Open minded Golden Cage

This is not a common fan post about RE.

Maybe I am too sensitive after spending years focusing on topics like feminism, women's health, domestic violence, and inequality in relationships. I simply can't see the world with the same eyes as before.

What pissed me off this time:

There was a video of a couple. The woman was obviously playing RE9 for the first time and probably without any clues about how to get the good or bad ending. It was still kind of possible to avoid spoilers at the end of February, I guess. At least she was aware that Leon could die.

She played together with her boyfriend, who had probably played RE9 before or at least knew which decision led to the bad ending.

At the "Destroy Elpis / Release Elpis" choice, she asked her boyfriend how to save Leon. With all the confidence in the world, he told her to choose the option that leads to the bad ending. When she asked several times, "Are you sure?" he kept insisting. After she chose "Destroy Elpis," the guy had the audacity to make fun of her. She seemed disappointed and sad, and he laughed at her.

For me, this is a subtle form of abuse. Almost invisible.

Similar situations happen in long-term relationships. Women mention their favourite things—and also the things they dislike the most, such as flowers, scents, sweets, snacks, colours, activities, etc.—yet for anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, and other occasions, they receive exactly the kinds of things they don't like (or even hate), or things that make them feel unwell.

It happened to my colleague recently. For their 20th anniversary, she got a bouquet of orange begonias from her husband. She hates begonias, and the colour orange is connected to a traumatic event in her life. There was no way he didn't know.

This "funny activity" is probably common in his family because my colleague also received an unwanted Christmas gift from her mother-in-law—a perfume she doesn't like. Same scenario.

There is a similarity in the excuses: "You should be grateful he didn't forget at all—you know, men don't remember these things." (But they can make effort remember things which she doesn't like and spend money on them). Or: "Why are you freaking out? It's just a video game. It's a horror game. The character isn't real. Your boyfriend is just a prankster. So cute. Nothing happened to you."

The sense of humour is more subjective than objective. In the context of culture or literary theory, it might sound fine, but in the dynamics of a romantic relationship, it's questionable.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He took advantage of her trust in him just to make fun of her.

Red flag.

It's a bad sign if you would rather trust the internet than the person who is supposed to be your soulmate.

If someone still wants to say, "It's just a video game. She should have been prepared for the worst," I just want to point out that victim blaming exists on a spectrum (probably)—from "What she was wearing" to "Why did she trust her boyfriend instead of checking the facts herself? Is she dumb?"

There is still a possibility that the video was staged, but judging by many similar stories from people around me and the countless storytimes on social media, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.

🎀 always prioritize yourself, your job, goals, your life. Never centered a men. If someone fails you, leave them on the spot. 🎀 if you already decided to give a chance to some mere mortal, challenging him, it doesn’t matter you are in the middle of some zombie outbreak. (Who cares?) He should be familiar with the fact you never lower your standarts, no matter what. Men need challenges in their life. The messier it gets, the better. 🎀however Ada’s fall was tought in the end of RE2, Leon had to fell harder... 🎀know the price of your services. Ada doesn’t risk her life for free. I bet that she has some servis rates with high numbers. 🎀technically, f*ck the patriarchy, use your own body however you want and wear whatever you want. If anyone has any objects... let them. Don’t waste your time and leave.

There is also refuse to go deeper and ask why Ada does this job. Canonically this question still stays with some vague hints but we don’t know why she is doing something that dangerous. And answers don’t have to be nice.

Well, in most of a time when I started read One Piece, I didn´t care of OP Community. With my own pace I read manga chapter by chapter and successfully avoided most of the spoilers before I reached ongoing (and dropped it now I don´t care so much about spoilers and start read manga again in that point where I stopped five years ago - and Wano is done :D ) To the point, I was horrified how many people hate Tashigi so much. She always was one of my favourite characters and I ship her with Zoro. Ok, in two cases I am able to understand why she is not popular character: 1, ZoRobin shippers- understand to their feelings, they root for their favourite couple and I feel their "pain". Still get it, it´s part of the fandom to prefer one ship to another one. 2, she is weaker fighter than the others- ok, I have some arguments (I will explain later), but I get it. Some fans have to compare everyone with everyone who holds a sword and yeah, Tashi-chan is really weaker than Zoro or Mihawk. What I don´t get it, why people hate her so much. Be honest, it seems to me that hating Tashigi is an act of misogyny. I'm not exaggerating. Tashigi is a perfect sample how it´s hard to be significant female figure in two almost 100% male domains. In OP universe there is not so much swordswomen and there is not so much higher ranked marines. In many stories there is a narrative if we see female characters among the men and she is "the best however she is a woman" and in many stories it´s explain like "be woman is something worse, but she is great"). Personally, I don´t prefer this type of narrative and gladly Tashigi is not that case.

