[ SECRET POST #3308 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3308 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 065 secrets from Secret Submission Post #473.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

They say that a character comes across as flawed but "we're still supposed to sympathize and identify with them" but that OP "just can't."

It strikes me that you're twisting OP's words here. OP was not making a blanket criticism of characters who "come across as flawed" but a specific criticism of characters who are "supposed to be 'feisty' and 'strong'" but instead come off as selfish and bratty (by which I'm assuming OP means entitled, demanding, and petulant).

In other words, the author expects the reader, not to identify or sympathize with a flawed character despite their flaws, but to view the character's flaws as virtues, or at any rate, to ignore the fact that the flaws are flaws at all.

Can a flawed character be sympathetic, and a good protagonist? Obviously. I'm thinking right now of Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, who starts out as a godawful spoiled brat, and an unmerciful bully to the poor Ayah who is stuck with the unenviable task of caring for her. But what makes Mary sympathetic is the way she gradually learns to care for things and people other than herself. Imagine if we were expected to admire her from the get-go for being "feisty and assertive"!

Anyway, when a character's flaws are staring us, the readers, in the face, it's hard to imagine how the author can have failed to take note of them. I suppose the rule "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" comes into play here.

[(Anonymous)]

But my problem - and the reason that it's hard for me to read the OP the way that you do - is that OP does seem to assign it to malice! At least that's how they read the phenomenon that they're talking about. And that's partly why it's difficult for me to read it as a question of the informed attribute problem - because there (and elsewhere) OP seems to conceptualize it as an intentional choice on the part of the writer, NOT as a simple error in writing.

I mean, look at the first couple sentences there - OP is saying that when authors write a young female character who is a childish brat, it's badly done characterization. They're not saying that they dislike it when characters are written badly that way. They said - and I honestly think this is the only way to parse those sentences - writing a character on those lines is in and of itself bad characterization. That's what bothers me.

[(Anonymous)]

The key word you're missing here is "feels". OP said it FEELS like purposefully undermining what ought to be a good heroine. OP isn't saying this is exactly what's happening or making accusations, OP is merely describing what it feels like to them.

[(Anonymous)]

Even if we accept that - which I think is a more generous reading than is necessarily justifiable - again, how do you read the beginning sentences? "I just have a hard time believing it's anything but badly done characterization [when authors write a young female character who is a childish brat]". How is that anything other than objecting to certain kinds of flaws as such, not just when they're poorly written?

[(Anonymous)]

Because you're missing the context of the very next sentence, where OP clarifies that they're specifically referring to characters who are supposed to be strong characters, but who are instead written like brats. The strong implication here is that the author is going for "feisty heroine", but falling short and their character comes off as a brat instead.

[(Anonymous)]

At this point, all I can say is that you're sacrificing the meaning of literally every other sentence in the secret on the altar of the one sentence that talks about characters who are supposed to come off one way but don't. I don't think that makes sense.

[(Anonymous)]

Looking at the first sentences apart from the remainder of the secret is the problem, I think.

I read it this way: OP hates to see young female characters written as childish brats, because in her experience, the author expects the reader to sympathize with these characters and see them as "feisty" and "strong," rather than the selfish, rude and petulant children they actually behave like. In other words, OP sees it as bad writing because in her experience, it's never done well.

And OP is attributing it to malice on the part of male authors, perhaps, because she suspects that these authors don't care for assertive, self-confident women, so they write such women as overbearing and selfish.

[(Anonymous)]

I am looking at the whole secret. You're looking at one sentence in isolation from the rest of the secret. And then you want to come and talk to me about how I'm not good at analysis and just can't understand how someone might be objecting to bad writing and need to be talked to in short sentences.

You know who should learn to fucking write better? OP, that's fucking who.

[(Anonymous)]

What I'm doing is looking at that sentence in connection with the rest of the secret, and as the key to the rest of the secret.

You were snippy and patronizing in your initial post--"sorry you can't empathize with flawed characters"--and then you claimed that there could not possibly be any other way to interpret the secret. One snippy post deserves another!