Violence and depictions of abuse in the doll world?

You won't know the hero's a hero until he's got a villain to fight against.

 

I dunno, I'd cerainly say that it's possible for the "villain" to be something like a natural disaster. In which case there's no physical person to struggle against, but you deffinately get heros coming out of the situation. IE, if someone risks his or her own life to get a bunch of kids inside before a tornado hits, there's no real 'villain' there, but deffinately a hero.

My favorite villains are the ones who mess with the mind rather than physical attacks, anyway. Anyone can punch someone else in the gut or kick a puppy, it takes a well crafted villain to leave the hero with mental scars that will never fully close *without* resorting to physical violence or torture to do it.

And then there's the anti-heros, where sometimes the hero is so bad that in other situations, he probably would be the villain...

Oh, dear. I seem to have gotten myself off topic. [/has done way too many panels on villains and moral ambiguity in writing.]

 

Agreed, DeadLegato- also, there's the possibility that the hero and the villain are the same person, as in hero versus himself.

 

Dead Legato makes some good points.

I've always been attracted to anti-hero types--I think in large part because they aren't black and white characters. The really good villans, in my opinion, are also the ones that have fairly complex character--not just evil because they're evil. Good vs Evil stories can be fun, but I prefer seeing some shades of grey mixed in. It makes the characters more human and makes the story more thought provoking (for me anyway).

 

True. And I find myself agreeing with them. I'm just not a good enough writer to craft at that level yet. And such subtle attacks typically take much longer to set up and deliver. So I apologize for the turn my stories have taken recently, but it was thoroughly bugging me that my "evil" boy was just not being taken as such at all. By anyone. "Cute" and "lovable" just do not describe him accurately to me.
And I strongly suspect this will be the only instance of such violence in my stories. I find it very difficult to do. It's just not the type of person I want to be.
It's also a lot more draining for me to portray. And hey, I'm actually in this for the fun and laughter - which explains most of my stories.

But basically, the violence I chose to portray was for a specific purpose, and fairly short in duration. There should only be one more installment with vicious fighting.
I wanted to dispel the idea that this character was all cute and fluffy, and I wanted it done quickly so I could go back to enjoying my boys as they are.

 

Oh, violence in stories doesn't upset me (there are some things I have trouble with, but I can always choose not to look ). Sometimes violence is necessary for the story--some of my own characters are involved in violent acts, and there's just no way of getting around it. Then again, as I said before, I like anti-hero's and several of my guys depending on how you view them, do not fall into the clearly "good guy" category--Frank can be pretty darn ruthless if he feels he needs to be.

 

To run with the off-topic-ness, I find that it's usually pretty obvious when someone is having an evil character do something JUST to show off how evil they are... and I find that in almost all cases it takes away from the villain as a character, at least for me because I prefer villains with complex motivations beyond just 'Ain't I a stinker?'

Unless the villain is the type who is evil just because they want to be evil and they're loving it. Like the Voltaire song. ^_^ But it needs to be obvious that they're doing it BECAUSE they revel in being wicked, not that the author is simply trying to portray to the audience 'this character is sooooo baaaaad.'

 

Agreed on that point, too. I'm a professional writer- I work for a game company as a writer and do stories of my own freelance, and villains are some of my favourite characters to write. Whenever I want something evil to be done by them, I have to have a reason. I can't bring myself to let a character do something evil if there is no reasoning. Except with the case of one of my characters who is evil because, just like stated, he WANTS to be and he enjoys making people miserable.

...Also I always thought the description of evil in that song equated to more of "annoying jerk". =P

 

RE: Villians. I love villians of all types. The obvious villians, the subtle villians, the scary ones, the creepy ones, and the stupid ones. But the ones I find the most terrifying are the ones who do horrible things just because it makes them smile. Senseless, reckless, lawless evil is really scary!

I like the bad guys that have a good reason to go out and do what they need to do, or the bad guys who go out of bounds because they believe it's the right thing to do. They are interesting, multi-layered characters. Sometimes, however, it's nice to kick back with a straightforward good versus evil, the hero has to save the world, kind of story and have fun, too.

But as for depicting violence and such in the doll world, I think the same follows for alot of things. I certainly enjoy watching characters get into tussles on occasion, because physical pain is easir to convey to your audience. Physical development is easier to convey as well (hero gets new skill, levels up, or can finally wield that super special weapon that will save the world).

It's also a sign of the times. We're seeing more of these things on the internet, un-cut, uncensored, totally raw - for better or worse. So, naturally, it spills over into our imagination. Where the hero is hurt, but can still rise up and fight. The world is in danger, but can still come together to overcome an evil for the greater good. So it's important to have an outlet, and stories often become that outlet.

 

Well. Personally, while I prefer to not see dolls get all cut and chewed up, I think we ALL tend to forget that extreme violence, serious gore, downright viciousness and so forth have been around as *entertainment* for literally hundreds of years.

You can go right back to the first recorded pieces of literature and drama. They are GORY stuff. (The Odyssey and the Illiad, anyone? Beowulf? The Greek tragedies?) War, incest, adultery, monsters, blood and guts, scheming nasty people. Read the Bible, for crying out loud, it's *loaded* with violence. Personally I think the only difference between the portrayal of violence in art and literature five-six hundred years ago and now is that we can see it faster, more of us can see it, and we have wider accessibility to more ways of portraying it.

We have, at least in the US, been tremendously "Disneyfied" in the last sixty years or so, most of which I've been around for. The Grimm's Fairy Tales I grew up reading would probably prompt a library challenge or a lawsuit these days because of their really rather horrific violence. It's right in the same vein as people being utterly horrified by parents who spank their children occasionally -- when people MY age were spanked often and vigorously, sometimes with belts or other things -- and it was an accepted method of child-rearing. Or going out in the car without a seat belt, when such things didn't exist in cars until I was in my late teens.

Nowhere am I suggesting that we make things excessively gory, beat kids with a stick, or fail to wear seatbelts. What I am suggesting is that taking a longer view is often a very useful exercise.

 

Personally, I don't care to see it, I think it's usually done in a tacky way, and I probably would click away from a violent photostory.

But I think there is nothing wrong about it or about people who enjoy it. (I quite like violent/action books/films/anime, by the way; but I've never seen an exciting violent photostory with dolls.) To each their own. ^_^

 

Absolutely. This is actually one of the underpinnings of why manga, anime, and heck lots of blockbuster movies are SO successful. I'm going to blatantly and probably poorly paraphrase Scott McCloud, who writes so well about comic art and how it works. The better a story is able to take the reader/viewer/whatever out of him or herself and put him in the place of the main character (or even a really well-done minor character), the more successful it will be. There are SO many visual devices that carry a whole raft of widely-understood emotional messages and are able to suggest them with little to no fanfare. For example - want to show someone as being slightly out-of-kilter, either mentally or physically? Shoot the scene at a weird angle. All filmmakers, animators and comic artists know and use these devices.

And because we've all grown up in a visual world we've absorbed these things. Concrete, simple, distinct villians and actions and setups carry as many messages as tonnages of words - and they take up less space, too

A character getting violent may well be getting violent against the demon within. (and don't get me going on that, because there are actual physiological reasons we all experience the 'demon within' business.) He looks in the mirror, stares at his reflection and smashes it. That's a pretty clear message isn't it.

Someone back along said it wasn't appropriate to suddenly show a character being violent who never had been before. Ah, but here's where ALL of the photostories have the same issue -- whether they're cute love stories, rape tales, horror flicks or whatever. It NEVER works without previous character development. You can have the best setting in the world with the world's most perfect doll/drawing/whatever and it will absolutely fall flat if the story and the character haven't been well done previously. To that extent, I agree with the poster. If the character has previously been well-established then sudden violence has to do with the character him or herself, and shouldn't therefore be anything to take issue with.

And this is why I don't generally like genre horror movies or porn flicks. There's no plot and very little character development. They're entertainment for someone (not me) and more power to 'em. But a well done horror setup or a spine-tingler with well-written characters and a moment or two of intense violence or gore can work at least as well as anything else. And it always has. Ghost stories, evil fairy tales with cruel parents or strange old ladies in the woods who eat kids, and gladiators disemboweling other gladiators have made for great entertainment since before we had written words.

and... if you still don't like it (which you are certainly under no obligation to do) don't look at it!

 

I love villains, be they subtle or stabby. But there's a difference between violence included to demonstrate character development (such as, ah, certain scenes in Hogfather, or the ultraviolence in Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, or even some of the fight scenes in classical works like the Iliad) and violence provided to give the viewer some cheapies. Even fairy tales have a point. Something might be thought provoking in that it pushes the boundaries of polite society but otherwise dull as dishwater, because you don't care about anyone involved. So much violence in fandom is being used to turn a character who was previously decently developed into a total woobie. It's simple, quick and impactful but not necessarily elegantly done.

 

Dolls (especially bjd's) are made to look like humans, so giving them a history that is (unfortunately) quite common in the human world isn't something bad, in my opinion. Not only does it make a statement about the world we have today; its good a therapy-form xD

...Everybody giving all their dolls Perfect Pasts seems weirder to me.

 

Since many dolls are done up to be physically perfect I think it's refreshing that we're at least trying to be different instead of going the Barbie route (sorry, Barbie connoisseurs and Mattel) and having him/her be just another super-rich socialite with a beautiful body, loving mate and loads of cash.

 

"Not good enough"? That burns me up, this kind of needless self-deprecation. The use of violence, sex, or any other controversial theme has NO bearing upon one's skill as a writer, artist, etc. Any plot/character device is as valid as any other. There are a lot of naysayers who automatically think that such themes are done only for attention, the way a child will knock over a vase.... That attitude is so short-sighted that I can't believe it's even being countenanced in serious debate. Having a villain be, say, a "natural disaster" takes no more skill-- and many would argue that it takes almost none-- than does crafting a cleverly evil supervillain to wreak carnage on your hero. Which takes more imagination, really: inventing & breathing such vivid life into a character like Hannibal Lecter, or describing a tsunami whose outcome you already know? And having the villain be really really nasty physically, in addition to the psychological damage s/he inflicts, takes no less skill than making a villain who never sheds any blood.

QFE. The flipside of the "I'm too COOL for blood & gore" shtick is that there's a lot of empty posturing going on, and you hear about all the psychological scars this person has caused, but you just never see it. Yawn. Quit blathering and break a bottle over the hero's head, awready. Go eviscerate something. Heck, do your killing off-camera, but come back onstage with bloody fingernails. If you say you're evil, get on with it.

As to "tacky", yes, obviously not all blood'n'gore is good fun, just the way bad porn only makes sex look unappetizing.... bad quality is bad quality. If you're going to go there, at least do it well!

 

I agree with JennyNemesis; there is only so much storytelling that can be done with endless text. It's nice with a visual hobby to have things expressed visually.

However, I have rarely seen violence expressed well with dolls. I may have just been unlucky and missed the good quality shoots. I'm open to doll violence if it's done well.

 

I dont think theres anything wrong with doll violence. I do, however, definately separate it from tv violence. While dolls are realistic, i dont find them able to evoke the same emotions as real people, even tho these people are only "acting." Heavily modded, damaged dolls i find rather cool, and ive never seen anything in the doll world, no matter how twisted, which disturbs me. Tv, on the other hand, can stop me sleeping at night.

So im open to whatever people can come up with, and if its done well, great. But i also understand why some other people get heated about the subject, because the problem with the whole "dont like it, dont look" thing is, sometimes theres no warning, and you just cant look away, because youve already gotten involved. I know for a fact that the worse a horror film is, the more i wish i hadnt watched it, the more i feel the need to get to the end so that i know that its *over*