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shihalyfie · 3 years

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@sage-striaton replied to your post:

Idk how people can say Frontier has characters that lack depth. Imo it’s a very psychological season. The whole adventure thing is aimed to making them grown in their behaviours and feelings, it’s a big metaphor of their development

I’m sorry for hijacking your response to my post to segue this into another rant of mine, but I want to emphasize that one of my goals with this blog (if I can be said to have any) is that I really, really, really want people to re-examine whether they actually believe in the rhetoric that’s been dominating this fanbase for two decades, or whether there’s more to it. This is especially in regards to the fact that we’re talking a series deliberately written in such a way that it’ll change meaning and nuance as you get older, so it can “grow up” with you in a sense, and yet it seems like -- especially in regards to Adventure through Frontier, due to their position as the oldest series that the majority of the fanbase was elementary or preteen age during -- people are still regurgitating the same rehashed twenty-year-old ideas like they’re undeniable law. It’s one thing if they’re saying it because the series didn’t sit well with them the first time and they don’t want to watch it again, but we’re reaching a recurring problem where it’s sort of “brainwashing” even people who don’t actually believe it but feel compelled to go along with it, or wouldn’t feel that way if it weren’t for peer pressure. Obviously, there are dissenting opinions, and ones that are even very loud about that, but that pressure remains.

The mainstream opinion in the fanbase is that Adventure is untouchable and impervious to any criticism, 02 is its inferior sequel with half-baked characters, Tamers is an auteur work that’s the “deepest” of the original tetralogy due to being dark, and Frontier is devoid of much substance at all. Even those who don’t really believe in this will still be pressured to go alongside it, those who like 02 or Frontier will be pressured to consider it a “guilty pleasure”, and it’s only very recently when certain events revealed that the idea of 02 actually having quite its own fervent and passionate fanbase that likes it on its own merits became properly recognized. (I have actually noticed a huge uptick in 02 fans, especially casual ones, being more shameless in talking about liking it in the last two years; you’re still going to get the obnoxious person “reminding” you how bad it apparently is if you bring it up, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be.) I’m not talking about whether something is a “good” or “bad” series -- that concept doesn’t really exist to me as much as whether it’s “to one’s tastes” or not, and I think one of the joys of this franchise is that it has things that cater to people with vastly different preferences -- as much as a lot of potential for analysis and intimate thought about these very fascinating series. Even if 02 and Frontier were as shallow or half-baked as they were accused of, I wouldn’t think it’d be shameful to like them for one’s own reasons anyway, but what frustrates me is that I just don’t think that’s true in the first place!!

Not helping is that there’s still a refusal among the fanbase to admit that there were substantial differences in American English dubbing (especially in regards to Adventure and 02), which I don’t mean as a bad thing in the sense that some people prefer to stick only with that dub and consider that version what they want to work with, but in the sense that the treatment of them as “the same thing” has been horribly detrimental when two people, one coming from that dub and one coming from the Japanese version (or a dub more closely based on it), will end up often having an argument doomed to go nowhere because they were never talking about the same thing to begin with. Recently, a friend admitted to me that although they’d switched to the Japanese version a long time ago, they still couldn’t get the image of Daisuke and Takeru having an inherently hostile relationship (they don’t) out of their head due to the influence of that dub, and although they consciously knew better -- at least enough to admit this to me -- it wasn’t helped by the fact that the fanbase itself continues to reinforce this image because of how normalized it is to treat the dub version and the Japanese version as “virtually the same” and for Western fanbase discourse to assume you should be projecting those takes into the Japanese version. If you’re hanging out in English-speaking circles but are working from the Japanese version or a dub directly based off of it, you do actually have to filter out a lot of takes you’re hearing because they won’t actually apply to the version you’re watching, but not a lot of people realize this.

All four of Adventure through Frontier share tons of key staff, especially Seki, known for her focus on wanting the kids in the audience to be able to empathize with and relate to the characters on screen. All four share some of the best character work I’ve seen not only in this franchise, but also in kids’ media in general, and I also stress that a lot of this has a ton of nuance that isn’t always apparent unless you read between the lines. I do understand that a lot of this probably went over our heads as kids, and I won’t say that the choice to execute it this way should be impervious to criticism, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to call attention to the fact it is there, and much of it becomes recognizable once you see it that way; for instance, so much of "it's contradictory character writing!" comes from the fact that the series tries to represent humans in their inconsistent, messy ways, and while it'll feel "messy" from a writing trope perspective, when you think about it as "since this person has this mentality, does it make sense to approach this with this mindset?", suddenly it becomes very consistent. The supposedly “shallow” 02 and Frontier characters will act in ways that match existing psychological profiles meant for actual humans to terrifying degrees, in ways that you might actually recognize even better once you’ve hit adulthood and start intimately understanding things like depression or anxiety in ways you might not have before. Shockingly, “having heart, important themes, and kindness towards the human condition” are completely valid reasons to uplift a creative work in ways distinct from technical writing or cerebrality or how many tropes they subvert or whatever.

