I know Tumblr tends to be very US-centric, but there is something happening in my country that I absolutely have to share.
Soon, Brazil will host presidential elections. These are the first elections since the impeachment of our last president Dilma Rouseff.
The leading candidate is currently Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is a man who has made racist, sexist, and homophobic claims such as, “I would rather my son die in a car accident than be gay,” and, “my sons would not date black women as they were well educated.” He even said to a woman that she was, “so ugly” that she, “didn’t even deserve to get raped.”
A few decades ago, when Brazil was under a military dictatorship, the government tortured many people for speaking out against the regime. Bolsonaro has said that, “their only mistake was not killing those people.”
However, something incredible has been happening.
A movement called Mulheres Unidas Contra Bolsonaro (Women United Against Bolsonaro) has been surfacing. The hashtag #EleNão (#NotHim) has been getting popular and gaining international attention.
Yesterday, women all over Brazil (and the world!) protested against Bolsonaro.
Here are some pictures.
São Paulo, Brazil:
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:
Ilhéus, Brazil:
Cuiabá, Brazil:
Porto Alegre, Brazil:
Brazilians living abroad also joined the protests!
Zurich, Switzerland:
Madrid, Spain:
Melbourne, Australia:
New York City, US:
Protests occurred in over 62 cities around the world.
Even if you’re not Brazilian, please share this post! Show your support and raise awareness of the movement!
she basically implied that rebecca sugar was a pedophile (or at the very least, was a creep who sexualized kids) because of what stevonnie was meant to portray, and how the episode went about this.
she quoted the interview where rebecca sugar said:
“Stevonnie challenges gender norms as an individual, but also serves as a metaphor for all the terrifying firsts in a first relationship, and what it feels like to hit puberty and suddenly find yourself with the body of an adult, how quickly that happens, how it feels to have a new power over people, or to suddenly find yourself objectified, all for seemingly no reason since you’re still just you.”
she then proceeded to rant about how rebecca sugar was a creep, how that wasn’t how puberty works, how you don’t just wake up with the body of an adult, and if she really wanted to portray puberty she should have made stevonnie awkward, have acne, and a cracking voice. that be showing stevonnie as an adult it was no longer a metaphor it was just doing the thing.
the thing is, she isn’t the only person with this criticism, actually, a lot of crits (the majority of whom are antis) feel the same way, and imply if not outright accuse the crew of being pedophiles.
it’s something that honestly fucking infuriates me, because I know exactly what rebecca sugar is talking about. and instead of crits using actual critical thought to think that maybe that rebecca sugar was drawing off of her own experiences with puberty (even more so since rebecca also came out as nonbinary) decided that she and the crew are creepy and like to sexualize children.
honestly while stevonnie isn’t a physical representation of what puberty is (you don’t just wake up one day looking like an adult) they are sure as fuck was puberty feels like to a lot of kids. and honestly I think the way they represented the emotions that entails- at first they were completely oblivious to the fact that lars and sadie were attracted to them, to the way they are confused, and eventually frightened when kevin tries to push himself on them, did a really good job of portraying exactly what rebecca was going for.
because geez, I remember hitting the same age connie is in the show, and suddenly things started changing for me. sure I didn’t turn into an adult overnight, but you bet as soon as I started growing tits I suddenly had new rules to follow. rules that assumed others in my life suddenly saw me as a sexual being, even if nobody explicitly said that. even if I was 12, and was the same kid at 11 who just liked to play pokemon and neopets I suddenly had to be careful. I couldn’t invite my boy who was a friend over because “there’s only one thing boys want at your age”. I had to change the way I dressed and the way I behaved because something seen as innocent when I was a kid suddenly had sexual overtones (I could go on, but honestly this is about how you’re suddenly objectified because your body is changing, not “all the way kids can be exposed to sexuality by their own peers before they are ready” and I think I made my point).
this is something kids go through. and if the experience of myself and the people I know is anything to go by? this is something kids go through a lot. and the fact that crits and antis in general have the audacity to accuse them of creeping on children because they chose to represent how this feels– it not only completely misses the point, it deliberately throws the point in the garbage, pretends the point doesn’t exist, and then accuses you of being a pedo for not thinking that all minors are pure and sexless until they hit 18.
the fact that the camera emphasizes sevonnie’s “adult” body is meant to really illustrate this point and hammer it in. yes, stevonnie has these “adult” traits that are “sexy” to all the teenagers in the room (and being a puberty episode, it’s important to note that stevonnie is only interacting with teenagers in this episode, because teenagers develop their sexuality at different rates, sometimes your peers are gonna be way more interested in sex when you’re not there yet! this is a thing the target audience is or will deal with! but whooops another tangent.)
BUT!!! that doesn’t mean that stevonnie has to want their attention.
what I think the episode executes beautifully is that in the end it shows that it’s ok to go at your own pace. you have time to be a kid. you don’t have to want this attention. you don’t have to be grateful that you’re getting this attention. you don’t have to pressure yourself into being more grown up than you actually are. and that’s a message that kids going through this are rarely told but really need to hear.
when the target audience is children 8-12 who are either starting puberty or will start it soon, who are or may feel like they are being thrown into an adult space that they aren’t psychologically ready for because their bodies are changing….. it’s really fucking gross to view the episode with the “adult” lens that stevonnie was meant to titillate the grown ass adult viewers and imply that stevonnie was made as “bait” for the creeps or was “an excuse” for them to creep on children. it’s so fucking gross and insulting and it’s one thing that I hate about crits/antis who do this.
and really, the folks who do this talk about this like it’s a chronic problem with stevonnie, but it’s really only there in their debut episode. kevin does creep on them a bit in the race car episode, but it’s also firmly established that he’s doing that specifically because he wants to get under their skin and upset them because he thinks upsetting them is funny (basically going from your stereotypical creep to a stereotypical troll) and that episode also acknowledges how angry and hurt steven and connie both were by him in their initial episode!
