dynamic with her comes as a result of the abuse he suffered under Sou Hiyori, and this abuse is part of why Kanna perceives herself to be worthless. He takes out his own anger at himself and his weakness by constantly belittling Kanna, calling her weak and useless to the group (eventually doing this because he thinks it will help her escape), and the constant reinforcement of this mindset is what leads to her self loathing and, in some cases, eventual self sacrifice. Not only does Shin fail to protect Kanna from death as a parental figure, he fails to prevent his own patterns of abuse from affecting her. This is a classic example of how abuse can become generational.

I want to cycle back to the topic of Sara, now, and bring Keiji into the mix, because I believe that Keiji is one of the biggest and also most fascinating examples of the failures of adults- primarily because he is simultaneously the child being failed and the adult who is failing. Keiji started out as an idealistic child with high hopes for his own future and strong beliefs in the police force, but he ended up killing his mentor and destroying his own faith in the goodness of the police. I also find it intriguing that the person he kills is one of the most solid parental figures in the game; Mr. Policeman cares for his child a lot and shows great care for children who aren’t even biologically related to him (such as Keiji). He likely left the police force for the sake of his child as well as to escape corruption. When Keiji kills him, he is not only killing the idealistic dream that his child self once harbored, but he is killing the biggest human embodiment of that dream in his life. Fittingly, then, Keiji goes on to turn into the opposite of what his younger self would have wanted to be. He wanted to be a protector, but in the Death Game we see him flirting with the child he’s protecting, consistently lying to and deceiving her for his own gain, pushing her into being a leader because it benefits him, and going behind her back to help himself survive (such as performing the card trade with Q-taro when it’s clear that Sara had the Sacrifice and likely would have died because of it). At the surface, Keiji is a betrayal of the mentor Sara needed in her life, but when you look beyond that, he’s a betrayal of the adult figure who guided him and the adult figure his child self wanted to be.

There’s also Q-taro, one of the more blatant examples of an adult who valued his own survival over those of the children in the game. His selfishness, however, wasn’t concealed with concern for the children, like Shin’s and Keiji’s were. He indirectly participated in thrusting Sara into a leadership position, and time and time again attempted to get the children (specifically Gin) killed because he thought it would benefit either him or the group. His selfishness is not as much of a betrayal as it is a sad reinforcement of the idea that adults in this game can’t be trusted to protect the children. Even as he campaigns for Gin and Kanna’s deaths, even as he waits until the last minute to press the button, he still looks to Sara for guidance and trusts her as a leader. To make things even worse, the child whom he’s targeting has already been disillusioned to how pathetic adults can be; Gin’s father abuses alcohol, and as Gin establishes from the beginning, he’s already lost his trust in the reliability of adults. And, in a sad way, Gin ends up being proven right; his first father figure in the game dies immediately, and his second either dies or is quickly revealed to have been tasked with killing him. Unreliable adults in awful circumstances.

Then you have Gashu, one of the only actual parents in this game, whose failures are felt in not one, but two children. As I stated before, while talking about Sara, Kai was one of the only people who made a move to stop Sara from being established as the group’s leader in Russian Roulette. While I believe that this is mostly because he knew of the Hades Incident and wanted to stop it from being replicated, I also have to wonder if it was because he knew what it was like, as a child, to be forced into a terrible position (as Gashu had high expectations of him as an assassin) and didn’t want the child he’d grown affectionate towards to be forced to undergo the same thing. Whatever his motives were, Kai was an example of the pain neglectful parents can bring, and he provides a stark contrast to Ranger, who wasn’t yet aware of Gashu’s cruelty when we met him. We watched in real time as Ranger realized that he wasn’t actually all that loved or valued; he was just created to serve a purpose, and when he stepped out of line he quickly lost his value. Just like how Kai served the purpose of being an assassin, and, potentially, how Sara serves the purpose of being the leader. Gashu isn’t just a neglectful parent, he’s outright malicious.

I’d like to speculate, then, about how the story is going to take the path of neglectful adults as it goes forward. I already think that we can see where it’s going to go with Sara, as 3-1a has clearly showcased the effects of her guilt and, depending on which route you take, has either established that she’s grown comfortable with her position as leader or is crumbling under the pressure of her grief. However, going back to the theme of parents... it must be noted that almost none of the characters have been confirmed to have 2 biological parents. They either come from an orphanage or are missing a parent... and the parent they’re missing is typically the father. I have to wonder if this consistent theme of failed parenting is going to tie into Gashu’s reminder to “question your upbringing,” and if the shitty adults are going to make a more literal appearance.

#holy FUCK this was long #if you read this entire thing idk whether to thank you or apologize #also this was so poorly written im so sorry lol #yttd meta #your turn to die #yttd #kimi ga shine #sara chidouin #shin tsukimi #kanna kizuchi #keiji shinogi #depressobean rambles #my writing

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xxsaints4girlsxx · 2 years ago

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ok so i've been thinking about gerard's female archetype outfits and i have gone full charliewithboardofredstring.jpg. basically i think this is about recontextualizing and questioning past mcr lore, abandoning the role of hero, and blurring the line between villain and victim, powerful and marginalized.

the cheerleader is (almost) at the top of the high school hierarchy (still below the football players). she's the mean girl, the bully. so of course mcr, as official representatives of the Weird Kids, loved to use cheerleaders as ironic imagery - especially cheerleaders covered in blood. the cheerleader is always the first girl, the bitch who had it coming. she will always be the whore etc etc

the nurse plays a supporting role to the doctor. she cares for her patients. she does the work the doctor doesn't want to do. her work is unglamorous and intimate and gross. and the nature of her job is exactly why she's able to so easily abuse patients if she so chooses. that's what's so scary about the horror movie nurse, a trope mcr obviously made frequent use of - her job is to take care of you, but that means you need her, and that means making yourself vulnerable.

the teacher, just like the nurse, was, for a long time, one of the few socially acceptable jobs for middle-class women. it's difficult and underpaid. but to the kids mcr was always for, teachers represent power and the enforcement of the status quo. the teacher, like the nurse, is in a position to abuse her power over the very people she essentially works for.

jackie was the widow of a martyr. gerard always loved to play the martyr, even literally dressing up as jfk. all the heroes in mcr's lore die. but it's easy to be a martyr. it makes a great story. assassinated political figures become much less controversial. the catholic church killed joan and then sainted her. and when the tortured artist dies at 27, it's a perfect, neat little tragedy and everybody mourns him. he gets to die a saint. but the people he leaves behind just... have to keep going. they don't get to be saints, but their work, like that of the nurse, still needs to be done.

the manson girl is the most obvious example of the villain/victim dichotomy. obviously, they were the victims of a cult leader, but at the same time, they committed horrible acts of violence at his direction. a rockstar is a lot like a cult leader, and the press during the height of mcr's fame basically called them actual cult leaders. gerard was always conflicted about this - "give me a better cause to lead". but that line is shortly followed by "give me a reason to believe", which sounds more like the words of a follower. by taking on the image of a manson girl, it's like gerard is saying they are not the leader of the "cult" of mcr, but just another victim.

in dressing as the women who once played supporting roles in the band's lore, gerard rejects the role of hero, martyr, rockstar, cult leader. they are saying, the character i played was never real, and now he's dead. and the nurses are cleaning up the mess he left, and his followers are dealing with the consequences, and his weary widow marches on. you don't get your convenient tragedy, you get to pick up the pieces and carry on. get up, coward.

#this is so long and probably incoherent <3 but i just drank a monster and rn i feel like i've connected so many fuckign dots

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mybg3notebook · 4 years ago

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Loving your analyses of Astarion's behaviour and character so far! It has really reaffirmed in my eyes just how much of a bastard he really is. (I say that fondly, of course.) Do you have any thoughts on why the general reaction on tumblr has leaned so much towards woobifying him? After looking at his actual (explicit and implicit) morals in game it seems quite odd that some people are reading him as an edgy soft boi who just needs a hug from the right person to fix him.

Hello!

Thank you very much! I really enjoy seeing chars in a deep way. It makes me change my opinion on them, sometimes. That's why I like to do these analysis, even though it's a lot of work for a person who doesn't speak English as a native.

Lol, please, I won't be offended. Astarion is a bastard in the whole sense of the word, lol.

However, I find Astarion an interesting evil (evil neutral imo) char to explore the narration of “abuser who found a greater abuser”, with all the topics I talked about in those posts. I would feel a bit disappointed if Larian suddenly changes him into a man who always had a gold heart (because for that, you need to give hints, even in EA, and none of that has been seen so far).

An example of how this is done is with Shadowheart, she is evil and she supports a lot of cruelty that Astarion does too, but we got meta-knowledge (and not so much meta when we see her heavily drunk after killing the tieflings) that gives us enough reasons to believe she has some heart in her, despite Shar and her teachings. I do not support the idea of “she is a softie”, because she is not, but she doesn't have the same level of cruelty nor revels in murder so much as Astarion does. They represent different degrees of evilness. What plays in her favour is her face, which gives the idea of more softness than she truly has; the same happens with Astarion. Lae'Zel is less cruel than Astarion in general, with more logical reasons to be so because her brainwashed culture made her to be more pragmatic than a taster of cruelty, and yet, she receives a lot of more hate in the fandom... and it is clear to me why: she is not “beautiful” in the traditional white euro-centric standard sense.

And this is my point to answer your question (remember all this is personal opinion): I think there are many reasons why people woobify Astarion (not only in tumblr, but also in Reddit or in Larian Forums, it's a big part of the EA fandom).

First and foremost, I believe it's his appearance. If he were a bugbear or a goblin, few in this fandom would give a thought about his abuse, his pain, Cazador, etc. They would focus on his “bastard” side and leave it at that (again, Lae'Zel has this treatment). I want to make clear that I'm not questioning people's taste, everyone can like whatever they want to. I'm saying that, for me, there it proof enough to sustain this idea that Astarion is woobified because he is beautiful: when you read that a lot of people in this fandom never had an interest in Larian's previous games, or isometric rpgs, or even turn-based combat games (there are some people who are giving feedback against the game being a turned-based combat one! It's the nonsense because it's basically Larian's style), but they bought bg3 because they saw Astarion, even though they knew nothing about him.... All this, clearly, shows to me that a lot of people approached this game for only one char, for only his design (a big amount of them say it explicitly), and it is not far-fetched to know that people justify more easily beautiful villains than ugly ones. We can explore a lot of examples of this in many fandoms. People can love villains because they have real complex reasons to be so (like Loghain in DAO), but they also can like whimsical villains just because they are “hot”. I feel this is Astarion's case, he is a “beautiful villain” who apparently has always been evil. His reasons for his whimsical evilness is more like “it's always been in his nature”. Unless the family part has a different role in his backstory (mirror option) and it's not a mere line for a player to play a “good aligned” Astarion when picked as Origin. I don't like to read much about it in that scene because the game still doesn't have companion Tags; those options in the mirror can be there just for the player to pick, flavoured with each origin, but not necessarily the three of them are canon. This will be seen once we have the companion tags activated as it happened in DOS2.

What we can say for sure is that Larian knew what they were doing when they picked Astarion's design; they choose a dangerous white guy with white hair and evil alignment: an archetype that catches a lot of people in many fandoms.

Part of his woobyfication process has a deep root there, in my opinion. Again, if he were a bugbear, a goblin, a githyanki, a monster-humanoid... we would not have 90% of the EA fandom collapsed with his image, or Larian focused on him to the point that after 4 patches he had new scenes, lines, corrections, and development, while Wyll is still there, sitting in the bench of “the less developed chars” (with around 2k less lines than the rest of the chars, and his personal quest bugged since the first day). Yes, I don't like the preference on one single companion when I am seeing the “future Beast” (from DOS2) in Wyll.

Second, he is a vampire. Vampires are a great element in any fantasy narrative. You know you will have a lot of fans behind a vampire char. Not by chance Vampire The Masquerade is one, if not the most important product of White Wolf, which keeps still giving them a lot of profit despite being decades old. Vampires are always a good element of personal horror, of lack of control of your own body, and also an allegory of abuse, power, and rape. This concept of “being a monster without control” that they embody helps a bit more for the woobification.

Third, people tend to mix a lot headcanon with what a character gives us as canon. We can have a long useless discussion about which is more worthy: canon or headcanon, or about why one should or should not respect canon, but putting all that discussion aside, and considering the previous two points, I see that a small part of his woobyfication comes from the fact that people love denial and self-projection instead of analysing of what they are given (and let's be honest, we know in tumblr, reddit and others social networks, people lack of reading comprehension skills, which makes analysis all about self projection without a real effort in understanding the character's perspective. It's all about the player unilateral perspective. How can you analyse a char you didn’t play with or explored in all its paths? ).

So if their beautiful character is behaving in a way they don't want to, they start considering him “random” (I read this so much that confuses me, because Astarion has clear patterns for everyone who wants to see them, like the rest of the companions. He is not random, he follows pretty well all what I listed here, that list helps you to predict what he will disapprove or approve) so they end up filling this apparent “randomness” with headcanons and self-projections. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise headcanons, I love them, I have a lot of them and create with them. But I also like honest analysis and separate what I want from what I get from a company (to correctly give them feedback, otherwise I will be giving them my headcanons).

If you don't want an aspect of a given char, and you want to deny it, it's perfectly fine. Do it, it's your entertainment, but be honest with the fandom about it, acknowledge this is a personal denial you enjoy. And mainly, don't use headcanons and self-projections to attack the rest of the chars you don't like in their own tags. We know how aggressive some people in this fandom are, and it's a bit frustrating to see aggression without the slightest effort in understanding the character they hate.

There is also something sad to say, related to self-projection, that contributes to Astarion's woobyfication too: a lot of players are survivors of abuse who connect with him from trauma, and I can understand if denying his past is a way to help them to release any kind of pain or need for vengeance against their abusers. It's a natural and totally understandable projection. The woobyfication, then, ends up in an intense self-projection where they give to the char something that they needed because their own trauma.

