Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

Exactly.

Which makes leaning into the well-worn tropes of the noble sacrifice and hard choices that just so happen to include a woman dead so the man can earn badass, respect and/or sympathy points with the audience (revenge arc optional)...

A problem with real world impact. Since jerks will actively use those tropes to defend their own actions when they hurt people in real life.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 11th 2019 at 5:04:39 PM

Talking about that...anyone remember's Linday Ellis' Game of Thrones video and the part where she argued that SPOILERS.

Jon killing Daenerys was apologia for Domestic Abuse?

I will be honest. I was repulsed at Lindsay comparing killing a mass murderer with Domestic Abuse. It was like...What the heck? I knew her point, but like...Gosh, Fridging are bad but like...if anyone acted like a abuser, it was Daenerys.

The allegory falls apart when you consider that the power-dynamic in the relationship favors Dany. Danaerys has Drogon, the Unsullied and Dothraki behind her. She has shown herself capable of acts of cruelty. She has spent time trying to cut Jon off from his family, and in the final episode she gives a speech where she implicitly threatens their lives (by promising to march on Winterfell).

The interesting thing about the "domestic violence" interpretation of that scene is that it actually does makes sense, but only if you see Dany as the abuser and Jon as a victim acting to defend the safety of his loved ones.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 11th 2019 at 11:27:04 AM

This whole argument about real life happenings and fiction... I agree that a writer can, indeed should, pick their topics and plot points, and take care. It's also dependent on what you think of fiction: some say it should mirror real life accurately, with warts and all (by which some seem to mean especially the bad sides), some say creating fiction to be not what reality is but what we wish it could be is also admirable (to paraphrase Tolkien, if a soldier is captured, can escape not be considered his duty?)

Dany had a bit of Entitled to Have You going on in that last episode, what with the way she insisted it was their destiny to rule together.

I mean she has had an entitlement thing with ruling all along, you could say. But it does make sense she would after spending her first 10+ years* hearing all along how the throne was her family's and she was to be queen.

[[*]]I don't remember her age, only that she was aged up in the show for the purpose of the Drogo marriage probably.

Edited by akanesarumara on Sep 11th 2019 at 6:51:02 PM

I suggest people try out Anita Sarkesian where she talks about the extensive history of Hollywood and video games that men are forced by outside circumstance to Mercy Kill or otherwise murder the women in their lives. It's a disgusting pattern that Jon and Daenerys fall into. It's also one that has evolved from honor killings and has been analyzed in things like Dracula. You know, with Lucy being "tainted" so of course they must kill her to save her soul.

Let see:

M84:hela Is a cartoon villian, barely rising about stephenwolf for Being Hammy. And Ragnarok does screw Is narrativos by karma Houdini both Odín and valkire.

Tobías:I disagree with it, because it force the narrative to stick with one thing or another to satificie exceptation about something and cómic books are really bad about it.

Setting a sacrifice and then no doing it isnt Being power fantasy, Is a cop up.

Protagonist and Charles: the problem Was at that moment, everyone was excepting Hawkeye to die, there Is a reason Ao U subvert that and killing him Is lame.

As much as I agree with Widow as the choice and feel that it is in its own way empowering, doing something just to subvert expectations is total bullshit. Hawkeye being the expected death doesn’t mean the narrative should be changed negatively so as to ensure a surprise.

If you want to see what happens when creators care more about doing shinny twists that subvert expectations look at the last season of game of thrones.

Which doesn't change the fact that she's imperialism embodied. So she's not just a flat generic character. There's a point to Hela besides giving the heroes a Big Bad to fight.

I mean, for a chararter stand point, it suit nat better because as the pragmatist who Is finding Is own path sacrifice Is quite a peak.

But problem here Is not a chararter problem but a gender one.

And Gámes of thrones isn a good example since for all it acused of subversión for their sake, it also end indulging fan exceptations at the drop of a hat: Tyrion Being hand, cleanegebawl or give the chararters stupid plot armor (Ramsey for example or almost everyone when finding the zombie)

"the problem Was at that moment, everyone was excepting Hawkeye to die, there Is a reason Ao U subvert that and killing him Is lame."

That is a super stupid reason. Popularly regarded twists aren't popularly regarded just because they're unexpected. A snowman

Also, here's another thing the hypothetical no-sacrifice could have been called: not letting the heroes succeed the same way the villain has because indulging in the villain's tactics usually isn't a good thing.

And Ronin wouldn't have worked because...

"Popularly regarded twists aren't popularly regarded just because they're unexpected"

But in part because it is unexpected, and letting the normal guy die, specially to fuel "he left family behind" angst is pretty damn tired a this point, I hate they kill is family in endgame as just more angst fuller.

And mostly because they’re good twists, same reason most events in fiction are still remembered.

Like, a snowman popping up in the desert to punch you is a twist because you didn’t expect that, did you? It’s also a garbage one because it makes no goddamn sense and adds nothing to the narrative.

Edited by fredhot16 on Sep 12th 2019 at 8:09:02 AM

I stand that the idea of the heroes not taking a Third Option was good. Widow.even was a good.sacrifice.