Assuming for "for non-existent misogyny"

Ppl critisize her for assuming Zoro for nothing. However we knows that his reason why he didn´t want to fight with her it´s kinda different than she thought. But be honest, women don´t assume the men for misogyny without reason. Who knows Tashigi´s experience with discrimination because she is female? Marine´s bases are not space of understanding and tolerence overrun by unicorns. Most of her superiors are men and also most of her subordinates are men. From my own experience I know some women who are in leadership positions and every single of them has experience that they struggled with some dump male subordinate who didn´t respect them because "they are just women". She had to make many times more efforts because of her gendre so that the people around her began to respect her. To become a petty officesand later a captain. And maybe when she fought with the pirates, she was used to that they insulted and underestimated her. We don´t know. Probably, she just expected the same interection from Zoro.

Tashigi is "crybaby"

The others critisize her for her "overeacting" and that she´s weak and crybaby. It´s typical insult for women. Crying is human biological process through which, for example, sadness or frustration is expressed (for all of a people). And I seriously debt when Zoro has his defeated moment with Mihawk and cried and screamed, nobody said "oh, he is too weak, emotional crybaby". No, he is so cool, cause he is able to express human emotions and for female audince he´s more se*ier than before. For girls crying is "shame and typical female reaction", for boys it is "a courageous act in which they show their humanity". Tashigi also show her humanity. In Logue Town, in Alabasta, also in Punk Hazard Arc. She felt frustrated, helpless, betrayed by her own perception of justice. That´s the reason why she cried.

Tashigi is weak

Tashigi is different type of swords(wo)man. If we could look at it that way, there is a group of swordsmen -swordsmen´s comunity whose "members" are divided between pirates, marines and the other groups in OP Universe. Like in almost every pirate crew there is one member who is familiar with some type of swords. These swordsmen and swordswomen are belong to different crews, everyone has different mindset, different goals in their lifes, different personality. And Tashigi is also different than the others. Most of the swordsmen wants to be better and better fighters, want to reach their names into the heavens (ehm,ehm) and be more and more skilled in fight how it would be possible. And for most of them see swords just as tool for reaching their dreams. Tashigi is focusing on these "tools". She is sword geek with high sense of justice, sometimes out of the reality. She wants better world where all of the famous swords are in hands of good people and serve to good of mankind. I don´t get the fans who still compare every single character with Mihawk or Zoro. They throw away Tashigi over the board just because she is weaker than Zoro. Ehm, Idk but it´s the point of the story. Zoro made a promise to become the greatest swordsman in the world and his goal is defeat Mihawk. We saw him in every chapter/episode how he´s becoming stronger and strogner and slowly reaching his name into the heaven. We don´t see Tashigi every single day (or decade) but she is in different position. She is not pirate in the crew somewhere middle of Grand Line and she doesn´t have to face to great dangers every single day. She is captain, most of the time probably she spends in headquarters or on the marine ship where she plans and gives orders to the marines. Of course, she is also in action but with reference to the above it is as it is. And she is not bad.

She is just annoying. Poor Zoro.

