fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2893 ]

[ SECRET POST #2893 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2893 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #413.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I hate the term, too. And while I agree that things like "man suffers over loss of wife/child" is a horribly overused trope, it can be done well, it can be acted well, and calling it "man pain" diminished both the character's development as well as it sot of minimizes genuine trauma in men in real life (Seriously, if you'd use "man pain" on a guy who lost a wife or child in real life, I just might punch you).

I'm pretty sure only sociopaths would do that.

This confirms my suspicion there are sociopaths on tumblr.

Well, honestly, thousands of users are on tumblr. Of course there's going to be people with sociopathic tendencies. Just like anywhere else on the internet

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 08:26 (UTC) - Expand

Or just a bunch of dumb kids/teenagers who are super edgy.

i fail to see how calling the trope "manpain" minimizes IRL trauma. like, that is a thing that doesn't happen. at all. no well adjusted human being is going to point to a living breathing man and go "stop crying about your manpain" when his wife and kid dies. ignoring any pseudo-feminism 15 year old tumblr hivemind, real feminists would never do that. to claim otherwise just sounds like a form of "feminists are all crazy manhaters!"

people might overuse the word, but i'd rather people be willing to criticize the bad tropes and writing that plague media than not do it at all. it's hardly harmful, writers usually ignore those complaints anyway, and doesn't hold nearly the same weight as calling a character mary-sue does/did.

It doesn't have to, but I've seen it happen.

The problem, like with other things in fandom, is that original meanings get lost or shift. So, a term used originally to describe basically a man's ^pain over a woman being fridged, starts to basically extend to "all trauma suffered by protagonist white men" and then jumps to being used as a term for actual trauma by non-fiction men.

To me, at this point, it is similar to Mary Sue. Also, as I said elsewhere, I prefer the term fridging if a woman's death is used as a trauma device, because a) that actually keeps to focus on the woman and b) addresses the issue without making light of trauma (even if in-world).

As someone with actual PTSD: shut the fuck up.

The trope itself diminishes real life trauma by making it into a vehicle for attention and angst. It's all about how fucking sad this straight, white dude is and nothing else. So sorry, but yeah, I'm going to complain about manpain as a trope because it's such a bullshit trope that is all about how the world in this story revolves around the protag in a bullshit way. And it's always a fucking female character. A wife, a daughter. Very rarely is it a son, unless the son was the goddamn heir to the family and now it's a Problem.

Wow, jesus, you're fucking rude.

And no, it's not always a vehicle for attention and making the world revolve around the character. It's often used badly, and definitely used way too frequently, and way too-lopsidedly wrt the genders and races of the characters, but there is nothing inherently bad about telling a story about a character's grief over the death of someone they love -- no matter their genders. It can be good or bad, depending on how it's done.

The reason it's usually annoying is because of how cliched and unimaginative the trope has become, and how split along gender and racial lines the trope is in the aggregate. It's still being used today the same way it was used in the 1960s, and it still isn't used with a variety of different kinds of people -- THAT's the problem.

da

You're rather rude yourself...

I'm sorry, but I think I'm allowed to be rude over trauma and PTSD being used as a vehicle for the main character's development and nothing more--like a goddamn accessory.

(no subject)

diet_poison - 2014-12-05 03:44 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 03:51 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 18:43 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

diet_poison - 2014-12-06 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

Hey fuckhole, howabout saying "I disagree, here's why" instead of telling a user to "shut the fuck up"?

Not fucking difficult, and useful if you're actually interested in communicating your opinion to other people. People tend to tune you out when you open with "shut the fuck up."

And people won't tune you out when you use "fuckhole"? Jesus Christ

Don't waste your time with SJW scum.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 07:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 18:17 (UTC) - Expand

How dare someone be angry about a topic that pertains to them.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 18:44 (UTC) - Expand

I'm actually going to agree with you here. Most plots that use "manpain" normally have a white dude brooding (like you said, over a female), rather than have a plot that cares about exploring PTSD symptoms respectfully

You know what, I was going to be pissy but hey - whatever happened to you, I'm sorry it did. No-one deserves PTSD and the things that cause it generally aren't pleasant, so I genuinely wish you the best.

That being said, just because someone has suffered trauma does not mean their trauma is representative of all the trauma that can be suffered ever.

I agree it's an overused, often badly done trope - but I disagree a male character suffering loss of a loved one is by definition bad in fiction.

And I have already seen the term "manpain" seeping over from fandom to real life, using it on real men who had something bad happen to them. So no, I'm not a fan of the term. Besides, we already had a term for it: fridging, which I think is way better, conveys the problem more (killing of a female character for conflict) without emotional hurt in men as a bad thing.

Yes, fridging is the far superior term - because it actually (funnily) focuses on what's happening to the female character who is being used as a device rather than what the device is for.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-06 13:02 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 08:22 (UTC) - Expand

Go back to tumblr.

You aren't entitled to tell other people to shut up you retarded piece of shit. People can post whatever they want. Now fuck off to Tumblr and never come back, we don't need cunts like you here.

DA

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 03:50 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 05:03 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-05 07:08 (UTC) - Expand

Go jump in a lake please. As soon as possible.

You know, I think it's become one of those things where it's so tired and overused that it's still irritating to me even when it's done well. Same as rape as character development, it can be done phenomenally, I've seen it, but it's still such a pain in the ass to see yet again.

Hey, I get that. It's perfectly valid to just not like a trope at all.

The term manpain is only in fictional stories where your accusing the writer of bad writing.
No one in their right mind would accuse someone of manpain IRL if they lost a loved one. Apples and oranges.

They would if they didn't actually understand the term. I'm not surprised that Tumblr has (apparently) done it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only