Real, Realistic, Relatable

I’m honestly getting an increasingly lowering tolerance for the words ‘in real life’, ‘realistic’ and ‘relatable’ in regards to fiction.

Like, the character can jump a hundred metres into the air and slice through buildings. He has ancient alien cells in him giving him a psychosis. Why is it so difficult to imagine he might be single-mindedly in love with the girl he’s been in love with since pre-teens?

Realistic? Hardly. Does it matter? No, if it’s well-written.

“In real life–“

Shut up. What does the actual text say?

Never mind that ironically the only realistic part of that paragraph was the love.

Likewise, it’s certainly realistic for people to take one step forward and two steps backward and absolutely never learn from their mistakes, but as a story it’s so excruciating to read about. It’s like, you go through that in the first book and five books later the character is still in the exact same spot. And at that point it’s about time to give up.

Moreover, in real life it’s realistic for everyone to be jerks to a greater or lesser degree but in fiction you expect better from characters who are supposed to be so ~full of love~. Instead, the author says that and then shows you the exact opposite because either stories are only as intelligent as their authors or that’s how much they think of you.

You know, I honestly think this exact mindset is the reason why there’s been a definite decline in the quality of fiction.

I mean, if all you want from fiction is realism or relatability then you might as well just go live that real life?

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Which is not to say that fiction can’t or shouldn’t be realistic. But what it needs to be is grounded. Not a hundred per cent like real life but grounded.

Fiction Isn’t Reality

Yesterday I went to a café and ended up unintentionally recommending an Italian soda to a couple of old ladies. They were pondering what Italian soda even is and I gave them the answer and mentioned that I liked the rowan berry soda. The old ladies ordered that exact taste and I was like, oops, I hope you like it then and I’m so sorry if you don’t!

And today! We got more snow. ❤ You know, it’s such an amazing thing that even though you’ve lived in the north all your life, every time it snows, you’re still all, “OMG! SNOW!” ha ha.

Anywho~ today’s topic is more on fiction isn’t reality. I’ve written about this before in Pet Peeve of Literary Discussion and Literary Interpretation Ground Rules but I think this will be a bit too long to add to the latter post.

Okay, there’s this thing that people do. They bring up real life or real-life examples to explain something in fiction. What I’ve noticed is that this more often than not happens when people want to deny or excuse something in the text.

Example One:

In Book Five of Harry Potter, Harry tells Ginny to her face that he forgot that Tommy was possessing her all year long in Book Two. That was immediate. That was instinctive. That was the only thing Harry forgot about the whole debacle because he had no memory problems yelling at Ron about saving his little sister when he wanted Ron to get in line and do as he was told.

One explanation for this is that Harry had “post-traumatic stress disorder” from the chamber incident and “in real life” post-traumatic stress disorder works in mysterious ways, which could be why he forgot that particular Ginny-related fact.

And I’m just, I’m sorry, first of all, there’s no post-traumatic stress disorder in Harry Potters, okay? The only post-traumatic stress disorder that Rowling alluded to was survivor’s guilt in Books Six and Seven and that’s it. Like, you can read whatever you want into a text but if the author makes absolutely no mention of it, it’s just not there? As I said before about Hermione in Book Two, for example, I could always assume what Harry is feeling about one of his best friends lying in the hospital wing petrified but there were seriously zero emotional cues in the text itself so?

Second of all, this is fiction. Harry is not real. Therefore, Harry’s reactions aren’t real. Harry is an abstraction created from the imagination and biases of someone else. He reacts exactly as the author makes him react.

So Harry saying to his One True Love’s face that he forgot about the most traumatic experience and year of her life, really shows nothing but how utterly unserious Rowling was about those books and Harry/Ginny. I mean, it’s consistent with Harry’s characterisation because that kid seriously did not waste even one brain cell to think about his One True Love even after they got together. Like, people can be uncomfortable with it all they want but there’s a reason why I started shipping Ginny with Ron, ha ha. Because it’s hilarious, because there’s a surprising amount you can dig into with that pairing, and because Harry/Ginny was that terrible.

A good author? Would’ve made Harry and Ginny bond over their similar experiences. But as I keep saying, we never could have nice things in those books.

Example Two:

Because this ties well with the previous.

In Final Fantasy 7, the original, Cloud Strife forgot a promise he made with Tifa Lockhart, his love interest.

