fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2296 ]

[ SECRET POST #2296 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2296 ⌋

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

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Notes:

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Several things, OP:

First of all, I don't think Crowley and Bela are really similar at all. That's just my opinion.

Second thing: the thing is, SPN writes really, really crappy women characters. They're just bad at it. When they do write a decent character, she either turns evil, gets killed off, or both.

So people's knee-jerk "misogyny!" cries are somewhat justified, I think. Let's face it, there ARE a lot of fans out there who dislike the girls because they get in the way of ships, or the fans aren't attracted to them, or whatever. Which is basically gross. And a lot of those more vocal fans have, to my understanding, gotten characters written off the show. Jo, for example. Bela's another one. Both those characters have a lot of fans (myself included) who are naturally upset by this.

I think there's of course legitimate reasons to dislike a certain female character. If you really don't like Bela, there's nothing wrong with that - and the reasons you've listed here are perfectly valid.

It also sucks to get dogpiled and called a misogynist. I get that. But in the SPN fandom, it's just that there ARE so many that hate the female characters just because they're female that the rest of us may get frustrated. And it's also frustrating to watch a character you liked turn evil or get written off, especially when you know it's because annoying fans made noise. I used to love Ruby, and then she got that crap ending. They totally changed Anna's character after a season. Even Becky. And Jo and Bela and Ellen and so many more.

So basically- I hear what you're saying and yeah, it sucks, but there's a reason people have that knee-jerk reaction. Doesn't make the reaction okay, but I think that's why it happens.

Well said.

You're probably right. And I get that frustration--Anna is my co-favorite character and half of my only (het) ship, and I hate what they did to her and was terribly disappointed with how things turned out for Ruby. There are other female characters I've loved (Ellen, Jody, Meg) and most others I've at least been okay with. Bela in particular just rubbed me the wrong way.

I just wish people would listen when I try to explain my reasons instead of jumping to conclusions. It actually disturbs me sometimes that people speak about Bela as though she's a wonderful admirable role model because she's strong and smart and so on, while totally ignoring the fact that she really was not a good person at all.

DA - WTF, there are people who call Bela a good role model?! I like Bela, but even I wouldn't say that. I mean, she's a really interesting character imo, but she's not exactly a good person. At all.

In honesty, I'm not sure I've ever heard her called a role model in so many words. But that's very much the impression I get from the way some of the fans gush about her. They go on and on about all her wonderful powerful feminist qualities, how she gave her parents what was coming to them and was rich and took no crap from anyone and knew what she wanted and took it, etc., and completely fail to acknowledge that she was also a remorseless thief who sold her soul to a demon and killed or caused the deaths of a bunch of people for profit...

Well, it makes me feel a bit better to know that no one's used those exact words, since I'd worry about that person being out and about in the world, lol. I'm actually willing to cut Bela slack on the selling her soul to a demon thing, since she was pretty young at the time, in a pretty shit situation, and not (imo) fully aware of what was going on (plus, Lilith isn't exactly a slouch in the manipulation department). Then again, I'm willing to cut more slack to the people on the show who sell their souls to help family members or to get out of an abusive situation (and it was pretty heavily implied that Bela was) than someone who gives it up for money, fame, etc. Now, Bela wasn't particularly a good person after she sold her soul, and I'll imagine there were a lot of people who were hurt either directly or indirectly by her actions, and that's not something people should overlook. I don't overlook it as a Bela fan, and I understand people not liking her for a lot of the shitty things she did. I think it makes her an interesting character, though, just like I think the fact that Gabriel fucked off from heaven for selfish reasons and killed a lot of people while he was playing demi-god makes him an interesting character as well.

I love Bela so freaking much, but it is because she is not a good person, not that I am ignoring that fact. And what I don't understand is why you single Bela out for this. 90% of the male characters that fandom loves (FREAKING LUCIFER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!) are not good people either. And in your secret you are essentially calling Crowley a good person for wanting to be liked when he is a demon. Who manipulates people. And wants to be liked for a reason. Double standard much?

I don't mind people not liking Bela/female characters if they don't have a double standard about it. The people I side eye are the ones like you who love the male characters for doing the same things the female characters they hate do.

I didn't say Crowley was a good person, I said I find him more likeable than Bela. Big difference.

The role model thing is actually a slightly separate issue, I probably shouldn't even have brought it up. But if I saw people gushing about how Crowley is so admirable because he knows what he wants and lets nothing stand in his way, implying that they'd want to be like him or think he's some kind of good example, the way they frequently do with Bela, I'd be worried about them too. Maybe that's not you, Anon, but it's some fans. She gets a free pass for her horrible behavior just because she's a "strong female character," and, sorry, but no.

