If the White Calf was famous with a big fanbase, what do you think the bad fandom takes™️ would be?
Speculating on the hypothetical of one's incomplete story having a major fandom and criticizing that imaginary fandom for imaginary bad takes is possibly the most pretentious, masturbatory exercise in the world and feels pathetic. But it IS also fun so thank you.
I ended up kinda broadening this into "bad fanon characterizations" and "sources of debate" rather than just "bad takes", and mostly just keeping it to character stuff rather than broader aspects of the story.
-Janeys would be the ‘he’s a woman to me’ (possibly at the expense of the 'man' in the main cast who actually for real is a woman) because he’s emotional and cries a lot and is kind of pathetic in general, which as we all know are Woman Traits. In order to more securely portray him as Babygirl, his fanon variant would be substantially more incompetent and less assertive than he actually is, and would often be an exclusive sub bottom in smut. In order to fit tropes as The Grumpy One he might be cast as kinda tsundere (extrapolated from him being irritable, though he is openly and sincerely affectionate).
He would be divisive for being basically impossible to interpret as anything but an asshole, though many of his supporters would rush to place the blame exclusively on his mother. There might even be occasional takes like "he doesn't hate women (more than average) he's just traumatized by his mother! Look at how much he respects his older sister, is proud to have family in an all-female priesthood, and occasionally values his wife's opinions! Could a misogynist do THAT?"
-Brakul would be woobified to shit. Fanon Brakul would be fucking unrecognizable. I already struggle with conveying how much of an asshole he is outside of description because he’s like, cute and fairly amicable. It’s much more apparent in the text but people will describe the most overtly vicious men their sweet baby lambie pookies who wouldn’t hurt a fly, so the gay guy who’s caring towards animals and children and is superficially less misogynist than most of his peers and calls his partner ‘darling’ sometimes has no chance of Not being mischaracterized. He would have the edges sanded off to fit into yaoi fanfiction tropes, sometimes cast as like this ray of sunshine (rather than, at best, "chill"). He also might be mischaracterized as dumber than he is and get called a himbo (dude is actually pretty damn smart).
Brakul and Janeys both get compared to dogs by other people as a means of degrading them, and have the most in-your-face interactions with the Dog Motif (there's kinda a core theme of unease surrounding ambiguities between in-group and Other that relate to other core themes about animal-human relationships, dogs occupy that thematic space as animals that have this cultural unease about them in that hard lines can't Really be drawn between 'loyal hound' 'lowly scavenger' and 'sinister maneater'). It should be hard to interpret the characters being compared to dogs (always by other people rather than the narrative) as about anything but Othering, but BRBAverse fandom (among other things) has taught me that characters being dehumanized by dog comparisons can and will be interpreted as "omg dog motif.. it means he is loyal and submissive like a hound he's so doggy". Janeys would probably be chosen as The Dog Guy because 'intensely loyal to loved ones' and 'being protective' are more significant character traits of his, and there would be text posts eroticizing how he's like a guard dog <3 and drawings of him with dog ears and etc.
-Hibrides is a woman and ‘in the way’ of a gay relationship so she’s like, fucked. And also she’s not a great person, not in ways that are particularly outstanding or unique to her but she’s a woman so she’s fucked. And she’s capable of abusive behavior and seizes opportunities to wield power over other people for a sense of control and psychological gratification, nothing outstanding compared to the guy who has spent half a decade wounding and guilt tripping her for failing at motherhood and for emotionally divorcing him, or her husband (who effectively owns her) having a history of casual cruelty towards her that only toned down to treating her like a full human being once she clicked into the ‘female family member’ space in his brain, but again she’s the Woman One so she’s fucked. She would absolutely be demonized by a significant part of the fandom.
On the other end, some people defending her would probably overcorrect to treating her like She Has Legitimately Done Nothing Wrong and sanding off all her edges (particularly ignoring that she is Notable for classism among her peers of also classist nobility, something that has absolutely fuck all to do with anything she’s gone through) because like women simply CANNOT be full people they have to be either the good innocent victims or evil monstrous bitches.
In general I'd imagine some people would miss the memo that being married to a gay man does absolutely Nothing to make Hibrides' material conditions fundamentally different from any other noblewomen (given that lavender marriage in queer fantasy/historical lit tends to be treated as if it's some panacea to repressive gendered relations and the historical purposes of marriage), and this would lend difficulties to interpreting some aspects of her character. She's still functionally a man's property and has extremely limited autonomy apart from her husband and has had a pretty shitty time with all this, and a massive, MASSIVE aspect of her characterization is how she fully accepts this as normal (it Is "normal") and stakes her sense of dignity on Dealing With It, seeing women who express pain at their circumstances as weak and childish while trying to quash down any weakness in herself, while also feeling desperation to have a real sense of control over her life and the world/people around her and seizing any opportunities to do so.
(She would of course have many defenders. Might be drawn killing Janeys in both jokey fanart and serious Judith Slaying Holofernes type paintings. Which is OOC because if she wanted to kill him she'd leverage someone else into doing it.)
