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xparrotJust read a comment on my flist by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
copracat in which she made a fascinating point about character bashing in fanfic, which I wanted to expound upon.
It's a well-known phenomenon in fandom, that any character who comes between a pairing will be hated by some fans of that pairing. While it's not the only source of character hate, hatred of the interloper is perhaps the number one reason for char bashing. Sometimes the hated characters will simply be absent from fanfic, or otherwise ignored. But sometimes the chars will be bashed - portrayed in extremely negative, often wildly OOC ways, as scheming, selfish shrews out to ruin love affairs. When it comes to m/m pairings, such romantic interlopers are nearly always female characters (since almost all slashed male chars are canonically heterosexual, so their only canonical romantic partners are female. The reverse can be true with femme-slash pairings; Joxer was hated by some fans for being a potential threat to Xena/Gabrielle.)
copracat points out that such interlopers are a standard trope in romance fiction. A stock female villain in romances is the woman is trying to come between the lovers: "generally shallow, beautiful outside but ugly inside, a harpy to women and a sweet charmer to men, and will do anything to win the hero from the heroine." This is a classic figure: Cinderella's stepsister, Ursula in Disney's The Little Mermaid (Gaston in Disney's Beauty & the Beast is a male variant.) Her love isn't genuine; it's greed, fueled by envy and resentment, wanting what should rightfully be the heroine's. She's an obstacle in the path of True Love, and for a happy ending to be achieved, she must be defeated, losing everything she's unfairly taken.
Like most fiction tropes, this may not be a story that appeals to you personally, but it's one that works for a lot of people; it's a trope because it's emotionally satisfying to many. It's arguable whether it's intrinsically misogynistic; at least in traditional romances it's less blatantly so, because the villainess is losing to a heroine. When this trope is applied to a m/m slash pairing, then it becomes more problematic, because it's vilifying the major female character in the story.
The other problem is that in the original romances, the female villain is supposed to be hated; that's her role in the story, and to like her you must read the text subversively. But when a female character from a non-romance is cast as such a female villain, then that's a subversion of the original text, and is therefore nonsensical to anyone reading the text straight. Moreover, even if you do like slash, if you're not the sort of person who likes this particular romance trope, then the bashing can seem like pointless, malicious cruelty.
A basher who casts a female character as the evil obstacle in a slash pairing isn't necessarily doing it because they want to make people hate the character, or even because that's actually how they view the character; it's because it's how they want to view the character, what is the most emotionally satisfying way to see them, properly fulfilling their role as villainness. In the same way some fans "love to hate" the textual villains of a series, so do some bashers "love to hate" the chars who are villains in their personal reading of the canon, and enjoy fanfic that supports this view, enjoy seeing them get their just desserts - especially if it's never going to happen in canon.
If you are a fan of the bashed character, you may be frustrated with such OOC portrayals, but it will do no good to argue with a bashing fan. Part of the trait of a good female villainness of this style is that she's got the hero snowed; arguing her good points is only evidence that she's successfully fooling some of the audience, too. (Hence the seemingly paradoxical accusations laid on some characters, that they are simultaneously perfect Mary Sues and helpless, useless, pointless characters - the villainness's Mary Sue-ness is that she is perceived to be perfect, while in fact having no real skills beyond duplicity.) And liking this trope may slip over into misogyny with fans of strictly m/m slash who never like het pairings, because pretty much all female characters can be viewed as possible threats to slash pairings, and therefore all of them may potentially be cast as the hated villains.
But much fanfic in general is about casting characters in new roles, about telling different stories and using different tropes than are seen in the canon. And with many fans liking a good villain to hate in their stories, it's hardly surprising that a canon char may be relegated to that role.
