[Story Rant] Persecution Fantasy?

[jordangreywolf]

Is there a TVTrope that corresponds to an overblown persecution fetish? Like, "Everybody is out to get me for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON OH WOE IS ME?" Because I think there might just be something worth categorizing in a few anime I've seen.

It feels a little like some of my worst early attempts at writing fiction when I was in grade school and junior high: Joe Nobody is picked on by everybody for absolutely no reason. Why, he's not even Rudoph with a red nose for them to make fun of. But of course, he shall RISE ABOVE all that, and show them. Maybe even get revenge.

I think in part it was because I was a kid who moved around a lot and thus any established friendships got shattered and I had to keep starting over. But I can't blame it all on just THAT, because once I stayed in one place, I kept doing really stupid stuff that people would remember. In any case, I read an awful lot of young adult fiction and kid stories in which the poor, poor protagonist was senselessly picked on by wicked stepparents, aunts, and uncles, classmates, and maybe even random strangers. Maybe there was some reason to it, however superficial, but that seemed to be lost on me.

Mostly I just seemed to come away with the idea that heroes are persecuted. Being picked on is a sign of virtue and that the universe is eventually going to get around to balancing the scales. So I think maybe, just maybe, I had a bit of a self-fulfilling thing going on -- I EXPECTED (maybe on some twisted level even WANTED) to be the noble loner, the pitiable, virtuous protagonist who, any minute now, should find a magical wardrobe leading to a fantasy land, or fall into the cockpit of a giant robot vehicle powered by teen angst, etc.

So, having tried to drag myself out of that sort of cycle, I think I might be especially sensitive when I get even a whiff of that sort of twisted fantasy playing out in fiction.

Deadman Wonderland
Deadman Wonderland is a grand example of this from the get-go. Perfectly innocent protagonist is framed for mass murder of his classmates, put through a laughably melodramatic "kangaroo court," complete with wicked lawyers making un-disguised smug grins, and then thrown into a weird prison-slash-game-show-nightmare with shades of the Running Man, complete with exploding collars (but then it quickly abandons that concept to springboard off in very different directions, like a puppy distracted by a squirrel).

The Saga of Tanya the Evil
I might be stretching my premise, but I sensed a little of this in The Saga of Tanya the Evil. That is, the protagonist is clearly given a "reason to suffer" ("How dare you FIRE someone for being incompetent at his job, when he has starving kids to feed? And when he subsequently KILLS you, then surely you need to be punished further in the afterlife!") but then, the deity of this universe is pretty darned demented, too. There are times when it's pretty clear that the audience is intended to sympathize -- at least a little bit -- with the protagonist's bloodthirsty take on things.

But a large part of why I feel that way, is because of the setup of the conflict that "Tanya" is thrust into. Imagine World War I or II (exactly which, it's a bit squishy), with a stand-in for Germany, and all the Allied nations are out to crush it. And I mean EEEEEEVERYBODY ... except that Pseudo-Germany hasn't attacked or invaded anybody. There are no Nazis, and yet all of Pseudo-Germany's enemies are complete zealots about the need to CRUSH Pseudo-Germany, even to the point of self-sacrifice. This prompts me to wonder ... WHY?!? What is motivating all the nations of the world to throw themselves into the meat-grinder of magical trench warfare against this one nation, if it's purely playing the defensive and driving off invaders?

Rise of the Shield Hero
And we get to what set off this train of thought: Rise of the Shield Hero. It's hard to avoid spoilers here, but right from the get-go, there's something off about this almost-bog-standard "Isekai" ("To Another World") anime. Even though the protagonist ends up visiting a fantasy world through a magical BOOK, it's somehow yet another JRPG fantasy -- because apparently writers these days are too far removed from any other sort of fantasy setting to even conceive of a fantasy world where you DON'T have "hit points" and "experience points" and "level-grinding" and other such tropes of MMOs and the like.

