Comments | puella_nerdii: We Love the Women That the Fandom Hates (spreading the word)

puella_nerdii

We Love the Women That the Fandom Hates (spreading the word)

Sep 07, 2011 17:07

I think I saw this advertised in game_thrones yesterday, though it took me until now to get off my butt and sign up for it.

We Love the Women That the Fandom Hates is what it sounds like: a celebration of female characters who come in for their undue share of fannish vitriol ( Read more... )

fandom: the hunger games, awesome things by awesome people, challenge: we♥the women the fandom hates

Comments 49

liberty_witch September 8 2011, 00:25:10 UTC

I would do this in a heartbeat if I knew who the heck to choose. >.<' Choices, choices... @.@

puella_nerdii September 8 2011, 00:33:13 UTC

Well, there's no claim limit, it seems, so in theory you could do more than one! Other than that, I am not sure how to advise, because a whoooole lot of women qualify for this thing. Sadly.

liberty_witch September 8 2011, 00:51:36 UTC

IKR? I'm kinda torn between picking a Homestuck girl, or a book fandom girl. [Why not an Anime girl? TOO MUCH CHOICE. I would have to list every heroine, EVER, how sad is that? ._.]

(The comment has been removed)

puella_nerdii September 8 2011, 00:33:38 UTC

Glad to provide! I'm excited to see what people come up with.

fragilesymphony September 8 2011, 02:02:32 UTC

Thank you for pimping this out, I probably would have entirely missed it otherwise! I mentioned on twitter, but I'm doing Tonks. (And considering also doing Annie? She doesn't get hate in fandom, really, but I've had conversations with more casual fan friends that said somethings that really surprised me. Also I want an excuse to unload all my meta-ish feelings, lol.)

puella_nerdii September 8 2011, 14:27:34 UTC

No problem! :D I do recall seeing that on Twitter, and as another R/S fan who likes Tonks, I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say.

(SO MANY META-ISH FEELINGS ON ANNIE. I think a lot of our meta-ish feelings on her align, though. And I frown hard at those casual fan friends, because I adore Annie and will stan for her unto the death.)

aimmyarrowshigh September 8 2011, 11:52:21 UTC

On Katniss -- I definitely do not think that she's emotionless or a sociopath, and is NOT MURDEROUS AT ALL WTH, but I do think that SC's handling of Katniss' emotional repression/struggles did not necessarily work in Katniss' favor in the long run. On the one hand, it's TOTALLY AWESOME that Katniss is a YA, female, in-a-love-triangle narrator whose focus is on real-world issues that actually deserve her attention, but on the other, it's sometimes hard to sympathize with a character who doesn't seem to have any understanding of kindness without expecting reciprocity ( ... )

puella_nerdii September 8 2011, 14:24:40 UTC

I get what you're saying. I disagree, but I get what you're saying. It's not always easy to sympathize with Katniss: she's judgmental, she's prickly, and she starts off with very little empathy. But I like that about her, honestly, on a narrative and on a craft level. Male antiheroes have been in vogue for ages, but I don't think a lot of writers take the risk of presenting a female lead who's not necessarily sympathetic.

What ticks me off is when the whole "strong female character" thing comes into play when people talk about Katniss, and the idea that the trauma Katniss suffers over the course of the series makes her weak and whiny, or deprives her of agency. (I put "strong female character" in quotes because the common fannish definition of it seems to be "a woman with no flaws whatsoever." Which makes for a boring female character, if you ask me.) I've noticed people look at Katniss, look at her survival skills and combat prowess, and think that's all that counts as strength where she's concerned. There's this expectation that ( ... )

zorabet September 8 2011, 16:02:04 UTC

I actually had a like two hour discussion with tracingaladder about this once, because I really, really thought along these same lines for a long time.

I'm a very, very, very emotional person, and I have trouble with things and people and characters that don't immediately feel empathetic and stir up my emotions and ~make me feel in my heart. And I've always thought Katniss was a smart character in terms of writing, but as a person, to the extent that she is, I didn't get it. I didn't like her, I didn't feel worse for her than anyone else, etc ( ... )

twigcollins September 8 2011, 22:30:28 UTC

I think the crux of...everything, is that Katniss is an INCREDIBLY unreliable narrator. Like. Really unreliable.

I found the glimpses of other characters talking about her to be really interesting in this regard.

carcharias1130 September 9 2011, 03:48:36 UTC

This is really intriguing; so many female characters are the target of so much hate. It's really depressing sometimes, especially when you're new to the fandom and you really enjoy this one character and then you find that there's this huge underground hate movement against them and it sucks. I've found this semi-inconsistent in my novel or TV fandoms, but in my anime fandoms, it is almost omnipresent. (And maybe that's just me, or maybe that's just that anime fans are more vocal, or both, or neither). Bleach, for example. When I started the manga a few years ago, I almost immediately fell in love with Orihime's character. And then I got deeper into the fandom and find that she is the target of some of the worst fandom hate I've ever seen. I don't understand, and I wonder at it ( ... )