(For the record, I'm not into this trope myself; I like my antagonists in shades of gray, and I don't care for villains in love stories. But that's just my personal taste, and I don't feel that fans who enjoy more black-and-white, straightforward tropes are in the wrong for liking them.)
copracat in which she made a fascinating point about character bashing in fanfic, which I wanted to expound upon.It's a well-known phenomenon in fandom, that any character who comes between a pairing will be hated by some fans of that pairing. While it's not the only source of character hate, hatred of the interloper is perhaps the number one reason for char bashing. Sometimes the hated characters will simply be absent from fanfic, or otherwise ignored. But sometimes the chars will be bashed - portrayed in extremely negative, often wildly OOC ways, as scheming, selfish shrews out to ruin love affairs. When it comes to m/m pairings, such romantic interlopers are nearly always female characters (since almost all slashed male chars are canonically heterosexual, so their only canonical romantic partners are female. The reverse can be true with femme-slash pairings; Joxer was hated by some fans for being a potential threat to Xena/Gabrielle.)
copracat points out that such interlopers are a standard trope in romance fiction. A stock female villain in romances is the woman is trying to come between the lovers: "generally shallow, beautiful outside but ugly inside, a harpy to women and a sweet charmer to men, and will do anything to win the hero from the heroine." This is a classic figure: Cinderella's stepsister, Ursula in Disney's The Little Mermaid (Gaston in Disney's Beauty & the Beast is a male variant.) Her love isn't genuine; it's greed, fueled by envy and resentment, wanting what should rightfully be the heroine's. She's an obstacle in the path of True Love, and for a happy ending to be achieved, she must be defeated, losing everything she's unfairly taken.Like most fiction tropes, this may not be a story that appeals to you personally, but it's one that works for a lot of people; it's a trope because it's emotionally satisfying to many. It's arguable whether it's intrinsically misogynistic; at least in traditional romances it's less blatantly so, because the villainess is losing to a heroine. When this trope is applied to a m/m slash pairing, then it becomes more problematic, because it's vilifying the major female character in the story.
The other problem is that in the original romances, the female villain is supposed to be hated; that's her role in the story, and to like her you must read the text subversively. But when a female character from a non-romance is cast as such a female villain, then that's a subversion of the original text, and is therefore nonsensical to anyone reading the text straight. Moreover, even if you do like slash, if you're not the sort of person who likes this particular romance trope, then the bashing can seem like pointless, malicious cruelty.
A basher who casts a female character as the evil obstacle in a slash pairing isn't necessarily doing it because they want to make people hate the character, or even because that's actually how they view the character; it's because it's how they want to view the character, what is the most emotionally satisfying way to see them, properly fulfilling their role as villainness. In the same way some fans "love to hate" the textual villains of a series, so do some bashers "love to hate" the chars who are villains in their personal reading of the canon, and enjoy fanfic that supports this view, enjoy seeing them get their just desserts - especially if it's never going to happen in canon.
If you are a fan of the bashed character, you may be frustrated with such OOC portrayals, but it will do no good to argue with a bashing fan. Part of the trait of a good female villainness of this style is that she's got the hero snowed; arguing her good points is only evidence that she's successfully fooling some of the audience, too. (Hence the seemingly paradoxical accusations laid on some characters, that they are simultaneously perfect Mary Sues and helpless, useless, pointless characters - the villainness's Mary Sue-ness is that she is perceived to be perfect, while in fact having no real skills beyond duplicity.) And liking this trope may slip over into misogyny with fans of strictly m/m slash who never like het pairings, because pretty much all female characters can be viewed as possible threats to slash pairings, and therefore all of them may potentially be cast as the hated villains.
But much fanfic in general is about casting characters in new roles, about telling different stories and using different tropes than are seen in the canon. And with many fans liking a good villain to hate in their stories, it's hardly surprising that a canon char may be relegated to that role.
(For the record, I'm not into this trope myself; I like my antagonists in shades of gray, and I don't care for villains in love stories. But that's just my personal taste, and I don't feel that fans who enjoy more black-and-white, straightforward tropes are in the wrong for liking them.)
