1/1.5/2-person theory
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024 13:31![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cashewPreamble (more like pre-ramble):
I'm going to switch to using 丹枫 and 丹恒 rather than English names because I realized the two names look too much alike in English and I keep accidentally mixing them up. There's more obvious visual distinction in Chinese, so.
On the subject of 1/1.5/2-person discussion
This entire discussion is purely driven by ship goggles. I wish fangirls would recognize that canonically there is only one interpretation: 丹枫 and 丹恒 are 2 separate people. The story is unequivocal about this, even with 2.5 patch's terribly inconsistent writing.
Why? Because the story is 100% behind the belief that 丹恒 is innocent of any wrong doing. 丹恒 is the victim, has always been portrayed as the victim, and the narrative never wavered on this point. While 丹恒 the character might be waffling back and forth about who he is and how he interprets himself, the narrative has not.
Because if the narrative actually agreed with 丹恒's logic, then the story would not allow 丹恒 to continue being a free person. The meta-texual ethical justification for 丹恒's continued participation as a member of the MC's party is because the narrative has always treated 丹恒 as a separate entity from 丹枫. The canon simply does not support an alternative interpretation.
With that said, the entire argument regarding 1/1.5/2-person interpretation is driven solely by shipping, specifically the type of romance that can be written depending on where one stands in the 1/1.5/2 debate. Are we good? All right, then on to the actual discussion.
1-person theory
The driving impetus behind the 1-person theory is because 景元/丹恒 shippers want to avoid the very awkward replacement goldfish situation. The majority of 景元's feelings toward 丹恒 is unequivocally driven by his interest in 丹枫. The deep history 景元 and 丹枫 shared in the past, the 700+ years of 景元's non-stop effort to clean up the political mess that is 饮月之乱, the continued protection 景元 offers 丹恒 currently is all owed to 丹枫. Without 丹枫, 丹恒 would be nothing to 景元. Without the history of 丹枫, 丹恒 will mean as much as MC or March 7 or Welt. A useful ally, but only a useful ally, nothing more.
Everything that makes 丹恒 special to 景元 is because of 丹枫. This is the inescapable truth.
So 1-person theory gets around the problem by simply making 丹恒 the continuation of 丹枫. If they're the same person, then all the emotional hangups are gone. 丹恒 has served his sentence, both in prison and exile, he completed the duty 丹枫 had abandoned while in prison (by reinforcing the seal on 建木), and he's legally been absolved his past crimes by doing a good (by helping to fight Phantylia) of equal magnitude and has made up for the deaths caused by the taboo experimentation 丹枫 committed.
1-person theory seems to fix all the problems stopping the ship, except for how it throws canon out the window. It's also ethically unsound, since this implies somehow one can make up for killing (at least) 4000+ lives by saving others in the future. That's villain logic, and everyone knows it.
This is probably why 1-person theory fic tends to lean towards less heroic portrayals of 丹枫/恒. He can't escape his guilt, and he has to make up for it by suffering emotionally forever, often putting people he loves into danger and whatnot. Or, 饮月之乱 never happens, so we don't have to deal with the problem at all. So AUs are the other out from this ethical conundrum.
1.5-person theory
1.5-person is an attempt to have one's cake and eat it too. 丹恒 inherits all the good stuff, such as memories of 丹枫's relationship with 景元, and forgets all the bad stuff, such as his motivations during 饮月之乱. This way, the shippers can keep the emotuonal history of 景元 and 丹枫, while getting around the criminal liability of directly causing 4000+ people to die. The foundation of 1.5-person theory is the belief that one can only be held responsible for what one remembers.
So like...here's the problem. Forgetting does not absolve one of one's liability towards an action. Like, as a society, we have agreed upon this. This is precisely why companies push so hard for the subscription model of business. Just because you forget you subscribed to a service doesn't mean you're not still liable for paying for that service. Similarly, just because you forgot everything associated with a crime doesn't mean you aren't still liable for that crime.
(Sidenote: don't bring in statute of limitations into this. The statute of limitations is a practical issue about the fairness of who gets to get away scot-free and how long a person can be held for processing when there's limited resources to pursue and process liability. The ethical liability remains regardless of how much time has passed.)
As most law books indicate, amnesia in of itself is not substantial mitigation of criminal responsibility. However, if there is enough evidence to consider the cognitive alteration constitutes an entirely new person, then there can no longer be grounds for prosecution.
