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Post by dreamingfifi on Jun 3, 2016 21:34:55 GMT
建前 Tatemae - the personality that you use with strangers or in formal situations to make things go smoothly. 本音 Honne - what your real personality is, what you really think. You allow your Honne to show with people who you are intimate with, like friends, family, or lovers. It's a pretty big part of Japanese courtesy and culture, and not something that I see mentioned a lot in DC fanfics, so I thought I'd make a thread describing it to draw awareness to it. Here's a really good video about it, with Japanese people describing it: Have you ever written a scene in a fanfic drawing attention to Tatemae/Honne? With all of the deception in the story, this is a great source of drama. With Kaito, I usually replace "Tatemae" with "pokerface", but I did use the concept in my fanfic about Sonoko, A Kindred Spirit, because Sonoko is typically characterized as hardly ever using a Tatemae.
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Cesela
Senior Member
Posts: 480
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Post by Cesela on Jun 3, 2016 22:44:28 GMT
Oh. I like this concept. Good to know that some languages have a difference between the two 'personalities'. It definitely explains some oddities I've puzzled over from Death Note. but with this it makes perfectly sense.
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Post by dreamingfifi on Jun 3, 2016 23:26:52 GMT
In English there's the concept of a "white lie" - a lie that isn't harmful and that you use to make things go more smoothly. It's a similar concept, but not quite the same, since we don't apply it to one's entire personality. I'll bet that plenty of cultures have this concept in them somehow.
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neonquincy1217
God
Note to self: Be kind to yourself. Be patient. Embrace the random. Life is not instant noodles. :))
Posts: 1,339
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Post by neonquincy1217 on Jun 4, 2016 3:45:44 GMT
Oooh, interesting... I'm a bit uncomfortable with it, tho. I'm usually the honest, I-don't-wanna-lie-to-anyone-type of person and I'm sometimes misunderstood as being cruel or rude because of that. But when I explain that I'm being honest to you just because I don't want people talking behind your back, or that I say what I think before anyone starts being dishonest to you, then that's the time they understand.
Right now, I don't do it often anymore... I think it's the matter of shutting up if I don't have anything good to say, unless said person I'm talking to tells me I can be cruelly honest.
Here in the Philippines, if, for example, we talk about a guy who likes a friend, and that friend doesn't really like him, and then we ask "Is he handsome?" there's the tendency to avoid the question and just say... "Mmmm, well, he's nice. He's kind," stuff like that... Like, instead of saying something bad about a person, we just look for something good in him/her and say that instead. I dunno if it's a good thing, tho. I personally think anyone can be cruelly honest with me for as long as he/she explains why he/she said such thing. XDD
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doublexxcross
Junior Member
Yes, and on this night I will again visit a most resplendent gem...
Posts: 63
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Post by doublexxcross on Jun 4, 2016 8:17:13 GMT
We do actually have a similar concept in English...
...Judging by one family member who's genial in the face of certain groups but immediately switches to mocking, jeering and virulent stereotyping the second they have some privacy and the assumption that the soap box is theirs (generally when other people in the party are being quiet).
(Once, 'privacy' amounted to talking loudly in a crowded restaurant that just didn't have a customer of the subject ethnicity at the time.)
Naturally, they're also a staunch opponent of 'political correctness', which is often defined as exactly that.
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Post by dreamingfifi on Jun 6, 2016 4:30:59 GMT
*winces* that sounds unpleasant. In the US, you're supposed to use your Honne most of the time. There's a lot of value put on the virtue of honesty and telling someone the truth no matter how welcome that truth is. Politicians like to say that they "say it like it is" and so on.
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doublexxcross
Junior Member
Yes, and on this night I will again visit a most resplendent gem...
Posts: 63
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Post by doublexxcross on Jun 7, 2016 11:45:10 GMT
Honne is indeed damn important. Being an honest asshole is far less dangerous than being a secret asshole; people know to avoid you like the plague, and fewer people can be blamed for somebody else's lies.
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