I do not think that word means what you think it means

[selenak]

Sometimes it really seems that the time between fannish expressions being coined and them being used in a way that's far from their original meaning gets shorter and shorter. The most prominent example being "Mary Sue" which after a gazillion people used it just in the sense of "female character I don't like" lost all its usefulness. Two or three days ago, I started to add "man pain" to the number, after reading a tweet wherein the writer of same talked about Steve Rogers' "man pain" in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

Errr.

Steve isn't even my favourite MCU character. Or comic book character. But. If there is one superhero who reliably puts saving people first and his own angst for later, it's Steve Rogers. This, btw, is something I like about him. "Man pain", as far as I know, was coined to signify a character (usually male, though I did see people use the expression for the occasional female character as well) making not only something bad happening to him but something worse happening to other people into fodder for his own angst, and his own drama. (Come to think of it, wouldn't the female version be the expression "white women's tears"? Though that one is strictly related to poc's fates being used as angst fodder for a white female character, which "man pain" is not.) Meanwhile, Steve throughout "Winter Soldier", where he gets a couple of shattering revelations both general and personal, never loses sight of what's most important (that would be: no fascist surveillance state taking out its enemies) while finding the time to comfort Natasha through her moment of of "what the hell was my life about?"' angst. The point where he whited for spoilersprioritizes Bucky isn't until Hydra is already defeated. When it's solely his, Steve's, own life n the line. Which he's prepared to sacrifice rather than kill his friend. But when everyone else's lives were still at stake, he did fight, and he did finish that mission. Again: if there's one superhero currently in the MCU who never prioritizes his own pain over anyone else's danger or pain, and who certainly does NOT make other people's tragedies about himself, it's Steve Rogers.

End of MCU Captain America Has No Man Pain rant.

Meanwhile, via lonelywalker, a fabulous interview with John Logan, the creator of Penny Dreadful, in which we find out that Vanessa Ives is a Wilkie Collins kind of heroine (of course she is!), the Ives-Murray abode in London is the bridge of the Enterprise, and Victor Frankenstein isn't likely to find out happiness in season 2 (naturally; he's Victor). Consider me more thrilled than ever we'll get more of this show.

Comments

[lonelywalker]

The definition of manpain seems to agree with you. I definitely always saw it as the hero standing around with rain symbolising the tears he can't shed, etc, etc. But yeah, I wouldn't personally view Steve as a good example of that. There's no scene of him brooding, angsting, or acting out that I can recall.

Hee - didn't Malcolm in Penny Dreadful have a whole scene explaining why a man's pain was waaaaay more painful and important than a mere woman's pain? Which was pretty hilarious given everything Vanessa had gone through by that point.

[selenak]

The closest thing I can think of a "Steve broods" scene is early in The Avengers when he's punching a bag, and he doesn't do it to avoid communication - when Nick Fury shows up, he immediately signs on to the suggested mission, then tries to get into conversation with his new co-workers, etc.

[onyxlynx]

I suspect this post was strictly coincidental. (Via Making Light.)

[selenak]

LOL. Quite, as I'm not on tumblr, but it makes the point beautifully. :) "Captain America gets rained on, too. The difference, I think, is that at some point he would go out and buy an umbrella" is a great way of putting it.

[monanotlisa]

Oh my God, that one was perfection; I reblogged it.

[lotesse]

hmm, not sure about the equivalency of ww's tears and manpain - for sure, both are about the unjust centering of a privileged person's upset, but with I think different functions and pathologies. white women's tears are a way of calling on patriarchal stereotypes of white female fragility in order to shut down potentially difficult scenes, whereas manpain is a seriously warped expression of what ought to be genuine human suffering, pressed through masculinity paradigms until it emerges as something monstrous.

[selenak]

Yes, they're two somewhat different phenomena. (Though the first time I've seen "white woman's tears" used fannishly was in the context of an s1 Merlin episode where the poc character, Gwen, lost her father in a terrible way, but the white character, Morgana, was the one whose reaction to this the episode - and Morgana herself - focused on.) At any event, my point is that their current usage is becoming so generic that they're rapidly degrading to meaninglessness. Not because what they describe has ceased to exist, I hasten to add.

[jesuswasbatman]

I was just about to post about this and use those two examples as well, but I was also going to complain about how "queerbaiting" is rapidly becoming meaningless thanks to its use by the selfish "it's homophobic if MY PERSONAL slash ship isn't made canon" element to mean "anything that a committed shipper can read as evidence of romantic tension", or in other words "these two characters exist".

"White womens' tears" is another one that's being used so broadly as to be virtually meaningless. Originally it meant the specific situation where a white person is so upset by discussion of racism (especially if it's subconscious racism in their own behaviour/creativity being pointed out) that they freak out so violently that the whole discussion stops while everyone else feels obliged to reassure them that they personally are a decent human being and not an irredeemable racist monster.

Personally, the only female character I'm aware of who I think is guilty of full-on infuriating manpain is Buffy in the Season Eight comics (don't know about later because I gave up in disgust at that point).

[selenak]

I agree about "queerbaiting". All these expresssions describe phenomena which do exist, but as we agree, the way they're used now makes them meaningless. Argh!

[wee_warrior]

I was also going to complain about how "queerbaiting" is rapidly becoming meaningless thanks to its use by the selfish "it's homophobic if MY PERSONAL slash ship isn't made canon" element to mean "anything that a committed shipper can read as evidence of romantic tension", or in other words "these two characters exist".

Oh word to this!, she said, rolling her eyes especially at certain factions in a certain fandom.

[intrigueing]

I've heard it described two ways: there's the first, which is manpain-as-person - which you describe in this post. The second is manpain-as-character, which is when the character reacts in a perfectly decent, reasonable, unselfish fashion from an in-universe perspective, but the story is structured by the author in such a way that the main character's pain takes center stage and/or comes at the expense of women, minorities, minor characters, etc.

In the first one, you're pissed at the character for reacting that way. In the second, you're only pissed at the writer for writing it that way, though there's nothing wrong with the character's behavior. But there's a blurred line there -- it's not always easy to tell if the main character is explicitly making other people's pain all about him, or if it's just that the writer is choosing to show only the main character's personal pain.

[genarti]

Yes, I agree, about these two definitions. (And that neither one fits Steve in Cap 2.) There are certainly plenty of times where I feel that the character is justified in being deeply upset and in pain, but the narrative is not justified in giving that pain as much narrative weight as it does.

[wee_warrior]

I feel a lot of these particular terms tend to be overused in fandom, tbh. I blame the irritating need to categorize everything, without taking the pain to actually think about definitions. (Although I do still love "concern trolling." Not that overused yet, at least where I usually roam.)

, and Victor Frankenstein isn't likely to find out happiness in season 2 (naturally; he's Victor)

Dear Victor is so much like certain parts of me in some regards, I should probably worry. Then again, all the rest of me is very much not like Victor, but shaking its head at him, thinking "why do you have to be this way, child?!" If I had a son, he'd probably be like that, including the hideous ex-boyfriend/creature.