So yes, legally, we (the human society) have in fact wrangled with the issue of memory vs identity, and our unanimous agreement is "memory loss = responsible, completely new identity = not responsible". In other words, 1.5-person theory does NOT allow 丹恒 to circumvent the liability of 饮月之乱. Sorry fangirls, there is no happy ending here.
2-person theory
This is the canonical reading. Since 丹恒 is so altered by his new life and forgot so much of his past life, he is considered a completely new person. His personality and identity is different enough from 丹枫 that he's not 丹枫. 丹枫 is, at best, someone who is related to him, like an identical twin, but as far as personhood is concerned, they are two separate people.
This is the most ethically sound outcome. But this is also the most emotionally complicated, because, as mentioned before, the entire emotional foundation between 景元 and 丹恒 is built on 景元's feelings for 丹枫. 丹恒 hasn't done anything to warrant real emotional investment from 景元. He is no more special than MC, March 7, Welt, etc. So unless 丹恒 does something really huge to change the dynamics, he will not be able to escape the replacement goldfish conundrum.
This puts a lot of burden on shippers to try and find hints and clues that 景元 and 丹恒 are emotionally growing close because of their current situation rather than the result of continuing a previous emotional connection to which 丹恒 has no rightful claim.
The canon...does the shippers no real favors in this sense. This is why I'm surprised that miHoyo keeps trying to sell this as their BL bait when there's basically nothing there.
In conclusion
1-person theory is doomed to tragedy or ignoring 饮月之乱 via AUs. 1.5-person theory cannot absolve 丹恒 of criminal liability via memory loss excuse. 2-person theory absolved 丹恒 of 丹枫's crime, but turns him into a replacement goldfish.
Every version has problems, but the 2-person theory is the most ethically sound. But also maybe y'all should try shipping 景元/丹枫 instead, since that's where the actual emotional foundation lies.
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no subject
Date: 2024-09-18 16:58 (UTC)Also, I suppose another way of getting around these 3 theories is to avoid them altogether. If you write short enough, especially with PWP or fluff pieces (that assume established relationship), you don't need to get into the emotional setup/backstory. *shrug*
Anyway, I agree with your analysis. And like, this is probably why I am mostly dropped out of this ship. That and it lack of popularity means there's little to no updates, much less good fic, when I do go looking.
(I've also peeked a little into the more popular Blade/Dan Heng fandom, but nope, still not liking their vibes.)
Going to stick with Ratio/Aventurine as the popular safe pairing at this point...
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 01:30 (UTC)景元/丹枫 never had a chance to be truly happy, so ending the story right before Battle of Shuhu is the way to go for a (relatively) happy ending. It's all about expectations. With 景元/丹恒, anything less than a full resolution is gonna feel tragic, while with 景元/丹枫 just having the two manage to confess to each other feels like the best possible result. The frame of reference is very different so the type of plot that brings emotional satisfaction will be different.
Since canon already sunk the 景元/丹枫 ship, there's a lot more creative freedom to make up stuff. With 景元/丹恒 it's a lot harder since the story isn't over and the official account keeps pretending this thing has a path towards the happy ending.
Like, I'm noticing a lot of 景元/丹恒 shippers are really afraid of emotional torture for some reason. Given romance's biggest draw is the dragging out of the emotional suffering of the pairing by injecting obstacles between the shipped pairing, this makes a lot of 景元/丹恒 fic emotionally immature. There's no emotional satisfaction if the couple doesn't earn their sexy times by having to struggle with uncertainty and misunderstandings. It doesn't have to be super dramatic, but things like jealousy, mutual pining, or even comical obstacles like the pet who won't let you have sex, are all ways to drag out the anticipation.
Obviously this is a matter of degree, as too much angst will drive the story into melodrama. But not having any obstacles (which tend to be the more common leaning in 景元/丹恒 fic) makes the fic bland and emotionally unsatisfying.
So I guess what I'm saying is I find 景元/丹枫 (on average) to wrangle a little harder with the feefees, something I'm looking for if I'm going to read shipfic.
