Haigeki Discussion

[Dracos]

Something like Hell is a Martial Artist or Destiny's Child is fun, where its some conscious decision, or embarassing result.  Something where Brainwashing Gear is part of the equation is not. 

Heck, even Magical Girl Ranko vs. Z-Fighter Ryouga is more amusing, where Ranma does some of the very self-same things in this fic in a way that's far more acceptable.  Ranma there takes on this kind of magical girl training route out of sheer competitiveness with Ryouga and instead of it going down the 'complete erasure' route, it goes down the 'he has odd quirks in girl form now from forcefeeding herself too much magical girl propaganda during the training' and playing off the 'hey ridiculous magical soul powers work!' bit.  And it's embarrassing and silly and Ranma is self-aware of it all being silly, but hey, it's a technique that lets him kick Ryouga's ass, so it's all good because Ranma is the Best!

[Brian]

Isn't there a subsection of fanfiction that's basically, "All of X's problems would be solved if they could just become the opposite gender!"?

Naturally, Ranma's a go-to for the concept, but I believe I've seen it applied other, less sensible places, too.

[Arakawa]

I like a fic where Ranma decides to explore his feminine side (see Girl Days or Clothes Make The, for instance), but when you actually remove Ranma's personality from the equation, it takes all the fun out of it. (Plus you're left with the distinct feeling you've just waded through someone's fetish without appropriate hazmat gear.)

What kind of hazmat gear would ever be appropriate to protect one from the horror of, say, furries?

* Arakawa ducks, in case there are any furries in the room

I read of a psychologist who put forward a theory that male-to-female transsexuals are simply people who succumb to an 'erotic fascination with themselves as women' (i.e. that reads to me as people with a particular fetish that is considered worthy of medical consummation):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?ei=5090&en=0c1176374e251f82&ex=1345348800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1187716213-FvzJ0+13RU6loS2uPlvN/Q

(tl:dr -- after publishing his book, the psychologist was then subjected to the academic equivalent of a stoning. Fairly or not -- you are free to have your own opinion.)

However, the sheer amount of gender bending fics/webcomics/whatever one runs into these days (some of the material, like this fic, presented in a manner which is... distinctly odd) makes me want to give some weight to that theory. (In general, this fic in particular has a variety of ironies which dissuade one from taking the transsexual cause seriously, which is probably not a good thing for anyone. I'm trying to think on how to comment on them tastefully {EDIT} since I'm starting to be pretty squicked out by implications of this fic that I hadn't seen previously!)

_{Aside: in order to get to that link (I forgot the name of the professor or of the book) I had to type the terms 'transsexual "erotic fascination" as women death threat' into Google. I wonder what a random person being shown my search history would think.}

[Anastasia]

That theory makes a hell of a lot of sense. Shit, after reading one too many bad fanfics I'd say it strikes me as entirely probable.

Hell. Men like women. It seems easy to get that mixed up a bit and start thinking women are so beautiful and desirable that you want to be one. It really would explain some of the shit I've seen written in bad fanfics.

[Arakawa]

Okay, a bit of careful consideration later: here is an implication of 'Haigeki' which I think would make any advocate of transsexualism feel incensed by the fic if they take the time to think about it. No, it is not "gender bending is mind rape". (It's still obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that gender bending can just as easily not be mind rape; just as reading this fic should not impede people's ability to watch magical girl shows.) It's far more subtle than that.

Consider: Ranma undergoes some pretty traumatic shit in order to become a magical girl. He is in every sense of the word trapped in the wrong gender. However, ending up that way is his only chance to save Akane and Ukyo, which makes it worthwhile. And in order not to go into hysterics (literal or metaphorical) while reading the fic, we need to take the premise that there can be reasons that make the sort of experience Ranma goes through worthwhile, and assume it at least for the duration of our reading.

Which premise leads us to consider the transsexual question. Considering that the act of not having your gender modified is far less invasive and frightening than deliberately tearing your soul apart with haigeki nonsense... it becomes likely that there can be all sorts of reasons (shock, horror) not to bother with gender reassignment, reasons that would make even being trapped in the role of playing the 'wrong' gender... also worthwhile? Consider what one potentially loses in terms of disruption to one's family, social circle, etc., etc. -- The answer could easily go either way, depending on what you value in life.

Which, as I understand it, goes against most modern transsexual advocacy. (Can anyone correct me on this?)

At this point my train of thought tends to plunge right off the edge of anything even remotely resembling political correctness, so I'll stop here. Safe conclusion: in indulging an evident male-to-female fetish, the author has indirectly stomped on the face of transsexualism, and the irony is so palpable that it makes me want to curl up into a ball and laugh/cry about the sheer ridiculosity of this world we live in. Others may disagree.

[Dracos]

Isn't there a subsection of fanfiction that's basically, "All of X's problems would be solved if they could just become the opposite gender!"?

