#because often we make villains and they're supposed to be horrible or at least make you question why you like them

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Hello! I sent this to vinelle and she said you've already seen it, so, thoughts on the new spiderverse? Do you have a favorite spiderperson? Thanks!

I have seen it.

Well, the thing is, as usual, I don't think you'll like my thoughts.

Also, putting in a read more as this is a fairly recent movie that I assume people don't want to be spoiled on.

It had fantastic animation, great art style, interesting designs for all the characters in a myriad of different styles. Wonderful diversity of the cast and universes. It's also nice to see what our heroes are getting up to after the last film, how all their problems weren't solved and they're still in much the same messes as ever.

However, for me, it's much weaker than the first film and not just because we get a "WAIT UNTIL PART TWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

First, for the part two bit, we get that this is a build-up film to whatever the next film is. We only introduce the problems and don't really get around to resolving them. We spend so much time between spider HQ and evil spot man that we don't focus on either as villains enough to really justify the time spent on either. Peter B Parker suffers a similar fate in that he just kind of... shows up with a baby. He's clearly comic relief again, but there's a very large question of why he's here and why he's doing what he's doing when he has about two seconds on screen to justify himself then uh change his mind, I guess. And from what we saw of part one, while we had some great fight scenes, I'm not sure they all justify what will ultimately be around a 4 hour runtime for both films.

The other bit is that it's a movie that... kind of gets the characters to do what it wants them to do. It's a hard sell for me to tell me that all the Spidermen (except for Myles) are getting together to make every other Spiderman's life miserable because one Spider Vampireman blames a teenage kid for the universe collapsing. Miguel comes off absolutely unhinged and I'm hard pressed to believe that most, if any, of the Spiderpeople we see recruited go along with this (when their role isn't so much to save people and help out other Spiderverses but make sure Uncle Ben dies horribly). We get a lot of justification for Gwen in that her life was falling apart, she'd lost her father completely as well as her only friends, and this gives her purpose and a found family. However, Peter? Peter who is an adult with a child and watching out for his own universe?

We also know of at least one universe that has survived without a Spiderman that is supposed to have a Spiderman (looking at you 42) so... why do they all assume the universe collapses if Spiderman doesn't do the same things in exactly the right order. Perhaps there's proof offscreen, but what happened to New Mumbai (especially given Spot was fucking with a particle collider) doesn't read as proof for me. Especially not for in universe characters.

It's also a bit strange when, from the last film, the point was that all the Spiderpeople are choosing to be Spiderpeople in a very individualistic manner that... doesn't lend itself to these people forming an HQ making decisions they don't agree with.

Myles even brings this up. Why is Hobie involved if he doesn't like what they're doing? Hobie never answers this then uh... leaves when it's convenient for him to do so because the plot said so.

Now, this one might get me killed if the rest hasn't already, but while I loved the animation itself the way it happens in the film is often a bit much. Don't get me wrong, it has great style and I love this age of artistic vision we're entering with animation. However, there was often too much on screen at any given moment (and this is the case with both the style and the dialogue). We'd get rapid fire quippy dialogue as the screen whirls past us, five things are happening at once, and as a result it's almost exhausting to watch. There were a lot of parts of the movie (the Lego Movie reference for example) that felt thrown in to show off artistic prowess as well as to make a gimmicky reference the audience will like. The issue isn't that they're there at all, but that there's so damn many of them. Add into that that we're already in a two-part film and I start to wonder if we couldn't have cut a lot of this.

To sum up though, don't get me wrong, I thought it was good and easily one of the best animated films I've seen in years. I will absolutely see the continuation film. I would still recommend people go see it but I'd tell you that if you're in it for story more so than art maybe just stick to the first one.

As for my favorite spiderpeople? You've come to the wrong blog. But I suppose I'll pick Peter B, you good old comic relief guru homeless man. He didn't do much in this film, but he was my favorite from the last one.

[princessofmerc]

Lewis hates to be in cool down rooms, he kinda tried bc Charles was there today but the only times he looked relaxed this year was when George was there with him and I’m not saying this bc yay britcedes, it’s just body language (same goes for Max with George, especially if Charles is there too). Everyone on tv and socials trying to make George the villain when he’s basically everyone’s emotional support teddy bambi—- err bear

I think it all comes down to the same reason George got voted as a GPDA director by the drivers. They know he stands for his own values and they know he's incredibly self-reflective. They know they don't have to face bitterness or whatever because George understands a lot of the situations that happen are by chance or because their team or car put them in this position. He will call out situations but he knows when the driver himself isn't to blame he's not calling them out (compare the conversation about the lack of punishment about Max and then Abu Dhabi). He's keeping it professional.

He accepts this is the show and the show must go on. Even when the show isn't a show because it's not fabricated to make Red Bull win. This was supposed to be a metaphor but it turned out to be a horrible comparison because the show suddenly has two meanings.

But I mean it in the way of an actor who watched the important prop on the other side of the grid fall and shatter who's already trying to bring out the best performance possible even though the important prop is missing.

