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antimony-medusa · 6 months

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Hi! I don't know if you've followed the debate on twitter these last few days (if you haven't, feel free to ignore this ask, I don't want to drag you into stuff) about whether themes of slavery can be depicted in fictional settings. I'd be curious to have your opinion because you have very based takes on the topic of fanfiction

Boy. I have been at a wedding so I have NOT been following, but a friend dug that one up for me, and boy. Isn't that something.

Okay, do I think that slavery can be depicted in fictional settings?

I'm gonna start this with a caveat of saying that I'm white, and as far as I know my family tree doesn't include any enslaved people. So slavery is an atrocity, but not a personal one for me any more than I feel personally about all atrocities, and your opinion on this subject might be different based on your experience, and that's completely fair. This is just the opinion of someone who thinks about content warnings and representation and exchange rules sometimes, and honestly if you want to take my answer as me saying "i'm white, anything I say after this doesn't really matter" that's a fair read of the situation. End post.

But further, the siren song of being asked a question:

My general stance is that there are very few things that can't be depicted in fictional settions, but there are a lot of things that should be depicted with care and research. And I consider major archive warnings to be one of these things. (I'm on the team that says that in an ideal world we would have a major archive warning for racism or slavery.) I don't think that there are any topics that are inherently off-limits for fiction.

If you're interested in writing professionally, there's a workshop called Writing The Other that does intros into writing topics that you don't share experiences with, and they do a really good job of breaking down the ways that you can analyze your work for cliches and stereotypes and other weaknesses, and ways that you can research to avoid them. It's an excellent workshop and I really recommend it— they even do scholarships, which is how I got to join! I consider them the industry standard of the question of "can I write about this", and as I remember it their basic answer is that the more outside of your experience a thing is, the more research you have to do to make sure you don't mess it up, and the more central to your story a thing is, the more you want to make sure that you don't mess it up. So sometimes you do hit topics and you go "am I the right person to tell this story, should I leave this topic to someone who knows it more personally, who's studied this". But that doesn't mean that you can't tell the story, it just means that to do it well, you have to put the work in. And that no one is obliged to trust you on the surface of things to have put the work in. I am probably going to trust an author who I know is disabled to have written disability well, for example, more than an ablebodied author. But there are authors out there that I know do their research and I pretty much trust them to deal with any topic carefully, if they want to take it on. A lot of the time, the more sensative a topic you are touching, the more you need a relationship of trust between author and reader, and sometimes you have to earn that trust carefully.

And boy is there fiction out there that deals with sensitive topics in ways that does not earn that trust. I have read things that I find highly distasteful. I have read published work that chooses to deal with real life atrocities in ways that I find wildly uncomfortable and I do not tend to recommend those books or authors.

I have also read nuanced and insightful explorations of horrific things, including slavery, including domestic violence, including racism, in ways that I felt enriched my understanding of the world and the people around me. I've read books that carefully touched on things like childhood sexual abuse and police violence and involuntary commitment, and that didn't make the story not a life-affirming and joyful experience, because the stories were able to take these things and make healing and catharsis out of them. Simply hearing that a story deals with a topic does not tell you if it's a story to recommend to others. We all live lives that sometimes touch on terrible things, and I think that trying to police who can tell stories about bad things leads into bad things like making people prove that they've suffered enough to write or shit like "are you black enough for this story", and I don't want that in my writing community. I have literally seen the bad end for going down that road, check out "helicopter discourse," and I'm against that.

I'm against that enough that I'm willing to endure people who do not share an experience writing badly about terrible things as the price we have to pay to allow people who have personal stake in the situation to be able to explore sensitive topics without harassment. Especially with fanfiction, we're dealing with amateur writers, so unfortunately most of the time when you have a subject come up the default assumption is going to be that it's dealt with badly. But I personally fall on the side that it's worth five people writing it badly to allow the one person who's personally impacted to write about it as much or as little as they want. My personal bugbear is terminal illness in children, that's my trauma, but I would personally rather have people write horrible tearjerker fic about aging down their characters and killing them off and it's so sad, even though I don't want that, rather than to say that that topic is off-limits to people.

On the topic specifically of slavery, this fandom, as many fandoms do, has a habit of including slavery and human trafficing as themes in their writing. A lot of the time this is not done well. We have a lot of baby writers who are deliberately writing the saddest thing they can think of or writing unjust societies for their guys to rebel against. This is not what I would say is a strength of the writing in the fandom, taken as a whole. And some people do their research and do it well! I've read great fics that pull from history in an informed way and do interesting things with it! But not everybody, good lord.

But saying that because a lot of people deal badly with slavery nobody should deal with slavery is not a path forward that I'm personally in support of. Do I think it should be tagged? Absolutely. Nobody should hit that unawares. But a lot of societies through human history practiced slavery of one kind or another! If you are drawing from roman history for your gladiator au, most of those guys were not there of their own free will. Tropes like fae folklore includes themes of posession and ownership, because that was the background radiation to the lives of the people who told these stories in the first place. There are a lot of tropes where these topics are going to arise, and I don't think that's inherently bad (though I personally would certainly feel a lot more comfortable with pulling on classical and medieval history for these stories rather than 1800s America, for example). And like, you can absolutely try your best to steer around these topics! That's an option! But honestly if you're doing something historic or historic-inspired, I'm not sure if it's more respectful to write a fantasy past in which greek history did not include slavery. That's whitewashing of history by definition. So if you want to avoid that, you're left with most of human history off-limits to write about, because of the atrocities? And I don't think that's ideal.

And like, I think with fanfiction you kind of just have to accept as background radiation that there are going to be a lot of people dealing with topics that they are not equipped to deal with. That's just how it goes. These are people writing with minimal research, experience, and editing, cause we're all here for fun, not professional development. You're gonna have people mishandle things. And that's why I think tagging is really really important, so that you can see the tags on a fic and go "oh I do not trust them with that topic" and navigate away, or filter the topic entirely. I have my touchpoints that I steer away from, and I have 100% clicked away from stories in horror going "oh no no no no no that's not good." But I don't think people should all be banned from writing about these things because some people do it badly.

Note: that doesn't mean that like, we shouldn't have conversations about how maybe if you put the minecraft men in your story where hybrid trafficing is a metaphor for the underground railroad, you should do that Carefully. We can still strive to do better. I have Seen Things and there is room to improve. There's room for discussion about people using slavery for cheap angst, in the same way that I've talked about the treatment of disability used for angst, and I've seen people talk about the agency allowed female characters, and the list goes on.

And that doesn't mean that I'm not going to 100% respect it if I get a DNW in an exchange where someone has said they don't want slavery or hybrid racism. People should be able to opt out of these topics (entirely! even if they're dealt with well!) and nobody has to read things they don't want to.

So in essense, when it comes to writing sensitive topics like slavery I'm going to do my best to think about what I'm doing and do my research— and I have written slavery and human-trafficing-type-deals before, I like gladiator aus and classical-inspired fantasy— and I'm going to tag so that anyone who doesn't trust me— and nobody has to trust me— can navigate away. But when it comes to policing what other people are writing, I don't think it does anyone any good to post callouts on twitter. At most I'm going to warn a friend that a certain fic deals with a topic badly. That's my viewpoint.

#cw slavery #cw genocide #cw child death #cw csa mention #cw racism #cw police brutality #long post #discourse #fandom meta

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transformers-fan-continuities · 3 years

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Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf created by @artsy-hobbitses!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place.

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society.

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower‘s OC Missit!) is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

#long post #gore #ties that bind #spotlight #transformers #HUMANFORMERS #transformers au #tf original continuity #transformers fan continuity #transformers redesign #maccadam #i said id post this on sunday but i realize thats a holiday for lots of folks on this site :/

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thankskenpenders · 3 years

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Enerjak Reborn: Epilogue

It’s time to answer the question on everybody’s mind. How did Ken respond to Ian killing off Locke, one of his pet characters?

Well, the answer, as you should expect, is: poorly

Now, it’s important to remind everyone that Ken has not actually read the arc. He never read any of Ian’s run, to my knowledge. But his fans were sure to tell him all about it and ask him how he felt

Eventually, in 2010, two years after this issue dropped, we got a response from Ken talking about how he felt about Ian’s run. (Again, even though he wasn’t actually reading it himself.) Said response is worth reading in full if you’re interested in all this drama and Ken’s mindset. You literally get to see the guy brag about how he actively ignored what Bollers was doing when the two were sharing writing duties, as if this is a good thing that makes him a better writer. He also criticizes Ian for using the previous writers’ characters instead of introducing even more characters to the bloated Archie cast in his first few years on the series. But the relevant part to the discussion of Enerjak reborn is here:

“I especially don’t consider anything either does with any of the echidna characters – especially Locke – to be canon as neither created the characters nor established them in stories as the viable fan favorites they’ve become. No matter what Ian writes, he can never alter the fact that in MY universe, the events of Locke’s passing as depicted in SONIC #143 is canon. Anything he writes can easily be counter-written by a better story with an alternative solution.”