The issue was that she was the only OG female Avenger and that she basically died before she could get her solo movie.

@M84: Yeah

@Charles: I get that, but honestly, there's a limit to that and when you switch a power dynamic where Daenerys is clearly the abuser in order to paint her as a victim of Domestic Abuse (with a added plus of mockingly repeating Abuser Stock Lines—thanks for the bad memories Lindsay), you have crossed it.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 12th 2019 at 10:28:30 AM

That's one of the uncomfortable things: often, an abuser is also abused... and/or visa versa. :/

Lines are rarely clear. Fiction likes white hats to be white and black hats only black, but, um. No.

However, the TV series did nobody any favours when portraying the tipping points and complexities.

The issue is her attempt of.portraying Jon as a abusive partner.

When Daenerys was the one threatening his family and trying to cut him from them (AKA Standard Abusive Partner behavior).

It felt like Victim Blaming.

I think Hela got a few lines that talked about imperialism but no deeper analysis.

I do hope the MCU continues the trend of giving Susan Storm Adaptational Intelligence.

Colonialism is bad.

There's not really a lot of analysis to go into. Killing people, driving them off their land, and taking all of their stuff is really, really bad. It's one of the most unambiguously evil recurring behaviors in human history. What's there to really talk about?

The main point of discussion was Thor realizing that Asgard was an imperialist state. It's something he was blind to for his entire life until Hela opened his eyes to the ugly truth of his nation. Thor's spent his life going "WE'RE GOOD GUYS!" while sitting on a throne of blood and skulls, and he never really thought too much about it. But, as Hela points out, "Where do you think all this gold came from?"

And that is, itself, more of a lightswitch revelation than anything else. Once he's made that connection. Like. What else is there to discuss? Some things are complicated and warrant a prolonged debate. "Imperialism: should we?" is not one of those things.

I mean. It's not by accident that they literally picked the Goddess of Death to embody colonialism. It's about as on-the-nose as that time Magic The Gathering depicted colonialists as literally being vampires. It's really not a complex topic.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 12th 2019 at 12:04:25 PM

Its colonialism without any actual interaction with the victims. Which I argue means it really is a surface reading of it. Asgard conquered and looted a few other countries/planets and Thor finds out they took a bunch of gold from them. The fact that it is purely how the conquerors/colonialists deal with it rather than the native peoples really does undermine any point. Also, where are the colonies themselves? What happened to them? Did they get abandoned or are they still out there oppressing?

Its akin to doing an all-white movie about a woman coming back from Africa and taunting her all-white family about how they made their money via stolen oil lands. Except we don't even know that much as there's no historical context for Asgard's misdeeds. Is it when Odin wiped out the "Dark Elves"? Is junk planet inhabited by the worlds conquered by the Asgard and a planet of refugees? Was it the Frost giants?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 12th 2019 at 11:07:14 AM

Going to agree with Charles' talk. Plus, Odin didn't stop the invasions by his own decision? That ranks him pretty good as.far Colonialists go

After ordering them in the first place. And then trying to cover them up and pretending they never happened, to the point of literally burying the evidence by shoving the bodies of the soldiers who died fighting his wars deep in forgotten crypts.

Also painting over the mural depicting Asgard's true history.

It's blatant historical revisionism and whitewashing.

Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2019 at 2:21:40 AM

That's still honestly pretty good as far colonialism goes.

Yeah, it says a lot. Thought when you have entities living long lives...dunno, I tend to apply different moral rules.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 12th 2019 at 1:23:22 PM

Given her talk of drowning entire civilizations in blood and tears, I imagine the subjugation of the Nine Realms was on par with the Great Crusade from Warhammer 40K in terms of bloodshed.

Hela's brutality in the movie highlights just how awful the imperialist mindset actually is. As that Mary Sue article points out, it's probably not a coincidence that this movie had an indigenous director.

Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2019 at 2:34:23 AM

I like the concept of discussing Colonialism in Thor Ragnarok, but it does feature a bit of a odd mismatch with previous films. The first Thor is immensely enhanced by the colonialist message, as the film retroactively gives a lot more depth to Laufey and Odin. There's particularly one scene near the end of the first movie where Odin and Thor talk about being a king and Thor says Odin's the perfect King, and you can't help but retroactively interpret Odin's forlorn silence in response as a form of regret and remorse on his part after being told of his alleged greatness as a King.

The wonkiest bits are in The Dark World, where the Asgardian Empire did more or less unambiguously protect the nine realms from a invasion, twice and also in Infinity War in which we see Eitri tearfully ask where the Hell was Asgard when it needed them (something foreshadowed in Ragnarok where Thor points out Loki's absentee ruling of Asgard left the other Realms completely unprotected). This paints a more gray (and slightly confusing) image of the colonial empire of Asgard.

But all of that aside, I quite like Hela as a female antagonist personification of colonialism. I think Ant-Man and the Wasp's Ghost was another solid MCU villain with a goal entirely unrelated to her "femininity" and with the added bonus of being a much more nuanced character to boot.