#cass has always lived in an abusive environment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mstrickster · 5 months

Note

How do you think the bat kids were in school/high school and did there end up being a change in them when they started living with Bruce?

Thank you so much for the ask!

So it is canon that Jason really enjoyed school when he was a kid. We also know that Duke and Damian currently attend school. Also that Tim dropped out of high school. So I am going to take all that into account in this answer.

Dick: I do not believe Dick was ever in a formal school environment before Bruce. Since he was a circus kid, I think it's more likely he was homeschooled by his mom. Due to this fact, I would guess that Bruce decided not to enroll him in school for the first few years. I could see Alfred acting as a tudor or Bruce hiring one. I could see him trying a private school, but it was just not fitting. He preferred being at home where he could move around while he was taught. I do think he was about to graduate high school, but he probably didn't want to go beyond that.

Jason: Jason was probably in school when Bruce adopted him. As a kid from Crime Alley, I could see Jason finding comfort in school. Due to the fact that it gets him away from his abusive home. After Bruce adopts him, he probably gives him a choice on schooling. Jason chooses to stay in his school. He doesn't end up graduating, though, cause of the whole dead thing. However, I can see him continuing informal education through reading. I could also see Alfred taking him to museums, libraries, and other educational places as a bonding experience. However, Jason will probably never receive any more formal schooling.

Tim: I am under the firm belief that Tim hated school. He didn't technically need to attend cause he's a genius. However, Bruce insisted that he needed social interactions. When Tim got the chance, he did end up dropping out. It's not that he thinks he's above school. It's more he has no problem finding social interaction, and he is smarter than all his teachers were. So he doesn't see the point.

Barbara: I know Barbara isn't technically Bruce's kid, but she is a bat kid, so I'm counting her. I truly believe Barbara was one of the only ones who really enjoyed school and continued to go like she strikes me as the one who actually graduated. She is probably the only one who went to college as of yet. She probably went for computers or some kind of programming or coding. However, she always has had a thirst for knowledge and a pretty open disposition so I could see her not refusing school. Also, Bruce probably offered to play pay for her schooling, but Jim refused. He had been saving up since she was three, and he would pay for it himself, goddammit.

Steph: Of all the bat kids, Stephanie and Duke probably had the most normal upbringing school-wise. Like I know her dad is a supervillain, but her mom isn't, so I could see her actually going to public school. In fact, her mom probably insisted that she regularly attended school. Her mom really wanted her to graduate and succeed in life. She is currently in college, which Bruce is paying for. However, that is his only contribution to her education.

Cass: It is canon that her parents did not feel the need to educate her in anything that wouldn't achieve their goals of having her be an assassin. In canon, even though she is very well educated in battle and body language, she is illiterate when we first meet her. So I feel like she would have the biggest turnaround of all the bat kids. I could see Bruce setting up a whole school in the manor for her comfort. She was taught how to read, write, and do math from this school. Due to the care put in by Bruce, Cassandra ends up really enjoying school. She never does attend public school or college because she isn't comfortable. However, she is brought up to her current level. Plus, if she ever expresses the want to learn more, Bruce is ready to comply.

Damian: Even though he was also trained as an assassin like Cassandra, I can see Damian actually being taught proper schooling. In fact, I could see Talia going out of her way to make sure he is able to excel in any educational setting. Damian strikes me as the type of kid who knew five different languages before he was even 10. Therefore, when he moved in with Bruce, he didn't see a need for school. He thought it was silly and that he was more educated than anyone that he would ever meet in a school. However, Bruce did insist that it was not for education it was for social interactions. Which Damien begrudgingly agreed to. He did end up liking it after a while because they allowed him to do more than just educational classes. He was able to indulge his art, which he really enjoyed. He probably does go on to graduate high school. He says it's because he wants to finish, unlike some people. The truth is he likes having something that makes him a normal kid.

Duke: Duke schooling probably didn't change much after Bruce took him in. He was already in school and probably was a pretty decent student. The only change I could see is that he switched to a private school instead of a public school. Otherwise, I think Duke has the most normal school experience out of all the kids. He does probably go to college but more as a way to honor his parents than it being a need.

Thank you again!

#anon ask #anon answered #batkids #batfam #batfamily #dick grayson #jason todd #cassandra cain #tim drake #stephanie brown #barbara gordon #damian wayne #duke thomas

39 notes · View notes

justanie · 2 years

Text

Hoshi Kazeno (Lil' Oc Info):

Birthday: October 5th

Age: 12

Height: 1,49 cm - 4'9,5"

Likes: Singing, music, cute things, butterflies, fashion, shopping, gifts, showing off, being "herself", being pampered, desserts, candies, make friends, Big Hero 6, flowers, jewerly, pay attention, stickers, fruity lip gloss, cute animals, unicorns and rainbows.

Dislikes: Ugly insects, the abuse, that things don't go as she wants, ghosts, studying, "Nerd Things", seeing others suffer, villains and monsters of San Fransokyo.

Family: Liv Amara (Aunt), Fugi Kazeno (Father), Adelaide Amara (Mother), Ima Kazeno (Big Sis.), James Kazeno (Big Bro.), Yoshio Kazeno (Lil Bro.) and Kimi Kazeno (Lil Sis.)

Friends/Allies: Hiro Hamada (Crush onwards), Baymax, Megan Cruz, The Nerd Gang, Aunt Cass, Professor Granville, Chris (temporarily)

Enemies: Di Amara (later) Chris (later), Karmi (regularly) most of the villains in the first few seasons.

Voice Actress: Liliana Mummy.

History:

Hoshi Kazeno is the niece of Liv Amara, moved to San Fransokyo by decision of her parents since not having enough knowledge and getting distracted in her classes around science, she is moved to the city to take advantage of learning more from the high technology of which said city is characterized. Although the care of "Liv" does not help much, since she is negligent with Hoshi's education and instead of helping her to at least start with the basics of science as it was proposed for her, she enrolls her in the SFFI (San Fransokyo Female's Institute) to receive an education worthy of a true young lady believing that her reason for being there is for spoiled behavior (which, also helps, despite not being the main objective of why the girl is in San Fransokyo)

In her establishment, she ends up bumping into Hiro Hamada, who meets him at an event where the most acclaimed schools in San Fransokyo (the SFTI, the SFAI, my invented SFFI, among others) come together in a fair every year. Although her first impression was not something so pleasant, since Hoshi only mocked not him but the entire SFTI for the already reputation they have by being named "the School of Nerds" that by that time even before, Hoshi despised this type of people for no reason.