This is why I would like Larian to give us other survivor chars that people can project onto, whose stories are really about survivors of abuse who were not evil in the beginning. Because I feel a lot of people approached Astarion as a narration of a “victim who will become a victimiser” or as a “bad behaved victim”, instead of what I think it's shown: an abuser who found a greater abuser (and his story is about punishment of the abuser and the concept of justice in a world which has none), so trauma survivors will end up with disappointment if they think Astarion is something similar to the representation of what they experienced. Plus, vampirism is never good to use as allegories of abusers/victims because the relationship Sire/Childe is too sick and twisted. So, again, this is a mere opinion from all what I've been reading since the game came out.

I hope Larian sticks to the narration they seem to follow with Astarion: an abuser who found a greater one, and now wants to become the next Cazador, and this woobifycation doesn't change the real potential of a dark deep story that I believe they want to give us: not every char is redeemable, and sometimes evilness is capricious. We had chars like these in bg1 and bg2 after all.

#bg3 early access - answers

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sandraoledan · 4 years ago

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Warrior Nun: Why we love Avatrice

The past few weeks, I've been trying to articulate how and why Beatrice and Ava's story resonates with Warrior Nun fans so profoundly; to unravel the layers of such a well-written subplot.

Firstly, both characters portray vulnerability and loneliness in different ways. We can liken Ava to a lost puppy: new to the world and naïve. New not only in terms of gaining full control over a once disabled body, but also in terms of finally experiencing life outside of the orphanage. The victim of a traumatizing car accident that left her orphaned and sustained abuse from Sister Frances, her first instinct is flight over fight, and she protests when those around her confront her with her new responsibilities. Enter Beatrice, who herself experienced trauma in the form of punishment and outright rejection from her parents, committing herself solemnly to the Church. Both are lonely; both were unable to express parts of themselves in their past lives, and are now dealing with managing their shame in different ways and at different stages of their respective journeys. We see this explicitly, for instance, in the scene where Ava cries into Beatrice's shoulder after being accused by Mother Superion for committing suicide, and in Beatrice's "coming out" scene where she states, exasperated and defeated in equal measure, that "pain is what made me a sister warrior." Witnessing this tenderness in each other, and oftentimes being the source of comfort for one another, creates a delicate bond between these characters.

This source of comfort not only comes from a shared feeling of shame, but also from their contrasting personalities. As mentioned, Ava puts herself first, runs away from responsibility and struggles to see the bigger picture. However, she is innocent, encouraging and not judgmental. This juxtaposes with Beatrice, the paragon of responsibility and duty, always "putting the mission above all else" - but she is guarded and jaded. When Beatrice implicitly confesses her sexuality to Ava, Ava tells her, "don't hate what you are... what you are is beautiful." More light-hearted examples can be found in Ava's growing list of cheesy puns, a habit Beatrice is slowly picking up on and genuinely enjoying. In the same vein, Beatrice teaches Ava what it takes to be a good leader, and offers constant moral support: "it wouldn't matter if you were a quadriplegic, festooned with boils or a talking head in a bag... we will never leave you." When they are together, they are less lonely, less fearful and more assured of their own self-worth. Ultimately, Ava lightens the load of Beatrice's burdens, while Beatrice grounds Eva.

The great thing about making both characters so different on the surface is that there is so much more you can do with them; the beginning of a slow-burn relationship that, in this first season, has been written and directed impeccably well, through dialogue and prolonged silences. Beatrice never actually explicits comes out - we are given little golden nuggets in her conversations with Ava, such as when she says we have "secrets, that are ours alone", and "there's always more". In the latter example, immediately before she says this, she steps out of the light and into the shadows, symbolic of her hidden past and what she continues to conceal to this day. Ava then turns to her, and they look at each other intensely for a few seconds. A similar, prolonged stare, can be found in the scene where Beatrice asks her, "do you trust me?" and after a few seconds, Ava says, "I do", both still in a locked gaze. Whether this is fear, affection or romantic longing on the part of Ava is left ambiguous, which makes it all the more exciting for the viewers. We are left with the knowledge that one is repressing her desires, while the other has them and does not know how to act on them yet, or who to act on them with. This point adds another layer to the Ava-Beatrice-JC love triangle: will Ava choose Beatrice or JC? Will Beatrice choose Ava or her faith? Ultimately, each interaction is purposeful, rich in meaning and thoroughly set up, so if - sorry, not if, but WHEN - we get a Season 2 of this already beloved series, there is nowhere to go but up, because we have a world full of exciting - and potentially, scandalous - possibilities for these two and the rest of the Warrior Nun characters.

#warrior nun #sisterwarrior #alba baptista #kristina tonteri-young #avatrice #ava silva #sister beatrice #series #review #netflix

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rainbuckets8 · 4 years ago

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Why you should watch RWBY

TL;DR:

Summary: RWBY is an epic fantasy with themes like found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths: RWBY has unique and memorable characters. The show is smart. It has excellent cinematography and animation. It has representation. It tackles hard topics. It’s got incredible music and it’s free on RT’s website.

Weaknesses: RWBY has some early growing pains, specifically volume 2’s finale, as well as budget and polish. Later on, volume 4 is weaker than the rest. Volume 8's finale is extremely distressing for a lot of viewers (and we haven't seen the follow up to those events yet). The fandom can be bad at times.

Misinformation: The early volumes being bad, the racism plot line, and the animation (not the same as “budget and polish”) are not as bad as you may have heard from YouTube.

Suggested viewing order

Red Trailer, White Trailer, Black Trailer, Yellow Trailer

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4 Character Short

Volume 4

Volume 5 Weiss Character Short, Volume 5 Blake Character Short, Volume 5 Yang Character Short

Volume 5

Volume 6 Adam Character Short

Volume 6

Volume 7

Volume 8

(I did my best to make this spoiler-free. When there are spoilers, they’re worded ambiguously enough that someone new to the show would never guess what’s going to happen just by reading this.)

What to expect

The world of Remnant is filled with monsters called the creatures of Grimm. Warriors called Huntsmen and Huntresses defend humanity. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang go to school to become the next generation of heroes. Together they make Team RWBY (pronounced, “Ruby”)! Joining them is team JNPR (“Juniper”), made up of Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren. But evils even more dangerous than the Grimm are ready to make their move, and school quickly becomes an afterthought…

(I mention these next two topics specifically bc they can immediately turn someone away based on bad expectations.) There is a fantasy school setting, but RWBY is not a show about school. School topics are not a dominant idea: it seems to resemble a setting like Harry Potter, but the actual focus of the show rarely touches on things like classes or homework or tests, and we quickly move on. There is romance and it has a role in the plot, but RWBY is not a romance show. On the scale of romance in FMAB to She-Ra, RWBY falls somewhere in the middle.

What is RWBY about, then? RWBY is like an epic fantasy or high fantasy, despite first appearances. Perhaps not every genre convention is followed, but at its core, RWBY is about an epic struggle of good and evil.

RWBY contains themes such as found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths of the show

The characters are unique and memorable. One of the cool things is that they all draw inspiration from a real life fairy tale, myth, or something else. They designs are all top notch. One character who died with extremely little screen time even got so much fandom love, they included the character in a mid-hiatus short later. The characters have unique weapons, too; in the world of Remnant, a weapon is an extension of ones’ soul, and they reflect the variety of their owners. They’re also just plain cool; Monty was famous for following the “Rule of Cool.” And their individual stories are all compelling and interesting.

The show is smart. As a fandom, we generally pick up on the narrative hints the creators are dropping. And our predictions usually come true, but not in a way that makes the show predictable and boring. We very rarely guess exactly what will happen, but we have some similar idea of it. It’s just excellent foreshadowing.

RWBY also likes to play with tropes, as an extension of this. Often it will challenge them, or subvert expectations. In other cases, RWBY uses tropes to avoid showing us what we already know will happen. This occurs in both characters and plot. For example…

SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR VOLUME ONE FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH: Jaune’s entire character arc is about trying to be the anime protagonist, and learning that he doesn’t have to do things alone, and it’s ok to be a support main. The show sets up the narrative in a way that looks like, oh of course the direction it will go is him becoming the main character, but then it destroys toxic masculinity instead.

Our characters are smart, too. Plot-induced stupidity generally doesn’t happen. (A few big mistakes or errors in this regard aren’t actually the fault of the narrative, either, but animation and miscommunication and failure to execute. And those aren’t common.) It goes beyond just “not being dumb,” however. The villains’ plans are incredibly clever, and our heroes sometimes even guess at the usual “plot twists.”

The cinematography is just incredible. There are numerous freeze frames with extreme attention to detail that reveal character motivations or arcs or foreshadowing, there are many effective cuts and moving parts, there are soooo many parallels and callbacks, and visual cues such as lighting and color all are used appropriately to convey emotion and assist the narrative. It is one of the biggest overlooked strengths of the show, imo, simply because a lot of people in the fandom don’t notice these things as much for whatever reason, or else don’t give as much praise about them.

The animation is extremely good as well. Budget issues and technology issues aside (which means a lack of polish), the actual animation? The fight choreography, and all the other parts of animation that aren’t just “expensive CGI” are all wonderful. You can have very shiny, polished turds after all, and RWBY is like the opposite: not very polished, especially early on, but very well animated. All the trailers, volume 1 episode 8, the volume 1 finale, the volume 2 penultimate episode, and basically everything else hold up extremely well even today. If anything, the worst fight animation was in volumes 4 and 5 because of Maya growing pains, and those are an example of being more polished, but not necessarily better animated. Animation of faces has always been good, animation of characters has always felt lively. Aside from a few small actual hiccups (that one person running across rooftops for instance), it’s well done.

There are LGBTQ+ characters. The treatment of one of the recent trans characters, in volume 8, was nothing short of amazing. They worked with a VA who was trans. The moment of canon confirmation was important to the character for backstory, because of course that affects the character’s life, but not the only important thing about the character. The representation is not in-your-face or pandering. And there is a split of representation among the main cast and the minor characters, with promises of more to come (notably they’ve said they’re working on more mlm for future volumes, too).

RWBY is not afraid to tackle hard topics. It deals with things like mental illness, systematic racism, and cycles of abuse. It’s not because the show is trying to earn “gritty and dark” points, it’s because those are some of the topics that real people have to struggle with as well. And the show handles most or all of them very well, in a way that shows respect and an honest attempt to depict these things as best they can. (NOTE ABOUT VOLUME 8: THERE IS A VERY DIFFUCLT CONVERSATION CURRENTLY HAPPENING. I am on the side of, let’s wait and see what happens next because the story isn’t over, so we haven’t really seen the fall out. But I understand why this paragraph feels really difficult to agree with if you've seen the volume 8 finale. I trust the track record of the rest of the show, personally.)

As an example, the show has a theme that villains are rarely evil just because. A lot of villains choose to do bad things because they were hurt in some way. Some lived in poverty; some were hurt by racism; many of them are victims of abuse. But the show doesn’t make excuses for them. It’s possible to be both sympathetic and still choose evil over and over again (that’s called tragic). The ones who eventually do try to do good again are not always forgiven, either.

The music is amazing. I can probably count on my hands the number of times I’ve heard someone say otherwise, which is astonishing when you consider this fandom.

It’s also free on RT’s website. (A paid, “FIRST” subscription removes ads and lets you see new episodes one week early, but they all eventually release for free.)

Weaknesses of the show

Early volumes’ growing pains exist, much like most or all other shows. (Even some of the greatest were not immune to this, like ATLA.) In this case, however, it’s a little bit rougher. A large reason why is that this was kind of the first big thing from RT to ever come out. If you remember back almost a decade ago, their only other big thing at the time was RvB, which was machinima. They pretty much started from scratch with everything, from assets to VAs to animation to writing. Imagine if a random twitch streamer, like Ninja (idk who’s popular these days) said one day, “OK let me just direct something that’s intended to be the next great movie series of all time, like Star Wars, with a $4 bill and an iPhone camera.” Then went out and actually made something. Of course it would be rough…but then it turns out the movie is actually really good. And then you get to watch over the next several years as everything gets better and better until it’s honest-to-god comparable to the MCU. That’s kind of what happened with RWBY.

One specific growing pain was the volume 2 finale. Pretty much everything else up until that point, I love about the show. But the finale just fails to deliver on the build up of tension from other episodes. Some of it is because of later plot developments that we didn’t know at the time; some of it is because of just not great writing; some of it is because of just not great animation; and yes, some of it is budget. Regardless, it’s a low point for the show.

Speaking of, the budget for the early volumes is super small. The infamous volume one shadow people, the infamous person jumping across the rooftops in volume two, and just production quality isn’t high compared to a major release from some established studio. These are real weaknesses of the show that for some people, make it unwatchable, and if that’s you, that’s ok.

One last weakness of the show, the screen time per episode, especially early on, is NOT a full 20 minutes like you may expect of an anime (or anime-inspired-western-media, for those of you who will die on the “RWBY is not an anime” hill). This is a trend that has stuck with the show, a shorter run time per episode, for generally the entire lifetime. On one hand, it means it’s a little less daunting to catch up or rewatch than the number of episodes might imply. On the other, early on, some episodes have a little weird pacing. It also means the writing had to adjust for this, so while RWBY got really good at telling a story within a shorter amount of time, there’s also challenges with that too. Perhaps one of the notable ones is the pacing, with slower moments sometimes feeling like it takes up too much screen time, or not enough. Volume 4 was a particular struggle for the crew, both because they switched animation engines and also for the story.

Common complaints that I don’t agree with

I don’t agree that the early volumes were actually bad overall. Growing pains, yes, but not bad. I attribute that complaint to overly focusing on one character’s storyline, back when it wasn’t clear there was so much more to come and before people realized the show would challenge the tropes instead of falling into them. It’s pretty much just volume 1 when people say this anyway, most of them I’ve heard admit that volume 2 was a lot better (except the finale) and almost everyone loves volume 3. And looking back on it, I do think volume 1 holds up.

