Something I have realised in the past few days, I have a major thing for broken friendships as a result of betrayal, and father issues in stories. You'll be surprised how often the two can be linked together. Mother issues in plots tend to bore me, and I can't decide if it is because I'm female and the whole deal is kind of boring, or if it is because mother/daughter issues are hardly ever depicted as vicious and violent in stories. Judgemental and indifferent; yes, but never the full scale anger/hate/violence that literature/media tend to depict the father/son issues. And it is the latter that is damn fascinating (to me at least). What's interesting about the father-issue stories that gets to me (in a, 'Oh, this is so cool, in a rip-my-heart sort of way,') is that the father does love his son dearly, it is just that circumstances (Anakin turning to the Dark Side, or Connor being completely screwed up in the head because of every other person in his life) that forces the son to have major problems. Based on series of events, father-issues often results in a screaming/death match, which will leave one (most often both of them) in a pit of dark angst, and the other dead/maimed/insert your form of bad.
And yes, by now you should have realised I’m using Star Wars and Angel as prime examples, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other examples of father-issues that ends badly. I just can’t seem to think of any at the present time.
But back to the point; most mother/daughter issues get resolved through some form of ‘soul searching’ or ‘talking’ (screaming match works too), but hardly ever reach the level of violence’ of that of father/son issues. And I find myself being much more affected (emotionally and visually) by the father/son issues. It hit me on a basic level that makes me sit at the edge of my seat, eyes glued to the screen. Damn good drama (or melodrama, depending how you want to interpret it.)
Hmm. Just how differently do the w-media and the j-media depict father/son issues? It is too early for me to think in that direction. Not enough coffee and mind can’t change track.
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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MWAHAHAHABWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
The Luthors are a complex lot *koffs* And let's not even forget Clark and his Alien dad. Or his Earth father for that matter. *snickers*
I ｆｅｅｌ ｖａｌｉｄａｔｅｄ． ＊ｈｕｇｇｌｅｓ＊
Mother-daughter usually fails me not because of the lack of conflict, but because (fictional) women often can't admit even to themselves that there is conflict or distance in a mother-daughter relationship, so the best you get is a one-sided thing or something awfully passive-aggressive, and it never resolves. (Or you end up with stereotypes and flat, two-dimensional villains or angsty 'monsters'.) Passive-aggression in fiction really pisses me off. :D And fictional mothers, too, aren't usually allowed to abandon or not care about their kids without being majorly villainised, unless they die (and are sainted). Motherhood in fiction majorly sucks.
(BTW, your Suwabara icon is the BEST EVER. :D)
I like the father/son violence (with the screaming and fighting) because of the emotions expressed. It is fascinating to watch, and you know they really do care for each other, it is just that events, cicumstance (Fate is a Bitch) have left them at a point where going backwards is no longer a possibility. It is heart breakening, and I get terribly weepy. In addition, the regrets ones are interesting because when the son meets the father again there's usually some form of, 'You BASTARD!' *punch punch* But it always get resolved somehow. They might never be the poster-boy(S) for a happy Father/Son relationship they can at least understand each other. Of course, that doesn't always makes it better.
Know what you mean. The passive-aggesiveness (or just passive) role of the mother pisses me off. Hell, just once I want to see a mother slap her daughter/son/husband for being a bitch/prat/arse who abandoned them no matter how grand a Destiny they may have. And have you noticed how female characters ONCE married/have kids/ become emotionally retarded. I can understand 'suporting' the man you love, it makes perfect sense, to me anyway. But that is not the same as not even admitting that you are pissed and angry at being abandoned, or that your daughter and son are prats who thinks you are horrible because oh woe, their father is not there. Mothers are /not/ perfect, they are human beings who feel anger and hatred, to take that aspect out completely. It make very angry (And probably why I see the role of mothers in most media to be kind of a let down.) Having said all of that, still think Joyce (of Buffy) was an awesome mum.
Thanks! I didn't make it.
I see. And they've both (or at least the kid has) put so much of themselves into the hate that they can't give it up and can't move on. Even if they come to some sort of resolution, they can't change the fact that there was this thing in their past--the negative emotions they have take the place of other people's more normal father-child relationships, in building their personalities. It's sort of tragic. (I think Itachi-Sasuke actually works on this level; their early relationship reminds me of a mother-son relationship, and then Itachi abandoned, then betrayed Sasuke, and then left him utterly alone and alive. I can't even imagine Sasuke being able to get past it, before or after Itachi's death, whether he gets the revenge he wants or not.
