#he can fill the role of whatever the writers want at any moment. why doesnt he get included more!! hes so versatile!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wormstar · 3 years

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i was going thru ur blog and u have good posts about ableist aus and i was wondering - what if in the aus the requirements for warriors were different? Like instead of having to fight jay only hunts? Would the muddling of roles still be ableist? In a Tree-like situation?If its not presented in a "work super hard to get what you want" and more in a "yeah they can decide what he wants to do". This is mostly for jay (and cinder) specifically because they had desires to be warriors yet were forced to be medicine cats because of ableism (ig this can apply to briar but i just truly cant remember oots that well and i havent read her death). I am asking because i am still trying to unlearn the ableist mindset that i grew up with. Feel free to ignore this ask and thnx!

hey yeah thank you for asking! took the opportunity to write up more general thoughts on rewrites as a whole and i went over why exactly theyre ableist hopefully that provides a better perspective

i think the major thing to keep in mind is that the structure of the clans is very abled centric and overly ignorant of inner community work (for example dens are only solidified or altered when either the area takes damage/the clans grows wrt population) theres a fixation on marking territory and starting fights and whatever with other clans which is whats expected of most warriors to partake in. to fix those implications in any fanwork youve really gotta knead into them and understand the nature of their ableism....its not just a problem with cats being barred from being warriors its the whole occupation and the standard its held to, so to speak (+ that fits into general clan society being flawed but eh thats another thing and also its easy to branch out into thought about)

going to stress other disabled people might have other solutions to how disabled cats are received this is just how i like to think of things

first i think its kind of interesting to examine discrepancies between disabled cats in canon as somewhat of an indicator of clan attitudes and leaders and whatnot. like i think you could get something interesting by regarding lets say deadfoot in windclan and cinderpelt in thunderclan who both have bad legs yet had different experiences with them in clan life. if you wanna go a step further comparing generations like lilywhisker and deadfoot or cinderpelt and jayfeather (+ the consideration of how congenital disabilities are regarded) can also make things interesting and just give you an idea of what to do. having the clan systems stray from a clear-cut common attitude both gives you more freedom for different approaches + adds to worldbuilding anyway. imo boiling down clan society to perfect utopia just gets boring but you can have imperfections in the system that depict the disabled experience just fine. just be careful with them and the way they come across yeah?

(real quick as an in between. god just dont refer to cats/their injuries as crippled. it still happens somehow)

im a little ambivalent on the idea of creating a ‘special role’ for disabled cats to be thrown into. cause then thats a repeat of canon medicine den really. its like ‘oh youre disabled youre instantly discarded into the x role pit’ i think just adding substantial in-universe changes to the warrior rank itself (vagueness is fun actually) or expanding on ‘warrior types’ rectifies the othering angle. ‘othering’ as a whole is just as bad as the ‘exception’ archetype people run for most warrior aus i want to state that clearly. effectively if youre gonna introduce roles that dont depend on fighting or hunting or both make sure theres abled cats who have them too. like say you want a camp-based role where a cats job is to fix dens or one where they help in the nursery, its far easier for a cat who cant run to manage those but also have some cats who are physically capable of doing other ‘tasks’ do the same thing for personal reasons

the tree comparison is interesting honestly cause i guess you could just give a cat a particular thing to do as a nonfixed position. and roles accordingly being made for a cat to fill until they cant and the positions done away with afterward. but youve gotta do it carefully so you dont fall into othering as ive said. id avoid something like that personally i just dont like the quality of ‘well theyre not a warrior (the most noble/useful concept in cat society) theyre actually some other thing’

in general giving disabled cats agency and choice is the best thing you can do. whether this means them deciding on tasks they can do themselves or picking a certain kind of warrior to be or asking for an assistant to help them out when they do stuff. the way you wanna pull it off again depends on my first question of “how does the relevant part of your warrior cat world treat disabled cats already”