Tying into this, the racism plot line is another common complaint. I don’t think it’s actually executed quite that badly. I think it makes sense for there to be regional differences in the amount of racism we see, it just so happened that we only saw a very small and isolated environment, Beacon, for much of the early volumes. (Incidentally, that’s actually similar the environment I myself grew up in.) It’s not perfect, though. But there’s no doubt that the later volumes do a better job portraying this. Again, I attribute it mostly to people not knowing how long the show would run for at the time, so of course if that’s all we saw, it would’ve been bad. But it’s not. I have a lot of respect for Miles and Kerry for even attempting to handle the racism topic in the first place. And for the faults that DO exist in this plot line, I credit them for learning and growing past that too, and doing better in later volumes.

The animation is not bad. I’ve already touched on that earlier, but people confuse “budget and polish” with “animation.” Give me RWBY any day over Michael Bay’s Transformers: no matter how much polish those robots have, they’re still a confusing mess to try and follow. And the polish isn’t even an issue once we get past the growing pains of Maya and get a bigger budget, because wow does this show look good now.

Between these three complaints I hear about often, I think those are the biggest ones. And they’re all generally done in bad faith, based not on just those but on other more provocative statements people also make with them. That’s part of my issue with the fandom, specifically the vocal but small parts of the fandom, because they’re just repeating these things from early days that aren’t true. But YouTubers gotta get those rage and hate clicks somehow, right? Unfortunately it discredits the show a lot and influences other people’s opinions into not giving it a fair chance, because it’s become a narrative of “RWBY IS BAD” when they all won’t shut up about it. So yeah, fandom can be bad, join at your own discretion. (Of course, all fandoms have annoying parts, and my interactions with the fandom have been good overall, otherwise.)

Onto other complaints, some say the cast is bloated. I don’t agree, but I don’t think this one is in bad faith. I think we get the important characters as much screen time as we can, and the minor characters don’t actually detract from that; one of the differences between good minor characters and bad ones, is that bad ones take up too much time. RWBY has a ton of characters but many of the minor ones don’t actually take up too much time. So it appears bloated, but actually I don’t think it is.

Finally, a small word on the no-no topics. Adam, and Monty. Adam is like the champion of the Monty topic. Which essentially boils down to “Miles and Kerry are ruining Monty’s vision for the show.” Toxic fandom is truly awful and I have no respect for anyone who says anything like that. Shame on all of you. This isn’t really anything negative about the show, but the fandom, and tbf all fandoms have toxic parts. But toxic fandom can be a real and valid reason to not watch a show. Thankfully they seem fewer in number these days, but I think they’ve evolved into hiding behind other characters or topics, so you know. Beware. Again, it's not too hard to avoid them or block them, and my interactions otherwise with most fans have been good.

#rwby

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eroticcannibal · 4 years ago

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Common myths and misconceptions about home education

So in case anyone has somehow missed it, I have recently become a Big supporter of home education in a very lefty way, which has meant I have had to challenge a lot of views I have previously held about home education and that I know a lot of other lefties hold too. I am of the opinion that embracing home education, not as a last resort, but as the primary form of education for as many children as possible, is a vital part of achieving the required shifts in society needed to meet the goals of most leftists. So I am taking it on myself to convince you all that it is a very good thing, and also to clear up some misconceptions people have about home education that may make them feel they are unable to do it.

(A note, I am from the UK and shall be using UK terminology and specifics regarding law, policy and other such things will be from a UK perspective. I shall be using the term home education, as that is the legal term in the UK and is distinct from home schooling, which is the term for what school children have been doing during the pandemic.)

And I would also like to extend a quick thanks to Education Otherwise and the mods at Home education and your local authority for teaching me A LOT.

Have any questions about anything I’ve not covered here? Just let me know!

1. “Home education is illegal.”

- Sadly, home education is illegal or restricted to the point of inaccessibility in most of the world. From the research I have done, it seems that only the US and the UK have reasonable laws around home education (if I am using a very broad definition of reasonable, it is still not great). I do hope I can change this section soon, and I would *heavily* encourage people to campaign for the right to home educate post pandemic, perhaps cite any benefits learning at home has provided to children, perhaps???

2. “Home education is a tool used by religious fundamentalists to brainwash children!”

- This is a view many hold, and for good reason. For many of us, when we think of home education, we think of christian fundamentalists in the deep south of America, pulling their children out of school to avoid the liberal agenda. The truth is, anything can be used as a tool of indoctrination. This can happen in home education, and it can happen and has happened in schools too. In my own communities we have had instances of schools being a site of religious radicalization of children. The reality is this is far too complex and deep an issue to be solved by deeming any particular form of education as “bad”. I am not an expert on how best to deal with such issues, but I do feel that things like outreach and building a healthy community with otherwise more isolated religious groups would be a better way to address these issues.

3. “You need to have x qualification to home educate.”

- Again, a reasonable view to hold, given that state run and private education does require educators to hold certain qualifications, but in practice it quickly becomes evident the same does not necessarily have to apply with home education. Educational qualifications are very much focused on delivering an education in a classroom, which is a far cry from home education. During our home education of our child, my partner, who is a qualified SEN TA, has struggled far more than I have with educating our SEN child, despite the fact I hold no qualifications.

We live in amazing times when it comes to education. There are many things that parents and communities have to teach a child, and there are many things a child can teach to themself if given the tools to do so. You can even learn together! Their are endless resources available, books and games and documentaries, and even home education groups and private tutors if you feel that is the right fit for your child. You don’t need a piece of paper for your child to spend a day with their nose buried in a book, or to help the neighbor with his vegetable patch, or to cuddle up on the sofa while watching Planet Earth.

4. “You are required to follow the national curriculum.”

- This does vary by country (that allows home education). As a general rule, the stricter a country is about who can home educate, the stricter they are about what must be taught. In the UK, you are not required to follow the national curriculum. Education must be “efficient” and suited to the child’s “age, aptitude and ability”, and LAs do require that english and maths are covered. Other than that, you are allowed to tailor the content of education to the child and their interests. We have recently dropped geography for now and are only just picking up history again. It has also given us the freedom to focus on areas our child needs that would not be covered in mainstream education, such as anxiety management, trauma processing, self care and hygiene.

5. “Home education looks like school/is just filling out workbooks/etc”

- The thing you will always hear from experienced home educators when you begin home education is “home education doesn’t need to be school at home”. Much like you can tailor the content of the learning to the child, you can also tailor the delivery to the child. Some child need structure, timetable, instructions. Some need freedom and to bounce between topics. Some need to have an hour learning maths and only maths, some need to go dig up your garden “for science”. Some want to learn every day, some will need extended breaks.

Learning happens all the time, from the moment they wake to the moment they sleep. As an example, at home we have some workbooks, as both me and my child have ADHD and need someone to go “ok learn this” rather than us having to work out for ourselves what we need to cover for core subjects like english and maths. For the rest of most days my child is left to their own devices to binge youtube and netflix and work on their art. We try and go for a woodland walk every few days, where we have Deep Discussions about all kinds of topics, and we are also working on growing edible plants and baking cakes from around the world. We are more hands-off at the moment, due to the current bout of anxiety, but when that settles again we will get back to history themed crafts and STEM activities. Post-pandemic, we will be signing our kid up for swimming classes and “after school” clubs, and looking at sending them down to my mum for the home ed groups where she lives, like the forest school. A lot of home education outside of a pandemic is in groups and community based, or will make use of libraries and museums and other public learning opportunities. Frequently very little will happen at home.

In fact many home educators will advise new families to “deschool” for a while before jumping in to learning. This is a period where you “get school out of your system”, and just exist. Learning does not have to be intentional, you will be surprised how much you can achieve by just having fun.

6. “Home education is expensive.”

- It can be, ask my bank account. However, it is perfectly possible to deliver a quality education with little to no money. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s doable. Their are many online resources for free (check out oak academy), and libraries have plenty available too. Even paid resources can be very cheap if you know where to look. (psst, if your kid thrives with worksheets and powerpoints, get yourself a twinkl subscription, download everything you need for a year then cancel it.)

(This does not apply to exams. Get saving!)

7. “Home educated children are not properly socialised.”

- This is only really true during the pandemic. The rest of the time, home educated children are free to socialise whenever they want, with whoever they want, in whatever setting they choose. Socialisation while home educating is in the opinions of many of a higher quality, as they are not limited to groups of a similar age and background. Many home educating families form groups for their children to socialise together too. For ND children especially, socialising while home educated can be far less stressful and far more fulfilling than in school.

8. “Home educated children won’t get qualifications.”

- Just plain not true. Arranging qualifications can be costly and time consuming, but it is possible and regularly done. Some children may return to school or college to access exams for free, and I have heard of a handful of cases where individuals were able to secure prestigious university places without any qualifications. Home education also allows for more freedom with how exams and qualifications are approached, for example, many home educated children will pick one GCSE to focus on at a time, rather than covering numerous topics over 2 years and having exams for all of them at once like children in school will.

9. “Home education is a safeguarding risk/is used to cover up abuse/home educated children are not seen.”

- In the UK at least, home education is not considered a safeguarding risk, no matter what authorities may tell you, nor are home educated “not seen”. They still visit medical professionals, they still engage with their communities.

Now I shall add the relevant paper here should I find it again, but the idea that home education is used to cover up abuse to a statistically significant degree, or that home educated children are at more risk of abuse, is false. Home educating families do face a significantly higher risk of social services involvement than other families, but far less abuse is found in comparison to other families. It is also worth considering, when talking about social services involvement, that many families pursue home education due to failures by schools regarding a child’s vulnerabilities. In most cases, especially the Big Ones, where a home educated child is abused, the child was already known to authorities as a victim of abuse, therefore home educating did nothing to hide said abuse.

Children are also routinely abused in schools, which is another common reason for home educating.

10. “Home education has to be monitored or approved.”

- Depends on the country, I know in Japan home education is monitored by schools, however in the UK, monitoring is not lawful. Local authorities may make informal enquiries to ensure a suitable education is being facilitated (keep EVERYTHING in writing and please go straight to “home education and your local authority” group on FB for advice, you WILL need it!). In England, if your child is in mainstream education, you can deregister at will, from a special school will require LA approval. In Scotland deregistering requires LA approval. (Again, head to the aforementioned group for advice).

11. “You can’t work/get an education while home educating”

- It is hard to balance work, education and educating your child, but it is possible, people do it every day. Obviously, having at least one parent free to educate unhindered at all times is an ideal situation, but in the real world it often does not work that way. Parents may have to home educate regardless of their other commitments if a child truly needs to escape the school system. Many parents work or learn from home, and sometimes it is even possible to combine these activities with home education. Professional artists and crafters can pass down their skills while working, distance learners can invite their children to sit in on lectures. The really great thing about home education is it is flexible. Do you have a whole day of meetings? Let the kid play minecraft all day! Going to be in the office all day? Drop the kid off at the local forest school or something else they can do all day. Drop them with the grandparents to help with the gardening!

12. “Home educated are behind/achieve less than school children.”

- Their is no evidence that home education is of a lower quality than school education. Many children are home educated specifically because the school environment was detrimental to their education, and thrive with home education. Plenty of children are able to learn more simply by having 1-to-1 attention, without the distraction of an entire class. And others may well be “behind”, and are educated at home because of their specific needs that mean they will never thrive in an academic setting, so they are allowed to focus on learning skills that will allow them to live independently.

#word of god #home education

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its-a-writer-thing · 6 years ago

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The Advantages of First Person – And When to Use It

The perspective you use in a story can have greater weight and influence than three extra characters. Among the range to choose from, First Person is one of the strongest. It can shape the entire tone of the book, enhance character development, and more thoroughly immerse your reader in the story. It also serves to help writers overcome their own pitfalls and instead turn these into strengths.

Should you use First Person perspective? When is it most advantageous? We’ll discuss that below, in the 5 biggest strengths and uses of First Person perspective.

To help make this point, I’ll be referencing Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen by L. S. Andersson. It’s a first-person tale of struggle, betrayal, fighting for your life, and gaining your freedom. Not only is it a great book, but it’s a prime example of the strength of First Person perspective, when done right.

First-Person Perspective Helps:

Character Voice Reign

The key to successfully leveraging First Person is to immerse the prose in the character’s voice. It’s not the writer simply painting the scene – it’s the main character describing things as would be logical to their personality and current focus.

If you’re not excellent at writing descriptions, but prefer to channel the overall mood of a scene, then First Person excels in this department.

It also gives you freedom to play with different writing styles. While one character may quickly pick up on the look in someone’s eye, the next may be distracted by another detail. This allows you to disguise foreshadowing.

In Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen, the author uses this to define Rebecca’s past experiences and how she approaches the world. Rebecca is prone to noting tics or tells in someone’s expressions, or how they move around her. As someone who has been a prisoner in more ways than one, she’s quick to notice exits and how claustrophobic an area tends to be. In a Third Person perspective, other details may have been worthy of noting, but in Rebecca’s First Person look, we see what’s important to her. In doing so, it reveals more about her character.

Subtle Character Development

The development of a character’s voice can be more telling than the pure events themselves.

In Behind Closed Doors, early on, we see Rebecca’s voice leaning toward long sentences spliced with contradicting thoughts. She thinks of nuances in length and often makes excuses before even confirming her opinion. She tries to see all angles of the situation, even as they are damaging to her. She twists herself in knots - in the prose as in her own thinking - and that’s what helps keep her a victim.

However, as the story progresses, she’s faced with do-or-die choices. At these points, the prose and her state of mind quicken and become crisper. With each situation she faces, this ‘final decision’ portion becomes tighter, with less questioning, less reminiscing, less apologies, and less sympathy for her abusers. This serves as subtle character development. Rebecca is learning from her experiences. Rebecca is becoming more fed up with the things she’s subjected to. Rebecca is learning to stand on her own feet and make no apologies about doing so.