Let’s just brush past the very funny part where he calls Locke a “viable fan favorite”

So yeah. Penders was VERY unhappy with the way Ian wrote Locke, and the way Locke’s death in Enerjak Reborn meant that the timeline depicted in Mobius: 25 Years Later wasn’t the one true future of the series. He’s also gone on record saying that he thinks Ian didn’t get the relationship between Locke and Knuckles. When asked about Ian’s work, this has always been one of the major things that’s bothered him

On a broader level, his ramblings here are reflective of how he views comic franchises in general. A particularly illustrative quote from him is provided in the comments section below the article I linked:

“The only work I consider significant to any character is the work done by the original creators. Anything done afterwards by anyone else pretty much doesn’t count. For example, I consider the original issues of FANTASTIC FOUR by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to be the only stories that matter in the entire run. Anything being done today is by writers and artists who are simply building off the work Stan and Jack originated. I apply this standard to just about every character I ever enjoyed over the years.”

This odd mindset explains a lot about Ken. It explains why he hates that Ian kept using his characters, and why he actively avoided building off of the work of his contemporary writers at Archie. I can see what he means on some level, of course. When another writer comes in and adds more novels to a series after the original author dies, I generally tend to ignore those. And I skipped a good chunk of Twin Peaks season 2 because it had less involvement from creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, making a lot of it feel like filler. But we’re talking about a licensed comic, one that had been a collaboration between multiple writers based on the work done for the games and cartoons from the very beginning. Ken was never the sole writer--he wasn’t even there for the first year--and he was writing stories centered around characters he hadn’t created like Sonic, Sally, and Knuckles. He doesn’t take credit for creating any of those characters, but the hypocrisy still seems to be lost on him

But of course, we’re not just talking about Ian’s handling of all of Archie Sonic here. We’re talking about Locke. And as Ken has said himself, Locke was based partially on his own father. And that’s really the kicker here

As I’ve said many times before, I try to avoid psychoanalyzing Penders and digging into his personal life. I don’t know the guy, and that’s his own business. But it’s hard not to when he literally says shit like THIS to fans

Locke is emotionally abusive towards his wife and son. Locke is also based on Ken’s dad. Ken refuses to see Locke as abusive, even though that’s exactly what he wrote, because that would mean acknowledging that his own father was abusive. So there’s always an excuse for why father knows best. It was a different era! They’re not humans! He could see the future! He might have hurt Knuckles, but it toughened him up, and he was always there for him in the end! The dad is never, ever at fault. The moms, on the other hands, are mere bystanders to the child rearing done by the dads. It’s just sad, really

I get why Ken would be bitter that Ian took this fictionalized version of his late dad, went “hey, this guy’s an asshole,” and then killed him off. I get why that would upset somebody. He wrote a very personal story there. But it’s not like Ian was pouring salt in a fresh wound--Ken lost his father all the way back in 1982. I know this because Ken literally dedicated the M25YL story about his version of Locke’s death to his dad. It had been nearly 30 years when he wrote this response to Ian’s work. That’s plenty of time to see a goddamn therapist instead of projecting all of your baggage onto Knuckles the Echidna and writing stories for kids about how you should never question your dad ever

The irony, though, is that Ian’s different take on Locke is arguably way more nuanced than Ken’s ever was. In his final moments, Ian’s Locke turns into this tragic figure who only realizes too late that the way of life the Brotherhood had raised him to believe was a mistake, that he had failed his son by passing those beliefs on to him. But he’s still held responsible for what he did. He’s a horrible dad, and the characters around him call him out for his failures, but you pity him for only now realizing what he had done

Ken, on the other hand, gestures at Locke doing horrible things, then tells you to forget about all that and stop questioning him. Knuckles pretends he has a totally normal Leave it to Beaver-ass father-son relationship as soon as they reunite in the Knuckles series. As an adult he thinks back on how great a job Locke did raising him, even though Locke literally took him from his mother, raised him to believe that his mother and the rest of his species were all dead, and then pretended he himself was dead for six years of his son’s childhood (among MANY other things)

M25YL gestures at those very same themes of not repeating your parents’ mistakes that Ian touched on in Locke’s final moments. Knuckles is raising Lara-Su very differently from how Locke raised him, and Locke admits that he wishes he had raised Knuckles differently on his deathbed. But his decision to suddenly admit wrongdoing in this flashback to his death feels unearned and arbitrary. Locke is never at fault. We cannot question Locke. Knuckles turned out fine, so don’t worry about it. Locke might regret the way Knuckles raised him, but Knuckles is not allowed to hold any ill will towards his father or question his methods whatsoever. We’re allowed to gesture at the idea that Knuckles doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the previous generations, but those vague mistakes aren’t allowed to be anyone’s fault. That’s just “how things were”

Ken would do a lot more than just complain about Ian’s handling of Locke on the internet, though. Because you see, the way Ian wrote Locke is commonly cited as one of the main reasons why Ken started copyrighting his work, right up there with Bioware basing the story of Sonic Chronicles partially off of the Knuckles comics without his blessing. And those copyrights, of course, were what started the legal battle that would kill off the original Archieverse

#StH 184 #tkp post #Enerjak Reborn

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teiahlu · 3 years

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The Construction of Violence in Banana Fish

By: Teiah Lu Palhetas

If you speak to anyone who’s read Banana Fish, one of the first things they’d likely mention is the violence. As a crime thriller that follows an 18-year-old gang leader named Ash Lynx in New York City, based in the year 1985, both the comic and the animated adaption are violent from the beginning. The story never goes an episode or volume without threats with guns and knives, kidnapping, sexual assault or murder.

Codes and Conventions and how the influence messages about violence:

Episode 1 opens with what appears to be an eagle flying overhead. Traditionally, birds are seen as a symbol of freedom. This is an interesting contrast to the life Ash Lynx has lived. Freedom is something he longs for, that doesn't exist in his world. Ash was taken and sexually abused from a very young age by wealthy, powerful politicians. When he was only 12, he killed one of his tormenters just to have the chance at escaping this life. Despite the title America has as a “free country, ” Ash’s childhood shows that even though there are laws against violent acts, you can never abolish it for good. That he can never be free from the trauma he experienced in his youth.

At the end of the first episode, A Japanese boy named Eiji asks to hold Ash’s gun in a bar. Given what we now know about Ash’s past, this gun is something he used to take other peoples lives, a violent weapon, the only thing he has to protect himself. Eiji asking Ash’s permission becomes symbolic of trust as well as consent. It's an honest, innocent request without any ulterior motives. This moment is what draws Ash to Eiji. But even more than this, it is the fact that Eiji has enough respect for Ash’s boundaries to ask first. When Eiji returns the gun, he says to Ash “Thank you for trusting me with it.”

Image of Ash and Eiji for Banana Fish exhibition in 2018

In the end theme of each episode, we are shown the lyrics “Get away from me, get away from dark nightmare.” I believe that this is Ash speaking to Eiji. Telling Eiji to get away from him, because all he brings is sadness and chaos and he himself is a dark nightmare. This would be in line with the way Ash tends to view himself, since the audience is shown a lot of self loathing on his part. Especially when it comes to Eiji being involved in this violent world Ash lives in.

Lastly, I'll be discussing a vision Ash has under anesthesia. In episode 9, Ash is forced to kill his best friend, Shorter. In terms of him hallucinating Eiji, I view this as Ash believing that he has murdered Eiji’s innocence and his fear of what's to come. If Eiji were to die as a result of his involvement with Ash, however indirect. Ash would feel direct responsibility. To top off this horrific hallucination, we see Ash drop to his knees as he screams that he is a murderer. Further emphasizing the extent of his guilt. This is again symbolic of how he is trapped in this cycle of violence and self loathing.

Short scene below:

Ideologies put forth by the mediaconcerning violence/ What external forces influence these ideologies?

The racial realities of Banana Fish’s America:

The original comic is a painful read because it’s able to capture how pervasive white supremacy is throughout all areas of society. The series depicts how that ideology is perpetuated through interpersonal relationships and how it has an influence on real-world policy decisions. The creator or the story Akimi Yoshida clearly did extensive research on the subject. However, she ended up perpetuating racist caricatures reminiscent of the long history of Anti-Black portrayals in media.

The comics highly tense environment draws from real-world events such as the Civil Rights movements, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, which created impactful societal changes in the United States. During Richard Nixon’s presidency, the “War on Drugs” became a priority. This initiative both criminalized drugs and associated them with communities of color, which allowed law enforcement to raid their neighborhoods. As a result, the mass incarceration of people of color, particularity Black people, rose dramatically during this period. The street gangs featured in Banana Fish formed as a direct result of communities of color feeling disenfranchised by a country that continuously proved it didn’t care about them.