But more importantly, although there are four great Cardinal Heroes, right from the start, there's this disappointment that, aww, you're the SHIELD Hero. The SHIELD Hero is for LOSERS. It's, like, lame, man. Can't tell you WHY, but it just is.

And since that just isn't enough, we're going to throw in CONSPIRACY and BETRAYAL from the outset. (And, good grief, the fact that this is going to happen is practically there in FLASHING NEON LIGHTS. The foreshadowing is anything but subtle.)

Never mind the complete lack of motive. Never mind the complete lack of opportunity for anyone involved to have organized said conspiracy. Never mind the complete brazenness and stupidity of the whole plan, based purely on one accusation. It's just going to happen, because we need our protagonist to get royally PILED ON, so we can go, "Yeah, TAKE THAT!" when he hands out some much-needed butt-whooping to anyone who crosses him from that point on.

...

And I think that's pretty much what it boils down to. Our hero needs to be unfairly betrayed, for no good reason, so that we, the audience, can get riled up and therefore cheer when the protagonist uses any and all means to crush his enemies.

I guess it's not the worst trope. I mean, it's leagues better than the quasi-morality of the age-old "Punch and Judy" puppet show.

But, seriously, it bugs me when the writer can't be bothered to at least ascribe some sort of motive to the persecutors, and some sort of reason for this all happening other than what seems to be, "Sorry, the gods want to hate someone, picked randomly, and it's YOU. But at the same time they're also going to give you lots of crazy powers, which they totally don't expect you to use to crush your adversaries."

I've looked at reviews of these anime, however, and I haven't seen a trace of anyone else seeing a bit of a "persecution complex" in the story line. Is it just me?

Comments

[tuftears]

I've definitely seen a number of manga and anime that fall into that category. Gives you Revenge-Driven Hero, usually, but sometimes the character rises above it and becomes the Real Chosen One, despite all the hardships (as happens with the Shield hero). I guess it's just... a thing?

Maybe it appeals to the people who feel victimized or belittled in real life, and want a character who can dish out some payback on those kind of people. Of course, said character can't actually dish out said payback without having been treated that way in the first place.

[jordangreywolf]

Yeah, I can see that. I mean, there are SO MANY stories where "Hero gets wronged ... AND NOW IT'S PAYBACK TIME!"

It can even be EPIC: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Or, it can be surreal: I'm thinking "John Wick" here, as it's ultimately about revenge for ... A PUPPY! (And it's the CUTEST PUPPY IN THE WORLD, so, yeah, those bad guys really have it coming. ;) )

But most of the time, there's a reason for it, or at least it's conceivable how this could happen. A lot of the time, it's a villain who has wronged a LOT of people, and this time, he just managed to cross the wrong guy (or gal). It's not ALL ABOUT YOU, hero ... but don't let that stop you.

What I'm thinking of, rather, is this strange sort of derivative story where I feel as if the writer has been inspired by stories and setups such as that, but has gone overboard: It's not just that the hero is wronged, but he's singled out senselessly, like the UNIVERSE has a grudge against him. "Tanya" goes far into that territory, because "Being X" (I refuse, like the protagonist, to call this insane pseudo-deity "God") isn't merely punishing Tanya by sending him/her to another world: Said entity appears to be driving entire NATIONS of the world into self-destructive zealotry just to prove a twisted point to ONE PERSON. (Also because, in the manga and light novels, "Tanya" is a far more sympathetic character. In his former life, the guy he fires is a drug addict who seems to deliberately under-perform at work out of spite for the main character's attempts to get him to shape up, practically DARING to be fired -- and yet "Being X" somehow still feels the need to PUNISH not-Tanya for this transgression. The anime at least tries to tone down the "persecution fantasy" a LITTLE by making the protagonist more of a cold-hearted jerk about it in his former life, but even THEN, the firing is apparently very justified.)

