loooooool, as if I would ever pass up a chance to yell about this! It's stuff I think about a lot (AS YOU MAY HAVE SURMISED).
Also, I feel much better about the asshole characters I love now.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
You're right about needing to tread carefully when talking to someone about a character who means a lot to them. "I think this character sometimes gets an unearned pass because he's (male, pretty, white, funny)," shouldn't just flow into, "The characteristics you identify with don't deserve understanding or sympathy."
I mean, I could get behind "it's a fine line." I SAY it's a fine line. FREQUENTLY. But YES, and that dismissiveness bothers me. If someone's talking about a fictional character in a certain kind of way, yeah, sometimes I do get a ~vibe that this person is doing a thing that I fully admit I do, which is talking out that character's ~stuff because it's a tolerable distance from their own, and a reason someone (again, myself included) might do that is because they've internalized "YOU have no right to feel the way you feel, YOU are just being a wuss and a whiner and a BAD PERSON." So yeah, it's just ripping fun when that ends up in a backhanded attack, "YOUR CHARACTER has no right to their perspective, anything you say about THEM is just making excuses for a wussy bad person which you're only doing because you're STUPID." That's not the same as going after a specific argument, a specific fandom pattern, whatever. It's not constructive. If it lands at all, it'll be in a way that's just hurtful. To a REAL PERSON, who is on some level showing a REAL VULNERABILITY. Speaking as someone who is MEAN AS A GODDAMN SNAKE, I think that's kinda shitty.
I, um. Tried not to be too abrasive on the post because I'm sure there was context I wasn't getting.
Also, I feel much better about the asshole characters I love now.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
You're right about needing to tread carefully when talking to someone about a character who means a lot to them. "I think this character sometimes gets an unearned pass because he's (male, pretty, white, funny)," shouldn't just flow into, "The characteristics you identify with don't deserve understanding or sympathy."
I mean, I could get behind "it's a fine line." I SAY it's a fine line. FREQUENTLY. But YES, and that dismissiveness bothers me. If someone's talking about a fictional character in a certain kind of way, yeah, sometimes I do get a ~vibe that this person is doing a thing that I fully admit I do, which is talking out that character's ~stuff because it's a tolerable distance from their own, and a reason someone (again, myself included) might do that is because they've internalized "YOU have no right to feel the way you feel, YOU are just being a wuss and a whiner and a BAD PERSON." So yeah, it's just ripping fun when that ends up in a backhanded attack, "YOUR CHARACTER has no right to their perspective, anything you say about THEM is just making excuses for a wussy bad person which you're only doing because you're STUPID." That's not the same as going after a specific argument, a specific fandom pattern, whatever. It's not constructive. If it lands at all, it'll be in a way that's just hurtful. To a REAL PERSON, who is on some level showing a REAL VULNERABILITY. Speaking as someone who is MEAN AS A GODDAMN SNAKE, I think that's kinda shitty.
I, um. Tried not to be too abrasive on the post because I'm sure there was context I wasn't getting.
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