OMG Christmas, yay!
I got SO MANY BOOKS!
*squee* *dance* *attempts to read all of them at once*
One of these books is 20 Master Plots and how to build them by Ronald B. Tobias. Reading (or rather, scanning through) this one accidentally unleashed a little bit of rage that I shall expurge below:
(warning: swearing, frothing, and a general "you")
Oh. My. God. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
As much as I loved Beauty and the Beast, the basic plot is absolute BULLSHIT. ETA: Forget that line there. I was too busy frothing to actually think it through *ashamed*
"You can make an abuser a good person if you love them enough". NO. Worlds of no fucking way in hell. You can't change someone with "True Love". You CAN'T change someone - they have to WANT to change. J.K. Rowling mentioned that she was disturbed by all of the fangirls proclaiming their love for Draco Malfoy. Because he is NOT A NICE PERSON. They think that they can "redeem" him with their love - and that is what terrifies me. Not that they're proclaiming their love for a fictional character (Hell, people do that all the time. Sometimes they marry them and only then discover that that person doesn't actually exist), but that they think that they can "make him better" with the power of love.
This is what we grow up with. Not just girls, but boys too. We're told that we can "change" someone for the better if we love them enough. So that means what? That the spouse of an abuser doesn't love them enough? That it's the abused person's fault?
Please. I have three words for that sort of thing, and the acronym is Bite. Me. Hard.
According to 20 Master Plots, the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw ends with Eliza Doolittle essentially telling Henry Higgins to go fuck himself. Because Henry Higgins is a fucking bastard - he's not a gentleman, "even though he talks like one". He's sure that she'll come back to him, even when she's telling him good-bye forever. I read that and I fucking cheered.
The audiences, on the other hand, apparently went "OMGWTF, Where's our happy ending?!"
WHAT?!
Excuse me, but WHAT?!
That IS a happy ending you fuck-wits! Eliza is breaking away from a fucking bastard of a man and going her own way! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
The point of the story wasn't to show two people falling in love, but to show the consequences of fucking around in another person's life. Fucking around with someone else's life IS NOT love.
In conclusion?
Love does not conquer all. Love is a human attachment, just like friendship. "Bad guys" can love and still be "bad guys". No one is going to "redeem" anyone else with the power of "twu wuv".
My therapist and I have been talking about how I feel that I need to "rescue" people from themselves and their problems. But that is not my job. Likewise, it is no one's job to "rescue" people through "true love".
True Love can kiss my ass. I don't need it. I don't need it to rescue me or anyone else. It isn't the be-all, end-all answer to everything.
((Because we all know that the real answer is 42))
Oh, and I'd just like to say that I fucking LOVE Terry Pratchett. I got a copy of The Art of Discworld, and he mentions at one point that he learned words through reading too, and it took him the longest time to find out that the monsters that everyone fights in fantasy stories weren't pronounced "ogrees" ^_^
PTerry, you rock my socks.
*squee* *dance* *attempts to read all of them at once*
One of these books is 20 Master Plots and how to build them by Ronald B. Tobias. Reading (or rather, scanning through) this one accidentally unleashed a little bit of rage that I shall expurge below:
(warning: swearing, frothing, and a general "you")
Oh. My. God. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
As much as I loved Beauty and the Beast, the basic plot is absolute BULLSHIT. ETA: Forget that line there. I was too busy frothing to actually think it through *ashamed*
"You can make an abuser a good person if you love them enough". NO. Worlds of no fucking way in hell. You can't change someone with "True Love". You CAN'T change someone - they have to WANT to change. J.K. Rowling mentioned that she was disturbed by all of the fangirls proclaiming their love for Draco Malfoy. Because he is NOT A NICE PERSON. They think that they can "redeem" him with their love - and that is what terrifies me. Not that they're proclaiming their love for a fictional character (Hell, people do that all the time. Sometimes they marry them and only then discover that that person doesn't actually exist), but that they think that they can "make him better" with the power of love.
This is what we grow up with. Not just girls, but boys too. We're told that we can "change" someone for the better if we love them enough. So that means what? That the spouse of an abuser doesn't love them enough? That it's the abused person's fault?
Please. I have three words for that sort of thing, and the acronym is Bite. Me. Hard.
According to 20 Master Plots, the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw ends with Eliza Doolittle essentially telling Henry Higgins to go fuck himself. Because Henry Higgins is a fucking bastard - he's not a gentleman, "even though he talks like one". He's sure that she'll come back to him, even when she's telling him good-bye forever. I read that and I fucking cheered.
The audiences, on the other hand, apparently went "OMGWTF, Where's our happy ending?!"
WHAT?!
Excuse me, but WHAT?!
That IS a happy ending you fuck-wits! Eliza is breaking away from a fucking bastard of a man and going her own way! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
The point of the story wasn't to show two people falling in love, but to show the consequences of fucking around in another person's life. Fucking around with someone else's life IS NOT love.
In conclusion?
Love does not conquer all. Love is a human attachment, just like friendship. "Bad guys" can love and still be "bad guys". No one is going to "redeem" anyone else with the power of "twu wuv".
My therapist and I have been talking about how I feel that I need to "rescue" people from themselves and their problems. But that is not my job. Likewise, it is no one's job to "rescue" people through "true love".
True Love can kiss my ass. I don't need it. I don't need it to rescue me or anyone else. It isn't the be-all, end-all answer to everything.
((Because we all know that the real answer is 42))
Oh, and I'd just like to say that I fucking LOVE Terry Pratchett. I got a copy of The Art of Discworld, and he mentions at one point that he learned words through reading too, and it took him the longest time to find out that the monsters that everyone fights in fantasy stories weren't pronounced "ogrees" ^_^
PTerry, you rock my socks.