It is when for the time that she stays and adapts more to her new environment in the city, Hoshi changes her way of seeing science as something boring, to end up impressed by the great work and requirement that the facilities and inventions originating from San Fransokyo, starting to get closer to Hiro and the gang, where she was able to reveal a more friendly and charming face than the egotistical and pampered one that she always has to expose to the world. Her connection to the Big Hero 6 so far, is that she has only been present to see them in action (sometimes she gets rescued by them if danger confronts her) without taking into account that under those armors they are Hiro and the others being those super heroes, it's not until later.

Personality:

I think that by this point you already know what her personality is like: She is initially seen as a spoiled, selfish and pretentious girl, wanting anything on a whim and leaving aside issues that she dislikes. But under that layer of hostility, there is also an outgoing girl, with a sweet and kind heart who has only show if you know her better, worrying about people who matter Hoshi in her life despite continuing with her reputation as a "girly and spoiled girl".

Other Datas:

It is known that she is not originally from San Fransokyo, she lives in the almost neighboring city of this "Santolumbur" (A combination of Kuala Lumbur - Malaysia and Santorini - Greece) together with her family that you met from her parents and her four siblings, despite Since it is a disadvantage to be half ignored for being the middle child, she takes advantage of acting and doing what she wants with her life, even if her parents still pay her the same attention as their other children. Hoshi was born with the rare and peculiar "Alexandria Syndrome" reason why her eyes are naturally purple and not brown or blue like the rest of her family.

Her passionate hobby is a limited variety of what is related to music, preferring the classical, pop and celtic genre. She has a very fine and prodigious singing voice, knowing how to play wind instruments (specifically, the flute and its derivatives) better than anyone, although it can also vary a bit since she is able to play the Lyre and/or Harp and because of her musical likes, she dreams of one day becoming a famous singer in the future.

And that would be the most important thing that I can tell about my OC, that it should be stated that she would be introduced between the end of season 1 and that she would happen if she developed more than half of season 2 with Di Amara as the villain. Actually, i'm edit the part of Hoshi's home ^-^

#big hero 6 #bh6 #bh6 the series #big hero 6 the series #big hero six the series #bh6 oc #big hero 6 oc #my ocs #oc info #hoshi thyella

19 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

#when i read about tim i often kind of come to the idea that he's relatively self centered#and that can be both a flaw and a strength#but he doesn't often consider other people's feelings and circumstances#like when dick made damian robin he didn't really consider the situation from anyone else's view#or in his origin story#he doesn't seem to consider how dick would feel about hearing how tim was affected by dick's parents' death#or with the spyral situation#or in regards to him earning robin#and its pretty consistent in fandom characterization even if a lot of writers don't seem to be aware of it#its interesting cause i think its something i think he has in common with bruce#its honestly a surprisingly consistent thing from what i see#and it can be a strength to#it can absolutely lead to some confidence and self actualization#as well as being able commit to fixing something and working hard at it#because you believe you can and don't think anyone else can/will do it via @emenerd

Y’know, what’s interesting to me about these points is the fact that like.....Tim having tendencies towards self-centeredness is actually something that COMPLETELY makes sense and can be quite sympathetic in light of his backstory of having neglectful parents.

In an age of armchair diagnosticians eager to label anyone who expresses a controversial viewpoint while centering themselves as an example, as like, having a narcissistic personality disorder (and with the loaded implication that this makes them a bad person even if its true, instead of just....having a disorder, yay weaponizable ableism) like, it can be important to add in distinctions that even tendencies that share overlap with a lot of things born of entitlement, etc....aren’t always necessarily proof of that.

For instance, in Tim’s case, an overemphasis on himself and his own position in situations and arguments can very reasonably be attributed as a coping mechanism he developed in an attempt to acknowledge and address self-esteem issues he sees himself as having, DUE to parental neglect.

Its not that he thinks he’s the most important person in the room, necessarily, its that he spent so many years not even being considered a person in the room, that now he OVERCOMPENSATES on his own behalf, in an attempt to remind himself that no, his opinion and feelings and situations do matter.....and because he like most of the Bat-characters has a tendency towards hyper-fixating on a problem they’re trying to address, this can also understandably create a kind of tunnel vision. Where he’s so busy focusing on what he’s diagnosed as an actual issue he has that he’s trying to address or make up for, in order to build up his self-esteem....that he neglects to keep everyone around him equally centered in his interactions with them, and remember that like, they have their own issues and ignoring that to focus entirely on his own runs the risk of negatively impacting them in the exact same way he’s still learning to cope with having been negatively impacted in his development as a child.

None of this makes him a bad person, or is stuff that can’t be addressed and developed just by paying the appropriate attention to it and his interactions.

SO the issue I tend to more often have....

Is with how often in fandom and fanon we hear references to Tim’s neglect and emotional abuse and how this impacted him.....much in the same way we see Jason and Cass and Damian and Dick’s various forms of abuse and the developmental impact it had on them....

BUT there tends to then be a disconnect, IMO, because that acknowledgment of the WHAT of Tim’s neglect and abuse and the HOW it hurt him.....isn’t often followed up by an examination/awareness of how it also SHAPED him.....at least, not compared to how discussions/fics about say, Jason’s abuse tend to point out the latter as much as the former.

And this is a big part of my gripe with the ways abuse is centered and tackled as a topic in fics and fandom discussions, because its so often capitalized upon as a defense or shield for a character from criticism, stuff like that.....without ever actually EXPLORING the topic itself, or the FULLNESS of the impact it can have.

But only in regards to some characters.

What I mean is like....we see a lot of focus on Jason’s childhood abuse, yeah? And this often is then connected through headcanons, meta and fics to various aspects of Jason’s characterization as a teenager, and as an adult as well.....with a tendency towards anger or violence, abrasive personality, etc. Don’t get me wrong, its usually presented as such in a SYMPATHETIC light, especially when raised by fans of Jason themselves.....but his abuse is very much present and centered in fics and discussions as something that not only impacted him and made him suffer, but something that actually shaped him to varying degrees as well....with a lot of focus then in fics of him as an adult, like, paid to him going to therapy and unpacking his childhood abuse in an effort to WORK on these aspects of himself that make his present day life harder or less healthy than he’d like it to be. The issue of how his abuse lent itself to various behaviorisms is raised in order to address various byproducts of his abuse as FLAWS that he seeks to eliminate, in order to make himself happier and make himself someone that people want to be around more.

And again, don’t get me wrong - for the most part, this is a GOOD thing. The caveat here is just a personal dislike I have for how often these narratives smack of a kind of saviorism, and act like it was only through the grace of Bruce and becoming part of the Batfam that Jason’s ever afforded the opportunity to better himself as a person. I dislike the hell out of this because it not only pairs all too well with a lot of classist shit, it feeds into the singular narrative we’re so often presented with by media about abused kids: the myth of the victim being destined to become a victimizer, it all being an inevitable cycle. The reason this myth is so easily perpetuated is the exact reason I’m so critical of the saviorism in a lot of abused-Jason fics.....people can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that abused kids are likely to grow up to be abusers because they never have anyone to TEACH them that abuse is wrong, or to lead by healthy example.

