Trope Talk: Pinocchio Plots

I initially read “Brutish invaders” as “British invaders” and didn’t even bat an eye

On the subject of Star Trek and the immortal soul, I will never get over how funny it is that Vulcans scientifically proved that Vulcans have souls but didn’t bother to see if anyone else does

"The price you pay to be recognized as a human being is to sell off the hours of your precious mortal life in service to a moneymaking machine that'd just as readily swamp you out for any other cog. If you want to be seen like an individual, you have to stop acting like one." That just hit me out of nowhere, very unexpected (positive)

The "I want to be human and do human things" trope is so well done in Fmab with Alphonse Elric. We know of magical creatures with amazing abilities wanting to be ordinary humans and that is eye-rollingly bland. But to have an ordinary human stripped off his physical body and essence and trapped in an empty suit of armor, desperate to return and feel the breeze on his face is truly tragic.

The best part of Trope Talk is when I have no idea what the trope is until Red starts to explain it and then I think of some examples.

"I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” ~Mewtwo

She didn't mention the part where Data is offered to be made into an actual human, but refuses, apparently because actual huamns don't know what it is to be human, so it wouldn't help his philosophically driven quest. Interesting angle

There really is a whole other layer to these stories if you're neurodivergent. The parallels between "If I just act neurotypical enough, maybe I'll be treated as a person" and "If I just act Good (TM) enough, maybe the Blue Fairy will give me a soul". The way the stories where the non-human character realises they were worthy of personhood all along always resonated with me more. The fact that Ariel doesn't go to the sea-witch immediately after dredging up a hot boy to crush on, but after her father loses his shit about her special interest and makes it clear that having a supportive home life is incompatible with being herself, and how infuriated it makes me that everyone smugly interprets the moral of the story as "lol change for your man". The way Amalthea in The Last Unicorn starts to forget who she is after masking for so long because she would be mistreated if her true nature was known.

One of my favorite things about Data is Brent Spiner(his actor) has said he's glad he didn't learn how autistic people connected to him until after the show ended. He feels they would have added stereotypical traits of autistic people that are now outdated or offensive. But since they didn't know how certian people connected to him, Data was just himself and the audience loved him *edit for mispelling

Fun Fact: For Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio, composer Alexandre Desplat had all the instruments for the recording sessions to his score be made of wood.

As a nerodivergent person we have a huge issue about personhood that its basically not about how internally human you are but how you outwardly express it. Most don't really care if a living thing is experiencing pain or grief if they cannot see that in outward expressions. Data as was pointed out experiences lots of emotions, but since he doesn't express them how others do he's viewed as not human. Data isn't alienated for not being human, hell this is a spaceship full of aliens, or for not having feelings. He's alienated because he doesn't smile, or laugh, or cry. Because we treat a person who doesn't show those outward displays as not feeling them. An inverse of the philosophical zombie

I would say another subversion of the Pinocchio plot is the Velveteen Rabbit, where the Rabbit's 'realness' is defined by how much he's valued by the Boy. The fairy basically tells him 'You're Real because you're loved' and that stuck me as a kid

The original Pinocchio story was written at a time before the Nuclear Family was so prevalent in most of the world: A society where most families had a communitarian structure where children lived most of their lives with their parents, siblings, and relatives. In that context, Pinocchio being a literal puppet until he goes outside the family to get an education, learn work ethic, and form a morality structure is a pretty straight-across mirror to a kid engaging with institutions outside of his family for the first time, gaining the skills required to be independent, and going out to start his own family. In the modern context, Pinocchio's immortality is like somebody never growing up and continuing to live with their parents well past adulthood. It's not a mistake that Pinocchio becomes human like his father, and assumably also becomes able to reproduce. In Pinocchio, humanity is adulthood.

I just thought about the last unicorn, when she was transformed into a human and she freaks out because she can feel her body dying since she is not immortal anymore. And in the end when she is finally a unicorn again how she realized how much she changed because of this expirence.

I love how Red uses a treatise on the human condition and how persecution comes about to lead into talking about funny puppet child

An interesting facet of the "humans are feelings" element is that it's relatively modern--alot of earlier authors said what made humans human was the ability to reason, or farm and deliberately cultivate things, or other ideas. The Sumerians even had a big list of "what makes someone a real boy"!

Red actually unpacked this trope a little bit in her comic. Where the question is “do you actually want to be something else or do you just want to be treated with kindness for what you are?” It really resonated with me as a neurodivergent gay. Go read Aurora if you haven’t btw

Growing up ND I always wondered why monsters wanted to be human, when being human seemed much less enjoyable then being a monster.

Me watching Data and other characters who don't have typical romantic or sexual desires as a teenager: haha these characters are so interesting and relatable. Me as an adult: heywaitafuckingminute-

I love how your description of Del Toro's Pinnochio -- created as a replacement for a dead child, rejected by his creator, becomes more than his origins, etc. -- is basically Astroboy. Or at least his origin story.