They all get along with George. He doesn't need to be best friends with George. But George is probably the driver on the grid who so far has gotten the healthiest teammate relationships probably in the history of sport. And since this is number 3 now (technically 4) I don't htink this is a coincidence.

That being said. Do you know what makes George so different from all the teammates Lewis had in his life? George has his back. In the way that this is a teamsport and this is a fellow competitor. They're fighting together even if they're battling each other. This is a completely new situation Lewis finds himself in. He doesn't need to fear double crossing. He doesn't need to fear George manipulating everything around him to get his own results. They both know they will fight when they have the possibility to do so. But it's an honest fight. Without manipulation of any kind (at least between them).

And not just that: George has his back off track as well. Lewis has not had a teammate who backed him off track as much as George. Please if you think I'm wrong find me a quote (from the driver directly).

(Also can we talk about how George has the power to literally bring out the best in his teammates like what in the sports anime power of friendship is this?)

Yes, George is everyone's emotional comfort bambi. Yes, that is especially true for his teammates. But it's not true for Lewis. The way Lewis completely relaxes with George. We often talk about how George's body language is attuned to LEwis, or how he loves talking to or about Lewis. But idk Lewis always has a wall up. Oter than George it's maybe Seb that can let him relax be himself and forget about the world that wants to see him fall.

George is showing Lewis what having a good teammate really means and for the first time in his career Lewis is in this position. Yes, George can learn so much from Lewis. But I think Lewis is learning a lot from George as well

[jheselbraum]

Part of why the writing of steven universe is one reason for the common fan interpretation of Rose (that she is, somehow, an irredeemable monster despite the concept of irredeemable monsters being in complete opposition to the show's thesis) is that Rose haunts the narrative so fucking much that it feels like the show... forgot? To include more stuff about the other diamonds being evil? We're shown them doing horrible things a number of times (the biggest being the corruption blast, of course) but each of them only really gets one arc where they do one truly awful thing. White's only directly shown during the final arc of the series, of course, and thus only gets that final arc to show off how truly heinous she is (and boy howdy does she pull out all the stops trying to do this), but we only see Yellow being evil during the cluster arc, we don't really get much more on her aside from that and we don't see her making either it or the other gem experiments. We only see her invading other planets once in the show and even then it's from a distance in the form of a surrealist flashback that focuses more on and tells us more about Pink (as an aside, the entire concept of colonization in the show is often relegated to flashbacks or simply not shown. Gem Colonization, like Rose herself, haunts the narrative but it does it in such a way that looking back its ties and symbolism regarding real world colonization isn't as strong as it is in some other shows, and is arguably barely there at all. It's got the trappings of classic b-movie alien invasion but in a less directly and culturally disruptive way. Human culture largely developed the same as it did in the real world, albeit with a few name changes, whereas in a show like The Owl House even though the dominant culture of the show isn't a human one we'd be familiar with, even casual watchers can tell that witch culture is something that's been deeply disrupted by Belos in a way that perfectly encapsulates the effects of colonialism on the cultures it tries to erase. Belos is also never openly mentioned as a colonizer despite literally being a colonist, and yet he's a much stronger metaphor for a fascist, colonialist, overlord than the diamonds ever were. The colonization metaphor in Steven Universe leans very heavily on a couple of Jasper's lines and the word colonization itself. While Steven Universe very much feels like it was going to have political undertones at some point, particularly in the early Peridot arcs, the story seems to pivot and dive head first into "homeworld isn't the government, homeworld is your parents" somewhere around the 3rd or 4th season. This pivot into the eventual metaphor for the diamonds works better with the central thesis of the show but contributed if not directly caused a lot of fandom bullshit because people were expecting the diamonds to be full on space nazis and not your homophobic grandma).

Blue's big villain moment is her kidnapping Greg. We see her threatening to shatter Ruby in a distant flashback, a grudge that Garnet holds throughout the rest of the show and brings up several times but it honestly comes off as a way to remind the audience that we're supposed to think Blue is a tyrant and not a giant homophobic sad sack too upset over the loss of the gemdaughter she neglected and mistreated to do much. Narratively speaking, she's not presented as being as threatening as Yellow, who herself doesn't get much time to be threatening on screen. And while both Yellow and Blue remain villains until the last episode, throughout the entire Diamond Days arc they're arguably at least trying to help Steven get through the princess gauntlet. Their villainy is distant, and much of what we do see outside their big reveal arcs was directed at Pink.