Becoming Orochimaru's vessel is the best thing that could happen to him. :D)It's like there's no room in fiction to admit that mothers aren't all loving, etc. (Or if there is, the neglect to the child usually comes because of another sort of love, like excessive love for a man, rather than because she's too busy or because she doesn't really care about them or because she just doesn't understand the whole mother-cult thing we have going on and how important it is for her to Care and to Be There.) Emotionally retarded, yes; there are no shades of grey for women in emotional situations, just black and white. They either love with all their being or they're the evil stepmother, the total hateful bitch who ruins everyone's life. It's unrealistic--and worse, it's boring. I totally agree with what you've said regarding mothers. (Although I didn't much like Joyce; she wasn't the sort of character I could get into.)
I think what is interesting is that more often than not the absent father figure seem to expect to be forgiven for their absence, or at the very least they are stuck in a mind frame where they assume everything they had left behind would stay exactly the same. It is as if they think the four-yr-olds they left behind would stay four, and the wife they left behind will still be alive (hardly ever), and still unmarried (always true.) But it is always a shock for them to see that everything they had left behind had changed, and that in a way is sad. So very sad. As for the son… well, the amount of, ‘How could you?!’ and the ‘Mum died because of you,” etc., would contribute a lot to their hate and their anger.
Itachi-Sasuke. Exactly what I have been saying (and ranting, and screaming about) for the past year. It makes me want to throw something at people when they start to say, ‘Get over it,’ or ‘Sasuke is such a whiner,’ etc. I mean WTF? Hello, boy’s family got murdered by his OWN brother here. The person who was closest to him, the person he admired, trusted, and probably more of a father figure than his own damn father. Not exactly a great start for functional, stable character. Yet, Sasuke still grew up, still managed to have a sense of humour (earlier chapters), and was developing attachments. And really, you can’t blame him for losing completely when Itachi came back and broke him. And… uhm, I’ll stop now. Sorry about the rant *koffs*.
See, that’s what pisses me off. My mother loves me I have never doubted that in my entire life. I know I’m the most important thing in her life. She has done a hell of a lot of things for me, but that does not mean she’s perfect. She has gotten angry at me, she has screamed at me, and at times she’ll take out her anger at me (and everyone in the house -_-;;) But she never let me doubt she loved me. The ideal mother-figure is complete bullshit. My mother is no saint, but that does not mean she loves me any less. And to tell the truth I rather have a mother that I can perceive as human, that I can get angry with (screaming matches), but we’ll mend everything up in half an hour with no hard feelings than have a card-board cut-out. Your family is the closest thing you’ll ever have, and that means knowing their faults and loving them despite it.
Completely boring. Probably why I can’t identify with most mother figures in anime, though I admit I liked Trisha (from FMA) but I suspect that was because there was so little of her, and I can assume that might have thrown a few temper tantrums here and there. It is alright, you can dislike Joyce, I still love you despite your deficiency :p
I have seen that frozen-family thing, so much. I guess it's understandable, too, because I always assume that nothing at home will have changed in the months I'm in Australia. And it's so selfish; it makes me want to hit the character, because what is he thinking, that the sun stops rising when he's not around? His fatal mistake, egocentricity.
That Sasuke thing! I went off on a major tangent on him, and had to stick it in a post in my journal. :D
Motherhood in fiction isn't often very complicated--there are so few failings that society as a whole seems to be willing to forgive mothers, which really limits what's shown and how it's shown. My mum wouldn't really fit in the mother-pattern, either (although my dad does fit in the absent-father role); I think it would be really creepy to meet a mother who did, because, dude. What is she hiding, why is she pretending to be that way? No real person could naturally be what we have the cultural expectation that mothers are, surely. The ideal mother portayed seems to be what we assume a parent should be, but lacking anything else--she's given away her personality, her self, so that she can be Mother, a totally devoted figure of first femininity. (And if she's not, she's unforgivably flawed.) Like Sasuke's mother, dude. She freaks me out. :/
And when they're not that freaky, unrealistic, boring type, anime mother figures often piss me off in a completely different way--Hatsumi's mother in 'Hot Gimmick', for one. ARGH. She told her daughter off for refusing to go out with a boy who had pushed her down the stairs in childhood! Because it might lower their status in their apartment building! >:| (See, you forgive me for Joyce. Can you forgive me for Joyce and Sasuke?)
