[ SECRET POST #1817 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1817 ⌋


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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 165 secrets from Secret Submission Post #260.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
New Year's Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[yucari.livejournal.com]

You can't divorce this kind of thinking from its context, though! Fandom has a history of tearing down characters who are perceived as too feminine or too passive (if you don't believe me, look at how HP fandom treats Ginny). Bella is worthy of critique (the whole of Twilight is worthy of critique, not just Bella alone), but merely proclaiming "she mopes a lot therefore she sucks" and celebrating such proclamations without examination, just cranks the big fandom wheel of sexism.

Also, to be frank, I find the huge emphasis placed on Bella being a passive girl character, as opposed to Edward being, I dunno, a possessive chauvinist stalker creep, to be rather off-putting.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

So much this.

[murderershair.livejournal.com]

Very much this. It sort of reminds me of how Lord of the Rings fans liked to hate on Arwen practically for being there, but then would back up and say I'M NOT SEXIST I LIKE EOWYN.

[dragonladyk.livejournal.com]

...
...
...

But Arwen is badass and wonderful, and the only reason she was only a footnote in the books was because of Tolkein's Victorian philosophies. How can people be mad?

I'm have a little less faith in humanity now.

DragonLady

[followthemoth.livejournal.com]

Actually, Tolkien really wanted to put her in the book but he felt it would be too much of a random insert, as most of Arwen/Aragorn's relationship in occured WAY outside of the timeline of the story. It just wouldn't fit, it wasn't about 'Victorian values'. He put everything he couldn't fit in the book in the appendices.

On top of that, while he most of his characters are male, he was pretty liberal in terms of gender roles in Middl-earth. He wrote a quite a bit about Elvish culture, and aside from body parts, there was no difference in value/position between the sexs, female elves could do anything male elves could do. In his other works, like The Silmarillion, Tolkien has a lot more female characters; Luthien, Nienor, Aredhel, Idril, and Morwen, to name a few. Another interesting fact, of all the Valar (the greatest of the spirits who created the world) the most sacred Vala to the Elves is Varda, a 'female' Vala.

Oh my, I'm sorry for the length, I can ramble about Tolkien for hours.

And for the record I love Arwen too. <3

[followthemoth.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I remember Arwen-haters, I would fight them so much. I love both the girls. :)

[murderershair.livejournal.com]

I keep running into them even now. I don't even consider myself in LotR fandom, but I saw the movies, and I quite liked Arwen and Eowyn (and Rosie, for that matter, but no one ever seems to bring her up). I was a bit fonder of them than several of the men, honestly. I met this one girl earlier this year who was going on about how she was considering boycotting the Hobbit because she heard Arwen might be in it, and I was like REALLY, WHAT YEAR IS IT. Then I found out her favorite author was Terry Goodkind, and I understood everything.

[followthemoth.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, I thought Arwen-haters died out in 2005. Rosie is a sweety too! I have a love for female characters of Tolkien as well.

I'm not familiar with Terry Goodkind, I couldn't find anything wiki other than he's a fantasy author. I'm curious, what's wrong with him?

[murderershair.livejournal.com]

Oh, where to begin with Terry Goodkind. The long version is gone over pretty well on the Wayback Machine here

The short version is he writes about a Gary Stu who has attractive women falling over him, when they aren't being constantly almost raped, occasionally by the Evil Kinky People. Ironically, his stuff was turned into a rather better regarded tv series, Legend of the Seeker, that apparently took out most of the rape and had more lesbians.

[followthemoth.livejournal.com]

Oh shit, I can see why you dislike him!

[emmybuns696.livejournal.com]

I still don't understand why it's sexism. Finding a character frustrating because all he/she does is mope is completely legitimate across both genders. Dean at certain points of Supernatural drove me up the wall, but at least he tried to work past it. Bella does absolutely NOTHING to work past her issues with Edward leaving her. I have no control over what people do in their real lives, but if I'm choosing to read/watch something that is fictional? I'm going to damn well choose stories with characters who are compelling and don't creep or annoy the ever loving shit out of me.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly, if Bella was male I'd still dread her character. Because she just doesn't seem to have anything all that likable.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with what emmybuns said.

Heck, I can list a couple of male characters who I list as aggravating as Bella. For instance;

My good gravy, Sasuke Uchiha. I stopped reading the series partly because even as a side character, my god he annoyed me. He constantly let his grief and past rule his future, allowed him to be turned into a tool of darkness. (Now, as I said, I stopped reading. So I don't know if this has changed since a year or so ago.) Letting yourself lose all that makes you good is worse than just losing yourself in depression for me.

However, Bella is horribly written AND her depression is merely a plot-point to show how much she looooooves Edward. Thus, I actually dislike her more. (Heck, there are a few female characters in books I have read who have lost themselves in dperession like she did, but because they were better written and pulled themselves out slowly, and had SOME AGENCY, I love them as characters.)

And you know what? I don't see what is wrong with saying 'Girls and guys? Acting like the world has no meaning for a prolonged period of time when your love left you is not ok. We recognize this happens and it's a way to deal with things, but it is a unhealthy way to do things.'

By not saying this behavior is BAD, then we help enable it. As someone who struggles with depression, if my mom or friends told me 'Oh sweetie, that behavior is normal and good! Don't change or try to get better until some outside something makes you feel better', then I would have gotten worse.

[streetcake.livejournal.com]

But the sum of Bella pretty much IS her passiveness and inability to function healthily without Edward. This isn't a case of misogynistic fans nitpicking a female character, since Bella's whole essence is a badly-written and poorly portrayed idea of a woman in love. And people argue about Edward too, but it's(I'm assuming) because Bella is a character that the readers are allowed/encouraged to envision themselves as that ticks people off. She's unhealthily obsessed with an abusive man and it is shown to be romantic and not wrong at all. Bella is the one Meyer encourages the female readers to relate to, so Bella is the one everyone is quick to criticise. Or maybe they're just sick of shitty female characters and since Bella is a rather shitty character from a shitty franchise with immense popularity they want to make sure that everyone knows that she could have been written a hell of a lot better than what Meyer presented everyone with.

And there's really no proof there was no examination when the person made this image? There's not a disclaimer that explains and maps out their thought processes to confirm that they weren't just making quick judgements, but regardless there isn't anything about this particular image that makes me think they're judging women for being passive. Since it's about Bella specifically, who's whole existence doesn't expand past her dependence on a man.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not that into the Twilight fandom/hatedom, but I hear a lot on the periphery. Maybe you're more knowledgeable than me about this, but I hear TONS of criticism of Edward and his creepy possessive stalker bullshit.

And criticism of Bella that I have heard is generally part of a greater criticism of Twilight and the way codependence, stalking and suicide is portrayed as romantic.