Meanwhile, most of the other rogues filling out the SU roster are either corrupted gems with little to no agency in the narrative, Lapis and Peridot, or gems who have some bone to pick with Rose and have decided to ruin Steven's day about it. What do we have on Pink? Well she bubbled Bismuth, cracked Volleyball's eye with her trauma beam, left Spinel in the garden, didn't tell Garnet she used to be Pink, didn't tell Greg she used to be Pink (but notably almost did), commanded Pearl not to tell anyone she used to be Pink, started a war, Rose intimately haunts the narrative and she kind of has to in order for that climax where White takes Steven's gem out in a failed attempt at bringing her back to really hit right but like. We got an entire movie where the plot was "Hey Rose fucked up here's a brand new villain that everyone can project themselves onto." Her mistakes are deeply interpersonal ones, not vague science fiction concepts like Yellow, and they're not overshadowed by just how sad she is all the time like Blue, and they're not saved for the very end like White. And that deeply human, interpersonal, relatable evil the other diamonds commit? It's abusing Pink.

I'm going to be generous here and blame part of this on the fact that the show was cut short (I brought up TOH earlier in this post but I'm gonna do it again to mention that what they were able to do with their shortened show is an absolute miracle, most shows can't pull off a near-perfect finale like that at all, let alone on such a strict time schedule. S3 of TOH still felt complete while giving us little bites of what could've been here and there. The last arc of SU felt like they were ticking off boxes in some places, and I'm glad that Future and the movie were able to happen because while the finale would've been serviceable I really think the story needed those last bits for Steven's sake) but god, how this show balanced Rose against the diamonds really distorted things and honestly as much as I love this show it really weakens the overall writing for me.

[ihopesocomic]

Something I appreciate in a weird sense in IHS is that you've established that, on no uncertain terms, Jasper is abusive to Vicious and his other kids. It really bothered me the way MP tried to paint Quickmane as a loving husband and caring father after all the horrible things he'd done. It made his character writing feel extremely inconsistent. People who commit infant genocide with a sick grin then continue to abuse the child they disabled mercilessly aren't typically loving parents and partners on the side. What felt like an attempt to make him a 3 dimensional villain did the exact opposite and made him flat and inconsistent. Jasper, on the other hand, feels like an actually engaging villain. His interactions with those around him a more complex and the way he emotionally abuses those under his control feels much more real and sinister. Jasper just feels generally more real as a villain and abuser, and as awful of a person as he is he's an engaging villain. It also adds a layer of complexity to Vicious because you can tell Jasper's abuse and control plays a part in influencing her treatment of Hope and her other kids. Ultimately her treatment of them is her choice, and I'm glad you're not going to try to write her some sort of redemption arc, but it's a small detail I appreciate in the way you make your characters complex and multidimensional.

Thank you so much! And I have some complaints about sympathetic villains let me tell you LOL At least modern ones. People probably noticed the trend of movies and shows trying to justify the villain's actions. What that usually ends up doing is trying to get the audience to side with the villain instead of the hero and it either ends up with how the audience feels fighting against what they're "supposed" to feel, or the audience has a fucked up view on what counts as villainy and heroism and end up siding with the villain that way lol Its done so badly so often, I just have a hard time picturing professional productions failing this hard in the writing department.

More competent writing would have their audience feel conflicted, like ugh... this guy makes a good point... but he's clearly wrong. Or they make good points, but for all the wrong reasons. And of course there's good examples of how to make a villain a good parent, you can have a complex villain, but it can't be filled with double standards, like oh he actually loves the people he abused. (Which, if it was used to be manipulative, that sort of thing would get called out by someone at some point.)

But some villains don't need depth. They don't need a "traumatizing backstory" or somebody "comparatively worse" or anything. Like okay, I'm still hung up on him killing babies with a smile on his face, but for the sake of argument, did Quickmane decide he was gonna be a "good husband" immediately after killing Powerstrike's first husband, or was it something he had to learn over time? We have no idea cuz Powerstrike "quickly" had his cubs, he is rightfully pissed at Nothing leaving his cubs alone to potentially die, and by the time he gets killed, his character earned exactly zero sympathy from the audience, and the only thing he had going for him was in this one instance where Nothing had to be written to be stupid for the sake of conflict. And its just hammered into our heads that we're supposed to like him because Feather mourns him (and we're meant to like Feather), and Powerstrike later tells Proudmane to honor Quickmane's decision to allow a couple of lesbians live among them lol (And apparently we're supposed to like her because she stood up for Hover, so naturally what she says is /reasonable/sarcasm.) And don't get me started on how manes "have to do horrible things to survive" like what a fuckin joke.

I especially don't care for the trope of "These two people have similar trauma, but one is good and the other is evil!" It's like the concept of being a perfect victim -gags-

In real life, some people are just terrible people. They don't always have bad upbringings. They don't always have missing parental guidance. Heck, a lot of times they aren't even wronged by society. (There almost always seems to be a sense of entitlement tho.) There's no Hollywood-tier story to tell about them, sometimes they're simply just bad people. Parents included. And justifying why they are the way they are just makes it look like you're trying to win people over even tho what they do is not worthy of sympathy. And we wanted to do keep it fairly simple with Jasper. No tragedy, no nothing. He just is awful and manipulative. No matter how many second chances he's given. And I'm sure alot of us have known someone like that. There's no point in over-explaining him. And I'm glad it worked out. People sure do love hating him and he deserves it haha - Cat

[develop-your-villain]

Big OC Question: Thursday edition

Which of your OCs was or wants to be compassionate, but had to change themselves in order to survive?

