Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2008-12-29 05:04 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2008-12-29 05:04 pm
[ SECRET POST #724 ]
⌈ Secret Post #724 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
101.
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[Anderson Cooper 360 (Anderson Cooper x David Gergen)]
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[Dexter]
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[Merlin]
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[Boston Legal]
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[American Girl--Felicity/Ben]
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[Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers; Trini Kwan x Lord Zedd]
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[Weirdsister College/Worst Witch]
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[Supernatural]
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[Numb3rs]
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[Pokemon Mystery Dungeon/Doctor Who]
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[Code Geass]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 10 pages, 247 secrets from Secret Submission Post #103.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
The thing that butthurt SPN hetshippers never want to acknowledge is that whether the boys sleep with girls or not, the show is about the boys, and everyone else, regardless of race, gender or age, is supporting cast AT BEST. It's not about romance, it's about two brothers, and the primary emotional development story arc is always going to be about their relationship, not them and the girlfriends you wish they had. You don't have to ship Wincest, but canonically, the show is not and is never going to be One Tree Hill with angel and devil wings. Nor is it going to be Heroes, Star Trek, SG-1, SGA or any other TEAM show. There will never be a main female character on this show because it's not a TEAM show. And pretty much every recurring character of any race or gender who isn't Sam or Dean will probably die or get taken up to heaven or down to hell. That's what SPN IS. It is not Buffy with a classic rock soundtrack, and if that's what you were looking for, you ain't gonna ever like it. Bitching because it doesn't have a five-person team that includes at least two women and two people of colour is like bitching because there are no little grey extra-terrestrials on a horror programme. The structure of the show is about two working-class white male brothers who live in each other's back pockets, not a multiculturally diverse team. Deal with that, or find a fandom that has a team in it. It's also based in an Abrahamic religious worldview, so stop expecting it to give you friendly Wiccans. It's not about Wincest vs. het, it's about people who like the show the way it is and people who think EVERY show needs to have a multiculturally diverse team (with girlfriends and boyfriends) and treat all religious points of view equally. If you feel this way, SPN is not ever going to please you. And the vast majority of the fandom is going to be irritated by any effort to try and make it something it isn't, because we like it the way it is. Not because we're horrible racist sexist jerks, but because it's OKAY for there to be shows that are just about one person, or two people. Not everything is structured around an ensemble cast. And I don't see why it should have to be.
no subject
You rock, and I love you.
And can I just say, though this was hardly your main point, that though I love Dean/Jo as a romantic pairing, I would much rather have totally platonic Jo than no Jo at all. I miss her :( I've seen soooooo many people say they liked her as a friend or little sister character, just not a love interest. I wish they'd try to bring her back as that.
no subject
I do love Wincest. I didn't particularly want to ship it at first, but the show convinced me that for various reasons there's just nobody else who can be the full emotional support of a partner. Which means either Wincest, or what they're doing in canon: sex with other people, primary emotional relationships with each other, and when the relationships with other people start to threaten the primacy of the relationship with each other, they have to go or they become a source of conflict in the relationship that drives the show.
You know, I get that people do want shows with female leads and leads of colour. Which is great and I wish we had more but that doesn't mean I want the basic structure of a show I like the way it is changed into one. SPN is a show that has two leads only and they are neither, either you deal with it or you go to something else. Most of the people I know who generally bitch a lot about SPN not being a team show are people who were into a) Buffy or b) comics. SPN is not either of those things and that is okay.
What I heard a lot of from the "bring back Jo" groups was "of course we want all the support we can get" but then you'd go to the petition and the petition would have wording asking for the relationship between Dean/Jo, so I couldn't sign it, even though I wanted her back, and what not.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2008-12-30 04:55 am (UTC)(link)Bitching because it doesn't have a five-person team that includes at least two women and two people of colour is like bitching because there are no little grey extra-terrestrials on a horror programme. The structure of the show is about two working-class white male brothers who live in each other's back pockets, not a multiculturally diverse team.
I may be misunderstanding what you mean, but any complaints I have heard about race in regards to Supernatural have not been to insert a character of color in a main role (because Sam and Dean are the only main roles) but over the lack of diversity in the side characters that they do have, such as the girls of the week they used to have and such. Which I think is perfectly legit.
no subject
I would like to see a black guy who wasn't an antagonist once in a while myself; but I really hear a lot of people who keep expecting characters on the side to stick around and not get killed.
no subject
I'm probably alone in this, but I really love that Supernatural isn't PC and that Kripke never intended for it to be. Even from the original pilot script he was saying that he wanted the most gas-guzzling, environmental-destroying, anti-PC car he could find. I don't want them to have to add more people of color or anything in just because they are. I personally don't care because I look at people as people, not their gender or race or ethnicity. At least it isn't Heroes who tries to be all worldly and multicultural and just makes everyone as stereotypical as the can possibly be. That's more offensive as far as I'm concerned.
To be honest, I was always pretty indifferent to Jo, but I did love Bela and there are a lot of other female characters that I'd love to see back because Supernatural does have a ton of great ladies. All the people who complain that Kripke hates women are the same people who ignore most of these and only focus on the three or four recurring women we've had in the last few seasons without even considering those that stop by for one episode, make their mark, and are on their way. And that's a hunter's life, Sam and Dean aren't supposed to build an entourage that follows them around, they're loners by profession.
Thank you for putting this all so eloquently!
