#what we should condemn are the characters who try to uphold these systems and use said systems to demonize characters who go against them

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

i still cannot believe that people consider having lovers outside of a political marriage as cheating

a lot can be discussed about how raging misogyny and the patriarchy in westeros has led to unequal standards for women to uphold and suffer from

as highborn women are not allowed the same sexual freedom that highborn men get to experience, and even if these women do have relationships outside of their marriages, they are usually scorned and shunned by society for daring to practice sexual autonomy

it’s unfair, i am very aware of this fact

(that’s why i’ll never understand team green stans)

but george has never ever condemned his characters for finding and experiencing love outside of doing their duty.

never.

we’re not unfeeling machines that lack emotions. we’re humans who are, more often than not, led by our hearts. and grrm does a phenomenal job when creating characters, as they truly feel human.

so yeah, it’s a bit disappointing that people dumb down what is clearly a very complex situation to “cheating” (btw george himself calls rhaegar and elias relationship complex and he’s never implied that they loved each other in a romantic sense).

to reiterate, i am well aware that highborn women and men are held to different standards, however, if you have a problem with characters working through, around, and sometimes failing to overcome the social structures that cause their suffering, then you must have a major issue with george’s exploration of the human heart in conflict with itself.

george’s characters aren’t robots and that’s what makes them interesting. they do things for very human reasons. they’re biased. they’re traumatized. they’re conflicted. but they’re still reaching for a better tomorrow and they’re still trying to find happiness.

so i’ll never consider rhaegar and lyannas relationship as cheating, or something unsightly that should be scorned. for they simply dared to find and grasp love in a society that would rather shackle them to unhappy marriages, which is very commendable.

oh… and do you know what george does criticize?

political marriages lol

he makes it clear that selling women off as broodmares and forcing men into marriages they don’t want is a recipe for disaster.

of course the eventual fallouts of these relationships is super interesting to read about, but you should never ever support the systems in place and the societies that benefit from pushing people/characters into these incredibly unhealthy relationships

so while i find it interesting to read about characters navigating these relationships, i’ll always be the first person to condemn these societies for forcing this fate onto them. i’ll also always be the first person to root for characters who do their best to find happiness outside of their political/arranged marriage

sorry that i don’t condemn a character for finding love outside of a loveless marriage

instead of getting angry at rhaegar and lyanna and being very nonsensical in the main tags about it, how about you turn that anger onto the patriarchy, which is rooted in every single institution and family in westeros, the patriarchy that refuses to allow women to have the same amount of sexual autonomy as men?

(this is why i despise team green :))

[bestworstcase]

(i feel i should clarify that this isn’t criticism it’s one of my favorite things abt the show)

i don’t disagree, per se, but when i say rwby is cynical what i mean is this:

the good guys—these kids who care so much and try so hard to make the world better, to do the right thing even in the most awful circumstances—are on the wrong side of the broader ideological conflict. the heroes are huntsmen, and huntsmen are the institutional keystone of the postwar society ozma designed; their literal stated purpose is to train children as soldiers in order to use them as cannon fodder in a never-ending shadow war against the human being ozma views as the root of all evil. they are glorified mercenaries operating with zero meaningful oversight and the authority to act as international law enforcement agents, and rwby as a narrative has made a deliberate point of emphasizing the many, many failures of this system—from rampant corruption and outright criminality to using an enslaved child’s suffering as recruitment material instead of enforcing the laws against slavery to the trauma inflicted on the children who sign up to become heroes and get drop-kicked onto the frontlines of a war zone instead. & then v6 comes out swinging with the revelation that the ultimate purpose for ALL OF THIS is to placate a god who has condemned humanity to death unless they collectively ‘redeem’ themselves for the (nominal) wrongdoing of one person, for which all humankind is evidently guilty by association as far as the gods care. we have three whole volumes and counting of narrative arc about the kids struggling with the trauma of that discovery, yeah? like this is a major pillar of the story.

the notional big bad—salem—meanwhile, explicitly positions herself in opposition to this system and the ideological beliefs undergirding it. the story opens with salem waxing poetic about how fucking awesome she thinks humanity is in one breath and eviscerating ozma for his reliance on isolated guardians and hollow symbols of strength to prop up his ‘so-called free world’ in the next—and then the beacon arc’s like “so all the adults in this school are cultists and instead of dealing with the problem they’re going to manipulate and put so much pressure on this seventeen year old girl to let them cram a comatose woman’s soul into her that the girl in question has a nervous breakdown and then commits suicide by heroic sacrifice” and follows this up with salem delivering a second monologue in which she bluntly spells out that ozpin failed because his secrecy and unwillingness to trust anyone are corrosive to the ideals he nominally upholds. one of the things that makes rwby so fascinating is how it turns the “evil cannot comprehend good” trope on its head: salem speaks tenderly of human bravery, resourcefulness, passion, and ingenuity; describes hope as an indomitable force and warns ozma that strength will not save him when hope is lost—and he is so consumed by fear and so blinded by faith in his mandate that her point sails entirely over his head and he retorts that actually victory is found in simpler things, like hope, that she’s long forgotten. kshdkf like! it isn’t just that salem is correct in her assessment of ozma’s character and the failings of the society he built—it’s that salem values humanity. it’s that ozma believes that the universal fundament of human existence is fear and salem looks at humankind and sees courage and passion and hope. her absolute disdain for ozma and the scornful critique she makes of the society he built arises from her staunch belief in the intrinsic value of human nature.

rwby is an unabashedly humanist narrative in which the heroic characters are ultimately enacting the will of a god who thinks humanity deserves to be wiped from existence, while the villain is a woman who despises that god with every fiber of her being and glowingly tells the story of how humans defied fate itself to survive and thrive in a cruel, unforgiving world. salem is evil—but her ideological stance is right.