Thanks to First Person perspective, we are not only viewing, but also feeling Rebecca’s character development. The very way she thinks is changing from beneath her – and beneath us as well – which affects the choices she makes. Rebecca of Chapter 2 would not have acted like Rebecca of the last chapter, because, as we can see in the prose itself – she’s a changed person.

Make it Personal

Referring to the character as he/she/they will inevitably place a barrier between the reader and the character themselves – in the most basic sense, because you have a narrator there. This can be lessened to a degree with a Third Person Limited, but nonetheless exists.

In Behind Closed Doors, the story of Rebecca is raw and personal. It follows her journey through abuse, neglect, and betrayal on many levels until her point of hope and self-reliance. Third Person perspective may have been suitable to tell the events, but First Person threw us right into the thick of it. Just as we refer to ourselves as “I” and “me,” we’re better able to immerse ourselves as the very character saying “I” and “me” in the prose.

When you’re hoping to drive home a point more thoroughly, First Person lets you dig right into the characters’ brain and do this. This is best for stories with otherwise unsympathetic characters, for more emotional stories, or for stories where nuances play a heavy role. When you can’t afford the reader missing the finer details, First Person is best.

Smooth Gaps in Memory

Perhaps you don’t excel at writing transition scenes. Perhaps you’re writing a real life account and don’t have all the connecting information. First Person POV can help you smooth out gaps in memory.

It’s natural for people to forget information that isn’t immediately pertinent. In Third Person perspective, the writer is expected to be aware of these details, whereas in First Person, it’s more natural for this information to have escaped the main character’s mind, especially after time has passed.

In Behind Closed Doors, the story spans many years in Rebecca’s journey for freedom and self-empowerment, with numerous catalytic events propelling her from one to the next. In First Person, the burden lies on the main character to tell her story as she deems fit. She’s not recounting her entire life, but a collection of events that directly led to where she is now. As such, she sticks to the high points – the crucial points.

As such, readers are more forgiving and the transitions are more organic. If you’re looking to tell a specific story, or a large story that needs to be condensed, then First Person allows you to do so more smoothly.

Keep Up Hope

When writing a rather grim or disheartening tale, First Person perspective allows you to reinforce that the speaker is still alive – and still trudging along. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel, subtly reminding readers that hope still exists; after all, if the main character is telling the story, then they must have reached a point where they can tell the story.

In Behind Closed Doors Rebecca is telling her story to a trusted companion at a (currently) undetermined point. The First Person perspective gives us a steady view that she is somehow going to journey beyond her poor circumstances. It also gives the character an opportunity to reflect on the events and drive home the nuances of what we’re witnessing.

When you’re writing a story that needs to keep a note of hope up throughout the grimmer happenings, First Person is a subtle but impactful way to ensure this.

Conclusion

For your next story, or your current one, would it be better told in First Person?

If you’re interested in seeing this done well, want to read a fantastic story of struggle and triumph, and also support a fellow self-published author, check out Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen by L S Andersson.

Also check out her site, AnamMara.com, where she’s spearheading a project to help abused women find their voice and gain their own independence financially. Proceeds from the book will contribute to making this project a reality.

#writing advice #first person #first person perspective #writing tips #POV tips #writing POV #L S Andersson #Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen #Behind Closed Doors #iawt

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softlywithhissong · 6 years ago

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I’m calling bullshit on your hate.

STOP STEREOTYPING SANGWOO FANS!

I am a Sangwoo fan. I am also a Bum fan. A strange dichotomy, I know.

Both of these characters exhibit problematic behavior, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a fan of them, either individually or simultaneously. Does being a fan of either of these characters mean that you support these damaging behaviors in real life? NO. Calling out people who support REAL LIFE crimes is fine, but calling out people who are trying to enjoy being a fan of a FICTIONAL character IS NOT OKAY. You are clearly not helping real life people by doing so. You are being judgemental and self-righteous, shaming people to feel superior and patting yourself on the back for it. You not only contradict yourself several times, but you also act entitled to hate real people for liking something you personally don’t, have the arrogance to proclaim what the author “better not” do, and wish ill on real people. The hypocrisy is appalling. Do you not see the irony? You are not protecting people from real life abuse BY HATING ON REAL LIFE FANS of a fictional character. You are in fact engaging in verbally abusing real life people. It doesn’t matter what the character does; it’s fiction. Are there real people existing out in the big wide world who do crimes or support criminals? Yes, but to generalize, stereotype, and basically accuse FANS of being as bad as the people who do this or to conflate us and lump us together is disgusting, illogical, and highly offensive.

How can we “still stan his ass / this ship”? We can because the beauty of fandom is that you get to pick and choose what you like. You get to twist it up, turn it inside out, and make it into an AU parody of itself. ART IS SUBJECTIVE. It’s about what individual thing each and every one of us found gut wrenching or what pulled at our heartstrings. Don’t invalidate what other people found or resonated with just because it’s not the same thing you did. People fear different things. People emphasize, magnify, and conversely minimize different things based on what concerns each of us individually. That’s okay and people shouldn’t be shamed for having a different opinion. After all, being a fan is a form of opinion. And opinions are not facts. Don’t confuse the two; you holding an opinion does not make your opinion a fact.

Fiction is about emotional catharsis. It doesn’t matter that stealing a car or killing a dog are not crimes worthy of the death penalty in real life - I wanted to see John Wick kill all those fuckers for killing that little puppy.

And NOT ALL MEDIA should have a healthy or happy ending. Was Romeo and Juliet’s double suicide a healthy ending? NO. It was a tragedy! Tragedies have an important place in media. They often serve as cautionary tales. If you want another cliched boring “bad guy dies/goes to jail” ending, WHY ARE YOU SHAMING FANS WHO WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT? You have an endless supply of your preferred ending. Go watch one of the thousand CSI/detective/cop procedural shows. They are everywhere. While I enjoy psychological thrillers (AS RARE AS THEY ARE), I am also a fan of some great detective shows and murder mysteries. I could recommend so many fantastic ones. But some of us want a unique ending for Killing Stalking, even if that means something “unhealthy” by real life moral standards. It was labeled a psychological thriller, after all. Not a mystery. Not a detective story. It was also labeled BL, and even if it gets a twisted/unhealthy ending because of the psychological thriller genre, it still qualifies because twisted BL is still BL.

I do not excuse Sangwoo’s abusive treatment of Bum. I’m often disappointed and angry on Bum’s behalf. And while I find it difficult to believe canon Bum would be in a healthy relationship with anyone (and I would love to make a post about how I see his fondness for frogs as symbolism for his relationships), I still have the ability to enjoy the possibilities of a healthy fanon-based relationship or even appreciate the grim take of a tragic and/or twisted unhealthy ending. This is how I still ship Sangbum in certain contexts, but not always, because context matters and it depends. I know that sentence sounds ridiculous, but that’s how it works! Because it’s OKAY TO SHIP FICTIONAL UNHEALTHY SHIPS. Because it’s fiction. And if people can vent their issues through the written word in order to not do so in real life, good. Many people find reading/writing therapeutic. Some authors write a lot of problematic behavior as angst. Do they deserve hate? NO. There are plenty of instances when I have shipped a healthy ship but not shipped it (and in fact wanted them not to end up together) in certain fics because I felt the fic had portrayed an unhealthy relationship. But did I send hate to the author of that fic when that ship ended up together anyway? NO. Just because it ended in a way I didn’t like didn’t give me or anyone else the right to spread hate or shame over a fictional story.

Also, as a Bum fan, I do not appreciate seeing any victim blaming of Bum. There’s some out there (including your despicable “Bum better not” comment), but at least this hate is not anywhere near the amount of Sangwoo hate. As a fan of both characters, I can see that there is clearly so much more Sangwoo hate out there. And it’s fine to criticize, dislike, or even hate Sangwoo as a character, but it’s NOT OKAY to hate on his fans. He is a fictional character, but his fans are real people.

I am a fan of Sangwoo because he is an intriguing, complex, and well-written character. He’s got flaws. All characters do. And I understand his flaws are pretty damn big. But I understand that he’s a fictional character. I would never support a real person committing such crimes or abuse. So, frankly, while you may find my being a fan “annoying” - I will not be shamed or hated upon.

To quote my sister, “In the safety of fiction, we can deconstruct the complexities of what’s morally gray.”

In other words, exploration through FICTION, discussion, and debate are welcome. Hateful posts are not.

This is a long post, so I’ll put my further calling bullshit on arguments made by haters behind a “Keep Reading” link:

Also, the criticisms for being a fan because of “fetishizing gay men” are bullshit. Firstly, anything anyone finds hot could be labeled “fetishizing” which is ridiculous. Secondly, some fans are gay men who are not “fetishizing” - they are simply enjoying the story even if it is twisted. (It’s okay to be a fan of a story that portrays an unhealthy relationship; not every story is meant to be a moral standard.) But also, this bullshit argument is just reducing people down to a ridiculous stereotype used to stifle women in fandom. This has been used through the ages and it is wrong. Are there possibly straight women out there objectifying gay men the way straight men would objectify gay women? Yeah, there’s probably some. But I’ve been in fandom a LONG time and this is not representative of fans in general, let alone all female fans. How about you let women consume all forms of media they find identifiable, cathartic, containing unique storyline with complex flawed characters, or even (gasp) entertaining? Stop shaming people. And maybe especially - don’t resort to misogynistic tropes to do so. I think it’s safe to say that fans (including female fans) generally tend to be a fan for more than just a character’s appearance and body parts. There’s usually character traits, personality quirks, things that draw you to go beyond casual reading/watching into becoming a fan.

Personally, I identify with stories portraying gay relationships equally as much if not more than with stories portraying heterosexual relationships. Maybe that’s because I’m bisexual, but I don’t think so. I believe that straight people can also find themselves identifying with the story and the struggles portrayed - no matter what the sexual orientation of the pairing portrayed.

You think I only like portrayals of gay men rather than women? No, I like both. Killing Eve is a fantastic example of a fandom that I would love to see grow! I despair at how small the fandom is compared to my usual fandoms, but it’s new! It can grow and I can’t wait for season 2. The harsh reality, though, is that f/f ships tend to be smaller fandoms. This may be due to so few well-written female characters in general throughout media - though, this is improving and having more female writers in media helps. Killing Eve has great characters and really great writing, so hopefully they can buck this trend and grow a decently large fandom featuring f/f ships. Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe from Legends of Tomorrow are a pretty big ship, which is heartening, and Xena/Gabrielle from Xena Warrior Princess were an absolute juggernaut back in the day (kudos to anyone who recognized Xena from my main tumblr’s icon).

You think I only like hot men? Or that I excuse the actions of killers who are hot men? NO. I watched The Fall with Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, where Jamie Dornan played the serial killer and NO - I was not a fan of his character, let alone attempted to excuse any actions by his character whatsoever, even after they explained his tragic backstory. And You on Netflix is just too obnoxious in my personal opinion for me to even watch. But I’d never take time out of my day to hate on any fan who enjoys it.

Calling out problematic stuff in media is fine, but don’t use it as an excuse to spit vitriol and hate at fans who you disagree with.

P.S. Seriously, ask me for recs of good detective shows/murder mysteries. I’ve got so many I could recommend that are way better written than most. Want a female detective? I’ve got plenty. Want a gay male detective? Got it. Want a murder mystery twist where the murderer wins? Got that.

#Dear Antis #sangwoo #killing stalking #i'm not tagging that hateful poster #because if they don't frequent the tag they spewed their hate in it won't matter #my post wouldn't stop them #but if i can reach the ks fans who do #and encourage this fandom to be nicer to each other #that matters

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hirazuki · 6 years ago

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I’m going to try and summarize what bothers me about VLD from as objective a standpoint as possible. A lot of people, including myself, have already made posts pointing out specific issues, especially with regards to the messages it sends to abuse victims, so I’m not going to touch on that or any type of emotional issues here at all. I’m going to skip specifics except where needed as examples, and just talk about the nature of story telling itself. As someone who not only has used fiction for escapism, but who has studied story telling both in terms of literary analysis of novels and of religious texts, it’s a subject that I feel very strongly about.

Warning: long ass post.

Okay, a couple of disclaimers first.

One, I am a firm believer in the “don’t like, don’t read” mentality. If I don’t like something, I don’t talk about it, I just move on. Y’all have never seen a single discourse post about The Dragon Prince, right? Yup, that’s ‘cause I really didn’t like it. It goes for countless other things too. I don’t expend time and effort and energy on things I don’t like, that’s just wasteful. So, why am I harping on VLD? Because I really enjoyed it, despite a couple of what I felt were minor issues at the time, for most of its run. That’s why I -- and I imagine the same goes for many other fans -- am so bitter.

Two, I came late into the Voltron universe. I joined in a couple of days before s6 dropped, and only watched DotU as well as the other Western versions in the past couple of months. Haven’t had a chance to see the original Japanese anime yet.

Three, I’m not a shipper, in general. I don’t ship anything in VLD except Zarkon/Honerva. Romance/sexual stuff is just not my thing, I’ll take swords and explosions any day over that. So my saltiness regarding the series has nothing to do with ships.

Alright, so I think my major gripes with the series can be sorted into three categories:

1. Inconsistency of Story Type:

This is, of course, my own opinion, but through my time of consuming fiction, I think there are three types of stories:

Good vs. Evil: the most basic type of story. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone stays well in their lanes. Think Disney movies, typical Saturday morning cartoons -- the heroes are exemplary of good traits, the villains are one-dimensional and unrepentant, evil for the sake of being evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this story type imo, and there are several stories of this nature that I really do enjoy.