The harm of this perception is that it kinda throws under the bus every kid who never lucks out and gets a Bruce Wayne style savior swooping in to not only save them from their abusive environs, but TEACH them that they deserved better and that abuse is wrong.

Because its like, uh, the thing is, plenty of abused kids who never get a personal mentor or savior figure are fully capable of figuring out for themselves that they deserve better and that people hurting them is wrong, because it makes them feel bad and they don’t like that?

Many abused kids don’t grow up in a media vacuum where they simply have no access to glimpses of lives different from their own.....we see kids having happier, healthier family lives on TV or in books and are able to figure out that society overall thinks that’s what family is SUPPOSED to look like, and its ours that is the aberration?

The very fact that we’re taught or have it instilled in us by abusive parents that like, we’re not to bring up instances or examples of our abuse to teachers or friends, that its a SECRET, is like, usually a dead giveaway that there’s something WRONG with it that we’re being instructed - and enforced with abusive consequences - to keep from alerting others to....like, this is basically a blaring siren to a lot of us that no, what’s happening to us ISN’T normal and acceptable, and that’s literally WHY the parent we’re afraid of is so insistent on us keeping the facts of it hidden?

And so like, tons of abused kids figure out for ourselves the difference between right or wrong, based off nothing more than our own feelings about things and a desire to not be like the people who make us feel miserable - like, never underestimate the power of spite to like, keep a kid from growing up doing the same thing to others that was done to them, lol.

But point being, lots of kids never get a Bruce Wayne figure to take them away from their abuse and also teach them that they never deserved it and how not to pass the hurt forward by doing the same things to others. And its kinda condescending as fuck that we so often see narratives that take it as so obvious it barely merits commenting on, that like, ‘of COURSE abused kids grow up to become abusers if they don’t have someone else step in and show them a better way’....mmm, no. Fuck that. But you get what I mean.

So like, its a mixed bag. Its a good thing, to see Jason-centric stories that show him addressing his childhood and seeking just a more fuller, happier, healthier life for himself. Its a less great thing to see this narrative presented as all encompassing, with it never being raised that no, Jason actually could figure out he deserved better and how to treat people in ways he’d want to be treated even without a billionaire guardian angel.....NOT because the narrative wherein someone helps an abused kid figure out what was wrong about how they were treated is like, NEVER valid....but rather it just becomes a problem when looked at as a data point against the larger tapestry of fandom-wide works....and noticing that this specific narrative is pretty much the ONLY one raised or treated as valid. With it just being ASSUMED to be the natural course of events and characters, rather than just....the direction society overall has their perceptions of abuse steered towards due to a singular and constantly reinforced abuse narrative shown to us in media.

And the way this all plays back into my point about Tim and what took me down this road in general.....

Is that disconnect I was talking about, lies specifically in HOW Tim is often acknowledged and regarded as an abuse survivor due to his emotional abuse and neglect......with this abuse and its impact on HIM often taking center stage, much the way Jason’s abuse and its impact takes center stage in his narratives.....

BUT with a key difference being that while a lot of Jason’s narratives go on to denote the specific ways his abuse helped SHAPE him and his interactions with others, and raise and address the ways in which he can better himself and his relationships by unpacking all of this openly....

Most of the stories about Tim’s abuse/neglect tend to just STOP at the awareness of its existence and impact on him. Never taking it that one step further to examine how those specific forms of abuse could have additionally SHAPED him....in ways that sometimes negatively impact those around him and his own loved ones, even if this is completely unintentional on his part. The difference, the disconnect, lies solely in how rarely its ever acknowledged that Tim’s own upbringing can and does play directly into how he interacts with people later on in life.....and in ways that he’s fully capable of addressing and bettering himself so as to be happier and healthier just in his own life, and in his relationships, as someone others want to be around.

Aaaaand once you actually examine or consider WHY there’s this discrepancy between the full ramifications of Tim’s abuse and that which various siblings of his underwent, when there’s full agreement that what he did go through absolutely can be termed abusive as well....like, its the implications of what about Tim makes him more naturally resistant or whatever to being shaped by his abuse in ways that have actual negative impact on others in his life, whereas the same isn’t true of say, Jason.....that’s when the red flags start to go up for me, and the unintended subtext starts to get Less Than Stellar, IMO.

Anyway. Just food for thought on the subject of Tim, his upbringing, the various impacts this had on not JUST him but also on how he interacts with others, and ways in which all of this compares and contrasts with how the subject of abuse is raised and depicted in regards to other Batkids.

34 notes · View notes

whetstonefires · 4 years

Note

Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.)

The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.

339 notes · View notes

sylverivy · 4 years

Text

This post is about AFTG so all the usual warnings apply. If you want me to put any more warnings in the tags, TELL ME I will add them/change them.

Mandatory disclaimer that these are just my thoughts on the books. Of course we're all going to have different opinions so please respect others' opinions.

@bloody-wonder sorry this is late, school happened.

This is in response to all the recent posts which have been 'cancelling' Nora over things found in the books/extra content.

Some of the main things that have popped up as being 'wrong' or 'too dark' are

- Andrew and Roland having a sexual based relationship whilst Andrew was underage.

-Andrew never smiling in the future.

-Andrew and Neil never getting married or saying 'I love you' in the future.

Etc. Basically the general consensus amongst like half the Fandom is that AFTG is 'too dark'.

And let me tell you something

It's

Supposed

Dark-

That

The

Point

Think about the Foxes backstories - sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug abuse and lord knows what else. Of course the series is going to be 'dark', they're 'dark' subjects which come up pretty heavily throughout the books.

Of course there's going to be things that are 'wrong', abuse is wrong. Regardless of circumstances, it's wrong. Abusers are wrong, regardless of circumstances. And when a child grows up in an abusive environment, of course they are going to do things that are seen as 'wrong' by the majority of society.

And people who read the books complain about them being 'wrong' and 'too dark'. Which, once again;

The

Point

Because abuse is never 'light', it is never sparkles and butterflies and healing rapidly in order to be an 'upstanding' member of society. So when you complain about the series being too 'dark' and 'wrong' and think that it should be 'lighter'; think about all the children who were in those situations.

Because the books are based on something, what they are based on I do not know, but what I do know for sure is that there are people out there who have been in situations that are like the Foxes', in situations that are worse.