and this is where rwby is a cynical narrative, see, because—the villain is right. the villain is fighting a desperate war of resistance against genocidal gods because she rejects the divine perspective that humans are worthless, and her opponent is the chosen one who folded like wet cardboard when his god told him that humans deserve to die. the villain is the cosmic scapegoat. the villain is a woman who has been abused and persecuted and rejected for two hundred million years and still believes that humanity is good. the villain is a character whose villainy is created and enforced by dehumanizing propaganda. rwby is hopepunk and rwby is also a story blatantly setting the stage for the villain’s villain -> hero arc to involve the heroes taking her side against the gods and rwby is also a story that interrogates the simple ethos of hopepunk and finds that it isn’t enough to be kind, it isn’t enough to just fight for a better world, you have to also be critical of what you believe, your preconceived biases, your assumptions about what “better” means; are you taking a stand against injustice or are you actually defending a status quo that benefited you at the expense of someone else? (think abt how the heroes read into salem’s narrowly-focused campaign against the huntsmen academies a desire for total destruction of civilization itself; and how this subconscious idea that humanity and huntsmen are one and the same has locked the kids into thinking of the conflict as a problem that has to be solved by force even though salem cannot be forced to stop.)

the heroes are a bunch of children who were never taught to do anything except kill monsters, trying to figure out what the hell to do in a war that cannot be ended with violence, and the villain is a deeply traumatized immortal woman brutally ripping apart the cult of her tormentors after two hundred million years of not being treated like a person. the narrative appears to be setting up for THE VILLAIN to be the one who initiates peace negotiations and is structured such that the villain has to win because her ideological stance is that humanity has the right to exist.

rwby is not cynical in the sense that it disdains optimism or sneers at the idea of believing in things—quite the opposite, it’s hopepunk—it’s cynical in the sense that the narrative grabs the simplistic good-vs-evil moral conventions of its genre by the throat and goes this is the problem actually, this comforting myth of clean dividing lines between the good people and the monsters. it’s cynical about the tidiness of fantasy conflict, the easy moral resolution, the allure of the simple answer. & it’s this cynicism that gives the hope its teeth, bc the hope has got this underlying rage burning through it.

rwby is hopepunk but also profoundly cynical i think

[hamliet]

I feel like people confuse heroes with what we know here in America as cops lol

What’s so wrong with Hawks killing Twice is that he’s claiming to be a hero. Heroes don’t kill. And people keep comparing them to real life cops who kill when they deem it’s necessary, or whatever.

Now don’t get me wrong I don’t think cops should kill either, but that’s a different discussion. But the bottom line is you can’t call yourself a hero if you can’t find a way to save people without killing someone else, and Hawks is doing just that, and the other “heroes” are allowing it, which in my opinion makes them not *true* heroes.

Why people insist on forcing cop values onto fictional heroes is beyoooond me.

So I got this ask like two months ago (at least; it might’ve been longer) and wrote out a response, but decided not to post it because it is a complex answer. With the diskhorse now revived and rearing its ugly head, I decided to refine a bit of this and post my thoughts. 

I don’t think a distinction between cops and heroes is really important, since as far as we have seen in BNHA... we aren’t really sure of the distinction, plus at least for me as an American, I can’t comment on Japan’s system (and there’s a major racism factor in the US).

We have seen heroes willing to kill in the manga (I mean, they were all trying to kill Tomura), though. This fits with this chapter’s (314) indication of a highly corrupt system. 

I also completely agree with you: in general (look extreme situations exist, but BNHA thus far isn’t in one; it will likely have one towards the end with AFO) if you can’t find a way to save a life without it coming at the cost of another, that isn’t something heroic to be celebrated, and that’s a cheap-ass view of justice (also as a personal value). It’s a tragedy, not something to be admired or inspired by or to aim for, all of which are generally responses to heroism as a concept (within our world and within BNHA). 

This idea--that killing is not heroic--is also reflected in the story for the most part: from chapter one, we are told a hero saves. We can thus conclude that someone who does not save is probably not intended to be seen as heroic in that moment (which is not the same as condemning them as a monster who cannot change). That is clearly a value of the story, so to uphold this, Twice’s death (since this is the scenario wherein this tends to be discussed) has to be wrong, thematically speaking. 

On the correlation of cops/heroes... it is complicated.

In general, I think it’s poor analysis to directly correlate fiction (especially when the work is from another culture than one’s own) to real current events, and particularly when they are so raw, real, and painful. At the same time, I also get that it’s impossible for brains not to make connections and see familiar circumstances in them. However, this doesn’t mean that 1=1 but instead is a blurry reflection in a mirror: the arguments and logic are not entirely removed from the real world, even if not intended to be 1=1 equivalents (by equivalents I mean direct representations of a particular real life event/concept). Even if the author does not intend the reflection, it can still exist and be picked up on by readers, or by the fandom in their respective contexts/cultures. This is not “wrong” of fans; we.all do this.

So, to return to how Twice’s death is analyzed within the specific context of fandom, I’m reluctant to equate it to the real world, while at the same time indeed finding it almost impossible not to shiver at the way the arguments used by hero stans mimic rhetoric from the real world. Personally, I do find it disturbing how many people come to my inbox and make the same exact arguments as “blue lives matter” folks. Of course it is fictional and therefore different, but it can trigger things especially given the current events in the US, where I live. I’m unsettled by said argument even with contextual and cultural changes taken into account, because on a “personal value” level, the arguments are just flat invalid, rooted in a very shallow understanding of justice, and prone to the whims of injustice. Additionally, many of the asks I’ve gotten do indeed draw on the real world “well it’s okay for real world cops/soldiers/etc” directly, which is partially why I think I’ve responded heatedly before, and why I think other meta writers have done the same. 

