crosspost: woobies and arrows [Nov 2012]
Dec. 13th, 2018 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI recently listened to some guy reviewing ATLA, which was … okayish, but I found myself getting progressively more annoyed as he talked about Azula. He looooved Iroh’s “she’s crazy and needs to go down” and went on a tangent during “The Beach” about how her preoccupation with her mother couldn’t explain much if anything about her development, because she was evil even as a small child, so obviously she’s just an inherently awful crazy person for no reason.
Then he kept going BAD FANDOM, STOP WOOBIFYING HER when she did awful things, and completely ignored her collapse in the finale, which is actually where she wins the most sympathy. There’s a brief reference to her paranoia, but not to “you can’t treat me like Zuko,” not to mirror!Ursa, not to her sobbing on the ground.
I’ve talked before about why I’m uncomfortable with a lot of anti-woobification arguments, but I have to say, a man railing against fandom woobifying a teenage girl is a different dynamic, and far more uncomfortable than the usual.
(The fact that the same man defends Sokka’s sexism and points to his defense as the Right Way To Do Fandom, condemns Zuko fans despite being one himself [but not an icky fanfic-writing fangirl who just thinks he’s hot!], and criticizes Katara at every turn while admitting that it probably makes him sound sexist, doesn’t really help.)
Anyway! I’ve seen other guys (and to be fair, plenty of women, too) loudly wondering why women tend to prefer nastier fictional characters to pleasanter ones. Not Nice Guys, as such, though Nice Guy-ism often shows up in the arguments (e.g. Borra shippers, when Bolin didn’t “deserve” Korra for being a good friend to her—people do not deserve other people). We’re talking legitimately upstanding, heroic folks whose faults do not dilute their basic goodness. They’re often liked, but not with anything like the fervour that deeply flawed heroes or sympathetic villains tend to be.
Now, I’m not sure that most of the people asking about this are actually interested in an answer. But the most recent round of “but why don’t women like the niceguys fictional characters :( :( :(” brought my creative writing classes to mind.
I’m a writing minor and I’ve transferred between four colleges, so I’ve taken a lot of different classes in different places from very different people. Most of my profs have very different opinions about things and give different advice. But one of the things they’ve tended to agree on is arrows.
The arrows they’re talking about are the features of a character that point them in some direction. We can be talking about motivation, but also other things, like backstory or personality traits—e.g., free-spirited + curious + dashing + adventurous, taken together, all point towards “swashbuckler.” And my profs always said that characters tend to be more appealing when the arrows are NOT all pointing in the same direction; with a reverse arrow, one that goes against the tendency of the others, it’s unexpected, there’s a resistance, a tension with the general tendency, and a certain degree of unpredictability. (Suppose the swashbuckler is committed to nonviolence.)
Now, I want to clarify that this isn’t just about not writing stereotypes, or being rounded or well-developed. A character can be complex, but nevertheless their features fall neatly together and we’re never really surprised by some reverse arrow pushing them in a way we didn’t expect. Elizabeth Bennet, say: once we know what she’s like, nothing she thinks or does really comes as a surprise. What’s unexpected are the situations that arise, mostly due to Darcy doing something (and he is very unpredictable for most readers).
Also! Sometimes, reverse arrows don’t work and just come off as breaking the established character (to go with Austen again, a lot of people since Mansfield Park’s publication have felt that Henry Crawford’s affair with Maria and/or Mary Crawford’s blithe hope that her lover’s older brother would die were incompatible with their characters).
But when it’s done well, it tends to be really appealing to a lot of people, and it tends to be anti-heroes and anti-villains. Take Han Solo. A swaggering pilot who shoots a bounty hunter without warning, then casually pays for the inconvenience—that all basically points in the same direction. It points at an attractive type, even. But I’m pretty sure he would never have been as popular as he was if not for the layers of genuine heroism and deep personal loyalty, which clash with the other side of his character (yay, conflict!) without ever feeling inconsistent with it.
Similarly, Korra ostensibly disarming Tarrlok, earthbending the floor for no reason except to terrify him, and then NOT immobilizing him with earthbending but trying to burn him alive, is the moment that draws a lot of people’s attention. Not because it doesn’t make sense for her. It does. She’s an aggressive person and she gets carried away by her need to prove how powerful she is, and she’s spent the entire episode locked in a power-play with a man equally prone to grandiose displays of power, and equally likely to escalate when crossed, but much more calculating. But at the same time, “aggressive, asskicking hero” does not naturally gel with “attempted murder.”