very important point, the majority of the ableism also comes in the form of character narratives and not just the structure of the world itself. like think for a bit why the writers decided jayfeather shouldve been forced to be a medic or why briarlight got killed off early etc etc. characters ‘wanting’ to be like the abled ideal and still being bitter about not fulfilling that years down the line are just part of the ableist storylines. if youre abled id literally say just do away with those sadstuck ‘i wanted to be a warrior!’ moments. if you really want to id say pull a cinderpelt or a shadowsight where a cats time in the medicine den started their fascination with medicine and they switched to that path due to personal intrigue. id say a more interesting and realistic angle to it is having a disabled cat who found fulfilment in doing something else besides being a warrior becoming bitter about their entire clan ‘mourning’ how theyll never fight again or giving them the pretence of being a warrior being the best thing you can do.... it depends on the character really

this is just a very basic disability thing but stray from the whole ‘useless/dead weight’ way of regarding disabled characters. like dont place their worth on how well they service a clan or not theyre still deserving of shelter and whatnot. you dont need to justify a cats existence or usefulness by going ‘well they may be blind but their sense of smell is excellent so we keep them around’ or whatever its just no good

last thing i can think of is like. dont disregard how a cats disability affects them. like its fine that briarlight cant fight (or even hunt major types of prey) she doesnt need some convoluted method that lets her do that. there are like a dozen other warriors hunting and fighting and theres present value and enjoyment in the stuff she does around camp. she doesnt have to be brightheart 2 its ok

#hopefully this makes sense im tired of reading it over and over again #rambling

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tumblunni · 5 years

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OH FUCK I THINK I FINALLY CRACKED THE CODE OF WHY I ALWAYS LIKE THE VILLAINS BETTER

Like man it always makes me so confused cos i mean im a soft AF person and i always end up having sympathetic redemption headcanons for them so its not like i like VILLAINY ITSELF but what else do all these characters have in common?

Thats it. Thats it, ursula helped me crack it.

I just WANT THOSE TRAITS ON THE HEROES

I really want a nice confident sassy funny chubby trans auntie who promotes body positivity to our young hero and always gets to say the coolest lines and get the best moments and BE LOVED FOR WHO SHE IS

And like usually whenever you get anywhere close to seeing those "villain traits" on a hero they like.. Remove all the good parts. If you have a supportive hero aunt she's always boring and generically supportive instead, and has to look like the most stereotypical boring mess ans have a super small plot role and uuuugh thats IF SHES EVEN THERE i mean seriously aunties and grandmas are weirdly less represented as mentors than grandpas who are already REALLY HARD TO FIND and again OFTEN GENERIC AND UNFUN WHENEVER THEY GET TO APPEAR

And how damn often are we allowed to have a chubby gay aunt!! WHERE IS MY CHUBBY GAY AUNT!! ive met SO MANY chubby gay aunts in real life like 90% of all my psychologists have been either that or like.. The exact same but a straight lgbt ally instead. Sassy plus size aunties are THE BACKBONE OF OUR SOCIETY DAMMIT! I've had so much help thanks to sassy gay aunts!! And like even just looking at any damn crowd scene in a normal city centre youre gonna see so many chubby aunts and long nosed uncles and all those sorts of bullshit "ugly people" that mass media pretends are ugly and relegates to One Minor Role In The Entire Cast despite them being infinately more common than supermodels and NOT UGLY AT ALL GEEZ IT PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH

I cant believe im a fuckin disney villain fan cos of body positivity

Tfw u suck so bad at making hateable people that the fandom universally hugs all your villains and ignores your boring protagonists like fuckin TAKE THAT DIDNEY

God i wanna hug hades sooo bad he just needs a friend aaaaaa

And i mean its not just disney, every damn time ive obsessed over a villain its been because they have some trait thats supposed to be "bad" but its actually good and we dont get to see it on the heroes