But I really don’t have much to say to this one mainly because I pretty much do agree with everything say here. Epiphany! Yes! ^_^ Exactly, it is really hard to say I dislike the parents who abandon their family because 9 out of 10, they have a reason and are really nice people, but at the same time… ‘HELLO! FAMILY HERE!’ So, uh, yeah, parental issues definitely get to me in fiction.
Frozen-family thing. Stupid, selfish, and sad. It does make me all teary when I see a father learning what have been happening when he wasn’t there. Dead wife, a child who hates you, oh, the woe.
Ideal-mother figures do freak me out; it is the continual calm and the blend smile that gets to me. It is a POD-PERSON! ARGH! And then it is the evil bitch from hell. What, so, nice to see how forgiving out literature is to the female maternal role *rolls eyes*
never paid much attention to the difference in treatment between j-angst and w-angst though... besides the fact that w-media tends to make the father and the son face each other in an elaborate verbal confrontation, which makes them sound as if they're reciting off scripts given to them by their individual therapists.
i would like to see complex mother/son relations. only example in fiction that comes to mind right now is the one in ursula le guin's the dispossessed. sure the society where the hero shevek operates in is one that advocates total equality, parenthood for all, that stuff, but the longing to be nurtured by a biological mother still appeared to be a great influence in the shaping of shevek's character. in their confrontation, it turned out that rulag ("the mother," as she introduced herself) turned out to be the unemotional, unattached one, whose sentimentality took a back seat to intellect. their maternal relationship (or lack of one?) is not just curious because it cast a woman into the stereotypical role of father, but because it showed the profound impact of an emotionally distant mother on the psyche of her child, especially her son.
*laughs* Oh definitely, I keep on thinking just how much money the therapist must have earned from the whole experience *giggles* But I do adore the way that ‘Angel’ handles the whole father-son issue.
Have never read le guin’s work, but you know, the emotionally distanced mother seem to be a sort of icon in fantasy novels. More often than not it involves a mother figure in an extremely powerful position (Dowager Queen, etc), who need to be emotionally distanced and cold, and extremely intelligent to get to the point they are at. Power, power, power. The son often reacts badly to them (I say often, because I’m reminded of Cordelia’s (of the Vorkosigan series) child rearing technique, of which I think she said was distanced, though not emotionally so.) It is often fascinating to see these dynamics in play; half the sons seem to hate their mothers, while the other half seem to have a healthy respect for them (of course this might be due to the mothers themselves, they might be more of the intellect, but it does not mean they do not respect their children. It is those that often manipulate their children that seem to be perceived as overbearing evil bitches.) Either way, the best mother figure to be ever written IMHO has to be Cordelia Niasmith Vorkosigan (Lois McMaster Bujold, BESTEST AUTHOR!). Forever the intellect, always analysing the situation, but obviously loving her children (despite the slightly distanced upbringing method she used.) Wonderful character, absolutely wonderful.
However, in relation to FeiLong's father issues. I honestly do not think he can ever resolve them. He's too obsessed, and too delusional in his view of everything. It is as if he built up this wonderful image of what his father was like and just couldn't let it go. I don't even want to bring in Asami 'cos what FeiLong wants from Asami is so messed up ad tangled up with the death of his father. The only way I can see FeiLong coming anywhere near a resolution is to either get amnisia (just shoujo enough it might happen) or have a miraculous epiphany (as if). He's so doomed.
I love 'Veiwfinder' fics that actually try to make FeiLong a beleivable character rather than, 'let's make him the Villain, so, Takaba and Asami can have Hot Monkey Sex.' Though I admit, shameless Feilong fangirl here *koffs*
I wonder if I can chat with you or send you email about this, since I don't feel entirely comfortable talking about the fic's plot on lj, although I do babble about random musethoughts on it, some of which you can now see. My email is on my info page, if you feel better contacting me that way. I hope that I haven't been too pushy. If I have, I apologize for that.