are they shovels

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now everybody is forcing people into labels and attacking each other. both sides do this. it's aggravating as hell.

Art is one of the primary ways human beings process things that scare us, upset us, anger us, or fascinate us. Sometimes the point of depicting a relationship is specifically to examine it. Look at Harley Quinn and the Joker. Sometimes the point is to show exactly how manipulation works. Sometimes it's to demonstrate how abuse gradually escalates. Sometimes it's to communicate the feeling of being trapped in a dynamic that looks impossible from the outside, but feels inescapable from within.

Yknow I would actually argue that fiction becomes weaker if we insist that artists should only create relationships they personally approve of. Human experience contains cruelty and exploitation and obsession and dependency and coercion and jealousy and resentment and lcountless other ugly emotions. If art is forbidden from engaging with those things, then art loses one of its most important functions of helping people understand realities they may never have experienced themselves.

Sometimes hatred is a creative motivation in its own right. Sometimes an artist draws a horrible character or relationship because they want the audience to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes they write two characters together because they want to explore how badly those personalities would clash. Sometimes they are dissecting a power imbalance. Sometimes they are constructing a cautionary tale. Sometimes they are examining the psychology of an abuser. Sometimes they are showing how victims rationalize harmful treatment. None of those things require the creator to find the relationship romantic, desirable, or aspirational at all.

Honestly some of the most effective depictions of abuse I've ever seen were created by people who despised the relationship they were writing. You can tell because the narrative choices are structured around exposing the damage being done. The relationship isn't framed as beautiful or as healthy. It isn't framed as something to aspire to either, the entire point is that it hurts people. Just as abuse does.

There's also a strange double standard that appears in these conversations. People generally accept that someone can write a murderer without wanting to commit murder. They accept that someone can write a corrupt politician without supporting corruption. They accept that someone can write a cult leader without wanting to start a cult. Yet somehow when it comes to relationships, people often jump directly from "this relationship exists in the story" to "the author must support it." I don't think that's a useful way to engage with fiction.

A relationship can be narratively important without being morally good. It can be compelling without being healthy. It can be interesting without being admirable. It can be realistic without being aspirational. In many cases, the emotional impact comes specifically from the fact that the relationship is terrible. And beyond that, I think there is genuine value in learning how to portray harmful dynamics accurately. Understanding red flags requires recognizing what red flags look like and understanding manipulation requires seeing how manipulation operates, understanding abuse requires being able to identify abusive behavior when it occurs. Fiction can contribute to that understanding when handled thoughtfully.

Sometimes a toxic relationship is in a story because the author loves it, sometimes a toxic relationship is in a story because the author hates it. And those are not remotely the same thing. The existence of a subject in art tells you almost nothing by itself. What matters is framing and context and how the work treats the behavior, what consequences exist and what emotions it evokes. And also what conclusions it encourages the audience to draw.

Depiction is not endorsement. Exploration is not celebration. Analysis is not advocacy. And I think remembering that distinction would make conversations about fiction a lot more productive.

I grew up with the western, thinking Mew is just a cutie! Look at him playing with the bubbles! Mewtwo there making a whole speech and the mew just existing.

Later I learn that in the japanese movie mew viewed clones as flawed and abominations!

Well the message that all life is valuable and it's up to one to create their purpose is still there.

But boy, was it a shock!

I much prefer the English dub, but I will give Mew the benefit of the doubt here. The PokeClones were created for violence. They never experienced evolution. ZardTwo, VenusTwo and BlasTwo weren't the original Charmander, Bulbasaur and Squirtle clones we see at the beginning, they were all cloned as their final evolution for power and power alone. Which, considering everything, is INCREDIBLY flawed of their creation. And, considering that cloning was a science created by mankind, Mew viewing it as an abomination does make a bit of sense being the ancestor of Pokemon.