Hating that character/pairing - or hating the fans?

[misscam]

So, those of you that have an active dislike of a character or a pairing in fandom, do you think your dislike is fuelled as much by fans of it as the thing itself?

I bring before you a hypothetical situation.

In your neighbourhood lives Miss Enthusiastic, who has a cat. You don't really like cats as much, because you're a dog person. But to each their own, right? However, your neighbour is very proud of her cat. She keeps coming around with it, talk about it, have a t-shirt with a picture of the cat - it's all cat, cat, cat. She can't understand why you just won't love her cat. You find yourself starting to resent that damn cat, because after all, if it went away, your neighbour wouldn't annoy you so much. You see the cat, you think about what bliss it would be if a semi-trailer hit it.

Others in your neighbourhood - Mister Casual and his wife - also has a cat, but is much more tolerable about it. But because Miss Enthusiastic has so soured your cat reactions, you find yourself narrowing your eyes at their cat, too. You begin to realise you hate cats. Really, really, really hate cats. Wish all cats would go away - or never have evolved at all. Cats have ruined your neighbourhood.

Miss Enthusiatic gets another cat.

Three days later, you get a bulldog and go to war.

Replace neighbourhood with fandom, cats and dogs with ships - do you think dislike of what is essentially people can fuel dislike of something you are to start with just fairly 'meh' about? (Or entertain a mild dislike - and perhaps even sadder - or a liking for to begin with.) Because I look at some of the vitrolic in fandom directed at ships or characters and I wonder if fictional things can really get that much passion up. But other humans being, I know can. (I know for myself that my irrational hatred of Vålerenga, a football club, is fuelled entirely by behaviour of the fans on some matches I've been.)

And for the record, this is not about one particular fandom - I've seen what I think is this happening in several fandoms.

Of course, there doesn't need to be just one cause for a dislike to form and stay firmly rooted - so perhaps it is a combination of things that is most likely of all. In which case, what part do you think it plays? Do you have dislike that when you think about it, is definitely fuelled by fans, if not just that?

Opine on me please?


I love cats and get very enthusiatic about mine, a cuddly whiskered furball of love. I probably get annoying about this. Oh yeah.

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't necessarily say fans of a particular character so much as fandom reaction to them, as minor a distinction as that may be: in Buffy fandom a couple of years ago it wasn't possible to discuss anything on some boards without it descending into a fight over Spike, since many many people rabidly loved him and many many people rabidly hated him. Even if it was a thread about Giles, or the season's big bad, it'd turn into being All About Spike. He started out as my favourite character, but since I like lots of characters and ships, it got to the point where I just wished all sides - pro or anti - would shut the hell up and talk about something else.

[fantasyprone.livejournal.com]

I think it works both ways. I have been so annoyed by fans that I've gone completely off pairings, but I've also been swayed to like some by particularly well-written fics and rants.

[belegcuthalion.livejournal.com]

There are pairings in the LOTR- and HP-fandom I really dislike, but the best thing I can do about that is to avoid the stories written about them... and not necessarily the people writing those tales. Some of them are rather nice, and they have found friendly words and honest praise about stories and pairings I have written myself. And normally I'm completely able to behave - by keeping my opinion for myself. *smiles*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Yes, reaction from other fans can (and has) shoved me from having an opinion to becoming hypersensitive to an issue to furious about an issue to picking a side and a gun in a fanwar on an issue.

I'm more pissed off about the "rip open reality and bring Rose back" T-shirts than I am about the way Martha was treated onscreen, for example - the latter is something to have an opinion about; the former directly says "fuck your opinion."

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

My personal feelings on a character or ship aren't personally affected because I like what I like and possess the magic scroll button that allows me to roll right on by posts that annoy me.

What I do find vexing in DW fandom is that, as Doyle mentioned in Buffy fandom, any and all meta conversations are automatically filtered through ship lenses and are dismissed out of hand by one rabid faction or another based on which camp you've chosen to plant your flag. Even worse, any comment that doesn't support the theory that character A or B is The Most Awesome Character Ever brands you a de facto supporter of the opposition.

It's insane.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

This didn't make you write fanfic devoted to humiliating, abusing and hating on Spike though, right?

I've heard tales of the great Spike split in Buffy fandom. Sounds nasty, right enough.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's a good point. It's not always the shows I love the most I get into fandom for, and this isn't always because it doesn't have a fandom.

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, man...good times.

but since I like lots of characters and ships, it got to the point where I just wished all sides - pro or anti - would shut the hell up and talk about something else.

