[ SECRET POST #6170 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6170 ⌋

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


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[Genshin Impact]



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[FFXIV]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #882.
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

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm.

Having now seen it twice, I'm troubled by this, but I have to think about why.

Men want to see other men in fiction, even men getting whumped. They rarely want to see women. But women also want to see men, and don't want to see women. Is it really about the distance, or is it about how our society views women; and the fact that even women are taught to value men more highly, to find them more relatable?

[(Anonymous)]

DA

For me this a specifically fanfic only situation. I want shows and games and books with female leads/cast, I just don't want fic focused on them. I come to fanfic with very specific wants and a very specific experience. Its actually the opposite of what I look for in most other media. It is absolutely about distance, not value.

[(Anonymous)]

But I think even that need for distance is socially mediated, because men tend not to have that same need for distance. So, either there's some essential difference between men and women, or there's something else going on.

The connection requires some explanation, but I think sometimes about something I read several years back. Women were surveyed some time ago, the '20s IIRC, on how they felt about their genitalia, and the bulk of responses were neutral to positive. In modern times, when women are surveyed on the same, the responses are largely negative.

Are we sure the distance we need from ourselves isn't because we've been taught to dislike ourselves, because women are supposedly dislikeable?

[(Anonymous)]

As the original poster, I mean I don't want to consume female whump because I've been through it. I see it on the news. I am starkly aware of the shit we go through every single day. Why bother reading fanfic of a female character I like getting whump'd when it just reminds me of stories I see in the news of women getting savaged? Of my own life? It's miserable. Fandom is escapism for me.

[(Anonymous)]

DA, but from my experience, I really think men's tastes in fanfic are quite similar to the anon you were replying to, but gender-reversed. I see a lot of "dudefic" (fic obviously written by men) where there are only women in the story, even in canons where most of the main/most developed characters are men. I write a lot of porn that tends to appeal to guys and the requests I get are like a laundry list of rare femslash pairings, and when making up OCs, I've had those (I'm assuming guy) requesters specifically ask I only use OFCs, not OMCs, in my story. When seeking out mainstream media and stories, I think guys do want there to be a "relatable male protagonist" they can project onto and vicariously live through (see: all the mysteries and detective stories and war games and westerns and all that). But when it comes to fanfic? A lot of guys are allergic to the presence of any dicks, or male characters going through any experiences involving intense feelings, and prefer if female characters went through those experiences. I don't know it really is the case that men don't also experience that need for a bit of emotional distance when seeking out iddy fic.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, the very straight (if not downright sexist) men I know prefer only girls. One likes girl-centric anime, especially where they kick ass (including anime where they beat up the men around them at the slightest excuse); another far preferred She-Ra to He-Man "because she's a girl."

[ariakas]

I'm not so sure about this, men don't want to see other men getting whumped. They would much rather see women in that circumstance, which is why the horror genre has so many female protagonists (why Harry was genderswapped in the SH film, why so many male players got so uncomfortable with Outlast 2, because the male protagonist is helpless/overpowered and sexually menaced like a standard female horror protagonist would be). They want to see other men in fiction when they can live through them as a power fantasy. They don't want to see them sobbing/afraid/disempowered. Like, emphatically do not.

Probably for exactly the same degrees-of-separation reasons.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's a big distinction that people like to gloss over when it comes to women and violence on screen. Most female characters getting "whumped" are actually getting abused. Male characters get whumped, but they aren't in the process usually overpowered or helpless, crying at the pain or the fear. Male characters get whumped explicitly to show off their masculinity, toughness, and prowess. It's a power fantasy both ways: men are stoic and tough; women are cowering and crying, and purposefully and distinctly Not Masculine - in fact, the whole plot for most horror/action movies with a female protagonist is that she has to be in pain and fear to shed her femininity and thereby becomes more masculine to defeat the villain. Which leads to a lot of basically "abuse porn" because the abuse is her "character development".

And then people call misogyny when you don't want to see a woman get abused for entertainment.

[(Anonymous)]

But men absolutely do like seeing a man who empowers himself by getting back at and conquering those who "whumped" him. And they like seeing it in the context of what we would term hurt/comfort, where a male chatacter is being supported by a loving partner, or by a group of comrades.

Whereas women don't seem to want to see it at all, and don't seem to want to see themselves at all, "whump" or not.

[ariakas]

Ehhhh it's rarely ever _him_ who gets "whumped", it's his wife/girlfriend/daughter/dog so that he doesn't have to suffer the indignity to get his revenge, and even if it is him, the anon above has explained quite eloquently how it's never quite the same as when it's done to a female character.

I think women would absolutely love if they got to be the avenger/rescuer without themselves suffering the requisite sexualized/fetishized abuse and disempowerment they seem required to have to be allowed to take on that role.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but the fact that it's not the same when it's done to a male character as opposed to a female doesn't mean it's not "whump." "Whump" doesn't mean "sexualized torture porn," and my objection is that your overall point relies on treating it as if it does.