On the flip side, people praise Adventure and Tamers for being the naturally “superior” works with better writing, but when it comes to talking about why the writing is supposedly better, a good chunk of the reasons stated don’t actually explain anything substantial, or go back to actually being passive-aggressive dunks on the other series in some form -- it’s because 02 and Frontier’s character writing sucks that badly, or because Adventure had the “best plot” (which may be true if by “best” you mean “easiest to understand”, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who might not be very happy about how its story progression is just a boss rush), or because Tamers is the “deepest” when by “deep” they actually mean “cerebral, dark, and unsubtle about it” without any further meaning (as if Adventure and 02 were idealistic series that never went into anything nuanced and not, say, the fact they went very viciously deep into societal issues between parents and children, psychological horror, and intimate takes on the human condition). I’m personally saying this as someone who does think Adventure and Tamers have a lot to praise in terms of their approaches to realism and the unique aspects each bring to the table, and I feel that people like this are doing them more of a disservice by not bothering to uplift them for any reason that isn’t actually just inherently condescending. I mean, even taking this outside of the original tetralogy for a bit, when I was plugging Appmon earlier, there’s a reason I focused more on its theme and character writing and the use of “dark” writing to convey its sheer range, rather than trying to boil it down to a shallow “it looks cheery but gets really messed up later!”, which is unfortunately an argument I’ve been seeing about it lately.

In the end, when I write my meta, I write it "making a case" for my point of view, and I welcome others to disagree, but if you disagree, I really hope it'll be because you personally disagree, and not because the entire fanbase has been saying otherwise for twenty years and I sound like a radical. I’m not saying that everyone’s consensus takes are completely unfounded, but frankly speaking, this fanbase has some really bad takes, and in the past few years I’ve found it freeing to not only “say what you feel without worrying what others think”, but actually go out of my way to outright try and purge all the preconceived notions and pick only the ones I agree with because I actually agree with them. I encourage you to do it too! And if you do, you might find things about something you like that you didn’t realize before.

#digimon #shiha's ask box #sage-striaton #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon tamers #digimon frontier #shihameta

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nunonabun · 5 years

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I did love Trixie admitting she'd dated a gay man as cover once in that dismissive way she did. Because to her his sexuality didn't mean anything to her, but she didn't want him to be hurt. I know that episode had many other things to take out of it but that stood out to me, along with her saying that what would bother her wouldn't be her partners sexuality, but that they cheated. All that was important was their faithfulness.

This got quite long so I’ll put it under a cut.

This is a heck of an episode, and I think how everyone comes off in it is quite complex. There was a lot I liked about Trixie in that episode, especially her speaking up at the dinner table and saying “Well quite frankly I thought we’d fought a war over facism, and that’s what this is, telling people who they can and can’t love.” But there are also the ways in which she’s still viewing things from a heternormative POV and participating in the “othering” of gay people, as are pretty much all the straight characters in the episode (I am going with Trixie at least self-identifying as straight, in this analysis.)

When she says she couldn’t forgive Tony Amos’s actions if she were in Marie Amos’ shoes “because [Tony] cheated, I couldn’t care less who with,” that equates him acting on his sexuality outside of his straight marriage, with a straight person in a straight marriage having an affair. It puts the blame for Tony’s affair fully on Tony as opposed to largely on the way heteronormativity and homophobia have forced him into that situation. It’s kind of like an “I don’t see colour,” but with sexuality; a disregard of how the oppression a person faces factors into their actions. That’s not to say it doesn’t truly harm his wife as well, and it’s absolutely fine to empathize with her, but to just say it’s cheating and he’s fully wrong for cheating misunderstands the situation. Phyllis does this too, when Sister Monica Joan says crime implies someone was harmed, and nobody was in that case, Phyllis says “try putting yourself in Mrs. Amos’s shoes,” as though that somehow justifies the punishment Tony is receiving even a bit. It’s a horribly difficult situation and of course it’s valid for someone Marie’s position to feel hurt and deceived, but it’s also important not to ignore how Tony entering that marriage and breaking his vows is not a malicious deception. It’s a situation where he is under immense pressure to conform to a social norm that he would be severely punished if he broke. He’s also very likely to have gotten the message implicitly and/or explicitly that getting married to a woman would “fix” him... and then finding out he can’t repress a natural and important part of himself.