Amen. For that, and so many other, fandoms.

*gives DW fandom a significant glance*

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I think fandom size matters a bit here. I mean, LotR fandom is so big you can find your own corners with people of similar interests - in smaller fandoms, there might be just one comm and you're forced to share space much more with people you might not find so nice.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

What were those t-shirts? Did I miss something?

Fanwars do seem to favour bazookas quite a lot of the time. Huge firepower, shame about what was in the way.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

And you don't get into a ship comm if you're a member of an opposing one, right?

The DW race debate does seem to have become ship-filtered and totally derailed into something else at times. I don't know what to think about it all anymore. Some of it has clearly gotten personal, at which point rational debate takes a backseat.

[everysecondtues.livejournal.com]

In some ways, this is true for me. There is a specific person I know who, if he likes and talks about something I've never seen/read before, tends to make me wary of/have a prejudice to things before I even find out more about it. If he tells me I absolutely must check something out, I find myself going out of my way to avoid it. It takes several other close, trusted friends with similar tastes to undo the damage. I realize it's irrational, but I find I can't help it.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

This didn't make you write fanfic devoted to humiliating, abusing and hating on Spike though, right?

No indeed - though I have to say, even with the great Spike split, there were far less fics of that kind than those bashing Riley or Kennedy, since all sections of fandom cheerfully slagged off those two (grr). "Buffy never once had an orgasm while going out with Riley" seemed practically compulsory in Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel fic for a while.

Actually, the reaction to Riley and Kennedy is why I was pleasantly surprised at the reaction to Martha - yeah, there were/are some people denouncing her as Satan because she replaced a very popular character but at least it's not the whole fandom.

[20thcenturyvole.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's definitely how it works for me. But the positive and negative reactions of other people to that... er, animal... colour my judgement too. I mean, say I was on friendly terms with Mr. and Mrs. Casual, and after being soured to cats, one day brought up - as delicately as I could - the matter of Miss Enthusiastic. If Mr. and Mrs. Casual said, "Oh, her. Um, yes - look, we like cats, we really do. But the way she likes them just kind of makes my skin crawl. I'm sure I've seen the woman eat cat food." - Well, I'm pretty sure my opinion would start to change, and I'd shift my hatred from cats to people like Miss Enthusiastic. And I'd feel better, because I know it's not the damn cat's fault that its owner is so damned annoying.

On the downside (and, I know, I'm as impressionable as a dollop of warm wax) - say before I moved into that neighborhood, I'd had some dog-loving friends who maybe knew Miss Enthusiastic and told me all about her and how much they'd like that cat to go to sleep under a garbage truck's front tire. The first time Miss Enthusiastic came round, cooing about how her bitsy boopsy caught a widdle birdy and puked it up under the couch, my preconditioned dislike would go FOOOOM and I'd kick her out of the house. I might never speak to Mr. and Mrs. Casual because they are icky cat-lovers OMG, and it would take me a long time to reach equilibrium, if I did at all.

(As an example, to make this incredibly extended metaphor make sense: my first experience of fandom in any capacity was the Spike forums on a James Marsters fansite. For a year before I discovered real fandom, I lived and breathed that site, and got really, really in to Spike/Buffy, caught up in the squee - and also caught up in the vitriolic hatred for Buffy/Angel 'shippers, all of whom were clearly stupid fluffy idiots who read too many trashy romance novels and Anne Rice books and were clinging desperately to the past. It has taken me years, and I still wouldn't read a Buffy/Angel 4eva kind of fic unless it was recced up and down fandom, but I know now that my fourteen-year-old self clearly needed a bop on the head and a lesson about other people's squee.)

Does any of that make sense?

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Also, the endless, tedious bashing of Gwen in Torchwood fandom for getting in the way of the boyslash being an OMGSLUT made me determined to like a character I was previously indifferent about.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh man, once a whole fandom pretty much agrees on hating a character protesting bashing is just like trying to swim in treacle. And then of course people who will cheerfully bash fandom's punching ball gets all hurt if their favourite gets even one critisism.

Fandom consensus can be an odd thing.

And yeah, DW fandom is much nicer in some ways about character hate than for instance CSI fandom - the fic trend I was thinking of is from there. There is a set of people who hate a character there so much they devote fanfic to nothing but going after the character in rather crude offensive ways. This includes rape, sometimes.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hear you. I fear people pushing Veronica Mars on me a bit like that helped me so not like the show, in the end.

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

And you don't get into a ship comm if you're a member of an opposing one, right?

