[ SECRET POST #2470 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2470 ⌋

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

01.


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02.
[Homestuck, Teen Wolf, Supernatural and Sherlock]


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03.
[Supernatural]


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04.
[Watashi ga motenai no wa dou kangaetemo omaera ga warui]


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05.
[Agents of SHIELD]


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06.
[Sleepy Hollow]


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07.
[Fullmetal Alchemist]


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08.
[World of Warcraft]


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09.
[Pacific Rim]


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10.
[Richard III in "The White Queen"]


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 044 secrets from Secret Submission Post #353.
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

[sootyowl]

I haven't read this fic or heard of it, but aww. Poor Winry. She doesn't deserve the hate she gets.

[(Anonymous)]

I've always liked Winry. I think of her at work when I use my tools, and how much she'd go crazy admiring them.

I'm kind of like her myself because I tend to collect all kinds of useful nifty tools.

[sootyowl]

:) That's a great story. I'm sure she would! I love her love for tools and machinery. You don't see many women in stories with that type of passion for tools.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks :)

I really think it's cool they made her like that. A woman who is very skilled with precision and design. You rarely see that in real life.

[meishuu]

You rarely see that in real life.

You need to get out more.

[dragonimp]

This really isn't a "bashing" fic. It takes Winry's habit of flinging wrenches to a particular conclusion that some fans don't want to see. It's not a foregone conclusion but it is a valid one and there's plenty to support it in canon.

But that's only the set-up. The whole point of the first arc of the story is that Ed and Winry are both at fault for their relationship falling apart, and from there they both work on changing and improving the situation they've created. And I'm really fucking sick and tired of this fic and this author being dumped on.

[(Anonymous)]

Although the specific complaint about all the other female characters bashing her could still be valid, if accurate.

[iggy]

This really isn't a "bashing" fic. It takes Winry's habit of flinging wrenches to a particular conclusion that some fans don't want to see.

Unless the author treats EVERY SINGLE aspect of slapstick in the series with that amount of weight (which somehow I doubt), this is ridiculous. Seems like typical Ron the Deatheater to me.

[dragonimp]

Which other aspects do you mean? (honest question)

[iggy]

Um there's tons of other slapstick moments in the story? Slapstick hitting, slapstick... dying (are we going to pretend these are actual deaths now?), the list goes on? Arakawa does a lot of very physical humor, and while it might not be up your alley, to act is if one person engaging in it is a problem while ignoring the rest if fairly standard flanderization and die for our ship behavior especially when it's toward a woman and used as a gateway to pair up a favorite other ship. I don't have time to pull up the manga, and if we're talking about 2003, I definitely don't remember, but if you give me some time, I can provide specific examples. And heck, Arakawa actually drops the wrench gag for the most part fairly early on in the series.

[dragonimp]

Fair enough. I have written in the past about why the wrenches bother me when other slapstick doesn't (me; I can't speak for the author, only guess that her reasons might be somewhat similar, I know she finds the wrenches disturbing), but it's far too long to copy-paste here. But even if you take out the over-the-top, a-wrench-would-kill-someone aspect, it's still a pattern of violence. Most other moments of slapstick violence in the series are one-offs or instances where we're not meant to see it as anything but violent (Izumi tossing Ed and Al around, Knox hitting Mei over the head with the pan), but with Winry it's made a defining character trait. Treating that character trait with the same seriousness that the characters are generally given in canon is not automatically bashing. It could easily be, but this fic doesn't make Winry out to be evil or the villain. It explores her character and treats her pretty sympathetically.

[iggy]

but with Winry it's made a defining character trait.

but with Winry it's made a defining character trait.

Wow okay I'm done. A defining trait? That is plainly incorrect. If you seriously think that the wrench gag, which happens a few times in the series, is a defining character trait of hers, then you are pretty clearly paying no mind to her character.