It's cliche but at least acceptable to have the regular trope of "The Bad Guy slaughtered my entire family." Why was the family slaughtered? Because the Bad Guy is a raider, or he's a villainous rail baron planning to run a railroad through the territory and the rancher father wouldn't agree to sell the land, or the Bad Guy leads a bunch of murderous orcs who love to kill and pillage and this family was just one of many to suffer along the way. And thus the hero, the lone survivor, is motivated for revenge.

At times, though, I see evidence of a story where the writer completely skips the need for justification. I usually see this in very amateur works. For instance, I remember some indie "furry" comix from way back when, when the writer completely skips the point of establishing WHY we should root for the protagonist in a conflict. For instance, in one fantasy series, we have some "daring" rogue who breaks into a palace, appears to force himself on a maiden, then trounces the palace guard on his way out, and we're supposed to root for HIM, not the guard. Or, it's a military alt-universe setting where we see some hot-shot pilots blowing some other ships to smithereens with ease, and the other ships start to retreat, and the protagonist pilots are all "Yee-haw!" as they proceed to chase down and obliterate the fleeing craft ... and then proceed to even shoot those who bail out.

Now, sometimes, in a serial work, the writer might do a course-correction. Oh -- the maiden LIKED it, so that little incident with the rogue was "okay." And, oh, the captain of the guard turns out to actually a power-hungry jerk/villain. What? Readers still sympathize with him? Okay, let's make him get even MORE villainous. (I'm thinking here of the old Xanadu comic. Sorry, I still liked the gryphon more than that stupid cat. And the unicorn princess was just plain sleazy.) I can't remember the name of the comic with the bloodthirsty "hero" pilots -- I think it might have been something in "Furrlough," or else I might be conflating it with something else.

Anyway, my point is just that I think some writers get in the "Star Wars" mode, where we should just expect that we'll see "good guys" mowing down "bad guys" with great gusto, but they forget that we, the readers, upon being introduced to the story, DON'T KNOW who the bad guys are on sight. I mean, you could possibly take a shortcut and stick swastikas on them, and we the readers will be able to tell that they're Nazis and thus okay to shoot, stab, mutilate, and spindle with no remorse whatsoever, but I still think it's better story practice to at least put in some token effort to show why Group A are good and Group B are BAD, just to be on the safe side -- and all the more so when it's a fantasy universe. Just because we can see the faces of the protagonists, and can't see the expressions of the antagonists is a shaky shortcut. (I mean, naturally, there will be a tendency to sympathize with the protagonist -- we're seeing his or her side of the story -- but it's not guaranteed.)

I feel like what I think of as "Persecution Fantasy" is where a writer has at least recognized that problem -- "Audience needs a reason to sympathize with protagonist" -- but has still missed a crucial point: WHY is this happening? It doesn't need to be in depth and exhaustive -- the wrongs could just be a casual thing by bad guys who simply don't CARE who they hurt (they're outlaws/raiders). But if there appears to be some sort of a coordinated CONSPIRACY that is SPECIFICALLY targeting the hero, I feel like there needs to be a little more justification, especially if our hero is: a) Nobody Special; b) Guilty of Nothing.

A *and* B don't go hand-in-hand with being the target of a conspiracy, unless there's some sort of misunderstanding involved.

Our hero COULD be B (guilty of nothing), but happens by bad luck to be the next in line to be king, or the inheritor of great wealth, or otherwise has SOMETHING that someone ELSE wants ... and thus the way for that someone else to get it lies in either killing or discrediting or otherwise inconveniencing the protagonist. It might not be any FAULT of what Character A did, but there's still at least some motivation, however petty and self-serving, on the villain's part.

Or, our hero COULD be A (nobody special), but he might be guilty of a rather mild offense (insults someone, who proceeds to seek vengeance beyond all reason) such that we can still sympathize with him as the audience. (Gee, he was just a little rude. Doesn't mean he and all his family should DIE HORRIBLE SCREAMING DEATHS!)

