Friday, February 24, 2012

Misuse of the term "tsundere"

Yes, I know, two angry posts in a row, meh.  I need a specific reason to post, and I haven't had enough time or money to get new gmaes recently (although someone did give me a copy of Dead Island so I might review that-- the few hours I have spent on it have been quit enjoyable, albeit a bit ), but still-- I'm getting a bit tired of this.

A woman who is a nice person generally, and who says something harsh, is not a "tsundere".  The term and concept for "Tsundere" came about because Anime writer shave no damned clue how to write women, and so they almost always wrote about a plucky girl or about a proper housewife.  Tsundere was an attempt to deepen the female characters by adding one (1) new element of their personality-- usually a mean streak on an otherwise nice girl.  However, it is still lazy writing, because the "tsundere" character is almost invariably very, very shallow.  The term itself comes from "tsuntsun", IE aloof or irritable, and "deredere", IE lovestruck.  And its use goes way too damned far for such a lazy, condescending term.

Unfortunately, Japan being what it is (royally fucked up), and Japanophiles being what they are (also royally fucked up), the term has been used to describe real people instead of half-assed constructs by lazy writers.  A normally nice woman who is groped and tehn gets mad about it is called "tsundere".  Because... what, she's supposed to LIKE having her breast grabbed by impetuous little turd of a man or something?  The man DESERVES the anger.  She isn't being tsundere, she's defending herself from an asshole.   Similarly, if one percieves a woman as a mean bitch but then sees her doing something nice, this also desn't mean she's a tsundere either.   More likely than not it just means that you probably gave her no reason to like you in the first place, or the time you've known her she has been in a situation that you keep caching her in a bad mood due to reasons enitrely beyond her control.

People are more complex than anime constructs.  There are a wdie variety of different personality quirks in a single person, and attempting to define them by comparing them to definitions of pop culture concepts is a stupid endeavor.  Get to know them as people instead, and you'll find that they're far more interesting that way.

3 comments:

  1. Well i mostly hate anime and harem animes are pretty bad too. I've seen more than enough panty shots for multiple lifetimes. I only considered you a tsundere because you seemed mean for a while to most people and then later seemed nice. Really it was more of a joke. I don't get how that personality came about for anime writers. I just think you're pissed a lot. The 'left behind' series, talk of people not being christian in a love your neighbor sort of way and instead being meaner and more extremist, homeopathy and this. I don't mean to be too mean about it but you do come off as really angry most of the time. While i feel like i get along with you now people that are always angry make me not want to be around them. I think part of the love of the tsundere character is that like the 'loli' girl they're usually both fun to tease and in both cases only because they get such a response out of it. If you didn't give a shit people wouldn't tease you and you wouldn't get super angry. Anyway people are weird.

    I actually stopped reading your blogs for a while. Figured i needed something else to take up my attention like skyrim, starcraft 2 and shogun 2.

    I enjoy it when people read my blogs though. I made quite a few on my skaven forum that's up for anybody to write on. Place is mostly dead unfortunately. Sometimes rants and blogs are good to write though. I'm thinking of writing one on how wizards are overpowered soon. I already wrote one about why i hate elves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh and you know what's really bad? Yaoi. Now you know about nerdy things and anime so i'm guessing you already know but it isn't just gay anime oh no that would be a blessing. You see they have a feminine male character and a masculine one but that's not all. You see the masculine character is supposed to be the antagonist and the feminine one is the submissive victim. That's right it's basically rape. Oh and this is the tame stuff. Then they get into all the weird variations of porn like tranny's and children even boy children. Japan is so fucked up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for making me laugh, this entry and your preceeding rant have really brightened my day. I think the homeopathy rant could have done without the policical crud at the end, but when you're writing a quality rant sometimes you just have to follow it to the end , no matter where it goes.

    ReplyDelete