That does not mean these fans inherently have a certain point of view (many don’t); I’m just saying that the similarities in arguments specifically around the morality of using lethal force against a potential criminal is hella yikes for me personally, and I know I’m not alone in this (and also know that people closer to these issues than myself might feel differently too; there are no monoliths). Anyways, I wish more hero fans would acknowledge this when justifying Twice’s death. It’s fair to discuss it within the realm of the series’ portrayal of morality, and the story has been odd with the framing around Twice’s death: the narrative hasn’t called Hawks out (yet), while also portraying Hawks unequivocally as in the wrong during the actual murder (look at the panels again. Horikoshi drew them that way for a reason). 

But people often revert to real world justice arguments to vindicate Hawks, and... maybe don’t? 

Is Hawks brainwashed? To an extent, yes. He’s not more or less culpable than Dabi or Shigaraki just because the law gives him a license to kill. We can discuss ideological motives and how they impact the degree to which a character will be held responsible in a story because, of course, it is not the real world and is for a message, but that’s for another day. He needs a chance to free himself, but you can’t say that he did not do something wrong by killing Twice. That doesn’t make him a monster.

Anyways I think the fandom ought to be more sensitive and self-aware of the arguments we are making, and where they come from. 

[onlyfangz]

i know i’ve made text posts up to my ears on this, but trans men aren’t allowed to have external identities, and we aren’t allowed any type of gender presentation without it being criticized and forced out of us. we just aren’t.

the softboys had the safety of their identities ripped away by cis people taking it too far and applying softboy culture onto all trans men, and in turn caused a bunch of backlash from non-softboy trans men (specifically but not limited to tr*sc*m), and now softboys are seen as infantile, even when they’re not. at the same time all of this was happening, cis people started taking that culture and applying it to their fav cis characters, and then everybody decided because it was cis women applying the label to their soft fem cis male favs that it was cringey, and the cis girls cried sexism for shaming them of their interests, and trans softboys were pushed out of the conversation all together.

the fems have had their identities as trans men erased by cis people and other trans people alike, and spend their whole lives being reminded that if they’re not even going to try, they can’t expect any stranger to gender them correctly as if trying would even help. the same people who praise GNC cis men condemn GNC trans men because they don’t see us as men, they see us as women, and there’s nothing subversive about a woman dressing in womanly clothes. it’s so blatantly obvious, and yet everybody pretends like its’ not, especially when it’s pre-t trans men. there’s a difference between choosing to perform gender in a certain way, and being forced into a gender presentation by society. learn that difference, and listen to fem trans men when they speak.

the chaotic trans men, which probably isn’t the term for them but idk what is. the trans men who associate themselves with mess, and dirt, and cryptids, and “gross” animals, and androgyny, and well, chaos, are accused of stereotyping the rest of the transmasc community as being into that as well, when in fact it was cis people who can’t confront that no two trans men are the same and just because you see one subsection being really similar, everybody else isn’t automatically the same. they’re seen as cringey, or freaks. (much like the reaction to softboys, but i feel like the reception was different.)

the passing trans men, who don’t really tie themselves to extra identities listed but are still and always will be trans are told that their experiences don’t matter and that they’ve got access to some super extra special privilege that they use in the name of Evil, as if transphobia starts and ends with a stranger’s ability to tell that you’re trans. they’re held to impossibly high standards, higher than any cis person, woman or man, and if they slip, well isn’t that proof enough that they’re dangerous gender-traitors who were fated to be evil the moment they “decided” to be men? not to even start talking about the erasure of intersectionality some passing trans men still face, as if being a man lessens those struggles.

the hypermasc trans men, - and no, i did not say the toxically masculine trans men, they’re two different things, and the fact that i need to pre-emptively point that out is just a great way to start, - are seen as predators in their own community. are seen as traitors who uphold a gender binary. people get tunnel vision around hypermasc trans men and forget the goal of dismantling the patriarchy and the gender binary and all that jazz is giving people the option to present however they want, not forcing mascs (and fems, although not what im talking about here) into androgyny (which we’ve already discovered isn’t acceptable either) lest they be accused of sexism. the way bigots think of hypermasc trans men are that they’re actually women who have done the unforgiveable, they’ve actually became men, and therefore, should be forever scrutinized, because if we turn our backs for a second, they’re going to be raping and murdering our innocent little cis girls and forcing them to become men too.

i’m sure there’s so many other transmasc subsections and subcultures and presentations out there, but one by one, they’ve all been ripped away from us regardless of where you sit. if you’re closer to the fem side of trans masculinity, you’re a cringey straight girl in disguise, if you’re on the andro side of trans masculinity, you’re (again) cringey, a freak, who needs to stay away from polite queer society, and if you’re on the masc side of trans masculinity, you’re a dangerous predator that needs to be kept in line, bc otherwise you won’t be able to help yourself and become an evil dirty man for real. 

this isn’t my original thought, but to echo a reblogger from another text post of mine, these aren’t isolated incidents, or freak happenings, it’s a system at work, and that system believes that the only correct way to be a trans man is to not be one.

[gamesception]

The Promised Neverland is kind of really good, actually?  I mean, yeah, I’m late to the party as usual, but I just binged the first season of the anime, and then the manga from that point on (the site I was on didn’t have any of the second season, but apparently it diverges from the comic and gets bad anyway, so maybe just read the comic to begin with).  And, I mean, spoilers, obviously, but I’m going to get into some extremely major spoilers here so if you haven’t read it or if you’ve only seen the first season of the anime maybe skip this post and read the manga, but...

...