This is the brutal reality that our racially diverse gang leaders Ash, who is white, Shorter and Sing, who are Chinese, and Cain, who is Black find themselves in as they try their best to survive a world hostile towards them. However, their interactions and later involvement in larger political schemes show how unequally the story treats their leadership qualities.

With the exception of Eiji, there is also the issue of the few openly LGBTQ+ men of color in Banana Fish being depicted as pedophiles or rapists. So, while representation can be empowering, it can also be problematic.

Target Audiences:

Victims of sexual assault and gang violence likely relate to this story the most. One Reddit user says “I definitely related to Ash. We’ve been through a lot of similar things. Maybe that's why I took the ending so hard and felt devastated. Despite its depressing end, I understand that I deserve love too, Just as much as anyone else. I haven't been able to resonate with a character this well ever. Or felt this touched by a work of fiction in a while.”

This story seems to have had a great impact on many people who have read/watched the series. Especially those who grew up around violence. Leading the original comic to reach legendary status is Japan.

Breaking conventional norms:

Everyone loves a happy ending. For all the sadness and violence to just, disappear. Many people read stories for wish fulfillment. They want to see a world where the heroes succeed and the unjust are punished. Stories centered around tragedy often end this way. Bird box, for example. In the movie the main characters witness death and violence around every corner. In the end, they reach a safe haven away from danger, It's predictable.

Banana Fish is a story I’ll l never forget. From the beginning, the audience was sure Ash would find happiness with Eiji at the end. Ash would begin to heal from his trauma and all would be right in the world. Up until the last 5 minutes of the final episode, all was going as planned. Ash’s lifelong abuser was dead and his ring of abusers were exposed to the world.

Ash, recognizing the danger he exposes Eiji to, ceases contact with him. He is to return to Japan, though just before his departure, Eiji entrusts a letter for Ash to Sing. In the letter, Eiji says, "You are not alone Ash, my soul is always with you." Ash changes his mind, and wants to see Eiji one last time. For the first time in his life, Ash lets his guard down is stabbed by an enemy gang member. Ash shoots him, as one last violent act to end the story.

He takes this as a sign from God that he doesn't deserve to be happy. He walks to the New York Public Library where he bleeds to death, smiling and clutching Eiji's letter in his hand.

Eijis final letter to Ash:

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sirsparklepants · 5 years

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On Abuse, Anger, and Control: Billy Hargrove

The next chapter of In a Day or Two opens with an explicit scene of child abuse. It’s been there from the initial outline. There are other scenes of abuse prior to this, but this is the first (and probably the only) one where it gets physical. I was working on it last night, and I had some Thoughts about how the Harringrove fandom as a whole deals with writing Billy’s canonical abuse.

Below the cut: explicit descriptions and discussion of child abuse, some mild criticism of fandom trends

Here’s the thing, so I don’t get a bunch of messages and replies questioning my bona fides: I’m the survivor of a childhood probably best described as “cartoonishly abusive”. I don’t talk about it a lot, not because I’m ashamed or whatever, but because it’s honestly so much ridiculous bullshit that I sound like a soap opera character. I definitely relate to Billy, but what’s depicted on the show I tend to see as comparatively mild on the “bad parenting” scale.

But I do relate to Billy. I see parallels in our upbringing. I want him to stop being such a fuckhead teenager and grow up to be a decent adult who left his past behind him, as much as I can. That’s really why I started reading Harringrove fic: no one in the fandom is shy about saying “yes, Billy’s a fuck, but probably a big chunk of it is that he’s an abused kid.” It’s a big part of his character, and even if authors understandably don’t want to deal with on-page abuse, I’ve read very few fics that don’t acknowledge this. Which is great, honestly, there’s a ton of fandoms that don’t do half as well. But I have noticed a trend that’s been niggling at me. A lot of stories paint Billy’s abuse as extremely, and only, physical. To an extent, that’s understandable - he is hit and shoved around in canon, and media and society in general tends to paint physical (or sexual, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms) abuse as the Most Serious Abuse There Is. I think it does a disservice to both Billy’s canon situation and many abuse survivors, though.

I don’t doubt that those authors are coming from a very good place. It’s fucking hard to get into the mindset of an abusive person so that their actions have internal consistency, whether you’re an abuse survivor or not. It can feel like you’re doing something wrong. It can be incredibly upsetting. It’s understandable to go for what’s been presented to you as the worst thing and leave it at that. The thing is, though, that for the most part? The actions of an abuser are not random. They’re very calculated to fulfill the abusers’ goal: keep their victim under their power. In my experience, physical abuse was just one tool my abusers used very judiciously to express their control over me.

Yes, Neil does absolutely physically abuse Billy. That’s onscreen. It’s canon. It’s undeniable. But I seem to have taken away something different from that scene than a lot of other viewers. The physical abuse is bad, but the way his father acts? It’s an act of control, of expressing his power over his son. Billy is clearly physically larger and stronger than his father, but he never fights back. In my opinion, that’s because his father has somehow made resisting him seem useless or futile - either because he’s abused Billy from a young age, as we see in s3, or because he’s manipulated the situation so that if Billy does physically resist, he’ll be the one in legal trouble. He also only gets physical when it seems like Billy will do something he hasn’t mandated - go out and have fun. The thing that absolutely cements this for me, though, is how his father used Max.

I have four stepsisters who I love dearly. They’re my sisters as much as the ones I have who are blood related. However, we did not have the easiest relationship growing up, mostly because our parents manipulated us into seeing ourselves as extensions of my father’s first and second wives and therefore natural adversaries. They did this because if we stood together against them, their control would slip. And I see this very much in Billy’s relationship with Max. His father has placed him in a role of semi-parental responsibility to her, something Billy clearly resents. Max often defies his authority, and this clash between them serves to make their relationship bitter. Billy is a bucket of fried assholes to Max, clearly, and she doesn’t deserve it, but I don’t see his behavior towards her as coming entirely from himself. Given the fact that Neil uses Max as an excuse to push Billy around and make him cancel his plans, making Billy see Max as an extended instrument of his abuse, it’s pretty clear to me that Neil is driving a wedge between them on purpose.

Because here is the thing: as a child abuse survivor, you are counting down the days. High school graduation, college admissions, turning 18, that military recruitment date - as you get into your mid-teens, there’s something you see as an out. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a rope you’re holding onto with both hands. It’s something you absolutely are keeping secret from your abuser, or if they must know, it’s something you frame so it seems like their achievement, something you did because of them. Season 2 Billy is clearly fast approaching that date, whatever it is for him, and that date? It means he’s out from under Neil’s thumb. And being out of their control is the worst case scenario for abusers. If Max and Billy have an alliance against Neil, much more things can get done under his nose to try and get Billy out of that house. And Neil probably knows it.

To my mind, Neil is all about control. Even in his physical abuse scene, he slaps Billy and pushes him up against things - nothing likely to leave suspicious marks. Clearly he knows his son is often shirtless or otherwise unclothed. The type of physical abuse he engages in isn’t a loss of control on his part at all. He wants to make it seem like it is, like Billy made him lose control with his “bad” behavior, but he goes into Billy’s space, so that anything broken will be his. He uses his physicality, but only to an extent. He never crosses a line that would have anyone asking any questions. He doesn’t do anything “bad enough” that his watching wife, who clearly doesn’t approve, would feel she’s forced to intervene. (Although I have a whole essay on The Narrative Role Of Susan, that’s not for today.) And, most notably to me, he stays away from any windows. To me, these are all signs that Neil is perfectly in control, just choosing to make Billy believe he isn’t.

The other thing about Neil and that scene - he clearly wants to make Billy believe that he is at fault. That there’s some imaginary standard he can reach where his behavior will be satisfactory enough that he won’t suffer his father’s wrath. That, somehow, what Neil does to him are the consequences of Billy’s actions. In reality, of course, that’s just not true, but it is a classic abuse technique. If an abuse victim truly believes that what they’re trapped in is a no-win scenario, then most of the time, they figure what’s the point in trying, and stop engaging completely with what the abuser wants. And that kind of behavior is a loss to the abuser. So they have to make their victim believe that there is something they can do to “fix” things, therefore putting the onus of the abusive behavior on their shoulders as well. The fact that Neil talks about standards of behavior Billy is expected to meet - the classic “respect and responsibility” is proof to me that that’s what his intent is with that scene.

So, is the physical abuse Billy endures from his father horrible? Yes, absolutely, and no child should be treated like that. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the symptom of something larger - the control his father tries to exert over many aspects of his life - rather than the absolute worst part of what he suffers. And when I see his abuse reduced in fiction to primarily the physical, it feels... like a reduction of what canon gives us. The Billy I see depicted in fic sometimes has experiences that I have trouble relating to at all, as opposed to the Billy onscreen.

