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shadowkatBack is better but I also took 500 mg of Naproxen, so there is that.
In an unrelated discussion on another topic, I got to thinking about character shipping. I call it character shipping as opposed to fangirling because fangirling is not a word and makes no sense to me.
Shipping characters is a bit like shipping relationships, celebrities, or anything else.
It's also similar to well how you perceive the word. People do not perceive things the same way. Heck, we don't perceive acting or writing the same. One person's favorite actor is another's least favorite. That's why Woody Allen refuses to vote or participate in any way in the Academy Awards or Oscars. He says it makes no sense. It's not like an actual race with objective criteria. This is all subjective and you can't even effectively compare the items in contention. Besides, the movies I made that I love and think are my best work - a lot of people hate - but I loved them because they challenged me the most.
I've shipped a lot of controversial characters - in regards to my flist and the people I know, who do not always share my views, even when they agree. For example? I love the character of Buffy, but I never shipped Buffy the way many people on my flist did and we do not agree on the character at all. Also I can't say I'm a fan of the actress who played her, I never really was, I liked the character often in spite of the actress. Another example? I am discovering that I love Emma Swan in OUAT, I know a lot of people who do not like this character and prefer Hook, Regina, and Rumplestilskin. I think they are surprised that I've fallen for Emma. It seems to go against my shipping pattern, it doesn't really.
I tend to go for tough female characters, who are tall, and snarky, with a level of skepticism and common sense. Buffy was actually an exception to that rule and I had an admittedly love/hate relationship with the character. The victimized little girl trope, equally, rarely works for me.
Then there is shipping characters...outside the proverbial box, or when your mind plays with the character because something about that character hits your story-kinks hard.
Spike was that way for me. That character, for whatever reason, hit my story kinks hard. I've explained before why I loved the character, writing essays on it...but when you get right down to it - he hit some of my story kinks and it was a character trope that had graced my own stories for quite a while - but here's the thing, I did NOT see or perceive the character the way many people did, including the writers and the actor who played him.
Which was interesting. I didn't really see him as the bad boy with the heart of gold.
I saw him as a sort of lost soul...who somehow lost who he was by trying to be what he thought everyone else wanted. He was so busy manipulating how he was seen, so busy putting up walls, that no one could see him. I liked the contradictions.
I often ship characters and relationships in stories that are subversive or contradictory. Spike struck me as very feminine in some respects, he manipulated people like women do in stories not like men. Using his sex appeal, using the female gaze to his advantage, using language and word-play. Since he couldn't physically overpower the heroine or her friends, due in part to the chip, he used other means - often language or manipulation. He reminds me a great deal of Rumplestilskin in OUAT and JR Ewing who did the same things. He also reminds me of a lot of great female characters such as Darla and Lilah and well...the Marquis in Les Liasons Dangereux.
I found the character intellectually stimulating. Plus there was that whole existential bit, how he refused to accept destiny or prophecy or God's dictates, and even though he most likely believed in God - he saw himself as the master of his own fate. Not God or Gods or the Powers. From Spike's perspective - he was responsible for himself, he created himself, and he defined himself - no one else did. And that I loved. I loved how he was incredibly honest with himself. Possibly the only character on both series, outside of maybe Darla, who was. Darla was my other favorite. For more or less the same reasons. I saw Spike and Darla as being fairly similar in some respects, which is why they hated each other.
But I know not everyone saw it that way. It's rare that I find people who see the characters the way I did, and since my views are constantly changing...because I am annoyingly inconsistent. I went from shipping Angel in S1-3, to shipping Spike. And I have no idea why, I think my tastes just changed. Same thing with OUAT, I went from only shipping Rumplestilskin, to shipping Emma, Henry, Bae, Snow and Rumplestilskin. But shipping Emma hard. Something happened and I flipped.