And no, I do not have a double standard. Crowley and Bela are both evil. Neither one is to be trusted or emulated. Crowley has done a lot of awful things, and I do not like him because of those things. I like him because he also had at least some rudimentary redeeming qualities and made some friendly gestures that Bela did not. They weren't enough to actually add up to redemption, more's the pity, but they were there.

He tried to better the lot of his fellow demons, threw Bobby's mobility into the soul deal just because he could, shared an interesting discovery with Cas not because it was particularly useful but just because he thought it was neat, proposed to Dean that they stop for pizza, and tried to make Cas feel better after he had his falling-out with the boys, then was hurt when Cas rebuffed him. And I maintain that he in fact did intend in the beginning for the Purgatory plan to work out for the best for all the principle characters, and it just fell all to pieces on him.

None of that makes him good, but the question isn't whether he's good, or even whether he was successful at being the lesser evil (overall, he sucked at it;) it's whether he's likeable. I submit that he is, moreso than Bela, because at least he occasionally tried.

Put it this way: Did Bela ever do anything with all that money to help other girls who'd been abused, let alone work so hard at it that the stress gave her an ulcer? Did she ever give away anything that didn't earn her an immediate payoff or further her aims of screwing someone over? Did she ever make any friendly gestures to the boys that didn't have some nasty ulterior motive? Did she ever say or do anything even the least bit genuinely nice or sympathetic, show any vulnerability whatsoever (at least before her very last scene,) or in any way attempt to not be a complete and utter asshole?

No, she did not; just the opposite, she consistently reveled in her badness, gloated at every opportunity, wanted no attachment or camaraderie or understanding with anyone else ever, had no friends by design, and was pretty much out to suck the world dry for her own amusement and profit. She gave absolutely nothing back in return, unless it got her out of some jam or out of owing a debt (or allowed her to case the joint.) There wasn't even a pretense of "live and let live" or quid pro quo with Bela. If she crossed your path, you were screwed. Even when she was about to be chewed apart by Hellhounds, she didn't call Dean to confess or apologize or share information in hopes of saving him, but to beg him to save her and maybe use him to get post-mortem revenge on Lilith.

And let me remind you that unlike Crowley, Bela? Did not have even the bad excuse of being a demon, though God knows she acted like one. Hell, Crowley sold his soul for foolish vanity where she bought a double homicide with hers. That alone puts them in two different classes of evil in my book.

tl;dr: They're different. And Crowley, though not a better person, is still a more likeable and sympathetic character, full stop.

I'm the thread OP, and just stepping in here for a second to say: these are all good points. But I'd just like to add that they're also clearly your opinions. I mean, you've lain out some facts, but at the end of the day, you find Crowley more likeable than Bela. That's totally fine.

But I would also just add that Crowley's been around for almost four seasons now. Bela got one - and a 16-episode one at that. She had far less time to develop the motivations and rationale, and redeeming qualities/characteristics, that you claim she didn't have. That is something to take into account.

And again I would just say that SPN has a track record with not WRITING good female characters. So the fact that you see Bela as one-dimensionally evil says as much about how she was written as about how she really just was.

I'm not denying Bela's flaws. And I don't really hate Crowley either. But I found Bela really interesting to watch. She wasn't a good person, but I liked her. To me, she did display vulnerability, and in the limited time we saw her, I bought her motivations.

And again, I wasn't in fandom back in S3 but it's my understanding that the fans' negative reaction to her was partly why she got so abruptly written off. And I'm still bitter about that - that characters like Crowley got four years to grow and be fleshed out, and she never got that chance.

And I can understand that. It does happen too often and for bad reasons. Maybe if she'd had more time to develop as a character, we would have learned things about her that would've changed my opinion. I didn't get into fandom until the S5/S6 hiatus, but I've never been one to seriously call for getting rid of a character. I'm more prone to say "For the love of God, give me a reason why I shouldn't loathe this person!"

I will also say this: Bela would make a superb demon, and I'd enjoy seeing her return in that capacity for an episode or two, if only because I love call-backs to past continuity. I admit I'm curious how she fared once she got Downstairs and whether she met any of the other Hellish personalities we've seen come and go.

Put it this way:...
But do we know that she didn't? All we got of Bela's character was snippets (6 episodes, I believe, of which she was barely a part of some of them?) and those were filtered through the lens of Dean's perception. We know what she said, but we don't know what she did. Like, for example, she let Dean believe she killed her parents because she is a cold-hearted bitch who wanted to get rich, whereas it was shown in the final episode that she killed them because her father was abusing her. Who is to say that there weren't other parts of her character we weren't privy to because she was mostly shown reacting to Dean?

