The Legitimacy of "Love Interests" In Plot
Over here ataniell93 talks about love interests, canon, and female characters. The post has spoilers for potential plot developments in Supernatural, to warn anyone who might want to click, but you really don't need to read the post to understand what I'm objecting to. About one third in ataniell93 says this and this about says it all: "New female character? Awesome. Love Interest? OMG get me the barf bag."
My immediate reaction upon reading that was two-fold. The first was "Bite me," which isn't terribly useful or conductive towards anything. The second was a question "What's so wrong with love interests?"
Here's what ataniell93 posits is wrong with (female, heterosexual) love interests --though I'll say I've seen this opinion before, over a multitude of fandoms regarding a multitude of pairings from a multitude of people. It's not just this post, I only use this post as a starting point and a place to quote from:
"I don’t like Love Interests for the same reason that a lot of people don’t like OCs in Canon Character/OC fics. I don’t like characters that have been created to fill a hole in someone’s love life-to be perfect for Character X first, secondarily to be a blank slate upon which the female viewer is supposed to project her romantic longings, and then, after that, to be real characters in the story. I also don’t like canonical heterosexual main character pairings very much, because when that happens, the female character tends to become more of a Love Interest and less of a real character than she was before she got with the male lead."
But, frankly, I'm still left going "What's wrong with love interests?"
It's not because I'm a big het person. Out of all the fic I've written or co-written, fully half of it is gen. Of the half that has a romantic pairing at the forefront/as a focus, the majority of those fics are slash. Many were written for ficathons, admittedly, but I signed up for those ficathons after all knowing what pairings I would get. So, to say I'm not a big het person is an understatement. I'm not even a big romance person.
That being said, I am a person that recognizes the significance and role romantic and/or sexual significant others play in the lives of most people. Most people want to get married or find a lasting love, or both. Maybe it isn't with one person because they, like myself, are polyamorous. Maybe it's not with the socially preferred gender for them because they're gay, or bisexual but find a lasting partner with someone of the same sex. But the fact is that most people are looking for romantic and/or sexual love during their adult lives (and teen lives and, for the early bloomers, sexual interests in their early pubescent lives too). Maybe they don't want to follow the accepted life path of having children because they, like myself, are childfree. Maybe they're happy going from one partner to another over and over and don't want to find that happily ever after.
But whatever they're looking for, very few people are asexual. Very few people never search from someone to love, for a love interest.
So, if that's true -- and I find it difficult to argue it's not -- then why would love interests in fictional, but still human-based, canons not be interested in finding love interests and why wouldn't being a love interest in and of itself be a legitimate plot role?
I'll give an example here of the opposite of what you usually see. A lot of the time you see women filling this role because the main protagonist, the hero of the story, is a male but sometimes you don't. For example, Pete Shanahan in "Stargate: SG-1" was introduced as a love interest for Sam Carter, the only female protagonist in that show. Both Henry Grubstick and Walter in "Ugly Betty" are love interests for Betty Suarez, the main character of said show. Even Logan Echolls can be described as a love interest for Veronica Mars in "Veronica Mars."
But the ultimate example of this is "Charmed." "Charmed," the longest running network show with all-female leads, had a myriad of male love interests throughout the show, characters with no other purpose than to be romantic matches for the lead female characters.
For example, Brian Krause, who played Leo Wyatt/the husband of Piper Halliwell, was signed on as a regular only after Holly Marie Combs, who played Piper Halliwell, suggested it. He was originally meant to be a simple , few episode plot point to get the sisters from point A to point B magically, but Combs saw the potential and pitched him as a love interest for Piper. And for four additionally seasons that's basically the only role he had on the show. He was Piper's true love and destiny. Eventually, towards S5/S6, he was finally given his own plot for awhile but, by the last season of the show (S8), he was back to being a bargaining chip for Piper to get motivated. (Literally so. He's frozen in time for nearly half a season to motivate her towards a task she might otherwise balk at doing, if not for the fact that having Leo returned will only happen if she does it.) Before Leo there was attractive, sweet man-next-door Dan Gordon, who lost out to Leo in the race for Piper's heart.