Grey Morality: a much more nuanced take on the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. Due to the very nature of grey morality, there are varying degrees to which this can be implemented. Probably the most common one I’ve seen is where the heroes do some bad/questionable things, the villains/antagonists do some good things or have the right motives or are “noble” in some way; but overall, there is a sense that there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, certainly by the heroes but also sometimes by the villains/antagonists too. An excellent example of this is Firefly. Another example, that puts a total twist on it by having the protagonist also be the “villain,” is Death Note -- even though the story resolves in a way that to the audience is, really, the only sustainable way possible, it still leaves neither the characters in-show nor the audience with any sense of victory. This concept is taken to the extreme by a series like Tenpou Ibun: Ayakashi Ayashi, where no one is right and no one is wrong, but at the same time everyone is right and wrong, and simply just human. There is no good and no evil, just context, circumstances, and choices.

Combination: this type of story starts with the Good vs. Evil dichotomy but, as the story progresses and the protagonist becomes more acquainted and involved with their environment, both the protagonist and the audience come to understand that the picture is actually much more complicated than that, and it evolves into Grey Morality. Bleach is a great example. We start with seeing the Hollow as evil, mindless monsters that need to be killed; we learn that they are actually human spirits that have transformed into “monsters” through pain and grief and, therefore, we pity them but also understand that it’s a mercy to put them down; we then find out that, actually, not all are mindless and they have a complicated society and culture of their own; and, eventually, come to accept them as (reluctant) allies against a bigger threat, understanding that they are creatures in their own right.

From the moment that Keith -- arguably the character within the main cast that had the most time/character development spent on him -- was revealed as being half-Galra (that is, half the “evil” race of the show), VLD promised to be that third type of story. Because there is no way that the writers would make one of their protagonists evil by default because of his blood in a kids’ show, duh, so by logical conclusion this means that that race is not all evil, after all. This was further emphasized by Lotor’s introduction to the plot -- a severe departure from his character in any previous incarnation -- and cemented by the episode, “The Legend Begins,” where we finally get to see the other side of things and the fact that not even Zarkon and Haggar were “born evil,” as well.

After the Keith reveal, we got shocked reactions from his teammates, notably and understandably Allura; got only an apology from her and not the rest for their treatment of him (which could have been better but, whatever, it was a step in the right direction, great!); and then... back to a weird strained relationship in working alongside Galra without another word on the subject.

Okay. Fine.

Then we get Lotor -- again, some of that initial resentment/treatment could be understandable to some extent, and eventually on the road towards, seemingly, genuine acceptance. Cool.

I won’t go into details about the colony episode, because that’s been done to death already, but, woah, major setback there. Back to the knee-jerk reaction of treating individuals of a race as complicit and responsible for the actions and perception of that race as perpetuated by a handful of individuals. And then -- flash forward to s8 -- we are welcoming Galra allies in our cause! Please join our Coalition! We want to help you!

Look. I’m not saying that you can’t retcon stuff; that you can’t go Good vs. Evil, develop into Grey Morality, and then reveal something and BOOM, jk, it was Good vs. Evil all along, gotcha! I’m sure that there is an author somewhere out there that has pulled that off effectively (I can’t think of any examples myself right now, but I’m sure it must exist somewhere).

I am saying that if you’re going to do that -- if you are going to pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet and sacrifice some crucial character development (and crucial characters themselves, let’s be honest) -- you better have a DAMN GOOD IN-UNIVERSE reason for doing so. And no, shock value or getting rid of a character because they were overshadowing the protags doesn’t count. Otherwise, your protagonists will look like giant jerks. Unless, of course, that’s what you’re going for, but I highly doubt that was the thinking here.

And then, we proceed to flip flop between “I knew it, the Galra are irredeemably evil, what’s wrong with these people?!” (I think Hunk -- HUNK, by far the most empathetic character -- said this at some point in s7?) and “Here, we can work together towards a brighter future” or some shit. You can’t do that. I mean you can, but you’re gonna get major backlash from your audience. Pick a fucking direction and stick with it.

For the past three seasons, it has really felt like the story line is being pulled into two different directions: 1) staying true to the original source material of Paladins = good, Galra/Drule = bad, and 2) providing the viewers with a groundbreaking, nuanced interpretation.

My dudes. You can’t have both. Trying to implement both of these approaches means having morally grey, nuanced characters operating within a narrative framework that is subject to an overarching principle of a strict Good/Evil dichotomy. Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off effectively without diving headfirst into the pitfall of punishing your morally grey characters by default, simply because they happen to exist in a universe that cannot, by nature, support them???? I can think of only a handful of authors that have managed that and, I would argue, that the man at the top of the list only managed to be so effective and influential because what he wrote was, in essence, a mythology. Mythologies have a totally different set of concerns surrounding them. And even then, he went to great lengths, both in his works and outside of them in discussions/interviews, to note that the “evil” in his world could never have happened without it intentionally being part of the larger cosmological design, i.e. balance. I’m talking, of course, about Tolkien.

Why the fuck would you attempt to pull something like this off in a kids’ cartoon?! Avatar: The Last Airbender, since everyone loves that comparison, was defined by a black/white view that developed into a very simple grey morality, and it was this limited scope that allowed it to be presented so effectively. None of this sashaying back and forth.

Especially when this flip flopping is done for le dramatic effect/shock value, with seemingly no good in-story reason?? Of course it’s gonna fall flat.

2. Concept vs. Execution:

This is probably what drives me crazy the most about VLD.

As an idea, it was fucking brilliant -- anyone who has watched DotU, even with all the nostalgia, I imagine, can admit that it was very much a cut and dry 80s cartoon, with simple concerns; Vehicle Voltron attempted some nuances, but the Lion Voltron part of the show, which was by far the more popular part, was pretty stiff in that regard. VLD took that and introduced themes like: being biracial (Keith, Lotor, etc.), having to choose between duty and family (Krolia), having to choose between personal dreams and important relationships (Shiro), having to overcome deep-seated understandable prejudice and work with people you never thought you could come to stand for a greater cause and through that see that not everything is black and white and attain a greater understanding of the world (Allura), leaving home and learning to survive in a totally foreign environment in the worst circumstances possible (the paladins), dealing with disability, mental illness/ptsd while also dealing with issues of being in a position of leadership/power (Shiro), parental abuse (Lotor), substance abuse (Honerva and Zarkon), being a clone and coming to terms with that (Shiro/Kuron), learning to compromise and sacrifice personal integrity/morals for the betterment/survival of those you have made yourself responsible for (the paladins), and so much more than that. Lotor’s relationship with Honerva/Haggar had serious undertones of both Mother and Child symbolism, as well as Arthurian legend. The whole quintessence thing drew pointers from ancient and medieval concepts of alchemy.

The inclusion of any of these things, injected into a pretty straightforward and tame original source material like DotU, was inspired. What an absolutely fantastic take, with incredible potential.

... and it was the shoddiest, shittiest implementation and execution of any concepts that I have ever seen. Like... how? How did they manage to not be able to successfully see any of these themes to a close, and to actually offend the vast majority of their fanbase (regardless of background, age, race, sexuality, literally from all walks of life) by the way these themes were handled????

I’m sure time restraints, direction from above, etc., played a big part in it, but still. If you don’t have time to properly develop the interpersonal relationships between the core members of your main group of characters -- to the point that, say, Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Did they ever properly, truly have any meaningful interactions? -- there’s no way you could properly handle all of this.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Also? As stories are being fleshed out, they and their characters tend to take on a life of their own. The Lotor/Keith parallels? I totally believe and understand how it’s possible that it was unintentional. But when that happens, you go back and rework the rest of your plot to make sense with what you now have before you. You adjust and adapt. You don’t barrel on ahead headless and not acknowledging it, and you don’t force your characters into straitjackets just because you want to doggedly follow this one idea.

3. The Female Lead:

Let me begin by saying that I really, really wanted to like Allura, and the way she was written was one of the biggest turn offs and disappointments for me. I won’t go into specifics regarding her, as there many posts that already address the problematic nature of how she treats people of her race vs. anyone Galra, but I will just look at her character development as a whole.

Perhaps the easiest way for me to voice my frustrations here would be with a comparison. Let’s look at my favorite female protagonist of all time, Nakajima Youko, from Juuni Kokuki (aka. The Twelve Kindgoms).

Youko starts off as a very meek high school girl, from a typical modern Japanese family. Class representative, top grades, is scared of conflict and wants to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, which makes her very submissive, a total coward emotionally, mentally, and physically. She seeks to please everyone and, as a result, harms her own development by never giving any thought to her own desires and ends up bullied by everyone around her. Magic happens, shit goes down, and she is whisked away to a different world that is parallel to our own, along with two friends from school; ripped from her home, her family, with absolutely no way back. This other world has a different language, people who end up in there from our world are treated like garbage and are slaves, has a medieval level of tech/advancement, and Youko with her friends has to figure out how to survive. She finds out she is actually queen of one of the realms in this world, which makes her a target of various groups. She is betrayed by literally everyone around her, everyone she places her trust in, including the two friends that got transported to this world with her.

She goes from meek and mild to bloodthirsty and brash; lashing out at everyone around her, plotting to kill those that offer her a helping hand, becoming unreasonably suspicious and racist and way out of line. Understandably so, but the narrative doesn’t, for one moment, present this as okay. Some more stuff happens and she finally snaps out of it, comes to a couple of realizations, and has major character development. She develops the attitude that, yes, people have betrayed and hurt her, but their actions towards her and their opinion of her is none of her business. It will not stop her from acting in ways that are in line with her own morals; if people choose to betray and use her, that’s on them. She will simply do what she must, and treat everyone as an individual according to their actions. This doesn’t mean that she adopts a pushover mentality -- it just means that she loses her knee-jerk reaction, and doesn’t rush to conclusions. She becomes a badass warrior and queen, strong and just, and, frankly, one of the most well-developed female characters I have ever seen.

Do I think this is the only way to write a strong female character? Of course not. But I’m convinced this is what the writers wanted to do with Allura, this kind of progression and path, from being angry, lost, and alone to being a confident, capable, magnificent ruler. And, imo, they totally missed the mark.

I think that the writers were so focused on giving us a “strong” modern female character, and getting as far away from her DotU damsel in distress depiction as possible, that they ended up writing her as, basically, a bully. Sure, they tell us -- both through other characters’ words in the show and through interviews -- about her diplomacy, peaceful nature, leadership quality, open-mindedness, etc., but they never show it to us. In almost every key moment in the series, she has been written to be combative and suffering from tunnel-vision.

And a huge part of this is that they simply didn’t give her any room to grow. Youko’s character started off at maybe... 5% of her potential? She was honestly so “weak,” I thought about dropping the series. But by the point the anime ended (because the story itself is unfinished and unlikely to continue, unfortunately), I’d say she’s at around 70%. That makes for an extremely dramatic, fulfilling, and believable character development. The VLD writers started Allura off much higher than that. Too high. From the get-go she’s a highly accomplished martial artist, has incredible physical strength due to her Altean heritage, a seemingly natural affinity for leadership and for appealing to people, she’s very attractive, well spoken, had a loving and supportive family, is a princess, had a brilliant alchemist for a father, has access to the universe’s greatest super weapon -- I mean, yes, she’s had to deal with immense loss and grief and come to terms with it in a very short period of time, and lost her father a second time so to speak with Alfor’s AI -- but overall, everything has been set up and handed to her in a nice package. Other than overcoming her hatred towards the Galra and idealization of Altea/Alteans, really, there’s nothing left for her to do that would be defining for her character.

That’s not to say that characters that are extremely accomplished from the start are a bad thing. But in their case, their emotional and mental development and maturity is that much more important, because that’s all that’s left to work with. The writers didn’t really give Allura any significant room to grow in terms of any of that. (And no, I don’t consider her new alchemical powers from Oriande as her growing; she expended no effort for that, it wasn’t really a trial at all for her; it was like me playing a video game on casual mode with the “killallenemies” console command enabled). Her overcoming her racism towards the Galra, beginning with Keith and BoM and continuing to do so with subsequent Galra allies, had a TON of potential and I had been so excited to see where it would go; but that fell flat, totally forgotten by the story.

In contrast, you have Lotor -- we see him struggling to claw his way out of the hand that fate has dealt him, to grow beyond his family’s influence and abuse. Both on and off screen, even described by his own enemies in great detail, we see just how much he has had to fight and to earn everything he has and he is, even things that shouldn’t have to be “earned” in the first place. He’s lost Daibazaal and Altea, both his father and his mother, he’s too Galra for anyone who’s not and not nearly enough Galra for anyone who is. Literally nothing has been handed to him. The juxtaposition between him and Allura, had Allura been given more breathing room by the writers, could have been fantastic and I would have shipped the hell out of it, like I do in DotU. She’s had everything he’s ever wanted (loving family, supportive father, Alfor himself, exploration, alchemy), etc.; envy would have been extremely appropriate on his part, and very interesting to work through, but that was never explored either.

So, I feel like what ended up happening was that a huge imbalance in how these two characters came across was created, made only more evident when their relationship with each other was what was front and center. And, at least for me, this is what makes me completely unable to see Allura’s side of things, and I freely admit it -- I simply don’t understand her or her actions, because I don’t feel like I’ve been shown enough of her inner workings as a character to be able to care about her in the slightest. I can definitely see where the writers were going with her, or where they thought they were going. But unless they actually meant for the character that is, for all intents and purposes, their female lead to be a racist, abusive, immature person playing at being an adult and at being the leader of a coalition spanning galaxies, who has no problem condemning millions of lives to death and devastation at a whim of her emotions because they are Valid™, and who wades dangerously close to “Mary Sue” territory many times due the way the narrative frames her... then all I see on screen is an unfinished character. Unfinished, because the writers didn’t take any opportunities in the narrative for the flaws and issues she does have to be addressed and overcome, opportunities of which there were plenty! I absolutely don’t mind that she has flaws -- flawed heroes are amazing. But, you gotta do something about them, i.e. address them and work through them. Otherwise your heroes remain static in a plot that is evolving and that’s not a good look.