I’ve tried and failed to write a big long post about all the ways it’s so good, how the main three characters are each so compelling, how its pitch dark but not cynical or misanthropic, with mortal stakes but not gore-porny, positive and optimistic without being trite or naïve, how choosing Emma out of the main three to be the primary protagonist and viewpoint character keeps the story from becoming a masculine militaristic power fantasy, how the antagonists are treated as characters and not just monsters - even the ones that are literal monsters, about how the story never supports or glorifies the idea of sacrificing the weak so that the strong can survive, about how empathy and understanding and a chance for peace are extended to every single villain without putting a burden to forgive on victims and without ignoring the need to fight those who refuse the offer of peace and uphold the status quo, how the story opposes oppressive hierarchies at every turn - not just those the monsters use to control the human children at the farms, but also how the monster elites use access to human meat to controller the lower social classes of monster society, and even to an extent within the human resistance.

But there’s just way too much to talk about to get it all into one big giant post, and I don’t have the stamina for a big extended ongoing project right now - or else I’d return to one of the like 12 I have on hold.

But, like, to pick just one thing....

ok, so eventually we learn what the monsters are and why they eat people.  They’re a weird sort of organism that can temporarily take on the characteristics of things they eat.  Eat a bird and grow wings, eat a bug and grow an exoskeleton, eat a human and gain a humanoid body and the intelligence to become self aware, learn language, form societies - for a while.  But if they go too long without eating people, then they lose their minds and revert to a bestial form.  In order to save the humans, the resistance leader Minerva plans to wipe out the monster society altogether.  After all, they literally have to eat humans to continue being people, there is no possibility of peace.

Protagonist Emma, though, has seen not just the horrific human farms and their cruel and corrupt rulers, but also their towns and settlements, their families and children.  She was even saved at one point shortly after her escape by friendly monsters who opposed the farm system, and even though it seems impossible, she wants to save both the humans and the monsters.

A more typical show, at least among those with premises as dark as The Promised Neverland, wouldn’t take Emma’s side in this.  She would be forced to ‘grow up’ and face the fact that she can’t save everyone.  Her naivety would get someone killed to break her heart and teach her to be hard and cruel as if those things are virtues.  Or, more likely, she wouldn’t be the viewpoint character to begin with, she’d be a side character whose ideals would get herself killed in order to elevate the male characters’ angst and justify their violence.  Either way, the message would be “Emma’s ideals were unrealistic and could never survive contact with the harsh reality of the world.”

TPN instead takes Emma’s Side.  She finds monsters who maintain a humanoid body and intelligence without eating humans, and they’re able to spread that trait to the rest of monster society while the humans all escape to the human world.  Now, as much as I don’t like the grimdark ‘there is no peaceful option’ hypothetical version of the story, this development could have been handled pretty badly.  Like, just reading it like that, it sounds like the story raised a big moral dilemma and then chickened out of it.  But that’s really not how it comes off while you’re reading it, for a couple reasons.

First of all, Emma meets the non-human-eating monsters early in the story, long before we get the explanation of how monsters in general work.  So by the time we learn that the monsters must eat humans to maintain their self identity, the audience already knows that there are exceptions and that an alternative exists.  The story never sets this up to be a moral dilemma in the first place, so when the issue is bypassed it doesn’t feel like it’s undercut itself.

More importantly, though, is the thematic & metaphorical content.  Because the monster society is a pretty explicit metaphor for unjust human societies, and monsters represent the people who make up such societies.  Not just the aristocrats who benefit from the unjust society, or those who directly enforce and uphold it, but also regular people.  People insulated just enough from the suffering and death that their lives are built on that they can turn a blind eye to it, but aware enough of their complicity in that suffering that they construct excuses to justify their part in it, and by proxy excuse those at the top who actually benefit from and shaped the society as it is.  People living lives simultaneously just comfortable enough to keep them docile, but precarious enough that they’re too caught up with struggling to maintain the tenuous grasp on the lives they have to feel like they can work towards anything better.  Monster society in TPN is a cage built out of the corpses of humans cattle, but built to imprison and enslave the monster civilians who eat them.

Hanging the story on the fantastical element of monster biology would divorce it from that essential metaphor while also endorsing an outright genocidal worldview, and TPN explicitly calls out the plan to wipe out the monsters altogether as just that - genocidal.  It never even pretends to entertain the notion that the audience should accept that plan as the right choice, even while it doesn’t condemn Minerva for pursuing it. When Emma is proposing her plan to Minerva, the deal she strikes with him is ‘I will try to make my peaceful solution happen, and if I succeed then you cancel your plan to wipe out the monsters’.  Minerva is eventually shown to be lying when he makes that agreement, but Emma isn’t, and note the if there.  If Emma’s plan fails, then she - and thus the narrative - accepts that Minerva’s plan to save the children is still better than leaving things as they are, even if it means wiping out all the monsters.  After all, the society IS monstrously unjust, and even the lower classes within that society ARE complicit in that injustice.

Minerva’s problem isn’t even presented as a matter of him hating the monsters too much to see a route to peace with them.  The story doesn’t frame the conflict between Minerva’s and Emma’s plans as hate vs. love or revenge vs. forgiveness.  It’s instead more of ‘hierarchy and division bad, mutualism/openness/relying on each other good’.  The point is to show how Minerva’s role as a figurehead who believes he has to project strength to uphold the hope that the other humans have placed in him has worn away his ability to rely on others or to be open to alternatives they offer, leaving him with rigid and inflexible thinking.

So when Minerva learns about the monsters who don’t need to eat humans, he doesn’t see an opportunity for a better outcome - potentially even an easier outcome since he doesn’t have to make enemies of the entirety of monster society - rather he sees a threat to his plan to starve the monsters back into an animalistic state.

And if that whole subplot isn’t explicit enough, Minerva’s internalized need to project strength also results in his physical body wasting away in secret from a condition he believes to be untreatable, but the moment he finally breaks down and admits he needs help Emma is able to point to a solution, one that again doesn’t come across as a cop out because again it takes the form of another character the audience was already introduced to a long time ago.

In a story arc that the second season of the anime adaptation apparently cut entirely, wow the more I hear about anime season 2 the worse it sounds.  And after the first season was so good....