I think this is why people liked Amon from pretty much the very first. Doling out vigilante justice against triad members, leading a terrorist campaign against the city, whipping up hatred by way of violent rhetoric, maiming innocent people, and deliberately terrorizing a teenage girl are not each integral to his villainy, but they all fit neatly with it. Articulating legitimate complaints against the power structure of the city that nobody else is willing to voice but which seems to resonate with vast numbers of people doesn’t point in the same direction—again, it’s not at all inconsistent with the rest of his character, it just stands out from the other stuff because it’s different. A lot of the fandom was left going, “well, of course his methods are awful, but he’s actually making good points and I… uh, kind of agree with him? What is this? OMG IT’S AWESOME.”
I could give plenty of other examples (Loki! Snape! Zuko and Azula! Prince Hal, lol, his arrows go every which way) but I think it’s pretty clear. We tend to like it when not everything about a character fits neatly together, we like some messiness, as long as it doesn’t pass whatever threshold we’re willing to accept.
AND ANOTHER THING. One flaw among a multitude of other flaws is not all that noticeable, or one virtue among a host of virtues; whatever it is that jars with the other stuff is what tends to draw attention.
So for the more heroic ones, fans tend to be preoccupied by their darker sides, displays of viciousness or ruthlessness or whatever (see “Han Shot First”; it happens with Hal a lot, too). But when we’re talking about a villain or just a generally antagonistic character, fans home in on the softer, sympathetic elements. It’s not all that surprising.
It’s not even that it’s always really flawed heroes/really sympathetic villains, though it generally is, as they’re probably the easiest to write that way. For instance, back in the Stewardist corner of LOTR fandom, it was Faramir who was the fandom darling, much more than the morally ambiguous but also more straightforwardly characterized Boromir. And as I remember, the two moments that we tended to home in on?
‘So it seems,’ said Faramir, slowly and very softly, with a strange smile. 'So that is the answer to all the riddles! The One Ring that was thought to have perished from the world. And Boromir tried to take it by force? And you escaped? And ran all the way – to me! And here in the wild I have you: two halflings, and a host of men at my call, and the Ring of Rings. A pretty stroke of fortune! A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality! Ha!’
and
“For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.”
For a moment Faramir’s restraint gave way. “I would ask you, my father, to remember, why it was that I, not he, was in Ithilien. On one occasion at least your counsel has prevailed, not long ago. It was the Lord of the City that gave the errand to him.”
And let’s be real, Faramir is leagues away from an anti-hero of any stripe. He’s noble and upstanding and brave and clever and wise and strong. But his darker moments are still what stood out to the fandom, and if feels had been a phrase at the time, I’m sure we’d have been overflowing with them.
So really, I think imprinting on characters that contain multitudes, highlighting particular qualities at the expense of others, and those qualities being the ones that stand out from the basic tendency of the character, is … just people being people, and not really some inexplicable activity of strange deviant fangirls.
Then he kept going BAD FANDOM, STOP WOOBIFYING HER when she did awful things, and completely ignored her collapse in the finale, which is actually where she wins the most sympathy. There’s a brief reference to her paranoia, but not to “you can’t treat me like Zuko,” not to mirror!Ursa, not to her sobbing on the ground.
I’ve talked before about why I’m uncomfortable with a lot of anti-woobification arguments, but I have to say, a man railing against fandom woobifying a teenage girl is a different dynamic, and far more uncomfortable than the usual.
(The fact that the same man defends Sokka’s sexism and points to his defense as the Right Way To Do Fandom, condemns Zuko fans despite being one himself [but not an icky fanfic-writing fangirl who just thinks he’s hot!], and criticizes Katara at every turn while admitting that it probably makes him sound sexist, doesn’t really help.)
Anyway! I’ve seen other guys (and to be fair, plenty of women, too) loudly wondering why women tend to prefer nastier fictional characters to pleasanter ones. Not Nice Guys, as such, though Nice Guy-ism often shows up in the arguments (e.g. Borra shippers, when Bolin didn’t “deserve” Korra for being a good friend to her—people do not deserve other people). We’re talking legitimately upstanding, heroic folks whose faults do not dilute their basic goodness. They’re often liked, but not with anything like the fervour that deeply flawed heroes or sympathetic villains tend to be.
Now, I’m not sure that most of the people asking about this are actually interested in an answer. But the most recent round of “but why don’t women like the nice
I’m a writing minor and I’ve transferred between four colleges, so I’ve taken a lot of different classes in different places from very different people. Most of my profs have very different opinions about things and give different advice. But one of the things they’ve tended to agree on is arrows.
The arrows they’re talking about are the features of a character that point them in some direction. We can be talking about motivation, but also other things, like backstory or personality traits—e.g., free-spirited + curious + dashing + adventurous, taken together, all point towards “swashbuckler.” And my profs always said that characters tend to be more appealing when the arrows are NOT all pointing in the same direction; with a reverse arrow, one that goes against the tendency of the others, it’s unexpected, there’s a resistance, a tension with the general tendency, and a certain degree of unpredictability. (Suppose the swashbuckler is committed to nonviolence.)
