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mintacle · 1 year

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A trend in whump fanfiction that has been bothering me for a while actually is the conflating of morality messages with whump stories.

As a great fan of the catharsis through Whump (Whump is like “Angst with a happy ending” or “extreme Hurt/Comfort”) I’ve been noticing that it greatly irritates me when the character being saved out of the bad situation of the premise has to either prove their moral worth before or after being rescued.

The two characters who get the most whump attention are Tim and Jason, and I want to talk about each of their cases and why implying the need for moral goodness is problematic.

Tim is commonly going to “deserve” his salvation through silently suffering prior to his rescue. These stories enforce the mentality that it is good to not speak up about one’s suffering, that other people will notice if they really love you and that your best hope to be saved is to comply as far as possible with the expectations placed on you, to the point of self-neglect or self-harm.

Jason will commonly “deserve” his rescue through punishment or repentance after the fact. Often he is portrayed to be ashamed of his actions, asking for forgiveness and promising to change his ways. Along the lines of Tim, if silence is rewarded, then Jason’s willingness to speak up about his trauma must be punished. Often the defense for this is to say that Jason has killed people though, and surely we all agree that is just wrong. And indeed, in the real world, we do. But Jason is a fictional character, and his killing is more of a symbolic action for the demand of extreme justice in reaction to one’s trauma than meant to be understood purely literally.

If we suspend our disbelief for the dressing up in a Batcostume and child-soldier-indoctrination of Bruce to be part of the medium, then we ought to understand Jason’s character with the same degree of abstraction. In the real world context Bruce suffers from severe delusions and Jason commits arbitrary murder. Suffice to say, this is not the story these comics are purporting to convey.

However a lot of fandom whump works choose to include an overt or covert moral message within their work. While it is understandable to cathartically want to feel that one deserves to be relieved of one’s suffering, it is troublesome that the implication arises that one ought to deserve it. The truth is that everyone deserves help and support, regardless of whether they in turn act in the ways we think would be best for them. After receiving help, a former victim should be entitled to the same freedom of self-determination as anyone else. There is no moral debt created by the act of having been saved by someone else.

Where Tim is usually the “good” victim and Jason typically the “bad” victim, they both get measured according to the same insidious metric that pervades the western cultural ideal of victimhood. Silence in suffering is expected and rewarded, complying to the demands set by the abuser is seen as more deserving of outside intervention than standing up for oneself and the narrative that being understood and having people agree with you, means that you are right and that you are loved. I find these implied moral conflations to the whump element of the story upsetting as a former victim of abuse.

Because, look, the fact is that you aren’t more likely to be saved irl no matter how good you are. Victims don’t have to deserve help, everyone inherently deserves to be helped out of respect for them as a human being. No strings attached.

#Tim Drake #Jason Todd #fandom salt posting slightly #I'm having more Tim thoughts lately #I still also stand by my opinion that fandom wrongs are not culturally significant enough to be a cause for social campaigns #I don't mean to say this is a huge and relevant issue and we should all be up in arms!!#I'm more interested in just exploring victimhood through the different representations that Tim and Jason offer #and I'm choosing to take fandom works seriously as a focus of analysis #I'm about to apply all the genuine thought that goes into my understanding of Jason to Tim muahahahaha #I'm a ctually having a lot of fun with his character. Not to be too judgy #but its kind of a pity that his fandom treatment is so pervasively superficial and acricature like #caricature*#Keep having fun though ultimately #write whatever fanfic you want. You're not actually hurting anyone tbh #this is very much my subjective opinion #dc fandom #batfam

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mikkock · 5 years

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i'm not the anon, but i do want to hear about your OCs!!!!!!! i'm bad with details but i vaguely remember you had these two gay bois and maybe one was a computer programmer or something?? idk but i think you had an art piece of him at a laptop,, anyway they were v cute

alright since i got a lot of gay boys i had to go searching to make sure i had the right gay boys sdhjfghsgsfg why do i have so many gay boys i do wonder mh

so im thinking u mean vince n xiaoli cuz of that piece of the latter

if not then oops u gon have to hear about them anyway uwu (im putting this under cut cause i tend to speak a lot and i dont wanna clog up people’s feed ya feel) if i got it wrong feel free to scream at me and demand explainations of other characters lmao

its em

Those two got a whole ass story (not a story about ass i just keep putting the word ass everywhere).

They were besties as kids, like, very young kids, talking inseparable besties. But, one day, quite suddenly Xiaoli’s family had to move back to China and so the two were seperated with no ways to contact or even ideas as to where the other was (factor in the fact that they were still very young and all, and if we take time into account that must mean they were in some time of barely no internet for everyone so prolly didnt have even emails tbh). The whole story i got planned for em is about how they grow up, evolve, yet still try to find each other again through the few pieces of useful information that they remember from back in the days. (and since im a sucker for happy ending it aint no spoiler that they do find each other at the end or smth like, pls, id die if they didnt. the important part is the path they took, and all the shit that happens in between ofc)

but who cares bout plot tbh, the important thing is the cHARACTERS (i kno cause my studies include storytelling classes so like bitch, i kno the story is the characters and all that jazz) so lets talk about the boys themselves some more, shall we uwu

Lets start with Vince, who’s the youngest of the two :

first thing i gotta say is that he changed a LOT design wise, like his first looks ?? wack.

who are you i dont know you u look rude im scared what happened to your hair ? so many questions

anyway now he looks like a baby and that’s all that matters.

(that was def done for a school exercise but look how cute he is awn)

He lives in the US, born of Ecuadorian parents. Ever since he was tiny he wanted only one thing, and that is to Win Gold at the olympics (yeah i know, small ambitions, what can i say he’s a realist at heart) for tracks (aint decided yet what exact part of tracks cause im not knowledgeable in track n field and i still gotta do my research boo bad me for procrastinating).

So he runs. A lot. That’s his main thing. A big part of his identity. But not all of it naturally otherwise he’d be a running robot not a guy.

He’s still very young so he can be a tad stupid, naturally. He’s also close to his family. And he big gay. He’s a friendly guy, the puppy type with others. He’s really big on listening to his friends vent out since he believes it does a lot to relieve stress (and ya cant be stressed if you want to perform amazing !!!)

He’s kiiiiind of an overachiever. Just a small bit. He wants to do perfect all the time, so he studies a lot, trains a lot, cleans his room, does his bed, brushes his teeth, he’s a Good Kid. He’s got a really strict timetable that he follows really closely, and in general, tends to monitor his life, maybe a biiiiit too much ? Even leisure time is a specific moment of the day, a set time, nothing more. Then he goes to bed, early, so he can get a full good sleep and go run in the morning. He needs to learn how to chill a bit more. He does have friends to help him get back into a more relaxed mindset sometimes, and once he reunites with his long lost bestie he definetly will have to accept a biiiit of chaos and imprevisible...

Cause let’s talk a bit bout Xiaoli huhuhu...

At first glance you may think “oh, what a reliable serious pretty boy, he seems nice and helpful” but he’s actually a sNAKE. Or more like a fox ? I’m no vet so I’m not sure what animal analogy fits best...

Fact is he IS reliable, and nice, but he’s ALSO a bitch. If you’re pal with him he’ll help you out with your homework, listen to you rant about a heartbreak, be a total sweetheart, but if you’re his FRieND then you’ll get that but under snarky remarks, teasing, and he’ll probably record you when you’re doing ridiculous drunk antics or just tripping over your own feet...

actually he def will do that.

He’s also very expressive and open, he’s one of those characters that i like to use for expression practice because his face will stretch in any possible way. He still keeps secrets tho, mostly he doesnt talk at all about his search for Vince (probably because he’s got the biggest lead, namely having randomly found him once through his running exploits and discovering his past bestie was now becoming some sort of “upcoming athlete celebrity you have to keep an eye out for” or something...)

He actually studies medecine, not computer science but tbh, I could change it in the future, its nothing fixed nor anything too relevant to his character dshsfsgs, and also he IS pretty tech savy so that’d make sense mh.....can you believe im gonna turn into those creators who take “fan theories” and turn them canon smh

He’s quite likes going out, partying and having fun. He values balance between work and fun above a lot of things, and he’s also not much of a big planner.

Also since I mentionned it for Vince, lets make it equal : he’s a HongKong resident, his mum is half Australian so that makes him a ? Quarterie ? Is there a word for half-halfie ? Idk man. And he’s very very bi, and quite chill about it, and quite absolutely into getting dates.

Those two got some potential for me to turn them into a story so i kinda hope i’ll be able to some time in the future, who knows, maybe that’ll happen somedays uwu

#startofamoment

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