Let's Talk About Manpain and Masculinity

[eilowyn]

I had a new idea for my grad school writing sample.

MANPAIN.

It's a fan-coined term for "when a main character in a story (always male, generally white) is written with a particular kind of psychologically painful history that causes him to behave in specific ways

Comments

[red_satin_doll]

I think this terrific material to work with because I think this largely goes unnoticed and unexamined in the larger culture; or at the very least, people are able to make excuses for why the male suffers and acts why he does. (Willow mindwiping Willow? baddy-bad-bad. Angel mindwiping Buffy? He had NOBLE reasons, don'cha know