...

Anyway, I tried to pick just one thing and this post still turned into a colossal gushing word cascade, and there are so many other elements to talk about.  Like how The ‘Mothers’ and ‘Sisters’ are menacing villains with seemingly no empathy for the children, but when Sister Krona realizes she’s lost the power struggle with Isabella she leaves the kids tools to help them, and then when Mother Isabella realizes the children have escaped, she covers up the route they used in order to buy them a little extra time to get away.  It’s these little touches - just as much as the short backstories that follow them - that show us how, while they might uphold the system out of fear for their own lives, and might have rationalize their part in it in order to live with the horrible things they’re doing, the mothers and sisters don’t actually hate the children.  Knowing that makes it believable when in the end Isabella does turn on the system, and every single one of the other mothers and sisters join her.

The bit when the fighting is mostly over and she tells the Mother at the house “it’s over, now we can just love them” and the other woman breaks down crying is so sad and human, it makes me tear up thinking about it..

Like I said, all the villains are characters, not just monsters.  They all have motivations for the horrific things they do - sometimes irrational, often selfish, but not even the most unforgivable of the monsters are just evil for evil’s sake.

Again, I’m rambling.  It’s just...  I’m used to these sorts of pitch dark dystopias being, for lack of a better term, kinda fashy in their messaging?  Or at the very least deeply cynical and misanthropic and just kind of mean spirited.  And TPN is so completely the opposite of that, in so many ways.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

where do you draw the line between accepting a cruel character or accepting the (sometimes deep seated) flaws of a character and admonishing a remake for the actions of said character? I know one of skam's objectives was specifically to educate teen girls so i understand the disgust surrounding William. And even tho the remakes were expected to uphold that standard, based on NRK's press release, few seem to have prioritized it. In which case i don't judge most remakes by the skam standard

Hi anon! 📒 I don’t understand the latter half of your ask. If you don’t judge a remake by the Skam standard, does that mean you hold them to lower standards than you would hold Skam? Doesn’t that let remakes off the hook? 

For me personally, it doesn’t matter whether the remakes haven’t prioritized Skam’s mission statement as laid out by NRK/Håkon Moslet. They chose to purchase the rights to the story and format, and they chose to use the name “Skam” for clout by naming their shows “Skam [CITY]”, so if they want to profit off the Skam brand, then I’ll hold them to the same standard. There are two remakes that didn’t name their shows after Skam: Druck, which very clearly is trying to adhere to Skam’s mission statement, regardless of the name. And Wtfock, which even in this last season is copypasting entire scenes. So yeah, if they’re going to pretty much use the same script that was used in Skam, of course I’m going to hold them to Skam’s standard lol. 

Not to mention that NRK lays out as a condition to get the rights that they follow NRK’s approach to teen shows, wanting the teams to do research among local teens, and so on. Like, at this point it’s obvious that NRK wants to protect what Skam means to NRK. And the teams agreed to the conditions, so yeah, they’ll be judged by the Skam standard.

As for your first question. I think when it comes to the remakes that follow Skam more closely, it’s worth asking why they make a character more or less palatable. Like, what’s wtfck’s intention when they make Yasmina’s dad stricter, or they develop Robbe’s parents beyond the faceless figures we saw in Skam? They have a blueprint that they follow more or less closely, so what is it that makes them decide a character should be portrayed differently? What’s their intention? What reaction are they hoping to elicit?

When it comes to the remakes that reworked the storylines more thoroughly, so that they have a storyline that doesn’t connect to Skam as much, the question is different. Does this make sense as a story? Does this story spread harmful stereotypes about women and/or minorities? Does the story push for systemic change, or do they just kinda shrug and say, “that’s how things are and will keep being”? If the story does fall into stereotypes, are they subverted? If a character is portrayed as a negative stereotype (i.e. a thug, a strict parent, a promiscuous bisexual, etc), are they developed beyond this stereotype? Are they granted the same understanding and compassion than other characters? Does the show implicitly condemn them through music or lights or positioning? And if so, who else is being condemned? 

This is like Critical Viewing 101, so I guess the answer is, I draw the line after I interrogate the story and decide where a Skam/piece of media falls.

[gayregis]

Thanks for reblogging so much that criticizes the netflix show man. Whenever I go into the tags everybodys just saying how good the show was and how good of a character Geralt was and I'm just wondering if Im in the wrong dimension or watched a different show

oh hell yea ofc im gonna criticize this. on r/netflixwitcher they’re keen to bad people who rightfully criticize the show, and that’s bullshit imo. as long as the criticisms aren’t anything 1) caused by gamer brain rot (i.e., “why doesn’t geralt have two swords on his back,” “why doesn’t geralt have a beard,” “why is the witcher medallion a coin”), or 2) stupidly racist (”why are the dryads black?” “why isn’t yennefer pale?”), or 3) stupidly misogynistic (”they made it “feminist,” fuck that”) then im all for it.

i really feel like the book fans got snubbed with this show because they explicitly advertised it as being based off of the books and assured book fans that the cast and showrunner had read the books and respected them, and then didn’t follow through on trying to make them accurate to the original texts at all. i’m not a purist, i’m okay with interpretation and editing things in to fit time or adding in an explanation or two or cutting superfluous dialogue/lore explanations that aren’t necessary, but they changed so much by cutting a lot of things out and adding unnecessary things in that it changed the essentials of the four main characters (and also quite a few side characters, like cahir and fringilla).

geralt is kind, patient, and dislikes violence and is very intelligent, eloquent, and conversational, and protective of the vulnerable and his loved ones, and the reason he scorned his link to ciri was because he didn’t want to introduce her to his violent life, not because he just hated the idea of having a kid. 

