[ SECRET POST #5889 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5889 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #843.
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.

Comments

Re: Secrets you don't want to make...

[(Anonymous)]

Ah yes, another part of the Hays Code that the kids who don't know what the Hays Code was want to bring back.

Re: Secrets you don't want to make...

[(Anonymous)]

So. Much. This.

When I read the Hayes Code for the first time, I was relieved that all this "MUST punish people we disapprove of and exalt people we approve of" stuff that felt to me like it was being mechanically forced into fiction for political reasons was, in fact, being forced in for political reasons ... and at the same time I was so alarmed that, instead of feeling accomplished and freed and going "isn't it great that we've won the right not to have busybodies trying to control us by controlling what we can read and see?" there was all this noise about WHY those things weren't mandatory and assertions like "wouldn't it be so much better if they were."

And that's a longstanding concern, in fandom. :/

Re: Secrets you don't want to make...

[(Anonymous)]

Well, a combo of that and the “if you say or do shitty things as a teenager, you must be punished for it forever” thing that the internet has going on these days.

Re: Secrets you don't want to make...

[(Anonymous)]

My initial interpretation of OP's comment was that they were fed up with weak redemption arcs (which is something I can agree on), but I can see how it sounds like they feel the criminal must be punished every time, regardless of events.

Re: Secrets you don't want to make...

[(Anonymous)]

For me, what makes a weak redemption arc is lack of character growth. It's when the story deprives us of the chance to see who this person becomes as they shed an identity that doesn't suit them as well as it used to. "Fallout" and "consequences" have nothing to do with it.

I have difficultly discussing this with English-speaking fans because several of the stories that I think do this well were so poorly translated into English that people tend to dismiss them. Dragon Ball Z is probably the most high-profile example, but in Spanish, Piccolo's transition from a villain intent on world domination to a father figure and protector for the main character's son (and earth as a whole) was incredibly well done. He's a complex character to begin with, and his heel-face turn is believable and well executed. There is zero effort to address "the people he hurt" when he was intent on world domination, and yet, that never feels to me like something that is missing from the story. He thought he was in a power struggle with Goku over who would rule earth, and Goku defused it in a way that made Piccolo rethink his whole outlook on life, and slowly but dramatically, he changed. I was twelve years old when I first watched that and it had a really positive impact on what I felt was possible: that someone could change the direction of their life that drastically without losing themselves or their self respect, and their peers could really accept that they weren't the vicious threat that they used to be. And life could go on, and they could go on. I think there's a crying need for such stories, and the emphasis on "but the bad guy was not punished" fucks it up.

I read an essay by a trans person one time, called Hot Allostatic Load, that really resonated with me. Particularly relevant to this conversation is the line "punishment doesn't happen to the people who deserve it. It happens to the people who can't stop it from happening." And I was like ... yes. This. So true. Because it honors the people being victimized (how much of the assumption that someone who is mistreated "deserved it" comes from stubborn adherence to the false, and often story-fed belief that the world we live in is just?), and it honors the fact that retribution is often a blind alley. In so many cases, former villains that are within reach of real-world punishment are actually functioning as a warning to others to stay the course and not risk the vulnerability of change. Because, no matter what you've done, practically no one wants what they've seen done to villains to ever happen to them.

To make it very clear - this does not discourage people from acting in ways that make other people regard them as evil. But it HEAVILY discourages them from ever facing the possibility that what they're doing is wrong or changing course.