Hell, Crowley sold his soul for foolish vanity where she bought a double homicide with hers. That alone puts them in two different classes of evil in my book.
This line really bothers me. Bela set up a deal to kill the father who was abusing her and the mother who (I would guess) condoned it. Also, she was 14 when she made that deal. Thus, she had no real understanding of the consequences of her actions. (I could go into the research of the undeveloped nature of teen's frontal lobes and the effect on their decision making processes, but I won't.) And you find this much more horrible than making a deal as an adult for vanity reasons?

And Crowley, though not a better person, is still a more likeable and sympathetic character, full stop.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. It seems we are looking at the characters from two different perspectives, I guess, and thus will never see eye to eye. I'm used to it.

Yes, I'll concede Bela didn't get much screen time. If she'd stuck around longer we might have learned more about her that would have changed my opinion. As it is, though, I unfortunately only have her canon appearances to go by.

And yeah, actually I'm pretty sure most 14-year-olds grasp the idea that killing someone is a Very Bad Thing even if they've done bad things to you. (I have in fact just consulted with my own 14-year-old daughter to confirm this.) She could have cut a deal to have them put in prison for life where they could never hurt her again, as one option. Now, if it were established in canon that young Bela didn't know that the plan was for both her parents to die, I'd say it was a slightly different matter. But all we got to see was the demon saying "I can take care of them for you." We'll probably never know the full story.

I'd have to say that arranging the murder of two people when other options were available to get out of a bad situation is a more awful thing to do than making a stupid personal choice and sinking just one's own boat, yes. This is not to be construed as sympathy or approval of the parents' actions. They fully deserved to be punished, and certainly needed to be gotten away from Bela and rendered harmless. I'm just against revenge killing without due process on general principle.

I think you're right, and thank you very much for for being civil about it. I wish I could debate stuff like this more often without it degenerating into ad hominem attacks and name-calling.

I just want to quickly say that of course most teenagers understand that it is wrong to kill. It's just in certain situations (the heat of the moment, or in this case, Bela not really seeing much of an "out" for herself) they react differently than adults do. Their frontal lobes are not developed.

Here is one article.
~ "This also may explain why teenagers often seem so maddeningly self-centered. "You think of them as these surly, rude, selfish people," Jensen says. "Well, actually, that's the developmental stage they're at. They aren't yet at that place where they're thinking about — or capable, necessarily, of thinking about the effects of their behavior on other people. That requires insight.""

Another
~ "MRI research has also revealed that during adolescence, white matter increases in the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This allows for enhanced communication between the hemispheres and enables a full array of analytic and creative strategies to be brought to bear in responding to the complex dilemmas that may arise in a young person’s life. Once again the role of experience is critical in developing the neural connectivity that allows for conscious cognitive control of the emotions and passions of adolescence."

Another
~ "In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. "

There are more, and those are more "populist" versus in-depth, scientific ones, but they have the science right. I'm not entirely excusing Bela's behavior, but she was in a stressful situation that her teenage self-centered self probably couldn't see a way out of and someone came up to her and gave her an out that her teenage impulsive self didn't think entirely through. I have a really hard time blaming her. Plus, there have been many abused people (wives as well as children) who have been allowed to cite self-defense reasons for killing their abusers. I don't see this as that much different.

But, again, agree to disagree. I just wanted to put that out there for a different perspective.

thank you very much for for being civil about it. I wish I could debate stuff like this more often without it degenerating into ad hominem attacks and name-calling.
Agreed on this part, at least. :)

AYRT

I understand that. Like I said, I think your reasons for disliking Bela are legitimate, and don't make you a misogynist at all.

And yeah - I mean, I actually really like Bela. Not because she's a good person or a good role model at all - no, she's a terrible person, and maybe "like" isn't the right word. I think she's a really interesting character, and I don't mind an interesting, even if unhealthy, baddie on occasion. But yeah, I would NOT call her a good role model at all. Yeah she's strong and assertive, but she's also selfish and manipulative.

But I hear what you're saying - it seems hard to express any negative opinions about the female characters without people jumping on you. The female character that I really don't care for is Meg, but even with her, I keep it relatively quiet - just because I don't want to face those accusations. But I don't like her because of who she is and what she's done, not because she's a female. And even though I don't like her, I regret that she was killed off - as a female, and also as the single longest-running character on the show after Sam and Dean (I believe). So yeah, I hear where you're coming from.

I didn't care much for Meg either until the past couple of seasons. Again, because she started to make some real connections with the main characters, however tentative. But continuity alone was reason enough to keep her around--as you say, she'd been around longer than anyone else except for Sam and Dean. (And the Ghostfacers. They are now the longest-surviving recurring non-main characters on the show, technically beating even Sam and Dean, who've died several times each. XD)

As I said further up the thread, I actually wouldn't object to seeing Bela come back for an episode or two as a demon. I think she'd be a great one, and it'd be a nice nod to earlier continuity.

the thing is, SPN writes really, really crappy women characters. They're just bad at it.

