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Follow-up to this post on the concept of misaimed fandoms (DW mirror here), which was itself inspired by this post by arachnekallisti on writing terrible human beings/deliberately unsympathetic characters.
I was talking this over with seanchai last weekend, actually as part of a tangent about Torchwood (why some people absolutely cannot like Owen or Gwen for the alien sex pollen and the retconning-your-significant-other-to-conceal-your-infidelity things while being totally able to forgive Ianto his cyborg girlfriend shenanigans), and one thing that came up is that different readers/viewers have different, and often very personal and non-rational Uncrossable Lines for characters and for shows.
An Uncrossable Line is something you absolutely cannot forgive a character for, a belief or action that, once expressed or performed by a given character, renders that character completely unsympathetic and unlikable often no matter what reasons/excuses/mitigating factors there are. The 100% unsympathetic oxygen thief perception may remain permanently even if the character shows extreme remorse in canon and goes on to save a thousand puppies before dying to save the world. They crossed the Line. What they do before or afterwards may not matter when weighed against that fact.
It works like this: in theory, the reader know that mass murder or genocide is, speaking objectively, probably worse than raping a woman, but rape is a visceral personal violation and murdering hundreds/thousands/millions is a crime so vast it's hard to even really comprehend the extant of it. The reader is unlikely to run into a mass murderer or be the victim of one in real life, whereas she has a 25% chance of being raped, and almost certainly knows another woman who has been. Therefore, rape or attempted rape is her Uncrossable Line. She can forgive Darth Vader for blowing up Aldaraan, can forgive Ozymandias for that thing he did 35 minutes ago, but can't forgive Spike for Seeing Red or the Comedian for his attempted rape of Silk Spectre I (actually, I find Ozymandias's actions are more frightening/chilling/evil than the Comedian's, but that's because rape isn't actually my Uncrossable Line. Unless it involves children, because sexual abuse of children *is* one of my lines).
For some Torchwood fans, Owen's sex pollen use is close enough to using a RL date rape drug on people that it crosses their Uncrossable Line of "commits date rape," and therefore is unforgivable. Those fans see him as a rapist, and cannot and will not like or sympathize with a rapist, full stop. Fans who have a different uncrossable line, such as "knowingly putting other people's lives in danger," frown in confusion at those fans and wonder how on earth they can judge Owen so harshly when Ianto kept his killer cyborg girlfriend in the basement and Jack sacrificed his grandkid to aliens. Fans whose own uncrossable line is "is incompetent at the thing that the narrative expects me to believe is their specialty/job/etc." have probably already abandoned Torchwood entirely for a show where the main characters commit fewer idiot-plot fuck ups (said show is probably not SGA, though SGA-1 occasionally looks downright competent compared to the Torchwood crew).
The Uncrossable Line can be racism, sexism, homophobia, animal abuse, child abuse, colonialism/imperialism, rape, torture, murder, betrayal of a cause/one's comrades, or something more petty like infidelity, or "is a hypocrite," or "lets subordinates take the blame for his mistakes," or "is a textbook Nice Guy," or "is a coward." Not all readers have one, and not all readers have the same one. I know several people whose Uncrossable Line is rape, one person for whom it's infidelity, another for whom it's animal harm, and seanchai's Uncrossable Line is being a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer.
I suspect that maybe, some of the misaimed fandom/writing unlikable characters that Oh Noes! too many readers like is a case of the author and a portion of their audience having different Uncrossable Lines.
This character has Crossed the Line, the author thinks, as she write them performing said unforgivable action or espousing said unforgivable opinion, and no right thinking person can fail to realize that their terrible Line Crossing raping/killing/cheating/puppykicking nature makes them irredeemable. My audience, provided they are all right thinking people, will be properly disgusted by this character, and if they're not, they're either not right thinking, or not paying attention.
Except that if the audience has a different set of Uncrossable Lines, they may find the character the author intended them to despise forgivable, or likable in spite of his flaws, while utterly loathing the author's hero or woobie for being a Despicable Line Crossing Bastard. It's not necessarily that they don't understand exactly what the character has done that's wrong, and why it's wrong. They just have their own diferent set of lines in the sand that a character cannot cross while remaining likable, or their lines are drawn in different places (ex: someone for whom infidelity is the Uncrossable Line might be able to forgive a one-off makeout session with someone not-one's-spouse but not be able to forgive a long term but unconsummated almost-love-affair because the emotional betrayal is more significant to them than the physical betrayal. Whereas for someone else, it's physically acting on those impulses that crosses the line, and just being tempted doesn't count).