basically the folks who make this bullshit accusation can’t think for one second that rebecca sugar as an adult, went through puberty once. or that she could possibly be representing how puberty felt to her. or how this actually happens to kids. how this is happening to their target audience as they grow up with the show. and how they wanted to represent that feeling and show the kids watching this kids show that hey- I know this feels confusing and scary! but it’s going to be ok! and instead think that everything is meant with the adult audience in mind, that she wanted to have an excuse to enjoy creeping on 12 year olds without “making it look bad”. because it’s easier for them to believe that fandom and the animation industry is filled with pedos than it is to accept that teenagers are sexualized by their peers and it’s important to teach kids about that and how that feels and how to deal with it- especially if they are developing faster
There are elements of storytelling which I (predictably) enjoy. One is what I like to call the mystique of the master. Here’s the setup: there’s a character – call them the master – who is particularly skilled, whether in brains or brawn, and sometimes both. The master need not be the best, but they do need to be very good. A large part of the tension comes from seeing the master’s plan (if any), how good the master is, or how the master can be defeated.
For examples, here are some characters skilled primarily in brawn:
Ravana from the Ramayana
Enkidu from The Epic of Gilgamesh
Roland from The Song of Roland
Ip Man from Ip Man
Levi Ackerman and Zeke Yeager from Attack on Titan
Arima Kishou from Tokyo Ghoul
Itachi Uchiha from Naruto
Yamamoto from Bleach
And here are some characters skilled primarily in brain:
Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong from Three Kingdoms
Hari Seldon and his “dead hand” from Foundation and Empire
Yang Wenli and Reinhard von Lohengramm from Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Dream of the Endless from Sandman
Light Yagami and L from Death Note
Robb Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire
Thrawn from Zahn’s work
Rommel in popular culture
And, naturally, some characters are skilled in both, the most obvious examples being Chrestomanci from Charmed Life, Dumbledore from Harry Potter and God from perfect being theology. Examples of these masters can be found scattered across a range of trope pages: Xanatos Gambit, Gambit Pileup, the Chessmaster, Old Master, Invincible Hero, the Ace, World’s Strongest Man.
Dramatic tension, the methods of the master’s defeat, and multiple masters
So much for the character of the master; now for the dramatic tension the character of the master affords. The master cannot be defeated easily and in a straightforward fashion; they cannot be “beaten at their own game”; if they could, they would not be the master. Instead they must either be mostly aloof from the conflict (Hiko Seijuro from Rurouni Kenshin), or remain undefeated (like Ip Man), or must be defeated/thwarted because of
factors outside their knowledge/outside context problems (commonly overlaps with Spanner in the Works; Thrawn),
adherence to their ideals (Bewcock on Yang Wenli: “If Yang were to ever be defeated … it’ll be by his adherence to his own ideals.” Yang is a man of conscience, much like Thomas More.),
some foreshadowed inner failing (hamartia, often hubris: Pang Tong, Dumbledore),
sickness which weakens them (Itachi Uchiha, Chrestomanci, “Worf had the flu”),
defeat by their own hand/they allow themselves to be defeated (Dumbledore, Arima Kishou, Itachi Uchiha),
the mistakes of their followers (Zhuge Liang and Ma Su at Jieting),
the mistakes of their superiors (Zhuge Liang and Yang Wenli),
guile and deception (Yamamoto),
allied treachery (Robb Stark)
being outnumbered by an unreasonable amount of opponents (Ip Man’s master in Ip Man: The Legend is Born),
being defeated by another master or masters (commonly outgambitted; Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi to Guo Jia in The Ravages of Time)
or some other way – as long as it’s not a straightforward defeat. If it is a straightforward defeat in their own field of expertise, they’re not a master.
A large part of the tension thus comes from seeing how the master is defeated, how the master got to their position, and – if the master remains undefeated – just how good the master is. A side note on Thrawn and his defeat by an outside context problem:
Regarding Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn opines that Filoni and his crew did a very good job because they not only understood Thrawn and how they wrote him, but that they understood the meta around Thrawn and how to defeat him, which Zahn defines as to throw something to Thrawn that he can’t control nor anticipate.
A second (and even better) source of tension comes in if you have multiple masters in the story who come into conflict. This typically leads to a Battle of Wits. Mao Zonggang notes this in his commentary on the Three Kingdoms; part of the appeal of the story is that you have skilled people everywhere. A few examples on the brawn side: Xu Chu from Wei, Guan Yu from Shu, and Gan Ning from Wu. Some examples on the brain side: Guo Jia and Sima Yi from Wei, Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong from Shu, with Zhou Yu and Lu Meng from Wu. And these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head!
(The adaptation The Ravages of Time takes this even further, and has a group of eight particularly brilliant strategists – The Eight Geniuses – who are best at their craft, along with a host of other tacticians and unexpectedly brainy warriors.)
Other examples of multiple masters come from the trope pages mentioned above, but I will single out two more examples: Light and L from Death Note, and Yang Wenli and Reinhard von Lohengramm from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Light is an interesting case of a master, as he’s not that good.
Yang Wenli and Reinhard are a good case of duelling masters. They’re on opposite sides, both are well-written with well-defined motives, and both are very good at what they do. Reinhard wins nearly all the time; Yang is never outright defeated. Their plans inevitably conflict, and when they finally meet directly in battle, I felt genuine excitement at seeing who was going to prevail. The copywriters for the English translation of Volumes 2 and 5 clearly know this:
The unbeatable magician and the unstoppable genius …
Despite the empire’s superior numbers, Yang continues to outwit its most resourceful generals via tactical wizardry. Reinhard, on the other hand, seeing through Yang’s devices, opts for all-out war. And so, the “invincible” and “undefeated” once again clash swords. Who will emerge victorious?