Or, if you want both A and B (nobody special, guilty of nothing), then it could be a case of mistaken identity (he's mistaken for someone who IS special and has things people want, OR he's mistaken for someone who committed a transgression that antagonists want to punish). Or -- and this is much more contrived -- bad luck (evil psychopath multi-billionaire magnate randomly picked a name from the phone book, and you're the lucky one, and now he uses all his power to try to ruin your life, because that's his hobby).

"Deadman Wonderland" doesn't bother explaining anything. The hero is conspired against, and that's just that, and near as I can tell, the point is never revisited to offer any sort of explanation -- it's just an excuse to get a virtuous "everyman" character into a "prison hell" situation. I watched as much as I did primarily because it bugged me so much that I wanted to know WHY this happened ... but I doubt the writer even had a reason.

"Tanya" is just full of insanity. I suspect that the writer has ... issues.

"Rise of the Shield Hero" -- well, I've only seen one episode. Gwendel likes it more than I do, so I guess I'll see more. The thing that bugs me is that it's pretty much established that the "heroes" brought to this universe just got there from the normal world, and the local authorities were responsible for picking out some cohorts who would help them in their quest. There's simply no opportunity that can be seen for anybody newly arrived in this world to form any conspiracies with the locals.

None of the reviews I've seen so far on this anime, though, seem to question that point.

(If anything, it's "Boy, it's refreshing to have a protagonist in an Isekai who doesn't get everything handed to him on a silver platter." And ... yeah, I have to agree with that. That is, I think, this anime's only saving grace, because I'm tired of anime where the "hero" basically gets to visit a fantasy RPG world with all the cheat codes turned on. So, kudos for deviating from that over-worn wish-fulfillment trope, but I really hope future episodes reveal a little more rationale behind this setup.)

[tuftears]

I haven't seen Deadman Wonderland or Tanya, so I can't comment on those! Shield Hero, I've been reading the manga as it goes, the shield guy seems to be genuinely good-hearted, just put upon, so I can sympathize with him happily enough.

I mean, sure, the other guys are idiots, but eventually, through perseverance, well, I shouldn't spoil it since you've only seen one episode.

Some of this, I wonder if there are Japanese tropes in literature/media that we're missing.

[jordangreywolf]

I wouldn't recommend "Deadman Wonderland." It's gratuitous violence and gore with no redeeming qualities that I can tell.

"Tanya the Evil" is just a visually-amazing TRAIN WRECK of an anime. It's got some beautiful aerial battles, but it's a big over-powered cheese-fest. At no point does it feel like Tanya really faces any sort of challenge, save her ongoing insane "struggle" against an omnipotent (yet strangely incompetent) deity. It could have been something awesome, and some people think it is, but I think most of those who like the show do so without thinking much about the implications. It's worth checking out for some of the aesthetics and maybe for some idea-fodder that one might then use to try to write a BETTER story. ;)

As for Japanese tropes, I don't know. All I know of Japan, I get from a few news reports, some TV shows, and cartoons. I hardly think that Hollywood's presentation of life in America is really representative of the whole US, culture-wise, and I shudder to think of what other nations might "learn" about us through our sitcoms. Correspondingly, I figure I should be aware that I hardly know anything about what things are REALLY like in the broader world of Japanese literature/media (let alone Japan's culture as a whole) from the tiny subtitled slice I get to see.

[tuftears]

I think there's a definite bent toward bitterness and sadness-- not as goals in themselves, but as leaveners in the palate. Sort of the way that you might have a bit of pickled vegetables as part of a bento, so it serves as a palate cleanser. Tragic endings are a thing in some Japanese anime and movies, so maybe they decided to try getting the tragic in right at the start. Dunno!

I've been watching Sword Art Online lately. Not as good as Log Horizon, but entertaining enough; just a caveat that it has the usual 'MC is OP' kind of thing going on.