To the anecdote about the doctor she was a beard for again, it’s complicated. Trixie recounts: ”I certainly don’t mind fraulines. In fact, I provided diversionary cover for one during my training. Young doctor, melting to look at, but the other way inclined. Perfect gentleman, sadly. Without me on his arm, he would have lost his position.” One the one hand, she cared about him and helped him. On the other hand, the way she helped him was by providing the image that he did fit the norm. She helped dress up the closet door to make it look like he wasn’t in there. He probably wouldn’t have wanted her to do anything else. Society forced him into a position where, if he was out, he’d be out of a job. But it is still helping him to cover up and fit the norm as opposed to fighting the norm (Again, I know, he may not have wanted her to do that and certainly outing him to fight against it would likely have been hugely harmful, that’s not where I’m going with this. I’ll get to that in the last section of this little essay thing.) There was also something about how she told the story that was quite othering. The way she told it was as though it were an exciting anecdote, a titillating, somewhat shocking story of complicity with an Other. It wasn’t in a tone of ‘someone I knew experienced a scary, horrible encounter with bigotry and I tried to help.’ That lack of empathetic tone is kind of in line with the use of othering terms like “frauline” and “one [of them],” as well as her response to the same situation existing in nursing (”No dark secrets girls, not if you value your life. *giggles*”). I’m sure other people have other views on that conversation, but that’s how it came across to me. There’s also her conversation with Patsy where Patsy asks if she’s “the only one who doesn’t hate them, the queers,” and Trixie says “I just don’t think it’s our battle to fight,” and then changes the subject to her (straight) relationship and how to get the community to accept the straight wife of a gay man. Essentially, overall her perspective ends up being ‘yes it’s wrong that gay people are treated like that, it’s fascist to punish them for being gay, but they can conform, there’s no need to rock the boat.’ Those things I’ve discussed above are actually elements of the episode I really liked. The words and actions of each of the characters are entirely believable and consistent with who they are in the time and place they’re in. What I enjoy about these things is that I think they demonstrate how, in a homophobic & heteronormative society, even good people, even people who are against homophobia, can perpetuate it, be complicit in it, and participate in othering. Here I’m moving on to a broader reflection. I think the examination with Trixie holds, but a clearer example - and one where much more harm is done - is Patrick. Patrick expresses that “we ought to live and let live,” in his conversation with Shelagh, and he goes to court to speak in Tony’s defence, yet he prescribes chemical castration for Tony. He’s clearly very against punishing Tony for his sexuality, and the laws pressuring him to do so, but that doesn’t erase that he’s complicit in that punishment, in that horrible thing that is being done to Tony. He doesn’t stand up to it. Taking it up many notches from Trixie being a beard, Patrick expresses chemical castration being preferable as it is “more private,” again, providing a way to make a gay person conform. Also, in some ways, he buys into the established medical view of homosexuality at the time, seeming to accept that though it’s unfair Tony is being medically altered, his sexuality boils down to “urges”. He recommends that Tony focus on the joy of his child and basically just try his best to conform, and that will be enough. Another example of that is of course with Fred, looking reluctant and expressing apology for kick Tony out of the Civic Defense Corps but still doing it. I wouldn’t count Peter exactly because he set up the honeytrap and is more than just complicit, though he is also an example of how ingrained social hatred can lead to otherwise good people being cruel and utterly shutting off their compassion and empathy. There are also subtler ways like Shelagh, who seems to sit on the fence about accepting gay people, and others Tony in her language (asking how Tony can be “that way”, and if Patrick has met “many others”). And there’s Sister Julienne steadfastly not offering support and deferring to social views of the time (”a judge will try Mr. Amos, not us”). I’d argue those are forms of participation in homophobia, because not challenging bigotry when it’s presented to you is a form of tacit acceptance. The negative side of the refusal to judge that Sister Julienne is so often lauded for is pretty clear here. As Patsy communicates when she asks “who will [fight the battle for gay equality] then?” in her conversation with Trixie, if people chose to be bystanders to bigotry, how will we truly, meaningfully change society? This episode highlights not only how explicit enforcement of structures of oppression is deeply harmful, but how insidious those views are, present to some degree even in good people and even in those who explicitly reject it; how its subtler forms are still harmful, and how “tolerance” of the group being othered is still complicity in the oppression. I mean, I think that’s quite undercut but the whole ‘rat cull’ parallel subplot that communicates ‘it’s alright not to like them for their identity so long as you acknowledge their right to exist,’ but if I disregard that and just focus on the gay plot, that’s what I get.

Anyways, sorry, my thoughts ran away with me there, I have lots of thoughts and feelings about CtM 4x03. Not at all trying to rain on your reading of it, anon, different readings/aspects of a thing can stand out/be meaningful to different people, and I definitely agree Trixie has some strong moments. But I think it’s also interesting to look at the variety of ways homophobia & heteronormativity are present in people and are presented. And of course, those themes and messages are all too important in our present world as well.

#Call the Midwife #CtM s4e03 #Trixie Franklin #cw: homophobia #Anonymous

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