And oddity in hating characters

[marlowe1]

I find it fascinating that people hate characters for what they do as if they are real people. I was thinking specifically of Gwen from Torchwood. I mentioned that I hated her as a character because she was written one way (cop) and she was written as a Mary Sue who can't seem to stop remorseless killers from running on her knife or press the

Comments

[haro]

This is without a doubt a horrible thing to do and I wouldn't blame people for hating her for it.

She did, but every single character in the main Torchwood cast (outside of Rhys) has done far worse things in the series. It's not really a valid reason to hate her unless you hate everyone else.

Imo.

[shipaholic]

To be fair, Owen also busted out the roofies and he is/was also hated.

Then again, nobody hates Jack for doing it to Gwen in the first episode...

My approach to Torchwood is to pretend it started with S2. They basically redo everyone's character arc but better, and the characters are tweaked to become likeable (the change in Ianto is miraculous).

[haro]

Wow, so much typical character hate in this post.

Calling a lead female a Mary-Sue (a catch-all term used to justify lady hate, generally) because everyone falls in love with her (even though Rhys and debatably Jack are the only ones that do)? Check.
'Bland Asian' (how nice to identify a character by just their race)? Check

(Also Gwen and Tosh are awesome.)

[dropsofgleam]

This. it's hilarious in a trainwrecky way, considering how it's written as a textbook example of what should NOT go here. Bashing, double standards, immature "reasoning" that sound like childish fits ("ALL THE DUDES FALL FOR HER EVEN IF IT'S JUST TWO AS MUCH, I F*CKING HATE HER!!!111"), etc.

[marlowe1]

Also the walk-on characters.

But the main point is that hating a character for her actions is stupid (invoking Livia and Janice Soprano for that) but hating her because the writers never seem to know what to do with her except have her cry and get called the most beautiful woman in the world points to a sad misogyny within the show itself.

[akai_senshi]

Sorry, both are invalid.

Nice try, though, I'm one of the mods, you've been banned.

[dropsofgleam]

From the rules of the comm, clearly quoted in the info:

This is a character defense community. This is a safe haven for people to talk about their favorite hated characters without fear of getting into an argument with someone who disagrees with them and won't let them have their opinion, so absolutely no coming in just to criticize someone's post or toss out the exact same arguments they were protesting against or deliver a "they're fictional characters, get over it" speech. Especially if you are not a member of this community and have no interest in becoming one.

And yet your "post" has incredibly blatant Gwen bashing (with bonus pot shots at Owen and Toshiko), as well as an attempt to defend the massive hate against Gwen. (I don't think her actions were the best, but people have done far worse in that show and yet they don't get half the bashing that she does, to extremes like planning to verbally harrass her actress at cons.) Therefore, it's VERY against the rules of this place.

[marlowe1]

Whatever.

My main point is not so much hating on the character but wondering if the writers could have written her better. And how much is the fault of the writers and how weird it is that people hate her on this visceral level as if she was an actual person that did horrible things to them.

I contrast her with Janice Soprano who is one of the most malignant and self-involved characters on television (even though Livia is more destructive, we only see her for 2 seasons) but people LOVE her. And she does way more than any of the characters on Torchwood in terms of morally dubious actions.

And as for Owen and Tosh - again it's the writers who wrote them to be these one dimensional characters. I want to like them. I don't.

[kankurette]

You do realise this is an ANTI-character bashing community?

[marlowe1]

Well now I do. However, I will argue that this post is still valid as it questions the odd method of bashing Gwen based on her actions as if she is somehow a real person. As in "I liked Gwen before she retconned her boyfriend" and not for the way the writers DEMAND that we love her (because everyone on the show loves her) but don't give her any characteristics that are particularly loveable (or interesting for that matter - or even very realistic).

It's like hating on Bella for leaving Edward for Jacob instead of hating the character for being tediously dull.

[shipaholic]

To be fair, writers are usually trying to sweep you up in the narrative and make you react to the characters as you would to real people. Assessing a character based solely on the writing requires you to look at them from a distance, with your analyst hat on. If you'll pardon me saying so, it sounds like your problem is that you don't think S1 Torchwood is good enough to be caught up in it, and you can't understand why anyone is invested enough in Gwen's behaviour to form a negative assessment of it. Which I agree with, ftr, but I wouldn't necessarily agree if we were discussing a different show.