Context is Important: The Fires of Friendship · 9:33pm Oct 1st, 2014
A followup to my last blog post about disempowerment, which has since been rewritten.
If you recall, I used this image to illustrate disempowerment:
When I made that blog post, I did, in fact, know that it was related to a fanfic, so I went over to the story - The Fires of Friendship - and took a look at it. Its cover art depicts Rarity very differently:
Here we have a great example of contrast - in one image, we see Rarity cowering as the timber wolves are closing in around them, with only Applejack protecting her and their sisters.
In the other image, we have Rarity and Applejack standing side by side, warding off the timberwolves, much as we would expect out of the characters.
So, classic case of disempowerment, right? Rarity, a strong female character, is being depicted as a cowering damsel in distress in one, and as someone who will defend her sister from monsters in the other. The later, obviously, much better fits with her character as it was presented in the show, and it seems strange to depict Rarity as a damsel in distress given the fact that she is very willing to kick manticores in the face.
Why am I making this post?
I didn't do the research. I didn't read the fanfic that the art was related to, and as a result, I misunderstood what the art was depicting, why it was depicting it, and indeed, the order of events.
Harwick, the creator of the original cover art for the story, noted that there was a specific context to it. In the story, Rarity has a deathly fear of fire from an incident in her childhood. In the climax of the story, Rarity, while confronted by timberwolves and surrounded by the flames, overcomes her fear of fire and joins Applejack in defending their sisters.
Context is always an important thing to keep in mind. I had never read the fanfic in question; indeed, I would wager that, given the response that people gave to my post, no one who read my post had ever read this story. And thus, it took until Harwick, who drew the original cover art for the thing, came across my post somehow to point out that the image made sense in context.
So I started writing this post to discuss the importance of context when I realized, I still hadn't read the story in question. What if I was wrong? What if the story really was disempowering? After all, context is important.
This meant that I had to do what I had failed to do before: read the story.
And so, I read it.
So, let's talk about this, shall we?
The Fires of Friendship
The story starts off with a series of flashbacks between the past and the present. Rarity and Applejack are discussing the issues their two little sisters are facing; Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had, apparently, had some sort of fight with each other. In the story, Applejack and Rarity had once been friends when they were younger before they, too, had a fight, and Applejack accidentally burned down Rarity’s boutique by kicking over a candle – a fire which, we are told, gave Rarity a deathly fear of fire.
Now, right off the bat, this sent up a red flag in my head. We have this story tell us that Rarity has a deathly fear of fire… by telling us that she has a deathly fear of fire in dialogue. The problem is, this is something of the crux of the story – Rarity, allegedly, fears smoke and flame, but the story actually does a very poor job of selling the setup to this plot point to us. We have Rarity telling us at the start that she’s afraid of smoke and fire, but the line is weak and doesn’t really sell to us the idea that Rarity is scared of such. Worse still, when we see the flashback to the scene, and Rarity is carried out of the burning building on a stretcher, she doesn’t seem panicked at all.
Why is this important? Why is this a problem?
Well, as I noted, context is important.
Disempowering a character is always treading on dangerous ground; it is very easy to upset people with a depiction of disempowerment. And it is very easy to be lazy about it. In this case, the story didn’t actually do a very good job of selling the disempowerment; Rarity says she’s afraid of smoke and fire, but the story only really SHOWS us this, only really tries to sell this to us, at the climax, at the point where she IS disempowered.
And disempowering it is.
Here is all the setup we get for her fear of flames:
“And I have been terrified of smoke and flames ever since. Even so, it was never really about the fire, was it? When it happened, we had already lost so much. Do you remember when we first met, Applejack?"
The dialogue comes early in the story and is a fairly throwaway line, though we already know from the very beginning of the story that it is going to involve a fire.
Here is the actual disempowerment:
The fire and the monsters together were too much for Rarity. Of all possible things, this was how it was going to end - with a fire, and the gnashing of sharp teeth. She curled up in terror, thoughts and memories of smoke and flame coming to her unbidden, scenes flashing before her eyes.