Re: aventurine/ratio - fandom's over focus on Dr. Ratio's advanced degrees and flattening his personality to "stereotypical nerd" is kind of a put off. Ratio is a well-read Renaissance man, someone who has many interests and a philosopher who have many thoughts on how the world ought to be. We get none of this in fanfic. Ratio's most defining character trait is that he's an educator, yet I've not seen fic deal with what he sees as his duty to his students in terms of educating them into productive members of society. What is the most important value he wishes to impart to his students? That's the key defining trait of every good professor!
IRL examples of philosophical core that my professors imparted to me: astronomy 1 - no matter what you do in life, do something you're passionate about; Western Civ - be always critical of what historians write down; chemistry 1 - never be afraid to challenge authority; bio (all of them) - there is no dogma in science; statistics 101 - irresponsible post-hoc analysis can lead to misrepresentation of reality; etc. The job of Professors is to inspire young minds to want to inquire about the world around them. Yet fandom doesn't touch this aspect at all.
Note I'm not saying Dr. Ratio needs to teach a class in fic, just that the way he interacts with people ought to reflect his desire to teach and impart knowledge. Yet most fic would rather depict him as someone who shows off his smarts or is just bad at reading the room and responding to social cues. Having Dr. Ratio caustically taking down people a peg is like the worst possible depiction. He doesn't get his jollies out of making other people feel stupid, we even see this highlighted in his PV where he gives out praises when he thinks someone did a good job. He understands the importance of building up his student's confidence. Again, not saying he won't cut people down if they're asking for it, but that shouldn't be the focus.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 04:31 (UTC)IMO, I think that's because the fangirls who are into that all went into the Blade/Dan Heng ship, because that one is much more suited to torture, both emotional and literal.
> fandom's over focus on Dr. Ratio's advanced degrees and flattening his personality to "stereotypical nerd" is kind of a put off
Really? My experience is that the fans tend to gloss over Ratio's credentials most of the time. Maybe mention it in lip service but never actually feature anything relevant in the story. Because they don't have the context for someone of that level of intelligence. It's the same problem that they also often forget this is a scifi/fantasy setting.
Like, one of my pet peeves with Ratio/Aventurine fics is that whoever bottoms in the fic gets stuffed into the "domestic" role, complete with automatically becoming a 5 star chef, doing the house cleaning, etc. But, no one thinks someone like Ratio who has both engineering and comp sci degrees wouldn't have any robots to do his cleanup and/or cooking? Or that Aventurine couldn't afford to *buy* an advanced roomba? -_-
> Ratio's most defining character trait is that he's an educator, yet I've not seen fic deal with what he sees as his duty to his students in terms of educating them into productive members of society.... Yet fandom doesn't touch this aspect at all.
Hm, actually, I see a lot more of this featured in stories. Especially fics that include slice of life usually do a lot of portraying Ratio doing grading or lectures (remote and in person), getting into bad moods when coming across particular stupid assignments (or excuses for late assignments), the occasional POV from a student who's panicking over a deadline or grateful to have survived his class, etc. I mean, education is generally not the *focus* of fics, because the focus is the romance CP and Aventurine isn't a college boy except in AUs. But Ratio being a professor (and researcher) is definitely featured prominently in the background of the fics I've read.
Maybe we're reading different fics?
> Yet most fic would rather depict him as someone who shows off his smarts or is just bad at reading the room and responding to social cues. Having Dr. Ratio caustically taking down people a peg is like the worst possible depiction.
...I definitely think we're reading different fics. These sound like the kind of fics I close out after the first paragraph for being too OOC.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 06:17 (UTC)The Blade/Dan Heng ship isn't torture, it's abuse. The whole point of character torture isn't to abuse the character, it's to make them face down obstacles and earn their happy ending. In the Blade/Dan Heng set-up, that pretty much is an abusive relationship, both between the characters within the story and between the author and the characters being written. There is no love there.
That's what I meant by "focusing" on the many degrees. Not the content of the degree, but just the possession of the degree, as if having a piece of paper can prove expertise. It's a really shallow understanding of both academics and academia.
More shockingly to me is that apparently delivery and dining out, the staple of most academics and business men, are not the main form of food intake. Ratio is easily upper middle class and Aventurine is unequivocally upper class. Why are they being domestic? Where are the servants and maids?!