So we shouldn't blame the author for it being too wrong or too dark. Think about what that means to people who are in the same situations or worse. Think about what they take out of people saying those things. Think about what caused Nora to write something so 'dark'.

Sure, you're allowed not to like the series or the characters but, don't go after the author due to it. She wrote a story that contains 'dark' elements that are 'wrong'. I do see that but you may see it as 'dark' and 'problematic' but think about those who don't see it as 'dark'. Think about why they don't see it as 'dark'.

Think about the fact that some people may see it as 'light'. Think about why.

Usually when I read 'darker' books the thing that strikes me the most is not how 'dark' they are but rather how 'light'.

For example, the abusee does get hurt by their parents. But then they have enough courage to tell an adult, they get help, the abuser goes in jail, they go to therapy and magically become an upstanding member of society.

I am not saying that milder abuse is less important, because it is just as valid and important as the more serious kind but, real life isn't like that. In real life you're too terrified to tell because of the consequences. You know the abuser won't go to jail because there isn't enough evidence. You know there is no way of you getting help. And even if you do manage it, you know there's a very high chance of it not working, of never being what is seen as 'okay' as society, of always having to pretend so you can lead a 'normal' life. You know that what you have now is better than what you'll have if you tell (Andrew with Cass).

In real life you're Andrew. And in real life it can be worse.

So when I see 'darker than dark' stories like AFTG my main thoughts aren't of horror and of how dark the series and characters are but rather of hope. Because they all got out, they got a chance to improve, and yet they're not okay. But it's okay. You don't need to be okay.

Another thing that AFTG would be good for normalisation. Not of abuse, because abuse should never be normalized but rather how it affects people and how they cope. Like I said before, recovering from abuse is never pretty. It is not like what Renee becomes - a magically positive human being - but rather like Andrew - someone who is seen as 'broken' and 'wrong' by the rest of society. Someone who is still being hurt but is coping.

Someone who has survived and is trying to live but is criticised for doing so. Do I think some of Andrew's action are wrong? Yes. Do I understand why he does them, what drove him to do all of those things? Yes. Will I go after the author for them? No.

Andrew is someone who will never be 'okay' according to society's standards. And I think that's one of the best things about the books. Because it normalises that people are not going to be 'okay' and magically be like Renee, Dan or any of the upperclassmen. It normalises that it's okay to not be okay, it's okay to be like that. It's okay to be a 'Monster'.

One major thing that people were hung up about is Andrew and Neil never saying 'I love you'. But I don't see the problem with it. Because for me 'I love you' is years of pain and Love is giving someone food when they seem hungry. It is silently helping them when they're struggling. It is staying by their side even when they are acting 'wrong'. It is making jokes about dark things because the alternative is a mental breakdown and tears. Love is knowing when to Stop, when to Go and where to go. And I know that for Andrew it could be the same.

Another thing that came up was Andrew never smiling. But, once again, that doesn't bother me. I can tell that Andrew probably associates his smiles with the year of mania the drugs put him on. I know that happiness isn't always smiles but rather smaller gestures like giving someone an exasperated look when they're being funny. I know that sometimes smiles bring pain instead of happiness.

So in conclusion, for those who see the series as 'dark', think about the fact that real life is often darker. For those who don't, remember that the road to recovery is long and bumpy and you may not ever be 'okay'. But that's okay.

And for all of you, remember that quite a few people see themselves in the characters and in the story. Remember that people looked at the darkness and saw hope and acceptance. Remember why.

Remember that the story is just that - a story. A story that is about real life events which are 'dark' and 'wrong' and as such the story is going to be so too. Remember that books don't always reflect what the author believes is right/whatever and stop going after Nora.

56 notes · View notes

argotmagazine-blog · 6 years

Text

Envisioning a New World: Restorative Justice in Activist Communities

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

A pale person with wavy red hair and cranberry lipstick, dressed in all black, spoke in front of a circle of people sitting in metal folding chairs.

“We’re thinking about activities we agree to do or not do. That comes up often when we’re organizing, whether we’re organizing events, whether we’re trying to get people to come to our direct actions, we want people to wheatpaste with us or whatever your anarchy flavor is,” they said, adding quickly, “Or not not anarchy. I don’t know how you identify.”

The person in black is Anna Kark, a social justice and harm reduction educator who brought a consent workshop to a DC church. They worked with an organization called Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS). The church was full of people who do anti-oppression work, Kark told me. The International Workers of the World and No Justice No Pride worked with CASS to teach activists how to incorporate consent into every part of their lives, from consenting to specific organizing to consenting to sex. This included antiracist organizing, organizing your workplace, antifascist work, and more.

“I don't think there will ever be a cohesive definition or understanding of the DC left. It's probably very complicated and about how capitalism crushes our ability to organize with each other. But for whatever value of self-identification there is, that is who I selected to be apart of this workshop,” Kark said.

Anna Kark is a DC activist who has experienced sexual assault within their own activism community. They were the survivor in an accountability process, which means that they and their community tried to hold the person who assaulted them accountable and educate the person as a response to the assault.

The person was not pushed out of the community, but regularly asked to acknowledge what they did wrong and take steps to learn how to be better. An accountability process is just one of many ways activists in these networks are trying to make their spaces safe for everyone. Activists are also trying to hold each other accountable for other ways people push each other’s boundaries, learn bystander intervention techniques, and build mechanisms to ensure activists who refuse to accept what they did wrong and change can’t simply move on to other activism circles.

Why activists want transformative justice

The accountability process is not supposed to be a panacea for harassment and assault, Kark points out. It’s just one tool. But activists want alternatives to involving police officers and meting out justice through what some might call “carceral feminism,” or relying on the justice system for solutions to violence that is usually carried out by men on women. For activists who acknowledge that police often brutalize people of color and are responsible for sexual violence themselves and as people who fight for prison abolition, it’s necessary to have alternatives. However, Kark said that doesn’t mean activists try to dissuade survivors from reporting to police. Activists are also focused on looking at the entire community and systems of oppression that contributed to sexual violence, not simply one individual who carried out the violence.

This a necessary step, since media often seems transfixed with the personality of serial sexual abusers, and how to armchair diagnose them, usually to let them off the hook. As a society, we’re obsessed with going over the details of the assault in question to determine exactly what we think the victim should have done to avoid assault and sometimes, because people derive some form of enjoyment from their pain. Like so-called “poverty porn” which media creators claim is about exposing the damage of poverty, many unnecessarily detailed descriptions of sexual assault are often more about exploitation of someone’s pain for the purpose of spectacle.

As we saw last fall during the avalanche of sexual assault stories in the news, numerous people of all genders enabled these perpetrators. By demanding that we consider an entire community’s responsibility, we are moving away from those unhealthy tendencies and are working to reduce the likelihood of future harm.