Problems with writing a master
And here comes the three problems with writing a character as a master. First: creating tension. If a master is too good, they become a boring invincible hero. Second: how to remove the master. Masters typically have to be removed from the story in order for the story to progress. Solving the problems of the story would be too easy otherwise. (Superman stays out of Gotham so that Batman can show his skill.) The removal of the master can be done via the methods specified above.
And the final, most pressing problem: how should one write an intelligent master? There’s a problem here that if you could completely specify what a master would do, you would be a master yourself. (Yudkowsky calls this Vinge’s Law.) Writing a master can be done in the ways mentioned by Yudkowsky and Graham Moore.
History as a source
I will mention one more way to write intelligent characters: base it on history. I once commented that a philosophical training gives an uneven advantage in debates; when someone who knows philosophy marshals arguments, they typically are not only stating their own ideas but can also draw from the ideas of other very thoughtful people. (See Krister Segerberg’s interview in Formal Philosophy: “If you want to be smarter than Aristotle, go beyond his methods.”)
This is weaponised by Yang Wenli in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. He’s a historian forced into military command; he simply wants to retire as soon as possible. The only problem is that he can’t because he’s too good at what he does; he’s a strategic genius without peer who consistently outwits every enemy he faces. He is too skilled to be left alone. He gains the moniker “Yang the Magician” due to his uncanny ability to turn defeat into victory. Part of the story’s irony is that he’s a master who wants nothing to do with his mastery.
(One of the funniest scenes in the series comes after Yang has just won a great victory. An enemy general muses that after such an occasion – what might the legendary Yang Wenli be doing? Probably dancing with a beautiful lady at a party. Then the scene cuts to Yang Wenli wrapped up in blankets in his room, with his ward telling him, “No, you can’t pretend to be sick just to avoid the party!”)
Yang manages to consistently outwit his enemies because he’s a historian. One of the themes of the story is that history repeats itself, over and over. It’s strongly implied that Yang is no genius in the same way his counterpart Reinhard is (and he is painfully aware of it, as seen during Reuenthal’s attack on Iserlohn). He is brilliant not because of his own knowledge, but because he leverages the knowledge of others; being a military historian, he simply goes through his knowledge of history, finds the situation most similar to the one he’s in, and applies the appropriate counter-strategy given the necessary adaptations.
Yang is intelligent in his own right, but he’s also leveraged the ideas of others until they’ve become truly part of him. History gives him a well of other intelligent ideas and strategies to draw on; Yang is a genius in part because he borrows the genius of others. And Tanaka is able to write highly intelligent characters in part because he borrows freely from historically significant people.
Part of the joy of going through Legend of the Galactic Heroes is seeing how history repeats itself and finding Yoshiki Tanaka’s sources. The opening lines of the 2018 series:
If the events depicted here bear a resemblance to anything you know, or the people appearing here bear a likeness to anyone you know, it is but a fluke of history and an inevitability.
Staring at the simulated model on the screen, Lieutenant Commander Lao said admiringly in Yang’s direction, “I’ve never seen a battle formation like this.”
“I’d imagine not … It’s a first for me, too.”
But Yang’s words were only halfway true. Back when humanity had lived only on the surface of a backwater planet called Earth, this kind of formation had appeared on battlefields any number of times. Even the brilliant tactics employed by Count von Lohengramm had precedent in ground wars.
When I read about history, I always find myself wondering why a certain person made a particular decision at a given time. I love to imagine alternate realities where things might have turned out differently. In the case of Legend of the Galactic Heroes’ battles I took historical events and imagined someone making alternative decisions, then extrapolated them from there.
To name some examples:
Reinhard’s strategy at Astarte is based on defeat in detail.
Yang Wenli’s tactic to stalemate Reinhard at Astarte was common in naval warfare. (From Adkins on Trafalgar, p. 55-56: “A standard tactic was for a ship to try to sail at right angles to the bow or stern of an enemy … vessels were constantly manoeuvring to gain this deadly advantage.”)
Yang’s victory at Doria is based on Nelson’s touch at Trafalgar.
The Alliance’s invasion is thwarted much the same way that the Russians thwarted Napoleon.
Yang’s repulsion of Bittenfeld at Amritsar is similar to how Ōtani Yoshitsugu repulsed the Kobayakawa at Sekigahara. (Reinhard’s response to Bittenfeld’s request for reinforcements parallels Napoleon’s response to Ney’s request at Waterloo.)
Yang’s strategy to draw out Reinhard to battle at Vermilion (if I remember correctly) is a variation of the Trachenberg plan.
Yang at the Battle of the Corridor is similar to Yi at Noryang (if I recall correctly).
[Note that I don’t claim that Yang’s way of thinking is ideal, or that it would work in real life – I merely point out that it works in-story, explains how Yang is a genius different from Reinhard, and fits in well with the story’s theme. For an informal critique of analogising and its limits, see Elon Musk on first principles. Analogising from history in general is far more difficult than it sounds, as Carr (What is History?), John Lewis Gaddis, and Holyoak and Thagard (Mental Leaps, chapter 6) point out.]
Being skilled at writing and living
Skilled writers typically craft character arcs. (Exceptions: experimental writing, or writing based primarily on ideas – such as Borges and Calvino.) The simplest example of a character arc: someone has an issue, and confronts it. If a character has no issues, or has issues and never faces them, they don’t have a character arc – and, consequently, definitely aren’t the main character.
The manga Tokyo Ghoul was widely criticised because its ending left many character arcs unfinished; in many cases, there’s an expectation that the writers will finish their story well. The most recent example I found concerned some developments in Noragami:
Adachitoka are good, guys. They’re just good storytellers. I have so much faith that they’re going to tell the best story with their characters that it is possible to tell, so I have zero fears. No matter what happens, it’s going to be for the best.