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Date: 2009-10-13 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 01:07 pm (UTC)*nods* I can't speak for contemporary setting romances, because I tend to avoid those as boring, but the evil third leg of the love triangle happens all the time in historical romance, frequently with female characters but also sometimes with male ones (like Gaston). Superman Returns for example is rare for a love triangle romance in that Richard White is a decent guy whom the audience is supposed to *like* rather than a jerk who doesn't actually deserve Lois (who, in a traditional romance, would end up back with Superman after Richard turned out to be working for Lex or otherwise evil).
In the same way some fans "love to hate" the textual villains of a series, so do some bashers "love to hate" the chars who are villains in their personal reading of the canon
I hadn't thought about it this way before, but that makes a lot of sense -- certainly a lot of people in old school Gundam Wing fandom seemed to get a kind of enjoyment out of writing Relena as a cackling villainess (while I tend to want characters I truly hate to appear in fic as little as possible, there are some villains I love as villains). I wonder, with the love-to-hate thing, if it's truly the same as pure "DIAF, Bitch!" character hate, because the writer *does* enjoy a certain version of rhe chharacter. It's just not the version that appears in canon.
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Date: 2009-10-13 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 04:47 pm (UTC)This also made me think of my own writing; whenever I write a female as an obstacle between two males, it's generally because . . . well, if she's the love interest of one, she's the one with the most reason to try to come between them. From a plot standpoint, it just makes sense for her to resist; I can't imagine many girlfriends would be cheerful and supportive if her boyfriend suddenly fell in love with a guy. If it happened to me, I'd be frankly pissed. I think the characterization can be over the top, but sometimes the plot calls for a villain. And if you're going to have a villain or obstacle, there has to be a real threat, real tension.
But aside from that, I can see why it would be a catharsis to write someone that way. I don't usually go for that, but it does make sense.
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Date: 2009-10-13 06:39 pm (UTC)saucyapprentice. :Dno subject
Date: 2009-10-13 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 07:15 pm (UTC)And yes, the Superman Returns guy being good was an unexpected surprise to me! And also shows the dilemma of giving all sides a fair shake, because in the Superman movie, you end up feeling sorry for him more than empathizing with Lois or Superman (well, at least I did, anyway...) This can be nice, but it can also be unsatisfying, depending on what you want out of your romance.
I wonder, with the love-to-hate thing, if it's truly the same as pure "DIAF, Bitch!" character hate, because the writer *does* enjoy a certain version of rhe chharacter. It's just not the version that appears in canon.
This really seems to depend a lot on both the individual fan's tastes, and also the character themselves. In some ways it might be a self-defense mechanism? In Smallville, if you don't like Lana, then making fun of her is the only way to watch the show, because she's so omnipresent. And I think some fans can come to enjoy that hate. Like you, I tend to prefer the characters I dislike to be absent, but there are anti-Keller SGA fans seeking out fic starring evil!Keller (one such post inspired the comment which inspired this), so it must work that way for some fans!
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Date: 2009-10-13 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 07:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, sometimes I think the bashing is as simple as the plot demands it. As well as being cathartic!
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Date: 2009-10-13 07:22 pm (UTC)and groom creepy mordred to be their heir *g*
O-O!
Date: 2009-10-13 07:24 pm (UTC)NOPE!
coz I wanna be apprentice of Nimueh!!
she is much prettier and fun than gaius!
Gwen ought to stay with morgana!
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Date: 2009-10-13 07:43 pm (UTC)I think it's the comedy of manners element and the strict social rules that do it. There's something about highly stratified and mannered societies that makes for interesting reading, especially if there are historical clothing details, too (and even more especially if the clothing details are socially significant in some way or say something about the character).
In some ways it might be a self-defense mechanism? In Smallville, if you don't like Lana, then making fun of her is the only way to watch the show, because she's so omnipresent. And I think some fans can come to enjoy that hate.