*******
Rarity had earned her cutie mark - three beautiful blue diamonds - and she had heard that Applejack finally got hers as well - three bright red apples. She longed to see her friend, but the gulf between them was so wide, and so filled with recriminations and cruel words, it seemed that there was no way through.
Perhaps she could write a letter? Of course! That would make reconciliation far easier than awkward face-to-face encounter. Rarity took up quill and began to write. Every few minutes, she would cross out the text she had completed and start anew. Hours later, when she finally let exhaustion lead her off to sleep, she was surrounded by empty inkwells and heaps of crumpled parchment. There was no letter.
*******
For the third night in a row, she had awoken from the same nightmare. Smoke obscured her vision and burned her lungs, walls of flame hemmed her in, and there was nowhere to run. Rarity hated it when the nightmare came. Sometimes she would have it every night for a month. It had been this way for years. She would do anything to make it stop, if only there was a way.
*******
Rarity screamed, covering her eyes with her forehooves.
And here we have it; more than five thousand words into the story, and we have the writer trying to justify Rarity’s fear… after they have her cower in fear due to the “fire and the monsters”, the latter of which, I’ll note, she has shown that she can face down when necessary.
The thing is, there are ways of writing this story and selling it to us. Selling us a character’s fear of fire is something which can totally be done. But the story failed at this.
There are a variety of problems here.
The first is that the story TELLS us that Rarity is scared, but it doesn’t really SHOW us that Rarity is scared. I don’t believe it. Why is she scared? Her house burned down? Okay, so why weren’t we shown her panicking in it? Why weren’t we shown her stuck inside, trapped, unable to escape? She doesn’t even deliver her line with a shudder. No, we’re not shown anything. Had someone lit a candle or something earlier in the story, or had she taken extraordinary precautions in her boutique before lighting something, that might have worked a bit better.
Secondly, it only mentions the nightmares after Rarity starts cowering. Why weren’t these put in the story earlier? Why is it only coming up now? This isn’t the best place for it; indeed, we’re having two random cutaways, one after another, at the climax of the story. This is just plain old awkward writing, and it feels like the author is trying to justify themselves. See? Rarity is totally scared of fire! She had nightmares! Really!
The problem is that this is a post-facto justification.
The third is that the actual description of her shrinking in on herself in terror isn’t done very well. Selling the fear at this point is important, but the description here is pretty bare bones. It violates some of the most important rules of telling:
Don’t tell the audience what to think.
Don’t tell the audience how to feel.
And yet, we’re outright told that Rarity is terrified, rather than shown her terror; the description here isn’t selling it to me. Rarity is pretty brave, and her cowering in terror in the face of flames is a sharp contrast to her usual demeanor; it needs to be sold to me, that this pony who attacked an army of changelings and kicked a manticore in the face is completely terrified. I want something powerful, as this is the crux of the story, but instead I’m just told that she shrinks in on herself in terror.
There is one more enormous problem here as well – Rarity’s reaction. What we’re told is that Rarity couldn’t escape the Boutique, that she was afraid of being trapped. And yet, Rarity’s reaction to the fire is to cower in place.
This is completely the opposite reaction from what she should be having according to the setup of the story.
Rarity’s fear is of being surrounded and trapped by fire; thus, we would expect her response, when confronted with fire, would not be to cower and collapse, but to frantically try and flee from it. Indeed, when dealing with people with phobias, if you look at how they react to situations, this is actually their primary mode – they run away and avoid the source of their fear. They try to put distance between them and the object of their fear. And indeed, in this particular setup this is doubly reinforced because Rarity’s fear is, essentially, of being trapped and burned alive – we’d expect her reaction not to be to cower in terror, but to run away.
And this is why context – and writing – is important. The story needs to justify what happened – needs to justify Rarity’s fear. But it doesn’t. Indeed, it tells us that she’s afraid, but it doesn’t have her respond in the manner that seems most likely, nor does it sell her fear to us. The setup is weak and the execution is weak, and Rarity’s response doesn’t make sense even in the context of the story that we’re being told.
