It's So, So Distasteful How The Only 2 Canonically Referred To Female Characters Are There To Provide

It's so, so distasteful how the only 2 canonically referred to female characters are there to provide and cater to a family/male partner; nothing more than a counterpart. The entire "I don't want to introduce major female sticks into my writing because I don't want to include romance within my characters" bit is misogynistic. Nothing more, nothing less, and I wished the fandom would say it how it is. I'm tired of people trying to march around eggshells and thorns with the wording. It's okay to criticize your favorite. You need to say it.

the problem with mitsi (or as i like to call it. mitsogyny)

(context: this was written under a youtube video, which i'm sure most of us have at least seen pop up in our recommendeds, in response to many people taking criticism against the new episode. it has been edited a little to be more cohesive as a somewhat-essay)

ok, i wanted to write out a rant/essay/ramble/whatever sort of summarising the criticism against mitsi's plotline because a lot of the people here seem to be misunderstanding the fundamental issue that people have with it, including some of those people themselves.

first off, an analysis that i think tell both sides of the argument very well which i feel should be read before reading the essay: Mitsi: What Makes A Fridged Character (and why y'all are wrong about it) | an AvA essay by InksandPensblog. i will note: i don't care to discuss whether mitsi was fridged or not and that won't be of much importance in this post. the above link gives some insight into some of the fandom's criticism of mitsi and how she was "fridged", defining common tropes for examples. that's what's relevant to this post.

the main issue with mitsi, in my opinion, is less with the fact that mitsi's a girl and moreso the fact that she's one of the only female-coded character in the series, and that her character's main purpose was to further victim's own development. the other arguably female-coded character in the series is pink, who (like navy) only really exists to explain purple's motivations. i don't have much of an issue with that since they're not meant to be important or sympathised with at all. that's not their job in the story.

with mitsi, i've seen people point out that she has more character to her than just victim's love interest and supporter: she invents rocketcorp, she's smart, she's kind, innocent and helpful. narratively speaking, she shows other creations' relationships with their animators, parallels her innocence with victim's trauma, and introduces victim to the outernet (as most fans call the stick realm).

but most of this things imo are either stretches or invalid arguments. she's not really a 2/3-dimensional character in any way; her main character traits boil down to the fact that she likes to be in service of others with no nuance behind why she likes helping people. she hypes up victim for the villagers, she starts a company with him to share his talents with the world, and she helps him overcome his trauma from alan's torture. all of her main plot beats center around victim: and while technically the sticks are genderless and free to be interpreted however the viewer wants, alan and most of his team see all the main characters as male, and that subconciously affects how they're written. mitsi, the first major female-coded character, spends most of her storyline in service of victim, a character not written as female.

there's also the issue of her being victim's canonical love interest. i feel like this statement from alan is important to keep in mind (don't mind the sound effects and edits, this is the only isolated clip i can find at the moment). in particular:

"i just assume that [the ava/m characters] are just a bunch of bros]. i haven't thought of adding any female stick figures but i think it'd be good. i don't want to introduce any romance though, i don't want that to be a theme."

he seems to have changed his mind on that last part, which is fine, but the notable part for me is that he seems to associate female characters with romance from the getgo. before anyone misinterprets this, i'm not trying to call alan sexist or anything. but there's a common issue with women in stories being reduced to just a romantic partner for the male lead, and mitsi falls under this, with her entire character existing to serve victim. (not to mention people will make things about romance whether you like it or not. that's just basic fandom. search up grapeduo or chodark.) even her death is to put victim on the path of vengeance--- it doesn't need to happen to show the extent of tco and tdl's destruction, because that's already made pretty clear in ava s2 the flashback and the earlier scenes showing various characters escaping burning buildings. when you write a female-coded character whose only purpose is to serve a male character, you're contributing to sexist narratives.

a counter i see many people point out with the idea that she has no character is that she does have character traits, it's just that they're generic ones like "kind" and "innocent". the issue is that she has no flaws to counterpoint this; it's not that she didn't have enough screentime. in ava4 for example, we see tsc's flaws pretty clearly; they can be very mean when they want to, they're petty (albeit for a fair reason), they're a little impulsive. this is shown in 11 minutes (from the moment they come alive to the end of the video).

with mitsi meanwhile… she doesn't seem to have any flaws? she helps victim whenever she can. she's nice to all the villagers. her customers all like her and she's a great leader at rocket corp (to note, specifically as part of a pair with victim. they're a power couple, she's barely given credit for her work alone). she has 13 minutes of screentime, or 10 if you count from her waking up in the outernet. there's plenty of opportunities to show her having flaws; maybe she acts a little selfish during tdl and tco's attack, only wanting to help herself and agent smith, or maybe she overworks herself, or feels awkward at having too much attention (and that could also be why she redirects so much attention to victim, she's shy). you could argue that the episode needs to develop victim and agent smith too, but ava4 shows that's easy to do too: just a few seconds dedicated to showing rgyb fighting over who leaves first shows that they can be selfish and childish. it's very easy to insert a moment like that for mitsi.

