lilliputian meta on manpain
Jun. 17th, 2011 12:03 pmjust a tiny bit of meta, because it's summer and I'm apparently incapable of writing longform, so I'll just link: so ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thingswithwings made this amazing vid, posted with this accompanying meta, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about manpain since.
Because I am, arguably, a Manpain Queen. Pain makes me happy - in fiction, that is, ahem. My problem with mainpain - and it is a problem, don't get me wrong - is that it actually minimizes the amount of pain available. What if Sha're was taken by the Goa'uld and we got three seasons of Daniel angsting over it AND of Sha're dealing with possession/strugging to hold on to her own subjectivity/becoming increasingly radicalized and badass as she saw more of the world and its cruelties? Instead, manpain structures limit us to half the tasty suffering and weemo.
It's not that I want white dudely protags to hurt less. It's that it'd be cool if we had a more catholic camera in regard to pain in media, that was willing to explore ladypain and pocpain and trans*pain and other such interesting and possibly very moving sorts of things. Not restriction, but rather broadening of narrative focus. And the attendant increase in the gross volume of narrative pain for me to splash around contentedly in!
(I've been trying all morning to think of source texts that actually do this. Um, The Scarlet Pimpernel? possibly Tamora Pierce's books, though she still has issues with chromatic masses and white privileged protags, but the gender stuff is better most of the time. hrm.)
thingswithwings made this amazing vid, posted with this accompanying meta, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about manpain since.Because I am, arguably, a Manpain Queen. Pain makes me happy - in fiction, that is, ahem. My problem with mainpain - and it is a problem, don't get me wrong - is that it actually minimizes the amount of pain available. What if Sha're was taken by the Goa'uld and we got three seasons of Daniel angsting over it AND of Sha're dealing with possession/strugging to hold on to her own subjectivity/becoming increasingly radicalized and badass as she saw more of the world and its cruelties? Instead, manpain structures limit us to half the tasty suffering and weemo.
It's not that I want white dudely protags to hurt less. It's that it'd be cool if we had a more catholic camera in regard to pain in media, that was willing to explore ladypain and pocpain and trans*pain and other such interesting and possibly very moving sorts of things. Not restriction, but rather broadening of narrative focus. And the attendant increase in the gross volume of narrative pain for me to splash around contentedly in!
(I've been trying all morning to think of source texts that actually do this. Um, The Scarlet Pimpernel? possibly Tamora Pierce's books, though she still has issues with chromatic masses and white privileged protags, but the gender stuff is better most of the time. hrm.)