Vala Mal Doran: The Second Coming or the Anti-Christ?

[annerbhp]

I know I live a rather sheltered fannish life here in my little corner of LJ. It’s probably also fairly obvious that I have no patience for character hate. What has surprised me on and off over the last few years though, is how much hate there seems to be out there for Vala. Now, I know there is a huge difference between character hate and

Comments

[annerbhp]

You know what's weird about #3 type people? I honestly think a lot of them don't think they are doing it. They have managed to justify so carefully in their minds why character X sucks, that to even suggest it might have something to do with their OTP is completely beyond them. It's kind of freaky, but understandable. We all do millions of things without realizing the real root of it.

There were quite a few eps with heavy Daniel and Vala time, but it never bugged me for some reason. I also remained convinced that season 11 would have contained a lot more branching out, or something. Lol. Blame SciFi for canceling!!! ;)

[annerbhp]

I actually prefer when people just acknowledge that they don't like a character because it interferes with their ship. At least they're being honest about it, you know?

Yeah, but that sort of self-awareness usually precludes bothering to hate on anything or anyone. ;)

[nomadicwriter]

They have managed to justify so carefully in their minds why character X sucks, that to even suggest it might have something to do with their OTP is completely beyond them.

Oh, God yes. I have run into so many people who are utterly convinced that the SG-1 writers "lost their ability to write for Sam" in season four, but will fight tooth and nail against the suggestion that this opinion has got anything to do with the canon Jack/Sam in that season. They never give any actual non-ship-related reasons why they think the writing for Sam suddenly and abruptly "got worse", just keep banging on as if it's utterly self-evident that it did. (And - ironically - take any disagreement as a sign that you must be a rabid shipper who's unable to form objective opinions.)

Watching this kind of stuff from the outside as a gen fan who neither forms OTPs nor is bothered by characters being canonically paired up is an interesting experience. In a "head, meet desk; lather, rinse, repeat" sort of way.