Of interest is Yudkowsky’s point on Level 3 Intelligent characters. As a corollary of Vinge’s Law, the most convincing way to make a character a master is to be a master yourself. If you want to be write intelligent and interesting characters, the best way is to be an intelligent and interesting person. Making a character a master is difficult, but it’s worth it. The tension is generates in-story is real – and done properly, it will improve your life.
And this all finally links up to some advice a friend once told me: to have a good life, make sure you have a character arc. Be the main character in your own life. Make decisions before your back is to the wall. Finish your story well. Everyone has problems. Try to overcome (or at the very least, accept) yours. Be the well-rounded hero of your own story. Try to grow.
Chesterton: “Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” And in the same way – if we think of our lives like a fiction we make, we can make our lives to suit ourselves. Being someone skilled at writing our own lives is the same as being able to live and not merely exist.
[We can write ourselves into being masters, remembering – as Sekishusai tells Musashi in Vagabond – “Invincible” is just a word. Excerpts from the trope page on Musashi:
His driving motivation is to become “invincible under the sun,” but the closer he gets to achieving this goal the more he realizes how little the title means …
Musashi’s driven to become the strongest warrior in all of Japan, and to this end he overcomes obstactle after obstacle, never letting his failures overcome him and always working towards self-improvement as a warrior. It gets to the point where people are taken aback by his unnatural determination, some even calling him foolish for clinging to such outdated ideals.
After his massacre of the Yoshioka school, Musashi comes to terms with the fact that even his desire to become the strongest ultimately makes him feel hollow, and so his Character Development leads him to stray away from bettering himself as a samurai to bettering himself as a person.
In other words, being a master is not as important as people make it out to be. ]
This outside perspective is reminiscent of a Hamming question I was once told, useful if your life is in a rut:
If your life was a movie and you were watching it, what would you be screaming at your character to do right now?
This is not original to me; I’m merely clumsily restating what Thomas C. Foster puts much better in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In his chapter “Never Stand Next to the Hero,” while discussing why some characters are more developed than others, he digresses briefly:
… we are all complete beings. We have many different qualities that don’t always fit together very smoothly. More important, we’re all capable of growth, development, and change. We can get better, although we sometimes fail to do so.
To put this another way, we are all, each and every last one of us, the protagonist of our own story. Those stories frequently clash with one another, so other people may not seem as complete, or at least as urgently complete, as ourselves, but that doesn’t alter the other person’s reality.
This post is titled “Thoughts on storytelling” and not “Thoughts on fiction” because I think that these principles are far more general than fiction alone. We make fiction to suit ourselves; similarly, we can shape our lives to suit ourselves. We tell stories about our lives; we can change.
This is an excerpt from a write-up to a get-to-know-you prompt, kindly given to me by @transientpetersen and @hardlocke separately quite some time before this. As part my answers to the prompt, I wrote about my views on fiction. My answer to the prompt grew overly long, so I excerpted this as a subset of my thoughts on fiction.
I would particularly welcome critiques and thoughts from @hamliet and @transientpetersen on this piece (as both of them have indirectly inspired parts of it; needless to say, that doesn’t mean that they endorse any of it) – as well as from any other interested people, of course! (If there’s an actual, proper, literary name for the mystique of the master, I’d like to know.)
Even without changing the horribly designed production systems, there is no real shortage. People don’t starve, have no fresh water, have no houses to live in, etc. because there are not enough of these things. People don’t have access because capitalism denies them it.
There’s enough to share for everyone. It’s not a zero sum game for poor and oppressed peoples.
I known the argument that only GMOs can save us is untrue for the reasons above, but is overpopulation draining resources and killing the earth a lie promulgated by capitalists as a diversion as well? Would we be fine with this many people under a different economic/social system?
Yes, overpopulation is a capitalist/racist myth too. It originated in racist eugenics theory and ignores issues of distribution, infrastructure/technology, and disparate impact in favor of fearmongering about poor/brown people having too many babies.
This one pops up a lot, so I’m going to post some links on it here:
So, yes, it’s absolutely not the number of people that’s the main problem, but how resources are used and environmental management practices are done. If you were going to get rid of people to fix environmental problems, you would start with rich white Westerners, the opposite of who gets targeted by “overpopulation” panics.
I’m reblogging this post from last year, because I see so many opinions about the environment that repeat this nonsense.
It’s racist imperialist capitalist bullshit, and it leads to the exact opposite of real solutions.
Capitalism doesnt create artificial scarcity, corporatism does that
Not to pick on this individual, but I want to address this argument because it pops up a lot.
There is no such thing as “corporatism” separate from capitalism, corporations exist because of capitalism and to maintain capitalism.
Corporations are not somehow a natural universal constant. They are social and legal fictions created to enable the mechanics of industrial capitalism, and they essentially did not exist at all prior to around the mid 1800s. A lot of early Marxist theory predates corporations.
The older Marxist arguments against this “overpopulation” line also largely predates the large scale rise of modern corporations, and certainly predates their current form that Lenin addresses. Engels wrote a critique of Malthus in 1845.It’s a very dense work, and one that probably won’t make a ton of sense to people who don’t have any background understanding of communist theory, but addresses roughly similar points to the ones I made above. The argument that production geared towards accumulating capital for the bourgeouisie is what is the cause of scarcity isn’t just about corporations, it was already being made before corporate power was well established.
Okay, sorry, this is getting complicated, but I just want people making this sort of “it’s corporatism not capitalism!” argument to think of what a corporation is, where they come from, when corporations first developed, who benefits and who suffers from them, why corporate laws exist and why the state maintains them, etc. Because I think that if people actually start to investigate this even a bit I think they would recognize that there is no corporation without capitalism.