And again, I understand why people depict his experiences that way. I’m not trying to be an asshole, just speaking to my personal experiences. But I’d like to see a little more truth in television, so to speak, about his abuse.

If you’re interested in writing more realistic abusive characters, a book I can’t recommend enough is Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That, a book written by a therapist who’s made a career of treating both abusers in the hopes of making them no longer abusers as well as domestic violence victims. It’s a difficult read, and intended as a self-help book for domestic violence survivors, but it digs deep into why exactly abusers act the way they do. It’s often available as a free pdf online - I’ve seen several links floating around on tumblr.

#abuse cw #stranger things #billy hargrove #meta

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one-hell-of-a-bi · 5 years

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(could you tell me how those lack critical thinking please? not trying to argue, just actually confused)

Sorry for the late reply! The notes on the post itself do a good job of explaining things, but here’s my take.

Abuse is NEVER black and white. It might seem like it is, and for some people thinking about it that way helps, but with all forms of trauma assuming there is one way everyone should process and represent what happened to them is misguided and harmful.

Like yes at first it does seem reasonable to say that all abusers are evil and that they should never be redeemed and that narratives that frame them as being worthy of forgiveness are harmful, but that in itself is showing a remarkable lack of understanding of what actual abuse survivors go through.

I don’t really know how other to explain it than through anecdotes so this might get a little heavy, I apologize, I’ll add a TL;DR at the end encase you would rather not read about abuse.

That said, the paragraphs below discus childhood sexual assault and emotional abuse.

So I was sexually assaulted when I was ten. For the longest time I hated my abuser, tbh I sort of still do. But he used to be someone I trusted and loved, so it’s hard for me to say things like “he deserves to rot in hell” or “I hope he dies” because...I don’t really feel comfortable saying those things about anyone, even someone as bad as him. Plus, I have reason to believe that he might have hurt me just because he himself was hurt, and while that doesn’t excuse what he did, it makes things a little bit more complicated.

It was only recently that I discovered what became of him. After what happened my family never talked about him, and I never saw him again either. I didn’t go to his trial and no one ever told me what the verdict was. I can’t even find any news articles about it no matter how hard I look. For all I know he didn’t even get punished. And tbh I was fine with that. I didn’t want to think about it. I honestly felt a little embarrassed by it and felt like my family never really believed me. So I was ok with not knowing.

But a couple of years ago he apparently reached out to my mother and started talking to her. I don’t really know WHY, but she felt comfortable talking about whatever he wanted to talk about and some members of my family have welcomed him back into their lives. And when I found that out I felt SO betrayed. I felt violated all over again, and when I went onto his facebook page to block him I saw that he was in a relationship with someone. And part of me really, REALLY wanted to find out who he was dating and tell her what he did. Ruin his life all over again. Because he ruined part of mine, why should he get to be happy?

But after I calmed down I thought about it....and while I NEVER want to see him again(just the thought of it makes me break out in panic sweats and feel like I’m gonna throw up and cry), who am I to say that he isn’t allowed to try to be a better person? I don’t believe in the death penalty, and he’s only in his 30s. If he can see the error of his ways and grow and change and find a better life....well, I’d rather that than he go back to offending or rot in jail. If he can be forgiven by someone, that’s ok. It doesn’t have to be me, but I am willing to accept that he has a life now, and for better or for worse that’s not something I can control.

So you see, I cannot condemn him. Part of me still hates him, and I would rather die than ever see him again, and I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive him, but I don’t want him to die. I don’t want to ruin his life. I don’t want to stop him from being a better person. If there is a hell I don’t want him to go there.

And to say that if I don’t feel like he should be killed I somehow am being a bad survivor or that stories like mine are harmful is....bad. Stories like mine are actually VERY common. Most abuse survivors feel really conflicted about their abusers, some even still love them. Some forgive them. And reflecting that in our fiction is GOOD.

As another example, my dad has always treated me like crap. He loves me, I know he does, and I know it was mostly because he was sick, but he wasn’t a good dad. He used me as a pawn against my mom, he made me take care of myself way too young, he blamed me for things that weren’t my fault, he yelled at me, he neglected me, all in all he was a really bad father. And I still love him.

I can still remember the good times we had. I remember talking about sci-fi and science, seeing movies, and going out for good food. He bought me nice things when he could and taught me how to cook. He never made fun of my interests, he tried to teach me to drive, he even took me to conventions and helped me make my cosplays. He let me get dogs, and I am still so grateful for those dogs, who I still have and love to this day. He’s also the reason I moved to Arizona and because of that I made new friends and got a job I loved and met my boyfriend(and our 2 year anniversary is tomorrow!).

So yeah, my dad was both a force of good, and a force to harm in my life. He hurt me a lot, and I am still trying to overcome the trauma he caused to this day. I have a lot of negative feelings towards him, and it is hard for me to talk to him, and I do have to remind myself that I don’t have to take care of him, but he’s my dad and I forgive him. I know he loves me. I want him to get better and be a good person. I don’t want him to not have a chance at redemption. I cannot condemn him.

And these people who think that narratives like mine, where I forgive and move on and the abusers go on to have lives and even be a part of mine, are somehow evil or harmful or invalid are fucking wrong. I don’t feel bad saying that. They are WRONG. Because most people who did have abusive parents will feel the way I feel. Conflicted. A sense of both love and resentment. A reluctance to cast them aside. A desire to care for them when they need you. And a lot of us don’t even feel like we need to forgive them...we just do. Sometimes it’s easier to forgive. And sometimes we just want to have another chance at having a parent that loves us. There’s nothing wrong with that.

And as other survivors have said, seeing stories where abusive parents and people do see the error of their ways and go on to make an effort and change and try to be a better person and be worthy of redemption is cathartic as hell. It might be unlikely, and it might be an escapist fantasy, but it makes us feel better, and helps us process and cope with our trauma. Like fucking forgive me but sometimes I want to read a story in a world where people who do wrong ARE redeemed and DO make amends and become good people.

And this post is long enough so I won’t get into it too much but stories where bad people are redeemed are actually GOOD. Everyone fucks up at some point in their lives. Everyone does something awful, something that feels unforgivable. And when we do we see stories like ATLA and Star Wars and Steven Universe and see people who have fucked up and done awful things and who still are given a second chance. The struggle forward isn’t easy, people won’t always forgive you, they shouldn’t be expected to. But these stories tell us that no matter how far we have fallen, we can ALWAYS get back up. We can always be better. We are never beyond saving. We shouldn’t give up. That’s really fucking important for EVERYONE to see.

And I mean you don’t have to look far to see a world where one fuck up means you are evil. That’s how Tumblr is! A system of morality where one strike and you’re out. Where you can never be redeemed. Where all apologies are performative and anyone who tries to be better is just trying to get people to forgive them so they can be bad again. No one can learn from their mistakes. And that FUCKING SUCKS. I really do not want the world to start being like that too.

But anyway TL;DR

Most abuse survivors feel really conflicted about their abusers and do not follow a narrative that tumblr believes is “correct”. Acting like there is only one way to process and come to terms with abuse and that depicting anything else in fiction is somehow harmful and evil is in itself harmful and evil. The people making those posts don’t actually seem to care about that and tend to talk over abuse survivors who usually enjoy these narratives because stories where abusers do change and are forgiven are super cathartic and can help us heal more than stories where the opposite happens. In fact a lot of these stories are written by people who have been abused, and once again, acting like these narratives are somehow wrong is harmful as hell and invalidates a lot of people in the name of morality.

Tumblr once again shows a lack of any and all critical thinking and in doing so harms the very people they claim to be protecting because nuance is evil and everything is black and white.

Sorry that this got so long, if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

#long post #abuse mention #csa mention #Anon #Asked And Answered

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scripttorture · 5 years

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Torture in Fiction: The Umbrella Academy: Episode 1-6

I tried to start this saying I was only going to review episode 2 which has a prominent torture scene. Several hours later I am… significantly closer to the end of the series. So I thought I may as well include what I’ve watched.

The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix original series based on an independent comic book. With great acting, excellent music and a cast of deeply flawed characters it was (I understand) quite a hit.

I’m enjoying it a lot more then I thought I would. It’s violent but it’s also ridiculous in a way few stories but superhero comics tend to commit to. There’s a 60 year old man stuck in the body of a thirteen year old after travelling to an apocalyptic future and being in a thirty year relationship with a mannequin. And I just- I love comics.

This series feels very much like a superhero comic book on screen. With all the good and the bad that goes with that concept.

But I’m not here to tell you what I think of the superhero genre and it’s relationship with violence. I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the series itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

Umbrella Academy is the story about a group of very damaged people with super powers. Adopted as babies (born in extraordinary circumstances) by a millionaire ‘adventurer’ six of the Hargreeve children were raised to be superheroes. The seventh, apparently without powers, was isolated in a world of talking chimps, robots and extraordinary abilities.