Sharing the same fandoms, the same OTPs, the same opinions on canon, and even sharing the same ideological viewpoint, religious or cultural background, and political/social opinions, does not guarantee that people will share the same Uncrossable Line, any more than sharing all of the above will guarantee that people will have the same kinks and squicks. It can be the difference between believing that Spike can be redeemed post season six, and wanting to kill him with fire, between seeing Lex Luthor as a woobie and seeing him as an evil supervillain (or seeing him as an evil supervillain who's kick-ass awesome), between being horrified or disgusted by a character and fangirling him (or her).
*I debated whether to use this icon or the broken!woobie!Tony Stark one, but since the original post referenced Watchmen and had an Ozymandias icon....*
I was talking this over with seanchai last weekend, actually as part of a tangent about Torchwood (why some people absolutely cannot like Owen or Gwen for the alien sex pollen and the retconning-your-significant-other-to-conceal-your-infidelity things while being totally able to forgive Ianto his cyborg girlfriend shenanigans), and one thing that came up is that different readers/viewers have different, and often very personal and non-rational Uncrossable Lines for characters and for shows.
An Uncrossable Line is something you absolutely cannot forgive a character for, a belief or action that, once expressed or performed by a given character, renders that character completely unsympathetic and unlikable often no matter what reasons/excuses/mitigating factors there are. The 100% unsympathetic oxygen thief perception may remain permanently even if the character shows extreme remorse in canon and goes on to save a thousand puppies before dying to save the world. They crossed the Line. What they do before or afterwards may not matter when weighed against that fact.
It works like this: in theory, the reader know that mass murder or genocide is, speaking objectively, probably worse than raping a woman, but rape is a visceral personal violation and murdering hundreds/thousands/millions is a crime so vast it's hard to even really comprehend the extant of it. The reader is unlikely to run into a mass murderer or be the victim of one in real life, whereas she has a 25% chance of being raped, and almost certainly knows another woman who has been. Therefore, rape or attempted rape is her Uncrossable Line. She can forgive Darth Vader for blowing up Aldaraan, can forgive Ozymandias for that thing he did 35 minutes ago, but can't forgive Spike for Seeing Red or the Comedian for his attempted rape of Silk Spectre I (actually, I find Ozymandias's actions are more frightening/chilling/evil than the Comedian's, but that's because rape isn't actually my Uncrossable Line. Unless it involves children, because sexual abuse of children *is* one of my lines).
For some Torchwood fans, Owen's sex pollen use is close enough to using a RL date rape drug on people that it crosses their Uncrossable Line of "commits date rape," and therefore is unforgivable. Those fans see him as a rapist, and cannot and will not like or sympathize with a rapist, full stop. Fans who have a different uncrossable line, such as "knowingly putting other people's lives in danger," frown in confusion at those fans and wonder how on earth they can judge Owen so harshly when Ianto kept his killer cyborg girlfriend in the basement and Jack sacrificed his grandkid to aliens. Fans whose own uncrossable line is "is incompetent at the thing that the narrative expects me to believe is their specialty/job/etc." have probably already abandoned Torchwood entirely for a show where the main characters commit fewer idiot-plot fuck ups (said show is probably not SGA, though SGA-1 occasionally looks downright competent compared to the Torchwood crew).
The Uncrossable Line can be racism, sexism, homophobia, animal abuse, child abuse, colonialism/imperialism, rape, torture, murder, betrayal of a cause/one's comrades, or something more petty like infidelity, or "is a hypocrite," or "lets subordinates take the blame for his mistakes," or "is a textbook Nice Guy," or "is a coward." Not all readers have one, and not all readers have the same one. I know several people whose Uncrossable Line is rape, one person for whom it's infidelity, another for whom it's animal harm, and seanchai's Uncrossable Line is being a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer.
I suspect that maybe, some of the misaimed fandom/writing unlikable characters that Oh Noes! too many readers like is a case of the author and a portion of their audience having different Uncrossable Lines.
This character has Crossed the Line, the author thinks, as she write them performing said unforgivable action or espousing said unforgivable opinion, and no right thinking person can fail to realize that their terrible Line Crossing raping/killing/cheating/puppykicking nature makes them irredeemable. My audience, provided they are all right thinking people, will be properly disgusted by this character, and if they're not, they're either not right thinking, or not paying attention.