I have experienced sexual violence and harassment, like many women, and some of that violence came from people who belong to marginalized communities that are targeted by police. I also do not trust police to address sexual assault survivors in a responsible way, knowing how police themselves target and retraumatize sexual assault survivors. I don’t trust employers to address sexual harassment. Employers see the primary purpose of sexual harassment training and human resources responses as legal protection for themselves, assuming they don’t circumvent the process entirely to protect a perpetrator they consider less disposable than the victim. That means I’m not going to get what I need out of the process and neither will the person who harassed me.

I see why this approach would be preferable for many survivors. It isn’t necessarily a flawless practice or above criticism and personal biases against marginalized groups are still present, but I one would argue the justice system’s response is usually far worse. The justice system puts survivors’ emotional needs second, punishes men of color to a very different degree compared to their white counterparts and, sometimes, wrongly imprisons them. It counts on the threat of incarceration and incarceration itself to prevent or change a person’s behavior, which simply doesn't work. It nourishes the idea that victims must be white women and women who perform femininity correctly in order to deserve the justice system’s protection. The stakes are incredibly high, and when you lose, as many marginalized groups do, you lose big.

The justice system requires that in order for perpetrators to receive some form of accountability, they must be cruel evil men who have never been loved or supported by their families and communities; men who don’t really exist. Additionally, officers who were supposed to help survivors at their most vulnerable have subjected them to more violence. When it’s working, the accountability process also demands that communities look at the environment that allowed violence and harassment to happen, not simply an individual person. It demands that survivors needs are considered paramount and that communities acknowledge the humanity of perpetrators through education.

Kark said by having a community behind them, people aren’t asked to process what happened to them alone. This is particularly important for people who are experiencing poverty or financial precarity.

“I started a community accountability practice [last] spring when I was raped,” Kark said. “It is very difficult to do because all of the functions of capitalism prevent you from being able to do that work, right? You’ve got police state telling you conflict can only be mediated by a court of law, which is untrue. You’ve got poverty, which prevents people from people able to seek appropriate resources from their community because they have to focus on immediate material consequences within their lives.”

Kark said their anarchism makes it difficult for them personally to turn to “disposing of people as a first response.” This language about not disposing of people and healing from harm in a way that excludes punishment is consistent in anarchism. Cindy Milstein writes in her book, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, “... anarchism serves unflinchingly as a philosophy of freedom, as the nagging conscience that people and their communities can always be better.”

How the process works

Akosua Johnson, who has been involved in these processes before, said that the first step in an accountability process is to be open about the harm that the perpetrator committed. But the survivor gets to tell activists what they are comfortable with the community knowing. Then activists who are part of the process, usually activists who have participated and conducted this process before, gather information about what happened and how the person was harmed so that perpetrator understands what they did wrong. Activists acknowledge that some people may not know what they did wrong because we have all grown up in a society that normalizes sexual violence as a “natural” expression of masculinity.

Johnson said the next step is to educate the person who harmed the survivor. Then people close to the perpetrator need to make it clear to them that they need to be held accountable for their actions. The perpetrator also needs to fully understand what they did harmed someone else.

“That makes it more meaningful and more effective as opposed to some stranger coming up to the perp and saying, ‘You did something bad!’” Johnson said.

Activists need to ensure that the perpetrator and surrounding community prevent anything like that from happening again, Johnson said, but it’s important to look at the entire community’s role in what happened. Enablers and people who simply didn’t notice how this person’s behavior affected others have to sit with their own actions and learn how to hold themselves accountable for that.

“This is not simply an individual acting in a vacuum. It’s the community around that person that allows those ideas and actions to occur, so you spread it out in terms of educating in a ripple out from perpetrator,” Johnson said. “You’re making sure there is accountability not just for the perpetrator but people in the perpetrator’s life who may have excused or allowed behavior that is harmful or violent.”

Sometimes that starts with enforcement of boundaries in all activism practices, to build a culture of consent. For example, that means not putting fellow activists on the spot when determining who will do what for an event or protest, such as becoming a street medic or bringing food to an event. People in the activism community need to ask people if they want to put in a Signal group and be clear about how long a training will take. During the consent workshop, people took turns to be the person asking for things and the person saying no in response, to normalize the process of asking for consent and enforcing boundaries. It felt good to practice saying “No” to requests for information I didn’t want to give, as benign as those requests were, such as “Where did you get your shoes?” because I’ve been socialized to give reasons for saying no. In this space, it was clear that we didn’t need a reason and that it isn’t rude not to give one. People were learning to accept a no and not be personally offended by it, Kark explained.

Jen Deerinwater, a community organizer and freelance journalist and Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said that until activist communities respect femmes in all contexts, including meetings and inclusion in leadership, harassment and sexual violence will be a problem. In queer activism spaces, queer people can also be “misogynistic and chauvinistic,” Deerinwater added. “There is definitely an idea that for those of us who are more feminine, we have to do all of the caregiving work. We’re not as respected as those who are more masculine of center.”

A common complaint from women and nonbinary people in the movement is that men aren’t doing enough to address sexual violence and provide other forms of care that are considered traditionally feminine.

Although folks should get training to avoid asking questions that enforce rape myths, Belinda Rodriguez, an activist whose organizing focuses on climate, racial, and economic justice, said that starting with a sincere commitment to care for another person’s wellbeing goes a long way. She said the most common response she sees is a “deer in headlights” response where people don’t know how to react and ending up doing nothing rather than risk giving the wrong response.

“People are afraid to deal with the situation and so they don't do anything,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for people to read about this stuff in advance and have conversations with each other about what kind of response they would like to see before shit hits the fan. I think that's really important so that trust is already there when something goes down because inevitably, at some point it does, and we will all have a friend who is in a shitty situation or we’ll be in a shitty situation.”

Kark said that they’ve seen other activists become more aware of harassment as well as behavior that can be labeled “boundary-crossing.” For example, they were recently street harassed while a few of their male activist friends watched and did nothing to intervene. But months later, after talking to a partner about what happened, one of those men reached out to talk to Kark about what they should have done differently.

On another occasion, two activists had a difficult time working together because another kept pushing their boundaries, such as touching the person without asking. The activist who wasn’t comfortable being hugged and otherwise touched told the person to receive education and talk to someone in their community about how to be better about understanding people’s boundaries. The person did seek out that education and now they have a healthier relationship, with the person whose boundaries they crossed, Kark said.

“The person who was on receiving end of harm wanted that relationship to continue and believed in that person’s capacity to change,” they said.

