fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3328 ]

[ SECRET POST #3328 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3328 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 069 secrets from Secret Submission Post #476.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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I particularly notice this tendency in discussions of villains - you have to disclaim that the character's a terrible person when discussing them and the "right" way to like villains in certain places is if you see them as amoral monsters. The problem is that sympathetic and complex villains do exist - while their actions still aren't justified, there's a tendency to act like the sympathetic elements don't exist at all.

There are also villains who do have a sense of ethics (warped or limited morality is different from true amorality), and Even Evil Has Standards and Noble Demon are things).

I spy a Snapewife here. Go on, tell us how your abusive bully is really a misunderstood victim. We're listening.

I am not a Snapewife.

Snape's a bully and a nasty person who is unjustifiably cruel to children. He also has sympathetic qualities and is a complex character in the narrative. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Lol sympathetic. Tell me how someone who literally scared an eleven year old child into having his teacher be his worst nightmare is sympathetic? Go on, Mrs Snape, justify that.

The strawman isn't really appreciated.

Snape does have some sympathetic elements, judging from my hazy memory of the book - he had a harsh background, he was severely bullied, at one point almost put in a situation by Sirius which would have led to him being killed, and to a degree he wants to make up for how his bad choices led to Lilly's death. He is a very angry person, and very bitter, and made and makes a lot of very bad choices. His background explains why that is, and puts Snape's behavior in a narrative context.

This DOES NOT justify his treatment of Neville, Harry, or anyone else in any way. It also doesn't justify what he did to Lily. His treatment of Neville was abusive, cruel, a gross misuse of authority, and unjustifiable. What he did to Lily was his choice and he is held accountable for it.

Snape's actions were horrible, but his behavior is given narrative context to explain why he behaves the way he does. It doesn't justify it, but it does explain it to a degree and allow some narrative sympathy, as it is shown that he wasn't always like that.

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying a character's actions.

Snape gave as good as he got, he wasn't bullied he fought with the Marauders who were just fighting back after Snape got snippy on the Express when he butted into their conversation. He was only at risk from Remus because he was trying to get them into trouble, Sirius didn't arrange anything. You keep trying to deflect attention from him being a child's living nightmare. Do you think it is acceptable or common for any real teacher to be a child's worst nightmare? Keep on justifying your Snape love, tell me about your Snape wedding.

DA. Just so you know, the person coming across as a bit unhinged here? Is you.

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-13 23:06 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-13 23:20 (UTC) - Expand

Dear Snape hater,

Your attempts to create wank about Snape are getting more and more obvious, but also so nonsensical that I don't even feel like taking the bait.

Try something better next time :)

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying a character's actions.

I was actually going to post this in reply to the subthread OP but this is like, the perfect opening sentence for what I want to discuss so I'll post it here instead. Because I get that villain fans want to discuss and gush over the character's positive qualities without having to qualify that they know he's "bad" or whatever, and I (and in my experience, most people) generally won't butt into such positive discussions with "friendly reminder that..."

What I see way more of is the opposite: villain fans injecting themselves into discussions where the character's more awful actions are being discussed with a clearly-non-sympathetic leaning, and providing these explanations for their actions with that same "I'm just sympathizing and understanding here, NOT excusing, NOT justifying" line, which...well okay, but why bring it up in such a particular discussion if it's not supposed to serve as some kind of justification for the behaviour being criticized? I think that's why people get so suspicious and tend to jump to "you're justifying them!" in these specific cases.

I mean it's really rare that the people who started the discussion are under the impression that the character popped into existence just to commit the act that's pissed them off so much, for no reason whatsoever. More likely, they're just annoyed at the behaviour and want a good vent. They're usually aware that there's a narrative explanation for it, they don't need to be reminded of that, but sympathy is an entirely subjective emotion. It sure as hell doesn't stay static for all characters across the board, there is plenty that people (including villain fans) will excuse in their favourites that they don't excuse in other characters. That's normal. But there's an annoying tendency from fans to demand sympathy for the villain from said villain's detractors, just because the explanation met their own personal bar for sympathy. Whereas maybe it didn't meet the bar for the detractors, and they just want to talk about the awful actions, they're tired of said actions being swept under the rug, whatever.

Sympathizing and understanding is not the same as justifying, no, but I don't think you're required to have sympathy for a villain in order to understand them. Sympathy is not obligatory. It is possible to grasp the explanation for why they turned out the way the did and still not see it as enough to outweigh the gravity of their actions.

I usually see the opposite. I hang in a lot of villain-friendly spaces and it's gotten to where you can't begin to discuss Mad Hatter's TAS backstory without people dropping out of the ceiling and popping up from manholes to scream "OMG HE IS LITERALLY A PEDOPHILE MONSTER!!!!!"

So on the topic of why The Dark Knight was a bad portrayal of Joker and Nolan in general prefers to downplay the villains psychological flaws in favor of a more generic evildoer... "JOKER IS A TERRORIST! HE LITERALLY KILLS PEOPLE! You just want to fuck him. You're sick."

lets discuss Phasma and Hux's potentially diverging goals and if we think that will lead to future conflict between the two or if they'll both stay loyal to Snokes... "THEY ARE LITERALLY MASS MURDERERS! They have killed BILLIONS of people! They are NAZIS! IN SPACE! STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM LIKE THEY'RE COMPLEX CHARACTERS!"

I don't think Odin's entirely blameless and an excellent father in the MCU, both Thor and Loki thought the best way to win his approval was genocide. "OMG LOKI-WIFE DETECTED! YOU'RE SICK! He wanted to rape Jane! He wanted to commit genocide! HE'S EVIL!"