Like my thing with science villains in particular is that when i first played ff7 i really liked the idea of an evil minion who's a bad sidekick not just because he's "dumb" or "bumbling" but because he's actually not interested in any of the evil stuff and he works against his own boss and is like.. Friendly to the heroes, i have no particular grudge against you and i wont stop you if im off duty and all. I liked the Turks for the same reason but in the origibal ff7 translation they were kind of stoic and serious and i didnt really become as much of a fan of them til i saw them being more goofy and comic relief in some optional sidequests and then their movie adaptation. But hojo was always being all "lol my boss's plan is so stupid amirite" and had that very memorable scene where he's just sunbathing and tells you everything you need to know to get to the next thing to ruin his boss's plan cos i mean fuck it who even cares im just here to soak up some sun while fully dressed in a turtleneck and labcoat. It sucked so much that he was such a reprehensible bastard with creepy sexual assault vibes and murder and child abuse and experimenting on people and basically just NOT A LOVEABLE VILLAIN but his CONCEPT held so much potential to be filled by a sympathetic character instead...

So yeah then cos of him i kept being obsessed with finding SOME CHARACTER SOMEWHERE that actually lived up tp that potential, and thats why i was instantly interested in charon from pokemon and totally on edge waiting for the slightest chance for him to become That Perfect Sass Gramps Of Legend. And then he was indeed sassy!! And had so little screenyime that there was potential for interpretation of him as potentially redeemable cos i mean the game never said he wasnt, the game barely said anything about him at all, lol. And he was so old and small and frail looking and i just wanted to protect him!! And then that one wifi event that actually hinted at synpatheticness!! Aaaa its a recipe for a Forever Fave~

And i guess maybe it all started with my grandma being awesome and me really missing her? Cos i had shitty abusive parents and she was my ONLY good family member who showed me what love was like. And she was also basically a supervillain. Like every damn supervillain trait except being evil! She was bombastic and confident and sassy and mischievious and loud and passionate about stuff and always had something funny to say and never gave up no matter how many times she failed. And she also used all that great power for the forces of good!

So yeh thats why i love sassy good guys and i hate that often even when a sassy villain gets redeemed they seem to lose all their edge and become more generic now theyre a good guy. Or they get totally sidelined with no screentime anymore, or they ONLY get to be comic relief and dont get the full and complex redemption they deserve. Or just a lot of bads!! Its never the simplest answer of just fuckin.. Keep the character the character. Thats kinda why i didnt feel too much for the maleficent movie even though the concept itself sounded like everything i ever wanted. The character in that movie is a very different person to origibal maleficent, she's more just a stoic tsundere mumsy figure than a hammy badass iconicness. Still a nice villain redemption but it felt like it would have been better as an original story instead of an attempted maleficent. Also i wish they handled it better with the whole "true love's kiss could be from your mum instead" thing cos i get sooooo grossed out whenever i see people shipping movie maleficent and aurora! Like yes sleeping beauty with lesbians would be great but not when one of them is old enough to be her mum and raised her like a mum and changed her goddamn diapers! Also why did they have to ruin the three good fairies just to make maleficent have the mum opportunity? Like just remove them from the story if you wanted maleficent to raise the kid instead. No need to rewrite them into incompetant assholes when they were everyone's fave part of the original! Dont sacrifice the rare and elusive Good Sassy Gay Aunts!! THEYRE LIKE THE ONLY ONES IN DIDNEY!!! (Incodentally merlin is the equivelant of this to hades as the fairies are to ursula)

Also also villains tend to have ACTUAL FLAWS in stories that have a more boring bland protagonist. I wanna see the story behind charon's neuroses and how he struggles with overcoming his temptation to be bad because of greed but ultimately manages to conquer his own negative side because power of friendship and such. Thats a great character arc that provides so much more than he does as a villain where they just wasted him entirely :(

SO BASICALLY IN SUMMARY

* villains are often more complex and well developed characters with flaws while the same wroter might make shitty heroes due to the illogical fear that nobody would root for them if they werent 100% perfect and successful at everything ever

* villains are also often made as negative stereotypes of minorities and other rarely seen traits, which means its easy to reach out to them and reclaim them as a more positive version when theres literally no other options for you to cling to

* the quite common accidental sympathy factor where a villain will seem to be hated more than they deserve for their actions, ir unjustly punished so much that they feel like an underdog, since the writer assumes you'll think theyre "more evil" for being a stereotype and if you dont agree that this thing is bad then it seems like they have way less sins than the story claims they do

* also sass. Sass is good.

