It's not a problem in fandom because every fan is in love with the characters they're writing.
It certainly is less of a problem although I don't think fandom is without writers who lack empathy for their characters. In XF, for example, there are writers who love Mulder and dislike Scully, for example, and vice-versa. For me, the best example of this is Tesla's Mulder/Other stories, especially "Flight," but also to a lesser extent "Neither Here Nor There." Even in "This House Is Burning," which I love, Mulder is the star of the show. Scully really doesn't get much to do that's terribly interesting other than moon over Mulder and have really hot sex with him. Scully is written pretty sympathetically in the last two stories, but I still don't love and believe in Tesla's Scully the way I do tree's, to name just one example.
And I don't think you have to love your characters to treat them fairly as a writer; moreover, loving a character is no guarantee of empathy. There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the writers of extreme Mulder torture stories love Mulder but surely they couldn't empathize with him and still write what they do? In order to write those scenes, they must be able to create far more distance from the character than I am able as either a writer or a reader. It's probably useful to be able to do that: otherwise, a writer can't dig as deeply. That's kind of paradoxical. It's probably not true for every writer, either. Oh, well.
This is really off in left field but I also think causing pain, whether mental or physical, to a character has a different meaning to some writers (and readers) than it does to others. I'm still stuck in the problem of torture in fan fiction. It's a real squick for me, as you can tell. It's just that some stories seem to be written for the sole purpose of hurting the characters. Let's have Mulder give himself up to a sexual sadist so I can write chapter after chapter of vivid descriptions of rape and abuse and see what happens to him. Even stories that have the characters do stupid things make me queasy, because they seem to have been written just in order to humiliate the characters. Usually, the writers want to torture Mulder and humiliate Scully. I don't know what this means, but it does disturb me, maybe more than it ought.
In any case, Mulder, Scully and Doggett are all treated very sympathetically and fairly by the writers of "The Fractured Landscape," despite the POV being Mulder's alone (I think).
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winterfish
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Date: 2009-09-05 05:08 pm (UTC)It certainly is less of a problem although I don't think fandom is without writers who lack empathy for their characters. In XF, for example, there are writers who love Mulder and dislike Scully, for example, and vice-versa. For me, the best example of this is Tesla's Mulder/Other stories, especially "Flight," but also to a lesser extent "Neither Here Nor There." Even in "This House Is Burning," which I love, Mulder is the star of the show. Scully really doesn't get much to do that's terribly interesting other than moon over Mulder and have really hot sex with him. Scully is written pretty sympathetically in the last two stories, but I still don't love and believe in Tesla's Scully the way I do tree's, to name just one example.
And I don't think you have to love your characters to treat them fairly as a writer; moreover, loving a character is no guarantee of empathy. There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the writers of extreme Mulder torture stories love Mulder but surely they couldn't empathize with him and still write what they do? In order to write those scenes, they must be able to create far more distance from the character than I am able as either a writer or a reader. It's probably useful to be able to do that: otherwise, a writer can't dig as deeply. That's kind of paradoxical. It's probably not true for every writer, either. Oh, well.
This is really off in left field but I also think causing pain, whether mental or physical, to a character has a different meaning to some writers (and readers) than it does to others. I'm still stuck in the problem of torture in fan fiction. It's a real squick for me, as you can tell. It's just that some stories seem to be written for the sole purpose of hurting the characters. Let's have Mulder give himself up to a sexual sadist so I can write chapter after chapter of vivid descriptions of rape and abuse and see what happens to him. Even stories that have the characters do stupid things make me queasy, because they seem to have been written just in order to humiliate the characters. Usually, the writers want to torture Mulder and humiliate Scully. I don't know what this means, but it does disturb me, maybe more than it ought.
In any case, Mulder, Scully and Doggett are all treated very sympathetically and fairly by the writers of "The Fractured Landscape," despite the POV being Mulder's alone (I think).