[jordangreywolf]

Sword Art Online is kind of infamous for that. I'd go on a long ranty-rant about SAO, but there are certain YouTubers who've done a far more entertaining job of it. (Alas, the language they use is often NSFW.) Of course, that is not to say that SAO doesn't occasionally have its merits, or else I probably just would not care all that much.

Anyway, I just want to clarify: when I'm pondering the "Persecution Fantasy" (for lack of better term) phenomenon, I do not mean, "All stories that have the hero suffer up front" are this. What I mean is, I get the feeling that there is a writer who is probably INSPIRED by some other "suffering hero" story, but completely forgets to set up WHY the hero is suffering -- just as at times I feel like there are cases where an author is trying to make a knock-off Star Wars, but totally forgets to show us that THE EMPIRE IS EVIL and therefore why we should be sympathetic to heroes who undertake guerrilla tactics to fight said Empire.

If the hero is bloodthirsty in defeating his enemies, we need some kind of explanation as to WHY he's bloodthirsty, if we're to see him as a "hero," or else he's just cruel.

If the story is setting up the hero to demand our pity and sympathy by having everyone in the universe pile on him, there needs to be at least some token reason why he got the short straw (and "he's not the only one in the world who got the short straw" can be valid), or after a few coincidental bad breaks it just feels contrived. Or, worse yet, it starts to feel like a fantasy invoked by someone who's delusional.

For instance, I think of the "Gate" anime. It is very, very, "RAH-RAH JSDF!" to the point of feeling jingoistic. The JSDF never loses. In fact, in all the episodes I saw, there was never so much as a challenge. Dragon? KABOOM. Defeated. Army? Mow them down. Easy-peasy, don't even break a sweat. Several nations send black ops assassins to kill the protagonists? They're chumps compared to your goth-loli death-fetish girl. Oh, wait, that's not JSDF, but she's on your side, so ... eh, whatever. But what's more, there's not even an internal conflict to speak of that I can see. The JSDF members are all totally exemplary, totally LIBERATING all these poor medieval towns from their big, bad rulers.

It's like we wanted to imagine we were doing in Iraq ("We'll be welcomed as liberators!"). It's like the Japanese army presented its "adventures" in the mainland in World War II.

So, it introduces into my head a counter-narrative: What if this is the delusion enjoyed by the hero? What if things aren't as shiny and perfect as is being presented?

I also think of that when I watch that paranoia extravaganza called "They Live." Oh, look, only our hero with his magic sunglasses can see that all these people are REALLY skull-faced aliens infiltrating our society and brainwashing us, so he's fully justified in slaughtering what to everyone else looks like unarmed civilians. (Okay, they're unarmed even if they're aliens ... but they totally had it coming, right? Because they're ALIENS!)

Hence, if I'm presented with a story with a little too much paranoia, a little too much conspiracy going on, a little "too bad to be true," (and it's all leading up to the hero being "morally justified" in completely obliterating anyone who crosses him) I can't help but try to see if I can't possible fit a sub-narrative on for size. What if all this persecution is mostly in the "hero's" head -- what if those sinister smirks and the brazen eye-pull is just imagined -- and he's really just a scoundrel? ;)

(Back to Shield Hero: I mean, c'mon ... the girl does the "NYEH" thing with her tongue sticking out, fully confident that nobody else is going to notice or care. Like, "Ha, ha, GOT YOU!" What the heck earned such utter contempt? That sort of thing is usually reserved for someone that you're PAYING BACK for some slight, real or perceived. What the heck could have been perceived as that slight? What was it payback for?)

[tuftears]

I agree that it probably does need to be spelled out if there are reasons why they're doing these things... but what if it happens later in the story, say, in a flashback? On the one paw, you might call out, "Retcon!" On the other, what if they really did mean to do that all along, and they simply didn't think it fit in the story earlier?

I don't recall said girl, so I dunno, if that was one of the other heroes, then yeah, I think they were all pretty much jerks.