Within an entirely punitive and faceless justice system, you don’t really get to ask the person who harmed you to consider what they did and take steps to change in any meaningful way. Any relationship with the person who harmed you can be used against you as evidence that you weren’t actually harmed. It isn’t very realistic to expect people who faced harassment or violence from someone close to them, someone in whom they’ve seen sparks of kindness, to end all contact if they want to seek accountability. And the people who have harmed us are usually people we know.

That doesn’t mean the person who was responsible for that harm is going to be interested in being held accountable, however. Some activists have gone as far as to offer to pay for someone’s therapy if it would help them process what they did and change their behavior. But they don’t always accept that help, Chris, who does antiracist and anticapitalist activism work in DC, explained.

“I’ve had long-term friendships end over trying to hold someone accountable.” he said.

In one case, over a few months, it became clear to Chris and other activists that the perpetrator of the sexual violence wouldn’t take those steps. At first, the person seemed willing to participate and then it became apparent to Chris that their actions were only performative. Soon, he only responded to him on social media. But one day he ran into him on the street.

“I just knew the last time I saw him, he cried in my arms and said, ‘I’ve done terrible things,’” he said. “I said, ‘We’ve all done terrible things.’ And he wouldn't go any further on that.”

Sometimes survivors don’t want to move forward with an accountability process either, and fellow activists have to respect that, Chris said, even if others in the community would like to move forward. The priority is with the survivor's needs. And there are good reasons not to stick with a one-size-fits-all approach, BR explained. A survivor could be living with the perpetrator or share an employer and it’s important to be sensitive to their needs across these different circumstances.

In an accountability process, when survivors do move forward with the process and perpetrators won’t respond to the community's requests, Kark said they aren’t forced to leave but rather decide to leave because their friends won’t stop asking them to take steps to change. They gave one example.

“The process of being asked about that was so difficult for him that he voluntarily left and I think that happens a lot. Being accountable is a lot harder than being punished.”

When that a serial abuser leaves, however, they can go to another activism community where people don’t know what they did, which activists are concerned about. Johnson said this happens often and that they repeat the same behavior. They said they are working on developing a larger accountability communication network with other activists in DC to prevent this from happening.

Power differences

Still, that decision of how to respond -- whether or not to alert other communities, tell someone they can’t continue being in a space with the person they harmed so the survivor’s activism isn’t hindered, or welcome them back into certain spaces -- has to be weighed carefully.

Rodriguez said the specific harm by the perpetrator took, the risk of future harm, and the power differences on all sides need to be considered in crafting a response. Rodriguez noted an example where a young man of color was shunned from a predominantly white space without being given the chance to understand what he did wrong, where a white man was allowed to stay indefinitely, despite displaying repeated harmful behavior and showing no interest in accountability.

“This kid seemed very disposable in a way that a white dude in the same circle was not,” she said. “I have seen white men consistently be really problematic and manipulative and people tolerate them. I definitely have seen abusive behavior. But they were tolerated because they had more access to power and people were more afraid to push them out as opposed to this kid who became completely disposable, even though he was trying to be accountable and didn’t seem like he posed a risk of causing future harm.”

Often, people with more access to power are allowed to get away with bad behavior unchecked, and Rodriguez explained that she has seen movement organizations give prominent leaders a pass at egregiously mishandling situations, because they don’t want to sever their ties with someone who is high profile.

Deerinwater said that when there is violence within any activist community, there is a concern that it will provide ammunition for the government.

“There is this feeling that women and whoever is being assaulted just need to shut up and take it out of fear it will hurt the movement. Not everyone feels that way. I personally don't. I feel like that has hurt our movement already,” Deerinwater said.

There are challenges, however, since activists will try to insist that the community can’t afford to lose their support. Akosua Johnson, an activist who has worked on accountability processes for the DC activist community, said there is a tendency for people to try to leverage their cause to discourage people from holding them accountable.

“They get agitated and angry and they get into a regression. I don't know if you’ve heard this before, but ‘If you're not nice to me, I’m not going to help your cause,’” they said.

Activism communities face many barriers to tackling power differences within networks when sexual violence and harassment occurs, ensuring that efforts to handle accountability processes and care for survivors are spread evenly, and that people are prepared to handle accountability thoughtfully. But by talking about consent in all contexts, not just sexuality, activists are fostering an entire culture of consent where sexual violence is less likely to thrive. By turning attention to the community as a whole when sexual assault happens, activists are less likely to pretend that you only need to get rid of one person to make a space safe for all activists. And when we don’t see violation of consent as something only monsters do, but as something everyone is capable of, it becomes something everyone must watch out for and prevent. Our justice system and other institutions often fail us because, by their very design, they aren’t supposed to accomplish these things.

“I want to live in a world where someone can hurt me and then they can apologize and actually take responsibility for their actions,” Kark said. “In order for us to be able to get to that world, we have a long way to go.”

Casey Quinlan is a policy reporter for ThinkProgress who writes about education, labor, and criminal justice issues. Her work has appeared publications such as Bustle, The Establishment, The Guardian, In These Times, Glamour, Autostraddle, Dame Magazine, and The Crime Report.

#abuse

1 note · View note

jgreenuniverse-blog · 7 years

Text

Made In Dagenham Textual Analysis:

Which genre does the piece fit into? √ Made in Dagenham is a musical drama, despite the continued comedy element. It is based on true events set in the late 1960s, not only telling the  tale of the Women’s strike at Ford in Dagenham, but the effect on all the workers and some of their families. √ Where is the play set? Immediate location and the wider location. Ω The majority of the Musical takes place in Dagenham (either in/outside the Ford factory or in Eddie and Rita O’grady’s house), which is located in east London. There are scenes that take place in Jeremy and Lisa Hopkins house, which according to Lisa lies “in the middle of the Essex countryside”, Dagenham being just outside Essex. The Concluding conference takes place in Eastbourne, which is south of London on the coast. Ω What is significant and/or important about the locations? ▓ Dagenham is well renowned for being a poor, even poverty ridden section of the capitol. It’s a highly working class area, which is reflected in the busy working lives of most of the characters in the musical. Few characters are well spoken or educated, and most mention a desire for a break and a little more money. Rita is a prime example. In the opening of the show, we get her peak of the working mother’s morning routine, which is made hectic by her husband and kids. However in the Home of Hopkins we see a different story –educated house wife Lisa is bored stiff with the amount of time and Money she has on her hands. She is almost a complete opposite to Rita, but shares her views on Corporal punishment (both of their children have been caned by Mr Buckton) and Women’s rights, supporting her throughout the musical. ▓ When is the play set?  Are there any specific references to day, season or year? ♣ Eddie states in scene 6 that “Millwall’s last season in Division 3 South, so that’s 1958. I been married about ten years.” Which indicates that the Musical is set 1968. Also, upon research tells that the original strikes took place in 1968.  Eddie also (when asked about the date) thinks it might be ‘Pancake day’ which took place on the 27th of February, indicating it is early spring. The original Conference in Eastbourne took place on the 25th of April 1968 ♣ How much time passes during the play? ₔ Based on this, roughly two months pass in the space of the musical, (approximately 8 weeks.) How is the passage of time represented? ₠ After ‘wossname’ in scene 4, the scene jumps to Westminster with Prime Minister, but upon returning to Dagenham in scene 6 with the number ‘PAY DAY’ its now jumped to evening and the factory workers are celebrating pay day. In Scene 9, Harold opens the scene by saying “So Barbara, you’ve had those lovely legs of yours under the desk for a week now” having given her the job in scene 5 indicating a week has passed since then. In ‘Everybody Out” when the Machinists are off to Liverpool, there is a break in the singing where the music reflects the sound of a train moving at speed, which indicates the Workers have made the journey to Liverpool. Between choruses the song jumps to sections of dialogue, often phone calls between higher-class characters panicking about a potential strike, which shows time passing in the choruses. There is a montage used for the number ‘Storm Clouds’ in which scenes blurred together and connected with sections of song. It moves between locations and jumps through time, mostly with a chorus of “Storm Clouds, on the horizon”. Act 2 scene 2 see Rita is handing out the striker pay, which hints another week has passed and this is their fist pay day since going on strike. The launch of the 1600E Cortina is also mentioned to be on Friday, and the next scene jumps to that launch in a Car Showroom. ₠ How wealthy are the characters? ₡ There is a definite split between characters in terms of pay: Rita and Eddie are both working parents, who at the beginning of the show have been re-graded to B grade, meaning they’re paid for unskilled work. The same goes for all the female machinists; Beryl, Clare, Cass and Sandra. This is easy to see from the way thy talk about they’re working environment, they’re constant verbal abuse of management (shouting “Bastards” at every mention) and the uneducated quality of their diction. The Shop stewards (Connie, Sid and Bill) are perhaps a little better off even before the women were graded B, as they are part of the union. Monty was a convener and is being paid more again, however they are all still very much the working class. We see these characters more in meeting than grafting. Mr Hopkins, Mr Macer and Mr Hubble are all much higher up in Directing and management. Of these, Hopkins is likely paid the most. They are well off, and few worries over money. Hopkins has a country house in Essex (as mentioned by Lisa) we never see these characters getting their hands dirty. They spend all their time organizing meetings, telling people what to do, and it seems most importantly, drinking tea. Mr Tooley is the Ford U.S Executive. He Pay grade is considerably higher, with great responsibilities regarding the company. He even flies over from America to try and bust the strike. Other only worries he has about money is making sure other people don’t get too much of it. He is all boss, and is treated with great courtesy by all the management team at Ford. Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle work in the government; Wilson being the Prime minister and so are both of the upper class. They also have no need to worry about money (of their own). Harold Smokes a pipe and states that the TUC “pay for my holidays in the Scilly Isles. They underlay in my bathroom!” and Barbra’s learning to drive –both a costly. ₡ Is there a hierarchy? ₣ Interestingly enough, there isn’t always a correlation between pay grade and position in the hierarchy. At Westminster, although Harold Wilson is Prime Minister, Barbara Castle is a much stronger character than him, and isn’t afraid to disagree with him, often putting him in his place by saying “I’m a busy women” going as far as “ I’ll turn on you”. Mr Tooley easily has the most power at Ford, we see he’s top of the Hierarchy as soon as he arrives on the scene at the beginning of act 2. He enters on dry ice with the sound of a chopper I the background and with his barking attitude and bullish nature soon sets everyone on edge. No-one can go against his order. Next comes Hopkins, or orders all the shop stewards around. He tells Hubble off for his dirty jokes. Despite this he has a very different relationship with the workers –they make fun of him behind his back, and Sid and Bill do so cheekily in front of his face. Although Monty is technically higher up than them as a Union Convener, they mock him and show little respect, indicating the hierarchy works the other way round in relation to their pay grade. With the machinists, the majority of them seem reasonably equal, however Beryl seems a head above the other women due to her attitude, particularly towards Clare. She appears to be at the bottom of the hierarchy due to her limited aspirations and imagination, never mind her constant inability to put her name on… errr…errr… things. Initially Rita seems just part of the crowd, but she is put forward to go to the meeting with management with Connie and Monty. From here she becomes the ringleader, and eventually lead the women in, through and out of the strike until they achieve equal pay. She doesn’t back down, and refuses to take anything less than their demands. Lisa Hopkins has little chance to be part of a hierarchy, as she seems to have little chance to interact with people. However, upon meeting Rita she seems to treat her as an equal, offering to start a petition with her. However, she does seem to hold a little more power, being the wife of Managing Director Hopkins. ₣ How does their wealth or lack of it affect them? ₤ The effect of Money is most easily observed in the Hopkins and O’grady Households. Where as we see Lisa and Jeremy Hopkins positively swimming in money, with a large house and every latest product they could want, Rita and Eddie O’grady are working parents, who have tow work together to pay the bills and have very little time to spare. Hopkins is rich enough to have a trophy wife, Lisa. She is educated, beautiful and despite her own wishes doesn’t work. When the women decide to strike, it has a heavy effect on the O’grady household; soon enough their television is taken away, and they struggle heavily. Aside from the pressure put on Hopkins to get them back to work, the Hopkins are untouched. Sandra struggles heavily on strikers pay of £2 a week, and her will breaks upon being offered a promotions contra, showing she struggles heavily with the strain of having little to no money. Perhaps due to their excess of money, the higher-class men such as Hopkins and Harold Wilson are numb to these effects. Connie, who’s been struggling against the inequality of the sexist payment system all her life is passionate about issue. She even mentioned in her solo Song that originally she made jokes to make herself fell better, but now “it doesn’t seem quite so funny”. She can look back and see her mistakes, and heavily regrets them. For this reason she acts as a true guide to the women, and is the main trigger for the strikes, as she gives Rita the incentive. The male factory workers hold some resentment against management, as they seem to do nothing and get paid much more, shown by the fun they poke at them. However, they have some level of acceptance for the small wage they get. They are divided opinions when the women go on strike. Initially the men are supportive, though with no direct helping hand. Some mock them for going on strike. This all changes however when Mr Tooley lays off nearly 5000 men. Rather than blame Tooley, many men get angry with the women – “you happy now, Connie Riley!? You’ve closed down Dagenham!”