The fact that Applejack gets injured and Rarity ends up standing up and defending her doesn’t actually fix any of these problems, because the situation which lead up to it never made any sense to begin with, and the disempowerment and then reempowerment of a character didn’t end up working because I never bought the first half of it, so the second half didn’t resonate. I never got any real sense of the overcoming of difficulties, and the story as a whole ended up falling flat for me as a result.
I will also note that this little bit didn’t impress me:
"Well, I know a lot of fancy words," Rarity proudly declared. "My mother reads her grown-up stories to me at night sometimes, all about brave, muscly stallions and damsels in this dress."
"Distress?"
"That is what I said. Now, do you want to get your cutie mark or not? I have so many ideas."
Honestly, I’m not even sure if they would have stories like that in Equestria, given that their gender roles in society seem to be very different from our own. Given that that genre relied on the idea of saving noblewomen, but the most notable noblemare in Equestria is Princess Celestia, a hero of Equestria, this seems like a very odd thing to throw into Equestria, nor does it hang very well with the end of the story.
Even apart from the fact that the center of the story falls flat, I wasn’t actually terribly fond of this story; the dialogue wasn’t very good throughout the story, and didn’t sound much like the characters. Given how much of the story is dialogue, this is problematic.
The story is also very telly. For example:
Applejack twirled her rope over her head as Rarity and the others cowered behind her. The first toss was a miss, but on the second try she managed to pull the rope tight around one the wolves. With one swift tug the creature fell to the ground with a crash.
“Yee-haw! Y’all get outta here before I show the rest of you that ponies mean business!” Applejack yelled. She and the others were completely oblivious to the fourth timberwolf. It had stayed in the shadows, slinking surreptitiously toward its prey. It sprang at Applejack from her side, and she barely reacted fast enough to prevent the beast from biting down on her left hind leg. Instead, the timberwolf merely fell on top of her in a mass of teeth, claws, and jagged shivers of wood.
We have several problems here. The first is that the first bit of this has Applejack making several attempts at doing something important in a single sentence; we have her miss, and then hit with her lasso, but the line is a bit flat.
We then have the story tell us that Applejack and the others are oblivious to the fourth timberwolf, which we then introduce and then have attack them. The problem here is that this was a sudden sneak attack, but the text doesn’t really introduce it that way at all; not only is it very telly (informing us that the characters were oblivious to something) but it spends several sentences before they get attacked. We should have had the wolf introduced as it suddenly attacked her, and then had it justify what just happened; that would be more sudden and shocking, and would sell what happened to the audience much better rather than just sort of tepidly informing us that she was attacked.
We also have something of a deus ex machina at the end:
All eight creatures in the clearing jumped in fright at the sight and sound of a massive detonation above their heads. One of the featherfrond ferns had caught a spark and erupted in a gout of fire. Rarity realized that they must be filled with combustible gas.
“Sweetie! Apple Bloom!” Rarity shouted. “Start biting through the roots. We need those plants to fly higher!”
The fillies nodded, and even while Rarity continued to wield her burning branch, a flotilla of featherfrond plants began to float up into the night. It was now or never. She just had to hope that somepony, somepony who could reach them fast, was watching. Rarity whipped her head around, and used all her telekinetic skill to fling her flaming brand into the heart of the floating ferns. She was rewarded when the sky erupted in a furious barrage of light and sound, as each plant exploded in turn.
“Whoa nelly, just like Unity Day fireworks! Good job there, Sugarcube!” Applejack yelled from her prone position. The show also made a big impression on the wolves, as they turned tail and fled back into the forest.
What’s really sad here is that we actually had the presence of these ferns set up earlier; we could have had someone comment on the ferns being very flammable and filled with explosive gas. Heck, we could have had Rarity be scared of the ferns because they could go up in flames. Instead, we have this presented to us right at the end, two paragraphs before they use them to save themselves.
And then Rainbow Dash shows up afterwards to put out the fire, which, while less of a deus ex machina (it was noted earlier in the story that the weather team puts out fires on the edge of the Everfree Forest to keep them away from town) is kind of unnecessary.
