R, R & RR

Violence in stories

Hello hello
How are you guys doing??

I m fine, finally enjoying vacation after the most stressful school year. I have allowed myself to be lost in various fictional universes from books, anime and webtoons/comics yayyy

Anddd I m back with another rant yet!
So the subject here is ✨violence in stories✨.I have been thinking about this a lot lately and even more so after I finished a wonderful manga called Vagabond. However, I have not found answers to most of my questions yet, so consider this rant more like a discussion between us, rather than a display of opinions. Well, I still mean to support my views of certain aspects of the subject, but there are other aspects that I do not know what to make of. In any case, I would greatly appreciate it if you shared your thoughts with me as you read. And now, let's begin :)

What's the issue?
First things first, for this rant, I shall use the word "violence" to mean not only physical attacks but also verbal insults and generally, the intent to hurt. It has recently come to my realization that this "intent to hurt" has a big role in the world of stories and especially, the popular ones. More specifically, there are three attitudes a violent story can have towards said issue.

First, many stories and its fans look at violence with a neutral acceptance. This can be seen when a character takes lives or attacks others without having any thought about it. In this way, the story either evades to answer the question "Is violence good, bad or neutral?" or clearly answers that it is neutral, a "natural" occurence that should simply be accepted. A good example of it would be action series targeted at children (like Avatar: The Last Airbender) or teenagers (like Jojo's Bizzare Adventure) in which side characters are "defeated" in battle, which implies that they died but their deaths are never really showed, thus avoiding to adress the consequences of the hero's victory. The fans of these stories do not bother to discuss the issue of violence at all, simply turning a blind eye to it.

In the second case, however, the story and the fans do not simply accept but endorse violence as something positive. Think of the action stories, once again, except this time, there is an effort to present the characters as "cool" as possible while engaging in battle. So, for example, in The Cruel Prince, when the protagonist's father told her "You 're no killer", she took it as an insult and decided to work her way towards it to prove him wrong, all the while the fandom is calling her a "girlboss" and adoring her. Interestingly this was not the only time I have seen characters taking offense at being told "You 're no killer". Another example would be the culture of "aura-farming", as fans seem to choose their favourite characters based on how nonchalantly they are able to hurt others.

Finally, the third attitude a story can have towards violence is presenting it as something negative. These are usually dark stories that aim to deeply explore the ugliest parts of human nature and lead the audience to question the world inside and around them. The questions raised, though, are not about whether violence is "good" or not, but instead they build on the foundation that violence is bad to explore whether it should be condemned in all forms or justified as a necessary evil for a higher cause. Attack On Titan is a prime example, as the main character finds himself becoming the same thing he despised in the process to fight it, all the while regretting and still proceeding with commiting atrocities.

In the third case, the approach taken towards violence is an interesting and rather healthy one, as it shows resentment towards it while still enhancing critical thinking. It is the first two attitudes -acceptance and endorsement- which I find questionable and wish to explore in this rant. It is also worth noting that many stories belonging in these two categories were possibly aiming to be "dark" (third category) but failed to understand what it truly meant. That means that they showcase a lot of violence and character deaths so they can get the "dark vibes" but fail to put any meaning or deeper questions behind them. Jujutsu Kaisen, for example, has a lot of brutal violence and side character deaths without any deeper themes to support them, but it is still being called "dark fantasy" -mistakenly so, in my opinion. Something similar happens with Fourth Wing and Folk Of The Air as well. In both books, the protagonist was tortured at some point, but, of course she didn't break although she is just an inexperienced kinda-teenager undergoing procedures designed to make people traumatized for the rest of their lives and of course she wasn't affected the slightest bit after she left, as if the torture scenes had never happened. For those and many other stories, violence is simply there for "shock value" with no care to explore what it actually means, and the result is the questionable attitudes mentioned earlier - neutral acceptance and active admiration of violence.