vatrixsta replied to your post: Maybe it’s because I’m a fandom old, but I...
The other issue I'll bring up (as someone who both likes certain character bashing fics on a visceral, GP level and also finds them icky and am a little ashamed of enjoying them) is - where is the line here? I recall reading Twilight fics where Jacob was basically portrayed as a wife beating monster, over and over again, simply because he was the most obvious and easiest obstacle to put between the main pairing. The same is true in CS fandom for Neal and Milah (1/2)
particularly in AU fics. I think these fics are more noticeable because they are not part of a larger work and are not AUs - they are canon fics that exist solely to torture the character (while also hitting the GP smut button that we all share). Whether it’s right or wrong or tagged or not is a separate etiquette argument - but when you’re specifically talking about the /other to a ship you OTP, people aren’t really rational about “this is anti-Neal” tagging. Nearly (2/
(It’s just going to keep getting longer, stop me!!) every Twilight fic would have needed to be tagged anti-Jacob. (Spoiler alert: they were not) At any rate, I do think if you’re taking a character and writing them in a way that isn’t necessarily a canon interpretation, it’s fair game to tag it anti to allow people to filter as they choose. But can also see where people get so wrapped up in their interpretation that they’re like, why would I tag it anti-the Devil? Cuz duh
@vatrixsta That’s a good point, perspective matters, which is probably why I was like, clearly this is bashing and you just need to tag for it, and an author was like, I don’t really see this as neal bashing but ok. Like if you think it’s within the realm of canon that he would behave this way and think this way, then what’s the big deal? I think we all just need to be empathetic to other fans and try to think outside our bubbles.
The romantic obstacle thing is such a huge part of it. The place where i saw this kind of thing become the most toxic was in the Torchwood fandom, when fans feared that Gwen was going to be a romantic obstacle to Jack and Ianto, one of the first canon gay male pairings in a genre TV show that I’m aware of. Obviously a lot of fans were very attached to Jack x Ianto, understandably so, and that fear of Gwen as an obstacle (which she never turned out to be) turned bashing her in fic into a sport. Combine that with the fact that she’d committed adultery in the first season (even though she decided to stay with her husband), and that just added an ugly shut-shamey cherry on top of a misogynistic sundae. That’s where I saw a lot of “no character bashing” rules crop up, because the anti-Gwen fic genre was HUGE. Imagine being a fan of Torchwood and coming in and seeing that most of the fics were about how shitty the main female character was? *shudder* It was ugly.