If they have a redemption arc, do they ever get that gentleness back?

[kitkatopinions]

I feel the need to hear your opinion on this since this is something I've been thinking about recently, and it's how crwby handles complex relationships/abuse in their show... It's infuriating.

I can't tell if they genuinely think they are writing this in a good way or if they know they're half asss-ing it and don't care since the fandom will eat it up anyways. Two big examples that come to mind for me in the last volume are emerald & cinder and whitley & jacques. In both instances the the victim never gets a moment of closure or a moment of breaking away from their abuser, nor are either victims allowed to show any sort of 'hesitance' (for a lack of a better term) related to their abuse.

Emerald (despite being all over cinder before Midnight), just conveniently forgets about her for the finale. Same for whitley. He just completely forgets about jacques (the man who manipulated him from birth) the moment weiss hugs him. On a shallow level, watching a victim pay no mind to their abuser is satisfying, but it being so immediate is just unrealistic and takes away from the pain that we are supposed to think these characters have suffered.

One of the worst things about suffering from abuse is how is affects the victims even when they have left the abusive relationship, but crwby seems to want to erase that completely from characters who should experience that for plot convenience.

It seems like the lesson learned from this is "if you were abused, just get over it and be convenient to our heroes or else!" And it's pretty gross imo.

Thoughts?

I thought that I would put these two asks together and take this opportunity to talk about the abuse victims in RWBY and how they're handled. I've tried to think long and hard about what to say about this, because this is an important topic to me and something that's personal for me. I'm an abuse survivor, but I have a complicated relationship with that part of myself and I'm never really comfortable talking about it much. But despite the fact that I've experienced abuse, I recognize that I'm not a professional sensitivity editor, not a therapist, and not someone who's studied the effects of abuse.

I'm simply writing this based on my own feelings and what I've picked up witnessing other abuse victims discuss their own feelings about abused character. There will be RWBY criticism below the keep reading. Please keep in mind that I'm not speaking for all abuse survivors and am only trying to articulate my own feelings in regards to this issue.

The first thing to note is that there isn't one, correct, right way to write an abuse victim in my opinion. Lots of people have different reactions and responses to abuse, the way they were abused is often also different, causing different reactions.

In the first anon, it's noted that Emerald and Whitley both seem to move on from their abuse quickly and with very little effect on them or their stories. Many abuse victims put their experiences on the back burner or 'in a box' to deal with later, or mask and pretend that they're alright or that their abuse just didn't happen. Some of them let their feelings or their anger simmer over time. There are also abuse victims who do just... Move on with relative ease. I'd imagine that's very rare though. (again, I'm not not an expert or any sort of psychologist.)

In the same way, an abuse victim becoming an abuser in their own interactions is something that one hundred percent happens. Cinder, Salem, Adam, and even Blake and Winter have all acted in abusive ways towards the people around them (though obviously Blake and Winter acted much less abusive than any of the villains mentioned.) It might be very hard for abuse victims to not fall back into those patterns of abuse that they've suffered, especially if they go through it at an early age. I'm not very comfortable talking about my own experiences, but myself and my siblings have all had to fight down toxic, hurtful traits that we picked up either through emulating or through survival. And it's hard to do that. Portraying characters who have been abused that lost that fight and might have abusive tendencies or slip themselves is - to me at least - sometimes even helpful in working through my own feelings.

And there are definitely one hundred percent abuse victims who feel like the way they were treated is deserved, that they 'earned' it, that they must 'make up for it.' Oz is in this category. There's nothing wrong with the concept of a character who feels responsible for their abuser or the hurt their abuser has caused to others, there’s nothing wrong with a character who tends to act as though everything is their fault and who thinks very poorly of themselves.

In theory. But the problem is that in application, there are a lot of pitfalls and struggles that come with writing for abuse victims. Understanding, thoughtfulness, and care are not the RWBY writers’ strength, and any time you portray real life issues that strongly impact the real life people involved in them, you have to be aware and careful with the messages you’re sending. This is obviously very important when someone writes for any minority or oppressed group or the issues that they face, but it’s also important to remember when you write for abuse victims, because they do have stigmas around them and deal with stereotypes and harmful portrayals as well. Let’s look at what I consider some harmful or hurtful pitfalls when it comes to abused characters.