As for the second point, in my experience, women don't like that, especially when there's a male character who's secondary to the female one. Women will lay into the female character, write treatises on how unfair it is that she's the focus rather than the man. They'll argue in favor of what are essentially traditional gender roles (he should be in the lead; she should be supporting him; she shouldn't be talking back to him; etc) while working overtime to couch it in progressive talking points.

I'm at the point where I think that the true power of the Bechdel Test is that it gestures toward a truth about the modern media experience: the only way for women to appreciate female characters is to either have there be more of them than men or to largely isolate them completely from men. As soon as the gender ratio tips in favor of men; and as soon as men have prominent roles, it doesn't matter how well the female characters are written; they'll still all be "terrible" in comparison.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, "there need to be more female characters and they need to not be orbiting men" IS the point of the Bechdel test. It was never a test for quality of feminism, just for the ability (specifically for thr lesbian gaze) to see and connect to more female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

But the issue is that if they're not orbiting men; if the men are, instead, orbiting them, or at least secondary to them, then women don't like it! They object to the men playing second fiddle, and lambast the female characters for putting the male characters in such a position. Which says to me that women themselves have a bias toward men that goes beyond merely being attracted to them, and it's frustrating how difficult it is to have a discussion about that.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

It's the way it's presented. All the "you're just misogynist" people don't seem to want to admit that most of the shows/characters they enjoy are misogynistic caricatures to some degree or other. It's not that we object to men playing second fiddle, we object to the way men are made to play second fiddle. It's almost always condescending to the female character, badly written, unrealistic, or just plain stupid.

You can still enjoy it to your hearts content, but I want something good.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, there are a lot of female characters like that these days. The example that comes to mind most readily is Enola Holmes: her relationship with her love interest in awful, in that the way she demonstrates her "empowerment" is by being an absolute jerk to him, and him nonetheless trailing after her like a puppy.

But at the same time, my experience is that even when a female character is portrayed as strong-willed in a positive way, as having real leadership abilities; when she has flaws, and motivations, and experiences that have shaped her, with reactions and attitudes and behaviors that are grounded in those experiences; even then, she's still awful.

I am not sure what people actually mean when they say they want "good." I people say they want X, Y, and Z, and then reject X, Y, and Z when they're given it, and this often seems to be because it happened in the vicinity of a man.

[(Anonymous)]

Speak for yourself, I live for media where the men could be replaced by a sexy lamp

[(Anonymous)]

It's the way the whump is done. I hate watching horror movies because the woman is always crying and screaming until the very very end, when all the other women are dead, and the final girl for ten seconds actually fights back.

On the other hand, I LOVE Fury Road. When Max drives Furiosa into the side of the War Rig and she has a little blood coming down her face and she looks so determined to kill him. Or when Immortan Joe hits Toast with his gun, and once he's dead, she spits on his corpse with the blood streaming from the wound like it's decorating her face. Or when one of the Many Mothers takes a chainsaw to the neck, but uses the last of her strength to kill a guy by shoving a bullet into his eye. That's some delicious whump.

[ariakas]

Yeah! That is an excellent case of a rare example of a female character experiencing "whump" in the same way a male character would (while Outlast 2 is a rare example of the opposite, which is why it made male players to squeamish). I don't know a single woman irl who doesn't love Fury Road or Furiosa.

[(Anonymous)]

Another good example, IMO, is Kill Bill.

These are a lot of female assassins, mostly, whumping the crap out of each other.

And about 100 guys with samurai swords get maimed or killed by one woman.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a woman who finds Fury Road unpleasant and overrated. Furiosa is flat and two-dimensional, and the fact that she's the example for what counts as a "well-written female character" only proves to me that people are full of shit when they say that's what they're looking for.

[(Anonymous)]

Someone wasn't paying attention when they watched Fury Road.

[(Anonymous)]

Bet you don't like someone saying that to you when it's a character you're not fond of.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't mind it, cause I'll just say "You're probably right, I didn't really enjoy it." You're allowed to not like something without having to come up with some academic or moral reason why not.

[ariakas]

Furiosa is flat and two-dimensional, and the fact that she's the example for what counts as a "well-written female character" only proves to me that people are full of shit when they say that's what they're looking for.

But why? She's like a thousand male protagonists out there who are Grim, Gruff, Determined, and Stoic, and men absolutely adore and idolize these guys without some foot-stomping scold telling them they're not well-written enough to be enjoyable. They're fun. They're heroic. They get to have suffering that makes them relatable but never crosses the line into exploitative but also heroic scenes of triumph.

Why are male characters who are exactly like Furiosa the standard heroic figure without a whisper of complaint while Furiosa is so unbearable that the mere existence of people who enjoy her proves that everyone who says they want characters like that are misogynistic liars?

[(Anonymous)]

Those male characters suck, too. The solution to the problem of female characters being shittily written isn't to take shittily written male tropes and apply them to women.