Coop, a Cupid and the eventual second husband of Phoebe Halliwell, is also introduced solely to be a love interest. He says so himself in late S8 when he tells her that he was set up with her to make up for all the pain she's gone through in the last eight years. Her first husband, Cole Turner, is arguably the male character on the show with the strongest, independent storyline but even then the last exposure we have to the man is him stuck in a parallel plane, able to watch and long for Phoebe but not able to contact her. There's also long term boyfriend Jason Dean, in between the two husbands, who had absolutely no function in the show but as a way for Phoebe to move on from Cole.
Paige isn't much different. Her S6 boyfriend, Richard Montana; her S7 flirtation, Kyle Brody; her off-on boyfriend and eventual friend, Glen Belland. These are all characters who are introduced to show Paige the different tribulations that come with having a destiny and trying to find love at the same time. Each one shows her something about herself, her capacity/tolerance for love's trials, and her magic. They have no other purpose besides that. Even Henry Mitchell, who's at least introduced with a career and passion of his own that doesn't revolve around the Charmed ones, is basically there to be Paige's husband.
Prue's love interests perhaps are the only ones with actual, independent purpose. Andy Trudeau was established first as a cop and an ally, then as a love interest. Though then there was Jack Sheridan of S2, so maybe not.
Don't get me wrong. There are male characters in the show who have absolutely no purpose as love interests. Chris Perry/Halliwell, Darryl Morris, Gideon, Zankou, various magical beings and villains. And I could say I do have some issues with the heteronormativity of the show, though no more so than on television as a media representation in general. But the point is that this is a show which is chock full of examples of love interests whose only purpose in as love interests/as lessons for the protagonists, who do not have plots of their own but are, nonetheless, part of the plot.
Another show with this sort of example is Lifetime's brand new series "Army Wives," which I'm adoring. Again, it's a show with female protagonists and male love interests. Only one of the male characters is really anything but, maybe two if you squint really hard. And that makes sense in context of the show, of what the show is about, of what the plot is about, because, well, being a love interest doesn't mean that you're not part of the plot. It's a legitimate plot role.
Hell, way back in the day? Angel, eventually of the "Angel: The Series," but originally of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was introduced as a love interest for Buffy. He spent three seasons as that love interest where the entirety of his character and plot, even when he interacted with those outside of Buffy and her Scoobies (such as Drusilla and Spike), was about Buffy Summers. Eventually, he moves to L.A. on the new show, where he's now the protagonist, and Cordelia Chase becomes his love interest because, of course, he's the protagonist now.
These characters, in these shows, like many love interests over a great variety of shows, have the purpose of expediting or triggering emotional and maturity developed in the characters they're love interests for. They're the emotional backbone of these shows, very often, the motivation the plot-driven characters have to go on despite usually overwhelming odds and tons of suffering. Without them, the main characters would not go on and thus the show, the plot, would not go on. Or the main characters would not learn and thus the show, the plot, would stagnate, repeating itself over and over.
And of all the examples I give above, I've only heard protest about two of them. One, obviously, Cordelia. A lot of people rejected her being Angel's love interest and felt it warped her character (though I have to say that when they give examples of how I start pointing out those changes mostly happened in S2, where she had a love interest of her own in Gru). The other is Pete Shanahan, of SG-1. And for the most part, I saw people object to him because, well, Sam treated him like a love interest and/or because him being a love interest got in the way of the Jack/Sam slant the show liked to play with but never see through.
And for all the examples I have above, in both the cases of protest, it's the women that get lambasted. It's Cordelia's character who got "raped" -- can I take a minute out to say if I never hear that phrase used again that way it will be too soon? -- and warped. It's Sam who's the bitch and tease, who breaks Pete's heart.
On a show about women or, at least, with a female main protagonist, you don't tend to see those sort of protests or villainizations to nearly the same degree. You see them sometimes. I'm sure there's great, epic defenses of Cole Turner somewhere on the internet and I'm only glad I haven't seen them, but for the most part it's okay for male characters to be love interests on "female" shows whereas the reverse isn't true. Female love interests on "male" shows get destroyed, nitpicked, and dismissed as "nothing more than love interests."
I have to wonder why. Well, no, I don't have to wonder but I do wonder. And when I wonder, I come to the only logical conclusion to me (thus far, I'd be happy to hear alternative theories). I come to the conclusion that it's more acceptable on female-driven shows because female characters, because women outside of fictional worlds and thus women inside them, are accepted to want true love, to search for a soul mate, to be romantically/domestically driven.
