spnanonhaven

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#84

This post is for show discussion and fandom gossip only. NO ACTOR GOSSIP, NO ACTOR BASHING!!
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What do you consider character bashing? How far does a character have to go in a fic to be bashed rather than simply villainized? I'm wondering because the accusation of character bashing has been rather prominent on the FD recently and I'm wondering if the definition has evolved or authors are just less aware of what they're doing?

More specific case study type questions:

Two scenes of a longfic use a female character in the role of a "villain." Angry ex-girlfriend, bad customer, mean boss type roles. Is this bashing?

A woman shows up in a fic being excessively annoying and/or following the useless girl, overachiever, or similar female stereotype, but otherwise isn't a horrible person, doesn't die or disappear, etc. Is that bashing?

If either of these roles were actually men instead of women, would that be bashing?

(For a more specific example, does warning for Chad count as character bashing? If he's the obnoxious best friend, but does nothing else horrible, is it bashing?)

This is totally OT, but is anyone else watching The Newsroom? Because Sorkin, in addition to writing the world's biggest Mary Sue, has written EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER in a way that would absolutely be considered bashing if it were a fic and they were RPF characters.

It's really upsetting.

AYRT

OK, I wanted to watch it, but now not so much...

That's too bad since Sorkin usually writes really good female characters, IMO.

AYRT - He used to, certainly. CJ Cregg will always be one of my favourite women on TV.

But the women on this show are shallow, ditzy, unprofessional, and incapable of separating their love-lives from their work. It's dire. Sorkin obviously created this show to have a platform where he can make actors deliver his pet political diatribes. Which wouldn't be so bad, I agree with most of it, but he seems to have also created it so that he can make actresses say the things he always wanted to hear from his ex-girlfriends :/

AYRT

I loved CJ, too! And I loved that "Look around, smart girls have more fun" (or something like that) for his daughter. I thought it was a great line.

To find out he has a weird thing about working out his broken heart on screen just makes me sad for him. I was OK with his political diatribes on WW, so I figured it'd be fun on the Newsroom. BOOOO for making something that should have been awesome NOT.

Eh, he's not a Mary Sue to me. He screws up too often for that. The entire Newsroom team though, that's the Mary Sue. They stand up way too often and go "just because all other news channels are declaring this, WE THINK THEY'RE WRONG" and then turn out to be right. Also, I'm kinda curious since we're talking real events here, about what the actual news stations that first broke those stories feel.

It would be awful nice if they stopped with as much relationship drama though. Right now my favorite is the Bigfoot guy and Don, but only when Don isn't being a complete tool.

na
I only watched the first episode and I thought it was so pretentious and self-important. And I agree with his political views too. I don't think that show's for me though.

I consider bashing to be any combination of treating normal human responses as horrible via the narrative or other characters (eg, the girlfriend who is upset that her boyfriend cheated on her with his boyfriend because it's True Love!) or the lump association with female characters into negatively (and often sexist) roles, such as having the ex-girlfriend be a shrieking harpy type character who is also bad at her job, or makes inappropriate gestures.

The accusation of character bashing has been strong on the FB because there's been a nasty amount of character bashing. There's that JDM/JA fic where Gamble's main role is to inappropriately bring along the "pretty" ensigns to parties as eye-candy and another female character is written as cold and nasty because she's upset that she's been cheated on. Those are two of only three female characters and the third in the parts I read was flat and didn't have a characterization aside from to be wooed by Jared. Then there was that D/C fic where EVERY female character was either bad at their jobs, abusive, considered to be rapists, or just randomly around to beat up woobie!Castiel. Then there's the stories that use Danneel as the villain who frames poor woobie!Jared and attacks small children and I could keep going.

You've gotta understand too, there's a difference between the way men and women are treated here thanks to context. Treating one of the J's real life wife as the nasty, scheming, cheating, horrible villain is much much different than putting a random guy in that role. If EMW is the ex, there's not the misogynistic context to deal with.

And it also depends on how many female characters are actually characterized, as opposed to just having a cameo or showing up but never really doing much to show who they are. If a woman shows up and is any of those stereotypes you mentioned and she isn't an OC or that behavior considered IC, then I'd consider it bashing. If it is an OC, I'd consider it just bad writing. Reducing any character to a single stock trope is boring. Reducing a character to a single stock trope when in canon, they've actually got a lot going on, that's bad writing and bashing.