I cannot talk much for Goblin Slayer as I have not read/seen it yet, but I think I can talk for Berserk:
You only see those rape scenes on certain occasions. They usually appear as a motif of sexual perversion (Eclipse, heretic’s Cave at tower of conviction, Qliphot, that one kushan Daka factory using human pregnant women) in a doomsday kind of scenario. And it’s mostly done to give the story a push forward, scarring and traumatizing the characters and giving them a motivation or drive.
There surely are some personal reasons why Miura chose this way of story-telling and kept it through most of
the story (but I don’t want to dig into this and I hope he is all well if not I’ll spam him with lovely fan letters and good vibes)
It’s reason why Guts went on his 2 year apostle killing spree:
I also think the things that happened to Farnese while she was taken hostage by Guts, the things she witnessed at Tower of Conviction and Qliphot all together enabled Farnese to become a witch in the first place:
The “Daka Factory” made Silat question whether it is a good idea to follow a a king that lies beyond their understanding (one who resorts to using pregnant women to create hell spawn, I might add):
And later on Silat already makes this point very clear when asked to join the neo band of the hawk:
It’s a (prettyy fucked up) narrative tool, so to say. But also very effective because firstly, it is so shocking and secondly, the timing of these events fit into the overall narrative and development of each character.
Thank you for writing this.
I understand that people are upset with the rape scenes and find them questionable. But at the same time, as questionable as it is, Berserk wouldn’t be the same story without it (and I know this is going to be a controversial thing to say).
Yes, using rape to shock and upset the audience can be a bit of a cheap trick, but that’s kind of the point, to shock and upset both the audience and the characters. Femto/Griffith is considered as villanous as he is because he’s a rapist, as much as people complain that it objectifies Casca*, people wouldn’t hate him as much without it.
Honestly, reading through Berserk every single character who is a rapist has also been depicted as FUCKING EVIL (Wyald, Femto, the trolls, Ganishka, etc.) so it’s not like Miura is glorifying such actions. You could argue until the cows come home about wether or not rape should be depicted and even used as part of some character’s characterization, but IMO at the end of the day Berserk has been mature rated from the start, if you can’t handle sexual content then perhaps you shouldn’t read it.
(* – that’s not to say it isn’t a valid complaint)
Some other works literature, movies or games would only include explicit
scenes merely for shock value or PR (I’ve heard people saying that
Goblin Slayer does just that, but what can I say!)
Berserk has explicit and triggering content, but it makes it meaningful in the way the story is told. E.g. lets just point out how Guts was abused by Donovan and therefore WILL mercilessly beat up or kill anyone crossing his path who dares touching the weak (Though I also have to point out he is not actively pursuing that goal).
This experience of his is used as motivation that is showing throughout the manga in a very strong and effective way. It gives him a depth and also ambiguity – because he is not actively pursuing as goal – that not many protagonists have, at least those I’ve seen/read about.
I mean when the PROTAGONIST literally saves women from rape ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS (Casca/Adon, Casca/Farnese/Women from Enoch in Trollcave) it’s really really unlikely that the author endorses rape in any kind of way. (But I like that he also puts a reminder to not become the very thing you are fighting against *cough* winter journey *cough*)
While I understand people being upset about Berserk’s upsetting imagery (I was too when i first read the explicit parts), I think it’s art to write these things and give them a proper meaning and symbolism; it makes Berserk the masterpiece that it is.
This is so very important.
I’m sorry if what I’m about to say sounds kinda unrelated to this discussion @bscully, but Berserk has a real notoriety in the manga world and honestly, I thank Sensei for steadily going with the upsetting imagery in spite of this!
(under the cut, because possibly slightly out of topic)
“The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine. Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson. I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and be rightly horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium were plundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people they slaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In the gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal? So in Europe and America, yes, Hitler is the Greatest Madman in History. In Africa he’s just another strongman from the history books.”
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (via christymtidwell)
ALL OF THISSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!
Let it be known that I am black and Jewish and I am reblogging this. You can’t compare atrocities or genocides or massacres, that’s not what Trevor is talking about.
It’s about the different layers and perspectives and histories. It’s about forgotten peoples and vague estimates and how some people try to say what’s the worst when what they are really saying is “these people matter the most.”
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Exactly.Like for example in India, they have the MILLIONS of people who were killed by the hands of white colonialists during the time they ruled india for 200 years. Rarely anyone bothered to keep record of everyone who died fighting for the freedom of their country aside from a few freedom fighter leaders because unlike hitler, British rulers didnt count whoever they killed and just saw the death of those people as a stepping stone in their glorious conquest to “tame the savage people” of colonized countries.Indian history is painted red with the millions of people who lost their lives while being tortured and shot down by the british rulers and thats the worst atrocity towards humans any indian will come up with if you ask them. In India,as Trevor said, “ Hitler is just another strongman from the history books.”
Well, if the only point of Jon’s arc was to ride a dragon, no, it wouldn’t change anything. But surely that’s not all there is to Jon, right?
Number one I think, a careful distinction needs to be drawn. Jon isn’t a Targaryen. Jon is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. There’s a key difference there. Jon won’t do what he does heroically because he’s a Targaryen and only Targaryens can be heroes, that’s silly. Hell, I doubt if, by the end of the story, more than a handful of characters are even aware Jon was the son of Rhaegar. His story is not a House Targaryen story (in contrast to that of Daenerys, which is very very much a Targaryen story): he’s not going to claim the Iron Throne, he’s not going to rule the Seven Kingdoms, he’s not going to fly with a dragon banner fluttering beside him and his breastplate decorated with a ruby three-headed dragon.
