fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1174 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1174 ⌋

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

101.

__________________________________________________

102.

__________________________________________________

103.

__________________________________________________

104.

__________________________________________________

105.

__________________________________________________

106.

__________________________________________________

107.

__________________________________________________

108.

__________________________________________________

109.

__________________________________________________

110.

__________________________________________________

111.

__________________________________________________

112.

__________________________________________________

113.

__________________________________________________

114.

__________________________________________________

115.

__________________________________________________

116.

__________________________________________________

117.

__________________________________________________

118.

__________________________________________________

119.

__________________________________________________

120.

__________________________________________________

121.

__________________________________________________

122.

__________________________________________________

123.

__________________________________________________

124.

__________________________________________________

125.

__________________________________________________

126.

__________________________________________________

127.

__________________________________________________

128.

__________________________________________________

129.

__________________________________________________

130.

__________________________________________________

131.

__________________________________________________

132.

__________________________________________________

133.

__________________________________________________

134.

__________________________________________________

135.

__________________________________________________

136.

__________________________________________________

137.

__________________________________________________

138.

__________________________________________________

139.

__________________________________________________

140.

__________________________________________________

141.

__________________________________________________

142.

__________________________________________________

143.

__________________________________________________

144.

__________________________________________________

145.

__________________________________________________

146.

__________________________________________________

147.

__________________________________________________

148.

__________________________________________________

149.

__________________________________________________

150.

__________________________________________________

151.

__________________________________________________

152.

__________________________________________________

153.

__________________________________________________

154.

__________________________________________________

155.

__________________________________________________

156.

__________________________________________________

157.

Notes:

April 1st Submissions Post is open!

Secrets Left to Post: 08 pages, 185 secrets from Secret Submission Post #168.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's been a lot of discussion in certain areas of fandom about how, instead of ignoring poorly written, underdeveloped female characters, we should write fic "fixing" these flaws. I think the OP is saying that s/he would rather write about interesting male characters than try to create half-way decent female ones.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, what with the clever brown and pink coding to stand for ~brown folks~ and ~teh wimminz~. OP has the right to write whatever they want, but damn. That's kind of fucked up.

Honestly, it annoys me because it dismisses all the fascinating non-white and/or female characters that already exist. They're playing into the same sexist, racist stereotypes that say that white male = interesting, fully developed human being, while a CoC can only be a CoC and a woman is always a woman.

all the fascinating non-white and/or female characters that already exist

If a character is fascinating and well developed, then I assume it wouldn't be considered broken.

I think the source of 90% of the wank about whether a character is broken or not is that characters that are drawn in broad strokes with fucked up backstories will seem completely broken and not worth bothering with to some people but to other people they will have "so much potential". The problem is that the people who see the "potential" are not getting that they want to see it and that other people may prefer to write a character who's less of a fixer-upper.

But during these discussion people usually focus on the 'broken' female characters while ignoring all of the interesting ones. If someone says, "I write about CoC/women because they're not as interesting," you should respond by showing them that they're wrong, not pressuring them to write about all the characters that bore them.

I agree, though there are fandoms where this could be hard to do.

It's sort of doubly confusing because OP didn't even put well-written male characters they prefer, just "guy stuff." You have to decide between writing women/POCs and white dues forever and evar? Women and POCs are the yucky toys? There are no well-written women or POCs it would be fun to write about? OP has a weird state of mind...

It's somewhat disturbing to see a black woman doll all dirty and dismembered like that too. I know, I know, oversensitive.

Nah, I agree that it's disturbing while at the same time finding it obnoxious as hell that people expect me to write/rewrite characters THEY think have "potential" that I'd just as soon not write, ostensibly because the character is female or of colour.

And there are many well-written women/POCs to write about GENERALLY, but in some fandoms there's a dearth. Heroes was particularly bad. In the first season, the major black (African diasporic) characters were an elderly man who died, a scary Haitian who never got a name and stole people's memories, a convicted felon married to a stripper, and a woman who got killed in a fight between two guys who were both in love with her who mostly served to motivate men to do things and was never seen with a single female friend. The major female characters were a stripper with severe mental health issues, an invincible teenage girl who could not be killed, yet constantly needed rescuing because she was cute and female, an older woman who started out as a crazy mother figure and turned out to be evil, an FBI agent we didn't see much of, an untrustworthy seductive manipulator of minds, a woman who was disabled because of her husband's power whose disability and then cure thereof were all about manipulating his character, and a scared child that people wanted to kill. And an untrustworthy firestarter whose first thought upon being reunited with her daughter she'd thought dead for years was how much she could soak the dad for. And the black woman who got killed by her boyfriends fighting. Um yeah okay.

Some of these characters were interesting to me and others were not, but there were generally large amounts of fail in every single one of their characterisations and in second season I remember getting into a fight just like this about a Latin female character that some people thought needed to be rescued from writers by fans (which I was all for people doing IF THEY WANTED TO) and I just thought had so much fail in her background I didn't even want to think about her--seriously they took her from the Dominican Republic to the US through Mexico just so they could put more fail in her backstory.

Oh yeah, I'm cool with people who just don't want to write what they see as poorly-made characters. I only think it's rude if you devote entire fics to bashing them or something. Personally I absolutely love rewriting characters with potential, but it doesn't make me better, I just like having a challenge after being bored at work all day. :\

Sorry to hear people pressure you. I wish I could put "People can write whatever the fuck they want to write, so long as it's not hurting anyone" in the Livejournal banner.

I think the secret is poorly made and offensive. At the same time, I think I empathise with some of the feelings behind it, because the problem isn't that you are being asked to CREATE good female characters or CoCs*, the problem is that people in some fandoms are demanding that you like/write/revamp female characters (or CoCs) that you find so badly fucked up as to be offensive, that you'd really prefer not to even have to deal with.

And of course, some of the people who like these characters don't see how anyone else can not like them, so they imply that the people who dislike them and want to avoid/minimise writing those characters must be racist or sexist or self-hating.

I think that if you dislike the hell out of a character and don't want to write that character, as long as you're not writing tons of fic where that character is being brutally and mercilessly destroyed or bashed or made more of a jerk/idiot than they already are in canon, people should leave you the fuck alone about that.

* just TRY writing an OC to replace some of the awful characters out there and see what kind of reviews you get, especially if the awful character is a female love interest with a canon ship.

Thank you for this explanation - I had no idea what was going on in this secret, and thought it might've been a reference to that kid from Toy Story or something.

[ SECRET POST #1174 ]

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134

Re: 134