Warning for Chad is technically character bashing but it was never meant to be taken seriously. It's an old joke at this point and most people seem bored with it.

AYRT

I actually understand that there's a differences between the men and women due to context. I was asking because most of fandom doesn't seem to understand the difference, so I was wondering if I was just being a special snowflake. Also, women seem to be put into the bashed roles more often in this fandom.

I am the type that prefers OCs to RP in non-starring roles, especially villainized roles, but I'll read the RP version unless I get too squicked. Jared or Jensen's RL parents being abusive and cruel? Can't handle it. Danneel or Genevieve being lying, cheating, rapey bitches? Pass.

I sometimes feel like this fandom thinks their amount of bashing is astronomical and in some way special. I've never been in a fandom with this much RPF before, but every fandom I've been part of has had bashing to some degree. SPN/SPN RPF is no different.

da

My old fandom had a lot more ships, and therefore a lot more bashing of canon romantic partners/rival ships. A lot of, but not all, of that bashing fell onto male characters. I think SPN is worse in the bashing of female characters, because the old fandom had actresses as regular cast members and juggernaut het ships, so even if one lady got bashed there might a few others portrayed sympathetically (not that I ever like seeing any characters bashed), whereas in SPN it's often one female character serving as the impediment to m/m in SPN.

To make a broad generalization, the SPN I read seems to have less bashing in general but also more lady bashing. But this could come down to ships. (For the record, I read a lot of D/C, J2 and various rareships).

As for the FD post ... well, I want to know if authors are bashing ladies. Before I found this meme, I read this one fic that I was enjoying so, so much... and then the last third was all slut-shaming and lady bashing, and man a head's up would have been great. I still feel a bit wounded over that one. :/

AYRT

That's what I thought too, at least regarding old fandoms. I guess I don't understand bashing based on ships because I'm a true multishipper: I really have no preference and will read almost any pairing as long as the relationship is written believably. And you're spot on about lady bashing in SPN fandom. I understand it, but it makes me D:D:D:D:

I totally agree about the FD post. I think it's awesome and if I see slut-shaming and (what I consider) bashing, I'm all up in there saying so. But I guess the whole reason I posted originally was that I feel like I'm not liking how male bashing and female bashing are not considered equal over there. Nor do I feel like everything that is labelled bashing actual bashing. All the examples you cited I would probably consider bashing, but if I read a gen AU fic where Cas is on a power-trip (a la human God complex) I don't really consider it bashing unless the author writes it badly. And I see SO many accusations of ladybashing, then read a fic and get really uncomfortable with the manbashing and feel all angry that no one warned me. (Real serious bashing of any character squicks me something fierce.)

ayrt

Yeah, my old fandom had several rival ships with the same woman in common, so there was a lot of bashing of the menfolk (Everyone's a rapist except for this one guy, because a lady's only relationship criteria is "not a rapist." Never mind that some of the males receiving that treatment were rapists in canon, so the writers were essentially turning rapists into non-rapists and then making all the non-rapists rapists in order to sell their ship ...).

I don't read a ton of f/f, so maybe it's different there, but I don't think I've run into tons of manbashing. I mean, it's hard to find a story in which all of the men are portrayed as evil, and the men who are bashed are bashed on very different criteria than women who are bashed (slut-shaming is less common, for example). So male bashing is more often a case of character bashing (Sam doesn't really love Dean!), while lady bashing can be character bashing (Jo was so ungrateful and horrible to Ellen!) or it can be bashing based on the fact that a character is a lady (Jo is a slut and she's so slutty she doesn't even notice how Dean is so grossed out by her diseased lady parts!).

If Cas were on a power trip, I wouldn't consider it bashing. If putting him on that power trip required stripping him of all the layers he has in canon and/or insisting that Dean has always hated him, it's bashing. I've also run into Cas just written so horribly that I back-clicked, because Cas doesn't use California surfer slang and if you don't care enough to avoid that then why are you writing him at all? But I'm not sure that's bashing so much as the author not giving a shit.

I'm with you on hating any and all character bashing. It's really my least favorite thing. :/

I consider bashing to be any combination of treating normal human responses as horrible via the narrative or other characters

This, so much.

Also is the villlainised character necessary to the plot? I mean I get that sometimes you need a bad guy/gal, and though I'd prefer not to see someone I like cast in that role, it isn't necessarily always a bad thing, so long as they're kept IC and realistic.