He is, however, a child of prophecy, and that’s my second point. Jon is an in-your-face classic hero, right – the one who starts as a down-on-his-luck boy, roses in this ancient institution, and becomes an obvious leader against a major supernatural threat. He’s pointedly and immediately sympathetic from the first. So obviously, a good classic hero needs this miraculous birth story, right (something something gods and wonders always appear), and he has one! Rhaegar, the lost silver prince, last Prince of Dragonstone, handsome and chivalric, this guy who was apparently great at everything; Lyanna Stark, beautiful and brave, willing to stand up for the defenseless, a scion of that most cherished family, House Stark.
But then you realize – Jon doesn’t get a power-up from that parentage. Instead, everything is totally fucked up about that. Rhaegar broke every chivalric and dynastic code by absconding with Lyanna – daughter of the Lord Paramount of the North, sister of his future Lord of Winterfell, the betrothed of his Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Given his melancholic personality, I don’t think he ever really loved her; rather, he needed a mother for his third head, and saw that she fit his prophetic designs. I tend to doubt whether Lyanna was actually happy in the tower of joy; she might have been pleased to run away with the handsome crown prince as though her life was a daring song, but would she really have been happy living for several weeks and months after with a gloomy man, in a faraway lonely little keep in Dorne, never again seeing her beloved brothers? That’s really sad.
So instead of being the ideal prince, the son of the great Rhaegar and the lovely Lyanna, Jon is the prophecy-conceived child of a prophecy-obsessed prince who was willing to throw his realm into war to fulfill what he thought was necessary and his captive teenage vessel. Jon only exists because Rhaegar thought his conception would fulfill a prophetic vision (much in the same way Rhaegar himself was conceived). It’s glorious and horrible all at once: sure, Stark and Targaryen blood make a potent combo, but fuck man, you got it in the worst possible way. Poor Jon has lived his life in a crisis of identity, and now he finally gets the answer to his biggest personal question: his father is the man whose actions led to the death of Rickard and Brandon and was the villain of the popular telling of Robert’s Rebellion, his mother was the woman that prince ran away with, about whom his adoptive father rarely talked because the memory of her made him so sad, and his adoptive father spent his entire marriage hiding the truth of Jon’s parentage from his beloved wife because he couldn’t risk his best friend murdering baby Jon for the accident of his birth.
Poor Jon. He’s going to be devastated by that news. And that revelation is going to become a question for the remainder of his arc – am I a hero because I choose to be a hero, or because I was destined to be a hero from before I was born? And that’s the question of ASOIAF, isn’t it? So much of the story is hammering in that being a hero isn’t this glorious destiny for a chosen few. Being a hero sucks. And it’s hard. And you do it even though you might never get recognized for doing it.
So I don’t see R+L=J as a plot device, per se; rather, it’s, as @poorquentyn says, is the ultimate expression of that theme. It’s a way to demonstrate that heart in conflict, the key axis of GRRM’s story. Are you defined by what came before you, or are you what you choose to be? Are you the hero because it’s been foretold you would be the hero and you’re just another gear in the machine of prophecy, or are you someone who chooses to act in the hope of spring against the cold and darkness of winter? Or, alternately, are you able to escape what came before you, or are you bound to repeat the madness and blunders of those who came before you? Are all people, as Tyrion thinks, “puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us”, or are we our own characters with destinies we make for ourselves – good or ill?
The Queen Regent (NFriel)
Damn straight, bestie. Very well said across the board.
I’d just add that Aegon’s role in ASOIAF sheds some interesting light on all this. GRRM’s using him to satirize the Chosen One narrative he’s deliberately undercutting with Jon. Aegon isn’t actually Rhaegar’s son, but Varys and Illyrio are using the romantic idea of the Secret Exile Prince to sell a self-conscious fantasy story within the larger story, one that said larger story will ultimately reject with fire. Meanwhile, for Rhaegar’s actual son, the truth about his parentage won’t be empowering. It will be shattering.
Oh my god, thank you so much, @valyrianshadow! This really made me happy, even though I’m answering rather late. I wanted to reread A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons so this didn’t disappoint. So here goes!
Oh, Dany, Dany, Dany, Dany, Dany, you conflict me with your talk of Targaryen claim and sadden me rather deeply, even though you’re not in my top ten characters list. I want to guide you back to that big house with a red door so you can just live your childhood in peace with other children and have all the friends who will grin, giggle and eat sausages and honeyfingers with you not because of destiny or authority, but because you’re such a kind and sweet person even when you have your scary, questionable, and fierce moments.
What I think of Dany’s claim, she doesn’t have one by inheritance to the throne. Sure, Robert’s Targaryen blood was part of why he was chosen as king, but the reason the Targaryen regime was overthrown to begin with was because of Aerys Targaryen II casually violating the feudal social contract through burning Brandon Stark, his bannermen and his father without due process. You just can’t let that off with a slap on the wrist because it betrays the two-way duty that king and vassals. Compounding that was Rhaegar’s lack of visible condemnation of his father after that execution by burning by fighting for him and leading his royal army. Why should anyone defer to you as royalty if you can’t even follow the basic social contract you’re obliged to so you can continue earning your subjects’ loyalty? Robert’s Rebellion was a just war against the gross excesses of King Aerys II.
I’m sorry for Dany and Viserys, but House Targaryen deserved its fall from grace, thanks to Aerys and Rhaegar (in his case, to a lesser degree and likely better reasons, but that’s not saying much). After Robert’s Rebellion, House Targaryen lost their claim the throne, their right to inherit it, because of their latest monarch’s refusal to adhere to the social contract. Robert’s Targaryen blood might have been one reason for people to raise him up, but it was a political fiction to give further legitimacy to Robert’s claim and mollify the loyalists and historians who would have been tempted to see Robert’s claim as purely one of conquest. In truth, it was a combination of House Targaryen’s fall and Robert seeming like the ideal figurehead, having the right blood, disposition and martial ability, the ideal king to follow feudal obligations, to begin a new royal line after the old. In terms of claim through inheritance, people will only recognize House Baratheon now.