And, you know, I honestly think DotU Allura is a much stronger female character. She works for everything she gets. She works her ass off. She has to fight to not only be allowed to be part of the team and fly a lion, but even just to do everyday common things like be out in the fields or swim or whatever; forget practicing martial arts. Coran literally ties her up at one point to prevent her from participating. Nanny is a constant battle for her. Over everything, from her clothes to her manner of speaking to where she’s going. But she doesn’t stop, she doesn’t give up. And she fucks up, BIG TIME, several times, she does TONS of stupid shit. But she learns, acknowledges it, gets called out on it, tries again, and keeps on trying. DotU Allura’s biggest battles, in my mind, aren’t with Lotor or the Drule forces or Zarkon, but with her own team and those she considers family, and her struggle for the others’ acceptance of herself and her skills within the group. And for that, she is a much stronger, more solid female character than VLD Allura, despite all superficial appearances and frilly pink dresses and 80s voice acting.

Again, like I said in a previous post, I don’t conform to the view that creators owe their fans anything. Write things however the fuck you want. You want to kill Allura off, fine. Do away with Lotor too? Cool. I completely understand people who want happy endings in fiction because, it’s true, reality fucking sucks; there are several fictional works I turn to whenever real life is too much. And I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave stories where characters like Lotor are given happy endings; of course I want my favorite characters to be okay. But overall, I’m the type of person who, as long as things make for an effective, compelling narrative, I’ll be content with it, regardless of whether the ending is tragic or happy or anything in between.

So you want to kill off your morally grey character and your female lead, who is also one of the only women on the team, who is also a princess figure, who has also been completely visually redesigned in such a way that you know women of color will relate to her? That’s fine by me, go right ahead. But do so in a way that is meaningful and makes sense within the larger narrative you created, and isn’t some empty, sensationalist gesture.

And also be aware of your fanbase. This is a reboot -- that comes with certain expectations attached, as a number of the viewers will very likely be fans of the old series, watching out of curiosity, nostalgia, etc. Expectations like, the princess lives, the heroes aren’t assholes, etc. (and I’m referring to expectations from DotU and other Western iterations, rather than the original Japanese series). You don’t have to conform to these expectations -- personally, I’m a big fan of tropes being subverted -- but you need to be aware of them. You need to know the rules before you break them, and if you break them, you better break them damn well.

Imo, VLD ultimately failed to deliver on these fronts, and pretty much fell prey to what a lot of series do -- it couldn’t handle the shift from being primarily episodic in nature (i.e., each episode is self-contained, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while operating under a distant general goal, like defeating Zarkon; so, s1 and s2) to becoming a more complex narrative unraveling a hidden agenda (s3 onwards). Kind of like how the paladins made no provisions for how they would handle things after Zarkon’s defeat, it feels like the writers didn’t really have one solid plan for how to develop past that point as well.

tl;dr: Whoever is responsible for the way VLD turned out should write a book: how to offend your entire audience in eight seasons or less.

#okay i think this is my last personal post on the matter #i think i've vented about everything that's been bugging me for the past couple of seasons #i'll still reblog and comment on things i find interesting #but i'm gonna focus my energy on constructive stuff #like plucking the hairline of lotor's wig and writing fanfic :)#talk: v

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unclefungusthegoat · 6 years ago

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Far Cry 5 Theory #3- Faith And The Greek Goddesses

Hi all, and welcome to the third in a series of Far Cry 5 meta posts! Today, I’m talking about the often sadly overlooked, beloved little sister, Faith! It’s not an original theory this time, instead I’m building on already existing and acknowledged symbolism within the game!

This one is 1972 words, so another long one, but I hope it’s interesting!

Far Cry 5 is laden with Christian symbolism- talk of God, baptism, souls and sins- but there is one very interesting example of where this trend is broken. This moment comes within the scene where Faith entices Burke to kill Virgil, and then himself.

As she approaches her victims, she says to the Deputy:

“Do you know what hubris is? Arrogance before the gods. The Greeks saw it as a dangerous form of pride that invoked the goddess Nemesis, who would seek retribution.”

This is the only example in the entire game (and indeed, the supporting materials) where the situation’s religious undertones are blatantly derivative of Greek mythology. And while Faith is heavily under the influence of Joseph’s doctrine and ideology, I feel that this very deliberate reference can shed some light on how she decided to play the new role she had been given.

Not just as a Herald... but as a goddess.

Aphrodite. Cybele. Psyche.

Nemesis.

Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution, justice and revenge, a figure who punishes arrogance and pride.

Immediately after making this reference, Faith goes on to say:

“If violence is the only language you choose to speak, I’ll speak your language.”

She directly places herself in the role of Nemesis, deciding that she must combat the Deputy’s violence, their hubris, by retaliating with Burke and Virgil’s deaths.

Faith is the only one of the Seeds who actually punishes the Deputy’s actions.

INSPIRATION

Due to this reference, it appears that Rachel took heavy inspiration from the Greek mythology when performing her role as Faith. It has been discussed before (in this post by teamhawkeye and weekend-writer) that she may have learned how to be a Herald from Jacob, since she directly quotes him within the game, and I also think that all of Jacob’s talk of humanity, history and falling empires may have influenced her to look at the ancient societies, to understand the faiths that made their empires so strong.

She would learn of their all-powerful gods and of cruel punishments administered to those proud enough to challenge them- think of the fates of Medusa, Arachne, Marsyas and Tiresias.

And seeing how successful the ancient gods were at eliciting respect and obedience, she decided to put their methodologies into practice.

BUT WHY?

Delusions of grandeur.

It’s easy to imagine, that having been once cast out from society, Rachel might become enamoured with her new position as a Herald, as the one Joseph hand-picked to be at his side. She rose from nothing to become a leader, loved and feared. She now held the ability to control people entirely. She was now divine.

It’s pretty likely that power went to her head.

I have been considering the possibility that Faith believes she is supposed to act as a deterrent for Joseph’s own hubris. Joseph would worry that to wield the power he has, and to carry the notion that he is chosen by God, may make him arrogant and tyrannical, and he would need someone to keep his pride in check. Greg Bryk has discussed how Faith is a motherly figure to Joseph- who better to aid him in a battle with his own sins than a parental figure, just as he, as a ‘Father’, aids the atonement of his flock?

But why would Joseph ask her to take inspiration from an ancient religion that isn’t part of the Eden’s Gate doctrine? Why would he raise her to be a godly figure, when he and his brothers were simply prophets?

He wouldn’t.

So maybe Faith, with talk of her divinity as her new form of cocaine, combined Joseph’s request to assist him, her developing delusions of grandeur, and the ancient stories she learned from Jacob, to come to the conclusion that she was special, chosen like the heroes of old?

And so she decided to become a goddess, as evidence of her worth.

Faith wasn’t named by the Voice in Joseph’s original visions like John and Jacob were, and I imagine she’d be aware of that. Perhaps she felt bitter, outcast, not quite part of the group. A Herald, but not a prophet. A Jessop, not a true Seed.

She knew she must have a purpose, after all, she was chosen.

Perhaps she was chosen as a guide for the prophet, so that he might remain humble and loyal to his holy cause?

SO WHAT PROOF OF THIS IS THERE?

HER ORIGINS

Nemesis is the child of Nyx, the goddess of night, and Erebus, god of darkness. And so it can be argued that she was quite literally ‘born of darkness’. Both Nyx and Erebor were born of Chaos which the Greeks described as a formless, eternal dark abyss between the Earth and sky, or upon which the Earth rests.

In one of Faith’s broadcasts, she can be heard saying ‘Life comes from chaos’.

The Greeks' dark void, Chaos, was worshipped as the very first thing to exist.

It seems too much of a coincidence for her to make this statement, a sentiment not shared by any of the other Seeds, if she had not been influenced by Greek mythology. And it could be that Faith’s belief in this doctrine comes from the parallels it has with her own story:

“Faith flies divine—and Rachel…Rachel gropes around in the darkness. I left her there a long time ago.”

Rachel was born into a world of darkness, by abusive parents. She tried to remake herself using drugs, but still was lost in the ‘chaos’. It was only when Joseph found her that she finally became ‘Faith’... that she became ‘Nemesis’ and came into the light, ‘born’ as the person she was meant to be.

There are also interpretations where Nemesis has no father, which is all the more interesting, considering Joseph’s epithet.

SYMBOLISM

The above depiction of her is especially interesting, as Nemesis holds two of her symbols- that of scales, and a sword. These are the very symbols of her adoptive brothers. We have little insight of how Faith interacts with John and Jacob, but we know that Joseph apparently dotes on her. Perhaps, if she is indeed consumed by the notion that Joseph chose her, made her a favourite, that she feels she has some degree of control over them too?

THE ANGELS

Faith appears to have taken inspiration from Nemesis in her manufacturing of the Bliss, and the effects it takes upon those consumed by it.

The Angels are overdosed so heavily on Bliss, that they no longer have free will. This is an irreversible process, and one wonders why such a process is needed, if the Bliss is influential enough upon most people to make them suggestible to the Project?

Well, perhaps Faith suggested it, in reference to Adrasteia.

Adrasteia was an alternative name for Nemesis, and in Ancient Greek, roughly translates to ‘one from whom there is no escape’.

Interestingly, Adrasteia is also the epithet of Cybele, the goddess of childbirth. Could it be that Faith, in a twisted way, thinks of the Angels as her children- a note from a Priestess describes them as ‘extensions’ of Faith- and one very telling phone message, has her saying:

“A baby is a sack of screaming, shitting, crying impulses with no thoughts, no personality, no understanding of the world beyond feelings. It has no soul. You have to give it one. The only soul we ever have, we receive from others. And it is only others who can take it away.”

Writings on Nemesis has also described how she uses "adamantine bridles" to restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals”- and it wouldn’t surprise me to think that this is why her Angels wear masks over their mouths. There is a suggestion that their tongues have been removed, but why would Eden’s Gate hide that? They are hardly adverse to graphic reminders of their sins?

THE SIREN AND NARCISSUS

Faith bears the title ‘The Siren’, a creature from Greek mythology famous for leading people to watery graves by seducing them with their voices, and it therefore can be no coincidence that water is a recurring feature within Faith’s scenes. And, as The Siren, Faith uses desires and dreams to entice the disillusioned, before drowning them within the Bliss.

Nemesis is a siren in her own way, famous for leading someone to a watery grave- Narcissus, the man who fell in love with his own reflection.

Parallels can easily be drawn to Burke’s tragic tale. Once proud and confident, but discontented, he sits with the Deputy upon the water, quite literally reflecting upon his new life, filled with love for his new happier self. And though others try to save him, he cannot escape the obsession with these reflections and ultimately dies because of it.

PHYSICAL- APHRODITE?

In the Bliss, Faith seemingly possesses a pair of beautiful white wings. And while initially this may seem to suggest her angelic nature, it seems odd to brand her with the same title as the mindless Angels, when she evidently not only has free will, but also is of great value and deeply cherished by Joseph.

And so now we come to note that Nemesis is actually very often portrayed as a winged figure- the poet Mesomedes described her as “Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice”.

Additionally, it can be argued that Faith also took inspiration from Aphrodite.

Nemesis was said to resemble Aphrodite, the goddess of love who is famously beautiful, and there are multiple lines of dialogue from characters within the game that reflect on Faith’s attractiveness. Hurk even asks if there would be any way of reviving her, because she is so beautiful.

It makes sense that Rachel, riddled with low self-esteem, would choose to empower herself by modelling her image on a goddess so desired. Parallels can be drawn to the Greek tale of the ‘Judgement of Paris’, where Paris, prince of Troy, named Aphrodite as the most beautiful, over Hera and Athena- just as Rachel was chosen by Joseph as the most faithful over Lana and Serena.

Finally, Faith is often seen with butterflies around her. In Greek mythology, the goddess Psyche was a beautiful woman who people began to covet and worship in place of Aphrodite, and she was eventually brought into the service of the goddess, having evoked her wrath.

Psyche is represented with butterfly wings.

SUMMARY

Each of the Seeds act according to their own gospels, inflicted upon them by their own individual ‘Gods’. Joseph’s is the Voice. John’s are the Duncans. Jacob’s is his younger self.

And so who drives Faith?

She adores (and fears) Joseph. She learned from Jacob. But to assume that they are her Gods detracts from the severity of her actions and her evil. It removes her free will... and she is no Angel.

No, she must have set out to find a God of her own.

Tracey says of Faith: ‘This is what she does. Takes. Destroys.’ Faith knew misery in her life before the Project, and so is of the same mindset as the other Seeds- that happiness can only be found by enduring suffering and pain. And she may experience jealousy of others who have never had to suffer.

A quote I found on Nemesis read:

Nemesis believed that no one should ever have too much goodness in their lives, and she had always cursed those who were blessed with countless gifts.

In other words, Nemesis believed in punishing ‘undeserved good fortune’, not necessarily making people suffer completely, but suffer enough.

Just as she did.

Faith saw herself in this vengeful, loyal, beautiful goddess. She recognised her past and new mission within the holy figure’s doctrine. And with Joseph's open attitude as to how the Heralds chose to operate, she could easily merge her fantasies with his.

She became Nemesis, challenging the rightful goddess, and committing the very sin, the hubris, both of them sought to seek out and punish.

#far cry 5 #far cry 5 meta #greek mythology #faith seed #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #marshall burke #virgil minkler #wikipedia is totally my friend hahahaha #i'm sorry if stuff is inaccurate #greek mythology is so complicated hahahaha #this started as just an analysis of nemesis #but the others fit so well #I just couldn't ignore them #I've been a coward about posting this for days now #I just get so nervous hahahahaha #hope you enjoy!