The story starts with Reginald Hargreeve’s death and the five surviving children (including one who’d been living on the moon, apparently for years) meet for the funeral. In the course of this ‘Five’, teleports back from the future.

While the story overall focuses on the way an emotionally abusive and neglectful upbringing effects all of the major characters I’m going to be focusing on the clear instances of torture in and solitary confinement in some of the episodes.

Both Luther and Five are subjected to extreme solitary confinement. Luther is isolated on the moon for four years, Five is isolated as the last person alive for several decades.

Five stops up in a donut shop late at night and sits next to a tow truck driver. They have a brief conversation and the driver leaves. An armed gang then attacks Five. He kills them and two more people (Cha-Cha and Hzael) are sent after him, apparently by the same organisation.

Believing they’re looking for a man in his 50s they go after the tow driver. They torture him and while they eventually believe that he isn’t Five, they continue to torture him to get information on Five. The driver tells them everything that happened the night before.

Later Cha-Cha and Hazel mount a raid on the Hargreeves estate looking for Five. They don’t find him but they manage to capture his brother Klaus.

Klaus is an addict (what he takes is not explicitly defined) and talks to dead people. The two are linked throughout the story with the heavy implication that Klaus avoids sobriety in order to escape his powers.

Klaus is tied to a chair for about a day and a half. He��s beaten, strangled and ‘waterboarded’. (Cha-Cha calls it waterboarding but didn’t actually carry it out properly. I’ve assumed that was for the safety of the actors).

Klaus escapes and shows no mobility problems after being cut off the chair. He then spends several months in 1968 (as you do). On his return his mental health problems seem to be no worse then they were before he was tortured.

I’m giving it 0/10

The Good

The actual forms of torture shown in The Umbrella Academy are reasonably realistic. They’re not always accurate to the time period or place, but when time travel is involved I’m willing to let that slide. The electrical torture shown, with a battery and bulldog clips, could be taken directly from Alleg’s accounts of his experience at the hands of French troops in Algeria. The stress positions and strangulation are shown realistically. And while the waterboarding isn’t shown realistically I think it was done this way to protect the actor and allow him to breathe.

The Bad

I’ve covered solitary confinement before. The estimated safe period for most people is about a week. While both Luther and Five has a strong sense of purpose during their confinement (and this seems to be a protective factor) that wouldn’t help a lot when they’re confined for such an unrealistically long period. At four years Luther should be a complete mental and physical wreck. At several decades including puberty, Five shouldn’t be able to interact normally with people and should be more obviously mentally ill then Klaus. Both of them are shown without symptoms and this downplays the damage of torture that’s routinely depicted as harmless.

Umbrella Academy shows torture ‘working’ with victims giving up accurate information if only you know how to hurt them. This isn’t true. Torture can’t result in accurate information. This kind of misinformation encourages torture in real life.

Klaus’ response to torture is to thank his torturers for inflicted pain with the strong implication that he’s enjoying being tortured. It’s implied that he’s turned on by pain so ‘can’t’ be traumatised or hurt by torture. This is ridiculous and insulting to both the BDSM community and torture survivors. BDSM practitioners don’t stop feeling pain and they aren’t immune to trauma. There is a world of difference between a consensual and non-consensual encounter. Personally I think this kind of portrayal is akin to suggesting that victims can’t be raped because they’ve previous enjoyed sex. It’s unacceptable.

Klaus is held in a stress position for at least a day. This is a survivable time frame but on release he should have significant mobility issues and should have needed help escaping. Instead he’s perfectly capable of making his way out with a heavy time-travel device. He can walk and move his arms freely. This completely ignores that the way he was held is torturous.

Neither Cha-Cha nor Hazel show any of the mental health problems typical of torturers. They’re portrayed as competent and able to investigate effectively, even though they torture. Torturers are not good investigators and torture consistently undermines effective investigation. Realistically a character can be one or the other, not both.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are also depicted as good fighters and generally skilled. In reality torture produces a deskilling effect in torturers, they get worse at what they do.

Cha-Cha and Hazel are shown as obedient to their superiors, only targetting people who have information or are ordered as targets. This isn’t how torturers operate. They disobey orders, ignore superiors and target a wide array of people who usually have nothing to do with anything the torturers are supposed to investigate.

No one in the series so far has shown any long standing mental health problems as a result of torture or isolation.

No one has shown any memory problems as a result of torture or isolation.

The end result is that the series suggests torture doesn’t have any long term effects at all.

Overall

I think this series really highlights something I’ve been saying a lot on the blog: It’s very easy to find realistic depictions of how torture is carried out and it’s very hard to find realistic depictions of the effect it has on people.

These episodes, and I suspect (from what I’ve seen) the series more generally handles torture terribly. It’s unrealistic and it’s parroting a lot of tropes that either excuse torture or belittle survivors.

That didn’t get in the way of me enjoying the series outside of these scenes. There are a lot of great characters and character moments.

But none of that excuses this senseless repetition of torture apologia.

For a series that works so hard to highlight the effect of childhood emotional abuse it downplays the effects of physical abuse at every turn.

It uses torture as a short cut in the plot. It portrays torturers as smart and restrained badasses.

It basically does virtually everything I advise writers not to do.

And this comes about simply by repeating the same old genre tropes without bothering to look up the subjects involved.

There are other ways to have your bad guys find out the information they need to know. There are other ways to establish them as terrible people.

There are realistic ways to show people resisting torture, which don’t diminish the pain they suffered.

I think what I want to stress most of all is that this apologia is unnecessary. It doesn’t add anything to the story. The fun stuff, the super heroics, the ridiculous time travel escapades and carefully choreographed fight scenes can all happen without apologia as the background noise.

For once- I’m not really mad. I’m disappointed. That these tropes creep into genre after genre, put down roots and keep coming back up. The mainstay of this story wouldn’t be any different if they took out torture or even used it in a more realistic way.

Five’s isolation in an apocalyptic wasteland doesn’t last. He’s picked up by an agency of time travellers and offered a job. This could have happened more quickly, especially since the time he spends alone and the time he spends with the agency are both poorly defined.

Luther’s trip to the moon functions to build a wall between him and his siblings. And again, that could have happened in a much shorter time frame.

Cha-Cha and Hazel could have just interviewed the tow truck driver for their information. They’re shown conducting successful interviews later.

Klaus’ resistance could have been framed as natural and there are several points in his dialogue already that could have supported that. The story could have used the fact that Klaus genuinely does not know where Five is.

In the end The Umbrella Academy’s use of torture is a waste of narrative space. None of these torture scenes are essential to the plot and every single one of them is handled badly.

It’s an example of a narrative that wasn’t prepared to commit to showing the consequences of torture.

We can all do better.

Edit: I forgot the full title. Oops.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw rape #torture in fiction #the umbrella academy #torture apologia #solitary confinement #mental illness #superheroes #writing victims #writing torturers #torture and memory #stress positions #electrical torture

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nationaldvam · 5 years

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Our favorite childhood stories tend to stick with us. For me, rabbits seemed to be prominent characters in the books I loved – from Uncle Wiggily to Watership Down, Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. And more than the adventures of the bunnies, I remember the way the stories made me feel, and the lessons I still carry with me. There were lessons of survival, persistence, curiosity, risk-taking, and problem-solving that reinforced values of leadership, compassion, community, respect, and kindness. These rabbits live on in my subconscious, holding power and space having shaped my understanding of the world and all of its love and pain. Now, as a parent, I’ve come to know just how critical these choices are for my own children, and just how much power a simple picture book can hold.

Enhancing Social Justice Literacy

In 2015, Tanya Nixon-Silberg and Francie Latour, two Black mothers, authors, and community activists, drew on their own parenting practices – especially their use of children’s books to disrupt dominant narratives with their kids – to launch Wee the People (WTP) in Boston. WTP is a social justice project for children aged 4-12 that explores activism, resistance, and social action through the visual and performing arts. As part of their work, WTP hosts Social Justice Storytime at the Boston Public Library for their “Little Voices, Big Changes” initiative, built on the belief that if kids can understand fairness they can understand justice. Tanya and Francie work to builds parents’ capacity to confront topics like racism, deportation, gentrification, misogyny, islamophobia, and homophobia.

Innosanto Nagara, a Southeast Asian immigrant father, author/illustrator, and graphic designer creates new-wave board books that inspire conversations about social justice and encourage children’s passion and action around social causes like environmental issues, LGBTQ rights, and civil rights. With titles like A is for Activist, Counting on Community, and The Wedding Portrait, Innosanto explores themes of activism, free speech, political progress, civil disobedience, and artistic defiance. Innosanto is on the editorial team of M is for Movement, a site dedicated to exploring social justice and activism in children’s literature. The contributors to M is for Movement are children’s writers, illustrators, and book creators who are long-time activists and advocates who “come from and stand with marginalized communities living at intersections of identity, experience, race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, and ability.��

At the 2018 Facing Race National Conference in Detroit organized by Race Forward, Wee the People co-founder Tanya Nixon-Silberg and author/illustrator Innosanto Nagara presented a workshop together on racial literacy for children. They stressed the importance of racial literacy from an early age in the process of dismantling racist systems and structures.

