I started reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara because I read a callout post about it saying that it had a nigh-sadomasochistic focus on gay male suffering, and I was like “I love that shit.” I read the first four hundred pages in bits over the course of two weeks, and then spent six hours devouring the next four hundred pages interrupted by sobbing on my baffled husband about how much I loved him.
I, for one, was quite irritated by the whole "fabulously wealthy, partner at a powerful corporate law firm...handsome Oscar-winning actor...award-winning architect...painter who gets a four-floor retrospective at MOMA...etc. etc." thing. I recall it just sort of happening alongside all the bad stuff, with no effort or explanation, no sense that any of the characters had even a momentary flash of the focus or motivation or discipline or ambition that such careers require. As if Yanagihara thought such success could just be bestowed on her characters by fiat, without them actually *doing* anything. I was offended on behalf of powerful law firm partners/award-winning actors/architects/painters. Of course this is not really unusual for fiction but the extent to which Yanagihara took it seemed extreme. But I also mainly experienced the book via irritated skimming so I may just have missed the parts I'm complaining don't exist. Did I?
I always thought that this trope was exclusively for the josei demographic, existing purely in period piece romance tragedies with female or gay leads. But apparently not. I came across something written along this vein recently in a regression litrpg set in a fantasy world, where the male protagonist has to pretend to be evil and therefore suffer from the hatred and scorn of all his harem members, who want to kill him because they've gained memories of their past lives where he betrays them. Actually, it's hard to explain, so I'll just copy what the top review on novelupdates says:
```
The protagonist of the work who shoulders the fate of the world destined for ruin. Before regression, he committed many evil deeds to eventually backstab the Demon King all in order to gain the [False Evil] System privileges the only hope for a true happy ending, according to the guide book left by his ancestor.
He is also well aware that even if he saves the world, that doesn't necessarily mean his past actions were right, and he will in future have to pay for that. Nonetheless, he pushes through for his goal to save his loved ones.
MC gained the [False Evil] system, the more he commits 'false evil' (it may or may not be a good deed but it has to be perceived as evil by a third person) the more points he earns, and if his identity as a hero is revealed he will suffer from a penalty that cuts his lifespan in half. So in his mind he clearly has a divide between his true identity as a hero and false villain.
```
This is not a recommendation, because aside from literally translated Korean being more or less unreadable, it's also pretty trashy and mysogynistic. Just noting that it exists.
I hadn't heard the term "whump" before, but Stephen R. Donaldson is a professionally published author that's known for how much he likes to torture his characters and watch them suffer.
Is "Hamlet" whump? Certainly the title character spends much of the play being depressed. Is Neon Genesis Evangelion?
Personally I don't think Hamlet is, because the whole point of the genre is that the world is totally out to get the protagonist, and the protagonist will react with calm stoic suffering, but it is just so much that they have to break occasionally. One of the most common reactions to Hamlet is that he should just get over it.
“So much of this book is about Jude’s hopefulness, his attempt to heal himself,” Yanagihara explained to Electric Literature in 2015, “and I hope that the narrative’s momentum and suspense comes from the reader’s growing recognition — and Jude’s — that he’s too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.”
She went on to explain that she fundamentally mistrusts talk therapy, which operates under the idea that no depressed patient should die by suicide. “Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life,” she said. “But psychology, and psychiatry, insists that life is the meaning of life, so to speak; that if one can’t be repaired, one can at least find a way to stay alive, to keep growing older.”
Slightly off topic but I feel like anti-psychiatry people keep saying "in every other medical specialty they...", then keep listing things that absolutely do not apply to every other medical specialty.
Assisted suicide is extremely controversial in all of medicine. Doctors vow to save lives. I really wouldn't say medicine is ready to say out loud that sometimes people should die.
What story is "and then he has to guard the man he’s in love with and can never have, while the man is sex-pollened and repeatedly stabbing himself with a sword as a desperate attempt to try to keep control"?
I, for one, was quite irritated by the whole "fabulously wealthy, partner at a powerful corporate law firm...handsome Oscar-winning actor...award-winning architect...painter who gets a four-floor retrospective at MOMA...etc. etc." thing. I recall it just sort of happening alongside all the bad stuff, with no effort or explanation, no sense that any of the characters had even a momentary flash of the focus or motivation or discipline or ambition that such careers require. As if Yanagihara thought such success could just be bestowed on her characters by fiat, without them actually *doing* anything. I was offended on behalf of powerful law firm partners/award-winning actors/architects/painters. Of course this is not really unusual for fiction but the extent to which Yanagihara took it seemed extreme. But I also mainly experienced the book via irritated skimming so I may just have missed the parts I'm complaining don't exist. Did I?
I always thought that this trope was exclusively for the josei demographic, existing purely in period piece romance tragedies with female or gay leads. But apparently not. I came across something written along this vein recently in a regression litrpg set in a fantasy world, where the male protagonist has to pretend to be evil and therefore suffer from the hatred and scorn of all his harem members, who want to kill him because they've gained memories of their past lives where he betrays them. Actually, it's hard to explain, so I'll just copy what the top review on novelupdates says:
```
The protagonist of the work who shoulders the fate of the world destined for ruin. Before regression, he committed many evil deeds to eventually backstab the Demon King all in order to gain the [False Evil] System privileges the only hope for a true happy ending, according to the guide book left by his ancestor.
He is also well aware that even if he saves the world, that doesn't necessarily mean his past actions were right, and he will in future have to pay for that. Nonetheless, he pushes through for his goal to save his loved ones.
MC gained the [False Evil] system, the more he commits 'false evil' (it may or may not be a good deed but it has to be perceived as evil by a third person) the more points he earns, and if his identity as a hero is revealed he will suffer from a penalty that cuts his lifespan in half. So in his mind he clearly has a divide between his true identity as a hero and false villain.
```
This is not a recommendation, because aside from literally translated Korean being more or less unreadable, it's also pretty trashy and mysogynistic. Just noting that it exists.
I hadn't heard the term "whump" before, but Stephen R. Donaldson is a professionally published author that's known for how much he likes to torture his characters and watch them suffer.
Is "Hamlet" whump? Certainly the title character spends much of the play being depressed. Is Neon Genesis Evangelion?
Personally I don't think Hamlet is, because the whole point of the genre is that the world is totally out to get the protagonist, and the protagonist will react with calm stoic suffering, but it is just so much that they have to break occasionally. One of the most common reactions to Hamlet is that he should just get over it.
From a Vox article on Yanagihara:
“So much of this book is about Jude’s hopefulness, his attempt to heal himself,” Yanagihara explained to Electric Literature in 2015, “and I hope that the narrative’s momentum and suspense comes from the reader’s growing recognition — and Jude’s — that he’s too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.”
She went on to explain that she fundamentally mistrusts talk therapy, which operates under the idea that no depressed patient should die by suicide. “Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life,” she said. “But psychology, and psychiatry, insists that life is the meaning of life, so to speak; that if one can’t be repaired, one can at least find a way to stay alive, to keep growing older.”
Slightly off topic but I feel like anti-psychiatry people keep saying "in every other medical specialty they...", then keep listing things that absolutely do not apply to every other medical specialty.
Assisted suicide is extremely controversial in all of medicine. Doctors vow to save lives. I really wouldn't say medicine is ready to say out loud that sometimes people should die.
What story is "and then he has to guard the man he’s in love with and can never have, while the man is sex-pollened and repeatedly stabbing himself with a sword as a desperate attempt to try to keep control"?
Tian Guan Ci Fu.