#i am begging fandom to learn some actual things about actual literary criticism sometimes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sketching-shark · 3 years

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I think we should start a protection squad (although they don’t need it because they can protect themselves) for Sun Wukong and Guanyin

“Begone monkie kid fandom trying to down grade these really interesting characters with interesting personality’s and backstory ( the both of them like seriously Guanyin backstory is so cool) to a villain wile trying to justify your angsty backstory (that are no where near as cool as monkey who fights gods and Person who has 1000 arms and heads to help people in need) for the actual villain”

So who wants to join

Me:*raises my hand*

Ps: sorry if I got Guanyin backstory wrong am not an expert on it.

Haha okay so some critiques on the jttw & associated media western fandom & fandom in general coming up, so please skip this upcoming text wall if you don't want to encounter my undoubtedly ~devastating~ words (i.e. don't like don't read as people love to say, & if I have to be inundated with images of my notp every time I go into the sun wukong tag then I imagine people can be chill with me expressing my opinions & giving people fair warning that I WILL be critiquing common fandom trends, but no need for you to see that if you don’t want to. Cool? Cool.)

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PFFFFFTTT oh man there are many times when I feel like signing up for such a protection squad...when it comes to the current western jttw & Sun Wukong fandom I do feel like I'm often swinging at a rapid pace between "well it's fandom & people are allowed to make the stories they want" & "I am once again begging my fellow monkie kid enthusiasts (& sometimes creators) to do more research into the og classic/show it more respect so you can avoid any potentially offensive/off-the-mark misunderstandings of the status & cultural context of the characters in their country of origin (I promise it's super interesting & I can provide you with links to free pdf copies of the entire Yu translation, i.e. the best one ever created, so feel free to ask!) & maybe also stop constantly stripping away all the nuance of Sun Wukong's character for the sake of either making him an entire asshole so your little meow meow can look completely innocent in comparison and/or making the monkey king's entire life & character revolve around said meow meow."

Like I get that fandom's supposed to be a kind of anything-goes environment, but one thing that honestly seems to be true of a lot of fandoms--and the western one for Sun Wukong & co. is certainly not immune from this--is that there often seems to be a kind of monoculturalization at work in what stories are created & what character interpretations are made popular. Across a multitude of fandoms, you frequently see basically nothing but the exact same tropes being made popular & even being insisted on for the canonical work (especially hasty redemption arcs & enemies to lovers these days), the exact same one-dimensional character types that characters from an original work keep getting shoved into, the exact same story beats, etc. And I get it to an extent, as fandom is generally a space where people just make art and fic for fun & without thinking too hard about it & without any pressure.

This seems to, however, often unfortunately lead to the mentality that it’s your god-given right to do literally whatever you want with literally any cultural figure without even the slightest bit of thought put into their cultural, historical, and even religious context, even (and sometimes especially) when it comes to figures that are really important in a culture outside your own. For such figures--even if you first encounter them in a children’s cartoon--you should be a little more careful with what you do with them than you would with your usual Saturday morning line-up. It of course has to be acknowledged that there exists a whole pile of absolutely ridiculous & cursed pieces of media that are based on Journey to the West & that were produced in mainland China, but for your own education if nothing else I consider it good practice for those of us (myself certainly included) who aren’t part of the culture that produced JTTW to put more thought into how we might want to portray these characters so that at the very least (to pull some things I’ve seen from the jttw western fandom) we’re not turning a goddess of mercy into an evil figure for the sake of Angst(TM), or relegating other important literary figures into the positions of offensive stereotypes, or making broad claims about the source text & original characterizations of various figures that are blatantly untrue, or mocking heavenly deities because of what’s actually your misunderstanding of how immortality works according to Daoist beliefs. Yet while a lot of this is often due to people not even trying to understand the context these figures are coming from, I do want to acknowledge that the journey (lol reference) to understand even a fraction of the original cultural context can be a daunting one, especially since, as I’ve mentioned before, it can be really hard & even next to impossible to find good, accessible, & legitimate explanations in English of how, for example, the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China & according to the Buddhist beliefs that define the original work.

That is to say, I do think it’s an unfortunate, if unavoidable, part of any introduction of an original text into a culture foreign to its own for there to be sometimes a significant amount of misinterpretation, mistranslations, and false assumptions. There is, however, a big difference between learning from your honest mistakes, & doubling down on them while dismissing all criticism of your misinterpretation into that abstract category of “fandom drama.” The latter attitude is kind of shitty at best and horrifically entitled at worst.

Plus, as I’ve discovered, there is a great deal of interest and joy to be drawn from keeping yourself open to learning aspects of these texts & figures that you weren’t aware of! I can say from my own experience that I’ve always really enjoyed & appreciated it when individuals on this site who come from a Chinese background--and who know much more about the cultural context of JTTW than me--have taken the time to explain its various aspects. It often leaves me feeling like woooooaaaahhhhhHHH!!!! as to how amazingly full of nuanced meaning JTTW is like dang no wonder it’s one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels.