But basically the whole root of it is that its stupid and cruel and doesnt goddamn work when you make villains bigoted stereotypes. It just makes me love them! The only person i hate when i see a stereotypical villain is the writer who thought that was a good idea, lol. Just imagine that meme of the samurai holding the cat but its me holding all disney villains!

Also even if a villain isnt outright intentionally meant to be "this minority is bad", it can still make me symoathetic to them if theyre still something thats rare amoung the hero side in the same series. Like charon being the "most unredeemable" villain despite being the most harmless and funny and his plan being so much less world destroying than cyrus, and also he's the only grandpa villain in like.. The whole of all. And he's drawn very much in that way thays supposed to be "ugly" i.e normal grandpa, vs that weird sort of younger than he looks grandpa that hero ones tend to be because blablabla beauty ewuals goodness anti body positivity whatever. Tho actually sinnoh was good with that, they had the best grandpa professor in my opinion cos he got to be sassy too! Rowan always reminds me of auron from ff10. Sinnoh was a good game where i liked a lot of both the heroes and villains even if i still had more villain faves cos i mean pokemon is always biased towards that for me since every game has a voiceless perosnalityless main character and often theyre the one doing most of the heroing with the supporting hero characters having surprisingly little proper screen time. Thats a big part of why i loved hau gladion and lillie in sun and moon! They felt more like a real friend group than any other ones before.

ANYWAY now im just going offtopic into more "i love lots of stuff about every pokemon game" so ill stop typing now

But just basically VILLAINS ARE GOOD COS THEYRE GOOD CHARACTERS and if those stories gavethe same character a good guy role then id still love them just as much, if not more. I dont specifically like villainy, its just that my definition of a good character is often considered a bad character by lazy writers, apparantly?

Also WHERE IS MY SUPPORTIVE GOOD GRAMPS CHARON GAME AND GAY AUNTIE URSULA GIVES YOU FASHION TIPS SMARTPHONE MMO

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afishtrap · 7 years

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representing romance in YoI

I’d been thinking about this ever since ep11/12, but @soobaki‘s replies here and here kind of crystallized it for me, because I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say that the representation of romance is all that different, cross-culture. There may be more or less shown (especially in everyday life, or in hyperbolic fictions like anime), but falling in love is a pretty universal thing, as are stories about the experience.

What makes this particular story more difficult is that we’re also tackling the question of LGBT representation, which is pretty thin on the ground in Japanese pop culture. (No, I don’t count BL/yuri and other fetishistic genres.) Quoting soobaki:

...i didnt start watching akagami no shirayukihime and think “oh, they might be too uncomfortable showing a kiss, since japan doesnt do pda like the states” b/c that was a heterosexual love story. i didnt have any doubt, and that series didnt feature anything nearly as raunchy as yuri on ice...

That’s always been my rule of thumb, in watching any media representation. Compare the screentime and intimacy of the non-het relationship to what’s shown for the het relationships. Is the screentime equal? Do we see, relatively, the same kind of treatment, weight, and import in the storylines? Except in the case of YoI, it’s such a compressed story that there’s really only one other romantic couple. Three more are former couples; Yakov and his ex, Georgi and his ex, Mila and her implied ex-boyfriend. For JJ and his fiancee, we see physical closeness in person and in their instagram, verbal affirmation of their relationship (how they refer to each other), and of course the public display of their own rings. So at minimum, we know that these signifiers are being treated, in-story, as ‘enough to let you know there’s a serious relationship here’.