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charlotteroseessex-blog · 6 years ago

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Is banter dead?

Banter. It’s an everyday occurrence for most of us. A chance to let whoever we are with know how hilarious we actually are. Some may say it’s an admirable trait to be able to make jokes about touchy subjects, others might describe it as a necessity for a successful relationship, ‘cos after all, no one likes a stiff upper lipper with no bants.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years, banter is ‘in’. I’ve struggled to provide an intellectual answer with what banter actually is, as I don’t think mine covers it entirely, so I’ll refer to the ever reliable Urban Dictionary as a source to back me up.

So as suggested by the definition provided by the UD, banter is something you either have or you don’t. Despite banter being a new construct created by the specific use of language, it’s often found that each culture and environment depicts its own rules and regulations surrounding how and when the ‘playful’ jokes should be used. Banter or not, the reaction of the audience deters the success of your comment. It may have been funny yes, and it may have received some laughs, but there’s always that one stern and politically correct individual who thinks they’re just too good and suggests that your banter insinuated more than just comedy, it was an insult in disguise. These people might otherwise be described to have ‘dead banter’.

Banter, a couples thing.

With the population of active online users continually growing, the content available has now assuredly accommodated for all types of humour, political opinion and other unique preferences personal to us. Banter, on the other hand, is supposed to be a universal concept which is recognised by all in certain forms of situations whereby a comment is made from something that wouldn't originally be found as funny. Remarks involving banter also, more often than not, requires one or more people to display a back and forth exchange of witty comments at the expense of one another. Having said this, the process to embark on a banterful session of quick wit and intelligence, requires the understanding of metalanguage and thick skin of the opposing person and occurs when the response of the receiver provides a platform for banter - otherwise it’s just you being mean.

People taking banter the wrong way and people being offended with almost everything could easily be mistaken for one another, as people these days just don’t take the time or consideration to think of the bigger picture. Was this actually a hurtful comment targeting you? Or was this an innocent remark projected onto public platforms for educative or entertainment purposes? You see, it all comes down to the individual and whether or not they choose to deny the obvious innocence for sly digs. Controversial topics, still present in the media, consume huge attention for the potential slip ups and mishaps from their actions by people choosing to interpret their innocence or mistakes as deliberately harmful and offensive. Racism and sexism are just a few examples of negative impoliteness still circulating in the media today.

Banter (or not) in Parliament.

Take Amber Rudd for example. A Tory MP who recently stole the limelight with her clumsy comments regarding the race of colleague, Diane Abbott, of whom she initially attempted to encourage support of. In her live BBC Radio 2 interview, Rudd was asked about the abuse that female colleagues received and responded by outlining the overall struggles of being a woman in such a high profile job. She stated that "it's worst of all if you're a coloured woman. I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse." Now reading this on the surface, Rudd seems to provide a personal account for her experiences and answers by defining that the worst struggles are endured by her black colleagues. The answer seems to be pretty innocent right? By innocent I mean there’s no spite; no racist remarks or metadiscourse implying a hidden agenda which would make a mockery of anyone. But the outdated use of the term ‘coloured’, instead of black, caused outrage and disgust and Rudd was publicly shamed for this by none other than Diane Abbott herself. From an outsider, it seems that Rudd was trying to depict nothing but admiration for a black woman being so successful in her career, but through her clumsily chosen vocabulary, the overall message was burdened by the perceived racism and rudeness of her remark by Diane. This example suggests that no matter what your intentions are with a comment, whether you’re an MP, local van driver, whatever, the interpretation once delivered is only successful once in the hands of the beholder.

Humour or Hugely Offensive?

From badly executed compliments to genuine acts of negative impoliteness, the creation of banter takes on much to be desired. It derives from a language progression opportunistic in most daily scenarios in order to produce a funny or light hearted joke at someone else’s expense. From this progression, banter has slowly begun to blur the line between humour and being just darn’ right rude. From the sensitivity provoked from this matter, many people on the receiving end of banter decide to use the platform given by, sometimes, controversial comments to capitalise on innocent comments and scrutinise the ‘banterful one’ to be just a rude person masking their offensiveness with humour. We often hear comments responding to badly delivered banter like, ‘it was supposed to be funny’ or ‘it was just banter’.

So does this mean that banter is dead? Well I think to uncover that, we will need to enter the realms of social media. The digital world that encourages self-expression, growth and the freedom of speech. Well, 2 out of 3 might be true but when was the last time you felt free to publicly post something to all of your followers that had been eating away at your brain? The freedom of speech aspect on all social media platforms, more often than not, always receives unwanted attention from people who A) simply can’t take a joke or B) decide to take offence at anything other individuals may say, regardless if it affects them or not. Online banter is hard to articulate. Not only are you dependent on the person, or people, receiving the message in the correct manner, but your choice of delivery is just as vital in successfully creating the intentional humour. It’s a dangerous time to be living in to say the least.

Banter: 1 of your 5 a day.

So why can’t people just take a joke these days? Well I think the answer is embedded in our skin, we are simply all just peaches. Easily bruised and fruitfully delicate in how we are treated. The progression in banterful chats point suggestively towards the rise in controversy prevalent in the media. It could be assumed that since the rise in banter, people have become thin skinned, more sensitive in what others say and are actively searching for opportunities so they can take offence and play the victim. In this sense, one may conclude that banter is only successful if you know the person well enough to pick on them, or the person knows you well enough to understand your humour to be ‘just banter’ rather than a public display of socially accepted bullying. The importance of metalanguage contexts, more specifically the relationships between the people demonstrating banter, is crucial in determining the flow of slurs. When observing banter, you are generally able to notice the difference between positive and negative impoliteness:

Negative Impoliteness is obvious when the conversational tone develops a growing level of aggression, often including insults, criticism or preloaded words to achieve nasty and vicious blows to the opponent. It’s more like a verbal knockout in the ring of banter.

Positive Impoliteness infers more of a demonstration of mutual understanding in a playful tone and monitors the impact on the opponent so to avoid offence if the banter starts to get too personal.

In adjunct to this, does banter mean that social media has taken away our rights to express a freedom of speech? Putting controversial comments out in the public is dangerous enough without the concept of then having that, otherwise innocent, remark reported and pursued by an irrelevant external individual choosing to take offence to something that wasn’t targeted at them. See. We are all peaches, easily bruised and easily offended - but all with just no banter.

Choosing funny over friendship - is banter ever okay?

Let me just return to the concept of being online again. Social media sells itself to be a platform for everyone to create and follow content suitable for them and document images and opinions desirable to be shared with their online communities. Now let's introduce the element of social media accepting freedom of speech, meaning that we can comment and share whatever videos, photos and statuses we so wish...

…Okay, now imagine you’re scrolling through Instagram of an evening and discover that your best friend has posted a somewhat questionable selfie. I mean good for her, self love and all that because you’re down for a bit of positivity, but really? I mean she could’ve at least wiped last nights makeup off from around her eyes and picked up those dirty pants off the floor before taking the photo. Didn’t she see them lying there in full view, like they’re right there, fully featuring main stage in the background? So, as the supportive best friend that you are, you have two ways to approach demonstrating your online appreciation, as reluctant as you may feel about doing it:

Comment option 1: ‘Selfie Queen *carefully selected choice of emojis to imply admiration further*’

This way you get to support your friend in all of her choices, genuine or not, whilst also paying close attention to the fact that you aren’t complimenting her in the photo in question - it’s rather a nod to the fact she always posts selfies.

Comment option 2: ‘Great knicker choice babe. I personally find those ones cover your bum just the right amount.’

Funny. Banterful. Witty. All the things people would describe you in life, but also potentially a comment that might sabotage the friendship if she was to decide you were being rude. Key word here - decide. The power, as Paddy McGuinness famously says, is in her hands. Despite how much you actually hate this selfie and the fact that option 2 (if remarked in person) would be just banter, you simply can’t imagine being fake and saying how amazing she looks, would you truthfully decide to comment this - visible to all of her followers - over option 1 that supports and boosts her confidence? I think not. We simply are all too nice for our own goods.

Banter vs. Your Freedom of Speech.

The freedom of speech prevalent on social media platforms still proceeds to hold restrictive ties over each and every one of us. The expectations attached to certain uploads by friends and family demand support whether you like it or not. It’s almost like an unwritten rule of being online. We all like and comment on posts by our strong ties even if they are a slightly distorted version of how we actually feel. This ability to artificially construct our online personas have enabled us to portray the most admirable versions of ourselves who appear supportive and in admiration of our friends, however far this may be from the truth. To introduce banter online would probably be like pressing the self destruct button on ourselves, painful with no coming back from.

Who’s to say the banter I find funny is the same as the next person? And who’s to say my level of tolerance in the banter I endure is as high as the next persons? Everyone is different meaning that no two people share the same sense of humour. So, to post a comment fuelled with banter and for you to expect the same satisfied reaction you felt when you wrote it, would be to deprive someone else of their freedom of speech if they wanted to reply by expressing their dissatisfaction of your comment. And yet the ability to post an opinion or comment (with or without banter) is still a freedom of speech and is regarded equally as valid as every replier, agreeing with you or otherwise.

So, is banter dead?

Banter is slowly morphing into a forbidden feature on social media. The rise in prevention methods from allowing users to access or view your account has made the sensitivity of users reach an all time high. People are now more aware of the posts they share and the comments they make in order to maintain their following and avoid upsetting them with banter gone wrong. Online banter can provoke a strengthening of relationships if the users are close friends and aware of each others metalanguage so to avoid miscommunication and hatred. However the dangers of being banterful online may also conjure some negative attention from those unwilling to accept any explanation for your comment, other than the assumed offense.

So unless you know your audience, I advise you to put a lid on that canon of quick wit and wisecrack or else you might receive some unwanted attention from people with a banter deficiency.

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dabistits · 6 years ago

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1) Thank you for answering! I hope that you don’t mind my continuing this conversation despite not disagreeing with your points - the misogynistic undertones of that forgiveness were heavy enough to drag anyone’s mood down. It’s just that I feel the need to clarify that I’m in no way trying to absolve Horikoshi for writing these people on those circumstances in that way nor to guess if any nuance we extrapolate from it is intentional or not, just to say that an in-universe lens makes it really

(cut for length again and more discussion of fictional dv)

2) easy to empathize with the reactions of the Todoroki women. Maybe even more so than with Natsu’s perfectly natural hope than having their abuser at least recognize how shitty his action were may bring closure, since that puts healing on the hands of said abuser which isn’t constructive. And then there’s Shouto who has been trying to not do that anymore for a while and has felt pressure to work with/under that asshole to achieve his full potential (which, another sadly realistic thing) so of

3) course he can see that for now, regardless of how HE feels about it, the best hope for their mother is that their father’s action reflect this supposed change of heart regardless of genuinity. And I think we are actually supposed to side with that but whether that’s intended for the sake of the victims or the abuser depends on how charitable you are feeling with Horikoshi’s writing. I mean, in the absolutely most hopeful interpretation of his writing we may see that flower thing as a parallel

4) of something the Joker canonically did for Harley and hence a hint of not seeing Endeavour as redeemable but not being the time for his comeuppance since right now their world really needs effective heroes whether they are good people or not… but that wouldn’t have been such an issue if he hadn’t written Endeavour to be as consistently useful at law enforcement as he did. I very much do not feel like dismissing the Doylist readings of complex subjects, that just facilitates the propagation of

5) harmful messages, but I believe that complementing those readings with Watsonian ones can help us more fully tackle said subjects and avoid detrimental “moralizing”. We understand the world through stories, which is why fostering empathy for fictional characters is still used to teach empathy for certain groups. And like you’ve said, at least on the West victims who haven’t ‘fought hard enough’ get thrown under the bus (Cinderella being a great example of a fictional case) so to me

6) encouraging others to see things through the victims’ eyes in fiction too is important even when the author won’t. TL;DR: please do go off on any author that punches down instead of up but why miss out on appropriating representation for those who are down while we are at it?

i’ll say in advance that i know it’s hard to submit long responses through an askbox, so if any of the things i’m focusing on below were just a result of the character limit/poor wording/misinterpreting, then please do let me know and send a follow-up.

there’s one major thing that i think we have to get out of the way first:

i don’t think it’s fair to characterize natsuo (or any other person who refuses to forgive their abuser) as placing healing in the hands of their abuser. being angry and resentful towards the person who abused you is not predicating your healing on that person’s future actions; it’s claiming your emotions and experiences which your abuser has no control over, it’s setting boundaries for what you will accept from that person, and on what terms you will interact. it’s saying “if you don’t get better, then you will not have my love or support” and that’s totally fine! no one is owed our love, thus it isn’t hurting us not to give it to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

i’m not gonna lie, phrasing a survivor’s choice of dealing with their trauma as placing agency in the hands of their abuser bothers me a lot. it also sounds a lot like the things people say when manipulating a survivor into forgiveness, like: “you can only control your actions, so why don’t you forgive them for your own sake instead of waiting around for them to become better people?? :)” not that you’re trying to manipulate anyone, anon, but wording like that can be easily misconstrued and i would be mindful of it in the future.

now, for the rest of your ask: again, i fully believe it’s your right (and everyone else’s) to headcanon rei and fuyumi however you want to fulfill a satisfying watsonian reading for yourselves. the problem with watsonian readings, however, is that they’re all down to interpretation. you may say that fuyumi wants to reconcile for many complicated reasons, while another reader might say she’s just forgiven her abuser, plain and simple. it’s even more open to different interpretations than doylist readings, so why would i just pick one of them to incorporate into my analysis? how would i choose it? what would my biased choice lend to my meta?