All in all, this story is a bit of a mess. The center of the story was unbelievable, the dialogue didn't sound right, the prose was very telly, and events were frequently told to us in an awkward, stilted manner, with the story feeling thrown together as we go through it.
This is an example of a character being disempowered and acting out of character, and even in the context of the story, it failed to sell itself to me, the reader, because it didn't feel like the character and it didn't feel like the fear was justified as being a part of said character by the story. This is the sort of thing which can get you in trouble, as it is playing with fire; disempowerment is a powerful tool, and if you end up fumbling it, it can burn down your whole story when the reader doesn't believe that the disempowerment is justified.
Now that I see this blog post, I should admit that I had read Fires of Friendship prior to your post about disempowerment. But the story, with all the problems and plot holes you described, completely slipped my mind and landed deep in a pile of every other lacking RariJack I've read, so I didn't think to bring context to the discussion.
Speaking of, I've noticed quite often (but especially with RariJack or FlutterDash) that authors or other creators will poorly disempower a character in order to begin romance. Do you have any thoughts or similar experiences with that?
2499678
For the record: The Fires of Friendship isn't actually a shipfic; it is about Rarity and Applejack and their friendship, but it isn't about ponies kissing.
As for the whole "disempowering a character to start a romance" thing, I think that is the sort of thing which is replete with all kinds of unfortunate implications. It can be done well, but it can easily be done horribly.
I think I've made a post about that at some point in the past, but I think it was a forum post, not a blog entry, I believe in response to hurt/comfort fics. Lemme see if I can dig it up. The tl; dr; though, IIRC, was that the real key to doing it was to ensure three things:
1) The disempowerment was transitory - that is to say, the character at the end is "made whole". This doesn't necessarily mean that whatever disempowered them goes away - the hurt could be permanent, or could be temporary - but that at the end they are not any less empowered than they were at the beginning. This is not absolutely necessary, but most of the time it will leave a bad taste in people's mouths if you do otherwise; it also frequently leads to issues with #2 if you don't fix them by the end.
2) The character should not be "made whole" because they are kissing someone; in other words, while the romantic relationship might happen because they were disempowered, what makes them whole should not be the romantic relationship, but character development and growth (or simple recovery, even). Making it so that the person in question is only whole again because they have another person there to make them whole is really full of unfortunate implications and co-dependency. It is alright for the other person to help them recover, but their presence shouldn't be the cause of their recovery; the person should be able to stand on their own two feet (or four hooves, as the case may be).
3) The disempowerment should not be the reason for the romance; in other words, while the disempowerment can throw the characters together, it shouldn't be the reason that they are attracted to each other. Basically, if Rainbow Dash breaks her wings, Fluttershy shouldn't fall in love with her because she's taking care of her, but for other reasons; Rainbow Dash breaking her wings is a setting, not the plot; it is the reason that the two are spending time together and allow their emotions to grow, but it is not the reasons that their emotions are growing in and of itself.
I had actually been in the process of writing a response thanking you for acknowledging that you had made a mistake by removing the links to the story being illustrated, or even acknowledging that it was a scene from a story entirely, when I was alerted to this new post.
I honestly don't even know what to say to this one. To my biased mind, it reads: "Yeah, I took this woman's artwork out of context, used it to illustrate misogyny in society, but the story it is based on isn't well written so there." It just feels petty... A reaction to the fact that her friends took offense that you would attack her work, which itself was an expression of friendship between us.
I would respond to individual aspects of this, but I can't really see what to discuss. In general, I actually do agree with the larger theme you seem to be grasping towards in a broader view of portrayals of women, but you've narrowed your focus to such a minuscule level of offense that the whole thing is lost in hypersensitivity. That such exacting execution of "Rarity was in a fire as a child/Rarity has a fear of fire/Rarity overcomes this fear to act" is necessary in your mind to not be somehow detrimental to society as an example of "disempowerment" is evidence of a huge gulf between us. I follow your arguments on Princess Peach. That, in my mind, this totally inoffensive story could be held up to such lengthy review and scrutiny in order to find the offense in it seems misguided in targeting.
