beccastareyes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccastareyes) wrote2004-01-24 09:11 pm
beccastareyes) wrote2004-01-24 09:11 pm
(no subject)
I'm feeling literate tonight, so I am going to give you a semi-coherent essay on characters in anime.
Every three-dimensional charcter (thus excluding Mary Sues and extras) has flaws. This is expected. I've seen fans that gloss over their favorite character's flaws, but come down much harder on a character they dislike. In extreme cases, this person's favorite could walk into a town, rape and kill everyone bloodily, take their stuff, buy bondage lesbian beastiality child porn using their credit cards, and download Brittney Spears mp3s using their computers... and the fans will still defend him/her. Then, the hated character could jaywalk, and the fans would come down on his/her like a ton of hammers.
This irks me. I fully admit some of my favorite characters do not always do the right thing. Some of them were annoying at first. I like them because they grew and changed, and became better people. In the beginning of their series, both Millerna and Amelia were naive little princesses -- Millerna with her fangirl crush on Allen, and her naive belief that it was true love, and Amelia with her naive belief in black and white Justice and all of the interesting false dicohtemies she tended to make. By the end, Millerna was married, and fully able to realize what love was -- and what it wasn't -- and Amelia knew that there could be no Justice when one tried to practice Absolute Justice. And yet, both Millerna and Amelia have detractors that sometimes act as if they saw the first few episodes that these two were in, formed an opnion of them, and stopped paying attention to what they did. I don't mind people disliking them, but I would prefer that they dislike them for who they are, rather than who they were.
In addition to those who ignore character evolution, there are the cookie-cutter romance fic writers. You take two unique characters, and turn them into a romantic stereotype. In a het fic, the male becomes a strange mix of masculine and sensitive -- you might see James fighting to defend Jessie's honor, or Snape writing love poety -- while the female becomes a weepy damsel, appearance-obsessed socialite, and/or a 'rebel' Hot Topic Wiccan Goth. In slash fics, you get the standard weepy uke/domineering seme stereotypes.
I'm sorry, but these OOC fics make me wonder why these people claim to like these characters. Zelgadis is obsessed with his cure, a loner, and somewhat unsocial. James is a sexually-ambiguous vain, petty person who gets slapped around by Jessie. Nakago is a sadistic, cruel bastard who needs about two lifetimes' worth of couseling. If you don't accept this, then you don't really like the character -- you like a fandom myth attached to a pretty drawing.
Every three-dimensional charcter (thus excluding Mary Sues and extras) has flaws. This is expected. I've seen fans that gloss over their favorite character's flaws, but come down much harder on a character they dislike. In extreme cases, this person's favorite could walk into a town, rape and kill everyone bloodily, take their stuff, buy bondage lesbian beastiality child porn using their credit cards, and download Brittney Spears mp3s using their computers... and the fans will still defend him/her. Then, the hated character could jaywalk, and the fans would come down on his/her like a ton of hammers.
This irks me. I fully admit some of my favorite characters do not always do the right thing. Some of them were annoying at first. I like them because they grew and changed, and became better people. In the beginning of their series, both Millerna and Amelia were naive little princesses -- Millerna with her fangirl crush on Allen, and her naive belief that it was true love, and Amelia with her naive belief in black and white Justice and all of the interesting false dicohtemies she tended to make. By the end, Millerna was married, and fully able to realize what love was -- and what it wasn't -- and Amelia knew that there could be no Justice when one tried to practice Absolute Justice. And yet, both Millerna and Amelia have detractors that sometimes act as if they saw the first few episodes that these two were in, formed an opnion of them, and stopped paying attention to what they did. I don't mind people disliking them, but I would prefer that they dislike them for who they are, rather than who they were.
In addition to those who ignore character evolution, there are the cookie-cutter romance fic writers. You take two unique characters, and turn them into a romantic stereotype. In a het fic, the male becomes a strange mix of masculine and sensitive -- you might see James fighting to defend Jessie's honor, or Snape writing love poety -- while the female becomes a weepy damsel, appearance-obsessed socialite, and/or a 'rebel' Hot Topic Wiccan Goth. In slash fics, you get the standard weepy uke/domineering seme stereotypes.
I'm sorry, but these OOC fics make me wonder why these people claim to like these characters. Zelgadis is obsessed with his cure, a loner, and somewhat unsocial. James is a sexually-ambiguous vain, petty person who gets slapped around by Jessie. Nakago is a sadistic, cruel bastard who needs about two lifetimes' worth of couseling. If you don't accept this, then you don't really like the character -- you like a fandom myth attached to a pretty drawing.