Children, children, don't be scared...

[storywitch]

...the moon is up and we're all prepared.
-"Bat Boy: The Musical"

Well, here we go again. Never mind that all of my other attempts at LJ and any other form of diary-keeping have vanished into slacker wasteland. Now that I'm older and wiser, I will use my newfound focus and dedication to proactively seek out active fan communities, forge connections,

Comments

Re: I, for one, am scared of that musical.

[storywitch]

Fanatical villain fans with "moral objections": If they're actually objecting simply because they're villain fans, it's silly. If they're objecting on the grounds of an unbalanced portrayal--saying that JKR's world is simplified/morally black-and-white, that it's unrealistic to have *all* the Slytherins be nasty little weasels--that's a valid point.

You really shouldn't call her "Marty Noxious" when you've never seen any of her episodes (and it's Marti, by the way :-P). I, on the other hand, can and do. *resists the urge to launch into a Season 6 rant* But as for characters behaving out of character, it can happen, and fans have every right to call canon creators on it (ooh, alliteration). Of course, that doesn't mean they're always right; sometimes there is a valid reason for the character's actions, and often, it's arguable. But I do believe that a certain unnamed teen-detective show has assassinated several of its characters this season.

Creators can say that fans are not taking their characeters *the way they intended them to be taken*, but that doesn't mean it's "the wrong way." Of course, in the two cases you mentioned, I'm just a tad biased. ;-)

The Mayfair witches are Mary Sues. Anne Rice gave us the precious gift of Lestat and then lost her mind.

Re: I, for one, am scared of that musical.

[storywitch]

Ah, see...I think that's the question with fanatical villain fans. Chicken or egg? Are they complex people who feel drawn to complex characters, or are they trying to rationalize their favorite character choices with all this complicated moral stuff? What has it all got to do with the fans' personalities? It's a cliche that HP Slytherin identifiers compare Gryffindors to the real people who bullied them in high school, but...it's true that many, many heroes are impulsive, active, hotheaded types, and many fans are thoughtful, reserved geeksters. If the typical dedicated fan is so different from the typical hero, it's no wonder that Issues sometimes arise in fandoms. As another example from one of your fandoms, those guys writing the Buffy guide got uncomfortable when the writers started portraying nerds as bad. They felt like this was an insult to the fandom.

Also, popular fandoms tend to have a lot of action, which often means some kind of war, which means that people hurt each other, which means that the main characters also hurt others...and if the main characters are supposed to be "badass" and cool, they might have attitudes and insult their opponents and gloat when they win. And suddenly, they might start reminding their mostly-liberal fandom of a certain faux-Texan faux-President. Worlds full of battle and glory and daring make good fantasy material, but sometimes fans think about what it would mean in real life and realize that they just voted against that way of thinking at the last election.

I'm endlessly fascinated by these fandom issues...villain fandom because I've been in it since about the age of three, and canon/fandom interaction because...because...well...hmm. Maybe it has something to do with that, with how I imagine fictional worlds as other universes with authors as their gods, and...the idea of them being connected is such fun. It's hard to explain. I make lists of things like characters who come from the same archetype, characters who seem so all-knowing that they might be aware of other dimensions, series that can be crossed over easily, series where the Fourth Wall is especially thin, canon sues, canon OOC incidents, creator vs. fan controversies...

I guess I'm more interested in the particulars of each fandom's controversies, how they're similar and different, what everyone's reasons are, and what the valid and invalid points are in each case than in deciding whether canon characters "can" be OOC or whether or not it's right to blame an author's world view for the treatment of a certain character.

Also, I'm interested in personality types in general, so of course I'm curious about how they're expressed in fandom. I could ramble even more about personality and villain fandom...and I suspect I will at some point.

You summed up Anne Rice perfectly, by the way. :P I feel a little sorry for her because of the possibility that her husband's death was what pushed her over the edge. But she was too infatuated with her characters from the beginning.