Except that if the audience has a different set of Uncrossable Lines, they may find the character the author intended them to despise forgivable, or likable in spite of his flaws, while utterly loathing the author's hero or woobie for being a Despicable Line Crossing Bastard. It's not necessarily that they don't understand exactly what the character has done that's wrong, and why it's wrong. They just have their own diferent set of lines in the sand that a character cannot cross while remaining likable, or their lines are drawn in different places (ex: someone for whom infidelity is the Uncrossable Line might be able to forgive a one-off makeout session with someone not-one's-spouse but not be able to forgive a long term but unconsummated almost-love-affair because the emotional betrayal is more significant to them than the physical betrayal. Whereas for someone else, it's physically acting on those impulses that crosses the line, and just being tempted doesn't count).
Sharing the same fandoms, the same OTPs, the same opinions on canon, and even sharing the same ideological viewpoint, religious or cultural background, and political/social opinions, does not guarantee that people will share the same Uncrossable Line, any more than sharing all of the above will guarantee that people will have the same kinks and squicks. It can be the difference between believing that Spike can be redeemed post season six, and wanting to kill him with fire, between seeing Lex Luthor as a woobie and seeing him as an evil supervillain (or seeing him as an evil supervillain who's kick-ass awesome), between being horrified or disgusted by a character and fangirling him (or her).
*I debated whether to use this icon or the broken!woobie!Tony Stark one, but since the original post referenced Watchmen and had an Ozymandias icon....*
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It's like Tony. He betrayed his friends. Normally, that would be My Line. But he did it because he really didn't have any good choices, and that was the lesser evil in his view. I can buy that! I don't like it, but it's complex, not Evil. A lot of other readers... didn't buy it, because they couldn't get beyond "betrayed his friends". And thus, fandom rages on.
(uses a woobie Tony icon for you)
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I think there's a lot of truth to that. Grey_bard pointed out on the last post that readers/viewers respond to complex, three dimensional characters the way they do to real human being, and that just as IRL there are usually people out there who are totally indifferent too or BFF with people you hate, well written fictional characters get the same variety of reactions.
That was my middle school English teacher's theory on Shylock actually - that Shakepeare started out with the standard "evil greedy anti-semitic stereotype" villain figure, but was simply too good a writer not to make him three-dimensional. And three dimensional Shylock with valid grievances and understandable motivations is too complex to simply be a villain (on the other hand, Don John and Iago are pretty much 100% pure Bad Seed malice with no adequate reason for it, which implies that Shylock being an ambiguous character is intentional, and that an Elizabethan audience was supposed to be pleased when he gets his "happy ending" of forced conversion and presumed soul saving instead of execution. A modern audience, of course, watches and thinks, "Jesus, Antonio is a dick. And so is the Venetian legal system, my God. This is supposed to be a happy ending?" I can still remember my 8th grade English class's blind horror over the conversion aspect).
But he did it because he really didn't have any good choices, and that was the lesser evil in his view... A lot of other readers... didn't buy it, because they couldn't get beyond "betrayed his friends".
And thus you have the main interpersonal conflict of RR&R4, because "betrayal of those close to you" is one of Thor's uncrossable lines, given the whole "I trusted Loki as a friend and adopted sibling figure and then he arranged my little brother's murder," thing. (so you get talking-past-each-other conversations like, Hank: "I'm really sorry we cloned you so badly, and that the clone you killed people." Thor: "I do not care that your creepy unauthorized clone of me turned into Ultron, take 2! I'm angry that you cloned me at all! I would be angry even if the clone!me had spit rainbows and saved a thousand puppies!" Hank: "But the evil government guys made us do it!" Thor: "You could have said no!" Hank: "... they would have locked us up? In jail? And I really didn't think the clone would hurt anyone." Thor: You could still have said no! Your life wasn't even at stake!" Tony, of course, doesn't even bother explaining himself because he totally deserves Thor's condemnation, blah, blah, guilt complex).
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I think Shakespeare was also too good a writer to accidentally make a character sympathetic. He had some Srs Skilz.I think it takes a good writer to fall into this hole, but an excellent one to utilize it like the tool it is. Shakespeare was the latter. [$.0.02]
I would be angry even if the clone!me had spit rainbows and saved a thousand puppies!
Okay, now I want Clor to secretly love small, fluffy puppies, and to have an entire kennel of ones saved from Hideous Fates.
Hank is so bad at explaining himself. :( And there's always the question of who, exactly, the Ebil Government would have gotten to do the dirty work Hank & co wouldn't have done, and then the farther question of what other dirty work would have been done. Marvel does not have a dearth of amoral mad scientist types. D: Of course, Thor isn't going to see it that way.
I'm so excited for this fic, you have no idea. \o/