Regardless, as I noted before you clearly have strong feelings on the subject. In a final effort of reaching an understanding, I would just say that as a fellow artist it is very hard to see someone hold up something you create and state "I think this makes the world a little bit worse." You are going to offend the people involved if you use their work to illustrate your points on misogyny in culture while leaving out what they consider rather relevant details, and you will get some heated responses that are not at all about the subject you truly wish to address.
2499733
It is uncommon for a creative thing to make the world a worse place. I don't think that her art piece made the world a worse place. At a minimum, it inspired me to write some stuff, and frankly, I think her art is pretty.
I think you're assuming a bit much here as far as my motivations go. As I noted, I don't think that this story - or indeed, White Diamonds Ltd's piece of art - are misogynistic. Indeed, in real life, in reality, I would say that the majority of things which make people upset are not the result of misogyny but of carelessness.
As the maxim goes, never assume malice when you can assume stupidity.
I doubt that the idea that this could be construed as misogynistic even entered anyone's MIND while they were creating these pieces. It just is completely outside of their mindset.
And frankly, I don't think it is misogynistic.
But here's the thing: If I put Big Mac there in front of Rarity, instead of Applejack, do you think people's perception of it would change?
It absolutely would.
That was what I was trying to get at with the end of my last post; when people talk about this stuff, it is very easy to say "oh, this is misogynistic". In reality, it mostly is not.
But it can be problematic anyway. Disempowering characters is something which is very easy to end up giving Unfortunate Implications to, and I feel like this story didn't do a very good job with it, and thus didn't end up "justifying" the piece in question. Disempowerment goes well beyond ideas of misogyny, though; it really applies to a wide variety of things. Indeed, it is one of the most dangerous things about Hurt/Comfort fics, as I noted below.
Trying to sell Rarity being afraid of fire is, honestly, pretty hard to do. One major issue - something which I didn't even mention in this review - is the fact that Rarity is friends with a fire breathing dragon, and hasn't reacted with particular fear in the face of his flames. She wasn't particularly scared of the gigantic dragon on top of the mountain, either. This makes explaining away her fear of fire a bit tough, especially when this story has her cowering down in the face of the flames.
Is it doable? I think it could be done, though I think it would be difficult to do without setting it in an AU, simply because Rarity doesn't seem to mind Spike's presence at all, and even enjoys it. I think you could write an interesting story about that. But I don't know that it really fits all that well into canon.
But the idea of Rarity being really scared of something is not wholly unreasonable. Though I don't really feel like she is "the type" to really suffer from phobias, I think it is possible that someone could write well enough to convince me of it. But this story didn't do so.
I think you're focusing too much on the idea of this being misogynistic. The only mention I made of it in the entire post was to note that I did not think this was an example of misogyny.
Indeed, I suspect that this is really a problem with the use of the word "misogyny" in general; it is like "nigger". Even if you use the word in a context where you're saying something negative about it, people STILL obsess over the word. It is a "bad word". It attracts attention and focus to itself, even at the cost of other things, even when it is almost entirely extraneous to whatever else is going on.
I think I'm going to go and remove the word entirely from this post.
Totally random point, but I don't think Queen Elizabeth being totally in control and wildly popular kept 16th century England from being any less misogynistic than any other European society. Celestia being the ruler and mares being in the nobility doesn't completely rule out any possibility of this sort of thing existing in Equestria, or bar them from being topics/themes authors can write about in fan fiction (not that that's really the point you were making).
tl;dr Titanium Dragon was wrong? Lol no read it and weep fools.
Ahem
In all due seriousness though, I skipped this story after the first couple sentences. I remember loving Flight of the Alicorn as well as some of Ponydora's more recent stories, but this one didn't strike me as quality.
Anyway, I get the feeling that you're practicing a feminist mindset in the wake of this "Quinnspiracy" business. Seems like a great exercise for anyone making games today, to better anticipate audience reaction. Perhaps "feminist" isn't the right way to word it, but why tackle disempowerment specifically as opposed to out-of-character?
