I believe that a lot of things are fucked up in this country, and that a lot of well-meaning, otherwise intelligent people say stupid-ass things and need to be *corrected* for them. Ignorance is, after all, forgiveable -- right up until it stops being cluelessness and starts being a stubborn refusal to let go of the mistakes of the past and move forward.
I agree with that (in real life and in fandom alike--fandom is a very large part of my real life after all), although I'm disturbed at the way arguments online turn vicious so fast and people are sometimes dismissed as being stubborn because they don't turn round on an issue in seconds and because they don't immediately give up the beliefs they've had all their lives the first time they hear new ideas from complete strangers.
At the same time when we get to criticising fiction, I sometimes have the impression that there is a significant portion of fandom that wants the main characters in all the TV shows, books, movies and comics that they love to be perfect role models who never say anything that they consider wrong, despite the fact that there's considerable disagreement in our society about what's right and what's wrong and the characters they love may not come from a background that's the same as theirs. I don't think that it means the writers, the show or even the character are misogynist if the character occasionally says a dumbass thing that someone with that character's background might believably say. There's history here; I've written a number of pieces of original fiction and a number of fanfics where I've given a character a very different background, stance on issues, politics or religious views from my own, and been attacked by people whose views I agreed with or praised by people whose views scared me because they assumed that I agreed with the things my character was saying. On one hand I'm kind of glad I got that viewpoint right, but I wish people would not conflate my characters' viewpoints with mine. (I will never write for the HP fandom again.)
I like SPN because for the most part the characters seem real to me. I want to defend them because for the most part I think their behaviour (though some of their verbiage is questionable) shows them to have their hearts in the right places. And I'd like to think that if I wrote an SPN fic and people were offended by something a character said in it they'd at least consider the possibility that the words in the character's mouth represent what I think that character would say in that situation, not my own point of view.
part 3
I agree with that (in real life and in fandom alike--fandom is a very large part of my real life after all), although I'm disturbed at the way arguments online turn vicious so fast and people are sometimes dismissed as being stubborn because they don't turn round on an issue in seconds and because they don't immediately give up the beliefs they've had all their lives the first time they hear new ideas from complete strangers.
At the same time when we get to criticising fiction, I sometimes have the impression that there is a significant portion of fandom that wants the main characters in all the TV shows, books, movies and comics that they love to be perfect role models who never say anything that they consider wrong, despite the fact that there's considerable disagreement in our society about what's right and what's wrong and the characters they love may not come from a background that's the same as theirs. I don't think that it means the writers, the show or even the character are misogynist if the character occasionally says a dumbass thing that someone with that character's background might believably say. There's history here; I've written a number of pieces of original fiction and a number of fanfics where I've given a character a very different background, stance on issues, politics or religious views from my own, and been attacked by people whose views I agreed with or praised by people whose views scared me because they assumed that I agreed with the things my character was saying. On one hand I'm kind of glad I got that viewpoint right, but I wish people would not conflate my characters' viewpoints with mine. (I will never write for the HP fandom again.)
I like SPN because for the most part the characters seem real to me. I want to defend them because for the most part I think their behaviour (though some of their verbiage is questionable) shows them to have their hearts in the right places. And I'd like to think that if I wrote an SPN fic and people were offended by something a character said in it they'd at least consider the possibility that the words in the character's mouth represent what I think that character would say in that situation, not my own point of view.
Er. This was all over the place. Sorry.