[ SECRET POST #2700 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2700 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 099 secrets from Secret Submission Post #386.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't all that different from male canon writers who spend most of their plot on writing about male characters, but who save all their mooning and dreaming and sublimity for beautiful women who inspire their soul.

I wonder why the same thing doesn't happen with male *audiences* though.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, I kind of suspect it does.

[(Anonymous)]

Men aren't as likely to have a thing about BEAUTIFUL TEARS, though, because women are encouraged to show signs of weakness more than men. It's not a special magical thing if a girl cries, unless *only you~* get to comfort her. Whereas Sam and Dean in real life would probably refuse to cry in front of you, or go to the doctor.

Fanboys have a thing about not being able to attract women, so you get things that deal with fear of rejection more. Fangirls have a thing about men being scary, so they either they're hideously scary to other men, or relentlessly vulnerable or nonthreatening.

[ariakas]

It does, it's just less visible because fanboys seem to be less apt to do fanworks. But when they do (e.g. fandoms for shit like Touhou and Strike Witches are almost exclusively male) it's the exact same shit in reverse. Some Stoic and Awesome Men (that they don't really care about) and gorgeous hot chicks (that they do care about) doing things and being emotional and tortured and yaddah yaddah.

[feotakahari]

Touhou has men?

Also, I am now nervously tempted to check out Madoka Magica fandom and see if it does this. I have no idea who the stoic men would even be, given how few male characters there are in canon.

[ariakas]

Lol it has male self-insert OCs in the fandom, to either bang the chicks or be Gary Stus.

[ketita]

tbh this is why I kind of disagree with people who insist Madoka Magica is super feminist. I mean aside from ignoring cultural context, it feels like the reverse of watching beautiful guys being tortured and crying on screen. I guess the result actually is strong girls with strong characterization, and that's good, but the intent behind it feels like whump, basically.

[feotakahari]

Eegh. I'll grant that the author's prior resume easily lends itself to that interpretation, but I certainly don't think pain and suffering is the point of the show, or something the show particularly relishes in. Everyone who fails and falls does so for a narrative reason.

[ketita]

But the entire PREMISE is "girls suffer so well"....?

[feotakahari]

By which you mean that young girls are Kyubey's chosen targets? I wouldn't say that's what the show's ultimately about, and I certainly wouldn't say the show's purpose is to show them suffer. The show's purpose is to discuss issues of obligation and selfishness.

I guess another way to say this is that I feel like if MM was torture porn, it would linger a lot more. There'd be suffering just for the sake of suffering, and that's not something the show has.

(How much of the show have you watched? If you watched the whole thing and just thought it was torture porn, I have no Earthly clue how to respond to that.)

[ketita]

I'm not saying it's out and out torture porn. But I do think that it's partially fueled from the same place that a lot of women write whump and h/c fanfic. You love him, so you want to see him bleed and cry, because he does it so very attractively.

That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of quality works in that category, and btw I did watch all of Madoka and was quite impressed by it. The result speaks for itself.

I do think, however, that some of the choices of plotlines are the types of things you could easily find in whump fic, and they're the kind of good hurty angsty stuff you get when you want to watch a character suffer. Madoka watches all her friends suffer terrible fates. Homura relives the same timeline over and over and watches it go to shit every time. Sayaka's wish goes bad and she ultimately becomes the evil she intended to fight (and this is everyone's ultimate fate!). Kyoko's hard heart is softened by Sayaka and then she goes down fighting her.

This is straight up angst, and piled one on top of the other and wrapped around each other for added misery. If there was nothing in it besides misery then it wouldn't be quality, so I'll reiterate, I am not claiming it's torture porn..

[feotakahari]

I guess I'm coming at this from a different place than you are. I have a lot of issues with . . . Well, actually, that's a good starting point. I have a lot of issues. When something is described as whump or hurt/comfort or whatever, I picture something that fetishizes those issues while minimizing their impact and is really hurtful and disrespectful regarding them. (That's why I use the term torture porn, though to be honest I think torture porn is less awful and horrible by comparison.) I was being defensive of MM because I don't think it's on that level.

[ketita]

...that's weird, most of the h/c I read has been decently respectful and not all that fetishizing. Just a bit melodramatic and overblown.

Torture porn is something completely different, imo, because that IS 100% fetishizing the torture for the sake of torture, without nearly as powerful an emotional element. I think we're just using the terms in a completely opposite way, though I will confess I have never encountered a situation where torture porn could be described as less awful than h/c.

I mean, Character A having a cold and being taken care of by Character B can also be h/c, how exactly is that worse than torture porn...?

[feotakahari]

Well, at the extreme end, there's stuff like "Character A is brutally raped by character B, and feels defiled. Character C has sex with character A, and she instantly feels pure and whole again." (I've never been through anything remotely as bad as rape, mind you . . .)

Or "Character A has serious trauma from issues extending back years, and has received no therapy for it. She's getting worse and worse, and she's receiving no help for it. Character C has sex with her, and she's instantly cured."

I see torture porn as less awful because it's not cured instantly. Even if the victim is rescued, there are going to be lingering emotional scars, and you could almost call that respectful to the weight of the subject matter.

(Though if taking care of someone with a cold is h/c, I'll back off from what I've said. And I'll also qualify a statement from a while back--there really is h/c in the MLP fandom!)

[ketita]

I think you need to differentiate between h/c and BAD h/c. There's always terrible, tasteless stuff out there, and h/c isn't an exception. Just like there's generally awful fanfic out there.

The point of h/c is just that: hurt and comfort. You want to see a character getting hurt and then get catharsis from the comfort. This can be something as simple as a character suffering from a head cold and being taken care of, or on the really extreme end, a character suffering trauma and needing care. But the more extreme you get, the higher the chance that a bad portrayal will be offensive. A well-done h/c fic about torture should devote a lot of time to trying to overcome the trauma and acknowledging the lingering scars.
Whereas in my experience, at least, torture porn is just about glorified torture and wouldn't have much focus on trauma/recovery at all.

Also btw, h/c doesn't necessarily have to mean that it's sexual at all, it could be any type of comfort. While you are describing tropes that exist in lousy h/c fic, that's not actually what h/c is about.

[feotakahari]

I'm just gonna back out of this. I apologize for bothering you.

[intrigueing]

I disagree that good h/c "has" to devote a lot of time to overcoming the trauma -- it's hurt/COMFORT, not hurt/recovery. Not all h/c fics end with the character being completely recovered/cured. It just has to convincingly acknowledge how devastating the trauma is, and avoid depicting quick fixes. A lot of the best h/c I've read doesn't have too much comfort in terms of the number of pages, but it's not because there's a sudden 3 page long magic instant cure at the end. The hurt character is still fucked up at the end of the story, and is only comforted enough to have their trauma slightly/temporarily soothed, and for the hope for/path to future recovery suggested.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, you nailed it.

Honestly, I think it's kind of wonderful. All that Mars/Venus shit about how men and women are soooooo different and we have to do special training to communicate with this strange alien species that's the other half of the population... it's horseshit. We're all dorky in the same ways, shallow in the same ways, and have the same embarrassing habits deep down.

If that doesn't put a smile on your face, what the hell does?