[dragonimp]

It stood out for me. It's not her only defining trait; far from it. And I love her character. But with a wrench fling being her introduction to the story, it being her default reaction when Ed angers her by damaging the automail, her reaction to Ling when he embarrasses her, her reaction to Al when she's pissed at him after the Lab 5 incident - yes, I would call it a defining character trait.

But that's kinda beside the point. The author treats the violence seriously, but she didn't invent any of it. But she doesn't paint Winry as evil or the bad guy. Treating the violence seriously doesn't automatically make it bashing.

[iggy]

It pretty much does when you don't treat any of the other slapstick in the series with equal weight. Unless both Ed and Ling are ghosts in the fic because they've both 'died' comedically and god knows what other ridiculous things have happened are also treated as seriously as Winry's wrench, then yes, I think it's at the very least a huge double standard (and very typical of fandom misogyny and die for our ship behavior).

[(Anonymous)]

But even if you take out the over-the-top, a-wrench-would-kill-someone aspect, it's still a pattern of violence.

If you take the slapstick humor out of it, there wouldn't BE a wrench, and there goes the straw you and the author are grasping at. But from the way you've gone on in this thread, you're probably going to say that Winry would have just punched people in the face because violence (which, what, was only really present during the slapstick moments) is apparently one of her defining traits.

[dragonimp]

It sounds like you're saying I'm supposed to assume the slapstick moments have no impact on the story at all and should be cut out entirely. I don't think the narrative supports that. They seem to me to be actual events that happen in the story that are depicted in an exaggerated way for comedic effect.

But the point isn't which of us is "right," the point is that there are multiple ways to interpret those scenes. Interpreting them as nothing more than comedic moments is valid. Interpreting them as moments of violence depicted comedically is also valid. The fact that this author took canon events and interpreted them differently than you do does not make either interpretation wrong or unsupported.

I'm not trying to argue that you have to see the events or Winry's character a certain way, only that there is more than one way to see them, and that this author did not invent anything to support her story. She merely took canon events and interpreted them differently than you do.

da

[(Anonymous)]

She merely took canon events and interpreted them differently than you do.

Oh come on, the author SELECTIVELY took canon events and USED them to support her pairing. Why not selectively take Ed's aggressively violent CANON nature and draw him to be an abusive asshole who chases away the people he loves most or ruins relationships because he's immune to kindness or reason? Because fandom would rise up and say it's BASHING.

You can try to rationalize all you want but the story is character bashing. Just because the author is sweetly saying Winry is an abusive asshole doesn't change that the author is saying Winry is an abusive asshole. Roy isn't held to the same level of accountability as Winry, and neither is Ed (or anyone else for that matter) for their MORE violent canonical actions and history. The author has specifically chosen an event from one character and *highlights* it as THE defining character trait, trying to completely hang her story on it, and then paints Winry in a repeated negative light because of it. You don't get to pick and choose canon and then villainize a character over a biased characterization without fandom being smart enough to catch on that it's bashing.

My problem (I'm not the OP, btw) with this fic is only partially about interpreting canon. It's about seeing past the author trying to feed me selective canon as whole canon, and trying to get me to fall for a characterization that the REAL author never intended. Character bashing is easy to see, except to the people who appreciate and approve of the bashing.

[(Anonymous)]

This is reminding me a lot of that famous Ranma 1/2 fic from way back in the day that also claimed to "take Akane's violence to its logical conclusion" by turning it into full-blown mental illness and domestic abuse... all the while completely ignoring the fact that everyone else in the series engages in slapstick violence, since the series's humor is entirely based around it. It became obvious since no other character in the fic gets the "realistic" treatment for their own comedic behavior, they just drop the violence altogether (the final effect being total OOC-ness since no one acts like they do in canon). Tons of people loved it and thought it was so dark and realistic, but to me it just smacked of cherry-picking one single aspect of the story to distort and exaggerate to give a negative portrayal of a character you don't like.

Like, come on, the slapstick humor in FMA is even less pronounced, and gets phased out when things get serious. Unless this story also has Ling actually dead from one of his hunger coma or Ed and Al seriously horrifically traumatized by Izumi's training, which were all recurring gags as well, it doesn't get to claim that it's doing the fans some kind of service.