Are the abused characters treated as the victims they are? If the abuse a character faces is treated as comical, treated as unimportant, or treated as deserved, that’s an obvious major flaw. Sad to say, but RWBY does not pass this. On two separate occasions, a character is hit by someone close to them in a way that clearly causes them some pain, with Blake hitting Sun across the face for following her, and Winter hitting Weiss for answering a question incorrectly and again for failing in her training (I tend to be more sympathetic towards Blake’s situation, as it is more gray with her clearly thinking Sun had stalked her which is a clear trigger from her own abuse, but this is an explanation, not an excuse and the fact that it was framed as funny rather than something Blake shouldn’t have done and should apologize for is the problem.) They also do not treat Ozpin like the victim when Qrow punches him in the face, having no one call Qrow out for it and having him never express guilt or try to apologize for it. Yes, I know Ozpin had retreated, but they never showed Qrow even make an effort to get Ozpin to come back so he could apologize. . They also ‘redeem’ Hazel and give him a ‘partially right’ storyline despite his openly beating Ozpin, unfairly blaming him for the death of his sister, and insisting that Ozpin deserved to be tortured. On top of this, despite having been horribly abused by the SDC, Adam isn’t treated with even an ounce of sympathy or understanding and Jacques Schnee and the SDC is treated like a more comical-ish nuisance in season seven and eight. This is greatly flawed. Hitting someone because they lied to you or kept secrets from you is not okay, hitting someone because they said something you don’t like is not okay. This should not be treated as funny and it shouldn’t be treated as the fault of the person who was hit for not being a good enough friend.

Are the abused characters mostly villains, when the heroes have never faced it? The reason for this is obvious, although it’s valid to have a villain be an abuse victim, it’s never alright to villainize abuse victims. Making the majority of your bad guys abuse victims and your good guys have positive relationships is in my opinion, harmful. Point for RWBY, this is not the case for their show. Mercury, Salem, and Cinder on the bad side are all abuse victims with Raven being a possible, but unconfirmed abuse victim as well. While Weiss, Blake, Ozpin, and Whitley are also abuse victims, with Qrow and May both being possible, but unconfirmed abuse victims, and Winter and Emerald are both abuse victims who were on the side of a villain and then turned good.

Is the abuse more severe in the ‘bad’ characters and lighter in the ‘good’ characters? If the abuse that the good guys faced is mostly lighter things and the abuse that the villains suffered is worse and more severe, that might send some bad messages that people who suffer more are automatically worse people, or ‘unsalvageable’ or ‘too broken,’ as opposed to the people that ‘there’s still hope for.’ Unfortunately, I think RWBY is almost a tie? We’ve never seen Weiss or Emerald suffer more than a hit, we don’t know for sure that Whitley or Winter were ever victims of physical abuse. Ozpin and Blake’s abuse is worse, however, as they are hunted down by their abusers who attempt to murder them, make them suffer, and hurt their loved ones. They also were heavily emotionally manipulated and victim blamed by their abusers. And on the villain side, Mercury was beat by his father who hated him and stole his semblance (an extension of your soul, I believe, in canon,) and the abuse led to the loss of his limbs. Cinder was forced to work hard labor by her abusive employer and the ‘stepsisters’ treated her badly, and she was physically electrocuted. We see her abuse extend to Salem using her Grimm arm to hurt her, copying the effects of the necklace. Adam was also a child laborer who worked in terrible conditions who got his face branded by his employer, in the SDC, which had to have been anti-faunus charged due to his bull horns. We don’t see Salem ever physically abused, but know that she was mistreated, isolated, and neglected by her ‘cruel’ father. So it’s not quite a tie, there are more severely abused characters amongst the villains than the heroes, but this is close enough that I don’t consider this much of a strike against them.

In the villains, is the abuse they faced given as ‘reason’ for their villainy? As I said before, villainizing abuse victims isn’t the way to go. A good way to avoid this - I think - is not have abuse be the sole reason for someone’s fall into a life of crime or cruelty. This is something that RWBY... Fails at imo. When showing us Mercury’s backstory, we’re introduced to him through seeing that he had just killed his abuser who cost him his legs, and then gets recruited by Cinder who at the very least likely emotionally and physically abused him the same way she did with Emerald, leading to the conclusion that the only reason he’s there at all is due to abuse. However, he’s just a teen and it’s possible that (like Emerald) he’ll be redeemed. A much more condemning story to talk about is Cinder’s. After people had been clambering for a Cinder backstory since volume three, RWBY finally showed us one. But it doesn’t include Cinder meeting Salem, why she joined her, her proving herself, none of that. Instead, Cinder’s backstory was entirely focused on her abusive situation as a child, entirely focused on her suffering. Cinder killing her abusers and then killing the teacher who decided to arrest her for getting herself out of her abusive situation was portrayed as the only needed backstory, the explanation to why she’s a power hungry, abusive, cruel, selfish, and just plain evil person. ‘She was abused’ is the explanation for why Cinder is where she is and why she is who she is in RWBY. That’s highly problematic to me.