-Hibrides/Brakul’s relationship in general would be a fucking quagmire because there’s no way to posit either as THEE one and only victim between the two of them, which I have seen to be a scenario that large swathes of fandom simply cannot handle. It would mostly be Hibrides posited as The Abuser for above reasons but among The Opposition there would be some inaccurate gauging of Brakul's circumstances as more privileged than they actually are (he's at the bottom end of class power differentials, he has no other support network outside of this relationship, and did ultimately get coerced (as in initial objections being worn down by persuasion) into being the semen donor to protect his partner's marriage like he Was sexually exploited and this Did affect him badly).
-Couya is autistic and I think this will be Extremely evident (both in how she behaves and how much childhood abuse revolving around presumed cognitive disability informs her character, and how both of her siblings treat her). Which would probably lead to some fandom infantilization of her, attributing a lot of her character arc to being manipulated by others and generally not engaging her as a grown ass independent adult in her 30s. Would probably be hit with the classic 'barely knows what sex is' apropos of basically nothing. In particular I think she'd be characterized as poorer at understanding social cues than she actually is (she enjoys being in a position of respect and power as a priest where she can push the boundaries of etiquette that annoys her without facing many real consequences, and at least tries to Convey that she doesn't give a fuck what other people think of her).
I actually cannot think of any examples of a character who is coded as transmasculine in a similar capacity so I don't have a solid stance on what fandom takes on Couya would be. Though judging by conversations surrounding historical "women who passed themselves as men" (this doesn't fit her but it's an okayish analogue) I think there'd be a lottttttt of debate over whether she's a butch woman or transmasculine/a trans man with people feeling very strongly that there Is absolutely one clean answer (in her particular case the answer is "yeag" because her relation to gender is too culturally specific to put a tidy LGBT label on it beyond "under the wide umbrella of 'trans'" and "not a man" (basically treating 'Odonii' as a gender. Like not 'a woman with a specific job with specific requirements' but something different from 'a woman' while not completely apart from 'womanhood' either)).
-Masculinity is a prison for Palo and one he’s experiencing a reprieve from with a combination of giddiness and fear, sometimes attempting to reassert masculinity in very defensive ways and trying to distance himself from transfeminized subjects, but near-explicitly wishing he could be an “actual woman”. So, naturally, there would be some people headcanoning him as a trans man and seeing his discomfort over 'not being a woman' as internalized transphobia (fandoms at large have never let the source material govern their interpretations of the source material so I don't think him explicitly being A Eunuch would outright prevent that). Less dramatically there would probably be some of the usual handwringing on how a feminine 'man' doesn't HAVE to be a woman (in response to people picking up on the fairly obvious hints that Palo is actually for real a woman whose egg is in the process of cracking).
-Tigran would probably be somewhat infantilized (beyond reasonably recognizing him as a bit immature and also just the youngest main character at 19 years old). I can see him being an instance of fanon interpreting The Mask as The Character. He's a pretty chipper guy who is genuinely blasé about a lot of horrible things (has kinda low affective empathy which is part of it), but he goes to great lengths to convince himself and others that he's unaffected by things that Actually Really Bother Him. He also will intentionally play dumb in some situations and sometimes do dumb shit because he has some troubles regulating himself. I get the impression he could be mischaracterized as dumber, happier, and goofier than he is, and be used as a lolrandom comic relief character.
-I haven’t found any opportunity to organically imply Faiza is aroace with any sort of specificity (you just see her not seeming to reciprocate Stawis' one-sided + exclusively emotional affair with her in the same way, and sneering at people for wanting the services of sex workers while on a pilgrimage (which technically relates due to her ascribing her disinterest in sex to intellectual superiority) but this is anything but unambiguous). But there’s definitely people who would pick up on it, and thus people who would be INSISTENT that she's not, based on zero textual evidence of any interest in sex/romance beyond that just being the presumed norm.
-In general, no one’s sexuality is explicitly stated (obviously) and for most of them (with the exception of Janeys) it will be fairly ambiguous, so I imagine that could be a source of fandom conflict. Brakul and Hibrides in particular since they are at least superficially bisexual (Brakul's sexuality is ambiguous beyond liking men, even to himself, but Hibrides is a lesbian).
-people vastly overestimating how many Odonii are queer (not an unreasonable mistake given the two main Odonii characters Are, but I also do tend to see a lot of all-female priesthoods/celibate female priestly roles being treated as a Queer Thing in fantasy) or possibly misidentifying it as its own gender space on a cultural level. Also maybe expressing confusion that most of the empowered female priests they see are bog-standard misogynists.
-Janeys/Faiza incest ship, which wouldn’t be Completely off-base if the source was from people identifying how there were clear forms of sexual abuse within the Haidamane family that mostly fell on Janeys (not the types commonly identified as ‘incest’ but the kinds that are performed quite openly, sexualized policing of a child’s body and behavior), that their relationship involves 1-sided emotional dependency and adoration which is actively being fostered, and just reading the potential for forms of sexual abuse into that dynamic. That's not accurate but it's not an insane stretch. But I’m imagining the more typical “these siblings display affection towards each other - does that mean they want to fuck?”
On the opposite end, a few people very bravely taking a stand on how it’s Kinda Uncomfy that Janeys and Brakul insistently refer to each other as brothers, not even just 'brother' in a ye olde 'bro' sort of way but 'my brother' when talking about each other to 3rd parties. #Is this problematic
Or people very bravely taking a stand against Hibrides and Couya's romantic interest because they are considered immediate family within this society's kinship system.