If Dany’s claiming the Iron Throne, it’s going to be through conquest. There’s no other political fiction that’ll give people reason to recognize her over any other claimant, especially after the House Targaryen’s fall. It’s why she needed an army in A Storm of Swords: no one’s going to rush over to her and give her a crown while a king already sits on the Iron Throne.
Her ability as a ruler… oh, @racefortheironthrone and @poorquentyn could probably give you pages about her tenure at Meereen, the former from a political-level, the latter from a thematic-level. I’ll try to say new things, but I pretty much agree with them: she messed up by giving no military power to her new Astapor regime, left the ruling power in Yunkai unbloodied, tried to have it both ways in Meereen. The former two left her with the preconditions outside Meereen in A Dance with Dragons and the latter left her with the shadow war inside, thanks to the Sons of the Harpy’s wealth of resources.
Here are just some of the areas I personally think she fails:
Information Control: Here’s an area I was a bit lukewarm in thinking she failed at first. I mean, how bad was telling the Green Grace that she didn’t want to be a butcher queen with her hostages or telling the Meereenese she would head to Westeros eventually? But here’s the issue: by communicating that mindset to them and not staying silent about her objectives and moves, she made herself an open book. Someone they could read and maneuver around. They knew her stay in Meereen was temporary and she wanted to compromise more than wage total war, so they pushed back at her attempts to rule so she’d leave through attrition. That or be pushed into a situation where she can be manipulated into a false peace just to stop Meereen’s infighting.
Institutional Power: Here’s a problem she shares with Ned: they both think of politics in terms of people and personalities rather than institutions or sources of power. She thinks, because the rulers she appointed for Astapor are decent, that that’s enough, instead of giving them a foundation of military power to enforce their ruling. She thinks that leaving Yunkai cowed without any material loss to the ruling class is enough. It’s not. She thinks she has to play nice with the Meereenese elite in order to rule them. She should have just stripped them of wealth and redistribute them to freedmen. That would have stopped the Sons of the Harpy from being born. All of these mishaps are mistakes rooted in a misunderstanding of institutional power.
Focused Brutality: Throughout A Dance with Dragons, starting with Hazzea’s fate, Dany constantly worries about her rule being held up by the blood of innocents, being haunted by Hazzea’s bones and whether she should kill innocent cupbearers for their families’ crimes. I’d argue that a ruler cannot escape fire and blood as tools and they do have their purposes. They just need to be channeled in the right ways in order to be effective.
The wine-seller and his daughters would be an example of ineffective brutality and… yeah, I flinched at this hard my first read. I’m more sympathetic to Dany’s pressures and frustrations with the Sons of the Harpy now, but let’s be real: this is Dany lashing out at innocent people in order to wring any information about her enemies. It shouldn’t serve to indict the whole of her, but it’s definitely one of her questionable moments regarding violence.
The cupbearers could have served as a better example of effective brutality, showing the Sons of the Harpy that their actions had consequences. Would it be as morally abhorrent as Dany thinks it is? Yes, but the problem is that, if she wasn’t going to kill them, she shouldn’t have taken them in in the first place. In refusing to answer violence with punishment, she made herself vulnerable to the Green Grace’s marriage offer of Hizdahr… and that road led to false peace.
Firmness: She compromised far too much. Yes, she stopped a shadow war from bleeding her men dry, managed to gain back some economic gains with her marriage to Hizdahr and gained acceptance with the Meereenese elite… it doesn’t stop the fact that those were short-term gains for long-term failures to what she was trying to accomplish. I understand where she was coming off and sympathize with her decision, I just don’t think what she got out of compromising was worth it. She made a false peace that reinstated the bloody institution she was trying to wipe out.
Are these mistakes? Absolutely. Do I look down on her for these mistakes? Well… how do I put this? I’m older than her and even I couldn’t fully comprehend the political complexities of Meereen my first read. It was only after reading countless blogs, essays and other read-throughs that I managed to grasp a decent comprehension of her mistakes and the situation in it. The necessities of war and the nuances of peace are things that I think even some adults miss.
And here’s one thing I think escapes some complaints about how her handling of Meereen: she’s a teenager with no formal ruling lessons. Viserys and Willem Darry never thought Dany would rule the Seven Kingdoms so they never taught her how to be an administrator. She learned to be a leader through the Dothraki, but that’s a different skill-set than going through the tedium of governance. She mostly has knights, bloodriders and scribes as advisers, but no statesmen.
I think most of the above mistakes can be chalked up by the fact that she’s inexperienced and hasn’t had a stable political adviser to walk her through the nuances of administration and peacemaking. She’s young, she’s bright enough and she’s proven herself a quick study in trying to rectify her mistakes and taking accountability for them. Yes, she made plenty of mistakes and frustrating choices in Meereen, but honestly? She was young, idealistic and inexperienced as she was dropped in the most complex political theater Martin had to offer.
The deck was stacked against her and I ultimately empathize with her decisions. It speaks well of her that she didn’t want to be a butcher queen… but with every choice she made, I’m always torn. My heart agrees while my mind grimaces. She wanted peace and healing at any cost for her freed people, but that approach led to her failing her objective in Meereen.
I personally don’t believe she will get the throne, but if she had a shot at the throne… well, she’d have to kill someone acclaimed as a fellow Targaryen (Aegon VI) to become a ruling queen at least.
