astridv | (no subject)

Another reason I'm glad I'm not on Tumblr. Hang in there.

Tumblr skews very young, plus the whole setup encourages mindless reblogging and black-and-white thinking, I think. I'm not crazy about the amount of people who use a twisted view of social justice as a crude club to win fandom arguments. But there's also a lot of good meta, and all the shiny gifsets, and it's this fandom's main hangout, so I guess tumblr is where I'm gonna be for the foreseeable future.

Still... there are times I just want to bash my head against the keyboard. Two days ago or so I started bookmarking the most idiotic anti-ward posts. Apart from the whole nazi-apologist accusations and similar stuff, there are a few gems. Like today I saw this:

Things people should probably do:
Stop shipping Ward with Skye
Stop shipping Ward with May
Stop shipping Ward with Raina
Stop shipping a Nazi with women of colour

and this

there should be laws against the kind of people who like and believe in Grant Ward, beause there is nothing good about them.

and the other day someone said if she saw someone compare Ward to Bucky she'll "nail their foot to the floor". (I sure as hell want to see her come here and try.) Those are the kind of people who claim the moral high ground. Thank god tumblr comes with a built-in ignore feature, at least. I had over 70 people blocked in the past month.

Yikes.

Tip of the iceberg. ;)

I'm totally baffled. These people really can't have been in fandom long. I mean, it's not that I think some sort of ideological opposition even makes sense in Ward's case, but if you go around fandom like that, you are bound to exhaust yourself with outrage without it having much of any of the political or social impact you want to have. Like HP fandom is full of death eater ideology apologia fanfic that reframes the HP universe to make the pureblood wizard ideology have some valid basis. Also is shipping Voldemort left and right. Sometimes with children, like I've seen fanfic that was explicit Harry/Voldemort with Harry before Hogwarts as prepubescent...

Of course due to sheer size *anything* has a following in HP and its opposite too.

Not all are new, some have been in fandom for a while. Some people just get their kicks out of harrassing others in the name of Righteousness and have been at it for a while. It's like a fandom in itself.

You know what the best thing is? One of the major things they hate about Ward is that he's a white guy, right? So, sometimes I click on the tumblrs of these people before I add them to my ignore list and, well, there's a really good chance the blog is gonna be filled with their favorite white guy. I saw several Loki fans. I saw one Spike fan; her icon was even of Spike.

I dunno how their brains don't implode. cognitive dissonance? My theory is that there's some overcompensating going on.

My theory is that there's some overcompensating going on.

It seems really pointless to get outraged over what pairing or character does things for people. I mean, obviously popularity of pairings and characters has a political dimension as society is sexist, racist, etc. etc. but you can't argue with what gets people off (and I'd include the gen id-fic and even narrative comfort food type of storytelling that is much of all fanfic in that category) on ideological grounds.

I have actually tried this as self-improvement project on myself as an outraged baby-feminist from my mid-to-late teens to early twenties, i.e. to limit myself in my voluntary fictional reading to books written by women with female protagonists, because I was appalled how much more I seemed to like and identify with male characters, and I wanted to retrain my preferences. It didn't stick. Actually finding fanfic was the death knell to that project. I read a lot of cool lesbian and feminist genre fiction those years (and I still like it especially for original SF), and it certainly made me far more aware of all the ways fiction can be problematic, but my favorite genre characters skew still overwhelmingly male, and in porn I still get most reliably off on things that are appalling ideologically...

It is kind of a hen-egg problem, that people in a patriarchy will have narrative and sexual kinks (like the ideas of what constitutes heroism or romance) that reinforce patriarchy, same for racist ideologies. I've basically reconciled myself to a position that I try to be aware of how problematic some of my preferences are (rather than get stuck in defensive denial mode), and try to be positive towards fiction that is progressive (like more diverse or not blindly fetishizing militaristic warrior culture or whatever), but that I'm not going to beat myself up for enjoying what I enjoy unless it hurts someone in a more direct way than that it is part of the systemic perpetuation of oppressive ideology or such.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Okay, for me it's a bit different since I've always craved for both men and women to attach to in my media, and I think that's why I tend to gravitate towards ensemble canons where I have the best chance of finding both at the same time. Anyway. Yeah. You can not, will not, guilt people into changing the things their id desires. I'll just quote the post I made a while ago:

...I’ve in the past spoken up against the denigration of female characters. Actually I’ve lost a good chunk of my LJ friends list over that issue, and I stand behind every word I said. But I don’t think that denigrating male characters is the answer to that problem. In my opinion, the answer lies in promoting fanworks about female characters. Writing fic. Drawing fanart. Reccing those works. Commenting. Exchanges. In calling out unfair character bashing. But I’m not going to choose between fangirling female characters and fangirling male ones. I want both.

