A Chasing After Wind

I've complained in the past about fans stating a male character is "like a woman" or "female coded". Here's a great article about the race-based version, where white male woobies are "coded" of color:

How White Fandom is Colonizing “Character-Coding”

Getting back to my comparison to "female coding", there is a notable difference between these two problems. In my experience, fans who claim male characters are female-coded are themselves female, while those claiming that white characters are coded of color seem to be mainly white. I don't have any further speculation or analysis of that, just an observation.

Sometimes I will see fans talk about how they liked it when a fictional character is a jerk "for no reason". That seems an odd thing to say - everyone has their reasons for their behavior and choices.

I saw someone make that statement about Torchwood's Owen Harper. They didn't like his Fragments backstory, the revelation that he had a fiancée who died, because it gave him a reason for being a jerk.

Now this struck me as odd, because for me, Owen's fiancée's death did not in anyway explain his particular brand of assholishness. In fact, the main reason that I dislike his Fragment backstory is that I struggle to see in S1 Owen the Owen we saw in the flashbacks in Fragments. It doesn't fit, for me. Sure, people can become unpleasant after the death of a loved one. But to go from being a devoted fiancée to the cynical, unloving and unlovable Owen of S1 is not explainable only by the death of a loved one. People who lose loved ones do not react that way from the death of a loved one alone. The equation of human nature is not as simple as: Bad thing happens to person -> person becomes unpleasant.

Which leads me back to the "jerk with no reason" description. Since every has reasons for their behavior, what is actually being said here? It seems the only thing that counts as a "reason" is suffering. Someone who is a jerk with a reason is someone who has suffered in a way that the fan deems sufficient to justify or explain - or possibly sanctify - his assholishness.

And that leaves me with kind of bad taste in my mouth.

Typical fan: "I like characters with flaws."

Typical fan: "I dislike character X because she/he has flaws A, B, and C."

There's no right or wrong reason for disliking a fiction character (or at least very few). There are certainly character flaws that push all my buttons and make me dislike the character possessing them (and not always the objectively worst character flaws, even). But it's odd how many fans claim to love characters for the flaws, and then just take it for granted that the reason to dislike a character is that they have flaws.

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Your public livejournal/tumblr/other social media is not your space.

It is your platform. It is not your space.

Certainly you can and should have some sense of how you expect people interacting with you blog to behave. You should be the one to decide those expectations, not anyone else. You should enforce those expectations as you choose.

But if you choose to make statements to the world, the world is going to want to talk back. You can't make public announcements that anyone can read and then block and hide from anyone who makes you uncomfortable, anyone who does not reflect your worldview back upon you. You can't pontificate to anyone with an internet connection and then do everything in your power to hide from responses to your words made by people who like TV shows that offend you, or have negative opinions about fictional characters you love, or who respectfully point out that your arguments don't make sense.

Well, you can. But I, for one, will be unable to have any respect for you.

Public social media is not a place where you should feel comfortable.

Safe, yes. Comfortable, no.

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Every time I have heard a fan describe a fictional character as an "unsympathetic victim", it has always been a character that the fan has no problem sympathizing with whatsoever.

How convenient for them.

ETA: Okay, clearly I am cranky today. "I[...]will be unable to have respect for you" is a vast overstatement and unfair. It will lower my opinion of you, a little. But there is a lot more to people than how they choose to moderate their social media. My bad.

Thought I should drop a line to let you all know that I’m taking a break from fandom. I’m currently between jobs, and I don’t think that’s a good mental state for me to be interacting with fandom. I hope you all are well.

Advantages of being obsessed with stories about real people: There’s an objective reality. I really like that. Because then your interpretation of events can be “right” or “wrong”. You don’t have to say, “Well, your interpretation is equally valid”, because it’s not. I can feel that smug feeling of being objectively right.

On the flip side, I also like it when my interpretation turns out to be wrong, because then I know that it is wrong, and I know what areas of my view of the world need fixing. It’s not just the author being arbitrary. It’s reality.

Also, the level of detail. That kind of detail just doesn’t exist in fictional media. Sure, we can pretend that each character in a work of fiction is the hero of their own story, but in real life it isn’t a pretense. It’s true. Every character in the story is as real and complete a person as every other character.

Disadvantages: Moral ambiguity. Just plain sweet in fiction, a hell of a lot more complicated in real life, where real people get hurt. Good stories contain a lot of tragedy, and when this is tragedy that actually happened that I’m getting story-telling pleasure from, it causes feelings for guilt. Also, the concern that you are invading other people’s privacy, or contributing to the invasion of other people’s privacy.