Unlike in Harry Potter, though, Cloud had an actual reason for this in the text as he was being possessed and controlled by an alien parasite, and their promise was re-visited in the pivotal moment of the game.

Again, quite unlike in Harry Potter.

I guess this isn’t really an example, though?

Oh, wait. Now I remember why I brought up Final Fantasy 7, ha ha.

This happens a lot in that fandom. People invalidate the canon pairing with personal real-life experiences all the time. Either it reminds people of a dynamic with an ex or it reminds people of their personal experiences with mental health and how they couldn’t even imagine being a relationship then.

And everybody’s feelings are completely valid, okay? But they’re still not, you know, the text. And as much as someone might not be able to imagine Cloud in a relationship because they can’t imagine themselves in a relationship in the same situation, for someone else it might be hopeful and affirming. That no matter how “messed up” someone is, so to speak, there’s still someone who loves you and stays by you through it all, you know?

It might be fantastical for someone to take a dip in another person’s mind and “fix it” — I know, shocking in a game titled fantasy, ha ha — but that moment had a narrative purpose.

Example Three:

In Bleach, there was this moment when Inoue screamed at her dead love interest to save her.

And the various explanations and excuses for this are: she’s sixteen! she’s traumatised! she’s blah blah blah!

Boring.

She’s not, in fact, sixteen. She’s not real. She’s fictional. If there was ever a moment for her to “rise up” for her love interest, so to speak, it would’ve been when he was lying dead on the ground with a crater in his chest.

But no, instead she screams “Save me, Kurosaki-kun!”

Never mind that most of the main cast in Bleach were all sixteen so the argument doesn’t even work in the context of the manga itself.

The more I see this done in discussions, the more I think it’s made to derail the conversation about the actual text.

Literary Interpretation Ground Rules

The characters aren’t real.

The characters aren’t you.

Allegories are fun and all but they’re only meaningful if the author meant them as allegories. For example, possession does not have any apt equivalent in real life because in fiction it’s more often than not quite literal. This might sound controversial but often authors just want to write plot twists without any deeper meaning and that’s fine if they’re well-written. So it’s a bit silly to hold people accountable for something they didn’t intend or may have written badly because of lack of information or skill.

Not every interpretation is equal or even valid. Forget about participation trophies. Especially if you never participated in the first place.

Literary interpretation is not activism.

Holding fictional characters accountable for their behaviour, mistakes, or flaws is not activism. Neither is the opposite “apologia”.

Shipping fictional characters is not activism.

In general, none of the fictional activism above is a shorthand for someone being a good or better person than thee.

There are no thought crimes. Likewise, there are no thought heroics or thought activism. Don’t let abstracts rule you. I assure you, “thought activism” against abstracts aka people’s different opinions, preferences and thoughts won’t make you a good or better person than thee.

Also, psychoanalysing, hating, disliking, and name-calling fictional characters is still of less consequence than doing the same to real people. And yes, calling real people various ists, incels, basement-dwellers or dudebros just because you disagree about fictional interpretations is still name-calling. You might as well save your time, call the other person an idiot and move on. But I guess that lacks the same kind of flair as repeatedly implying that the other person is not just wrong but also bad for having a different interpretation or opinion on fiction.

Fiction isn’t real. You can’t be “anything” towards fictional characters because they’re. not. real. They’re either pixels or text on a paper or someone’s imagination. I assure you, libricide and paper policing won’t make you a good or better person than thee.

Symbolism is fun and all but I’ve read enough symbolic interpretations to have learned that most of them are either completely off or don’t pan out.

Ultimately, the only valid criticism of fiction is if it’s well-written or not. And foremost, it needs to be well-written in reference to itself and not other works of fiction.

I might update this if I come up with something else.

Pet Peeve of Literary Discussion

When someone discusses their personal experiences¹ while supposedly analysing fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s personal experiences are perfectly valid for liking or not liking something in fiction. If something in fiction resonates with someone’s personal experiences then that’s great.

But you’re literally not engaging with the actual text and dear internet strangers, how is anybody supposed to argue or debate with your personal experiences? They’re personal for a reason?

You know?

For example:

“I don’t like this fictional couple because of *insert personal experiences here* so I will lowkey or outright say that this fictional couple isn’t canon, and the (non-canon) couple I do like is also or more canon.”

