The Legitimacy of "Love Interests" In Plot

[saeva]

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.

Comments

[tielan]

I think what people object to when they object to "love interests" is to have female characters have no motivations, no character arc, no reason for being outside of being, well, the love interest.

Which is a reasonable objection. It just seems to be consistently levelled at female characters who aren't "mere love interest".

To take at least one examples saeva listed before: Cordelia was both continuity from Buffy, occasional damsel in distress, snark and clueless humour, and the human contact for Angel to stop him from going all Mistah Broody through all Season One - before there was any hint of romance between her and Angel.

So she certainly wasn't a "mere love interest" and (as I understand saeva to be saying) still got the treatment from fans.

And, in the end, isn't attributing more to a character than canon implies what fans do? We fill in the chinks that TPTB don't mortar up properly - and sometimes completely re-do the entire canon just to get our jollies - it's what we're known for.

Yet, from what I've observed, people are willing to lambast a female character for being introduced as a love interest, without even knowing what kind of story the character has, what background, what personality, and (as in the case of the current SPN kerfuffle) before the character's even made a single appearance or developed anything more than a shadowy presence in the canon.

[ravenclaw_devi]

I know, and those are valid points.