[ SECRET POST #292 ]

[shahni.livejournal.com]

⌈ Secret Post #292⌋

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

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Notes:

- I find myself growing tired of not!secrets that mock other people's opinions. Seriously, people. Grow up.

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 70 secrets from Secret Submission Post #042.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, 0 not!secrets, 0 not!fandom,.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Thursday, October 25th, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

23. Are you seriously saying that you believe every fic where a male hero isn't as cool as they are canonically is written like that because the author feels that men should be put down? Some sort of feminazi stuff? If not, just ignore the following, but uh...

I see all sorts of outrageous ideas these days about how feminazis/feminists are ruining male characters and all, and all I have to say is, BZUH?

To say it happens to female characters would be an understatement. How many fandoms have X female character who kicks moderate amounts of ass, but gets in the way of Y/Z ship, and is thus downgraded to being a sulky whore in every fic ever? Or the fics where a female character being saved is the main plotpoint, even though the character takes care of themselves just fine in canon?

Why the second that a man gets downgraded is it somehow against men? Maybe people just suck at writing strong, whole characters. Regardless of their genders.

[xenoglossy]

Yeah, I have to say I've seen more fics where female characters get turned into a whiny, clingy idiot/a bitchwhore/something else unpleasant and completely OOC than I have equivalent fics for male characters. Then again, I tend to hang out in predominantly-slash fandoms, where the hatred of icky girls who get in the way of the manluv runs rampant.

[(Anonymous)]

It gets in the way with het love triangles, too. You've gotta love the fandoms where two chicks could possibly be paired with a guy, so any time that one of the pairings is written, the other is either completely out of the picture despite being a main character, or just bashed constantly.

Though, that happens a little too when there's a love triangle with two guys. In the fandoms I'm in, it never seems to be quite to that level, but that could just be the fandoms involved.

[xenoglossy]

Yeah, I've never a male character getting quite the level of "omg getting in the way of my OTP!!!" bashing that some female characters get, but like you said, that could just be my fandoms. I've heard of it happening in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fandom (and by "heard of" I mean "I saw it mentioned while browsing the TV Tropes Wiki yesterday), but I'm not actually in the fandom, so I can't really say.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm trying to figure out how to say this properly so I don't stick my foot in my mouth, but I guess I'll start with saying that that wasn't my intention at all, and it's certainly not true in every case where the hero/heroine is weakened.

What sparked this particular secret was that, in Bleach, I feel like fandom's somehow gotten the notion into their heads that Ichigo is a four-year-old mentally and physically, and LOLOLOL LET'S CONSTANTLY MAKE JOKES ABOUT HIS IMMATURITY/UKENESS/WEEPINESS/IDIOCY/WTFEVER and I was just tired of seeing him constantly weakened by fandom. I mean, jokes are all well and good, but once it gets to the point where if you write him physically stronger than a female character you get jumped all over, I think it's going too far. :/

And I understand what you're saying about women being weakened too, but in al honesty, I haven't really seen much of that. I don't know if it's the part of the fandom I'm in or I'm lucky in what I read, but in the fics that exemplify what I was referring to, Rukia and Orihime were constantly kicking ass and really being very strong characters and always saving the day, while Ichigo or Ishida or whoever they were supposed to be saving were crying about their feelings on the sidelines. (Er, and that's supposedly without any mind control or Aizen control or anything. Just up and weeping.) The fic that irritated me the most had an author's note basically saying that Ichigo shouldn't be the hero because he's a boy, and that somehow made him a weaker character.

So...I guess what I'm saying is, yes, women are downgraded too. But I don't really see that much in my part of the fandom; most of the time, I see the exact opposite, and that's why I said what I said. It honestly wasn't meant as a slight; I just don't see that sort of...misogyny, I guess, very often, so it just didn't occur to me. TL;DR, I suppose, but I wanted to offer my side of the story.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Ichigo is an immature idiot! Just, uh, not a weepy or uke one.

I think the Bleach fandom is weird, because it has a lot of strong women and easy ways to get them out of the way of shipping problems. I think turning characters into weepy ukes is actually many fans' ways of expressing their love of the character, so I don't think they're being weakened so much as "I love him and I will make him uke cause that's soooooo yay!" That way they can hurt/comfort the character, or whatever.

Though some people may feel that way about Ichigo (and it's pretty idiotic to say that he's a boy and that makes him a bad hero-- there are plenty of reasons to hate on him, but that's not one of them), I don't know if it's all that widespread. At least, not enough for people to read the secret and go "yeah! Damn those people who hate men!"