i’m also not sure why you say sticking to a purely doylist reading would be ‘moralizing.’ a doylist reading places nothing on the characters themselves—it’s about using narrative cues to figure out what the author intends to convey, and in this particular case, it’s about criticizing the way horikoshi wrote the pro hero arc based on the way he framed the actions of the tdrks’ abuser and the perspective from which he decided to tell the story, all of which only add depth to the abuser’s character. there is no evidence to argue that this arc was meant, canonically, to condemn that character—in fact, all the evidence points to the contrary—and i disagree with the idea that our criticism targeted at the author and at the narrative must be filtered through a watsonian perspective. unless you believe that people adhering to a doylist critique of the tdrks’ narrative is somehow promoting a lack of sympathy towards rei and fuyumi, then what purpose does it serve except for doing hori’s work for him?

there’s a time and a place to discuss headcanons, and for me, within my metas isn’t it. most of them are geared towards a specific message that analyze the narrative at an authorial/doylist level, for instance “this is why hori is so damn shitty at writing abuse.” they’re not about “hori’s shitty and i’m correcting him with these headcanons based on this canon evidence and these real life examples.” if you want to do the latter, then by all means, be my guest! it’s just not a task i’m interested in undertaking, and, again, i don’t believe they’re necessary for message i intend to convey, and i don’t believe it’s actively harmful to survivors to exclude watsonian explanations.

i think it’s fine to feel sympathetic towards rei and fuyumi. i encourage it! i also understand if there are people who don’t want to get involved with them because they’re badly written and because hori uses them as his abuse apologism mouthpiece. it’s very dispiriting, and people are allowed to not interact with messages they feel are dispiriting or harmful.

i think it’s fine for fans to write rei and fuyumi however they please. they can write them as avenging furies or they can write them as complicated abuse survivors with conflicting desires. as i said in the post you’re referencing, i understand that fans themselves are coming from a complicated place, and i sympathize with that.

i think it’s simultaneously important for fans to remember real abuse victims, who don’t always make perfect choices, and who already get a lot of flak from society regarding what they do and don’t do. we must extend our sympathy to these real survivors, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have complicated and negative feelings about the ways fictional survivors are written.

lastly, i want to say quite simply, if you want to encourage people to sympathize with abuse survivors, there are better works than bnha. there are creators who work their commentary about abuse into the text itself instead of making fans invent an interpretation to convince other fans. i think it’s far more straightforward and a better overall experience for someone to read or watch a piece of media that intends to have a statement on abuse than to be left to flounder in the mess that bnha is.

#abuse /#ask

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scripttorture · 7 years ago

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Hey! It's awesome to see you back so soon! You really don't mess around! This blog has been SUPER useful to me, and I really appreciate all the work you put in! My question for this ask is about the stuff my character will be struggling with post-torture. (Not legally definable as torture, but most of the characters that don't know about the proper definition call it that). My world is a science-fantasy world, where my character is tortured by "the bad guy team" under the pretense of 1

"converting her," and making it appearlike they succeeded, when really, the person torturing her was doing it out ofspite to humiliate her and anger the "good team" she is known forworking for. Now, I know from your posts that they'd never be able to converther or anything like that, but instead they use a secret science-fantastytechnology (that I will stress the fictitious nature of) to control her, andmake her appear "weak," and like she was "Broken" by them(even if that's impossible) 2Well, later in the story, she gets rescued fromthis and that, and I have some questions about the side-effects of everything.Starting with the smaller things, (relatively speaking) I think I want her mainsymptoms afterwards to be memory problems, PTSD, and social isolation, but thefirst and third one I'm not too clear on. "Memory" problems wouldmean she's really forgetful with things like appointments and whatnot, right?Not that she'd forget the names and faces of the people she knows? 3So she'dneed someone to remind her about things often. Do I understand that right, orcould she really be more prone to forgetting the people she knows and such?Second up, what does "social isolation" or "difficultyconnecting with others" mean? Does it mean she pushes the people aroundher away? Or that she's more aloof and will have trouble holding aconversation? Or something else along those lines? I have seen "socialisolation" written here and there but never knew how works in practice 4

I’ve divided this up into two questions because I think the questions init are pretty distinct with one focusing on long term symptoms and recovery andthe other focusing more heavily on immediate injuries and damage caused soonafter torture.

Also nothing wrong with having characters use colloquial rather thanlegal definitions of ‘torture’. I think that’s pretty normal across culturesespecially in normal conversation.

I’m unsure about using brainwashing machines even when their fictiousnature is stressed. But I try not to say ‘never’ unless something is anactively dangerous and false trope. Given the questions you have and the wayyou’re approaching this with a focus on the victim I think you’ve got a goodchance of doing this well and I’m open to people changing my mind by writinggood, thoughtful takes on tropes I find uncomfortable.

I use appointments as a standard example of one of the types of memoryproblems torture survivors can get. I do that partly because missingappointments (over here) can get people barred from their local doctor or mentalhealth service providers, which further isolates really vulnerable people.

Memory problems broadly covers about four different kinds of problemssurvivors can experience. There’s the general forgetfulness you’re describing,intrusive memories (constantly and vividly being reminded of the abuse theysurvived), missing memories (which are generally focused on the timeimmediately surrounding the abuse) and false memories (which can be surroundingthe abuse but can also apply to life more generally as torture seems to makesurvivors more prone to false memories in general).

You’ve picked one type so I’ll focus on that.

Torture survivors don’t tend to forget things like the names or faces ofpeople they’re close to but they mightforget the names and faces of people they’ve met recently more easily.

The best way to think about it is in terms of how old the memory is.Older memories are more…set. They last longer and they’re more difficult to getrid of. So anything that causes damage to the memory or memory problems acts onmore recent memories first.

So childhood memories, the character’s name, old friends- those areprobably all ‘safe’. But things like what the character did in the week ormonth just before she was tortured might be lost.

And this pattern would continue as she tries to rebuild her lifepost-torture. If she manages to remember something for several months it’sprobably a memory she’d keep longer term. But if she’s trying to learn orremember something it will take more effort, more repetition and she’s likelyto forget things very quickly.

The comparison I keep thinking of is the early stages of dementia.

That’s not a perfect comparison: people with dementia tend to get worsewith time whereas torture survivors tend to stay at the same sort of level offorgetfulness long term.

But I think it’s a helpful comparison in terms of illustrating the kindsof things she might forget and struggle with and how difficult and dangerous itmight be.

The repeating conversation and inability to follow conversationscharacteristic of dementia are notcommon in torture survivors.

There’s the classic ‘I forgot I left something in the oven and now thekitchen is on fire’ but there are lower level things as well. She’d find itmore difficult to remember new things, so if she’s moved house or town it wouldtake her longer to find her way around. She might go out and forget what she’sgone out for. She might not remember the person she met yesterday. She’dstruggle more with changes to routine.

Difficulty keeping appointments and being on time can often make it moredifficult to hold down jobs as well as access medical care. Difficultyremembering what you needed when you go shopping can mean you end up with afridge full of rotten food and no budget for the next few weeks. Difficultyremembering what the boss told you just now can make you seem unreliable atwork. Difficulty remembering to take medication of any kind can have somepretty horrible health effects, especiallywith medication for mental health problems.

The accumulation of little things like this makes life a lot moredifficult for torture survivors and often in ways that are hard to counteract.

Organisation can help countersome of these effects and different people come up with different ways to helpthemselves remember things. Having someone on hand to help makes a bigdifference.

Which leaves social isolation.

Honestly it’s difficult to describe and what it looks like varies withindividuals and their other symptoms.

It can be caused by survivorswithdrawing. That’s pretty normal behaviour with some mental health conditionsthey can develop. Even leaving aside long term symptoms interactions with otherpeople can be stressful and torture survivors are already under a lot ofstress. Consciously or unconsciously they may choose to avoid social interaction because they don’t feel they candeal with the stress.

Which would then exacerbate their symptoms, increasing their stress andmaking interaction more difficult.

But- a lack of understanding and sympathy for mental health problemsalso factors into this.

A great many people see torture survivors as difficult to get on withand withdraw from them as a result.

This isn’t the survivor’s faultit’s a combination of the effects their mental health problems have on theirbehaviour and the way society teaches us to respond to mental health. It’s…thelogic that goes from having mood swings to being read by others as unstable andunreliable and therefore dangerous.Or having addiction problems and thereforebeing seen as ‘bad’.

Hell tying it to the memory problems you’re planning to show if someone regularly and repeatedly misses yourcoffee dates and meet ups even when they arrange them- You might start thinkingthey don’t value you or your friendship. You might get annoyed that they keepmessing you around. You’d be likely to blamethem before considering that they might have memory problems.

Torture survivors are often visibly mentally ill in a variety ofdifferent ways. And most cultures aren’t particular understanding towardsmental illness.

So social isolation can act in a huge variety of different ways and Ithink it’s best to tie that to the character’s personality and her othersymptoms. Think about the ways in which her other symptoms might make it moredifficult for her to meet and interact with people positively. And think abouthow that lack of social interaction and support would make life more difficultfor her.

We’ve all experienced a degree of social isolation at some point oranother in our lives. We’ve all felt like outsiders or excluded. Writing socialisolation is about capturing that experience for your character- how it wouldfeel for her over weeks, months perhaps years.

I hope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw ableism #effect of torture on victims #writing victims #social isolation #memory #torture and memory problems #forgetfulness #mental health #raven6229

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01sentencereviews · 7 years ago

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top 5 people of 2017?

carrie fisher: though she unfortunately and prematurely passed on december 27th of 2016, carrie fisher remained present throughout 2017, and i welcomed every moment and memory of her free-spirited, honest persona and her supernatural, brilliantly brass etherealness. as i wrote regarding abbas kiarostami’s passing on last year’s list, the untimely death of a person often results in a strange re-infatuation with that individual’s career and life, sadly helping to remind us all of just how unbelievably important and inspiring their past words truly were, and still are, to many of us. as an unapologetic mentally ill person and one of the biggest, most charismatic movie stars to ever grace us with her incomparable wit and aura, carrie fisher truly felt one-of-a-kind. she would have absolutely championed this current women’s movement in her own industry and the entire workforce, one where women no longer choose to sit silently in the face of violence from overly powerful and manipulative men, women who demand to finally be treated with respect and to be listened to, striving for an environment where anyone who finds themselves lower on this fabricated, but highly protected and followed hierarchy of people can still feel safe. she proved with her past hilarious and gutsy acts that she would have supported these victims and survivors. she would have wanted to be there to protect them, as she also has for many of us throughout her time as an advocate in the public eye. seeing fisher with an extended role in star wars: the last jedi, reprising her iconic role without ever missing a single beat, certainly made me miss her even more :( …we still miss you, carrie. we still love you. and we always will.

david lynch: it had been 11 years since inland empire hit theaters, the last time david lynch had gifted the world with a feature “film” from his twisted mind. after years of twitter announcements, financial and business setbacks, and never-ending, completely unreasonable and incorrect fan speculation, twin peaks: the return finally started airing on showtime this past may and i’m still not over it, and i most likely never will be. it confused, angered, and rejuvenated (notably, a very small amount of) viewers for an entire summer, and became the yearly example many film lovers and fans use to debate, experiment with, and restructure our understandings of what film/cinema “is” and what any and all art has the ability to conjure up in us all, from our most primal of emotions to our most complicated of perversions. lynch is simply a master of the surreal, a surreality which has never felt more welcomed in my life than it has during this past difficult year.

jordan peele: jordan peele is certainly the breakout writer/director of the year. i was familiar with his previous comedic work, but not enough to predict just how much of an impact peele would have within mainstream entertainment culture, helping to cement this more respected social thriller as a legit, respected, and welcomed trend, which is again beginning to find a necessary focus in the industry given the undeniable proof of our current more outwardly racist culture. get out electrified pretty much the entire moviegoing audience thanks its first-hand understanding of everyday, “liberal” racism in america, depicted with low-budget, but high-concept uses of dark comedy and violence to satirize distinct fears black americans experience today. peele may also be inspiring other filmmakers (cc: dee rees’ upcoming lesbians-in-rural-america horror film) to partake in this exciting, reenergized genre, and we should expect even more from peele himself whenever he finds the time in his busy schedule.

nicole kidman: did anyone have a more prolific, celebrated year in front of the camera than nicole kidman? big little lies… top of the lake: china girl… the killing of a sacred deer… the beguiled… those are just the projects of hers i was able to see, and kidman shines in each production, in multiple conflicting, recognizable, and traumatic ways as an actor. this list doesn’t even include her performance in 2016′s lion, which she spent much of the first few months of 2017 promoting and receiving awards attention for, or her upcoming performances in more widely released projects in 2018, like john cameron mitchell’s how to talk to girls at parties and karyn kusama’s destroyer to name only a couple. she is one of the most respected actors of her generation and she is only continuing to exemplify that we haven’t even seen her peak yet!!

tarana burke + the “silence breakers”: tarana burke is credited as the founder of the #MeToo movement, a phrase she originally came up with in 2006 while searching for the right words to describe her own experience with sexual violence and to provide a verbal sense of community with other women, particularly black and brown women, who had survived similar violence and abuse. this movement has greatly impacted hollywood and the entertainment industry, thanks to people like alyssa milano, rose mcgowan, lupita nyong'o, and dozens and dozens of brave women and men, who have shared their stories depicting the sexual violence and misconduct they have experienced in their careers. their stories, some eerily similar to one another’s about the same hollywood predators, are helping to create an environment where the “less” important voice in the industry absolutely refuses to be silenced. obviously, the industry is still picking and choosing which predators they deem more valuable and are therefore still allowed to be celebrated and rewarded even while making their work environments unsafe, but these stories and protests have finally began resulting in some justice, even if not nearly as great as it should be. 2017 has been an important year for all silence breakers and protestors, not just those in the entertainment industry, but for all people who feel disenfranchised, targeted, and disrespected by the same individuals elected to serve and protect them. hopefully, our voices will only continue to become louder and more heard as time goes on.

#anonymous #carrie fisher #david lynch #jordan peele #nicole kidman #tarana burke #silence breakers #best of 2017 #lists #q&a

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