Well I can copy/paste pretty easily. It's nothing grand by any means, just some thoughts running around in my head tonight.
So I've started attending the Ivy Tech Anime Club, as it were. Small thing with little official support, but it fits my schedule and gives me something to be socialable about while I'm stuck at campus anyway, even if truthfully anime isn't really something I make a point of seeking out.
So today, before I nicked off to my Microbiology lecture, we watched the first two episodes of a show named Toradora. I'm not going to describe it particularly; maybe you know it, maybe you don't, either way it's on Hulu if you want to go watch it.
Anyway I made a comment to the group, when we took a moment to discuss it between episodes, that I found the female lead character, Taiga, to be...I think I put it "...kind of irritating as hell, though I get the trope; you have to have somewhere to grow from." It's a pretty common thing in anime especially, though by no means exclusively. TVTropes has a pretty good rundown on how the kind of character I identify the female lead to be, a Tsundere, works. (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tsundere… ) If you aren't already familiar with the trope, you might want to take a quick glance.
Now one major problem that I do have with one of the ways Tsundere characters often behave, and the Taiga character definitely does, is that there's a tendency to somehow make abuse of their friend/potential romantic interest 'acceptable', or at least that's the impression I get from certain stories that dip into it.
This is a little troubling to me for the same reason that some have argued that stories such as Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' is troubling: there is a difficult and hazy line between teaching that love and kindness can uplift and heal troubled souls, and teaching that it's perfectly fine to stay in a relationship with an abusive person because underneath it all they love you. We've all seen, I think, times when people (women especially it seems to me) stick with someone because they 'know they can change him', and we've seen how often that leads to misery and even, at times, death.
One reason why I am rambling about this here on FetLife, of all places, is because I think that most of us have an interesting and compelling insight into such matters that some of our more, let us say 'vanilla' associates may not. I mean come on, a whole lot of us are into the various expressions of Dominant/Submissive relationship dynamics and interplay, including what under many circumstances would be genuine, horrific abuse. But for the majority of us there is an extremely important factor that changes the nature of the entire game from maliciously and selfishly predatory to an expression of romance, love, friendship and joy: Respect, and Permission.
That's what really irks me about subjects like this. Because at the end of the day I don't see any particular or inherent problem with a relationship that involves name-calling, roughhousing, ordering about, hitting even...as long as the parties involved are capable and caring enough to fully discuss and agree on what the rules and methods of their game are.
For full disclosure's sake, I am probably in many cases far more submissive than dominant. I like being commanded, I like serving, I like following another's lead. But there is a bit of a list of conditions that have to be met before I will seriously consider giving another person very much power over me.
But many Tsunderes, including Taiga in Toradora, do not meet those conditions. Outright permission is not asked, outright consent is not given. There is affection, there is caring, but without those first factors it is hard for me to consider that there is respect.
And while I enjoy being a Respected and Loved 'Toy', I despise the idea of being just a Toy.
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Topic: Blog Thread 4; Live Free or Blog Hard - 'cos we all like blogging (Read 631441 times)