Kdramas surprisingly are my gate to discover many faces of feminity through the popular culture. I was in shock after watching The Glory, Mr. Sunshine, This is my first life, My liberation notes, Hyena, Little women and many others, that the storytelling with female main characters (and also side characters) can be so real. Like that most of them what I watched can passed Bechdel test without any problems. When I was younger (around 16 y.o.) I found my passion in the anime and Japanese culture. Idk why maybe Japan is in the other side of the world and I was attracted to difference of the Japanese culture. Nevertheless I always missed something. Especially, my imagination and my inner world always missed the potential of female characters. Except for a few exceptions they were always same, they didn´t have personality which I would sympathize with. Most of them were subordinated to the behavior of the male characters. They just existed for love and support of the others. How years passes, this fact started to bother me more and more. Of course, I have my favourites, and most of them based of quality of female characters (for example Psycho-pass, Another, some Ghibli movies), but mostly male storytelling about women is something sick all around the world. I suppose that I am included (with my age and level of education and place where I live) into the targed audience of k-dramas. And it´s ok, cause media work in that way. One of my first kdrama which I ever watched was title Strong woman Do Bong Soon, in that time I was in my early twenties, and still I wasn´t into kdrama like in nowadays. But I was suprised. In last years I watched many kdramas with better storytelling, but Do Bong Soon, however she had a crush, sometimes she was naive, she was really strong. She has strong moral statements, she was so brave. And however the end is little bit cheesy and there is a tons of cheap female gaze, I really enjoyed the story. And personality of Do Bong Soon. Then, after few years, when I passed some relationships, almost finished my studies and moved for several times (in my homecountry and also in abroad and back), I felt little, little bit mature than before. And I realized, when I open the Netflix or other platform, that I want to watch something where I can put my shoes and say something like "Oh, I know how they feel." or "I like how she is independent, strong and at the same time so natural". In the other words, I wanted to watch female believable storytelling. And accidentaly I found kdramas again. My experience with Because this is my first Life was stunning, I loved everything (almost everything) about the story. Than I realized how the stories show females. Like individual human beings. Another milestone in my journey of discovering of beauty of womanhood in pop culture, was experience with The Glory and Little women. For the first time I watched story about broken INTJ female (I am also INTJ female and know how it´s f**king hard to find something like that, trust me), then The Glory was my little pleasure. And Little Women was my big pleasure. It´s a great example how women are able to be dangerous, powerfull, many faced and cold blooded. And maybe for the first first time I watched how the male characters are "just" puppets in this complicated, crazy, cold blooded and rational tricky games. It doesn´t matter how powerfull or capable they were, they couldn´t do almost anything. I don´t like the "fact" that rationality and thinking is some man´s thing. And the women are sooo emotional and they are not able to control their emotions. Nonsense, women have to control just more things in their lifes. Men can focus for only one thing (for example career) and the society passed them without note. If woman want to do same thing she has to deal with many obstacles, so she has control more emotions and feeling, and still, women are able to be rational human beings (I personally belive more than men). In kdramas I noticed one thing. It is admitted here that being a woman is hard (in many cases)

to be female lawyer without rich family and traumatic backround is hard (Hyena)

to be single female in her 30s´ without money or family who will help you and looking for a accomodiation is hard (Because this is my first life)

to be unmarried 27yo woman is hard (Strong woman Do Bong Soon)

to be a young woman who does not conform to beauty standards is hard (The Mask girl)

to be young woman who has traumatic experience with se*ual abuse is hard (Mad for Each other)

According to my personal feelings and thanks to nostalgia which I have for years from ship „Shinkane“ I really wanted to avoid this topic, but I think that I really can´t.

Can it really works? Like Shinkane? Of course yes, the authors almost indicated that the two are soulmates. But can it really be enough for a working relationship?

And my doubts grew when I watched the third series and met him – Homura. I have nothing against him, but at first I was worried that he was somehow connected to Akane. Somehow.

But I am not sixteen y.o. fool to think that Akane will live like a nun and wait until Shinya "dares" to "somehow" return home.

This brings me to an idea that came to my mind when I read the theather play Pygmalion (by Bernard Shaw) years ago - play, not a musical.

In the author's speech of the end of book, Shaw states that Eliza will not marry Higgins, but Freddy. In short, Higgins is a perfect soulmate, but Freddy is a perfect match because he is able to give her everything she needs for love. While Higgins will compete with her and never show her that he loves her.

There is something about it. I recommend that all young people read it- romance in relationships is not enough.

Back to the point. I can't associate this author's idea with the characters from PP Universe. Because:

Shinkane is not a toxic relationship. On the contrary- in most of time.

We know nothing about Homura. So we can't say he's a supportive man for Akane. They could have something in common, but we can really only guess what kind of person he is.

But… Psycho pass is one big soap opera with dominators from the beginning. First season is about relationship of two men, also about son-father complicated relationship. About the beginning of a romantic interest between two people put together by a terrorist (really, Kou and Tsu are closer because of Makishima, crazy, right? ). Only two people who are not drama queens is our cute lesbian couple (Kunizuka × Shion).

But it´s sounds as a fun. If Akane dated with Homura before her arrest and imprisonment and after her release, Ko picked her up and took her somewhere on date ... why not. Really why not. Maybe, for Kougami it can be sign of last chance like „don´t fuck up it again“ because Akane hasn´t to wait for him forever. In PP3 Kougami behaved as fool and it was clear that he had something against Homura. Guess what.

I really want to watch PP4, really… girls just want to have fun, yo know.

Well...