[dragonimp]

You actually highlighted why I find the wrenches disturbing. It's jarring and out of place in a series that otherwise treats violence seriously. In the case of Ranma 1/2, I agree with you.

But that's all beside the point. Treating the slapstick as seriously as the rest of the violence doesn't automatically make it a bashing fic. It depends on how the author handles it and how the author handles the character. But so far I haven't seen any arguments about why it's "bashing" beyond "OMG it's slapstick!!"

[(Anonymous)]

I disagree utterly. FMA makes a clear distinction when it's making a gag out of the violence, and when it's playing something straight. Ranma 1/2 has more comedy, but does the same. If I'm going to be disturbed by Winry's wrenches, I would also have to be disturbed by, say, the Armstrong siblings' chosen method of settling the inheritance issue. Hey, they seemed pretty serious about it at the time, and could have really hurt each other! Only not, because it's a joke.

The real problem with this, though, is that it makes no sense. If we accept that we're taking the wrench's damage capability seriously, then the very first time Winry injured Ed in the series, she would have been called out on it by all these characters who are so appalled by the behavior now (in-story). She has, after all, been doing this for years. If we're playing this gag seriously from the start then the dynamics of their relationship would have changed drastically and they would never have ended up together with nary a comment on it from any of the characters. It's exactly like the Akane example: she's always been like this, and nobody ever batted an eyelash before, but now that they're married it's suddenly treated like a serious problem that no one ever anticipated. This coupled with the fact that the fic is actually a romance based around a different ship makes it clear that this isn't a deconstruction for its own sake, it's an agenda to facilitate a rival pairing. Tale as old as fandom time.

[dragonimp]

The wrenches break the story for me; they don't for you. That's fine. That doesn't make either interpretation wrong, and it doesn't make an author treating them seriously "wrong." And it still doesn't automatically make it bashing. If your complaint is that "the fic is actually a romance based around a different ship" and "it's an agenda to facilitate a rival pairing" that is also fine, I am not arguing with that. It didn't bother me because of how the story progressed, but that's beside the point. You still can't judge whether it is or is not a "Winry bashing" fic on that simple and incomplete description.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, if you're going to play the "for me, not for you" card, then I can just put down the bottom line as follows: for me, a fic contains character bashing if it invents and/or flanderizes a character's perceived negative trait (in a nonsensical way from canon's perspective, as I already pointed out) in order to break up an existing pairing and pave the way for a rival ship. There are so many ways to break a couple up without turning one half into a domestic abuser; considering the general consensus on abuse, this guarantees no reader could possibly work up any sympathy for the offending party. It's unnecessary and ugly.

[iggy]

Bless you and all of your comments. Spot on.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, I wrote upthread but I tried to help saying it was hard to read the first story as the spacing was off. It was many large blocks of text. There were SOME spaces, but then I got accused of bashing. My comment was nothing of the content but the technical end - more detail above.

I have a feeling with this author and fans anything that isn't rainbows and unicorns is "bashing." Ironic it was this series mentioned, I would've normally skipped over because it listed a specific author/fic, but I had to read the comments. With the white-knighting, it was all too familiar MO. I never got to too much of the OOCness. I only made it a little way in before the random-block-spacing made me back button.

I get wanting to defend a friend, but saying something is OCC or a block of text isn't bashing. It was meant to help. If you are saying someone is constantly defending it, which seems to be what you're implying, then maybe it's time to figure out the common denominator.

That's all I will say on this. I hope the author can learn, there was potential there, but I am done with them.

[dragonimp]

I agree: saying the formatting is poor or stating that a character is OOC is not bashing. I can't speak to your specific incident because I didn't see it, and I can't speak to the author's actions because I am not her. If your intent was to help, then I don't think it was right that you got lashed out at. What I take exception to is accusing the author of bashing or of being OOC simply for treating the violence seriously - no work should be free from criticism, and I'm sorry if I gave the impression otherwise.