Through their work, Tanya, Francie, and Innosanto are invested in inspiring social action through the arts, and have found that children’s books offer a powerful medium for moving new generations of people towards justice. Louise Derman-Sparks from Social Justice Books (a project of Teaching for Change) agrees:

“Children’s books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children’s affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children’s books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible” (Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books, 2013).

Social Justice Literacy as a Prevention Strategy

Social justice literacy is an effective gender-based violence prevention strategy – a proactive effort to stop violence and abuse from happening in the first place by interrupting the cultural rules, norms, and constructs that support it. Several projects highlighted in the PreventIPV Tools Inventory demonstrate the effectiveness of social justice literacy in creating a more peaceful and just world. For example, Teaching for Change is a project that strives to build a more equitable, multicultural society by promoting social justice activism in the classroom. Their strategies center on leadership development and civic engagement for students, parents, and teachers that draw on real world current events. Teaching a People’s History offers classroom materials that emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. And Rethinking Schools focuses on strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism with a specific focus on promoting equity and racial justice in the classroom. These approaches focus on impacting the outermost layers of the social ecology to shift our cultural norms and values.

Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo, youth activists and creators of The Classroom Index, a textbook on racial literacy, identified two gaps in racial education:

The heart gap: “An inability to understand each of our experiences, to fiercely and unapologetically be compassionate beyond lip service,” and

The mind gap: “An inability to understand the larger, systemic ways in which racism operates.”

TED Talk: What It Takes to be Racially Literate by Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo

Children’s literature is one way to bridge these gaps by inspiring, educating, and engaging readers of all ages in a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of all people, families, and communities in our wide and vibrant world. But the fact is that marginalized people and communities are outrageously underrepresented in books available to children in mainstream American classrooms, libraries, and catalogues – in terms of both those authoring the books, and characters represented inside them. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center found that in all children’s picture books published in 2015, you are more likely to find non-human characters like bunnies (12.5%) than African Americans (7.6%) and Latinx (2.6%) combined. White characters are primarily depicted in the vast majority (73.3%) of these books.

Illustration: Diversity in Children's Books 2015 by David Huyck, in consultation with Sarah Park Dahlen and Molly Beth Griffin

Social Justice Books serves to identify, vet, and promote multicultural and social justice children’s books, building on the tradition of the Council on Interracial Books for Children which offered a social justice lens to reviews of children’s literature. They also help parents and children develop critical literacy skills and promote activism around diverse representation in libraries. One example is their #StepUpScholastic campaign urging Scholastic to “publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools.” Engaging children in proactive efforts to both notice and address the underrepresentation of people of color in literature, as illustrated above, builds their social justice literacy.

Books that Promote Justice and Peace

For those looking for books that promote justice and peace, resources like Social Justice Books offer vetted booklists on a variety of topics, as do Raising Luminaries: Books for Littles and Little Feminist: Books for raising conscious kids. Topics include:

Learning about family structures

Talking to kids about violence

Books for tomorrow’s leaders

Honoring single mothers

Promoting healthy fatherhood

Fostering social and emotional health, compassion, and independence

Helping kids recognize privilege

Cultivating healthy sexual boundaries

Preventing sexual violence

Bullying, civil disobedience, and disrupting injustice

Seek out books by authors of color like Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Honor receipient Kwame Alexander. Additionally, several anti-violence organizations offer book lists specific to addressing trauma. For example, The Child Witness to Violence Project offers books about trauma and violence for young children.

As M is for Movement explains, “Children’s literature—both fiction and nonfiction—is full of inspiration and examples of children and adults who stand up for themselves and others. Whether it’s ducks organizing animals to oppose unfair farm rules, a student listening to her classmates’ concerns when running for student council, or a boy joining his first march, young people’s literature can demonstrate how individuals and communities have the power to act as agents for social change.”

Through children’s books, we can teach justice and peace across generations. By engaging a child in a book with a strong message that fills the heart and the head, we can help build their understanding, compassion, and confidence to impact social change in ways that are meaningful and important to them. And these lessons and values will likely stick with them their whole life long

Images:

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

Counting on Community by Innosanto Nagara

Illustration: Diversity in Children's Books 2015 by David Huyck, in consultation with Sarah Park Dahlen and Molly Beth Griffin

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handlewithkara · 5 years

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Just some more overly detailed thoughts on “my” Daxam, how I tend to write it.

In a lot of ways, my stories are kind of related in a lot of ways. They aren’t really in the same universe or anything, but the vision I have of Daxam tends to be similar across my stories and a lot of ideas that get introduced in one story show up in other stories. Such as there being a a goddess of love and sex named Lirra.

According to wikipedia there is Kryptonian goddess of beauty named Lorra. I changed it to Lirra to show that Kryptonians and Daxmites have modified versions of the same religion. Like ancient Romans and Greeks.

Another concept that shows up in a lot of stories of mine is the concept that on Daxam children are sent to the temple of the goddess of love and sex to receive “practical” sex education.

A lot of how I write Daxam is my probably spending way too much effort trying to fix that feel like plot holes in the show. I try to make some things fit in a way that makes sense to me.

Such as Kara having heard of the prince but not reacting to Mon-El’s name. In Boy and His Comet the concept is done even more extreme with there also being a lot of body doubles.

I suspect that the Daxam I write is a lot bleaker than what other people write. This mostly comes from me trying to create something that to me feels closest to a place that would explain how show!Mon-El seems to feel about Daxam. I see the following things as the cornerstones of show!Mon-El’s relationship with Daxam:

He obviously spent most of his life “playing along” on Daxam

He kneejerk defends it when he and Kara first clash and Kara talks bad about it

What he said about drugs on Daxam

He seemed to fear or dislike his father more than his mother, even though Rhea clearly is more evil than Lar

He seemed very defeatist that Daxam could be changed. I read his speech to Lar more as a last ditch effort rather than something he really believes

Based on how he was thrown in a cell, led away from his “wedding” to Lena, and of course attacked by other Daxamites during the big battle at the end of season , he clearly had no powerbase of his own

I guess in a lot of ways my Daxam is a bit my personal explanation for why show Mon-El didn’t want to go back to Daxam, as well as providing some explanation for the way Rhea and Lar interact with each other and how Mon-El relates to them. That’s why my stories tend to be sort of the antithesis of Mon-El as the cool all powerful, respected prince, why there are so many scenes in Boy and His Comet where Mon-El thinks his decisions at the council meetings might just get overruled. Or how he strongly suspects that people just won’t do what he says if they feel it’s a bad idea or not in the interest of the queen.

In Boy and his Comet in particularly, Daxam is more like a really oppressive police state filled with people who want to claw their way to the top and all the sex and partying is really just a thin layer over it. I also have this headcanon which hasn’t explicitly shown up in any story yet (but would have shown up in Sky Without Stars) that the royal family takes a different brand of drugs that aren’t addictive the way the drugs of the regular population are (to explain why show!Mon-El didn’t show any major withdrawal symptoms). Also that Daxamite soldiers are always high with combat stimulants when they fight (in my head canon it improves their reaction times and makes them feel no remorse when killing, makes them all energetic and eager to fight and makes them feel no fear).

Another concept that comes up in some of my stories or that at least is there underneath is that the reason why Mon-El isn’t already latched is because Rhea doesn’t want it. That as long as he isn’t latched he is essentially like a kid still living with his parents, but if he got latched, she would have to give him a house of his own, his own powerbase and Rhea doesn’t want that, because she is paranoid about competition (in my head canon she murdered some of her relatives to get on top, so Rhea’s ascent to power was somewhere between a grand love story and a successful coup, because she had the backing of the military). For what it’s worth, the Sky Without Stars headcanon is that Rhea is generally the sexually aggressive partner 98% of the time. In my headcanon Lar also sleeps around (but loves Rhea, or rather is addicted to her). Rhea to me actually has very little interest in other lovers (other than what she has to do because it is Daxamite custom), mostly because deep down she really only loves power and she “loves” Lar because he is the one who gave her power and she has particular interest in sleeping with anybody who has less power than Lar. That’s also why she is so quick to kill him when he threatens to get in her way. (that’s also why it’s my headcanon that Lar genuinely never seriously got in her way before and has always just let her do what she wants and supported her blindly)

Another concept is that Rhea intentionally kept Mon-El away from Lar and essentially only brought Lar around when there were punishments to deal out. In Sky Without Stars in particular my headcanon is that Lar loved Rhea and she demanded of him that Mon-El must be hers and hers alone.