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-14 17:30 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-14 19:04 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-14 21:12 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-15 22:58 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-15 00:14 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-02-15 22:50 (UTC) - Expand

Okay, don't be a dick. I detest Snapewives and the OMG Snape was totes a victim mentality but Snape was genuinely a complex, fucked up, conflicted good AND bad character and person. AS WELL AS a shit bully to his students.

Wow, what a weird and obsessive crusader against fictional characters you are. Whatever the mirror inversion of a Snapewife is, you're it.

If this were a contest, Snape and all his pettiness and moral discord would win hands down, because he is way, way more interesting than you. His role and his behavior exist partly to create sympathy for the Gryffindors; his spite puts us on Neville and Harry's side. He's also the intermediary link between Harry and Tom Riddle: three lost boys, three unwanted kids, three half-bloods (although Harry's mum is, as always, something of an exception). Riddle is the sociopathic product of rape incapable of love, Snape is the bullied and neglected loner who fails at love, Harry is the emotionally abused orphan who loves others enough to die for them. Snape is a necessary part of the spectrum, neither as horrible as Riddle nor as good as Harry.

Frankly, I'd rather read about cruel, conflicted, doomed characters like Snape, characters who serve multiple purposes in the stories they inhabit, than whatever it is you'd probably suggest. Snape is a fascinating and self-punishing asshole who was given one of the best narrative arcs in the series, and it's a character type plenty of people love to read about, me included.

Case in point: I like Neville, but I don't feel compelled to read fic about him. Except for - and God, the exceptions are so often the most memorable - things like this wonderful Snape/Neville fic (yes, ayrt, Snape/Neville fic exists, and all the pearl-clutching in the world will not change that): Night-blooming heartsease (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1104139). I highly recommend it to the more open-minded FS posters.

Thank you for proving AYRT's point.

My experience has been the opposite, some villains could drop screaming orphans into a meat grinder for laughs and people will fall over themselves exclaiming how it's really the precious woobie who is the victim in all this. They confuse "sympathetic but deeply fucked up" with "did nothing wrong". Or maybe fandom has begun to swing towards the opposite extreme since the Loki heydays, I dunno.

My experience has been just that - behavior from both sides has made it very difficult to discuss such characters without being called out as an apologist, even if you state that the character's actions were wrong and unjustified.

There are some people who say that sympathetic villains are misunderstood woobies, and others who say that they're utter monsters with no sympathetic qualities whatsoever. There's a gray area, though, as you pointed out - you can discuss a villain as a complex and even sympathetic character while understanding that their actions are wrong.

That gray area is my favorite, and yet so tricky to find. It's hard to separate character discussion from personal preference, especially when discussion is always trying to make it personal, like your ideas of fictional characters somehow make you a questionable person.

It has swung to the opposite extreme, mainly by people still bitter about the Loki heydays and bringing their baggage to other fandoms.

Just like SU fandom becoming shitty to prevent the next bronies -those who get so overzealous in keeping a fandom from being "shitty" wind up being worse.

It suppose it says something that Googling "SU universe" gets me pages of links of how that fandom has set up camp in hell.

+1

Especially if they think the villain is "ttly hot".

Yep, attractiveness (particularly being a hot dude) is usually, though not always, a huge factor.

I'll take an apologist over those self-righteous assholes.

Villain apologist are a loud and silly minority, and at least they don't try to guilty trip anyone for daring to have a different opinion, nor they accuse other people of being abusers/pedos/whatever.

There's the apologists who treat you like a victim blamer because you don't think a character's sad history excuses monstrous acts. But I admit a villain's popularity usually has to reach exceptional proportions before the fans feel secure enough to do that, whereas self-righteous judgment is a lot easier to achieve.

I've seen a ton of the opposite. Like people saying you shouldn't even discuss villain origin stories because that's victim blaming.

Like Riddler in TAS, he gets his work stolen and it makes the corporate boss rich while he gets nothing, and he gets taunted for it "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" and snaps, uses his intellect to go after the corporate boss and becomes a villain.

That's a story of evil begets evil. It's not 'victim blaming'. It was wrong for the thief to steal Nygma's work, it was wrong for Riddler to seek revenge, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

If anything there seems to be a huge trend of only having a victim be sympathetic if they're a 'proper victim' if they're quiet and sad and want help. A lot of the idea that 'good people' are 'good victims' does a great deal to hurt real life victims when they don't act like 'good victims' and get angry, or lash out in pain. No, they shouldn't be excused for their actions and part of helping them should be protecting others from them. But this trend of trying to turn anyone who does anything remotely bad into a one dimensional blank slate and ignoring the past is a very harmful real life mentality. You can see it in the success rates of punishments that focus on rehabilitation and those that are purely to punish out of a sadistic sense of justice.

Is Jean Valjean a criminal forever and to be forever defined by stealing a loaf of bread? Or is the fact he was doing it to feed his starving family worth bringing into the discussion? Is he Jean Valjean or is he 24601?

I also see arguments that villains, no matter how sympathetic they may be, shouldn't be redeemed, and general writing off of characters as irredeemable when their narrative arc has just started (i.e, Peridot from Steven Universe).

I agree that redemption arcs can be handled poorly, but saying that characters can't redeem themselves at all and that bad or damaged people are doomed to be bad or damaged forever is a very harsh and extreme stance to take.

That's definitely a lot different from the "this mass murderer with the sad eyes did nothing wrong" type of chuckleheads that I deal with in my main fandom right now, but I have no problem believing other fandoms have swung so hard in the opposite direction...the whole "your fave is problematic ergo you're a terrible person if you still like them" shit isn't cool, either. I do think it's worth pointing out (due to the example you chose) that not all crimes are created equal. No, Valwhoever shouldn't have stealing bread for his kids define him. But the dude who sold his kids into slavery for a loaf of bread probably shouldn't have that tidbit about him forgotten any time soon, if only to keep him from running an orphanage one day...

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