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thelanaon the
genius wrangler trope.
Right now there is this upswing of "genius" shows where the, typically male, character is supposed to be that awesome and that good at what he does that he doesn't have to follow the rules and generally gets to behave like a disobedient child. Maybe it's supposed to appeal to some sort of lost childhood complex in the male viewer.
But this child-running-wild character has to play off somebody. Enter The Genius Wrangler. The Genius Wrangler usually is a good looking, not totally young, but not too old female who is placed in charge of the wild child genius. The genius gets to flaunt the rules while the wrangler's job is to make it alright again and communicate between the genius and the world of real consequences.
The post lays out both the appeals and the annoyances of the trope, and while I'm not familiar with all of the examples, I agree with the ones I recognize.
ivanolix on
the treatment of introverts and socially awkward people in fiction.
But the problem is, TV is written for extraverts. I'm not sure if it's because the writers are extraverted, or the actors, or the showrunners, but introverts on television are treated with an irritating "othering". They're the really "weird" ones, even though introverts are estimated 30-40% of the population. It's not treated as a personality difference, it's treated as the precursor to mental disorders. Which means that, worst of all, shows and fandom alike must "fix" them so that they will be like "everyone else", which in TV terms means going to parties and getting drunk and going from date to date with enthusiasm. As if this is the highest calling a human being can have.
I'm tired of the jokes made at the expense of non-social people. I'm tired at the assumption that if reserved people just "let their hair down" that they would enjoy parties just as much as "normal" people. I'm tired of it being acceptable in pairings for extravert partners to nag their introvert with "Why can't you just have fun?" and not accepting "My job/books/staying home/etc. is fun" as a proper response (it is, damnit). I'm tired of it being considered a problem to want to spend time alone when you aren't ill or depressed.
Yeah, so people started trying to "fix" my interest in books and disinterest in parties, drugs and drinking when I was about 13, and the fact that I'm typically perfectly content being alone for hours and hours is apparently similar to having two heads to many. Needless to say, most "fixing" in fiction rubs me wrong.
prozacpark on
Man Pain.
So what is man pain? It's this tunnel-vision, narrow-minded view of one's own pain that completely overlooks and ignores how others suffer or might even suffer *more* because of the same tragedies. Elektra's entire conflict is about hating her mother, and all she can see is her own suffering, a lot of which is, in fact, in her *head* and not so much real. And her mother? Klytemnestra has *actual* conflict, actual suffering, and actual issues all of which surpass Elektra's, but she can't see that because she's so focused on her own issues.
Fictional men do this. Often. More importantly, narrative pov does this by choosing to focus on men's suffering (at the expense of others'), which always makes me go, "Hmm, but what about the women?" And it's not always the women who get overlooked in this kind of storytelling, but even lesser POV characters. One good example is all the movies where the white people help people of color make some civil right achivement, and the focus is often on how HARD it is for the white people to give up their privilege to help these people out, ignoring the MUCH GREATER suffering of people who have never *had* this privilege.
I need not explain my opinion on the subject, I hope. And it came just a couple days after a
manpain picspam was linked by a listie.