In the heroes, are they “the Perfect, Sanitized Abuse Victims?” As I said before, there is no one type of abuse victim, but if someone has several abuse victims and they’re all either submissive, sad, and self-doubting, but gentle and caring and soft or dropped their abuser like a hotcake and never looked back, never seem affected, never really talk about it after they left... That’s bothersome to me personally. Measuring how RWBY is in this particular subject is... A little harder than I thought it would be. Let’s start by looking at the most prevalent abuse victim, Blake. She’s one of the reasons why this is hard to gauge, because for the first five seasons, Blake was deeply flawed and clearly affected by her abuse in ways that made her ‘unappealing.’ Blake was cynical, stubborn, cold, hard to get to know, she didn’t trust easily, she lashed out at her friends regularly, ran from her problems, made choices for her friends, and had a very negative self image. This didn’t stop her from being a good character and friend with a lot of good sides, too, and she had real, important friendships. This was - to me - a really great portrayal of someone clearly affected by their trauma, with lots to work on, who was still a good person. Some of her faults and problems started to get resolved in a natural way through her journey with Sun in volumes four and five, but when season six came around, many of Blake’s other traits suddenly vanished. No longer stubborn, independent, or cynical, and no longer standing up for herself, or really displaying her temper or hardheadedness or her struggles with getting to know people... Blake became more submissive, sad, self-doubting, but gentle, caring, and soft. Sigh. As the first ask mentioned, Whitley and Emerald both seemed to drop their abusers quickly the second they were removed from their lives again. it’s also worth noting that Whitley was treated with nothing but coldness and contempt by Weiss until he ‘proved himself’ by doing something selfless. Weiss did more or less drop Jacques the moment she left her house in V4, only mentioning him or her experiences when she’s using it to talk about Blake, and when she confronted him again in V7, she did so as someone who is proving she no longer cares. Ozpin seems to be the only one still unable to move on from his abuse and the ‘unappealing’ abuse victim. The first anon is right, there’s something satisfying with seeing an abuse victim move on like their abuser didn’t matter. But when almost all your abuse victims do, and one of the only other ones is turned into a submissive and soft support based / romance based character, and the only really ‘unappealing’ abuse victim is someone we’re supposed to see as ‘gray’... There’s something off there, in my opinion.

Were the abuse victims treated respectfully and thoughtfully by their friends, and if not, were they portrayed as wrong? This probably isn’t something that really even needs an explanation. Abuse victims should be able to set their own boundaries and tell their stories only when they want, when they feel comfortable, Their friends should be understanding of this and not force anything from them. In the case of Blake and Weiss, this is handled really well! Their friends let them talk about their experiences in their own time, and they’re understanding and validate their feelings when it comes up (much more common with Blake than with Weiss, who like I said, seemed to move on from her dad quickly after she left.) However, when it comes to Oz... This is all wrecked. Although unintentional (no one knew how deeply tied up with Salem Ozpin was or how intimate the memories they were going to watch were,) our main characters still forced Ozpin’s deepest and most personal secrets out of him in a fit of upset while he was tearfully begging them not to. He was forced to relive his most traumatic experiences in hi-def with other people watching with him, all his secrets and all his abuse wrenched away from him in what was clearly a very painful way. And then no one showed Ozpin even the slightest bit of sympathy or understanding for what he’d gone through, and no one ever apologized for what they had forced him to relive. In fact, Team RWBY were clearly displayed as in the right, and Oz was displayed as completely wrong for not trusting them implicitly. He had to apologize to them, which they acted begrudgingly accepting of as if they hadn’t shouted at an abuse victim after forcing him to relive all his worst experiences.

Are some abuse victims portrayed as bad for things that other abuse victims aren’t portrayed as bad for? Like the second ask says, in RWBY, Cinder and Mercury are treated as villains for having killed their abusers and Cinder is almost arrested for it, it’s considered a step in the direction of their villainy. But Blake is (rightfully) treated as the victim who was forced, who had no choice, who just wanted the abuse to stop. This is hypocritical and fundamentally flawed. I think this is a reflection of the fact that Cinder and Mercury are meant to be ‘bad’ abuse victim, who had violent tendencies and anger issues, and were already featured as bad guys before their backstory’s dropped, whereas Blake was meant to be a better abuse victim who (by season six) was starting to get written as a soft girl who just wanted to help her friends.

All in all, although there’s some things that I think that RWBY did well enough, I definitely think that I would consider their portrayal of abuse victims to be lacking. This is just my opinion and the way I feel about the writing, but there are a lot of ways to look at it. I think overall, I just really wish that the RWBY writers had been a little more sensitive and spent a little longer focusing on the character arcs involved in abuse recovery. (There’s still a chance for Whitley, Weiss, and Emerald to get more focus in volume ten, though, so long as the writers don’t timeskip!)

