Bite-sized meta

[ishtar79]

For blnchflr 's mini meta fest, propts #1 and 2. (Will try to get to the other two later)


 

Geek social fallacies: can fandom's laissez faire attitude occasionally turn around to bite it on the ass?

Heh, I suppose it’s karma that I managed to draw my most potentially controversial prompt.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the geek social fallacies in the last year, which had no shortage of…animated discussion across fandom. Whether it’s con drama, people showing their ass during Racefail and miscellaneous examples of Fans Behaving Badly, invariably there’s people jumping in and defending said behavior, because-well. Fandom is inclusive. Fans are not always the most socially adept people. Fans’ individuality is respected, and everyone should feel safe enough to express their opinions. Fandom is a community, fandom operates under a different set of rules, fandom is our Happy Place.

 

Fandom all too often doesn’t call people on their shit. I get it: we’re all unique special snowflakes, with varying levels of sensitivity and social skills, but all of that becomes rather irrelevant when it comes to making fandom just a little bit more hostile for other fans, sexually harassing actors in cons or sending writers death threats for killing half your OTP.

 

Asking people to apply a modicum of common sense and social courtesy isn’t going to magically turn fandom into some bad TV stereotype about US high schools. We’re all still geeky here, and still safe in our knowledge the mainstream thinks we’re kind of pathetic. But your right to express yourself/fly your geek flag doesn’t include your right to be, frankly, kind of a dick.

Character bashing

Given the length constraints, I’ll focus on fanfic.

 

Few things can pull me out of an otherwise enjoyable story faster than stumbling on a paragraph of gratuitous character bashing. Don’t get me wrong, I get disliking certain fictional characters-who doesn’t? A well-written story highlighting precisely those traits that drive me crazy is always a good read, but that’s not actually what I’m referring to.

 

Distorting characters into near-unrecognizable parodies of themselves, giving them a personality transplant just to make them unsympathetic, having characters who actually like them in canon suddenly turn on them, all of it is not only distracting, it’s plain bad writing. It doesn’t matter if I might share in the author’s dislike in the character, it’s about the characterizations making sense within the universe we were given. In other words, the point, dear author, is not whether you and I like Ginny-what matters is that, as of the point we left off in canon, Harry does. So him just realizing her inherent unpleasantness out of the blue, with no lead-up to it, is not unlike him randomly jumping Draco in the corridor in a fit of uncontrollable lust: it’ll have me reaching for the back button. (And that’s not even touching on the misogynistic issues of demonizing female characters in slash fic, that’s a whole other post).

 

Which is not to say that a character can’t be more unpleasant in fanfic than they are in the text; but as with everything else, a good writer needs to sell you on it, and suck you into the story of how that happens, rather than giving you the equivalent of a glimpse into their Burn Book.

 

 

Comments

[seanlily]

I'm a bit lenient with characterizations because people read things a bit differently, but when the writer goes off to
something completely without any warning or leading up to the change, then yes, it throws me out of the story.
(I'd like to read your thoughts on demonizing of female characters)

[cesy]

Yes - some J/D authors in Stargate have a tendency to demonise Sam, and it's just not realistic.

[dancing_serpent]

I never thought that fandom has a laissez faire attitude in the first place. On the contrary, to me it seems that people get called on their shit immediately (often leading to wank/wank wars). But maybe that depends on which corner of fandom we're talking about or it's just my personal experience.

Honestly? I often enjoy reading character-bashing fics. It's a safe way for me to get rid of some stress and focus my aggression on "people" who aren't hurt by it. A fictional character won't cry when I sit there and snicker to myself and think "take this you bitch/fucker". I always feel better afterwards and no one's got caught in the crossfire of my temper.

Of course I only choose stories where it's not my favourite character who's getting bashed. *g*

[cesy]

Hmm, good point. I'm strongly against character bashing in fics when it happens to characters I like, but I'm less likely to be bothered if the character annoys me, and sometimes I do love seeing them get their comeuppance. I wonder if there's a ficathon or anything for seeing particular types of villains thoroughly trounced.