Like, I don’t like Harry/Ginny or Ron/Hermione from Harry Potter, not because of any personal experiences but because they’re honestly badly written, okay? Ginny and Ron deserve better. Ginny deserves better than a kid who literally couldn’t waste one brain cell to ever think about her and then reduced her to nothing more than a body to re-create his loved ones. And Ron deserves better than a girl who attacks and scars him for the great offence of dating someone else when she never acted on her own attraction(?) to him. Pre-domestic violence isn’t any more cute than domestic violence, just saying. Neither is girl-on-boy violence any more cute than boy-on-girl violence.

But I still would never say that they’re not canon or that the ships I liked are more canon than them. Though, I do want to do a post on my totally awesome for reals Ron/Ginny proofs for fun and absolutely no profit, ha ha.

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¹ And you can replace experiences with preference too.

Fiction Meta

I was going around reading various meta on different stories and characters, and there’s one thing in particular that amuses me about it.

It’s every variation of this sentence: “Character’s experiences and reactions are very real”.

And I’m like, it’s fiction. By its very definition, it’s not real, ha ha.

Every experience, moment and reaction that a character has in a story is there because a person or several persons put it there. Conversely, there are myriad experiences, moments and reactions that a person or several persons didn’t put there. So what you actually get is someone’s idea of how, say, an abused character would act or react. And as I keep saying: authors are just people too. They are just as biased, ignorant and oblivious as everyone else.

When writing meta or criticising a fictional character, there’s no need to preface it first with “his experiences are very real”. The character isn’t real. His experiences aren’t real.

The real meta or criticism isn’t how “real” those fictional experiences or reactions are. It’s is this well-written or not? And if the answer is no… then it really doesn’t matter what terrible fictional things that character went through. It doesn’t change the bad writing.

And honestly speaking? I feel that the discourse has gotten like this because people started equating consuming and writing about fiction with activism. But advocating for the fictional rights of fictional characters does not make anyone’s real life better.¹

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¹ Which is not to say that fiction is meaningless or that seeing one’s own experiences reflected in fiction isn’t important.

Literary Analysis

You know, I wonder how much of literary analysis is actually people just reading what they want into a work of fiction.

For example, I dropped Boku no Hero Academia the first time somewhere around chapter 120 because I wanted to focus on writing Incandescent Snow. Then, as the massive writer’s block hit, I went back and re-read the manga up until the moment when Izuku started getting seven to million quirks for the price of one. I dropped it again immediately and haven’t touched it since then but sometimes I see people talking about it while browsing the internet.

And the thing is, most of these people have just… unbelievably stupid, false takes on this thing.

Example one: “It’s only in the final arc that the manga turns into a nerd power fantasy where nothing has consequences for Izuku any more.”

Er, no. There have been no consequences in this thing since the beginning — not just for Izuku but for anyone. Need I remind people of Eri? A little girl who was literally ripped apart and put back together her entire short life but aw, just take her to a school festival! that’ll fix her right up!

Like, are you fucking kidding me?

Eri was one of the things I couldn’t stomach at all, among others.

Example two: “Horikoshi totally intended to write a subversion of the superhero genre, show the dark side of hero society, and change the status quo. Now he’s pulling his punches because the editors are totally making him.”

Er, no. For one thing, Horikoshi doesn’t have editors — see all the time warps in the manga. And if he had even remotely intended for his work to be about “changing the status quo” then guess what? He would’ve focused on the 98% of people who are functionally quirkless instead of the top 2% who are nuking it out with each other for power. Instead — just like always! — the 98% are nothing more than window dressing for the villains to villainously victimise and for the heroes to heroically “rescue”. And he would’ve made the Liberation Army the main villains instead of All for One.

Also, he would’ve left Izuku quirkless instead of making him into a “nerd power fantasy” from the beginning.

Seriously, this is just Harry Potters all over again and it amazes me how people who supposedly studied literary analysis can’t see it.

I can’t really say that I don’t read what I want into a work of fiction to a lesser or greater degree but at least I always try to focus on what the characters are actually doing and what the author is showing instead of just what the author is telling me. Or what I want the story to be about.

Words are easy. Behaviour is the true content of someone’s character.

Cattle die,

kinsmen die,

you yourself will die,

but I know one thing that never dies,

the deeds of a dead man’s life.

— paraphrased from memory

The world would be a lot better place if more people learned to focus on others’ behaviour instead of what they’re saying.