it's a little disappointing when the first major female-coded character in ava is completely flawless, with no personality outside of being nice and helpful for others.

also, slightly unrelated, check out this quote from mitsi's plushie website: "her white featureless face seems to ooze mystery and feminine power all at the same time." her main character trait, as a woman, is being feminine. it's irritating as someone who's been raised a woman to see her reduced to just her gender. she feels more plastic than a person, like the concept of what a woman should be (perfect, kind, useful) and not an actual character/person.

i would expect more from the writing in the series seeing as it's not just an independent passion project anymore, and has multiple writers that all could've worked to flesh out mitsi, or at least get a sensitivity reader of sorts to point these issues out. it's extremely disappointing and i can understand why people were upset.

tldr: the problem isn't just that mitsi's a girl, or that she's nice or dating victim, it's that she's written in a misogynistic way.

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I mean animator vs animation alan becker ava mitsi and it's the fact that this critique of ava11 doesn’t stop there it's even more horrible from a writers standpoint I'm glad and happy that many are criticizing the blatant misogynistic choices but there's also major flaws from a writers standpoint as well and I wish those were also discussions within the community you're telling me the ab team couldn’t even THINK of a name for mitsi that the only creativity that they could fathom was a scramble of Victim's own name that says enough in itself it's so distasteful

My Fault (part17)

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me alan becker WHO DOES THAT why don't you just shoot me a million times what a stab in the heart the dialouge UHHHHJJJJ the dialouge I can talk forever but that's for the doc having an entire doc analyzing and complimenting a fan series??

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sscardinal7

3 months ago

Theory: The Newgrounds attack takes place On October 2nd, immediately after Dark and Chosen escape.

I’ve touched upon how I think the Timeline is a little wonky in this regard before, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And I think I’ve figured it out.

When Victim first escapes Alan’s PC, he first goes to Yahoo.

Theory: The Newgrounds Attack Takes Place On October 2nd, Immediately After Dark And Chosen Escape.

I even made a joke about it in my last post, about how Alan’s taken the piss out of Yahoo before.

But, well, that previous time?

The Flashback.

But moreso: Yahoo is the first thing Chosen and Dark are shown attacking during the Flashback.

Both Victim AND Chosen and Dark end up at Yahoo after they escape.

And there might be a reason for it:

Alan’s PC was originally tethered to Yahoo. [It also seemed to have an offshoot connection to MSN, which it took me an hour to identify that logo as I was unfamiliar with it.] That was the primary webstring (tunnel, but I wanna call them webstrings bc world wide web) to his IP box. And His IP only originally has one webstring coming out of it.

Until Victim does...Whatever THIS is. And causes ALL OF THE IP addresses to become tethered to the Outernet directly.

[Victim not being uploaded anywhere and coming directly from a PC in a rocket made of computer program parts might have significance on why the Barrier became connected to the IP Boxes, but that’s a different theory for another day.]

So currently, Alan’s PC has two connections to it: One that leads to Yahoo/MSN, and another that leads directly to the Outernet.

We all assumed that Chosen and Dark went right to the Outernet when they left his old PC, because it was implied that that tunnel was the same one Chosen had COME from and that he and the Color Gang were currently going through; a webstring that does spit them out into the Outernet.

But they didn’t.

Dark and Chosen did not go through the Outernet webstring.

They went to through the YAHOO webstring.

I refuse to believe it’s a coincidence that they ended up on Yahoo first, or just happened to choose to attack Yahoo first, when Yahoo is shown to be directly connected to Alan’s IP box.

They never went to the Outernet. They went from Alan’s PC DIRECTLY TO Yahoo.

Which means that the first part of the Flashback is showing the events of what Chosen and Dark did IMMEDIATELY after they escaped.

Yahoo was the first place they were spit out into, so they decided to destroy it too. Why not? They just literally got done destroying Alan’s computer, why not wreck more human shit?

Victim and Chosen/Dark’s paths differ after Yahoo.

Victim goes to Runescape, then Myspace, to the Singh Family IP Box, where he crashes out of and into GracesPC, where he’s taken to Newgrounds, and then he crashes into the Outernet.

Chosen and Dark, if the Flashback showed their complete journey, went from Yahoo, to Angry Birds, to StickPage, to Newgrounds.

The websites are shown to have dozens, if not hundreds of webstrings attached to them. Each leading to different places: other websites, other programs, other IP Boxes.