This. I usually can't connect or get invested in (or even LIKE, in a few cases) them because they're just so poorly done. The other thing I've noticed is that they're usually Love Interests first, not Characters. I don't mean this in a "boo, they're in my ship!" way, but the fact that they are introduced solely to hook up with someone. OTOH, then you have older characters like Missouri and Ellen and Pam who definitely won't be hooked up (despite good natured flirting with Pam), so they get characterization first. If the hot chracters got characterization first, and then fell in with one of the boys if the chemistry was there, maybe fandom wouldn't scream so much. Or maybe not. But I know I'd like them more if they were characters that existed outside of Love Interest.

+1 This is not something I would admit outside anon, but I don't really have and Supernatural female characters I love. It's not because of shipping (I'm not a shipper) or because I hate women, it's because the women are written so badly and then are gone so quickly, I rarely have a chance to like them.

I probably liked Ellen best, but she was still such a minor character to the point that I didn't understand fandom's outrage at her and Jo's death (especially because both characters had already essentially been written off the show, and were only brought back to die and get a reaction from fans.)

I've also really liked some of the demon women but that's largely dependent on the actress too.

I didn't understand fandom's outrage at her and Jo's death (especially because both characters had already essentially been written off the show, and were only brought back to die and get a reaction from fans.)

The fact that they were only brought back to die and get a reaction from fans was precisely why I railed about their deaths. There was no real reason they couldn't have been out somewhere fighting demons and the like instead of brought back just to be killed off.

Granted I also liked Ellen a lot. And Bela. And I disliked the trend of seemingly killing off the few female characters there were while letting the male characters mostly stick around.

I can understand that, but I think I just came across a lot of fans around that time who were just legitimately sad about it, and I just have trouble being sad when it's too obvious what writers were trying to get from me.

And while I liked them well enough, I didn't love them or really care that they died. I could get pissed about the poor treatment, but I don't know I've, given up? Like Supernatural is just not one of those shows I expect anything better from anymore. I tend to get more irritated when a show that did well with female characters goes downhill, Supernatural has just always been crap at it.

For me, it, followed by Anna's situation, was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back. Yes, Supernatural (show and fandom) was often crap at dealing with female characters, but it wasn't quite enough to make me give up on it. That was. I've not watched since.

So, I suppose I'm saying I can see your point. If you'd already given up on SPN being decent for female characters, I can understand why you'd react less to that.

The fact that they were only brought back to die and get a reaction from fans was precisely why I railed about their deaths.

Basically what the anon above you said. That was my main issue with Ellen and Jo's deaths. They had already been written off; when they died in 510 - and, IIRC, were only brought back in 501 and then again in 510 - it was clear that they had ONLY been brought back to be killed off again. And narratively, I get it - it upped the stakes for Sam and Dean, made them more personally invested in stopping Lucifer, etc. etc. It just sucked though. Not only because they were strong female characters (and I always loved them both back in S2) but because they were part of Sam and Dean's extended family, and their deaths started the theme of Sam and Dean losing everything they love. Well, didn't start it really, but to me, 510 is when the show really started getting depressing. (It's not been consistently depressing since then, but I do think the downward spiral started around that time.)

All of this is a long-winded way of saying why I was affected by Ellen and Jo's deaths. And, FWIW, the other thing for me is that I started watching the show in S6; so I watched the first 5 1/2 seasons in one go, and for me, their deaths felt sudden and abrupt.

I hear you though with the lowered expectations. I haven't gotten there yet, myself, but I understand where you're coming from.

'The fact that they were only brought back to die and get a reaction from fans was precisely why I railed about their deaths.'

And it's not like this is a trick they're hesitant to pull. Meg was the straw that broke my back.

I didn't make it to Meg's death. Ellen/Jo/Anna is what did it for me.

But, yes, they are willing to go there frequently.

Second thing: the thing is, SPN writes really, really crappy women characters. They're just bad at it. When they do write a decent character, she either turns evil, gets killed off, or both.

They write really crappy characters, mostly. They're not great at writing characters. With the exception of Bobby (and I think he mostly works as a character because Jim Beaver is a phenomenal actor who's also pretty talented as a playwright himself) and Dean and Sam (and I think they get an exception because the show is so central to them and the writers have spent so much time defining them and getting to who they are), I don't think there's any really great characters. The writers just aren't good at that whole aspect of the thing. Which is okay, I don't think they really need to be for the show to succeed as what it is, but it's fact.

So yeah, I think most of the female characters are pretty bad. Most of the writing is.

it's just that there ARE so many that hate the female characters just because they're female that the rest of us may get frustrated... especially when you know it's because annoying fans made noise.

I think both of those things are also true, though. It's overdetemined, as they say.

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[ SECRET POST #2296 ]

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