I get that to a certain extant -- there's a certain point with some canons where the only way to continue being able to engage with them is to either practice blanket denial ("Nothing after season [x] exists") or read/watch the new canon solely for the purpose of tearing it apart (or write "screw canon" AU fixits). But while ranting about things and people you don't like is entertaining or cathartic in some cases (few non-fannish internet pursuits are as much fun as reading the Smart Bitches' D and F rated reviews of really horrible romance novels, or the Flick Filosopher's scathing reviews of really horrible comedy movies), there's also a sort of tipping point where the hate can become like a trap, poisoning your enjoyment of the fandom or even the canon itself.
You're not enjoying the ranting anymore, but you can't stop fixating on it specifically because you dislike it so much, even though it's stopped being cathartic and is instead just making you more upset every time you rant about it (and the fact that other people in fandom like X hateful thing ensures that you'll continue being reminded of it, and in some cases, just the idea that other people *can* like something that makes you want to claw your own skin off with loathing is actually more distressing than the hateful thing). It's like the dark flipside of squeeful fannish obession, because it intrudes into your thoughts and becomes a fixation the same way that something that's your current fannish obsession does, except in a negative way rather than a positive way.
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Date: 2009-10-13 11:13 pm (UTC)I thought that was a really good point of copracat, that this is actually a common romance trope, it’s just a little less stark in traditional het romances because in addition to a villainess you have a heroine. I think for me it’s also more noticeable in fanfiction because even though I used to devour Regency romances, I always avoided the ones that relied on this particular plot device, so it feels doubly unfamiliar to me when I see it imported into fanfiction.
Interestingly enough in Yugioh, although Anzu bashing is alive and well, since the main “threats” to people’s OTPs often come from male characters, you see the same trope with male characters shoved into the traditionally female villainess role. For example in Prideshipping (well, bad Prideshipping), you see Yugi as a screeching, clinging whiner trying to keep Kaiba and Yami apart, and in Puzzleshipping you see Kaiba cast as the vindictive, manipulative bitch (when he’s not a rapist, of course). What’s interesting is that since there are no canon pairings, there are no canon threats, yet people sort of import them so that the appropriate hero can be rescued, and then twist the characters to match.
While I would agree it’s senseless to argue with anyone who’s into character bashing, and I am very wary of arguing about what’s right or wrong when it comes to people’s reading tastes, I would still argue that this isn’t good fanfiction. To me one of the main differences between fanfiction and original fiction is that with fanfiction you are given parameters to work within, and these focus on the characters and the dynamics between them.
While I would agree that fanfiction also explores things that don’t happen in canon, it doesn’t seem to me that’s what’s going on here. Instead it feels like someone has said that they want this trope, but there’s no way to write the story with the characters. Now with original fiction, you could simply change the characters, with fanfiction though, certainly part of the challenge is not to contradict them. So I would argue that a story that can’t be told without contradicting everything a character is at their essence is not really good fanfiction, however satisfying it might be to fans of that particular trope.
For example, to switch to Kaoru of RK. Her entire philosophy is based on the Swords that Give Life. I think her determination to find a way to use her technique to peacefully defend people would be intact regardless of if she was in love with Kenshin and regardless of whether Kenshin loved her back. So if she is a jealous harpy trying to kill Kenshin because he loves Saito, at some point she has ceased to be Kaoru, and to the degree that she is not-Kaoru the story does not work as fanfiction, although of course it could be a wonderful villainess trope story. So maybe we need a different category, maybe it isn’t really a fanfiction story but a trope story that just happens to borrow from fandom.
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Date: 2009-10-14 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 02:36 am (UTC)I don't think it's hypocritical; on the contrary, it makes perfect sense. Some fans are not watching for the same story that is intended in the text; they are watching instead a romance, in which the main story is the development of the romantic relationship of the heroes. The villain is anyone who opposes that relationship; it doesn't matter whether they're good or evil in a straightforward reading of the text.
It's also possible that with fans who like female villains, they prefer those chars who come by their villainy honestly. I don't know all of your example chars, but with Angelique and Saffron, the heroes *don't* like them (even if they're sexually attracted to them). The female romance villain is the girl who *seems* good as she seduces men with her charm, but is secretly evil; all of these women are openly evil. Most of the more disliked female characters I can think of (Lang Lang, Jennifer Keller) would probably be more liked by fans if they actually did turn out to be evil!