This is why I clarified I wasn't talking about actually teaching a class. I don't need college AU. What I would like to see is how Ratio's life philosophy informs his social interactions. Like, does Ratio ever bitch about shitty bureaucracy getting in the way of bringing in reasonable students or blocking a good hire? Does he get angry at the admissions process that cuts out qualified students to cater to kids from rich families? What kinds of social injustices pisses him off when it comes to equal opportunity access to education? These are the things that ought to matter the most to Ratio based on his personal story snippets.
Much like how professors at universities organized to protect their students' right to protest during the mess of pro-Palestine protests or how the President of a university wrote an op-ed in defense of their student's right to speak out against American foreign policies. Ratio is an academic, this is the kind of stuff that should get him furious and ranting. I mean the guy refused membership to an exclusive club because he believed in egalitarian access to education. He really ought to be supremely infuriated by systemic inequalities.
And no, I don't think the fact that the majority of his degrees are in STEM disciplines means that he'll somehow be less interested in social justice. The STEM professors are usually the first ones to get targeted by politically motivated policies, since there's always a fear from the higher ups that the "wrong" types of people are in STEM, the foundation of a group/country/state's technological advantage. (I mean did we forget Einstein was leading the resistance against nuclear weapons development due to ethical concerns?)
I mean it's possible. I didn't delve very deeply into the whole thing because my early forays into the fics made me so spitting mad. Like the stuff was obviously written by people who have ZERO insight into the academic life or know that "Ph.D." stands for "Doctor of Philosophy". Gah.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 07:01 (UTC)Unfortunately, with the typical level of writing in this fandom, I am not sure many writers actually make that difference. =/
Especially on the CN side. I mean, a lot of BG romance novels are about really toxic relationships, but the abused female lead will still end up forgiving any number of physical and emotional damage done by her abuser after some token "repenting", and "live happily ever after". But there's a significant readership which still sees this as just angsty romance and not, y'know, abuse.
> What I would like to see is how Ratio's life philosophy informs his social interactions.
Hm... those kind of stories will probably need to have a side character that's from Ratio's academics side professor to actually lead into things. Unfortunately, most plots tend to focus on the business relationship with the IPC, or research side with the Guild/Genius Society. So that doesn't come up often, I guess.
I've seen one fic recently which does get a little into his academic profession as a career, so I'll throw this rec out here: The Egyhazo Incident. There are stuff that really bugged me about it, such as equating the Intelligensia Guild = University of Veritas Prime, and the bad sense of scale giving it a staff size that's closer to my local community college than an interstellar institution, and the anachronisms like *fax* in a setting that already has cell phones. But this setup does end up featuring more characters from the university side, which offers more of a peak into that side of the story.
Another rec I'll throw out here is this one: 以毒攻毒 - A rewriting of Ratio & Aventurine's first meeting. Aventurine takes up the mission of getting Ratio's cooperation with the Strategic Investment Dept. Negotiation starts off at Ratio's university class, then moves onto a politically unstable planet where the Intelligensia Guild is doing some educational charity work. (Dialogue there gets a bit soapboxy but at least the ideas espoused are within my characterization SOD.) Ends with some actiony teamup work. The romance at the end feels too sudden IMO, if we can ignore that, it would be a nice pre-slash story.
> Like the stuff was obviously written by people who have ZERO insight into the academic life or know that "Ph.D." stands for "Doctor of Philosophy".
LOL, yeah, that would be obvious. I had the expectation before that this CP might not be pairing for you, given that the academic side of Ratio's character is potentially rife for writing that would drive you up a wall. Which is why I didn't really mention it much in my HSR posts.
I mean, I think the canon writing is also guilty of having writers who obviously never got an actual bachelor's degree from an university doing the writing. Because the 8 doctoral degrees thing is *so* unnecessary. I mean, look at Newton, he only had a degree in math, but that doesn't stop him from being a pioneer in fields like astronomy, economics, physics, etc. Similarly, if I was the one doing the writing, Dr. Ratio might only need to have a degree in math and theology (and maybe biology), and the rest of his credentials can just be discoveries/inventions/achievements in the other various fields. Or even honorary degrees foisted on him by the university maybe. *shrug*
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 09:56 (UTC)Yeah. It's why I basically skip around that ship. But it also leaves the ships I'm willing to read sadly lacking in fic because apparently healthy (if rocky) relationships are like unicorns or something.
I mean there's also the fact that a lot of writers have no idea how to show a character's philosophy. I've noticed that most writers only ever make characters say what they feel rather than delve deeper into their internal thoughts, despite the fact that the written media (aka novels/novella) is the perfect medium to allow readers to dive into the internal thoughts of characters.