And I guess that right there is the heart of a lot of my own personal frustration and disappointment with the ways that fandoms often approach a literary work or other piece of media...like don’t get me wrong, a lot of the original works a fandom may grow around are just straight-up goofy & everyone’s aware of it & has fun with it, yet the trend of approaching what are often nuanced and multi-layered works in terms of how well they fit and/or can be shoved into pretty cliche ideas of Redemption Arc or Enemies to Lovers or Hero Actually Bad, Villain Actually Good etc...well, it just seems to cheapen and even erase even the possibility of understanding the wonderful complexity or even endearing simplicity that made these works so beloved in the first place. Again, I feel like I need to make it clear that I’m not saying fandom should be a space where people are constantly trying to one-up each other with their hot takes in literary analysis, but it would be nice and even beneficial to allow room for commentary that strives to approach these works in a multi-faceted way, analysis & interpretations that go against the popular fandom beliefs, & criticism of the work or even of fandom trends (yes it is in fact possible to legitimately love something but still be critical of its aspects) instead of immediately attacking people who try to engage in such as just being haters who don’t want anyone to have fun ever (X_X).

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Anyway, I know I didn’t cover even half of the stuff you brought up in the first place anon, but I don’t want any interested parties to this post to suffer too long through my text wall lol. I was asked to try my hand at illustrating Guanyin, but as with you I’m nowhere near as informed as I should be about her, so I want to do more research on her history and religious importance before I attempt a portrait. I’ll try my best, and do plan to pair that illustration with my own outsider’s attempt to summarize her character. From what little I do know I am in full agreement that her backstory is so incredibly amazing...just the fact that she literally eschewed the bliss of Nirvana to help all beings reach it, and even split herself into pieces in the attempt to do so (with Buddha granting her eleven heads and a thousand arms as a result)...man, I can see why she’s such a beloved & respected deity.

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As for what western fandom commonly does with everyone’s favorite god-fighting primate...I can talk about this at length if there’s interest, but for this post I’ll just say that I guess one lesson from all of this is that for all the centuries that have passed since Journey to the West was first completed, literally no one drawing inspiration from the original tale in the west (lol) has come even slightly close to being able to equal or even capture half the extent of the nuance, complexity, religious, historical, and cultural aspects, and humor that define Wu Cheng'en's story of an overpowered monkey who defied even Buddha.

So thank the heavens we'll always have the original.

#journey to the west #jttw #guanyin #sun wukong #monkey king #monkie kid #fandom #fandom critical

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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I’m honestly asking this because I’m genuinely curious but—seriously why are you such a bitch to people who are just asking questions and who want to know more? You treat them like them not subscribing to your exact brand of analysis makes them bad people. I don’t get it.

People can have any sort of analysis they want. watsonian, doylist, psychological, cultural, historical, feminist, new criticism, reader response. I support fanfiction and fanworks. I support engaging with the content to understand your own life, experiences, identity and traumas. I ASK that they stick to the text, back up their theories with evidence FROM THE TEXT, consider the parts of canon that conflict with or debunk their theories and point out where they are engaging in logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks or confirmation bias.

This is called critical thinking. It’s pretty close to the scientific method. I’m a teacher, even though I left the schools, and it’s just who I am. In fact, I don’t subscribe to only one form of analysis. One day I’ll talk about trauma, one day I’ll talk about representations of misogyny and toxic mascuilinity, one day I’ll talk about the doylist needs of how to tell a story, the next I’ll fucking squee about bellarke and the epicness of it all.

I will ALSO analyze fandom itself, using critical thinking, social psychology, history, looking for patterns, cause and effect etcetera, and I will be honest when I see fandom doing unhealthy, toxic, irrational, unbalanced, cruel or abusive things I will speak out. No one likes their flaws being pointed out. But that doesn’t mean there are no flaws. I ALSO examine my own flaws and biases and consider the alternate points of view on a regular basis. I examine my own presence in fandom, how I can adjust or change to make the experience better for myself and my followers. But you can’t make other people be self reflective if they don’t want to look in the mirror.

You’re also acting like it’s my job to answer your question nicely and give everything i’ve got just because you ask me a question even if you don’t put the same thought into your ask. A lot of people have thought that I was like some sort of fandom mom or their teacher hired to give them gold stars. It’s one of the reasons I changed my name from rosymamacita, because I was tired of being treated like people’s moms who had to love them no matter how awful they were being. Shoot. My own daughter (a bellarke shipper) gets sarcasm and sass and scolded and punished. When I was a teacher I marked up people’s essays and scolded and told them no and got sarcastic and failed their asses for not using critical thinking. I had rubrics explaining the expectations. And if they didn’t meet them they failed. I mean. Who in the world is expected to only be nice, forever, and never disagree, say no, get impatient, get snippy, be sarcastic, or what ever. Only me is it? Why?

