Erm, I hope you don't mind I'm coming into this two days late...
Warning: lengthy ramble ahead.
I don't think I'd mind them so much if there weren't so many people constantly saying 'You don't like So and So? But they're so perfect and nice and sweet!' Including the author, who practically hits you over the head with it: YOU WILL LIKE GINNY, for example, or SLYTHERINS ARE EVIL.
Yes, exactly. It's not so much their character that is so objectionable - it plainly isn't, at least not more so than others in the books -, but the fact that the author so clearly favours them. And authorial bias is a frustrating thing in its own right if you don't happen to share it (as many fans obviously do), but it becomes worse because of JKR's sometimes very heavy hand in expressing it.
I think one of the things that frustrates me, personally, is not so much that so many people share JKR's bias, but that they also share her annoyhing habit of accusing people who don't happen to agree of shallowness. Who's being shallow here, the person who tells me one fourth of all children is apparently born evil, or the one who sees those supposedly "evil" children as interesting characters?
This sort of ties in with the Weasley debate - they may not be described as perfect by any stretch of interpretation, but what bugs me is that very clearly we are supposed to overlook their faults or see them as endearing because ... well, in the end, just because JKR says so. (Or perhaps she doesn't, and I'm overreading things; but her interviews seem to suggest that I'm at least not completely wrong here, and that JKR doesn't only write from Harry's POV, but also takes his perspective herself to a disturbing degree.) Being told to overlook someone's faults makes me only focus on them all the more. Dwelling on said faults makes me want to cut them some slack. Which, for reasons entirely separate from the characters themselves, already predisposes me towards taking Slytherin's side in the whole fandom split. (Not that I actually fully do; I'm a Snape/Black shipper and as such something of a fence-sitter.)
But before, I assumed if the 'Don't you just looooooove So and So' vibe wasn't working on me, it was a flaw in the text. But it obviously works on a fair amount of people, so either they're reading it 'wrong' or I am; is the vibe given by fandom.
Exactly again - we all have a tendency to suppose everyone else reads in the same way we do. Except that they don't, and to a degree which can be mind-boggling sometimes. Not to mention it all ties in with other things, such as the kinds of things we come looking for in fandom, the types of character who tend to draw us, the kinds of relationships that fascinate us. All of that becomes muddled in "liking (or hating) Character X", until we don't know anymore whether Fan A likes (or hates) them because they simply never questioned the surface of the text, because they happen to agree with the reasons the text presents for liking (hating) them, because they like (hate) something about the way the character is written, or if they like (hate) them for some completely separate reason.
So it's not surprising that the sweeping generalisations as to why we like Draco/Snape/Black/Harry or whomever rarely fit, and they wouldn't bother me nearly as much if JKR wasn't doing exactly the same thing as so many fangirls. (I wonder if I would still be as sensitive if I hadn't gone through this entire business in BtVS with Spike already.)
Erm, sorry for spamming your journal, sistermagpie.
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Date: 2004-09-02 03:43 am (UTC)Warning: lengthy ramble ahead.
I don't think I'd mind them so much if there weren't so many people constantly saying 'You don't like So and So? But they're so perfect and nice and sweet!'
Including the author, who practically hits you over the head with it: YOU WILL LIKE GINNY, for example, or SLYTHERINS ARE EVIL.
Yes, exactly. It's not so much their character that is so objectionable - it plainly isn't, at least not more so than others in the books -, but the fact that the author so clearly favours them. And authorial bias is a frustrating thing in its own right if you don't happen to share it (as many fans obviously do), but it becomes worse because of JKR's sometimes very heavy hand in expressing it.
I think one of the things that frustrates me, personally, is not so much that so many people share JKR's bias, but that they also share her annoyhing habit of accusing people who don't happen to agree of shallowness. Who's being shallow here, the person who tells me one fourth of all children is apparently born evil, or the one who sees those supposedly "evil" children as interesting characters?
This sort of ties in with the Weasley debate - they may not be described as perfect by any stretch of interpretation, but what bugs me is that very clearly we are supposed to overlook their faults or see them as endearing because ... well, in the end, just because JKR says so. (Or perhaps she doesn't, and I'm overreading things; but her interviews seem to suggest that I'm at least not completely wrong here, and that JKR doesn't only write from Harry's POV, but also takes his perspective herself to a disturbing degree.) Being told to overlook someone's faults makes me only focus on them all the more. Dwelling on said faults makes me want to cut them some slack. Which, for reasons entirely separate from the characters themselves, already predisposes me towards taking Slytherin's side in the whole fandom split. (Not that I actually fully do; I'm a Snape/Black shipper and as such something of a fence-sitter.)
But before, I assumed if the 'Don't you just looooooove So and So' vibe wasn't working on me, it was a flaw in the text.
But it obviously works on a fair amount of people, so either they're reading it 'wrong' or I am; is the vibe given by fandom.
Exactly again - we all have a tendency to suppose everyone else reads in the same way we do. Except that they don't, and to a degree which can be mind-boggling sometimes. Not to mention it all ties in with other things, such as the kinds of things we come looking for in fandom, the types of character who tend to draw us, the kinds of relationships that fascinate us. All of that becomes muddled in "liking (or hating) Character X", until we don't know anymore whether Fan A likes (or hates) them because they simply never questioned the surface of the text, because they happen to agree with the reasons the text presents for liking (hating) them, because they like (hate) something about the way the character is written, or if they like (hate) them for some completely separate reason.
So it's not surprising that the sweeping generalisations as to why we like Draco/Snape/Black/Harry or whomever rarely fit, and they wouldn't bother me nearly as much if JKR wasn't doing exactly the same thing as so many fangirls. (I wonder if I would still be as sensitive if I hadn't gone through this entire business in BtVS with Spike already.)
Erm, sorry for spamming your journal,