When a male character is shown with the same urges, like Dean Winchester who has said -- and been shown that -- on more than one occasion that his great unattainable dream in life is to settle down with a family, be safe, and have some respectability, the idea is treated as absurdist or a badly written interest. "Love interest" becomes an insult and any female character that takes up that legitimate, established plot role is seen as vapid and/or undeveloped and/or unnecessary and/or destroying the show. (And how I wish I was exaggerating on the last but, unfortunately, I have seen that and fairly regularly to boot.)
I don't know. I don't want to villainize people. I don't want to point fingers. I don't want to start a wank war. But when I see things like ataniell93's post, and I see them a lot, I find myself gaping, open mouth, at the sheer confusion of it. At the sheer double standard I see over and over in science fiction fandom where Buffy is the exception to the male, main protagonist rule.
I'm sure that she and others with that argument can come up with ways in which cases like introducing a love interest for Dean Winchester or for Angel or for John Sheppard is different than introducing one for Piper Halliwell, or Roxy LeBlanc, or Buffy Summers. Or maybe they can say that they do protest male love interests too and, individually, I can't say that isn't true for most of them. I don't see the writing of most of them, don't see the reactions of most of them, and so I can't speak for each case. I can speak for what I see as a trend and, as a trend, that is absolutely not true. As a trend, male love interests as seen as having a legitimate part of the plot and female love interests are not, for no other reason I can see except gender (and even then, Tara McClay was not villainized as a love interest for Willow Rosenberg).
Maybe that's why the demonization of the role of love interest, specifically of female love interests, is interpreted as quite possibly misogynistic by me and people like me. It might not be, case by case, but as a trend I find that argument -- that argument that it isn't and love interests of any gender/sexuality are judged equally by fandom and specifically LJ fandom -- hard to swallow and difficult to defend.
Because, yeah, I was around for the wank post-Half-Blood Prince in the "Harry Potter" fandom. And that wank alone damages that argument nearly beyond repair.
This analysis isn't terribly civil or terribly non-accusatory so I don't ask that the comments be either. If you want to yell at me, go for it. I'll argue my point. If you want to agree, please take the time to comment and do so because I could use the affirmation that it's not just me, my close circle of fannish friends, and the occasional post on metafandom that sees this.
- Andrea.
My immediate reaction upon reading that was two-fold. The first was "Bite me," which isn't terribly useful or conductive towards anything. The second was a question "What's so wrong with love interests?"
Here's what ataniell93 posits is wrong with (female, heterosexual) love interests --though I'll say I've seen this opinion before, over a multitude of fandoms regarding a multitude of pairings from a multitude of people. It's not just this post, I only use this post as a starting point and a place to quote from:
"I don’t like Love Interests for the same reason that a lot of people don’t like OCs in Canon Character/OC fics. I don’t like characters that have been created to fill a hole in someone’s love life-to be perfect for Character X first, secondarily to be a blank slate upon which the female viewer is supposed to project her romantic longings, and then, after that, to be real characters in the story. I also don’t like canonical heterosexual main character pairings very much, because when that happens, the female character tends to become more of a Love Interest and less of a real character than she was before she got with the male lead."
But, frankly, I'm still left going "What's wrong with love interests?"
It's not because I'm a big het person. Out of all the fic I've written or co-written, fully half of it is gen. Of the half that has a romantic pairing at the forefront/as a focus, the majority of those fics are slash. Many were written for ficathons, admittedly, but I signed up for those ficathons after all knowing what pairings I would get. So, to say I'm not a big het person is an understatement. I'm not even a big romance person.
That being said, I am a person that recognizes the significance and role romantic and/or sexual significant others play in the lives of most people. Most people want to get married or find a lasting love, or both. Maybe it isn't with one person because they, like myself, are polyamorous. Maybe it's not with the socially preferred gender for them because they're gay, or bisexual but find a lasting partner with someone of the same sex. But the fact is that most people are looking for romantic and/or sexual love during their adult lives (and teen lives and, for the early bloomers, sexual interests in their early pubescent lives too). Maybe they don't want to follow the accepted life path of having children because they, like myself, are childfree. Maybe they're happy going from one partner to another over and over and don't want to find that happily ever after.