It’s totally possible that Dark and Chosen just went through a different webstring than Victim did to end up at Angry Birds instead, especially if they stopped to destroy Yahoo. Victim just made a (somewhat straight) shot through. But they could have just picked an exit at random.

I made a diagram for it:

It this theory is true, then it implies that StickPage is the first time both Dark and Chosen are seeing other living stick figures besides each other.

And that some HUGE implications.

Do Chosen and Dark realize what they’re doing, when they’re attacking stick figures?

Do they understand that other sticks are alive like them? That other sticks can be hurt, that they can feel pain? Do Chosen and Dark have a concept of death? Do they even realize they’re causing death to the sticks they’re attacking?

Dark was literally just created THAT DAY. How much does he know? How much does he understand?

How much knowledge does a stick figure possess, innately, when they’re created?

Chosen has been alive for 4 and a half years, but he’d been imprisoned and enslaved. He’d never seen another stick figure before Dark. All he knew was fighting, being forced to destroy pop-ups, and trying to escape. Does HE know the nature of other living things? Does HE know how to behave towards others of his kind? Does HE understand the concept of death?

Dark was made to kill Chosen, and the first moments of his life were spent attempting to fulfill that purpose. And then he went immediately into destroying the computer. And then immediately into destroying websites.

Dark had nothing to teach him that wanton destruction and mass murder wasn’t okay to do. He and Chosen simply did them, and he found he liked doing them. He didn’t have a moral compass to tell him it was wrong, and he didn’t have the opportunity to properly develop one. There was no resistance to prevent him from becoming a psychopath who enjoyed hurting and killing other living beings.

Because Chosen certainly wasn’t stopping him. Not yet, at any rate.

But Chosen...Chosen was older. Chosen had experienced different things from Dark. Chosen probably experienced pain and fear at Alan’s hands. (Victim’s backstory has got me fully doubting that Chosen was just left to twiddle his thumbs when he wasn’t being used as a pop-up blocker. Alan hurt Chosen too. Chosen just probably never died from it.) Was that enough to give him the basis for a sense of morality? Enough to instill him with the ability to empathize?

Is that why Chosen pauses, when Mitsi dies? Is he starting to realize the full consequences of their actions? That they’re killing sticks?

Or does none of this even matter? Was Dark made from the start to be an evil psychopath and that’s why he is the way he is? Was Chosen made ‘normal’ and simply chose to be an asshole because he was angry?

How much of it is their nature vs their lack of life experience?

This might be the reason why Chosen is participating in the Newgrounds attack. It’s so early into HIS life that he hasn’t had those changes to his morals yet. This might be the START of that change. The instigating event. The things that start causing him doubt his own actions, that eventually blooms into distaste and guilt. That eventually allows him to see that Dark’s behavior isn’t right.

That allows him to recognize his own behavior isn’t right.

The Flashback attacks have set in motion the divide between them on what their characters eventually become: Chosen develops a sense of morality, Dark does not.

Both the party and the Flashback attacks are happening on October 2nd, 2011, mere hours after Chosen and Dark have escaped.

There IS one potential snag to this theory, and that's the escape portal.

And that is, admittedly, a massive one.

That LOOKS like a Chosen-made portal. It even makes the same sounds as the ones in The Virus and The Chosen One Returns did.

But we never see nor hear what a 'normal' entrances/exit to a website looks like. We see Victim exiting them in side profile, not as they look from the surface level.

It's very possible that Chosen is just opening up the entrance into a webstring when he makes his portals.

The webstring to the Outernet already exists. He's not MAKING a connection, just opening a door.

And a webstring from Newgrounds to the Outernet ALSO already exists.

That's what I think the escape portal is, this webstring that was made when Victim fundamentally changed the entire fabric of digital reality by complete accident. Dude had a busy day that day.

Honestly, I don't think even The Chosen One has the ability to MAKE webstrings. They seem like they're fundamental connections across the internet that had been pretty well established before Victim did his thing. And that was a MASSIVE amount of energy that was released to create those new webstrings.

The entire way the internet digital space works feels very cosmic to me. Like some massive inspiration was taken from the universe in it's design. The IP Boxes look like stars, the websites planets, and they sheer nothingness in between feels like a vacuum.

I don't think it's IMPOSSIBLE to make new webstrings [I actually theorize Dark figured out how to do so with the cliff side portals] just...

Beyond Chosen's ability to do so himself.

Hence: the webstring between Newgrounds and the Outernet.

The wobbly weird-sounded hole in the ground might just be what they look like naturally. Or someone else opened it. We have no confirmation that's an ability unique to Chosen.

So that's my theory. Chosen and Dark never went to the Outernet before they started their rampage. They rampaged, and THEN probably went to the Outernet.