I wasn't sold on it, and neither were you. So what?
2499733
Sorry, TD, but it really does sound like that. That is the theory people will think of first when they try to figure out why you wrote this, regardless of what your intentions were.
2500195
Not the theory that came to my mind first.
Looks to me exactly what is written on the tin.
Step1, Tit reacts to a picture.
Step2, the possibility of being wrong is presented in counter.
Step3, Tit reads the story for the missing context.
Step4, Tit reacts to the story.
His original blog was about disempowerment and why it is unfortunate. This post focused on how this story demonstrates that on action.
So uh.. what's this all about exactly? I understand that you are trying to discuss your views on disempowerment, but you went into a review of a fic and ranted about how they "did it wrong".
I'm not so sure there's a "wrong" when the ratio of upvotes to downvotes is 68:1 with over 12,000 views.
You go from talking about disempowerment, to criticizing art for breaking some non-existent rules. The point of art is to express yourself. There are no rules. If people like it or not is up to them, but there's no such thing as "well done" or "poorly done" when it comes to art. If his/her goal was to make a popular fic that is well liked, then he/she succeeded.
And so skipping over your review of the story all together, I am brought back to my original point. The word OOC is thrown around this place far too much. It's as if everyone who says "that's not what they would do" somehow knows the character better than the person writing about them. The same thing even happens with the show itself. A new episode will come out, and in ponychan's /pony/, there'll be a huge number of viewers who will be more than happy to point out how a character in the show is somehow OOC, even though it's in the show.
A single example is EQG:RR. That came out and Rainbow Dash, throughout most of the film, acted self-conceited and hotheaded. Now you better believe that many viewers were all "That's not how she would act! That's to even close to what she's like!". They can say that all they want, but they don't write the show.
This happens all the time, and among the world of fan fics, it's even worse, because everyone wants to believe that such and such character has such and such personality, and if another writer writes a story that goes against that, then they must be writing incorrectly by writing them OOC.
*sighs* So basically, in essence, what I'm trying to say, is that it is incorrect and logical fallacy to attempt to judge someone or some presentation of something (especially works of art) as being "wrong" or "incorrect" on the basis of an opinion that is held as if it's fact. The interpretation of a character is an opinion. Calling someone's character OOC for little things that can neither be proven nor disproven makes no sense for exactly that reason. It's an opinion. It can neither be proven nor disproven, and no amount of talking it out is going to reach either conclusion.
What's my point? Well, my point is that there is no point. Sure we can talk about the effects of disempowerment and sexism on society, and other such things, but this isn't what this is about. We're talking about one or to pieces of art representing interpretations of characters from a show that has inconsistent writers. I'm not so sure that this origin point makes for good discussion on those important topics.
So do I disagree with your thoughts on the effects of disempowerment and presentation of such? Not really. I agree with you mostly there. It's something that should be discussed when it is a problem, but something that most people understand instinctively, and is therefore not that frequently a real issue. So I'm good here.
As for the reasoning and basis you've provided for attacking and nit-picking two artists' interpretations of a character, I must wholeheartedly disagree. Not that you're wrong, but that there is no "right" or "wrong" on this topic. My reasoning is presented above.
Anyway, this has been fun.
I love your work and am looking forward to more.
Sincerely,
PiercingSight
2500195
A perfectly valid viewpoint to have, I'll note.
You can never know what is going on behind someone else's eyes.
Am I writing this simply to justify my point of view about the picture? Could I even tell if I was?
After all, the terrible thing about bias is that it is insidious; it is all too easy to paint ourselves as a good guy, crusading against evil. You know, roasting those awful knights who come to steal away our princesses and such.
(Insert reference to the enchanted forest chronicles here)
Anyway, here's the issue, from my point of view:
1) I had been thinking about writing an article about disempowerment of women, and why it is the act of disempowerment which usually is problematic, rather than women who are already objects.
2) I see this art by an artist that I like, and it set off a little twitch.
3) I look at the story, and see the cover art which is Rarity fighting at Applejack's side, which is more what I would expect.