Naturally, Ranma's a go-to for the concept, but I believe I've seen it applied other, less sensible places, too.

Well, absolutely.  There's a fandom around it that largely doesn't care what source they're writing about it in.  Furries are the same as Arakawa points out, but find less traction.  Slash writers.  Yuri writers.  You could say: There is a subsection of all fanfiction where character X will be happier if they appeal to my fetish"  There's also a subsection of fanfiction that goes "X would be better, if this fantasy occurred in it."  Where that could be intelligent dismissive protagonist, victorious villian, Superpowered Protagonist, Helpful Community, Wise Mentor, etc etc.  With an audience base that largely doesn't care the source for the story to take place in.

I dunno where I was going with that answer, but yes, even the 'Erase character's mentality' is one of them, which we are potentially seeing here.  An important distinction though is that while this is sometimes the author's goal, it is far more often a reflection of their audience than necessarily their own goals.  Though it can be.

*reads article*

Well, it does, but at the same time, it is foolhardy to really sort of declare human psychology in such broad strokes.  Still, pity for the professor.  Harrassment campaigns suck and we largely allow such things to go unpunished.  Being deceitful and trying to destroy someone really should have a negative response.

Arakawa:

I suspect if you are declaring the term transexual, are are also thinking about it more deeply than a lot of authors who write girl ranma fics are doing.   That could be their reason, certainly, but it bespeaks an amount of awareness of the side implications that most don't have.  A rather large percentage of total fanfiction writers are between the ages of 10 and 20, in my opinion.  I don't got statistics to back that claim, but virtually everyone on this site started pre-20s as far as consumption and many/most wrote something within their first year or two of consuming.  A lot of them simply don't have the education to be aware of the wider implications.

The same thing often goes for many of the manga and anime that get produced.  There the creator base is often in their 20s-30s, and have been working on delivering something that would break through for 4-5 years.  While there may be a depth of study on the things that go in, there's not necessarily a depth of understanding that goes with it.

Basically saying, The stories that go out to make an allegory as part of their purpose and understand how they are communicating it are the exceptional and rare case in amateur writing (Which virtually all fanfiction and most free original fiction is).  Folks who haven't written their first million words or so are just statistically unlikely to be doing much more than telling the story they want to tell or more commonly creating a vessel/framework for delivering some scenes they want to write.  Many people read things into people's work that isn't there as usually when a young author wants you to understand a moral or psychlogical point, it is done with a sledgehammer.

*takes off his edumacation cap and goes back to fiddling with games on his laptop*

Oh, slow typer misses more.

By the way, you brush against the side of one of the problems the Essay and the theory of power gives.  Frankly, going "Woman -> Creates Better.  and hey Beauty and Spirtuality are linked up, and women are pretty and ..." </Completely unfair compression of essay>.  It IS clearly thinking about it instead of simply writing it because it felt reasonable for the story, and that's not something being read into the author's voice, which basically delivers in context a "Women can become so beautiful they just win, men have no hope." as a narrative underpinning (Something more obnoxious than the early 'boys versus girls', which is just schoolyard antics given serious violent behavior).

Mmm, tired of being serious *wanders off in truth~*

[Jason_Miao]

I assume the above comment refers to the idea that Ranma is oblivious-for-comedic-reasons in canon. Which means that a disadvantage of first-person Ranma narration is that anyone doing it has to either content themselves with important plot elements never being mentioned, or contradict this trait and make Ranma much more perceptive than he is in canon. The author of the Haigeki fic is clearly going for the latter route.

Yes, exactly this.

Well, I guess there's also the third route of letting another character figure all of it out, if the writer doesn't mind the other character being the main protagonist.  e.g, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the protagonist is Sherlock Holmes, even if the first person narrator is Watson.

"embrace the Onna" discussion

I guess I'm reading it in the opposite fashion of you all.  I don't see this as a OnnaRanma fic at all - I've read plenty of those fics, and I'm pretty bored of them. 

I saw the last chapters of Haigeki as a fic about a deliberate sacrifice for power.  In Ranma's case, his sacrifice is a conversion to being a magical girl.  He values his manhood, hence, for story purposes, that was an appropriate sacrifice, but it's the sacrifice of value, not the fact that he's now a girl, that's important.  If his enemy was giant talking cats, and he drove himself permanently partially insane to access the Nekoken to fight them, it'd be the same thing.

In fact, if Haigeki does turn into another "embrace aqua-transexualism" fic, I'll probably stop reading it because I've read enough stories where Ranma deals with people trying to hook her up with boyfriends, extended shopping scenes, etc.  Those stories were kind of interesting back in 2000, but I find it a stale concept by this point.