I also have a headcanon pivotal moment to explain why Mon-El is so horrified by his father but that is in a chapter that has never been posted. I also tend to stay away from depictions where there was a lot of physical abuse, particularly not at the end of Lar. I tend to write the relationship between Mon-El and Lar as part giant misunderstanding (because Rhea lied to Mon-El about Lar) and part Lar turning a blind eye or ignoring Mon-El. I go back and forth on there having been physical abuse from Rhea, depending on the story but even if it’s there, I tend to write it as it being something relatively rare and the abuse is more emotional and in the form of mind fuckery. Some of that will show up in the next few chapters of Boy and His Comet.

Speaking of which, there was actually a flashback to Mon-El’s childhood that I kept purposefully vague. It will also stay vague. But the explanation for it is that the woman who tried to kill Mon-El when he was a kid was a mistress of Lar. She managed to get herself pregnant (somehow circumventing the whole birth matrix thing) and out of anger Rhea poisoned her so she lost the child (that’s why there is blood on her dress when she comes after Mon-El). This scene was inspired by a scene from a historical fiction book on the Ottoman empire where the king’s favorite wife loses her child due to poisoning from the first wife.

I also tend to headcanon that Rhea (despite the science expertise she showed on the show) as being a military person, a lot like Astra in season 1. After all she seemed to be in charge of the attack and she didn’t fear getting her hands dirty dueling with Kara. So in my headcanon she is the general of the troops and they adore her and are loyal only to her. In Sky Without Stars my headcanon is even that she “won” Lar because she was such a good warrior and conqueror (and by murdering the woman he was originally promised to). So I guess it is safe to say that I write Rhea was very violent and very ruthless.

I kind of expand this concept for me personally by writing Daxam as having a strong religious underpining. Now that part is really made up because there weren’t really a ton of signs that the Daxamites are very religious (other than Rhea saying For The Gods and I think the Daxamite ship had like these stone statues in them?) and of course most notably Mon-El isn’t very religious it seems. Still, because I personally like writing alien religions, I tend to write Daxam with these strong religious elements. In Sky Without Stars in particular the image in my mind was that in a way this is how Lar and Rhea distributed the work load, that Rhea is military and Lar acts as something like a high priest of their religion.

Of course the majority of my Daxamite headcanons concern sex and relationships. I freely admit a lot of these are mostly wild extrapolations in the interest of more porny setups. Such as there being lots of casual and very public sex (like Mon-El in Song of the Teacher mentioning that he saw his parents have sex in public to celebrate a great victory).

Another concept that is there underneath in Boy and His Comet and that would have shown up in Song Of The Teacher is that Daxam is very much okay with same-sex sex (”the more, the merrier”) it actually would be heavily frowned on for anybody to be exclusively gay, or exclusively straight for that matter. This is kind of represented in Song Of The Teacher where Mon-El says that sex on Daxam is like shaking hands and it would be weird if you didn’t shake hands with somebody just because of their sex. This is in a way the underneath conflict of the two side characters in Boy and His Comet, that in this couple, one woman is pretty open about not having any use for men and her lover constantly has to smooth things over in that regard. And Mon-El is sort of being a pal by inviting them to threesomes where he doesn’t touch Raina (the exclusively lesbian one) and in that way helps them keep up their cover.

Another frequent concept of mine is that in a strange way Daxam almost enforces casual relationships. Again, this is a pretty big topic in Boy and His Comet that actually all kinds of serious romantic and exclusive relationships are pretty much forbidden. But a similar concept shows up in Song of the Teacher where Mon-El explains to Kara

“Your responsibility is to your latch.” He shrugged. “I guess we believe that love is fleeting. You enjoy each other. You have good times together. But you also move on and enjoy yourself with others. But your family, and your latch, is forever.”

In Boy and His Comet Rhea’s thinking is in essence that strong romantic bonds are a threat to her. Let’s say Rhea wanted to execute somebody, then their lover would want to protect them or take revenge and rebel in that way.

I have this unposted, unfinished story concept where Karamel are at a Daxamite club and Mon-El mentions that a certain song that is playing is surely gonna be banned and be put on the index because it speaks of romantic love and laying down your life for the one you love and Rhea won’t have that. Another idea there was Mon-El mentioning to Kara that officially all Daxamite love songs about a woman are about the queen and all love songs about a man are about the king. Because of course you are allowed to lay down your life for the queen. (but I had to scrap that concept because it was a Boy and His Comet spinoff story where Mon-El thinks Kara is Daxamite and that’s not the kind of thing he would say to another Daxamite, since he would just assume that a Daxamite would know that)

#my writing: supergirl #my writing: daxamite lore #my writing: a boy and his comet #my writing: sky without stars #my writing: song of the teacher

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wouldyouliketoseemymask · 7 years

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I feel like a good-sized portion of the current DC fandom tends to prefer light-hearted, comedic stories where the villains get together and do funny, cutesy things and just generally act like they’re all close friends. And that’s great! Light fiction can be a healthy, uplifting way to decompress from everyday stresses and to distract oneself from negativity, whether it’s personal struggles or feelings of helplessness over tragic events in the news, and I highly encourage people to read and/or create content that makes them feel good. You should read what makes you the happiest and most fulfilled as a fan, whatever it is!

BUT

I also feel like there’s this sort of thinly-veiled shaming attitude towards fans who prefer darker, more morbid portrayals of the DC Universe (particularly in the Batman fandom) and anything even remotely gritty is mocked and subsequently dismissed as try-hard and pathetic, often by people who haven’t actually read the material. I’m not even talking about polarizing comics that have courted controversy or caused outrage--I’m talking about stories that feature psychological horror, depictions of violence, and fan-favorites like Harley Quinn actually being villainous and doing bad things that cause harm. It’s perfectly understandable to not be interested in reading those comics, but others are intrigued by the concept of exploring a more bleak and less optimistic view of DC’s universe.

It’s also worth noting that for some fans, reading heavy-themed comics is actually somewhat cathartic because they feature characters and subject matter that the reader can identify with: surviving childhood abuse, escaping abusive relationships, living with mental illness, being bullied, coping with trauma, etc. And sometimes being able to relate to someone--even if they are fictional--can help a person feel a little less alone.

There’s a reason DC has published different types of of comics over the past several decades, from the adorable Little Gotham to more mature titles from their Vertigo brand: fans have varying preferences. What one fan deems garbage will be another fan’s favorite. We all have our own likes and dislikes when it comes to comics, and making fun of someone because their interests don’t align with yours is pointless at best and unkind fandom elitism at worst.

#just a random thought #riveting text post

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adelaide-ill-omens · 7 years

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Some Anon Submission Re: Problematic Fiction

“Even ignoring how much info there is out there that notes the effects of media normalizing attitudes towards things…” That’s just it. There ISN’T any info out there drawing clear cause and effect. There’s no evidence of so-called “romanticizing” having a clear negative effect on reality. But what does exist is evidence that fictional depictions of bad situations help victims identify those situations IRL, and that fictional depictions of those situations can help victims process trauma. Evidence solid enough that mental health professionals direct their patients to read these kinds of fiction as part of recovery. And who exactly is doing all this supposed normalizing? Some random person online writing fanfic is somehow going to change the entire world? If some media WAS going to have a big impact, it would be media from major franchises or published authors. But antis and the other people doing callouts don’t go after major targets, just random fans online. Why? Because the people doing callouts care more about finding vulnerable people to hurt than actually helping anyone. Likewise your comment about “frequent posts of csa survivors calling y'all out”. Most of the people doing callouts are trying to feel better by taking out their hurt on vulnerable people. If they were really trying to help anyone, they wouldn’t be attacking other CSA survivors who dare to disagree with them or are survivors “wrong”.

This reads like an old strawman of this argument.

To start, there is. As back and forth as the arguments go there’s no doubt there’s a link between consuming pedophilic media and pedophilic behavior. As for unclear, kinda. I can see an argument that reason they’re linked is that behavior leads to consuming related media, but that’s not exactly an argument that helps pedophilic media any. A quick Google search just to make sure I wasn’t talking out my ass helped. And no evidence of romanticizing having a clear effect on reality? Like, my dude, have you browsed the site you’re posting on? The amount of posts, big ones that gets big callouts, with a person romanticizing that and start romanticizing it out of fiction? Shit the amount of times people here romanticize anything in fiction and then go on to do so out of fiction. And that’s before opening up fucking proquest or something to look studies regarding this.

Yeah depictions of bad situations help identify those in real life. Someone sees a situation in fiction presented as bad and recognizes it’s bad in real life. Funny, sounds like what I’m arguing. It’s almost like I’m not saying “people shouldn’t ever show harmful relationships,” but that I’m saying “people shouldn’t defend these relationships and present them as positive.” There’s a difference between writing a relationship between a 12 and 27 year old that shows it as harmful, manipulative, and inherently abusive, and presenting the same relationship as ending happily for…some reason. Bad situations help identify those in real life as bad when they’re depicted as bad. To continually connect to the original topic of shipping, when people ship a couple like that, write fiction of it and look for more of it to read, one has to wonder if it’s to see it positively or negatively.