4) A few other people on IM/Skype agree that it seems wrong.
5) I decide to stop procrastinating at write a post.
6) We discuss the post; I come up with a putative idea for how the two pictures might be related (the first one has Rarity wielding a torch, the second has them surrounded in flame; maybe Rarity lost her torch?)
7) Someone comes along several days later and points out that I don't understand the image in question, that in context, it isn't actually problematic.
8) I apologize.
9) I start writing a blog post about the importance of context, which was very apologetic, then, as I get towards the end of it, I realize... I STILL didn't actually FIX the problem - I did not Do The Research. I was STILL being lazy, and I STILL didn't know if the story was, you know, good or not. After all, context is important, right? Indeed, this is actually something of an artifact title - I originally wrote this post to apologize, but then I realized that the guy had complained about me being lazy, and even after all that, not reading his story would be wrong. After all, I had complained, I should read it and not be lazy, right?
10) I read the story.
11) I write a bit about the start of the story at the start, then keep reading.
12) I copy-paste the bit about the damsel in distress.
13) I get to the climax and find myself unhappy with the story, because the story really didn't justify itself.
14) I go back and quote the start and the climax, making note of what I didn't like - namely, that what disempowers Rarity (her fear of flame) was not made believable to me by the story.
15) I read through the rest of the story and note other issues.
16) I note specifically that they aren't misogynistic, because they misinterpreted me last time as calling them such.
Other than step 2, I think every step here logically arises from the previous one, and the real crux of the issue is really step 1 - was I biased against the image, predisposed to see it in the way that I saw it because I was mulling over the issue of misogyny, or would I have seen it in that light in any case?
That's a problem I'll never know the answer to.
Of course, #16, in retrospect, probably sounds like a Suspiciously Specific Denial, and the whole thing also exactly matches what you would expect from your own personal mental model - that someone was wrong about something, then didn't want to admit that they were wrong and went on to prove that they were right because of some sort of unrelated point.
And of course, I DO have the impulse towards winning arguments on the internet, if you hadn't noticed. Duty calls and all that.
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
So I am faced with the Gettier Problem: Do I really know what I know? After all, there's nothing WRONG with the chain of events from my perspective, but there's nothing wrong with it from your perspective, either. And frankly, it doesn't even necessarily have to be one or the other; maybe I was compelled to read the story so I didn't have to apologize. After all, that's a win-win from my perspective; if the story is good, then I have enjoyed a new story about my favorite pair of characters (well, save perhaps one), and then can apologize, write a blog post about the importance of context (and why it is important to keep an eye out for misconstruing stuff, and how I fell prey to the exact thing that Anita Sarkeesian did), and compliment the story and everyone is happy. If the story is bad, then while I "lose" in the sense of having to read a bad story (and, frankly, saying something which White Diamonds Ltd, who is an artist I like, might get upset over), I "win" in the sense that I was actually right all along, and that the story actually is an example of poorly written disempowerment, and I get to write an illustrative example of disempowerment in a story.
And I can't promise that on some level, my brain didn't calculate those odds and decide that reading the story was definitely the right thing to do. I CAN tell you that I actually was hesitant about doing so, because I realized that if I was right, if the story didn't do a good job of it, then that would put me in the uncomfortable position of taking back an apology I had already issued, as well as making the art "unjustified" by implication. And I wanted to like the art! I like White Diamonds Ltd! I am super happy that they draw daily RariJack art.
And of course I felt even more guilty after I went on DA to talk to them and... found out they'd sent me a message three days ago responding to me on tumblr, because I never log into DA.
But that was after I made the post.
I actually ended up completely rewriting the Disempowerment thing (well, almost completely; more like mostly)... but I haven't posted the rewrite, because I'm not sure if I should or not. And frankly, as a friend noted, people are likely to assume whatever it is about me that they are likely to assume, and see things through that lens.
But I also want to post it because I feel like it would do a better job of communicating the bit at the end.