jaskier is intelligent and talented and is a true master of his art. and geralt enjoys and appreciates his company and wants to have him around and protects him, etc, etc. jaskier is only considered “annoying” at times because he’s talkative and tells geralt truths about himself that he doesn’t want to face, and also because he has quirks like wanting to write and say reports in verse (to djikstra’s frustration). he’s also a little more of a scoundrel, and he’s a great flirt who easily gets women (unfortunately, because he soon drops them).

yennefer does not scorn aretuza, nor should we immediately feel pity for her due to her backstory b/c she’s so much more than that, nor was she the hero of sodden. she’s much more noble and isn’t an ungrateful brat who now hosts orgies just because she can, and fuck tissaia amiright. she also never gave her reproductive system up as a choice (she’s just infertile, her ovaries don’t function because she is a sorceress (visenna was a biological outlier), she didn’t get her ENTIRE WOMB taken out just so she could get magical plastic surgery). her goal to be a mother is something more innate in her i think, something that comes from wanting to also protect the vulnerable.

ciri is a little more spoiled (but they cut out the sword of destiny so this isn’t freya’s fault). i didn’t have much qualm about her because she just simply didn’t get a chance to show the viewers who she is.

calanthe is the lioness, true, but she isn’t a brute nor is she a genocidal maniac (also how would filavandrel EVER get to cintra if he lives in the mountains .). shes a refined and menacing powerful ruler who commands dignity and respect, not just someone who stirs up violence and wanders in bloody off the battlefield. also i dont remember her being so horny for her husband.

eithné uh..... isn’t that warm and nice. no offense. she does what she has to to protect the sovergnity of brokilon, so she must uphold her standards. but in the books she really was going to just make ciri a dryad and take her from geralt. also the dryads kill people of all ages so they would have killed dara (why did they only shoot his shoulder? not that i would wish for him to die, but dryads WOULD kill him).

foltest is gross but he’s not stupid like that. i think he knows what he did. also he was described as pretty in the books (unfortunately)

borch/villentretenmerth is called the most beautiful for a reason... im really not trying to critique the appearance of the actors, because acting is more important than appearances, but for borch it matters because that’s literally his title. he doesn’t wear a tunic that looks like dragonhide (painfully obvious), and he is a little more enigmatic and charming. 

cahir isn’t a nationalist freak committed to his job and he was only in the military due to familial and societal pressure and also because if he didn’t serve emhyr, he would be thrown in prison (which happens later when he fails and insults emhyr and condemns him for chasing little girls). he’s a young man caught up in the mess of society and is now in the snares of destiny. 

dopplers literally cannot be evil. also they use singular person pronouns to refer to themselves.

fringilla doesn’t practice the dark arts and isn’t a solely evil character and the secret power behind the nilfgaardian throne. she does do evil things but isn’t ruled by it, she took yennefer’s eyes out of her skull, later saved her, and then fucked her husband and hated on/argued with his friends. the woman is a bag of mixed nuts, but she isn’t straight-up evil and she doesn’t perform human sacrifice.

vilgefortz isn’t a weak baby and doesn’t get tired after casting a few spells (okay, there was ONE time when he got tired after casting a single spell. but it was, to be fair...... a pretty dramatic spell.... it was uh... too hot for him to handle, perhaps?, heh... heh..........heh..... im so sorry regis please forgive me i love you). also wasn’t he the hero of sodden and that’s why he was so important and had so much clout in the brotherhood?

no development at all for any of the characters in edge of the world, including nettly, torque, filavandrel, toruviel and the rest of the elves, and lille and the old woman weren’t even fucking IN IT!

EELS??????????

did i forget someone. i must have. but here are some thoughts

[moonlitgleek]

Do you think Ned Stark was successful in anything? Your metas heavily emphasize his failures, faults, and shortcomings. Do you think there was anything he was good at other than being viewed as a good man and moral? I don't see many people acknowledging positive aspects of him-other than he loved his family and was relatively a 'good' person, but that seems to be done more to lighten the criticism of him. Why is he so beloved in the book if he was such a fuck up to his family and the North?

Um, should I not criticize him where criticism is due? Or when an issue he did not handle properly is being discussed? I criticize Ned but I do not denounce him. It’s not that I’m heavily emphasizing his faults but there are places where Ned erred, even if it was sympathetic or understandable in some occasions. I’m generally against considering only one aspect of Ned’s personality as an indication of who he is as a whole, be them his virtues or his faults. My analysis of his motivations or his actions in a certain event isn’t a blanket condemnation of the character or any attempt to argue that he is a fuck up or a bad person. Flawed, certainly, but not bad. Far from it actually. The text itself criticizes Ned  because he, like every other character GRRM writes, is not a saint. He is one of the good ones, but he is not an impeccable untouchable paragon of all that’s good and right. He stands out, certainly, since he is sometimes the only person to speak up against some truly vile things (like the fight with Robert over his condoning of Elia and her children’s murder, or the one over Robert’s command to assassinate a pregnant Daenerys, in which he was joined by Barristan Selmy) but, well, Mycah.

I can’t really speak for the entire fandom, neither do I know what tone the conversation around Ned usually takes, but for me, Ned’s merits and morals and successes are explicitly laid all over the text so I don’t usually feel the need to argue for them. This is the guy who is reputed for his honor across all of Westeros, who garnered the epithet of the honorable Ned Stark. Everyone, friend or foe, make a mention of his morals and honor. And it’s not that he is good at “being viewed” as moral, he genuinely is. Ned Stark is the last person who would perform morality or honor. We’re inside the man’s head, we see his thought process, this is his character and his moral code.

The narrative gives us two contrasting ideologies in Tywin Lannister’s and Ned Stark’s to serve as foils to each other, and then goes to bat for Ned’s. It’s a part of a larger body of stories that is meant to make a statement about the importance of upholding values and believing in ideals even when corrupt institutions and individuals ridicule and distort them, or even use them against you. A corrupt system can’t take your ideals away from you, no matter what. Ned’s story falls right in line with this message. His ideals win. His political theory wins. He wins. How can he, then, be considered a failure?