This happens. I am currently shipping Damon Salvatore of Vampire Diaries, mainly because the writers haven't told me that much about the character's back-story. We've gotten plenty from Stefan's pov, not as much from Damon's. I've figured out something - I think Damon was disillusioned about life prior to meeting Katherine. Unlike Stefan and Rebekkah, he's not romanticizing being human. Nor does he want to be human. (Which is why I think he might accidentally get the cure, he's the one that wants it the least. Well, Damon and Elena that is.) I think there's an interesting back-story in there - about how Damon deserted from the Civil War, because he got tired of watching people die, his friends, and killing them. He's actually fighting with his father in Stefan's flashback, about going back to the War. Stefan is too young, apparently to enlist? Also he seems to be less than enthused in another flashback with Lexie's idea that Stefan join the War effort, and tries to join his brother, until she talks him out of it for Stefan's own good. Damon - there appears to be more story than there is with Stefan. Same with Bobby and JR Ewing - JR was more interesting, because you wanted to know why he was the way he was. At it's heart Dallas was the Cain and Able tale, and at mine - I always wondered more about Cain than Able.
Because...I was always more interested in the why and who, than the what. Some people are more interested in the what - what the character is doing right now and whether that melds with their moral code. As a former defense attorney and frustrated psychology major, that never interested me as much. I want to know who the character is and why. And in a way isn't that what most stories are about at their heart? Who we are and why we got that way? Not what we are doing or what we did? The what is apparent, no mystery there. But the why and who are not so easy to figure out.
I don't know why I love the characters that I love. Just that I do. I don't ship writers. Writers tend to disappoint me. They often aren't interested in the same bits...and I want to shake them. I shipped Whedon for a bit, until he disappointed me, and I stopped. Lesson learned. [Also as a writer, albeit a somewhat frustrated one, I don't really find what they do that mysterious or fascinating.]
Characters however...we can play with inside our own heads, recreate to our specifications or not as the case may be. We can role play. We can write fic or meta. Characters, particularly fictional ones - are ours. No writer really can own them. Once they leave the writer's head and fall upon the pages of a book or inside a film or tv series - they are their own animals and the viewers...perceived a million different ways. There are a million different Spike's, a million different Emma's...making the character multi-dimensional because it is seen so many ways. Once we fall in love with a character and our mind plays with him or her...that character becomes a part of who we are and anyone who sees them differently be damned. Argue all you want...but in reality you are just talking to the hand.
In an unrelated discussion on another topic, I got to thinking about character shipping. I call it character shipping as opposed to fangirling because fangirling is not a word and makes no sense to me.
Shipping characters is a bit like shipping relationships, celebrities, or anything else.
It's also similar to well how you perceive the word. People do not perceive things the same way. Heck, we don't perceive acting or writing the same. One person's favorite actor is another's least favorite. That's why Woody Allen refuses to vote or participate in any way in the Academy Awards or Oscars. He says it makes no sense. It's not like an actual race with objective criteria. This is all subjective and you can't even effectively compare the items in contention. Besides, the movies I made that I love and think are my best work - a lot of people hate - but I loved them because they challenged me the most.
I've shipped a lot of controversial characters - in regards to my flist and the people I know, who do not always share my views, even when they agree. For example? I love the character of Buffy, but I never shipped Buffy the way many people on my flist did and we do not agree on the character at all. Also I can't say I'm a fan of the actress who played her, I never really was, I liked the character often in spite of the actress. Another example? I am discovering that I love Emma Swan in OUAT, I know a lot of people who do not like this character and prefer Hook, Regina, and Rumplestilskin. I think they are surprised that I've fallen for Emma. It seems to go against my shipping pattern, it doesn't really.
I tend to go for tough female characters, who are tall, and snarky, with a level of skepticism and common sense. Buffy was actually an exception to that rule and I had an admittedly love/hate relationship with the character. The victimized little girl trope, equally, rarely works for me.
Then there is shipping characters...outside the proverbial box, or when your mind plays with the character because something about that character hits your story-kinks hard.
Spike was that way for me. That character, for whatever reason, hit my story kinks hard. I've explained before why I loved the character, writing essays on it...but when you get right down to it - he hit some of my story kinks and it was a character trope that had graced my own stories for quite a while - but here's the thing, I did NOT see or perceive the character the way many people did, including the writers and the actor who played him.