, I don't think anyone involved is misogynistic - the idea is rather silly on the face of it. I think what we had here was an issue of poor writing in the story, and an image which, out of context, could be seen "the wrong way" (though frankly, given that I've read the story and it still tweaks me a little bit, it still doesn't quite work for me, even knowing the context - but of course, we all know that could easily just be residual bias from seeing it the wrong way previously).
It is a very pretty image, and it is a pity I cannot fully enjoy it the way I enjoyed some of the other ones.
From the end of my rewritten post, which I have not yet posted, and am unsure if I should:
Hmm. I did agree with a lot of the points in your previous post - namely that disempowerment is very much a thing, and not a good one either. However, it is not the result of bigotry so much as an unconscious bias that everything from society to fairytales has drilled into us.
I'm not quite so enamoured of this blog post though.
Partially, I think I disagree with your methods for judging writing. It's quite hard to put into words exactly what it is a disagree with, but I'll make an attempt. Writing has rules. Creative writing is no exception - but it is also by its very nature not always going to follow them. I am probably generalising here, but I have found that your style of reviewing stories (this is through reading both blogs and comments by you) is very based upon these rules of "good" writing. This is not a bad thing - but, quite simply, I don't personally agree with it. Creative writing is not something that can be defined just by its rules - it is just as much about the emotional response, and even from a technical view-point I have found these rules work better as guidelines. I don't think that writing has to always follow these rules, that it has to be technically perfect in order to be good. It's more of a general problem I have than anything else - while I enjoy your writing and find your comments thoughtful and insightful, I rarely find myself agreeing with your opinion on stories, and I think this is a perfect example. The way you analyse The Fires of Friendship, well, to quote Harwick from earlier in the comments, it seems like:
...
And yet I'm not sure I could put it any better than I have. It relates somewhat to what both 2500360 and 2499733 have previously stated, though they have done so far more elegantly than I have. I hope that I have managed to convey my point here, but if I haven't, then I would be happy to try and clarify when I'm a little less tired.
Looking back at what I've just written, it's a ranting, nonsensical mess.
2501092
I think I get what you're getting at, but I'm not sure why you feel that way about this review; while it is true that I place a high premium on proper mechanics in writing, a lot of my complaints about this story come down to issues beyond low-level technical mechanics and go up to higher level things, such as when to introduce plot elements, as well as my complaint about the dialogue not "sounding right". I suppose one could call those "rules", but they're higher level rules which exist for good reason.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're talking about.
I do place a premium on beautiful writing, and I like to read beautiful writing; a story not having the best technical writing does bother me. Different people are bothered to different degrees by weak prose; I love beautiful prose and I dislike ugly prose, but serviceable prose is fine.
Just because I don't like something doesn't mean that other people aren't allowed to, either.
I really need to find more stuff I LIKE to review; I seem to end up spending a lot of time picking at stuff that I like less.
2501197
Well it seems I partially conveyed myself at least. You're right about this particular review not focusing so much on the technical issues in that sense. What I was trying to get at was that even though those higher rules are definitely rules for a reason, the nature of creative writing means that they don't always have to be in effect for the writing to be effective - at least, in my opinion. It's an argument that I would extend to the more nitty-gritty stuff technical writing. There is nothing wrong with liking beautiful writing, and good technical writing certainly contributes a great deal towards beautiful writing. I just think that technically well done writing is not the only way to make beautiful writing. If you see what I mean. Prose can certainly be weak and strong, but sometimes the way a story is structured sits outside of the rules of technical writing. I hope I've managed to clear up what I said here.
Also, you really should look into reviewing more things that you actually like. Good for the old blood pressure.
...So...you're like aware AJ's not a stallion right?
5252391
Wow, you're going through really old blog posts here.
I deliberately didn't delete these posts as a reminder to myself of how easy it is to be self-righteous and just be an asshole instead.
I was looking for reasons to be offended over stupid shit.
5252586
Sorry, didn't mean to bring up old stuff.
5252649
Naw, no reason to apologize. I'm honestly kind of flattered that you're bothering to go read my old blog posts at all. I'm glad they're still around for people to find and look through.
It's just that this post was me being dumb.
5253205
We've all made posts like that.