Hello! How are you? I’ve been thinking a lot about fiction tropes re: love and friendship. Also, I love my friends. While I try to figure out some next moves for feednet, I’m going to write about some friendship tropes. Have a wonderful week.
There is a trope in many YA novels, particularly the dystopian kind.
I don’’t think there’s a name for it, so let’s call it “Why are you yelling at genocide victims, bud?”
It’s a weirdly common trope.
Even before conversations about trauma and regulation started happening in the mainstream.
It’s in The Hunger Games, Gideon the Ninth, The Fifth Season, even The Outsiders.
Here are the scene beats:
Person A had a task that involves managing people for The Cause.
Person A gradually, over the course of the scene, loses their shit completely.
Person B, who has been quietly observing the scene, suggests maybe Person A should take a breather.
Person A flips out. Person B patiently waits for them to stop. Person a reluctantly agrees that maybe they need to take a break, chill out, stop screaming at genocide victims. At no point do either of the people in the scene, who tend to be fairly fucking traumatized (dystopia protagonists usually are), acknowledge the reason Person A is flipping out is probably about some shit they have not dealt with in their own sordid history.
That’s it. That’s the end of the scene.
Here’s how this trope goes in the Poppy Wars, a YA fantasy novel reimagining 19th Chinese history (it’s awesome). It’s a scene between Venka (genocide survivor and Person A) and Rin (general trauma guy and Person B).
Venka continued like she hadn’t heard.
“Do you want to guess how many of these girls are going to hang themselves? They have no space to be weak, Rin. They don’t have time to be in shock. That can’t be an option. That’s how they die.”
“I understand that,” Rin said. “But you can’t take your shit out on them. You’re a soldier. Act like it.” For a moment Rin thought Venka might hit her, too.
But the moment passed, and Venka’s shoulders slumped, all the fight drained out of her. “Fine. Put them under someone else’s charge, then. I’m finished here. And burn that place to the ground.”
“We can’t,” Rin said. “They’re some of the only walled structures still standing.” “Burn it,” Venka snarled. “Or I’ll get some oil and do it myself. And I’m not very good at arson.”
That’s it!
Nothing else happens.
Love does not cure PTSD.
Nobody decides to go to therapy. Nobody beats their addiction. No one even agrees to stop screaming at genocide victims from now on.
All that happens is Person A stops screaming at genocide victims for the time being, in this particular moment.
I think this trope is beautiful.
It’s about love.
—
In real life, the person who has done “Why are you yelling at genocide victims, bud?”, for me most, albeit with lower stakes, no genocide, is Noah.
** (Zenen too — but that’s a different email.)
“Hey, I can’t help notice you sent me an email last night at 4 AM, and now we’re talking on the phone at 6 AM and you’re screaming, is everything cool? It’s a little bit stressful!” Noah said to me towards the end of an aldermanic race.
He said this like he was asking if we had enough water bottles for canvassing, or if the Twitter graphic he made was in the right color: no big deal, no need to panic, but hey. Let’s talk about it.
Everything, as you might imagine, was not OK.
I wasn’t trying to burn anything down, but I also wasn’t fine.
I mean, the election, what we were working on? That was fine.
But I wasn’t.
I just didn’t notice until Noah did.
—
Noah did this trope for me a lot while we were working together. But I’ve also seen him do this for tenants, coworkers, Lilly, random people he encountered on the street.
When Noah does “Why you yelling at genocide victims, bud?“, it’s weirdly cheerful. It doesn’t have the pathos of The Burning God version.
It’s upbeat, fast paced, usually followed immediately by a self deprecating joke.
That’s because Noah has the uncanny ability to make light of things in a way doesn’t undermine their gravity.
He puts things into perspective, seeing people and all of their contradictions.
And what’s nice when Noah does this trope: if you don’t want to engage, or can’t engage with it, you don’t have to.
But, if you want, if you have the ability, Noah gives you an opportunity to step back, take a breath, think about where you’re at.
Noah did not heal my PTSD. Nor, as he would probably tell you repeatedly, has he cured anyone‘s PTSD. He might even question if he’s made the lives of the people he organizes with any better (but he has 🙄. Like, a lot).
But in that moment, I stopped yelling.
“Why are you yelling at genocide victims, bud?” — it’s an act of love.
And in fiction and real life, acts of love are very special.