#noralities vibe

[nistley]

An Isekai anime that doesn't use only stereotyping is refreshing!

(as a woman it’s nice to not roll my eyes or sigh for every panty shot or normalized sexual harassment behavior from the male hero)

Suzune and Ryusen relantionship

One of my favorite : Yes, Woman and man can spend time together and being friends. It is nice to enjoy time with a colleague.

(well, we don’t know for sure if their relantionship will evolve. Ship them if you want. For now my ace heart was pleased).

Multidimensional characters are what I crave !

Within 5 minutes of the episode we have three stereotypes :

- Genious student council president : smart, team leadar, sportive … : Suzune

- Smart, capable and composed student council vice-president : Ryusen

- normal guy : Usato

Don't get me wrong, clichés and stereotypes are useful. They give you a sense of knowledge and help you get into the story more easily.

Although when someone is only the "funny guy/girl" who is a cute and silly cinnamon roll for 10 episodes. Then, say an inspirational quote for the last episode, it is a frustrating and quite boring experience.

That’s why, when the magic circle appeared I was happily surprised.

Ryusen is freaking out. Usato is surprised but almost chill and Suzune is really excited about the event

That’s the moment, I said to myself, it might be interesting.

Usato has empathy and is attentive to his surrondings (I link it to the bird scene). Before saying Ryusen as to calm down, Usato acknowlegdes his anger and makes him understand that it is not a good option for them.

Like in real life, only shooting to someone to stop is often not effective, but if you add emotion (by example : « you seem hurt let’s discuss about it » or « you are right to be angry but it’s not my fault » …) you create a space for both your emotion to connect (at least in my real life experience maybe their is an on/off bouton I haven’t discovered yet).

THIS, THIS !

Am I too old ? Is the world a better place now for teenagers ? (calm down. I am not your mom, I am only in my late-twenties) ,or I have watched too many crappy or clichéd anime.

Simply, two guys checking how they are feeling. « Like, are you alright dude ? I am pretty angry to be here. How about you ? ».

No stupid joke, nothing pervy about the magician « nun outfit » (I don’t mak judgmenys, she is rocking this outfit).It feels realistic. Amazing.

To sum up, I enjoyed being surprised. I have watched countless anime for years and more often than not you can predict what will happen or what characters will say. I know I am not the only one. Sadly we are not super human, it is the source material which is poor.

Suzune is not the « Damsel in distress » or the nurse / the one caring for the guys . In fact she is the main character in spirit. Usato and Ryusen are bonding over their insecurities about being

thrown out into another world (in opposition to Suzune who is living her best life).

Additionally, I am sick and tired of genre stereotypes. . Woman as to be gentle, elegant, weak … Man have to be strong, fearless, insensitve …

It doesn’t seem like it in this anime, I have hope 

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

The inimitable Noralities did an excellent video on being Tired of 1000-year-old Lolis.

I feel like a similar handwaving I'm getting sick of is Isekai Protags Who Buy Slaves.

There's a basic, and then a separate meta, level of handwaving there. And it gets really gross really fast.

A lot of them play it as, "well, he buys her and he releases her and she's grateful so she sticks around" and that's still got some notable problems and that is the least offensive of what I've seen.

Far more of them keep the girl as a slave and she buys into the social expectations around that so he doesn't have to maintain the aesthetics of her being enslaved - he doesn't have to keep her locked up at night so she won't slit his throat in his sleep. The slave girls in these stories never seek freedom. After all, they have one of the good masters! He's one of the good ones, ladies. And this is the thing. It's a callback to an imagined good ol' days when women submitted and this arrangement of kindly male masters and subservient wives clearly made everyone happier.

In some of these the guy even leaves on a magic mark that would act like a shock collar if she were disobedient. But she won't be, so it's no problem! Don't think about it. It's fine.

Some of them also dip into the Born Sexy Yesterday trope, with the girl having spent all her time in a filthy cage and therefore being socially inexperienced (oh but also having perfect skin. Didn't you know that being beaten and spending all your time sleeping on straw and stone gives you perfect skin?)

Anyway the meta bit is, of course, that part of why the protagonist is treating it as okay is because the world is often a close relative of some game he's played. Which means his real-in-the-narrative gross morals are being derived from his own poor reading of the moral situation around how to treat game systems if they become real?

Like, there's an argument to be made that if you could discern that you were in a simulation and the simulated entities were really not thinking or feeling, then acting out bad impulses wouldn't be harming any actual people. But a) these slaves are always treated as real people by the narrative and b) they're also treated as real people by the protags who buy them and then treat them as property. There is not an attempt made to judge whether they're false people, before the decision is made that it's fine to treat them as property. The protag just decides it's okay because everything else is running on game logic, so why not follow the local moral mores too?

My opinion is that the trope does well because of some pretty rampant sexism: a desire to treat a woman as property and have that be seen as morally acceptable - possibly even righteous - by the community. But this "righteous" vibe generally requires the slavekeeping system he decides to partake in to be more monstrous, and then most of these authors do a bad job of making the protag even show distaste toward the whole slave trade. Not even a "Wow, that's fucked up. Can't do anything about it as a level 2 fighter. Maybe I'll put a pin in that one and come back to burn this industry down when I'm more powerful."

To be entirely honest, I feel like fucking OVERLORD is on more stable moral ground on this front. He's got a bunch of obedient waifus, but that's because they see him as God, because he literally created them. Any sexism there is much more "man of the house" kind of stuff, and Overlord does a nice job of undercutting all the sex stuff attached to the trope by making the protagonist Magically Ace (seriously, when he encounters sexual situations a magical effect he has no control over snaps him out of being aroused automatically).

I dunno. I could probably keep going but I think I've penned enough of my thoughts for the moment.

[felidthing]

thank you @magical-unicorns-kill for the best outfit idea of overalls and knee socks

[black-bombshells]

I didn’t realize it was such a big deal to some people, so let me tell you how I feel about dreadlocks...

At their best, they give me sporty, bohemian, black mermaid, and VOODOO QUEEN vibes which I think is really cool. So they have their charms and flatter some people, but they still simply are not my favorite style and that’s okay.

But who cares about my opinion anyway? Don’t read the captions, just enjoy the pics. And tell me if you know the girls’ names so I can credit and link their profiles. 

The beach babe is Mirna Norales aka Timelessly Mirna