But whatever they're looking for, very few people are asexual. Very few people never search from someone to love, for a love interest.
So, if that's true -- and I find it difficult to argue it's not -- then why would love interests in fictional, but still human-based, canons not be interested in finding love interests and why wouldn't being a love interest in and of itself be a legitimate plot role?
I'll give an example here of the opposite of what you usually see. A lot of the time you see women filling this role because the main protagonist, the hero of the story, is a male but sometimes you don't. For example, Pete Shanahan in "Stargate: SG-1" was introduced as a love interest for Sam Carter, the only female protagonist in that show. Both Henry Grubstick and Walter in "Ugly Betty" are love interests for Betty Suarez, the main character of said show. Even Logan Echolls can be described as a love interest for Veronica Mars in "Veronica Mars."
But the ultimate example of this is "Charmed." "Charmed," the longest running network show with all-female leads, had a myriad of male love interests throughout the show, characters with no other purpose than to be romantic matches for the lead female characters.
For example, Brian Krause, who played Leo Wyatt/the husband of Piper Halliwell, was signed on as a regular only after Holly Marie Combs, who played Piper Halliwell, suggested it. He was originally meant to be a simple , few episode plot point to get the sisters from point A to point B magically, but Combs saw the potential and pitched him as a love interest for Piper. And for four additionally seasons that's basically the only role he had on the show. He was Piper's true love and destiny. Eventually, towards S5/S6, he was finally given his own plot for awhile but, by the last season of the show (S8), he was back to being a bargaining chip for Piper to get motivated. (Literally so. He's frozen in time for nearly half a season to motivate her towards a task she might otherwise balk at doing, if not for the fact that having Leo returned will only happen if she does it.) Before Leo there was attractive, sweet man-next-door Dan Gordon, who lost out to Leo in the race for Piper's heart.
Coop, a Cupid and the eventual second husband of Phoebe Halliwell, is also introduced solely to be a love interest. He says so himself in late S8 when he tells her that he was set up with her to make up for all the pain she's gone through in the last eight years. Her first husband, Cole Turner, is arguably the male character on the show with the strongest, independent storyline but even then the last exposure we have to the man is him stuck in a parallel plane, able to watch and long for Phoebe but not able to contact her. There's also long term boyfriend Jason Dean, in between the two husbands, who had absolutely no function in the show but as a way for Phoebe to move on from Cole.
Paige isn't much different. Her S6 boyfriend, Richard Montana; her S7 flirtation, Kyle Brody; her off-on boyfriend and eventual friend, Glen Belland. These are all characters who are introduced to show Paige the different tribulations that come with having a destiny and trying to find love at the same time. Each one shows her something about herself, her capacity/tolerance for love's trials, and her magic. They have no other purpose besides that. Even Henry Mitchell, who's at least introduced with a career and passion of his own that doesn't revolve around the Charmed ones, is basically there to be Paige's husband.
Prue's love interests perhaps are the only ones with actual, independent purpose. Andy Trudeau was established first as a cop and an ally, then as a love interest. Though then there was Jack Sheridan of S2, so maybe not.
Don't get me wrong. There are male characters in the show who have absolutely no purpose as love interests. Chris Perry/Halliwell, Darryl Morris, Gideon, Zankou, various magical beings and villains. And I could say I do have some issues with the heteronormativity of the show, though no more so than on television as a media representation in general. But the point is that this is a show which is chock full of examples of love interests whose only purpose in as love interests/as lessons for the protagonists, who do not have plots of their own but are, nonetheless, part of the plot.
Another show with this sort of example is Lifetime's brand new series "Army Wives," which I'm adoring. Again, it's a show with female protagonists and male love interests. Only one of the male characters is really anything but, maybe two if you squint really hard. And that makes sense in context of the show, of what the show is about, of what the plot is about, because, well, being a love interest doesn't mean that you're not part of the plot. It's a legitimate plot role.
Hell, way back in the day? Angel, eventually of the "Angel: The Series," but originally of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was introduced as a love interest for Buffy. He spent three seasons as that love interest where the entirety of his character and plot, even when he interacted with those outside of Buffy and her Scoobies (such as Drusilla and Spike), was about Buffy Summers. Eventually, he moves to L.A. on the new show, where he's now the protagonist, and Cordelia Chase becomes his love interest because, of course, he's the protagonist now.