*snort*

Or have people on your flist who are h8rs.

And it's not just the race debate, it's ANY debate. The recent go round on narrative devolved into a ship issue, which really just defeats the purpose of any sort of meta. How can you discuss anything at all if your first criteria for judging the worthiness of the content is who does the author think the Doctor is schtooping in the TARDIS? I'm not saying that that sort of agenda doesn't exist but it's to the point it narrows the focus on everything.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

I love you a little right now for taking up my very silly neighbourhood example. :D

I frequently go "oh HER" about people in fandom. Quite sad, isn't it? There is someone in particular - NOT in DW fandom, I stress to add - who acts all I Speak For the Ship and whenever she does that, I want to throw whales at her. Because she totally does not speak for me or quite a lot of others I know and she's driving people to dislike the ship in general. GAH.

And yeah, the power of pre-formed opinions shouldn't be underestimated. I mean, I once got friendly with a young American girl. At one point, religion got brought up and I mentioned I was atheist. She was shocked. She had been taught all atheists were hateful, nasty people. She'd never gotten friendly with me if she had known.

(I was a Buffy/Angel shipper when I was quite young - never in fandom really, just when watching the show.)

You maketh sense, yes.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was the reason, was it?

I think I missed the round on narrative - what was that?

If everything gets judged on ship, where do the multishippers stand, one wonders? And yeah, while shipping preference can be motivations behind particular meta pieces, that doesn't mean they always have an agenda to slam the other ship.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Some of the nastiest attacks on female characters I've seen come from women in fandom writing slash. This makes me a bit sad.

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

It started here and in subsequent posts veered wildly off topic as comments drove it became more and more about Rose, the character v. Martha, the character which I'm fairly certain (having this person on my flist and not hearing boo shipwise from them) was not the intent at all.

(Of course, by even mentioning it, I'm sure this will label me as...something. I can't even keep up with the scorecard anymore.)

Multishippers? They're in the bunker, sipping mojitos and waiting for the storm to pass.

*pours another drink*

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Actually, me too on this one.

But as I epiphanised a while back, I have a character kink for underdog types. Bashing a character, especially in the name of others, is an almost surefire way to make me like them.

(I say almost, because I still can't like Kennedy from BtVS. I'd also put Riley here, but when he came back all commando and married, I rather liked him)

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, my opinions concerning certain characters or pairings are definitely influenced by the fandom equivalents of Miss Enthusiastic the crazy catlady. The three most obvious examples I can think of in my case are Snape, Spike and Rose.

I'm not even a HP fan per se, but I quite like Snape as a character in both books and films. And, yes, I do happen to consider Alan Rickman a talented, handsome actor. However, the Snape worship I encountered when I only dipped so much as my toes into the depths of fandom, to opt for a really silly metaphor, was, um, mind-boggling.

No, he's not "EVIL BUT SEXAY YAY!11!!" Nor is he just a poor misunderstood woobie. And, no, he's not anyone's husband on an astral plane, either. It almost made me despise Snape for a while until I learnt to stay away from the online stuff.

Rinse and repeat about the same experience with Spike when I started watching "Buffy" on DVD last autumn. (Alan Rickman PWNS James Marsters, though.) Boy, I'm just glad that I didn't catch that show live. Its fandom might have scarred my enjoyment forever. Posthumous exposure to scary fangirls had already made me reach the stage when I began to twitch as soon as Spike was onscreen.

And, well, there's Rose, one of my favourite DW characters when I started out with that show, because of her role as stand-in for the audience as well as Billie Piper's enthusiastic performance. Shipping her with the Doctor (esp. Nine) was also of the good. Then came all the post-"Doomsday" fixits. Now the post-S3 kerfuffles after poor Martha's departure. You know the stuff.

I haven't even looked at time_and_chips's mainpage for at least half a year. I think I might have become physically uncapable to.

Perhaps I should decide on a general 'Net abstinence for another six months and forget all about batshit insane fen.

[preachelectric]

I don't hate any pairing. The squick ones make me wince a little but, as you put it, "each their own". Even when the fans go on and on about their pairing I find that I don't care about the pairing, rather I tend to not like the fans for being absolutely mental about a pairing and not accepting of other ones. Fandom-idiots drive me up the wall which is probably one of the reasons I never get heavily involved in any fandom. Don't have to deal with them as much that way.

But, when Miss Enthusiastic is away on holidays, sometimes I'll even give the cat a pat on the head while walking my dog and then go on my way.