How Do U Deal With All The Problematic Aspects Of One Piece (transphobia, Sexism, Etc?)

How do u deal with all the problematic aspects of One Piece (transphobia, sexism, etc?)

Okay, so I’ve hit most of the individual “problematic” elements of the series individually, and I’m not going to regurgitate my thoughts here, but I feel like there are a lot of people in fandom today who hyper focus on individual flaws of a story to the point of being unable to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This goes for a lot of things, not just One Piece, because we live in a world of surface level hot takes, and most people don’t take the time to think critically about the media they consume.

To put it simply, it’s not as easy as “[X Series} did [X Thing] bad, and therefore [X Series] is bad”.

Using a non-One Piece example, the last couple months I’ve been reading through Moby Dick. It’s a book that was written in the 1850s and has a lot of the causal racism that you’d expect from the time period. It’s a story that condones and encourages the indiscriminate slaughter of sperm whales for nothing but the oil they produce, vilifies albinism, is overly long and at times incredibly pretentious.

I don’t enjoy Moby Dick because of the racism. I enjoy it for its insight into 1850s whaling life, the symbolism of Ahab’s futile struggle, and because Ishmael describes a certain species of porpoise as a “huzzah whale” due to the fact that they’re small, happy, and fat. I read past the offensive stereotypes and see the genuine friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg and read quotes like “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian” and see that Melville was trying to work past the caricatures typical of the time period, and even if he was successful by the standards of today, he is to be commended for the attempt.

The flaws of Moby Dick (and its author) do not detract from the overall quality of the work, at least for me. It is one of the great American classics, warts and all. And while I believe stories can shape what we feel and believe, at the end of the day It’s the reader’s responsibility to separate fiction from reality. Do you, the reader, feel like One Piece’s flaws outweigh it’s merits? Is the bad so egregious that it forever sours the good? Or are you aggressively picking at aspects you personally don’t like and throw it in the face of fans who do?

There are aspects of One Piece that can be rightly criticized, both in structure and content, but I don’t read the series to validate my beliefs and opinions. I can think [Insert Controversial Character Here] is a fun character and not condone their actions. It’s a story, there needs to be conflict. If nothing problematic happened it wouldn’t exist.

(Note that there’s a difference between a conflict that’s necessary for the plot and a misstep by the author. The people who came away from things like Sanji’s timeskip antics thinking they were funny already thought things like that were funny. Oda did not make it so.)

Oda is not free from his culture and worldview. Neither am I, and neither are you. Sometimes you’ve got to bridge that gap yourself and meet the author halfway, and in the instances where you can’t, there are ways of having a healthy discussion within the fandom that don’t devolve into shouting matches and name calling. This goes both ways—people who blindly defend a series can and often do have the lack of critical thinking as mindless haters.

And if a series (or a book, or a movie, or whatever) truly causes that much distress, then don’t engage with it, and don’t shit on the people who do. It really is that simple.

More Posts from Godims0tired and Others

godims0tired

2 years ago

They fucked that old man to pieces

73K notes View Post

godims0tired

5 months ago

It Was 20 Years Ago (ish) :: Empire Magazine Publishes The Lord Of The Rings: A Celebration, A Special

It was 20 years ago (ish) :: Empire magazine publishes The Lord of the Rings: A Celebration, a special booklet enclosed with the magazine's January 2004 issue, which was released in December 2003. The booklet carried interviews with the principal cast of the LOTR trilogy as well as a significant amount of the creatives involved. The photography was taken in Watford, New York, Wellington, London, Sydney, Los Angeles, Surrey, Melbourne, and Vancouver between February and October 2003. Shown here: Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Elijah Wood (Frodo), Billy Boyd (Pippin); John Rhys-Davies (Gimli/Treebeard), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Sean Bean (Boromir); Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Sean Astin (Sam), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn); Miranda Otto (Eowyn), Andy Serkis (Gollum/Smeagol), Liv Tyler (Arwen); Bernard Hill (Theoden), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Karl Urban (Eomer); Hugo Weaving (Elrond), David Wenham (Faramir), and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel). [Note: Dominic Monaghan's photo here is an outtake; the actual shot in the booklet can be seen here. These photoshoots provided several excellent outtakes that I'd be happy to share if there is interest.]

488 notes View Post

godims0tired

4 years ago

Muppet Piece is very important to me

Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery

“Oh yeah, every time that dad forgets mom is dead, we head to the cemetery so he can see her gravestone.”

WHAT. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this awful story. Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery. Seriously. I cringe every single time someone tells me about their “plan” to remind a loved one that their loved one is dead.

I also hear this a lot: “I keep reminding mom that her sister is dead, and sometimes she recalls it once I’ve said it.” That’s still not a good thing. Why are we trying to force people to remember that their loved ones have passed away?

If your loved one with dementia has lost track of their timeline, and forgotten that a loved one is dead, don’t remind them. What’s the point of reintroducing that kind of pain? Here’s the thing: they will forget again, and they will ask again. You’re never, ever, ever, going to “convince” them of something permanently.

Instead, do this:

“Dad, where do you think mom is?”

When he tells you the answer, repeat that answer to him and assert that it sounds correct. For example, if he says, “I think mom is at work,” say, “Yes, that sounds right, I think she must be at work.” If he says, “I think she passed away,” say, “Yes, she passed away.”

People like the answer that they gave you. Also, it takes you off the hook to “come up with something” that satisfies them. Then, twenty minutes later, when they ask where mom is, repeat what they originally told you.

147K notes View Post

godims0tired

1 year ago