#school back

So the first thing that kinda sparked my desire to discuss this was the movie Encanto.

For those who never saw it, Encanto is a movie about this one teen, Mirabel, who's the only member of her super-powered family who doesn't have powers, and due to that, her and certain members of her family tend to make her feel like she has less value than them.

Through some shenanigans, personal journey, and magic events revolving around helping their magic house that got sick, she ends up accepting that she has as much value as everyone even if she can't do all the stuff they can do, and by the end, she becomes closer than ever with her family.

Now, this is a nice message and all, to teach people who feel like they're less that they are just as much as anyone else, and that even if you feel powerless you are still strong enough to do what matters most for those that need you, be it your loved ones, or even just yourself.

The things is... This story brings up a small problem that I often see a lot for these types of plots, that being, the victim of the situation is usually the one that needs to save themselves.

Mirabel fighting to prove her worth is great, but it kinda bothers me that she has to fight basically alone. There isn't a lot of focus on her family members realizing how destroyed she is inside and how much they're indirectly hurting her. She literally has a whole song around the theme of "I'm not fine."

Red from OSP went into great detail about this in a Twitter thread and addressed how the victims of the situation basically had to do all the work of healing herself while the family basically just stood there watching and going "glad you finally feel good about yourself!" *thumbs up*

Now, the message still works because at the end of the day, you are the only person in your life that you can fully control, so it makes sense that stories will try to show that most of the work to begin self-healing lies in yourself, but not everyone has that inner strength to want to help themselves.

Many people are dealing with a lot of pressure and expectations of real life that are engraved into our minds from an early age, constantly being told "this is how good you need to be if you want to be happy!" and constantly comparing ourselves with others.

It's great that Mirabel decided to go on her journey to save her magic house and that resulted in her happy discoveries, but what if she hadn't? What if the house hadn't gotten sick? Would Mirabel just be miserable forever? Because nobody else was really doing anything to help her.

This made me think that, while I like these stories for addressing the pain of the victims to make us understand and sympathize with them, I would like to also see more stories that show how others could help them in case they can't help themselves.

Two stories that come to my mind on that are the manga "Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?" and the webtoon "Get Schooled."

The manga tells a story about a former bullying victim that became a teacher in order to help out other victims, and through some twists of fate, ends up becoming the teacher of the daughter of his former bully, and now needs to decide if he will help her or not.

meanwhile, the webtoon tells a story about a government system that tries to directly fight against bullies at school and protect victims of abuse by openly infiltrating problematic schools, finding out who the oppressors are, and basically bodyguarding the victims from the abusers with brute force and lecturing them, and us, the readers, on why their actions can cause so much harm.

I like both series a lot. They both address the struggle of the victims, and what outsiders could to to help them, while also bringing up the fact that sometimes the priority should be in taking away the oppressor's ability to oppress.

In the manga, the main character devises a plan to record the actions of the bullies through multiple hidden cameras in order to expose them in the media and allow everyone to be aware of their actions so that people learn that if they become bullies everyone will know. On the webtoon, the main leads are given authority to punish the bullies as much as they see fit under the notion that they're doing it to protect someone, so if anyone hurts someone, they need to be ready to be hurt too.

The reason I like these is because, quite often in stories the focus is "forgive and forget, being happy is the best revenge, they don't know any better, they're just kids being kids" and so on.

They underplay the harm and lasting damage of being abused, while in these series, the idea is "being abused can scar someone for life, so let's do all we can to make sure the abusers won't want to abuse anyone."

It works under the premise that some people should be given more power and freedom so they can protect the weak and that bullies should have bigger consequences to fear.

That sounds very effective at first, but once you stop to think about it, you notice that a lot of these ideas heavily rely on the goodwill of those in a position of power for it to work.

Even the characters inside each comic point out at some point "Cool idea bro, but that's not exactly a practical solution."

Yeah, I would feel safer if I knew a good person was watching over me all the time and ready to freely beat up some bullies if I was in danger, but what would happen if all this power was given to some prick who's just waiting to use it to take advantage of others? Or what if they make a mistake and think I'm the abuser for some reason?

The liberty to beat up students or the implementation of cameras to invade people's privacy at school... This is just begging to be exploited.

The risk in putting too much power and freedom in the hands of someone to be responsible for our safety is that we might think we have a Superman when in reality we have a Homelander.

Superman works because he's a man with all the strength and all the kindness to safely protect victims from harm. He's a symbol of the best of the best because he can help and he wants to help.

It's not just about the power to help, it's about the sense of ethics and kindness to use that power well. But, again, that's still not a perfect solution to deal with situations of abuse because... How the heck do you make sure that you have a good person behind the wheel making these decisions for us? How do we guarantee our own Superman?