Now, I want to clarify that this isn’t just about not writing stereotypes, or being rounded or well-developed. A character can be complex, but nevertheless their features fall neatly together and we’re never really surprised by some reverse arrow pushing them in a way we didn’t expect. Elizabeth Bennet, say: once we know what she’s like, nothing she thinks or does really comes as a surprise. What’s unexpected are the situations that arise, mostly due to Darcy doing something (and he is very unpredictable for most readers).
Also! Sometimes, reverse arrows don’t work and just come off as breaking the established character (to go with Austen again, a lot of people since Mansfield Park’s publication have felt that Henry Crawford’s affair with Maria and/or Mary Crawford’s blithe hope that her lover’s older brother would die were incompatible with their characters).
But when it’s done well, it tends to be really appealing to a lot of people, and it tends to be anti-heroes and anti-villains. Take Han Solo. A swaggering pilot who shoots a bounty hunter without warning, then casually pays for the inconvenience—that all basically points in the same direction. It points at an attractive type, even. But I’m pretty sure he would never have been as popular as he was if not for the layers of genuine heroism and deep personal loyalty, which clash with the other side of his character (yay, conflict!) without ever feeling inconsistent with it.
Similarly, Korra ostensibly disarming Tarrlok, earthbending the floor for no reason except to terrify him, and then NOT immobilizing him with earthbending but trying to burn him alive, is the moment that draws a lot of people’s attention. Not because it doesn’t make sense for her. It does. She’s an aggressive person and she gets carried away by her need to prove how powerful she is, and she’s spent the entire episode locked in a power-play with a man equally prone to grandiose displays of power, and equally likely to escalate when crossed, but much more calculating. But at the same time, “aggressive, asskicking hero” does not naturally gel with “attempted murder.”
I think this is why people liked Amon from pretty much the very first. Doling out vigilante justice against triad members, leading a terrorist campaign against the city, whipping up hatred by way of violent rhetoric, maiming innocent people, and deliberately terrorizing a teenage girl are not each integral to his villainy, but they all fit neatly with it. Articulating legitimate complaints against the power structure of the city that nobody else is willing to voice but which seems to resonate with vast numbers of people doesn’t point in the same direction—again, it’s not at all inconsistent with the rest of his character, it just stands out from the other stuff because it’s different. A lot of the fandom was left going, “well, of course his methods are awful, but he’s actually making good points and I… uh, kind of agree with him? What is this? OMG IT’S AWESOME.”
I could give plenty of other examples (Loki! Snape! Zuko and Azula! Prince Hal, lol, his arrows go every which way) but I think it’s pretty clear. We tend to like it when not everything about a character fits neatly together, we like some messiness, as long as it doesn’t pass whatever threshold we’re willing to accept.
AND ANOTHER THING. One flaw among a multitude of other flaws is not all that noticeable, or one virtue among a host of virtues; whatever it is that jars with the other stuff is what tends to draw attention.
So for the more heroic ones, fans tend to be preoccupied by their darker sides, displays of viciousness or ruthlessness or whatever (see “Han Shot First”; it happens with Hal a lot, too). But when we’re talking about a villain or just a generally antagonistic character, fans home in on the softer, sympathetic elements. It’s not all that surprising.
It’s not even that it’s always really flawed heroes/really sympathetic villains, though it generally is, as they’re probably the easiest to write that way. For instance, back in the Stewardist corner of LOTR fandom, it was Faramir who was the fandom darling, much more than the morally ambiguous but also more straightforwardly characterized Boromir. And as I remember, the two moments that we tended to home in on?
‘So it seems,’ said Faramir, slowly and very softly, with a strange smile. 'So that is the answer to all the riddles! The One Ring that was thought to have perished from the world. And Boromir tried to take it by force? And you escaped? And ran all the way – to me! And here in the wild I have you: two halflings, and a host of men at my call, and the Ring of Rings. A pretty stroke of fortune! A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality! Ha!’
and
“For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.”
For a moment Faramir’s restraint gave way. “I would ask you, my father, to remember, why it was that I, not he, was in Ithilien. On one occasion at least your counsel has prevailed, not long ago. It was the Lord of the City that gave the errand to him.”
And let’s be real, Faramir is leagues away from an anti-hero of any stripe. He’s noble and upstanding and brave and clever and wise and strong. But his darker moments are still what stood out to the fandom, and if feels had been a phrase at the time, I’m sure we’d have been overflowing with them.
So really, I think imprinting on characters that contain multitudes, highlighting particular qualities at the expense of others, and those qualities being the ones that stand out from the basic tendency of the character, is … just people being people, and not really some inexplicable activity of strange deviant fangirls.