Unhealthy Relationships in Media

Sleepyowl 2016-08-07 19:12:33 UTC #21

My opinion may be an unpopular one, but I honestly don't give a shit whether or not people show this stuff. If people want to explore that kind of thing from the comfort of fiction, then I say let them.

If someone finds that narrative interesting then no amount of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" guilt tripping is going to stop them. And as long as you're not A)Naive B) an idiot, most people know not to copy what you see on TV. And if you are one of those people that do then your parents didn't do enough.

People can write less than savoury things in their own stories without flogging themselves and chanting about how unhealthy it is and how much they're going to helll every 2 seconds. To me that comes off as very fake and an effort to see non Problematic™ to their more thin-skinned fans.

Fridgewriter 2016-08-08 18:19:15 UTC #22

I agree with this and let's keep in mind that Twilight with its "Hey Bella, some guy is stalking you." "Oh, that's okay, he's cute!" tendencies and 50 Shades being a slightly reworked Twilight fanfic are not great pieces of work. They're trash. Most of the people who enjoy it knows this is cheap trash. Like how kids liked Mortal Kombat games because the dudes bleed and can rip off heads. I can understand some groups getting a little worried, like the BDSM crowd thinking they're being poorly represented to those who never had any idea of what goes on, but like Mortal Kombat, it doesn't take much for people to figure out nothing was real or had any proper representation.

But the thing we can learn from is not do this ourselves, not because we want to show people these things are bad but because we want our stories to not be cheap trash and our characters to be unlikable idiots. Maybe dodge these tropes or we can play off of it in our stories without coming off as a "very special episode" where Captain Radion and Jim discover that X is very bad wrong. All of that is very possible with the talent here on this site.

Kura 2016-08-08 20:36:37 UTC #23

Reminds me of the screen grabs my friend was giving me for a otome visual novel (and anime based off a visual novel) called Amnesia.

Open in new tab for larger

and

As for how the fans of the game react to these characters.

69Michi 2016-08-08 21:36:46 UTC #24

@kurapikasuki I saw those on Youtube but they still amuse me to no end OMFG

With that said I'm sort of one who is fine with an unhealthy relationship, well, at least in novel, comic, rather than real life. Fiction and irl are way different from one another, after all.

My "twisted" sense of a character is always one who is super possessive. Believe me, I know that it's unhealthy, but I don't know, in a way I look at these as some sort of wish fulfilment? Because in no way in hell would anyone able to wholeheartedly love a possessive psychotic killer or someone that cares absolutely nothing about you and abusive as heck in real life. Or at least it's just me, and I deem anyone who willingly to throw themselves into an unhealthy relationship or "He/she treats me like trash but I still love him/her" to be idiots :/ It's just fun to read about something/someone that you have no experience with or never would run into in your life.

Kura 2016-08-08 22:10:02 UTC #25

@69Erocento yes, the scenes are def OMG WTF LOL but those fan reactions are just... so wrong and what made me repeditivly face palm x.x

scythe 2016-08-08 22:44:14 UTC #26

There is a tendency in today's society to think that we can 'engineer' culture. They think we could, for example, limit the number of abusive relationships in this world if we simply stopped glorifying said relationships in media. I'm not of this opinion. I don't think unhealthy relationships exist because people see similar things in stories, but rather, I think any relationship is potentially unhealthy and media simply reflects that fact.

While I do think that there are certain people who do get heavily influenced by what they see in movies or read in stories, I think they're probably in a minority. Everyone figures out pretty quickly that love at first sight and happily ever after don't exist in real life quite like they do in the movies. Likewise for the concept of soulmates or 'Mr Right'.

I actually really enjoyed reading Twilight (I don't care it's super trashy and mediocre). But I never for one second thought that their relationship was anything that anyone should ever aspire to in real life. Just like how I enjoy shooting people's heads off in video games, I'm not consuming media for life lessons or tips.

Stories that involve things like stalking, obsessive behaviour, violent sex and any other manner of things aren't mirroring what we want in our real lives. No, they're tapping into deep, unconscious regions of our psyche and letting those emotions flow in a safe, fun way.

People might find it gross, but one of the most popular porn videos consumed by women are rape scenarios. Likewise, one of the most popular for men are one woman with multiple men. What does this say about us? That women secretly want to be raped, or that men actually want to see their partners take on half a dozen studs at once? No, of course not! For many, these images simply trigger a pleasurable series of chemicals to be released in their brains. Why? Some people have some pretty good theories, but the point is, such facts remind us that despite the seemingly civilised culture we've surrounded ourselves with, we still possess powerful, base cravings and urges that we can't fully explain or even comprehend.

Love, sex and relationships in real life is fraught with danger, confusion, real pain. We all like to believe that the decisions we make throughout our lives are purely logical, rational and in our own best interests, but it's my opinion that it just isn't that simple. Multiple parts of our bodies are competing against each other to have their needs catered to. This makes us all do dumb things from time to time. And I think stories like 50 shades and Twilight are just tickle those parts of the brain that we too often like to think we have more control of than we do.

mac 2016-09-07 23:59:41 UTC #27

i heard somewhere that fifty shades of grey was supposed to be like a twilight au??? so maybe not??? even if its just a rumor it honestly sounds kind of plausible

Silverberry 2016-09-09 21:22:42 UTC #28

This entire paragraph sums up a lot of my problems with most paranormal teen romance stories.
In addition on of the tings that annoy me the most is a lot of these stories don't stress the importance of communication between partners is, especially when one of them isn't even human. Like entering a relationship with a supernatural creature is going to be inherently different. I mean its difficult enough for relationships with partners from very different cultural backgrounds already. Idk its something that irks me a bit.

myga 2016-09-09 22:02:16 UTC #29

Well, I think that if a person builds her/his relationships basing on what she/he reads or watches, then this she/he is not ready for a real, healthy, fulfilling relationship.
Saying that - not everybody is lucky enough to be shown a real-life examples of healthy relationships, so it is unavoidable to make some mistakes during the learning process. I actually think that the media, regardless of the type of portrayed relationships, give a very good clues as to how to make a relationship work - namely by talking about it.