. This shows there is a faire amount of pressure on them due to their low wage, and they can’t afford not to work. ₤ What are the social environments of the characters like? ₦ Are their differences in the social backgrounds and current environments? ₦ Many of the workers have very little social lives; most of it consists of work breaks and parties on payday. We see the Women having a chat on their break early in act one, and all the workers are at bar for the number ‘Pay Day’. The most socializing we see them do is on their tea breaks. For many of them, this will be how it was since they were teenagers, so their socials background doesn’t change, pehrpas starting out like Barry; as an apprentice. Lisa Hopkins has the most unfortunate social life. In the middle of the Essex countryside, as she rightly points out, she has nothing to do. In the late 1960s it wouldn’t be seen as socially acceptable for a trophy wife to go out and socialize without her husband. Unable to work, she can only go out shopping and spend time with a horse that ‘doesn’t like her’. We see her holding a huge grudge against her husband due to this, and she tests him often, trying to get a reaction, by serving duck eggs fro breakfast and states that her morning routine will be to “set fire to the women’s institute” –every word riddled with sarcasm. Naturally, the odd social event comes upon, which she is permitted to attend on the arm of her husband. Her social background was from that of a higher-class Family, meaning she will have spent time learning etiquette. She will have spent little time in the company of men (as that was socially unacceptable) even when studying her degree. The most socializing she can do is a ‘Tupperware party’ ; as suggested by her husband. Connie spends half her time with the men, and half with the women, as it’s her job to keep up communication between management and the machinists. She’s grown old working in a man’s world, and that’s what she’s used to. She’s says she’s been in the job since she was 16, and she feels very trapped in what she’s doing, but also that it was her own doing. We don’t see much of Barbara Castle or Harold Winson’s social lives, as Barbara is very professional, and we only see them in work. Its clear that Harold has little experience with women (socially) and he Babbles a lot when the machinists visit Barbara in Westminster, reeling of the times he’s met women, and even including ‘passing them on the stairs’. ₦ How will this affect how the characters will interact with one another? ₧ When Hopkins and other management team member such as Macer, Hubble and Mr Buckton interact with characters like Rita or Connie, they treat them very formerly but are slightly patronizing. They attempt to use complicated language to try and confuse them to avoid arguments or resistance. This works at first for Mr Buckton on Rita, though its clear that she’s a quick learner as she uses what she learnt from him against Hopkins in their meeting. When Barbara interacts with Harold, he attempt to be a little informal with her, being very round-about, but she cuts straight to the point. She very professional about her job; as a strong women in a mans world, she can’t afford mistakes. Interestingly enough, she softens a little when talking to Rita and the machinists, seemingly torn between he job and her desires she even says its her ‘job to get them back to work, but then again she’s a women’. This shows she is much less formal with the working class women, perhaps because she came into politics to ‘ease the lot of the working classes’. In their own groups, they often treat each other as equal (the men to the men, the women to the women). They all tend to tease Barry the apprentice, as he’s the youngest there, and hasn’t really established himself as one of the team yet. ₧ Are any of the characters influenced by events/beliefs? ₨ What effect does this have on the way the characters behave? ₩ All the women share the view that they should have equal pay. The first event that affects all the machinists is the new grade; they are put down as unskilled workers. They are all outraged at this, and decide to put forward a formal grievance. Rita is the main character motivated by events within the show. Her meeting with Mr Buckton seems to flare a little passion inside her. When Management have to organise a meeting due to the fact that Monty hasn’t signed off the new grades, Rita is vote to attend with Connie and Monty by the women. Hopkins, Hubble and Macer make no effort to listen in this meeting, and persist the machinists are unskilled despite Rita’s good arguments (partially inspired by Connie’s wise words in her solo song). This motivates Rita to the point that she urges the other women to go on strike, even traveling to Liverpool to convince the women there. this is all after she though she wouldn’t speak up at all as she “ain’t political”. Every time the bosses through something at them, she uses the blow to motivate herself. Mr Tooley is clearly motivated by his capitalist beliefs. He is determined that women shouldn’t have equal pay, as it would cost more for Ford, describing “Domino theory” to show how once they have equal pay in Britain, it’ll spread to Europe. He believes in being brutal, and lays off 5000 workers just to cut off the O’grady’s money in an attempt to bust the strike. Harold Wilson seems to believe that women shouldn’t6 be working. He has a very old fashioned view on things, and even questions why women are working, as the war is over. Rather than try and tackle any problem himself, he gives them to others to deal with, even creating a new ‘position in parliament’ for Barbara Castle. When Connie falls ill, and beseeches Rita to take over from her, Rita agrees. It is this event that influences Eddie to take the kids away, as their mother isn’t supporting them. He feels (rightly) that he has tried his best to support Rita until this point, but they can’t go on like this. Although Rita is heartbroken, she refuses to back down, and decides to see everything through. At the end of the show however, Eddie understands when he watches Rita give her speech, and gain the vote for equal pay. Lisa Hopkins, in conflict with her husband believes she should be aloud to work. She’s a few decades before her time, unable to use her degree in History. The Women striking seems to inspire some extra defiance in her, and she starts a Job working for the Spectator Magazine. ₨ ₩ What clues are there to the past lives of the characters? ₪ How will their past affect their futures? ₫ Are there any references to key events prior to the play? € Do any of the characters carry scars or memories from past events? ₭ How does this affect them now? ₮ Are their conflicts of tension between what the characters want? ₯ Do the main characters want to change their situations? ₰ Is there a difference in what the characters say they will do and actually do? ₱ How does morality or upbringings affect the characters actions? ₲ Are there direct references to the characters appearances? ₳ Are there any connections between how a character looks and behaves? ₴ What is the significance of the title? (Metaphoric or literal) ₵ Are there any key lines or speeches that summarise or capture the mood of the play? ₸ What is the main plot and how does it develop? ₹ Is there a sub plot? ₺ How can the shape of the play be best described – a story? Episodes? A journey? As a diagram or map? ₼ Which scenes are the most important? Why? ₽ Which scene is the least important? Why? ₾ How important to the piece is the set/lighting/costume/props/sound? ⃰ What is the climax of the play? Are issues resolved at the end? How much direction is given by the playwright in terms of stage directions? ℅ Which character is the antagonist? (Opposes the main action) ℓ Are their other protagonists or antagonists?№ Do any of the characters change from one to the other? ℗ How formal is the language used by the characters? ™ What is the level of education of the characters? Ω Do the characters use certain phrases or words or ways of speaking? ℮ How are the songs structured? (Monologue, dialogue, duologue, triologue, short sentences etc) ⅍ What kind of imagery is used? ⅎ What is the objective of each scene/unit? What is the super objective of the play? ⅓ What are the characters motivations and do they change in each scene? ↄ Does the play relate to any previous theatrical or written work? ← If so what are the links between them? ↑

#made in dagenham

0 notes