[dancing_serpent]

Exactly!

And that ficathon is an awesome idea. I would totally participate! *g*

[anehan]

I admit to, um, sometimes enjoying characters bashing fics, especially if they are Ron and Harry bashing Hermione/Snape fics. It's my guilty pleasure. *hides*

[ishtar79]

I'm lenient on the characterisation of some characters, but with others, I have those very specific requirements and sometimes they're not even from the actual canon but from my own personal fanon. Thankfully there's enough fanfic around to cater to everyone's tastes!

As for demonizing of female characters, it's just the usual. Female characters getting torn to shreds for behaviours where male characters get a past (and really, a lot of women do that to non-fictional women as well). Women are whiny, bitchy, Mary Sues while the corresponding males are woobies, snarky, AWESOME...It's obviously worse when the woman in question is an actual or perceived threat to any beloved fandom ships. Add to that the frequent sexist nature of the criticism (the way the woman is often deemed too slutty/bimboish/shrill and so on), and it gets kind of hard to ignore the patterns.

[ishtar79]

I'm not familiar with Stargate, but if I just switched some of the names, that sentence could apply to about a dozen fandoms I know.

[ishtar79]

I never thought that fandom has a laissez faire attitude in the first place. On the contrary, to me it seems that people get called on their shit immediately (often leading to wank/wank wars). But maybe that depends on which corner of fandom we're talking about or it's just my personal experience.

Heh, it's true that when we say 'fandom', we may all be meaning entirely different things. I'm a bit of a metafandom junkie, and have also been following Racefail and other discussions accross several fandoms, and I've definitely seen examples of that.


Honestly? I often enjoy reading character-bashing fics. It's a safe way for me to get rid of some stress and focus my aggression on "people" who aren't hurt by it. A fictional character won't cry when I sit there and snicker to myself and think "take this you bitch/fucker". I always feel better afterwards and no one's got caught in the crossfire of my temper.

Of course I only choose stories where it's not my favourite character who's getting bashed. *g*

I may or may not have indulged in that guilty pleasure myself a few times. :P

I'm not advocating for the erasure of character bashing, just stating my personal reading preferences. And whether I may occasionally read a fic featuring it, it still doesn't feel particularly organic to the story to me.

[ishtar79]

Oh yeah, been there, done that. But like my other guilty pleasure fics (many of which, oddly enough, are Snape/Hermione), I wouldn't necessarily hold them up as examples of stellar *writing*, you know?

[anehan]

many of which, oddly enough, are Snape/Hermione

Same here. Ahem. :D

I wouldn't necessarily hold them up as examples of stellar *writing*, you know?

It's definitely lazy characterization. If you want me to buy Harry hating Ginny, you'd better sell it to me convincingly.

[blnchflr]

I think fandom all too often dogpile on people - I see that way more often than people not getting called out.

Character-bashing sucks, I think most of us can agree - however, I get the temptation to do it!

[ishtar79]

I think fandom all too often dogpile on people - I see that way more often than people not getting called out.

It all depends on the corner of fandom and the issue at hand though, doesn't it? If we're talking, say, the Open Source Boobs project, then yes, Creepy Guy Wanting To Grab Boobs is likely to catch some flak. With less clearly defined things, it's complicated.

Character bashing can definitely be fun, I'm not arguing that.

[blnchflr]

Oh, I forgot to ask: May I link to this in a public post at my journal?

[ishtar79]

Sure!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Character bashing is like so many things in fic. A good writer can turn a hero character into a villain--or at least give him/her a villainous role in a fic--in a way that's really compelling. And it's much more satisfying to read, even if you hate the character as much as the author, than a fic where the person is just being set up as a hate object.

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly, it all comes down to writing. When it's just sprung on me it tends to make me think more about the writer's motivations than the character, and that's obviously distracting.