I don't know if this is the result of gamer fandoms or what, but it's like...internal thought process descriptions are rare AF for some reason.
But as for dealing with the business side of things...it's actually a great set up to get Ratio's perspective. Business decisions are profit driven. An academic's decisions are driven by things that have nothing to do with profit. Having Ratio negotiate the terms of projects and try to force his priorities into the grants/scholarships/project funding meetings would provide an opportunity to show what Ratio finds more important. Plus, it would give an excuse for Ratio to have to work with Aventurine, who has far more business experience and can...I don't know, edit his grant proposal with flirty comments like "I love your dedication to the pursuit of enlightenment, Professor, but there's no way you'll convince business sharks with your highfalutin arguments about the importance of education if you don't link it back to their wallets somehow." (Obviously this is an off-the-cuff example and not very well thought out. I'm not thinking about these characters very hard, but what I've seen have not impressed me that the writers thought very hard about the characters either.)
The pacing is a little off, but yeah, fics like this are less annoying. But also agree that the philosophizing got a bit navel-gaze-y and I'm still a bit annoyed at the weird robotic-ness of Dr. Ratio's language quirks. Like...gah, can he just talk like a normal person? Like why would he waste time saying he's "硕士研究生、博士导师" when he can just say "硕博研导" and it would literally mean the same thing? It's like saying "I'm the principle investigator leading this project" when most PIs would just be like "I'm the PI." (I've yet to see fanfic that has Dr. Ratio talk like a normal person. Which is weird because he speaks like a normal person in the game, albeit even "normal" dialogue in game is a weird mix of formal and colloquial grammar. But that's everyone. There's nothing about Dr. Ratio's speech pattern to suggest that he speaks more formally than everyone else.)
I will endeavor not to pick on that aspect of the writing...
OMFG YES! I didn't really want to get into it, since I do like the general vibes of Dr. Ratio, but the 8 doctoral degrees was pissing me off. Like, WTF, no, he does not need 8 doctoral degrees! It's basically just comics schlock (reminds me of Dr. Banner's 7 PhDs). God I wish people would stop doing that! I swear every time miHoyo writes more about a character I like they ruin him/her! It's infuriating! At this point I almost don't want to get into the canon any further because Dr. Ratio is perfect as he is in his PV and anything more would ruin his character for me.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-19 17:11 (UTC)Well, sure, if the writers actually want to write about the philosophical/ethical/etc. parts of dealing with the IPC, but most people don't. Usually, the IPC (or Guild) is just there as a catalyst for the plot, a reason for why the heroes are participating in the adventure of the episode kind of deal.
It's a bit sad, because even ignoring Dr. Ratio, Aventurine (who's the more popular character of this ship) and his relationship with the IPC, the IPC's relationship with the cosmos, are also very interesting topics to explore. But no one does it in favor of painting Aventurine as the standard overworked 007 employee of megacorp trope. Despite the fact that at his level Aventurine is upper management, not low level employee, and by definition the inflictor of 007 more than the victim of it, if anything. But people would rather "woobie" Aventurine, I guess. -_-
> I'm still a bit annoyed at the weird robotic-ness of Dr. Ratio's language quirks
I am coming to the hypothesis that people tend to write him like this because of stereotypes and that's how they think smart people behave or should be portrayed.
Still, IMO this is more tolerable than the other extreme, which is to have all characters use netspeak slang and swear all over the place because that's how the writer talks in real life. Writing from a thesaurus is better than writing with no vocabulary at all. -_-
> It's basically just comics schlock (reminds me of Dr. Banner's 7 PhDs).
LOL, now that you remind me. This is why my personal headcanon is that most of those degrees are honorary ones foisted on Dr. Ratio by his university...(Moving the rest of this headcanon to my latest post)
no subject
Date: 2024-09-20 03:09 (UTC)(Followed up on the other post you made so I'll just address the one point...)
Yeah, I'm not sure that's true. Like, unequivocally both are terrible, but writing from a thesaurus can lead to cases of people using words they have no idea how to use and conveying a comically wrong meaning. When using netspeak, at least the word is used correctly and is conveying what the author wants to convey.
But I'd rather neither happened. The difference is too small to be of significant value. :p