Each one of these stories does a good job of addressing parts of the problem and parts of the solution, but still not the full picture.

Encanto addresses the struggle and pain of the victim and the lasting impact that bad actions, even unintentional bad actions, can have on them;

The two comics address the need of those who are in a position capable of helping to actually help and the need to incapacitate the abusers' ability to abuse;

And Superman addresses the need for kindness behind your actions so you can use all that power responsibly and that maybe too much power isn't always a good thing if it goes to the wrong hands;

While trying to think of what would be a good way to mesh all these things together, I started to think about one of the comments I saw once regarding and Episode of Invincible focused on Atom Eve.

Basically, the comment was talking about a scene where Eve's friend ends up becoming afraid of her after finding out she had powers and starts distancing himself from her, and what they said was pretty much "Wouldn't it be cool if we had some sort of way of teaching civilians that they don't need to fear super-powered people at schools?"

I saw that comment and thought, "Wouldn't it be good to have this anyway, even without the superpower aspect to teach kids how to be morally good people, shouldn't we?"

This brings me to the last two series that kinda encapsulate a good compromise between all these points, "School Back" and "We Now Begin Ethics."

School Back is about a lady janitor who often notices that some of the kids in her school are dealing with a lot of stuff that they can't tell either their parents or teachers, so she talks to them herself... And that's it.

It shows the struggle of the kids, it puts just enough power of action in the hands of someone older and wiser, and it helps nurture the importance of kindness, all by having a story where children have someone to talk to about their problems who can help them, and she talks about these things in very clever ways that makes the kids themselves reach their own conclusions.

We Now Begin Ethics is very similar in that it is about a wise adult in a moderate position of power who simply gives classes about ethics and morals. And again, that's all it needs, just showing that these people in need have someone who can help them.

He gives out lessons for them to think about (all while posing sexily to the camera every now and then because the artist of the manga really wants to drive home how attractive this man is), tells stories and describes situations so at the end he can ask them what to they think, inspires them to communicate with one another and to try to be open to new ideas without forcing his own ideas on them.

Basically going "This is what I think. Do you agree?"

And again, that's all there is to it. Just an adult talking with kids and helping them become better people by teaching them how to think about what really matters and not about what society wants us to think matters.

Now you might ask, "What about preventing the abusers from abusing?"

The idea in these cases is more about preventing these kids from ever becoming abusers to begin with. We get rid of bullies by teaching what's right and wrong from an early age and making so they never consider the idea of hurting others to begin with.

Teaching how to sympathize, how to listen, how to be patient, how to be humble, how to not put your needs above others, how to use your words and think about your actions, how to properly value yourself and how to be honest with your feelings.

It's not a perfect solution, especially for those who are already too far gone, but just being there for someone who needs to talk honestly does wonders to help one another.

A lot of bullies are just people with many negative thoughts who never had someone to help them properly deal with these thoughts, mostly because a lot of adults really struggle to understand kids and teens, and in both these series, the protagonists are great examples of adults who know exactly how to use their words to reach the point they need to reach for those that need to listen to it.

There are a lot of stories about people wanting to help out others, but they kinda make it look easier than it actually is, which is not bad as it motivates you to be more open to the idea of being selfless and more being there for others... But you need to know what you're doing so you won't cause more harm than good.

If I was in Encanto and were to try and talk with Mirabel to convince her she's as special as anyone in her family, what would I say?

If I was one of the teachers fighting bullies in Get Schooled, how would I know when to hold back and stop fighting? How would I know which resources are going too far?

If I was Superman, how would I make people know they can trust me so they can come to me for help?

It's not just about understanding the victim's struggle like in Encanto, it's not just about being strong enough to protect the victim like in Get Schooled, It's not about having enough kindness in your heart to want to help, it is about being mature enough to know what the situation needs, being kind enough to want to offer it, and being good enough to able to offer it.

I'm sure there are a lot more to learn when it comes to abuse and being abused, about offenders and victims, about having power and being powerless, being mature or immature, about helping those in need, and so on... These were just my quick thoughts based on a couple of pieces of media that made me think about each respective case and how much I like the way they tackled it.

Encanto taught about the struggle of the victim

Get Schooled and Is it my Fault taught about the need of empowering those that can help and depowering those that can harm

My Adventures with Superman teaches about the significance of real good intentions when wanting to help

And School Back and We Begin Ethics taught how even something as simple as just knowing how to talk to others can have a great positive effect on others

This is all very surface-level discussion around each topic, of course, but it's still interesting to see how writers try to talk about it at all.