Of course I believe that many of those fans don't actualy want to change things; they want to feel superior. That's what this is about, imho.

Yeah, I agree that it doesn't look like any positive changes are the goal of fans who act like that.

Yep. If it were the case they'd be, for example, writing fic about Akela Amador instead of accusing Ward fans of not writing fic for Akela Amador. They're pretty easy to spot, that way.

I felt like Holst, although clearly having his own agenda, wasn't that much any worse than a lot of parents in that he actually raised Connor pretty well while also trying to imbue him with his own values. Admittedly, he was a kidnapper, the whole being an enemy of Angel (for entirely valid reasons) plus Connor is the special vampire's son complicated the issue, and then he was horrifically manipulative by killing himself to frame Angel, but I never felt he brainwashed Connor. If he had, he might not have had to be so manipulative? ...which is probably pretty much beside the point, except that I bet being a Holst fan wouldn't have been all that much fun either. Though he's much more unambiguously a villain...but there's enough ambiguity there to be interesting.

Anyway! What I really wanted to say was that it would be really awesome if there was a Holst and Connor vid set to Heather Dale's Mordred's Lullaby.

Guileless son, I'll shape your belief...

Holtz. I would have made a terrible fan.

Also, I think the word I was looking for was antagonist, not villain.

No man, that was brainwashing. He took him from his support system, isolated him completely and filled his head with his own ideology, causing him to turn on his own family. It's brainwashing to a t.

Now I'm in the mood for Connor vids, btw.

(eta: Not that Holtz didn't have ample reason to hate Angel. He did! But what he did to Connor was vile.)

Edited 2014-05-18 22:23 (UTC)

My thoughts have been flip-flopping ever since I started thinking about this, which is I think part of what I like about Holtz as a character. I have no real idea what to think overall.

I'm hardly an expert on brainwashing. It just struck me as an odd word, I guess mostly because I think of brainwashing as erasing something that's there and replacing it with something else, and babies don't have a lot of already formedness to them.

And as for what Holtz did to Connor, I believe there was some real father/son feeling on Holtz's side, that there would have to be under those circumstances, and that he really thought Connor was better off not being raised by his father the vampire. Not that it makes up for any of the horribleness of trying to make Connor be a weapon of hate, but it does make him to some degree truly Connor's father, for better or worse.

And that makes manipulating/betraying Connor for the sake of his dead family that much worse, really...

Yeah, maybe I can't exactly be a Holtz fan after all. That's a really unpleasant choice to make, valuing revenge for the dead over the living. I still think he's great as a character, though.

I think taking Connor was partly done in retribution for Angel killing his family, and partly to use him as an ally. But no, that doesn't mean anyone can't be a fan of Holtz! He was human. Angel hurt him in the worst way possible, and his actions are understandable. That's what makes all these characters so interesting... they are layered, and they are flawed.

Oh, yes, but I'm not sure I can, Holtz is layered but maybe too flawed for me in the end...though I suppose there are different kinds of being a fan for different kinds of characters. I sort of want to write a Holtz raising Connor story now.

I am exhausted just on the fringes on all of this. I'm trying to keep me and my opinions on the inside of my own walls and not get drawn in, because my head will explode from anger. I empathize with the characters who were betrayed but I also want a Ward redemption story like burning.

There is definitely a mob-mentality going on with regard to the Ward-hate. It's "in" to hate him, so that's what people do, even people who I think would otherwise be more neutral. Or who actually like him but don't want to admit it because he's the "boring white dude-bro" that the social justice folks have chosen to dump on, so they don't want to be "bad" people for liking him.

I'm also having very strong "fuck off, you don't deserve them" feelings about all the people who said the show wasn't worth watching at the beginning and stopped and are now coming back, now that it's "good." They still bash the early episodes, as if they are universally terrible, without I think, having seen them. It's another "in" thing to do. Or that's how it feels.

I understand YMMV for everyone and all that, but I love this show so much that I can't help but want to yell at everyone that if you don't like it, don't watch it, and quit talking about it as if you've actually watched it, because we are clearly not watching the same show. Obviously that is an irrational response, but ugh, people are killing me.

Sorry to rant in your journal. This fandom, man.

Total agreement on everything!

