Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Ryona needs to be completely overhauled
, started by SNESMasterKI on Nov 8th 2009 at 5:09:55 AM
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: A lot of Fetish Fuel examples, started by captainpat on Jun 22nd 2011 at 5:31:48 PM
Cut per Five P.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
So why is this called "Ryona" in the first place? Does the word mean anything?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus. Hide / Show Replies
The term "ryona" comes from "ryonanī" (リョナニー), a portmanteau of "ryōki" (猟奇, "Seeking the bizarre") and "onanī" (オナニー, masturbation).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
GOD WHY?
Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.
I think that this highly Freudian fetish is deeply misunderstood not only by its critics, but by many of its fans as well. Despite appearing to be naught but simple misogyny at first glance, it is actually a rather complex and nuanced mental exercise, incorporating elements of:
Sadomasochism: There's an obvious sadomasochistic edge to it. In Ryona, the masculine is synonymous with violence, and the feminine with the property of being beholden to that violence. The more helpless or imperiled the victim, the more pleasure the audience receives. However, one does not necessarily need to be a sadist to enjoy the genre. One may perhaps try to step into the victim's shoes, thus embodying the feminine/masochistic aspect rather than the masculine/sadistic one. Nevertheless, it is very clear that domination/submission plays a key role in the fetish.
Schadenfreude: The audience may place themselves under the false impression that the feminine represents a state of undeserved protection from harm or loss, whether physical, emotional or financial in nature. Part of the... "enjoyment"... (to use the term loosely) of the genre comes from a perceived reversal of this trend. The key is that the audience must create a fantasy world within his or her own mind where the real-world status quo is either irrelevant or does not exist. The viewer must create the illusion that women are over-privileged and deserve to be knocked down a peg from whole cloth. This is the "negative" interpretation method.
Compassion: The audience may desire to experience strong feelings of sympathy towards the victim. They may wish to view a helpless person being brutalized so that they may picture themselves in the role of a rescuer or savior. They may further imagine the victim turning the tables on their tormentor and getting revenge for whatever act provoked the sympathetic response in the audience in the first place. The fetish may seem bizarrely contradictory in that it can embody unrestrained male chauvinism one moment and then amazon feminism in the next, with the dichotomies reversed at the audience's leisure. The part that most people don't understand about the fetish is that partaking in a sort of postmodern, surrealistic act of contradiction is a very important part of the whole experience. The fetish is - itself - highly contrarian and elitist in nature to begin with. This is the "positive" interpretation method.
Extremes: The audience derives pleasure from deeply-juxtaposed and paradoxical representations of human behavior. Their mind internalizes a complex dichotomy of the masculine versus the feminine, the chaste versus the obscene, the normal versus the abnormal, the real versus the unreal. The fetish necessitates that the audience see things in black and white, with little deviation from this formula. Under those conditions, it is only natural that the "victim" role be played by a woman. To the audience, the feminine represents a state of submission. With a few exceptions (see "Compassion" above), attempting to reverse this trend by putting a male individual in the victim role is like pulling a block out of the foundation that the fantasy is built upon. The audience's meticulously-built Jenga tower comes crashing down all around them. It's important to keep in mind that the feminine and masculine are reduced to mere symbols under the precepts of this fetish. The victim and tormentor are not "persons". They are far too two-dimensional for that. Rather, they are simply viewed as manifestations of the audience's own psyche.
Exoticism: The audience has tricked themselves into believing that they're the only ones in the world who possess this fetish/complex, disavowing the existence of like-minded individuals who possess it also. An analogy would be a wealthy millionaire who purchases a Ferrari, convincing himself of the delusion that he is the only "real" Ferrari owner in the world and that all others are illusory. Ryona is likewise highly solipsistic in nature, exploring and deconstructing the very nature of gender roles in fiction. This is a key element of the fetish; one must constantly be in a state of denial about real-world circumstances, constructing deep fantasies about gender relationships that may or may not have a basis in fact.
Ryona isn't so much a genre or a trope as it is a very specific way of interpreting certain events in a fictional context, thus deriving emotional or sexual stimulation from them. It is possible to perceive elements of this fetish or complex in works of pretty much any genre that combines physical conflict with female characters. Books, superhero comics, monster movies, exploitation flicks, video games, tokusatsu shows, etc.