[rowyn]

Yeah, I remember thinking as a kid that I was picked on for no good reason. And then when I got to college and had friends, I realized all of them also felt that way. It was the first time that it struck me that maybe virtually everyone's perception of childhood had been "kids are all mean too me and I don't know why!"

But I'm with Greywolf that it is not a fun trope. It reminds me of the writing advice that goes "you need to be as mean as you can imagine to your protagonist, and now EVEN MEANER, no WORSE THAN THAT, before they can finally be allowed to triumph at the end. Oh yeah, how they triumph when everything is against them doesn't matter much, just say they win two pages before the end, there, perfect."

[jordangreywolf]

I definitely have NOT figured out what the right "dosage" is of success and failure for me to enjoy a show.

Horror seems to frequently be at one end of the spectrum. The hero is presumably an underdog (if the hero seems TOO COMPETENT at the start of the movie, then he's probably a bait-and-switch protagonist, or else the REAL opposition hasn't yet revealed itself), any victories are hard-fought, and thanks to the wide range of outcomes in the genre, there's no guarantee the protagonist has any hope of prevailing.

(I have special contempt, however, for the '80s trope of having a hard-fought victory where the PCs finally find the weakness of the Big Bad, and utterly obliterate him ... yet, right before the credits roll, and "THE END" appears on the screen, suddenly -- BOOGA-BOOGA! -- the bad guy pops out, and it becomes "THE END ... ?" Argh! So cheap.)

On the flip side, there seems to be just so much anime (I'd say "lately," but there have been examples of this for a LONG time) where the protagonist is a cock-sure, smarmy, smirking over-powered sort who simply WILL NEVER fail on any level that matters, because he somehow is playing this game with all the cheat codes turned on. (And these days, that may very well be literal, if it's an Isekai where he gets transported to a JRPG universe.) And there obviously are plenty of people who LOVE this, who don't even WANT there to ever be a chance of a sad outcome that might spoil their fun ... but as for me, sorry, I just can't root for the guy. It feels too cheap.

There's got to be some sort of decent medium, somewhere between those extremes. I think it gets more difficult for long-run stories. If you have an entire series where the hero keeps getting his hopes ground into the dirt (or where, repeatedly, your protagonist DIES, and another hapless would-be hero has to take up the torch), eventually it's going to get tiresome ... and if, suddenly, things turn around in the last episode (or perhaps second-to-last), it feels cheap. Like, "Well, of COURSE you're going to clean house now that the series is wrapping up!" Even if that wasn't a sure thing -- I mean, it COULD have been on a downer note throughout, even at the end, for all I know -- it somehow seems to cheapen it.

Here, I think of Higurashi, AKA "When the Cicadas Cry." At first it's a bewildering cycle of "light-hearted fun" that keeps spiraling into horror, with lots of "What the HECK?!?" moments, until on the meta level I start to feel that there's some sort of pattern here ... and then some of the pieces start fitting into place, and maybe there's some sort of hope for resolution after all ... but then the ending comes along and the tone so totally changes that it feels like this can't even be the same universe. The ending is TOO "perfect," too CHEESY, a total break in tone, where the very "rules" of the universe that have prevailed so far are utterly thrown out the window and suddenly it feels like a kids' show -- which this series, as a whole, most certainly SHOULD NOT BE.

As a result, it feels utterly *wrong*, and I find myself mentally rebelling, expecting some sort of "gotcha" at the end -- that this "happy ending" was just someone's deluded fantasy, and that really things ended horribly after all. It was still a fascinatingly horrible ride to get there, but I still can't understand what the heck happened with that ending. I wish I could edit it!

Maybe the better medium is some kind of mix of triumphs and failures -- y'know, kind of more like real life. Minor accomplishments here and there, that may or may not tie directly to the main challenge, but at least it establishes that not EVERYTHING in this story is pity-porn. ;)