For Yuuri and Victor, we see them hug; we see Victor showing physical affection to Yuuri, in public; we see Victor also publicly displaying/declaring the intent behind their rings. In that regard, if Yuuri and Victor were a background couple like JJ and his fiancee, then I’d probably call the representation equal.

But Yuuri and Victor are the central couple, and the emotional foundation of the story is their romance, although screentime-wise it’s probably a sub-plot within the overall sports genre storyline. For the moment, genderbend one of them, and make this a het romance. What would we reasonably expect to see, in the course of a developing romantic subplot?

I should note that I think it’s a bit misleading to compare YoI, which I’d say is in the ‘first-love’ genre of romance, to more adult fare. (While some US/UK media can get considerably steamier, I’ve seen plenty of Japanese media that may fade to black but otherwise doesn’t shirk from showing before or after of an implied sex scene.) Setting aside any prurient interest and just getting to the bones of a romance, what stages do we expect, in a story, that clue us in on the romantic progress?

1: Action. It starts with one character expressing/realizing an interest in another. It might be a bit ambiguous, if this character isn’t the POV character, but in hindsight, it’s clearly interest.

2: Reaction. The POV character develops a growing attraction in return. There might be some waffling, or rationalizing; side-characters may play a role in helping the POV character realize this is like-like, and not just like. Or the character may recognize it on their own, but we get some point where the audience can see that the attraction is now reciprocated.

3: Action. Some sort of gesture that signifies the two characters each recognize each the other‘s interest. This could be anything: shyly holding hands, agreeing to go out on a date, open self-aware flirtation. Cultures vary in this regard, but regardless of the intensity of the gesture, neither character is ignorant of the meaning (and neither is the audience).

4: Reaction. A slight drawing-back, or assessment. This is when each character ‘touches base’ with friends, family, coworkers. It’s a reaction stage, whether this reaction is from supportive (or disbelieving) side-characters, and that reaction allows the audience to see the characters’ own evolution from strangers to something close. This stage also lets us see the characters’ movement from seeing themselves as one person interested in another, to the beginning stages of seeing themselves as potentially one-half of a couple.

5: Action. Another step forward, increasing the intimacy again. In more adult fare, #3 might be the first kiss, while #5 is having sex; in a first-love story (or less PDA-happy cultures), #3 could be holding hands, while #5 is the first kiss. Whatever the levels, it’s displaying progression, and growing intimacy.

6: Reaction. Again the assessment, where the character’s reaction to the increased intimacy is contrasted with their previous reaction, in #4. If a character was doubtful/worried in #4, we’ll see glimmers of confidence in #6; if they did most of the talking in #4, we’ll see less of that as side-characters fill the gaps in #6 while the character holds back details. For the audience, this confirms that the relationship is now impacting the character beyond the relationship, and changing how they see/interact with friends outside that relationship.

7: Action. A final affirmation of the relationship. Depending on the time, place, culture, and personalities, this might be a wedding proposal, moving in together, showing up at a public event together... but it’s a step that seals the relationship as existing within the public sphere, and that the two characters are now interacting with the world as a couple. (You could say the world’s response counts as a #8 reaction, closing out the cycle, though this is usually a low-key final step compared to the rest.)

How much of that did we get, in YoI? Because it seems to me that some of these steps got skipped, and that’s why I felt a bit like I’d missed half the story, somewhere. I was expecting some kind of a progressive dynamic for the romantic subplot, but instead I only got snapshots at certain points in time, with the rest missing completely (not even mentioned in passing).

We got #1, with Victor’s advances. There’s a subtle #2, when Yuuri realizes he wants Victor to stay. I’m not really sure where/when #3 happened, and I’m not sure that scene on the beach counts; that conversation was about the role Victor would play, and not about their mutual attraction. Unless the kiss in ep7 was meant as the third step, but I think it was @caramelcheese and/or @soobaki who argued pretty persuasively that Yuuri’s reactions are completely off-base for a first kiss (especially one so public).