Thanks :)
In theory, being colour-blind is a great idea; in practise, it often amounts to not noticing the actual differences in opportunity and privilege between members of different groups. In the real world, it's a good idea to be aware of these things. I also think it's important to have shows on TV that have characters of colour and diversity, but I want them to have their own shows and be LEADS, not members of the TEAM. I don't think the TEAM shows are actually a great step in the direction of multicultural diversity. In the 1960s when Star Trek and Mission Impossible first came out, they were ahead of their time. Now, not so much, because you know, if you're black or female, it's no longer true that the best thing you can hope for is to be treated like part of the team.
All these TEAM shows usually have a white guy as the head of the TEAM, and they resort to stereotypes. House is the head of the team. Cameron is the compassionate one because she's a girl, and Foreman is the one who has a rap sheet because he's the black guy. That's not offensive or anything is it? Of course not. *eyeroll*. It would have been so much more interesting the other way around! Heroes is so bad I can't even go there. I don't think the Petrellis are more popular because fans like white people better; I think the Petrellis are more popular because the writers of Heroes can't figure out how to write black guys that aren't ex-cons or Magical Negroes, Latin people who aren't ex-nuns or drug addicts, and women who have lives independent of men. I liked the first season of Heroes but it has just gotten steadily worse and now I can't watch it at all without cringing.
Occasionally on various science fiction shows a person of colour or a woman gets to lead the TEAM. But that's the limit of progress. A guy who looks like Jason Momoa doesn't get to play a character like Rodney McKay, he plays the fighting dude from a fairly primitive world. And where are our female math and hard science geeks? (I can't stand Amita Ramanujan when she is trying to make Charlie be more normal or acting apologetic because she's working on an academic project with someone else--it's not like she's cheating on him, it's WORK. But when we find out that she's seriously into something geeky like MMORPGs or that she got arrested once because her date was smoking dope, I love her past all sense and reason.)
I like SPN not because it is un-PC, but because it is honest about being what it is. It's a show about two white guys. Everyone else is supporting cast. That's okay. I'm first to admit that not every show should be like this! But SPN is a show that has people in it like the people I grew up among in West Virginia and this is a lot of its charm for me personally. I know these guys. And I like that it picked a religious worldview and sticks with it instead of trying to please everyone or making up its own cosmology. For one thing, it is nice to see people treat the religions people in America actually practise as a mythology and not be afraid to write about them for fear of offending people or make up the demon Msswizzlestix because they're afraid someone will write in that they're promoting Satanism if they actually say "Lucifer".
I really disliked Bela...but I thought she was a great character, although I didn't like that they made her so much of a victim in the end. I hated her, and I loved hating her. She was so BAD! That was fun, and I felt cheated a bit that they took that away with the sympathy ploy; women don't get to be BAD like that a lot. :) I never understood why people were upset that Bela was hated, because it was clear to me that she was an antagonist; but because she was female, people didn't say the same things to people who loved Bela that have been said to people who like Sylar (whom I did not like till the end of S1) or to people who like Draco Malfoy (whom I do like), and I always found that odd.
Re: Thanks :)
I also think it's important to have shows on TV that have characters of colour and diversity, but I want them to have their own shows and be LEADS, not members of the TEAM.
I definitely agree with you here. It always seems like the members of color are almost added as an afterthought. On the rare chance that a show does star a person of color, it almost seems as if the show is dominated by someone of the same ethnicity rather than really making it even.
Having some cultural diversity or even being influenced by a different region can be so interesting, but they seem to make it a caricature rather than a believable trait and that's when I get frustrated. I'd rather not hear about it than have the character be all about it and overpower the character so no sort of personality is left.
The only thing I see in Heroes is stereotypes: the mobster Italians, the ex-con black, the white trash stripper, the rich blonde cheerleader, the Indian who drives a cab, the Asian foreigner who can't speak English... It's kind of disgusting at times. I want to think that they did it on purpose to "defy" said stereotypes, but it didn't come out that way so it would make them doubly stupid.
And where are our female math and hard science geeks?
I actually think Bones does this very well. Two of the smartest people in the field of forensic anthropology are women and they're extremely smart. One of them is also a woman of color. I think it's easier though because the main character is based on a real life female forensic anthropologist, so they have a lot to build off of.
Supernatural makes no apologies for being un-PC. I wouldn't want it to adjust itself to fit with how everyone else thinks it should be portrayed because it's very good at what it is. I'm actually really glad that Kripke went there with the Judeo-Christian mythology. It seems like it's so easy to use Biblical themes like Hell and demons, but when you go to the light side it gets shut down like only the evil side is allowed to be acknowledged because otherwise you're offending people. He manages to play both sides without pissing anyone off (as far as I've heard, at least) and doesn't ignore what others would just because it would be easier.
Bela was an excellent character. I really think that if we had seen her outside of SPN as her own protagonist, rather than being against the boys, people would sympathize with her and like her, but because she was trying to hurt Sam and Dean, they start to hate her. I'm speaking generally, though I know not everyone feels that way, but she was a very interesting character who didn't apologize for being mean or having pride and I, personally, would have loved to have seen more of her. I don't much care for Sylar or Draco, but I think it's still easier to see men being mean for mean's sake than women for whatever reason.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2008-12-31 12:46 am (UTC)(link)I do. If nothing else for the sake of being realistic, considering they're supposed to be traveling all over the country and they see 2 and a half non-white people in a season.