Mental health professionals actually recommend reading child porn to cope with childhood abuse? That sounds…a bit ludicrous. But yknow what? I’m not a csa survivor, so maybe that’s a thing. Those that I know I haven’t pried and asked about that. I’m not one, and by your language usage it seems neither are you. But then being anonymous you’re whatever you need to be.

As for major media…duh. That’s why major media that portrays these things positively tends to get criticized. Not always, unfortunately. Even negative portrayals can come under fire, also unfortunate. But to insist that only mass media can influence people is comically shortsighted. Ignoring how large fanfics can get (Twilight for instance, it’s inception, and how it romanticized abusive relationships being a good example), their impact is apparent by just this conversation here. People willing to attack, and defend, fanfic aggressively because of these things. Enough to make terms like “anti.”

Now this may get a bit personal, and I’m sorry, but you’re choice of language is telling. Antis, portraying people who criticize pedophilic material as the real villains, etc. Insisting callouts on this are done to hurt others, that people defending are victims, etc. These arguments are used for literally every fucking defense of fanfic. Oh something horribly racist, or objectifying gay or trans bodies? “Oh the author is exploring their gender or sexuality” and the like. Actually lemme expand that, not just fanfic, but Fandom as a whole, fic, art, all that. It’s to the point I see some good people put on their blinders and defend the craziest stuff they’re normally against because it’s Fandom.

I’ll give you that often callout culture here is pretty fucking warped at times, and there are big debates of various victims of being “wrong,” but these points keep being used to silence anyone who points out something is fucked up. How many posts go around that despite criticisms of callout culture, doesn’t defend many of the people who end called out. The infamous Josh Macedo (was that his name? The canadian guy who used his popularity to manipulate underaged followers) incidents come to mind. Were the posters in his case just trying to hurt someone vulnerable?

If this was about attacking people I’d have reblogged the posts I saw, argue with the ops, rather than posting my thing. I don’t wanna publicly shame people that I trust (and assume still can be trusted) on here.

Unfortunate you had to be on anon, it’s easier reaching people in person. Then again you might not even be someone I know, neither friend nor follower.

But I’m still gonna bring it right back to the last question on my actual post: why do you feel the need to defend these depictions? It doesn’t seem to be about helping csa survivors coping by their reading of this stuff, or you wouldn’t be attacking other csa survivors who criticize you.

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petitrangement · 7 years

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Real psychopaths don’t giggle.

The maniacal laugh: only in the movies. For a more realistic psychopath, look to bolt-gun–wielding Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. He just quietly walks up and it’s ka-chunk, you’re dead.

That’s the diagnosis from forensic psychiatrist Samuel Leistedt, who has interviewed and diagnosed real psychopaths, people who he describes as feeling no empathy for others. “They’re cold-blooded,” he says. “They don’t know what an emotion is.”

Leistedt and his colleague Paul Linkowski spent three years watching 400 movies looking for realistic portrayals of psychopaths. Leistedt says he personally watched all 400, some several times. That means he not only watched Psycho, but sat through Pootie Tang in the name of science.

He first weeded out clearly unrealistic characters, such as those with magic powers or who were invincible or not human (such as ghosts). That whittled it down to 126 films from 1915 to 2010, showing 105 male and 21 female potential psychopaths. A team of about 10 forensic psychiatrists and movie critics watched and weighed in on diagnoses.

They did this to develop tools for teaching psychiatry students, and ended up tracing a social history of how psychopaths have been viewed and understood since the early 20th century. Learning to diagnose a psychopath is not easy, he says. Not only are definitions and traits of psychopathy disputed, but students get limited chances to interview psychopaths.

Psychiatrists and neuroscientists have identified behavioral characteristics of psychopaths and parts of the brain that appear to function differently than in the average person. But much remains unknown; experts still disagree about whether and when there’s a genetic basis for psychopathy. Hollywood images of psychopaths have shifted over time as this understanding has changed, and as real-life cases came to light from serial killer Ed Gein to Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Overall, portrayals have gotten more realistic over time, Leistedt and Linkowski report in the January Journal of Forensic Sciences. Instead of giggling killers with facial tics, at least a few of today’s portrayals have more depth, giving a “compelling glimpse into the complex human psyche,” they write.

Here are a few of the best and worst potrayals from Leistedt and Linkowski’s paper.

The frighteningly realistic:1. Anton Chigurh,

No Country for Old Men

(2007)

This contract killer hauls around a bolt pistol attached to tank of compressed air, a handy tool both for shooting out door locks and for shooting people in the head. Leistedt says Chigurh is his favorite portrayal of a psychopath. “He does his job and he can sleep without any problems.In my practice I have met a few people like this,” he says. In particular, Chigurh reminds him of two real-life professional hit men who he interviewed. “They were like this: cold, smart, no guilt, no anxiety, no depression.”

Diagnosis*: Primary, classic/idiopathic psychopath

2. Hans Beckert,

(1931)

This child-murdering character broke with most portrayals of psychopaths at the time, depicting an outwardly normal man with a compulsion to kill. This is “a substantially more realistic depiction of what would eventually be known today as a sexually violent predator most likely suffering from psychosis,” Leistedt and Linkowski write.

Diagnosis: Secondary, pseudopsychopath, additional diagnosis of psychosis

3. Henry,

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

(1991)

In this film about guy who likes to find new ways to kill people, the researchers write, “the main, interesting theme is the chaos and instability in the life of the psychopath, Henry’s lack of insight, a powerful lack of empathy, emotional poverty, and a well-illustrated failure to plan ahead.”

Diagnosis: Primary, classic/idiopathic psychopath

Scary, but not realistic:1. Tommy Udo,

Kiss of Death

(1947)

A great example of an early portrayal of a “madman” as psychopath. The Udo character was famous for his creepy chuckle, and legend has it that actor Richard Widmark was later asked repeatedly to record the laugh on blank record albums.

2. Norman Bates,

Psycho

(1960)

After the 1957 arrest of real-life serial killer Ed Gein, a case involving cannibalism, necrophilia and a troubled relationship with his mother, horror films about serial murder took off. Norman Bates was inspired in part by Gein, launching a genre showing misfits with usually sexual motivations to kill. This kind of behavior became closely linked to psychopathy, but Gein was more likely psychotic, meaning out of touch with reality. Psychosis, which is a completely different diagnosis from psychopathy, often involves delusions and hallucinations.

3. Hannibal Lecter,

Silence of the Lambs

(1991)

Yes, he scares the bejesus out of me, too. But Lecter’s almost superhuman intelligence and cunning are just not typical among, well, anyone, let alone psychopaths. Lecter is a perfect example of the “elite psychopath” that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. This calm, in-control character type has sophisticated tastes and manners (think Chianti and jazz),exceptional skill in killing and a vain and “almost catlike demeanor,” the researchers write, adding, “These traits, especially in combination, are generally not present in real psychopaths.”

The new release The Wolf of Wall Street may be part of another movie-psychopath trend, the “successful psychopath.” Leistedt hasn’t seen the film yet, but he says the story of real-life con man Jordan Belfort should make for an interesting portrayal. “These guys are greedy, manipulative, they lie, but they’re not physically aggressive,” Leistedt says. Gordon Gekko in Wall Street is an example of a realistic successful movie psychopath. He’s “probably one of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date,” the researchers write.

Hollywood has lately been fascinated by these successful psychopaths, Leistedt and Linkowski note, in the wake of financial crises and high-profile trials such as Bernard Madoff’s. Apparently, vicious stockbrokers are the new bogeymen. Instead of disemboweling their victims, they gut their bank accounts.

No matter the subtype, one thing is clear: Psychopaths are the people we meet in our nightmares. And sometimes in the boardroom. We’re fascinated and repelled by them, so it’s no surprise that they are the subject of so many of our favorite films.

*The diagnoses of characters in Leistedt and Linkowski’s study are based on classifications outlined by forensic psychologist Hugues Hervé and by psychiatrist Benjamin Karpman. Definitions vary, and the descriptions below are general guidelines.

Primary versus secondary psychopathy: Primary psychopaths are deficient in affect, or emotion, from birth, suggesting a genetic basis. They are often described as more aggressive and impulsive. Secondary psychopaths have been shaped by their environment, may have had an abusive childhood, and are often described as having

more fear and anxiety than primary psychopaths. ‘’

Subtypes:

classic/idiopathic Score the highest on all sections of the widely used Hare Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R, showing low fear, lack of inhibition and lack of empathy.

manipulative Tend to be good “talkers” and associated with crimes involving fraud.

macho Lack the glibness and charm of the above groups but manipulate through force and intimidation.

pseudopsychopaths Also called sociopaths; show antisocial behavior but score lowest among these groups on the PCL-R.

#articles #movie psychopaths

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