[Arakawa]

Well, absolutely.  There's a fandom around it that largely doesn't care what source they're writing about it in.  Furries are the same as Arakawa points out, but find less traction.  Slash writers.  Yuri writers.  You could say: There is a subsection of all fanfiction where character X will be happier if they appeal to my fetish"  There's also a subsection of fanfiction that goes "X would be better, if this fantasy occurred in it."  Where that could be intelligent dismissive protagonist, victorious villian, Superpowered Protagonist, Helpful Community, Wise Mentor, etc etc.  With an audience base that largely doesn't care the source for the story to take place in.

My personal version of Sturgeon's Law is basically "90% of all fanfiction is written to satisfy a perversion that I don't happen to share with the author". So far, especially if I expand that definition to include perversions of the mind (hello there, Haruhi "crack" writers!) as opposed to just the libido, it seems quite accurate.

I suspect if you are declaring the term transexual, are are also thinking about it more deeply than a lot of authors who write girl ranma fics are doing.   That could be their reason, certainly, but it bespeaks an amount of awareness of the side implications that most don't have.  A rather large percentage of total fanfiction writers are between the ages of 10 and 20, in my opinion.  I don't got statistics to back that claim, but virtually everyone on this site started pre-20s as far as consumption and many/most wrote something within their first year or two of consuming.  A lot of them simply don't have the education to be aware of the wider implications.

Well, a key point of the thinking behind political correctness is that you can create hurtful implications even if you never intended to. I'm not clear on the author's intent, to what extent they're interested in exploring the 'turning into a girl angle'. Though logically they must be fairly interested to write about it in such detail.

*shakes head*

I don't know, too many questions for my puny brain.

Meh. should call it a night.

[Brian]

My personal version of Sturgeon's Law is basically "90% of all fanfiction is written to satisfy a perversion that I don't happen to share with the author". So far, especially if I expand that definition to include perversions of the mind (hello there, Haruhi "crack" writers!) as opposed to just the libido, it seems quite accurate.

*hurk*

Okay, yeah.  We need a real category name for that subgenre.

* Brian wanders off to tvtropes to ask the Hive Mind for guidance.  Wish me luck!

Edit: Nope.  Bad idea.  I'm too biased to be behind this effort. :(

[Jon]

I think it's important to note that transsexualism is different from 'having a fetish about yourself or others changing sex'. (I've sometimes heard the latter called autogynephilia, but I think the term is not well defined.) Here's a hint: if you think the treatment of transsexualism you're seeing could plausibly end up in 4chan's /d/, it's almost certainly the fetish version.

There are in almost any choice tradeoffs to be made. The hallmark of a fetish-based TG fic is one where the choice is entirely positive for the author avatar protagonist, if it's not out of his hands completely. (As an example of the other sort, consider "Clothes Make The...", where it's obvious the authors have strong interest in transsexual topics, but it's not obviously done for wank material.)


If you care about minor spoilers for Battlestar Galactica, stop reading now.

Personally, I identify as transhuman in the same way someone might identify as transsexual. John Cavil, a humanoid cylon in the re-imagined BSG series, has a scene where he complains about the limitations of human biology. Of course, "Transhuman" is normally used in the meaning of "becoming posthuman", which is not yet true for me; but I want it to be true and I am making (small) steps towards it someday being a reality. As a part of this interest, I like reading stories which explore or showcase the different ranges of human experience. (The Count of Monte Cristo is a classic here.) Some of the fics the TG fandom produces have bearing on my interest, but man, does Sturgeon's Law ever apply.

[sarsaparilla]

We need a real category name for that subgenre.

I've been pondering this for a couple of days and just now a thought occurred. How about:

lol fic

At least for me it invokes several connotations that are directly applicable to the phenomenon, including intentionally bad language, low-brow humor, copycats (pun intended) / meme propagation, stereotyping (written equivalent of image macros), juvenile group behavior and non-seriousness (just for the lols, or lulz).

Besides that just by hearing the term it's possible to get a pretty good idea of what kind of fics are in question, the choice should even be acceptable to those persons who actually write that stuff, as they may see it predominantly as a positive label ('for laughs').

[Brian]

I think I may be hijacking the thread a bit, but that's an excellent distinction -- and a name that's not automaticallt insulting.  Off to YKTTW now. :D

[Jason_Miao]

So, spamfics, except more so?

[Brian]

You should read one or two and make your own judgement.

[Dracos]

Well, what would differentiate them?

Spamfics are short fics delivering a simple joke or idea, potentially irrelevant to the characters (Kasumi Goes Psycho Murderer).  Lolfics are generally not so focused, though the line would blur at the edge of spamfics where the characters and setting descend into mere caricature while tropes or particularly juvenile humor is taking center stage in short spammish scenes.  Is what stands them out the audacity and extent?  That setting, characters, humor type, style, and other have been replaced, but when you ask yourself what replaces it, there's literally a babbling 12 year old?