Which means we missed that first mutual recognition, as well as the reaction to that recognition. Instead, we saw a public kiss well after the point where this would’ve been a landmark event (of moving to the next level in couple-ship), which I’d argue is why people were kind of thrown by the total lack of anyone reacting to the kiss at all (even from announcers, or a passing conversation between Yuuri and anyone). It’s ‘cause when the characters move to the next level, the audience needs that reaction to see how the characters are handling it, how they rationalize, interpret, hope/fear/whatever.

The proposal in the airport might be #5, and this might be echoed by the way the hotel beds appear to be pushed together in eps 9-12. We’re to assume, I suppose, that #5 indicates the emotional progression, and subtle background clues imply a concurrent physical progression. But again, there’s no reaction stage; nothing where we can see via side-character conversations the changes ‘being in a new relationship’ have wrought on either of the characters. It’s like they exist entirely outside any kind of greater world, or they’re fine showing hints of their relationship (the kiss, the rings) yet don’t actually discuss it with anyone. Victor does give it some time, in ep10, but I’d say overall the reaction time is so minimal that it took hindsight to think that perhaps some of those quick scenes were meant to imply reaction/processing time, maybe.

We do get #7, of course, with Victor’s announcement in ep10 about the rings, but that’s pretty much the first time we get any definitive reactions from any other characters. And I’d argue that the jumpy progression (with gaps) is part of the reason some of us feel like ep12 was strangely ambiguous. We never really got a good look inside Yuuri’s head via external conversations, about his relationship with Victor (as a lover, as opposed to as his coach), so it’s hard to gauge things. His inner dialogue is pretty consistently about their coach-student relationship, rather than grappling with the newness of a boyfriends-lovers relationship.

Now, going back to the switch of treating this like a het romance: if this had been a het romance, I would’ve been completely baffled as to the writers’ choices to leave off half the relationship’s progression. I probably wouldn’t even be sure there really is a relationship--or I’d be seriously distrusting the strength of the relationship. The only stories I can think of where the reaction steps are skipped are stories that aren’t actually romances, but are either horror (where #7 contains a reveal like, idk, the love interest is actually a ghost or already married or something equally shattering). Or they’re just abusive crap where the love interest wants to keep everything private, and isolate/control the protagonist, which I don’t find romantic at all, so much as just plain horrifying.

By that measure, I’m stuck saying YoI is simply too coy, because nothing supports that ‘sudden reveal horror’ twist (and there isn’t one, regardless). The simple conclusion is that the writers wouldn’t, or couldn’t, give the main romance a weight in the storyline equivalent to what I’d reasonably expect from a het romance.

As much as I do love the story and the characters, and will praise it endlessly for its representations of depression (Victor) and anxiety (Yuuri), I do think the lack of fully exploring the relationship’s progression--and in a sense, failing to respect the characters fully--is part of what renders the last two episodes rather flat. Without a complete sense of the relationship’s dynamics, we lost some of the emotional heft that might’ve alleviated the eleventh-hour switchups. We could’ve still felt confident that the relationship itself had moved through understandable stages to a good conclusion, even if the overall (sports genre) plot remained truncated.

Somewhat related: I wonder how much the writers chose to expurgate due to fear/worry that showing more (iow, giving the same weight as a het romance) would automatically land it in the category of fetishistic/yaoi/BL. I’m not convinced that’s so; Aniplex/BONES did No.6, and you can see the stages of negotiation, including internal/external reactions via other characters, with the mlm aspect treated matter-of-factly. (Not even sure it’d even qualify as a romance, but that’s a post for another day.)

But my sense remains, underscored by the post-broadcast comments of ‘not gay, but transcendental’ that there was a better/richer story hiding underneath, and it’s just one they didn’t have the nerve to tell. Then again, seeing how they didn’t have the nerve to carry through on the first ten episodes of promises all the way to the end, I guess I’m not surprised that under careful analysis, even the main romantic subplot was given short shrift, too.

#yoimeta #yuri on ice #analysis is my chocolate cake

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