snowflake challenge #3

[svgurl]

Challenge #3:
In your own space, talk about a fannish opinion you hold that has changed over time.

I am sure I had plenty of opinions change over time, but I can't remember all of them. When I became active in fandom, I was primarily a slash shipper and I am embarrassed to admit that I definitely was harsher on female characters than I should have been, especially ones that were "in the way" of my ship, but fortunately grew out of that (I hope). I'm not proud of the fics I wrote where I have bashed other ships/characters. I keep them up because a) I feel bad deleting when someone may have enjoyed it since I know what it's like to lose fanworks you enjoy and 2) just to remind myself where I came from and the need to grow/learn/do better.

There are still characters and ships I don't like but major character/ship bashing tends to give me second hand embarrassment, especially in fic. I have had character opinion changes too - there are some characters I've always liked and still criticized but somehow got more protective over them when they faced fandom backlash (Clark Kent in Smallville, Rory Gilmore in the years after AYITL, Steve Rogers post CACW).

If I'm still in fandom in five, ten years, I'm sure I will have even more changes. :)

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

Total agree on the female character bashing- even if I don't think they're good characters even with hindsight, the way a lot of people went about it was just immature and sexist in retrospect (honestly I think a lot of modern fandom just internalized "it's misogynistic" without losing their taste for character bashing)

Honestly, I don't really get the impulse nowadays with character bashing. When I hate characters, I just pretend they don't exist.

[svgurl]

Same. And in retrospect, I attributed it to slash fandom, because that is something that does get assigned to it but the het side can be vicious about women who are "competitors" too and I know that from experience.

I can get frustrated with ships/characters, but yeah, I agree that it's fairly easy to ignore most of them.

[barbaratp]

Isso me lembra da época onde toda mulher entre um ship gay era colocada na geladeira (eu já fiz isso e me envergonho, por sorte mudei). Não foi uma época bonita, ainda há quem faça isso, mas todavia enfrentanto muitos assim como você mudaram e deixaram isso para trás. Quanto a criticar personagens acho que todo mundo um dia ficou muito feroz nisso e depois se acalmou. Obrigada por participar feliz ano novo

[svgurl]

(I had to put this through a translate so I hope I understood you okay)

Yeah, the "fridging of female characters" (which is still done on shows/movies today unfortunately) and other villanizing/mishandling is something that a lot of us have done, but it is important that we can all learn and grow and get better. Fandom does still get vicious toward each other and "competing" ships/characters but yes, hopefully someday we can all live and let live. Until then it's up to us to curate our own experience and thankfully there are mute/block buttons to help. Happy New Year to you as well! :)

[corvidology]

I would like to tell you proudly that I never engaged in female character bashing as a slash fan but the truth is when I got around to slash fandom, my canons were more under the 'buddy cop' series genre, even if not actually buddy cops, so they never actually involved them with female characters who stood in the way.

By the time I ran across that in fandoms, I just sidestepped it, sent her off to a better relationship for her and got on with it.

Again, I think while we all share common experiences of fandomland, the fandoms you get involved with really lead to very different experiences.

[svgurl]

Honestly, as I was writing this post, I forgot how vicious het fandom can be to women that are "in the way" of their favorite m/f ship, and I should've because that side of Smallville fandom was far more toxic than the slash one.

That sounds like the right way to go about things.

You make good points. There is some overlap and people in shared fandoms but yeah, also very different. I am sure I see things a certain way because of the ships/fandom I entered under and what I experienced and others see it from another perspective.

[silversea]

Ugh, I feel embarrassed to admit the same but I used to be harsher on female characters as well, though not for shipping reasons. I was one of these "not like other girls" people, and took my internalized misogyny on many female characters (and series) that did not deserve them at all :(

I'm glad that I've reflected on myself and re-evaluated a lot of my opinions. There are so many wonderful stories and characters I missed out because of my own misogyny, and I'm happy to catch up on them.

[svgurl]

I'm sure plenty of people have experienced something similar. I was definitely snobbish about interests and was like "oh, you like that" and judgmental about "Mary Sues", but it's good that we all recognized what we did wrong and have gotten better! I think that is important and it's even better that you were able to go back and found joy in what you previously criticized. :)

[tinkaton]

It's funny how fandom backlash can make a person like a character more lmao. So many times I've been like "oh everyone hates her? she's my daughter now and she's never done anything wrong" about a character I might've only been mildly interested in without the fandom hate.

[svgurl]

So true! The urge to be a little contrarian is definitely there, but a lot of times it is just unfair or the maligned character's perceived faults are exaggerated too, so the instinct is stronger in that sense. :D

[tinkaton]

For sure, like for female characters a lot of the hate is definitely that "she's in the way of my ship" mentality and just general sexism, but even for male characters if a guy's like, too "mean" to the internet fave or something it gets everyone hating on them so easily. And I say this as a Tony stan who has seen a looot of people be weird about him over the course of the MCU--some people were SO weird about Steve post-CACW lmao like critique the writing all you want but these guys are not real people making real life decisions sjdhkfjsdf

[svgurl]

Definitely, I think people tend to over exaggerate flaws and sometimes hate on women for doing something that they may sympathize a male character doing the same thing for. And yes, a lot of time with slash ships, you can tell who is the fandom woobie and who is the guy who is the “prize” who needs to take care of him all the time and when canon does something to refute that, well, there’s fandom backlash. I didn’t realize how much I liked Steve until the post CACW weirdness, and as someone who shipped them since the first Avengers, I ended up staying away from that pair for some time due to the bashing. :\

Definitely agree about them not being real people making decisions and they also don’t have the information the audience has. In the heat of the moment, characters won’t always make the right choice.

[ragnarok_08]

There are still characters and ships I don't like but major character/ship bashing tends to give me second hand embarrassment, especially in fic.

I know, right?

[svgurl]

Definitely! What gets to me is the characters I actually care about somehow end up looking worse in an attempt to make the character I don't like look bad, and that just throws me out.