There is definitely a mob-mentality going on with regard to the Ward-hate. It's "in" to hate him, so that's what people do, even people who I think would otherwise be more neutral. Or who actually like him but don't want to admit it because he's the "boring white dude-bro" that the social justice folks have chosen to dump on, so they don't want to be "bad" people for liking him.

I think that's true, and that's actually why I'm in there on occasion, getting my hands dirty. 'Cuz I don't want that perverted ideology to take over the fandom and ruin it for those of us who still love the character, understand where he comes from, and hope for his redemption.

I'm also having very strong "fuck off, you don't deserve them" feelings about all the people who said the show wasn't worth watching at the beginning and stopped and are now coming back, now that it's "good."

At the moment I'm so riled up about the Ward haters that I can barely muster an eyeroll for these people, but, yeah. :)

I understand YMMV for everyone and all that, but I love this show so much that I can't help but want to yell at everyone that if you don't like it, don't watch it, and quit talking about it as if you've actually watched it, because we are clearly not watching the same show. Obviously that is an irrational response, but ugh, people are killing me.

and now it's way past my bedtime and my brain's getting frazzled but, yes! I really want people who admittedly don't watch the show, or have watched only the occasional episode, to shut up about the show. If you want to voice your opinion about a canon, at least do some basic homework and watch the frikking canon
1

igottagotobed...

My feelings on Ward are pretty complex! Like, he's unabashedly Hydra, unabashedly bad, and event he kind of guy who is just plain mean when he thinks he has the upper hand, but he's not irredeemable. He has feelings, and he's not a one-dimensional character. He's hellishly complicated.

Will they go there and redeem him? I don't know. If they do, I hope they do it well. (They did it so badly in TVD with Damon. SO BADLY.) Will they keep him like Crais or Scorpius or Grayza in Farscape, where he's a bad person, but not a one note character. I could live with that. I'm fond of the moral complexity of the bad guy working with the good guys because necessity demands it.

I feel SO BAD for the Ward fans. He has never been my favorite on the show (though I never hated him), but I've had too many of my favorite characters die not to feel empathy for fans Ward.

Will they go there and redeem him? I don't know. If they do, I hope they do it well. (They did it so badly in TVD with Damon. SO BADLY.)

The final few episode are clearly setting up a redemption arc imo. There's just a little part of me worried that the writers won't follow through just to mess with us, just because they can. Just to be edgy again. If that happens, I don't know if I can keep watching the show but for now there's nothing to do but wait and see how it plays out.

I haven't watched TVD since season three or so so I don't know how they handled Damon's story, but after this season I do have some trust (for now) in the Shield writers' abilities. Even though they screwed up my favorite character... at least they did it right, and did it well.

I feel SO BAD for the Ward fans. He has never been my favorite on the show (though I never hated him), but I've had too many of my favorite characters die not to feel empathy for fans Ward.

I really wish there were more people like you in this fandom. I can't tell how much I wish all those smug self-righteous folks who fling insults at us for falling in love with the 'wrong' character that someday something like that will happen to a character they love. And when that day comes, I will try very hard to be civil and not pay them back in the same coin.

I have a friend whom I dearly adore who, today, started slagging off Skye and I nearly wanted to scream. I adore Skye, she and Melinda are tied for favorite regular on that series, and. and. Argh.

ANYWAY. They maybe are setting up a redemption arc for Ward! I find myself curious to see what they do and I hope that, if you're right, they do it in a really solid, gradual way so that we can see the progress and occasional backslide. I hope that you get your wish!

I'm sorry they screwed up Ward for you! I'm also sorry the fandom has been on the Ward fans' cases, because the ones I've seen haven't been woobiefying him.

Did you see this that came out on metanews: Everyone Hates Grant Ward: Strung Up By Your Own Bootstraps. It's not an anti-Ward post! It does take a look at his fall from good-guy-dom and explains where and why and how the system - and HYDRA - failed him. I found it fairly sympathetic without excusing him.

Don't get me started on the Skye hate! From the very beginning she was getting hate and called a Mary Sue, and I was always getting the impression that those people were watching an entirely different show. I think they saw that she was young and pretty, heard her name, and pegged her as "Mary Sue" without reflecting.

And even now, after all the character development she's gone through and all the skills she's picked up through hard work and dedication, she still gets called useless or Mary Sue. At least the Ward hate is largely rooted in canon.

I'm sorry they screwed up Ward for you! I'm also sorry the fandom has been on the Ward fans' cases, because the ones I've seen haven't been woobiefying him.

I've seen some woobiefying here and there but not much; with canon like that, no surprise. It's kinda hard to top that. ;)

Yeah, I saw that article on metanews. It's an accurate and fair analysis.