In my mind, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons details why the Lannister regime will fall: the consequences of Tywin’s example, the Tyrell-Lannister infighting, House Martell’s Targaryen restoration plot, the Brotherhood Without Banners with Lady Stoneheart. The Winds of Winter will show the how of it, going from the aftermath of Kevan and Pycelle’s murders to Cersei’s rage upon House Tyrell to House Martell’s alliance with Aegon via Arianne and finally the Brotherhood Without Banners’ vengeance upon the Lannisters in the Riverlands. When the Golden Company comes in, especially after the bad rep the Lannisters have rightfully gained, with a fairy-tale narrative about the conquering martial king come to take back his rightful throne from the corrupt lions… people will flock to Aegon for some stability after the war-torn years they’ve had, likely seeing a worthy continuation of the silver prince, Rhaegar Reborn.
From Dany’s perspective, Aegon is different. She knows about the mummer’s dragon vision and when Tyrion tells her about Aegon VI, she’ll definitely connect the dots and think him false. Whether she’ll connect him to House Blackfyre or not, Aegon is an enemy to her, especially since Aegon will refuse to play second-fiddle to her aunt and vice-versa. So, regardless of how stable Westeros under Aegon’s rule, she will claim her throne through conquest against him. After that, there’s no coming back from that in the people’s eyes. Her dragons will always be remembered as the fire-breathing monsters that unleashed hell on King’s Landing and their poor king who saved them from the Lannister regime. Dany will always be remembered as the kinslayer who set her nephew and the capital aflame. They will recoil and gasp in horror from her actions, seeing her as Mad Queen Daenerys Targaryen I, the scion of Mad King Aerys Targaryen II.
They will never accept her, which is a muted blessing that she will never realize that… only because her father’s legacy lingers in King’s Landing. His wildfire caches still haunt all over the city like ghosts and once Dany arrives there, setting afire even just one of the caches…
From Aegon to Arianne, Varys, the Reachmen, the Dornishmen, the Golden Company and the citizens of Flea Bottom, all will be swept away, consumed by the jaws of the jade holocaust that’ll erupt from the dragon’s wroth. Dany will unknowingly provide the spark to her father’s final testament of madness with Drogon’s breath.
Dany will close House Targaryen’s chapter in the Seven Kingdoms the same way her ancestor Aegon the Conquerer opened it: with Fire and Blood.
‘straight men are terrified of showing platonic affection for other men because they’re afraid people will assume they’re gay’ now i hope this doesn’t sound too harsh but maybe if straight dudes, as a group, hadn’t spent decades
vilifying, mocking, and murdering gay men at every opportunity maybe being mistaken for a queer wouldn’t be such a federal fucking issue
‘straight men are terrified of showing platonic affection for other men
Nope. Not me or my friends at least.
because they’re afraid people will assume they’re gay’
I don’t give a shit what “people” assume.
now i hope this doesn’t sound too harsh but maybe if straight dudes, as a group, hadn’t spent decades demonizing, demeaning, disenfranchising, criminalizing, pathologizing, brutalizing, vilifying, mocking, and murdering gay men at every opportunity
I’ve never done this. Are you so fucking daft that you think that just because you belong to a certain gender and sexual orientation you gather in some global meeting every year to decide on shit like this? Lumping me in with people that do this sort of shit just because I share their gender and sexual orientation is fucking ignorant at best. You’re THE EXACT SAME as the people who claim that all homosexuals are degenerates. You’ve turned into the exact same thing that the people who fought for your rights in the decades before you railed against.
I hate seeing shit like this on tumblr, and I’m sorta disappointed in my friend who keeps reblogging it to be honest. It’s polarizing and hurtful, for no reason but to point a finger at people belonging to a certain group saying “it’s all your fault!”. This is the reason some guys feel the need to say “not all men!” which has turned into a meme at this point. But sometimes I feel shitty enough without coming to this fucking site to get treated like one of the assholes that actually act this way.
“All Generalizations Are Dangerous, Even This One.” – Alexandre Dumas
Stop. Making. Everything. About. You
This is this problem with the most privileged groups in society, they always assume thinking everything is about them without thinking of the big picture.
Straight people oppressed LGBTQ people for decades. The affects have carried on for generations in both Straight and LGBTQ people. You can’t run from this fact. LGBTQ people cant run either. No one can.
If you can show affection without giving a damn of toxic masculinity. Fantastic
If you don’t insult or help insult LGBTQ people. Fantastic
But guess what? You aren’t the only straight person in the world.
Straight people have been raised with anti-LGBTQ sentiments everywhere. That impacts how we see LGBTQ people and issues today. None of us asked for it. But it’s the circumstances we have been given that we must deal with.
You didn’t ask to be generalized. Guess What? LGBTQ people didn’t ask to be oppressed too. But that’s reality
The reason Straight people are criticized more is because of the INBALANCE in the dynamic between Straight and LGBTQ people. LGBTQ people have the short end of the stick, Straight people don’t.
Stop trying to be a victim, Straight people don’t have to deal with generalizations, caricatures, or any sort of discrimination BC STRAIGHT PEOPLE ARE ON TOP.
You may not have done anything but you are benefiting from the privilege of being straight. You didn’t ask for it. I know. But it’s the reality we have to deal with.
This and the “Not all men” thing are ridiculed bc all thst does is make an issue about women and LGBTQ people about men and Straight people.
THEY FUCKING KNOW. They’ve dealt with generalizations and know how bullshit it is.
The difference is the minority aren’t causing shit to ruin everyone’s lives. The MAJORITY ARE. That’s bc of how they were raised. We never asked for a bunch of straight white men to cause this bullshit. But that’s what happened. And we all have to deal with it. But we do have the power to make our own choices to rise above it. At least many of us
And if you choose to ignore what LGBTQ people say while saying how you have such a hard time dealing with generalizations, then you’re contributing by making LGBTQ issues about Straight People.
OPs post was about how Straight People oppressing Gay men impacted Gay and Straight men in the worst possible issue. You made it about yourself.
Just listen to what LGBTQ people have to say. This issue impacts them more than it does you.
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 