In-universe, it’s Ned’s legacy that has so many factions fighting for his children’s rights right now. Even Stannis, who does not like Ned and resents the hell out of him, expresses a lot of respect for him and admits to his value and morals. Throughout their stories, the Starklings encounter people who help, support and trust them right off the bat because they are Ned’s. Alys Karstark goes to Jon for protection because he is Ned Stark’s son. The mountain clans choose to die for “the Ned’s little girl”. Meera and Jojen Reed pledge heart and hearth and harvest and swords to Winterfell. The support Jon and Robb gain at the very start is in no small part due to them being Ned’s. This isn’t solely about the Stark name, this is specifically about the character of Eddard Stark and the way he ruled the North. You simply don’t inspire that level of loyalty and love if you’re a failure.

It’s true the Starks are revered in the North for protecting their people and being just plain generous (e.g: their long-lived tradition of taking in people in the winter town in wintertime to share with them the advantages of Winterfell’s higher technology of the glass gardens and hot springs, the benefit of which makes the difference between life and death in winter) but not only does Ned uphold that model, he capitalizes on it. You can easily see why he’d be so loved when you learn of the way he treated his lessers from minor nobles to the servants, and the apparent respect and engagement he showed to both his vassals and his household. Ned took care to foster loyalty in his people, employed a ruling theory based on having his vassals’ respect and admiration, and impressed the importance of doing that on his kids.

The Starklings’ behavior and ideals reflect Ned’s successes with them as much as it bears his mistakes. These kids’ value system is largely shaped by his teachings and it’s his moral code they try to follow. They aspire to (and do) follow his example. They are all, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, falling back on Ned’s teachings and model of behavior. They have a constant thread of “What Would Eddard Stark Do?” running through various storylines; a part of it is expected childish idolization of their father, for sure, but these kids also recognize that his morals and ideals are sound, and his example is a pretty good one to follow.Ned, by and large, shaped their personalities (some more than the others, obviously) and his influence is always there. The way Robb invites a different bannerman to ride with him everyday, which is echoed by Bran back in Winterfell, comes from Ned. Sansa’s absolute belief in the strategy of inspiring loyalty through love comes from Ned. Jon and Arya’s sense of justice comes from Ned. Their collective sense of responsibility and recognition of the value of every individual life comes from Ned.

Unfortunately, we get so little interaction between Ned and his children but what we do get, combined by how his kids think of him, tell of a loving, approachable and available father. He listened to his children and demonstrated a willingness to let their arguments and wishes change his mind in a way that isn’t exactly common in Westeros (e.g: listening to Jon’s argument and allowing the kids to keep the direwolves after he initially refused Bran, hiring Syrio to train Arya and planning to offer for him to accompany them back to Winterfell). Ned clearly did not see his children as investments or marriage pawns to be used to bolster his own power which is pretty rare in Westeros. He was attentive and protective of them and of their right to be children. He was very hands-on when it comes to his boys’ education, and his teaching method was pretty good; he taught by example, for starters, and he explained why he does something and what meaning lies behind his actions.

And we can’t talk about the kind of man Ned is without talking about what he did for Jon. To be clear, I’m highly critical of how Ned handled things with Jon but I’m not unaware that Ned’s choice to give Jon a relatively good life with excellent education and a family that (mostly) loved him came at no small expense to Ned and his marriage. He did not have to raise Jon in Winterfell to honor his promise to Lyanna (as far as we know anyway since we don’t know the exact promise Ned made.) He could have let Jon disappear into the Neck with Howland, but he chose to assume responsibility for the kid himself. He chose to give Jon an education on par with Robb’s and raise his biological children to love their ostensible bastard brother. Not many men would choose to do so. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

So no, anon, I definitely do not think Ned is a failure, far from it. But he was still a Westerosi man raised in a patriarchal society and wasn’t immune to its rigid rules and prejudices. He was still someone who made mistakes with his kids - he simply did not have any sensible choice in some places in the narrative, which has to be taken into account when we discuss him, but we also have to acknowledge that he was someone who dealt with trauma and situations out of his control by avoiding thinking about them entirely. His protectiveness and desire to keep his children close, and keep them children, did impair a realistic planning for their future while his tendency to compartmentalize to deal with his trauma or guilt directly affected at least Jon and Sansa. But Ned, like everybody in either the fictional or the real world, succeeded and failed; he made good decisions and very very bad ones; he loved and championed and protected his children but also failed them. Being a good father or a good lord or a good person does not exempt him from making grievous mistakes, and those mistakes do not make him a failure or a bad person. It’s the totality of his actions and the context of said actions that determine the kind of person Ned was.

[theliterateape]

The Surveillance State Made Personal: Why Everyone Should Have a Body Camera

By Don Hall

Once, a long time ago, I was assaulted by an ex-girlfriend. I use the word “assault” but that’s because that is the legal definition. The simpler truth, unpainted with the soft language of the victimized, is that she punched me in face several times because I wanted her out of my house.

So I called the police.

Not because I wanted her arrested but because I wanted her out of my house. Hell, I’d been punched by far larger people with far more malicious intent than her.

She patiently waited for the police and, when they arrived, without a hint of remorse or pause, she told them that I had assaulted her. She accused me of stalking her and luring her to my house and assaulting her.

I knew I was fucked. Her words against mine.

Images of prison flooded into my vision, of my life flushed down the toilet, of the devastation it would cause.

I was so shocked by her statement, at the overwhelming untruth of it, all I did was shrug and say, “I just want her to leave.” The officers assessed the situation, one escorting her to the lawn, the other, hands on his belt near his gun, questioning me. After ten minutes or so, they determined either she was lying or that they couldn’t decide who was lying but ultimately drove her to her car and followed her home.