Manifestations of this fetish or complex could perhaps be diagnosed as a form of neurological or psychological disorder, depending on whether or not the individual who possesses this complex suffers any ill effects from it. It could be most closely linked to sadistic or masochistic personality disorders, or even gender identity disorders. The conditions and disorders that underlie Ryona as a fetish may become pathological if the audience extends their simplistic perceptions of fictional characters to the real world (i.e. "It's okay for me to hurt this person because they're not real. They're in my head.")
So, when you tell a Ryona fan that he's sick in the head and that violence against women is commonplace, now you know why he (and it's usually a he) is so quick to lash out in response. He doesn't WANT to think that he's experiencing something common. Real-world violence against women does not interest him or dissuade him in the least. It may even repulse him. Rather, he simply wants to maintain the illusion that violence against women is uncommon and that he is experiencing something exotic and unusual by partaking of fiction that contains violence against women.
Don't take my word for it, though. I'm no psychologist. This is just my own little attempt to analyze the genre as deeply as I can and clear up any misconceptions that some people might harbor over it.
Edited by TrainDodger Hide / Show Replies
The one thing that is perhaps worth noting is that works revolving around ryona are always a work of fiction. Regardless of whether the work in question is a recording of a video game, animated footage or live-action footage, nobody is harmed or killed in real life in order to produce it.
I wouldn't agree completely about the element of exoticism. With enough Googling, one can find a number of image boards and sites revolving solely around ryona. In addition, traces of it can be found in almost any work of fiction, not just in works of fiction with it as the main genre. There is nothing exotic about it.
Edited by Androgeos
I suppose what I meant to say - without using so many words - was that this particular trope can usually be interpreted in one of two ways; as a sadomasochistic fantasy, or as a device for cheaply invoking pathos. Sometimes, the line between those two can become blurred. An author may intend to simply torture their characters, or they may wish to elicit sympathy from the audience. Regardless of their intent, the results usually speak for themselves.
It might be a form of overcompensating for a perceived lack of masculinity, though that'd apply mainly to those who make MUGEN Ryona vids and as a result tie into the very masculine fighting game culture. (Though the victims are usually from all girl fighting games like Arcana heart or a fighting version of some popular female non fighting game character)
At the risk of kicking up an Internet Backdraft, might I suggest we nuke this page? It's such a small and specific subgenre that it really should be a part of the Gorn page. Also the whole description is quite biased and smacks of white-knighting.
(And before y'all start dogpiling, no, I'm not a fan of Ryona, in fact I find the genre to be repulsive. However, TV Tropes is not meant to be a soapbox.)
Edited by thesunisup Hide / Show Replies
You can try it on the Cut List if you like, but I doubt you'll get anywhere. The Other Wiki recognizes this as being a valid sub-genre. The Powers That Be would consider it madness that they define something that we don't.
See you in the discussion pages.
I second a clean-up of this page. It just sounds all together mean spirited towards people that like this sorta thing when I read it.
This page definitely needs a cleanup. It's simply not accurate. Ryona is about a lot more than people making videos of female video game characters getting killed and brutalized.
There are entire video games dedicated to letting the player see the female (usually your character!) get graphically brutalized, raped, and or killed. There's also manga artwork as well, apparently. About the only thing that I can see that makes the whole thing forgivable is that is is confined exclusively to fictional characters, as far as I know.
This is a very small and typically independent subset of the industry, however. Claiming that, for example, Soul Calibur is a ryona game is just plain silly. Games in wide release may provide material for these videos, but it would be incredibly difficult to argue that it's the creator's intent.
One Foot In Fairyland
Half of this page seemed like it was written by someone who thought people who liked watching fictional girls be knocked out should be put into a bin with child molesters, and the other half felt like it was written by someone who was jacking off as they wrote it.
Rewritten as clinically as I could manage, and the examples culled and organized (I don't think we need a notarized list of every ryona video ever).
Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity.—Niles Crane
The page was previously flagged for Five P review with the rationale: It's a page describing what is essentially a very violent form of DIY fetish porn. I have heard that the term is sometimes used fairly broadly to encompass catfight videos and the like, but apparently the true definition literally just refers to videos of female characters dying horribly framed in a sexualised fashion, and that is what the article describes. Why is this still on the wiki? and the disposition was: It's a porn genre, we don't need cataloguing those.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman