Originally Posted by
JX Valentine
Because a lot of this does have to do with your idea, I'm just going to put my response here. If you'd like to VM or PM me about anything else, feel free.
You said this:
Over the course of the conversation, we've talked about what you meant by it. My initial response to it was that audiences don't really connect to female characters more than male characters; they connect to both genders equally the same because it depends on how the characters are actually written.
You responded by saying that your character isn't a Mary Sue. I replied by saying that I wasn't calling your character a Mary Sue. I was saying that female characters aren't exactly readily embraced by audiences and that, actually, they're very likely not to be embraced. I also included a comment about how no one would assume that what you're doing is rape fic, which started a completely different conversation. There was also a bit of commentary that themes are fine so long as you put a lot of thought into what you were doing, and I felt like the issues you were going to present in this fic were going to be trivial compared to, say, bullying or abuse.
You replied to that by saying females get more sympathy towards certain issues than males. I replied that, sure, they do in certain situations but not in others and that it takes a lot of thought to tackle the issues where they do. I repeated what I was saying earlier that a female character doesn't automatically get more sympathy than a male in every situation (be it from the audience or within their own universe), so if you're going to tackle those issues, do your research and choose your subject and how you tackle it carefully (i.e., “it depends on what you talk about and how you talk about it”).
You responded with a list of topics you're aware of. I replied with, “Yeah, that's nice, but you still have to be careful with how you deal with it in a fanfic.”
And that's how we got here.
Tl;dr, you started off by saying that a female character is more sympathetic to the audience than a male character, and that was in response to a suggestion someone made to your idea. I was trying to say that that wasn't true and that it really doesn't matter what gender your main character is so long as you write them well, so you don't have to automatically throw out a suggestion like “you could always write about Ash instead of Dawn since you want the Ash-Paul dynamic here.”
And that, yes, is related to your idea because I've been trying to tell you this entire time that the gender of your character most likely wouldn't matter that much according to the idea you've presented in this thread. Audiences don't connect more to male or female readers, and while there are issues that you could bring up that would depend on the gender of the character in question, you haven't really indicated that you're going after any of them. Your fic isn't about double-standards as far as we (everyone else in this thread) can tell. It's just about a girl who's constantly being stopped from winning by a guy. If your fic idea involves a rather abusive boy actually hurting or bullying a girl, then sure, that theme of "guys shouldn't hurt girls" ends up getting brought up, but the thing is that abuse is gender-neutral. People already understand that guys shouldn't hurt girls. It's the message of people shouldn't hurt people that folks have a difficult time understanding, and luckily, that's a message that you can explore without forcing your characters to be one set gender or another. As in, you can have a male lead if you wanted to. In fact, if you had a male lead getting abused by a female, you'd actually have a lot more deep issues to explore than you would in a story about a female lead and a male abuser.
Put it this way. Imagine that you're white, and you go to a public area where there's people of all races. Say the N-word and see how long it lasts you before someone tells you you're being racist. It's the same principle here. There are just certain things you do not talk about because it's hurtful towards other people.
Also, if you're saying I'm angry... I'm not really all that mad. I'm just saying if you're going to be in mixed company, you'll want to know that not everything is going to be okay to talk about. Or at least I'm explaining why people would get pissed off at you before they get pissed off at you.
Well, if you're going to continue to “talk about rape casually” without understanding that, yes, it can hurt someone legitimately, then yeah, people are not going to think you care. I'm sorry to put it like that, but I'm not quite sure how to make it any clearer that what you say can actually hurt someone pretty badly, even if they don't tell you. I also don't know how to clearly explain that there are people out there who are very vocal about the issue of rape (to the point where they make me in my current booze-less and caffeine-free state look like Little Miss Sunshine). That kind of thing legitimately shuts the people with triggers down because it brings up painful emotional trauma for them. It's like telling someone with depression to go kill themselves because you think it's funny or calling someone who's autistic retarded. You've got to be conscious and respectful of other people in order to interact with them because you have no idea if what you say is actually going to hurt someone.
And for the other types of people -- the type that I was talking about originally -- they just exist. You can't flip out and say "omg I don't understand why must they be soooooo meeeeeean" because... that's just not the mature thing to do. Yeah, I know, neither is arguing on the internet in the first place, but what I'm saying is if you want to get along with someone, you've got to make an effort to understand and accept other points of view. Rather than closing your mind off to everyone and saying "I'll just keep on doing this thing that I'm getting called out on" after you've been told it's inconsiderate, make an effort to figure out why people are telling you those things. Do your research. Don't blow off other people's opinions just because there's multiple sides to an issue. If you show that you're open-minded and flexible about things, then it's easier to accept the main reason why I'm telling you this: because these people exist, and you just have to deal with them. At the risk of being sappy, you can't change them; you can only change yourself. Blowing them off is not the answer. Trying to understand what they have to say and being willing to adapt when they call you out on something is. That's how you integrate into different communities without drama.
Granted, I'm not saying go overboard with your self-censorship. If you want to call someone a *****, by all means, go for it. I'm just saying that human interaction depends on both parties being aware of the fact that what they say can hurt someone before they actually say it. It relies on, well, a sense of empathy.
That's... not really much of an excuse for hurting someone else, sorry to say. If I punched you in the face right now (if we were face-to-face) and said that it's okay because people joke about punching other people in the face all the time, would that make it okay to you? That's the main argument against rape jokes. But like I said, there's crazier people, so one of the things you have to learn is the difference between people who are legit defending folks with triggers and people who are legit crazy. That's something you can only learn if you do your homework.
You're in public, bro. Saying things on a forum is exactly like going out on a busy street and shouting your opinions to everyone who passes by you. Freedom of speech on the internet has the same rules as human decency off it. Don't say anything that hurts anyone else, and joking about rape when there are actual rape victims out there would be saying something that hurts another person.
Or in other words, put it this way. By your logic, I can call you a moron and a jerk if I thought you were either. Except I won't because I know that would hurt you (besides getting me in trouble as well). It's the same principle. Don't joke about rape when you don't know who's reading unless it's completely and unquestionably okay for me to call you a moron. (Again, I'm not saying you are. I'm just using it as an example.)
But you're completely okay with triggering them and trivializing what they went through by joking about it, though. :/
Remember that an apology only gets you so far if you're not going to change your behavior to avoid doing it again. I mean, this whole thing is sort of like what would happen if I punched you in the face, apologized for it, and then promptly punched you in the face again.
Well, then you'd get why it's not okay to bring up someone else's emotional trauma and joke about it where they can see it. I mean, if you're not even willing to talk about what happened to you in front of all of us, why do you think it's okay to talk about what happened to someone else as if it's a joke?
I never said that I'm looking down on you. I said that what you're doing doesn't strike me as funny because it's a personal form of humor to you. You're very concerned about what you think, but you don't really think about how others will react to what you have to say. That's not going to fly for everyone on the internet because a lot of communicating online hinges on making sure what you have to say gets across properly thanks to an inability to rely on tone, body language, or familiarity with the people on the other end of the conversation. I'm also not saying you're a newbie to the internet; rather, I'm saying that the reason why we're having all of these conversations is because it seems like you're forgetting the people on the other end of the line aren't you. That's why I didn't find your statement funny, that's why you have to be careful about talking about rape, and so on and so forth.
Like I said... *motions above* A lot of it is just that you'll need to stop and think about what you're saying and who you're saying it to before you end up in these kinds of situations where you run headlong into drama. That's just how communication works, especially on the internet.
I don't mean to be mean about it. I'm just saying, y'know, the internet runs on empathy. It really does.
That being said, yes, please stop. Please stop hurting others by joking about rape, and please don't use random humor. I'm legit asking you nicely to be careful about what you say to other people, in part because I hate seeing other people get triggered. The other part is because, well, I'm just trying to warn you that there are all kinds of people on the internet, so you have to be conscious of what you say because they're people. While I know you've said that people you know offline are okay with rape jokes, but I'm sure that you just can't say anything you want to them. It's the same thing online too. Just because you don't see someone online doesn't mean you can't hurt them -- or they can't try to hurt you in response, either. If you don't want to change yourself for the consideration of other people, at least do it to protect yourself from their responses.
It's sort of funny, though -- and I have to point it out right now -- that all of this started when I told you that you don't have to worry about people calling you out for writing rape fic because you're not writing rape fic. I was actually trying to help you at that point by agreeing that there are crazy social justice warriors on the internet (when I thought that was what you were talking about) and that you don't have to be afraid of them because if they said you were writing about rape or something darker, then they had no idea what they were talking about.
The rest (including this post) is an attempt at trying to explain to you how other people's minds work because you're going to run into a whole host of problems if you don't check yourself before you head into other communities.
Which means we circle back to the original reason why I brought it up (which goes back to your idea): because I didn't see the connection. That was a genuine question that I asked earlier, and you responded with, “Lol it was just a joke.” Well, if it wasn't, then why didn't you say so earlier? It would have added to your idea and brought to light some issues that would have definitely been interesting to talk about in relation to your idea. There's a lot of themes built into the genderbend subgenre (just as there are issues built into the transformation fic genre), but those aren't always the same as the issues brought up in a non-genderbend fic that involves a girl. If you wanted to talk about genderbend fic on a serious level by connecting it with your idea, that would have actually been a rather fun conversation to have.
Except for the fact that, again, you need empathy to pull it off. If the other party doesn't get your humor because it's random and personal to you, then they won't find it funny. Communication – and humor – is a two-way street. You can't just say things out of nowhere and rely on irrelevance to get a laugh because, well, you've got to think about the other half of the conversation too.
Likewise, there's just some subjects that you don't joke about with strangers. Not unless you're prepared to deal with being called out on something.
Edit: I'd also like to point out the irony in the fact that your fic is about acceptance of criticism, yet when you receive criticism ("be careful with how you say things to other people" and "gender probably won't matter as much in this fic"), your reaction is, "LOL OMG IT'S JUST A JOKE." That... would not be an example of accepting criticism.
Look, if you want to talk about the issues in your fic, feel free. I've been trying to get you to talk about the issues you've been implying all over the place (issues that are apparently dependent on the gender of your character, among other things) for several posts now, but you'd rather talk about how I don't get your fic or how I've been talking about something completely different apparently. So, I'm just going to straight-up ask you. Are you still considering that idea, and if so, what specific issues are you trying to explore besides the acceptance of criticism? (As in, what issues make the genderbend fic relevant, and what issues make it impossible to switch out your character for someone else/a guy?)
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