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Date: 2009-10-14 02:55 am (UTC)It's arguably even more subjective in anime, which has the doujinshi culture. Many doujinshi are vastly, incredibly OOC - but the characters are still utterly recognizable, as they are drawn art. Add in the differences between manga and anime and dubs and you're often left trying to puzzle out what a character's canonical character even is!
There are definitely fanfics which are more in character, more true to the original canon, etc. But it's hard to say that they're fundamentally better fiction, or fundamentally better fanfiction. So while I'd definitely agree that there are different types of fanfic, some being truer to canon and while others only borrow random elements to apply to different story tropes, I would still call them all fanfiction.
(I admit my take on this has been influenced by being in SGA fandom, which had many crazy AUs and crack parodies and marvelous stories that strayed far from the original intent of the series and characters, but were brilliant and entertaining for all their tenuous connection to the rather mediocre source...!)
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Date: 2009-10-14 04:53 am (UTC)Because a good villain isn't mocked. Not in the romantic trope, especially. In general, they're powerful, quite comfortable with their own sexuality, and personally ambitious. Think Cordelia circa BtVS, or Amanda in the first "Melrose Place". I can only imagine that, just as actors love to play them, writers must love to write them. (Um, I usually fall pretty hard for the villains. *g*)
To use SGA as an example (*g*), I think that if a ficcer actually did write Jennifer as a full on villain (not just a pathetic nerd reaching too far above herself for a man she's not worthy of) I could well love the story. A Jennifer who came to Atlantis to satisfy her own ambition, hooked the Chief Science Officer through the cunning use of her sexual wiles (nearly got the expedition head, but Sam would get transferred at the last minute, damn it all to hell, all those 'girl's night in' nail-painting sessions gone to waste), and when a suspicious John came sniffing around, threatened to end him? I think that's a version of Jennifer I could get behind. :)
I don't mind when a canon character is purposefully turned into a villain. Often it's a great deal of fun. But I think reactive fic about a character the author honestly just doesn't like is a very different animal. The writer isn't enjoying building up this big villain, they're enjoying tearing down a character that (probably) they don't think should have existed in the first place. No one ever says of an actual villain, "Oh, the story would have been so much better if she hadn't entered the picture."
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Date: 2009-10-14 05:08 am (UTC)Not everyone sees villains this way. In the classic romances using this trope, you are not *supposed* to like the villain; you are supposed to despise her, and be glad to seen her torn down, degraded, destroyed. The emotional catharsis is seeing the good get rewarded and the evil get their just desserts. The people who write bashing stories I think are more in this vein; to them, villains are characters meant to be hated. Villains of this type aren't meant to be strong characters; they're pathetic, stupid, ignoble - deserving only scorn and abuse. Not Voldemort or Snape, but Wormtail. The pleasure is not in admiring their wickedness, but in seeing them go down.
To be honest, I like villains myself, so I'm not the best analyzer of this trope; I'm not entirely sure what the emotional catharsis is for people who get off on it. Possibly it's a variant of a revenge fantasy, degrading villains who resemble real people you envy/dislike. Maybe it's a more basic, brutal bullying impulse.
At any rate, it's a very, very different understanding of "villain" than your own understanding of the concept.
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Date: 2009-10-14 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 03:15 pm (UTC)I was just rereading a Buffy xover fic the other day, and commenting to a friend that if only they didn't start bashing Buffy and Willow in the way they did... To me, it didn't serve the plot or [Xander] romance much at all, and there are ways to portray characters in an unsympathetic manner without shoving them completely out of character into screeching-harpy-land.
But yes, those are my own priorities in fic. I hadn't really thought much about how some people like the alternate characterizations on purpose (even though my sister is one). So, thank you for reminding me that fandom is filled with many people with different tastes, and that just because I love or hate certain writing does not mean it holds across the board.
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Date: 2009-10-14 04:35 pm (UTC)