[mulderscully]

S"lvershewolf or whatever she has the most unhealthy obsession with ainsley. She said that Ainsley had to do something to teach Malcolm a lesson, and that's why she had to do what she did and that's why it's okay because he had to learn because he's an abuser too. That is what she said. I've never blocked someone so fast because that's what abusive parents say. I've blocked so many people the last week and I rarely block anyone!! Someone said good for her I saw it I know who you mean and I saw them on all these posts harassing people to defend ainsley before I blocked them. Another two people said how mysoginistic it is to call her out and how everyone 'hating' on her is sexist. It's only some people not even that many but it's so gross and triggering to keep seeing so thank you for your post. It's like people who say Martin's a good dad. I love Martin and Ainsley as evil people and they're such good characters for being bad, I can't stand people trying to pretend they're good just so they can feel morally justified of shipping them with other characters or liking them at all. like and ship them as being bad, that's okay! stop making excuses, you can like a villain! Stop trying to pretend all characters you like need to fit what you accept in real life by faking they aren't as terrible as they are because that's so much more untrustworthy then just saying 'yeah he's awful but really good looking and I want to like him but I'm not saying he's a good person.' at least on ao3 it's stories, and when they write victim blaming it's from a bad character. This is their real life selves doing the victim blaming and they're saying stuff like 'no, I get it she's in the right!' And if someone said that about a fic they wrote where bad things happened, where they didn't say 'this is really awful and mean obviously but it's just a story' but they said 'no, this is ok in real life and I defend the bad person's actions and think they're okay' I'd not trust them either and I've never seen anyone do that! that's how strange these few fandom people are. it's especially bad the people who defend by saying Malcolm deserved it or any of the other abuse his parents or team or anyone else have put him through. And I would call him out for abuse that bad too if he did and not watch the show more because he's not an abuser. It's so upsetting to see and he's not gaslighting. they don't understand it's not a term to throw around and they won't listen to victims of it in real life they ignore. I dont trust people so diehard obsessed with a character that they can't acknowledge when they do something horrible and instead say the victim deserved it. Ugh. This was long and maybe made no sense sorry but I needed to say it to someone.

so this was long, but it makes sense and i completely agree with you. i blocked a few people too over this.

to say that malcolm is an abuser is really, really unfair and plain untrue. malcolm does everything from a place of love and trying to help. when he fucks up he tries to make amends. words like abuse and gaslighting get thrown around way too often on here, and in no way do i think that scene is framed in a way that we are meant to agree with ainsley. we're supposed to be on malcolm's side, because this is his show. it's just a fact. i could write an essay about how refreshing malcolm's masculinity is because he so clearly wants to do and be good. he has a naturally gentle heart despite the world trying to break him. it isn't misogynistic to defend him lol

and i agree abt people who like martin or claim him to be a good father/loving. martin does not love malcolm, he wants to control and mold malcolm and malcolm is too good for that. he's too resilent and it will never work. i absolutely enjoy martin, he is funny, charming and cute. he is supposed to be. that's the point. but you have to remember what he is and what he has done. it's all a facade and a show. it's fake. him calling malcolm, "my boy" is a micro-way to have a sense of ownership on him, it's not a pet name.

ainsley, as far as we've seen, is being set up as a a villian. it isn't just that she killed someone, it's the subtle context clues around her behavior. from not caring about victims in order to get a story, to the flashbacks of her childhood mindgames and jessica's fear of her, all leading to her purposely traumtizing malcolm even after he came clean to her. it's all saying, "she is her father's daughter" which honestly had been a really cool twist imo as opposed to dark malcolm, which i don't think makes any sense with who he is.

it isn't misogynistic to say she's being written as a villian. you could say the writing is misogynistic, but i don't think it is. she isn't the only woman on this show. quite frankly i care much more about dani, edrisa and jessica than i do ainsley. if they wrote off ainsley for me to get more dani backstory, i would be competely fine with that.

but honestly, i think... sometimes people get genuinely charmed by serial killer characters through the screen and it's really an interesting phenomenon? as you said sometimes they feel like the character needs to be good to be justified in enjoying them which isn't true. but other times i do think some fall for the character's charisma and facade 😳

[pilferingapples]

Brick Club, 1.4 entire (retro)

Cosette's story often has such a fairy-tale feel, and it starts with this  section (what should I be calling these chunks of text? the X.X sections as a whole, not the X.X.X ones? Volumes?) .

And yet I'm not at all sure why I get that feeling quite so strongly, in terms of narrative technique.  The initial namelessness of the cast, with Two Mothers echoing the way people in fairy tales are Mothers and Millers and Eldest Daughters?  But if Fantine is presented as if she was s stranger to us again, it's not different than what happens with JVJ, and his story never feels this way.  The  Three Sisters made by Cosette, Eponine , and Azelma maybe? That's a very fairy-tale motif indeed.   Something about the way the inn itself is described..?

Augh, I absolutely cannot put my finger on it.   Still,  something about this passage feels as ominous and certain and doomed  as if the inn was a gingerbread cottage and Fantine was vowing to keep silent for seven years while making shirts out of nettles.

Notes on Various Things under the cut:

-  love that the inn sign is really badly made. I've seen several attempts at it in various adaptations and they're always a disaster and it's excellent, I want a collection.

-  the cart is covered with "the same ugly yellow mud sometimes used to decorate cathedrals".  The cart that is A Metaphor for outdated social institutions.  I see you, Hugo. 