I sat in my chair and contemplated what was going to happen. She was an activist. She was a woman of color. She had serious ties with the justice system and law professors as close friends. I felt trapped.

An hour later, she came back. Pleading with me to let her in so we could talk about it. When I wouldn’t, she broke my front window with a brick. I finally agreed to sit down, her on one side of the locked screen door and me on the other, and she calmed down. I took my phone, hit voice memo and record, and after 30 minutes got her to admit on the recording that she made it up to hurt me, that I had not assaulted her, that she had punched me rather than the other way around. I had it on tape and I told her so.

I still have that recording on a CD somewhere in a box. You know, just in case.

On May 20, activist Shaun King shared yet another story of a police officer pulling over a black woman and the subsequent horrors of justice so common in that scenario.

“Sherita Dixon Cole just happens to be a close personal friend of Civil Rights Attorney and my close friend Lee Merritt. These are the facts he was able to get together after speaking with Sherita’s family:

On May 20th, 2018 at approximately 1:30AM Sherita Dixon Cole was pulled over in Waxahachie, TX by a Texas State Trooper — Officer Hubbard, near a abandoned car dealership (I287 South & I35 South). She was told she was being stopped because Hubbard expected she was driving while intoxicated. Cole voluntarily performed and passed all DUI/DWI protocol including a breathalyzer. However, Hubbard decided he “didn’t like [her] attitude” and that he was going to take her to jail anyway. He handcuffed her hands behind her back and placed Cole in the front passenger seat of his patrol vehicle. Hubbard then took a seat beside Cole and placed his hand on her thigh. He asked her if she wanted to go home as he hiked up her skirt. He told her that she could earn her way home, if she really wanted to go.

Cole had called her boyfriend to the scene of the stop when she was first pulled over. He arrived just as the officer began to accost her. Hubbard asked Cole who was in the car. When she explained it was her fiancé he asked her, was he armed. When she said he was not, Hubbard retorted “If you tell him what happened he will be armed and his fire arm will be visible when I have to shoot him.” Hubbard went out to speak with Cole’s boyfriend and allowed him to speak with her briefly in his presence. She told him that she passed the DUI/DWI protocol but the officer said he was taking her in anyway “because of [her] attitude.” Hubbard immediately ended the conversation and told Cole he was taking her to the Ellis County Jail. Her fiancé told Hubbard that he would follow them to the jail but Hubbard warned him that he could not follow him and would be arrested if he tried. Cole’s fiancé drove a short distance up the road and waited for the officer to head toward the jail.”

He wrote that she reported being sexually assaulted to the county jail and they refused to take her in for medical treatment. That very evening, the Texas Department of Public Safety responded that the body cam footage of the arrest did not support her claims.

The Faceborg commenting nose-bleed sitters responded in outrage. Apparently, here was another instance that supported the trend. “We believe HER!” was the online cry. King was apoplectic and tweeted without cease about the injustice, that her character was unassailable, demanding DNA testing on the officer, alleged a departmental cover up and insisted the department release the body cam footage to the public.

So they did.

And she lied.

Upon watching the two hours of video, King responded on Medium:

“Earlier today I was able to review nearly two hours of body camera footage provided by the police department. The footage appears to be authentic and trustworthy. At no time does it show any of the horrible allegations originally made by Sherita Dixon-Cole. The officer never threatens her or her fiancé as she described. No sexual assault of any kind takes place. From all indications the officer, Daniel Hubbard, was very professional and patient throughout the ordeal. The whole thing was rather routine and painfully normal.”

There are those who have made the case that, due to decades of police not believing women in assault and rape cases, that it is time for all men to be held accountable. I’ve read think pieces that state that hatred of all men (misandry) is now a just stance and that calls for due process are tantamount to upholding the Patriarchy.

“We believe HER.”

Using the soft language of the victimized,

a dirty joke is sexual harassment

breaking up with someone is abusive behavior

laughing at someone online is assault

Had there not been a functioning camera recording the arrest, Cole would have been successful in using the hysteria of our times to destroy the life of what appears to be an upstanding and honorable peace officer.

Here is where I am faced with a legitimate quandary. How do I have a rational and logical discussion about these issues with people whom I love and respect when my natural — and I would argue, earned — skepticism conflicts so directly with the message that any doubt as to the honesty of accusations is tantamount to putting a boot to the neck of feminism and declaring allegiance to abuse and rape?

The hysteria is such that a recent exchange in which I pointed out the irony of someone who has used the theatrics of abuse narrative and the aforementioned soft language of the victimized whining about someone using the same tactics against her resulted in her mob all agreeing that I was psychotic and dangerous.

A friend was told he was not welcome to an event because he was considered ‘problematic’ and would violate their ‘safe space’ when it was discovered that he questioned the validity of the accusations against Woody Allen. (Something similar happened to me despite my working for a feminist cause for months prior.)

How do I have a conversation with people so entrenched in ideology that it feels somewhat like trying to reason with an avid Trump supporter?

Men should just listen, I'm told. But what if I listen and still disagree with the strident whole-cloth condemnation of behavior I consider ultimately benign? Does "You should just listen" mean that if I don't completely agree that I didn't fully listen? Does listening require me to turn off my brain?

I very much want to be an advocate for women (and men, and, hell, humans in general.) If being a non-thinking reactionary is what is being asked of me, I'm not at all certain I can comply nor would I want to.

More importantly than my perspective, what happens to Officer Hubbard after being falsely accused of rape and police brutality? Is he going to "believe her" the next time he has an assault reported? Or will his lens of personal experience color his perspective to begin doubting any woman's claims?

Maybe everyone should have a body camera and leave their recording apps on their smartphones in continuous ON position. At least with recorded evidence, those who would use a legitimate and necessary social activism for their own nefarious ends will be thwarted.

Or maybe it’ll just make them famous.