These characters, in these shows, like many love interests over a great variety of shows, have the purpose of expediting or triggering emotional and maturity developed in the characters they're love interests for. They're the emotional backbone of these shows, very often, the motivation the plot-driven characters have to go on despite usually overwhelming odds and tons of suffering. Without them, the main characters would not go on and thus the show, the plot, would not go on. Or the main characters would not learn and thus the show, the plot, would stagnate, repeating itself over and over.
And of all the examples I give above, I've only heard protest about two of them. One, obviously, Cordelia. A lot of people rejected her being Angel's love interest and felt it warped her character (though I have to say that when they give examples of how I start pointing out those changes mostly happened in S2, where she had a love interest of her own in Gru). The other is Pete Shanahan, of SG-1. And for the most part, I saw people object to him because, well, Sam treated him like a love interest and/or because him being a love interest got in the way of the Jack/Sam slant the show liked to play with but never see through.
And for all the examples I have above, in both the cases of protest, it's the women that get lambasted. It's Cordelia's character who got "raped" -- can I take a minute out to say if I never hear that phrase used again that way it will be too soon? -- and warped. It's Sam who's the bitch and tease, who breaks Pete's heart.
On a show about women or, at least, with a female main protagonist, you don't tend to see those sort of protests or villainizations to nearly the same degree. You see them sometimes. I'm sure there's great, epic defenses of Cole Turner somewhere on the internet and I'm only glad I haven't seen them, but for the most part it's okay for male characters to be love interests on "female" shows whereas the reverse isn't true. Female love interests on "male" shows get destroyed, nitpicked, and dismissed as "nothing more than love interests."
I have to wonder why. Well, no, I don't have to wonder but I do wonder. And when I wonder, I come to the only logical conclusion to me (thus far, I'd be happy to hear alternative theories). I come to the conclusion that it's more acceptable on female-driven shows because female characters, because women outside of fictional worlds and thus women inside them, are accepted to want true love, to search for a soul mate, to be romantically/domestically driven.
When a male character is shown with the same urges, like Dean Winchester who has said -- and been shown that -- on more than one occasion that his great unattainable dream in life is to settle down with a family, be safe, and have some respectability, the idea is treated as absurdist or a badly written interest. "Love interest" becomes an insult and any female character that takes up that legitimate, established plot role is seen as vapid and/or undeveloped and/or unnecessary and/or destroying the show. (And how I wish I was exaggerating on the last but, unfortunately, I have seen that and fairly regularly to boot.)
I don't know. I don't want to villainize people. I don't want to point fingers. I don't want to start a wank war. But when I see things like ataniell93's post, and I see them a lot, I find myself gaping, open mouth, at the sheer confusion of it. At the sheer double standard I see over and over in science fiction fandom where Buffy is the exception to the male, main protagonist rule.
I'm sure that she and others with that argument can come up with ways in which cases like introducing a love interest for Dean Winchester or for Angel or for John Sheppard is different than introducing one for Piper Halliwell, or Roxy LeBlanc, or Buffy Summers. Or maybe they can say that they do protest male love interests too and, individually, I can't say that isn't true for most of them. I don't see the writing of most of them, don't see the reactions of most of them, and so I can't speak for each case. I can speak for what I see as a trend and, as a trend, that is absolutely not true. As a trend, male love interests as seen as having a legitimate part of the plot and female love interests are not, for no other reason I can see except gender (and even then, Tara McClay was not villainized as a love interest for Willow Rosenberg).
Maybe that's why the demonization of the role of love interest, specifically of female love interests, is interpreted as quite possibly misogynistic by me and people like me. It might not be, case by case, but as a trend I find that argument -- that argument that it isn't and love interests of any gender/sexuality are judged equally by fandom and specifically LJ fandom -- hard to swallow and difficult to defend.
Because, yeah, I was around for the wank post-Half-Blood Prince in the "Harry Potter" fandom. And that wank alone damages that argument nearly beyond repair.
This analysis isn't terribly civil or terribly non-accusatory so I don't ask that the comments be either. If you want to yell at me, go for it. I'll argue my point. If you want to agree, please take the time to comment and do so because I could use the affirmation that it's not just me, my close circle of fannish friends, and the occasional post on metafandom that sees this.
- Andrea.