As an ex english and humanities teacher, some things specifically annoy me. Like erasing canon. Your high school english teachers should be ashamed sometimes. It’s like y’all think shipping or stanning suspends the rules of logic.

When people erase canon it means they can’t understand the show. this isn’t actually analysis, it’s personal response. and personal response is valid, but it’s not understanding, it’s not analysis, it’s not interpretation. No matter how much they love their faves or their OTP, if they ignore the canon to stan their faves, they’ve lost the story. They are no longer analyzing anything that I’m analyzing aka canon. We’re literally not talking about the same thing.

That’s like using unicorns as a scientific basis to study narwhals.

Unicorns are awesome, but it’s SO not any sort of understanding of narwhals. It’s made up. And not narwhals. Just because they share a singular horn and being a mammal, you can’t say the narwhal is the unicorn. You can analyze the wonder of the unicorn, but it still ain’t the narwhal, and saying the narwhal is the unicorn and failing in it’s job as a unicorn is... well does that make sense?

You ask why I’m a bitch sometimes? Did you happen to read my blog header?

I’m sometimes rosy

These are my rules. I ship bellarke, if you put bellarke hate or bellarke doubt or ‘i’m so worried bellarke is never going to happen’s into my inbox. You’re breaking my rules. If you are negative and disempowering you’re breaking my rules. Shipwars, fanwars character hate and writer hate are all against my rules.

When i was nice and sweet and entertained all that stuff, you know what happened? Constant harassment. Constant anxiety. Constant begging me to feed fandom neurosis in the guise of asking for assurance. All that has gotten a lot better since I developed stronger boundaries. And you know who HATES it when I have boundaries and calls me a bitch for setting them firmly and not backing down, no matter what tone I use? People who want to cross my boundaries and suck me dry. So kiss off with your tone policing.

Maybe I’m a bitch because someone pissed me off, or they’re ignoring the fifty thousand times I told them to stick to the text, or I’m exhausted and anxious about something in my actual life, since, you know, i’m a real person who is not perfect.

Maybe I’m not a bitch, I’m just sarcastic, and you’re so stuffed up with your own ego that anything but stroking your dick reads as me being a bitch. Oh. Was it when I said the flame was a party favor not canon? That’s the bitchiest I was this morning, and that was fucking funny. Did I hurt your feelings because you think a party favor means lxa is coming back? lol. Maybe that’s what this ask is about. If you had sent me another anon saying I hurt your feelings, I would apologize and explain without the sarcasm. I’ve done that before. But you didn’t. You called me a bitch.

Maybe I’m a bitch because I’m a bitch. It’s my blog. Deal with it. I am allowed to be a bitch. I did not ask you to follow me. I am absolutely a bitch now. Thanks. It’s your fault.

Maybe I’m a bitch to anons sometimes because of you, you coward on anon. Because I get shit like this constantly, and I never know who any of you on anon are, whether you’re one of my stalkers or someone who used to call me The Devil, or part of that kru that SOMEONE is still sending to attack me. I don’t know yet I keep my anons open.

Me? I own up to everything I say, even when I’m wrong, even when I’m called a bitch. I don’t hide behind anon like you so no one can ever judge your behavior or words.

“genuinely curious” my ass. Because if you were genuinely curious you would read my blog and see my DETAILED fucking explanations for why I do what I do and think what I think and stand behind what I stand behind. Do you notice that I wrote a fucking ESSAY explaining why I do what I do, using evidence and examples and types of literary analysis and this is NOT the first time I’ve done this.

Or if you were honestly asking, you would have honestly sent me a private message (which are open and always have been and I respond) asking me what my reasons are without calling me names.

You just wanted to send a nasty anon.

And I think that makes YOU the bitch. Don’t pull that guilt trip, tone policing, condescending shit with me. Pretending to be honestly asking because you want to understand.

Sealioning

A subtle form of trolling involving "bad-faith" questions. You disingenuously frame your conversation as a sincere request to be enlightened, placing the burden of educating you entirely on the other party. If your bait is successful, the other party may engage, painstakingly laying out their logic and evidence in the false hope of helping someone learn. In fact you are attempting to harass or waste the time of the other party, and have no intention of truly entertaining their point of view. Instead, you react to each piece of information by misinterpreting it or requesting further clarification, ad nauseum. The name "sea-lioning" comes from a Wondermark comic strip. [x]

#DO YOU GET IT NOW?#THIS is me being a bitch #and i could be worse

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