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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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*