- I will FIGHT Hugo about peasant/working class women's clothing in this era, this outfit would be super charming!  But it's definitely more about utility and practical wear than Fantine's old outfits.   There are roughly a billion dissertations to be written about the way that things working class people do and use are , through history, treated as inherently ugly/undesirable, regardless of how much art and beauty might actually have gone into it; I feel like the classism kinda speaks for itself on that.  And then,since Hugo's already drawn a huge Romantic Aesthetic defining line between the Useful and the Beautiful  in this book, I think  I can fairly just quote Gautier's explanation of the issue -- "Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature" -- and leave this for now.  I suspect it will come up again. 

- Fantine has been "marked by irony" --that is, scarred by her time with Tholomyes.  I do like the way  this new line on her face sounds almost like a dueling scar. Fantine's a fighter in her own way!

- ...Tholomyes is gonna make it to at least 1828, meaning he'll outlive everyone we love in this story except Cosette and Marius.    And he'll do it while being  "always a man of pleasure"--I feel like there's an implicit suggestion that Cosette has a lot of half-siblings in the world, all of them with a story as important as hers, if only people would take them seriously. 

- ...as a Somewhat Taller Than Average woman myself, I am rather delighted by Hugo's obvious terror of women who are Not Tiny.   ( And I realize I'm probably Reaching to think that Mme T might have been much happier and more well-adjusted if she weren't trying to cram her giant self into a tiny box of Ideal Femininity?  Maybe she'd have been much more ok if she'd  been able to go into showbiz and get famous as  a weightlifter or something. )

But I do think there's a real sort of sadness to her introductory chapters.  She had an ideal dream for her own life , and it wasn't even a particularly ambitious one--just a love story, really-- and it's fallen through as much as anyone else's hoped-for Ideal in the novel. She's still trying to hang onto it at this point, but we're already given a glimpse of the future  when she'll not only have given up on that ideal, but come to despise herself for it.  This is no way absolves her of her cruelty towards others, but I think she's a more complex villain (and she is  a villain) than she's sometimes treated as. 

- Fantine does try to lie about having been married, here! ...but she also comes right out and tells people she's making a financial Deal with exactly how much money she has, and how much she's able to give over, before it's all settled.  It's  painful how ill-prepared she is to deal with this kind of economic manipulation (and I think "prepared" is really relevant; she's had no one more naturally skilled or experienced to teach her how to handle these things, and business negotiations, which this is, are incredibly complicated) . 

Seeing how much money Mme T gets for Cosette's fine clothes makes me strongly suspect that Fantine was severely underpaid for pawning her own fancy things--unless, and I guess this is possible, her "putting all her finery" on Cosette  is meant to be literal, and Cosette's current clothes are directly made of Fantine's old fancy outfits. 

- Fantine tries to lie about having been married , and the neighbors *see* her crying as she leaves Cosette, and Cosette must have been well dressed and all for that first months or so...but still, everyone believes the Thenardiers when they start telling the town that Cosette is an abandoned, illegitimate child.  They believe it because Cosette looks the part, and Cosette looks the part because the Thenardiers force her into it.  In so many ways, Fantine is never in control of  the narrative about her child, and What People Say about them does indeed matter more than anything she does--no amount of effort, no show of love, can save her and Cosette when everyone else  has decided they're socially damned. 

...but on the less thematic and more practical side,how on earth are the Thenardiers learning about her marital status? Seriously, was this freely avaialable info?  This  issue is something that comes up several times in the novel and I really have no idea what access to people's family records was like? 

- we get our first negative association with a cat , hm 

- ...workers have "generous impulses", huh?  (also I am not at all sure if the corresponding Bourgeois Respectability is meant to be entirely a good thing, but I'm not sure it's NOT , like I would be with Some Writers? Agh) 

- The Thenardiers' animal souls are : 

French: écrevisses 

Hapgood: crab-like FMA: crabs Rose: crayfish  Donougher: lobsters

Google Translate agrees with Rose, but I wonder if this isn't one of those words that was colloquially used to mean a general category of creatures in its day --Things Like a Crayfish/lobster/crab-- and has come to mean something very specific now?

-  ..y'know, what really kills me about Cosette in this every time is how everyone , *everyone*  in this town really either believes she deserves her abuse, or thinks it's BETTER than she deserves.  This is not happening in secret, behind closed doors, in a private house; it's at the public inn and very blatant. Everyone knows she's out in the cold , first up every morning, starving and beaten, in a home where the other kids somehow have more than enough (because their parents steal it from Cosette, directly).  And not one person in this discount Omelas even thinks it's bad , much less intervenes. It's a point in the Thenardiers'  favor, socially.   This isn't just the gamins of Paris being brushed aside,this is a whole town actively citing horrible child abuse as the Moral and Good Option that elevates the people doing it.  

And in this, I suppose, Cosette shares a history with Valjean-- they're  both put through absolutely horrific abuse , which is not just societally ignored, or accepted with jaded apathy ,  but openly lauded as morally correct.   I hate Montfermeil so much-- but Montfermeil is not really different from Arras, or Digne, or any other place where people think that abuse of the "deserving" is a Good Thing.