What really bugged me about that JDM/JA fic was that the ambassador character seemed completely irrelevant to the plot, and coiuld have been left out without changing the story at all. And the first few times she's mentioned she's just The Ambassador, so seeing that one throw-away line of Ambassador Gamble really made me think the author was taking a pop at her.

ayrt

Good point about the necessity. Sometimes they can be necessary - a good antagonist causes conflict and gives characters something to strive against - but if the bitchiness is contrived or doesn't really add anything, it's worthless. The Ambassador Gamble thing fell into that.

The D/C AU I mentioned also fell into that, with the characterization of Jo. She was randomly written as abusive, annoying, possessive, overly jealous, and controlling, not to mention capable of sexual assault. It came across as incredibly contrived because all Cas had to do was say "thanks but I'm not interested in you" but for some reason, he never thought to do so. Thus, 40K words of a convoluted plot where Cas cheated on her with Dean but this was somehow romantic and a good thing, as Jo's characterization grew progressively more paranoid and OTT. The whole plot was pointless because there was no need for her to be in a relationship with Castiel to begin with and I don't think it ever addressed the fact that yes, she was paranoid, but she was right to be considering that her boyfriend was cheating on her with her best friend.

DA

Any fic where Jo is abusive and controlling would seem seriously OOC to me, so I probably would stop reading for that alone, but considering it's obviously bashing I would be angry on top of that. I do not stop reading fic in the middle very often, but for that I would.

I don't understand the majority of this fandom's ideas about infidelity either. I mean, if two people agree they are in a committed relationship and either of those people enter into a romantic or sexual situation with someone else THAT'S CHEATING. And it should be warned for. And no, the person being cheated on is not horrible for being angry that they were cheated on, even if they were in the way of your OTP.

ayrt

Oh, it was terribly OOC. I kept reading only because I was interested in this sub-plot with Dean and a serial killer but the way that ended made me wish I hadn't wasted my time.

I can understand if someone argues that cheating doesn't need to be warned for (it's a courtesy but it isn't the same to me as underage, deathfic, or noncon) but the author did warn for male/male relationships and not the cheating, so.

I think, in some cases, simply having a character play the role of the villain can be bashing, if it's totally OOC for them to do so. For example, if you're writing a Dean/Lisa fic where (soulled) Sam is trying to tear them apart because he's just that selfish, I'm probably going to say that's bashing. But context is everything, because kinky Evil!Sam isn't bashing Sam.

It also depends on how characters react and how many hold the same opinion. For example, if Bobby, Cas and Dean all decide they loathe Sam, and the author writes them as if they're right to do so when Sam hasn't done anything he hasn't done in canon, we have now entered Sam bashing territory. It can be slightly different with other characters. For example, depending on the season, Cas can adopt a more antagonistic role without being bashed. But if it's S5 and Sam, Dean and Bobby all hate him and want him to die, that's probably bashing. OTOH, everyone can hate Crowley, and that wouldn't constitute bashing at all.

I think it also has to do with the how of the villainization. For example, if Gen is a professional thief who makes deals with shady people, that is not bashing. If she is just a flat villain with zero humanizing characteristics, it could be edging toward bashing, depending on the rest of the story, but it isn't necessarily so (I would say it's poor writing). If she is dating Jared (who naturally sits around contemplating how gross her vagina is and is probably in love with Jensen) and she makes up a pregnancy scare to entrap him in marriage except then we learn that she's had five abortions in the last three months and also Jared has always sorta hated her and isn't it disgusting that Gen sometimes wants sex with her boyfriend... yeah, that's bashing. A woman who is a villain because she wants to nuke the world is different from a woman who is a villain because she is on the wrong side of the virgin/whore dichotomy or because the author wants a man to cheat on her without coming off as doing anything wrong himself.

Also, it can be something where the woman is acting like a reasonable human being, but the narrative condemns her for it. For example, Jared is sleeping with Jensen, and Gen is like "You didn't come home last night. I was worried something had happened." And his internal monologue is all about how much he hates it that his wife is a harpy who doesn't trust him implicitly, and the narrative seems to think he's right in his thinking.

So, basically, context is everything, and all of your example could be bashing or not bashing, depending on the rest of the story. Except for that last one with Chad. :)

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#84

Questions about character bashing

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