[ SECRET POST #2906 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2906 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #415.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/Fl8r8Z9.png?1

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly?

There's a lot more variations when it comes to killing another character than there is for cheating, and it's a lot easier for me to think up a reasonable justification for a character who thinks they have to kill another character than it is for me to think of a reasonable justification for a character who cheats.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

Cheating is entirely selfish

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's why people come down on it so hard.

With killing, you might be killing to protect. You might be dealing drugs to provide for your family in a terrible economic situation. You might torture someone out of desperation to get information (say, the password to deactivate a bomb). In all of these cases, your actions although evil in and of themselves, would have been done out of a desire to do good and protect people.

With cheating, not only is it betrayal of someone's love and faith, but it is entirely for one's pleasure. It's wholly selfish.

Now, of course, you could be blackmailed into getting physically involved with someone else. But that's not cheating -- it's sexual assault.

Re: Cheating is entirely selfish

[sabotabby]

You could be in a loveless or abusive marriage and unable to leave because of cultural taboos/fear for your own safety/financial considerations.

You could be revenge-cheating. (Not unselfish, but not a betrayal of love and faith.)

You could be seducing your partner's enemy because it's the only way to save his or her life.

These might not all be real-world cheating excuses, but in fiction, you can come up with as many excuses for cheating as for killing.

Re: Cheating is entirely selfish

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's pretty obvious OP means characters who do terrible things because they don't care that it's terrible, rather than characters who are forced into doing terrible things when they morally would not otherwise.

A character that murders for their own personal gain/enjoyment gets less flack than a character that cheats and may or may not regret it.

[nayance]

Probably because it's more personal and more likely to hit closer to home than murder/drug-dealing/whatever. Those things you listed tend to be more abstract concepts that most people can't relate to in real life, whereas cheating is something a lot of people deal with, or worry about dealing with.

Plus, I've found that cheating seems to strike more of an emotional chord rather than a "Well it's wrong because morally it's very bad to kill people," chord.

Having said that, yeah, I kind of wish there was more focus on the emotional/mental effects of murdering someone, or of the emotional state of the victim. Same with the other things you mentioned. Plus I do think this is part of a bias fandom tends to have towards shipping as a whole - shipping does seem to be one of the most important parts of fandom, if not the most important (overall).

[(Anonymous)]

Yes to all of this.

[kallanda_lee]

I sort of agree...prett sure I've even seen cheating-wank on F!S a few times.

[(Anonymous)]

It only riles my feathers when the cheating is shown as "they couldn't help themselves" or the prior relationship is shown as an obstacle to true love. And no, demonizing the cheated upon party doesn't work.

If the cheating is bad, and the narrative acknowledges they're assholes for doing it, then I'm down.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Agreed.

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of fandom members are just hyper judgemental assholes who look for excuses to indulge their revenge fantasies. That is why fandom goes mad over cheating, and a variety of other really minor things.

[(Anonymous)]

OP, you're not by any chance an OutlawQueen shipper are you?

Just a guess. I'm sure there's dozens of fandoms this could apply to - it's just the one that comes to my mind right now.

[(Anonymous)]

Really? I feel like cheating is seen as nbd in most fandoms.

[a_potato]

I can't personally relate to it; I feel the same way that you do. But I'm also not bothered by most of the things that people think of as "cheating."

To a lot of (probably most) people, cheating feels very, very personal in a way that all of those other things don't. It's also something that people can more easily identify with.

[(Anonymous)]

*grabs popcorn*

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's because canon cheating breaks the 'love will change them' trope. Without that, the evil murderer or villain or whatever could theoretically be reformed by love and Mary Sues and things. A canon cheater could, but it's harder and it ruins the love conquers all thing that fandom loves.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the problem for me is how it's treated in the text by the other characters and the show itself.

Usually, if a character is murdering people or selling drugs, the underlying message will be "this is very bad and is going to have serious consequences." ('Serious' is defined by the show's overall tone and genre. Sometimes it means a slap on the wrist and sometimes it means an exceptionally painful death.) Even if the character is supposed to be sympathetic, their actions aren't excused or romanticized.

Then you have the opposite with a lot of fictional affairs. Characters that are against our protagonist are demonized for it, but if it's the protagonist who's cheating, there's always a "good reason" for it.

"Oh, their partner cheated on them first."
"They're always super selfless, so therefore they've earned the right to be selfish for once."
"Their partner is an asshole, so it's okay that they cheated on him/her instead of leaving. The person they're cheating with is better for them!"
"Can't you see how in love these two are? They're so passionate that they don't care about the rules!"
"It was just one time! Their partner is ridiculous for being upset about it!"

And on and on and on. The constant excuses the writers make for their characters is my biggest problem. NO. Your character is doing a bad thing. Maybe they have their reasons, but it's still a bad thing. All you're doing by saying it's not is making me hate your character.

Ugh, this is why I had to stop watching Scandal and The Good Wife.

Obviously, you have cases where writers are excusing characters who are murdering people and other nasty things. But I feel the same way in that situation. Murderers and drug dealers are not "poor babies who don't have any other choice and should consequently be forgiven for everything they're doing." No, they're (almost always) grown adults who got themselves into this situation and should rightly pay the consequences for what they've done.

Doing a bad thing doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but it's still a BAD THING. That's all I'm saying.

[(Anonymous)]

because killing, drug-dealing, and torturing are largely so far-out and fictionalized that we can only relate to them on a superficial level– of course we know murder is wrong but unless we happen to be related to someone who has been murdered, it's also not as "real" to us, it's not personal. comparatively, many more people have been cheated on or know someone who was. it's a lot easier for us to relate to being a victim of that scenario.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's hated for the same reason that Umbridge gets more haters than Voldemort. It feels more relevant, therefore more real to the average reader.

Dealing drugs, murdering, etc., is wrong but are actions far removed from the average person's life. Cheating, lying, refusing to listen are far more likely to have affected any individual reader, making the reaction to a character who does those things more visceral.

[diet_poison]

I think the anons who point out that there are more likely to be fictional justifications for killing are absolutely right - and I also think that cheating hits closer to home for most people; even if you haven't experienced it, you probably know someone who has.

[(Anonymous)]

cheating =/= lies.

End of story

I don't usually hate a character because of it, but I don't much like to read about/watch it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't find it more morally reprehensible than murder, torture, kidnapping, drug-dealing, etc. But, unless someone is actually trapped in a relationship, there's such an easy solution so that no one has to cheat.

Oh, and I have never cheated or been cheated on, nor has anybody close to me, in a serious relationship, cheated or been cheated on.

[(Anonymous)]

Infidelity is a natural human response to a culture that forces monogamy on animals that are not naturally monogamous.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree completely. I don't really respond well to cheating narratives because they just strike me as "so edgy, all the characters are dicks" type devices but I think people have way, way overblown reactions to it.