Which was interesting. I didn't really see him as the bad boy with the heart of gold.
I saw him as a sort of lost soul...who somehow lost who he was by trying to be what he thought everyone else wanted. He was so busy manipulating how he was seen, so busy putting up walls, that no one could see him. I liked the contradictions.
I often ship characters and relationships in stories that are subversive or contradictory. Spike struck me as very feminine in some respects, he manipulated people like women do in stories not like men. Using his sex appeal, using the female gaze to his advantage, using language and word-play. Since he couldn't physically overpower the heroine or her friends, due in part to the chip, he used other means - often language or manipulation. He reminds me a great deal of Rumplestilskin in OUAT and JR Ewing who did the same things. He also reminds me of a lot of great female characters such as Darla and Lilah and well...the Marquis in Les Liasons Dangereux.
I found the character intellectually stimulating. Plus there was that whole existential bit, how he refused to accept destiny or prophecy or God's dictates, and even though he most likely believed in God - he saw himself as the master of his own fate. Not God or Gods or the Powers. From Spike's perspective - he was responsible for himself, he created himself, and he defined himself - no one else did. And that I loved. I loved how he was incredibly honest with himself. Possibly the only character on both series, outside of maybe Darla, who was. Darla was my other favorite. For more or less the same reasons. I saw Spike and Darla as being fairly similar in some respects, which is why they hated each other.
But I know not everyone saw it that way. It's rare that I find people who see the characters the way I did, and since my views are constantly changing...because I am annoyingly inconsistent. I went from shipping Angel in S1-3, to shipping Spike. And I have no idea why, I think my tastes just changed. Same thing with OUAT, I went from only shipping Rumplestilskin, to shipping Emma, Henry, Bae, Snow and Rumplestilskin. But shipping Emma hard. Something happened and I flipped.
This happens. I am currently shipping Damon Salvatore of Vampire Diaries, mainly because the writers haven't told me that much about the character's back-story. We've gotten plenty from Stefan's pov, not as much from Damon's. I've figured out something - I think Damon was disillusioned about life prior to meeting Katherine. Unlike Stefan and Rebekkah, he's not romanticizing being human. Nor does he want to be human. (Which is why I think he might accidentally get the cure, he's the one that wants it the least. Well, Damon and Elena that is.) I think there's an interesting back-story in there - about how Damon deserted from the Civil War, because he got tired of watching people die, his friends, and killing them. He's actually fighting with his father in Stefan's flashback, about going back to the War. Stefan is too young, apparently to enlist? Also he seems to be less than enthused in another flashback with Lexie's idea that Stefan join the War effort, and tries to join his brother, until she talks him out of it for Stefan's own good. Damon - there appears to be more story than there is with Stefan. Same with Bobby and JR Ewing - JR was more interesting, because you wanted to know why he was the way he was. At it's heart Dallas was the Cain and Able tale, and at mine - I always wondered more about Cain than Able.
Because...I was always more interested in the why and who, than the what. Some people are more interested in the what - what the character is doing right now and whether that melds with their moral code. As a former defense attorney and frustrated psychology major, that never interested me as much. I want to know who the character is and why. And in a way isn't that what most stories are about at their heart? Who we are and why we got that way? Not what we are doing or what we did? The what is apparent, no mystery there. But the why and who are not so easy to figure out.
I don't know why I love the characters that I love. Just that I do. I don't ship writers. Writers tend to disappoint me. They often aren't interested in the same bits...and I want to shake them. I shipped Whedon for a bit, until he disappointed me, and I stopped. Lesson learned. [Also as a writer, albeit a somewhat frustrated one, I don't really find what they do that mysterious or fascinating.]
Characters however...we can play with inside our own heads, recreate to our specifications or not as the case may be. We can role play. We can write fic or meta. Characters, particularly fictional ones - are ours. No writer really can own them. Once they leave the writer's head and fall upon the pages of a book or inside a film or tv series - they are their own animals and the viewers...perceived a million different ways. There are a million different Spike's, a million different Emma's...making the character multi-dimensional because it is seen so many ways. Once we fall in love with a character and our mind plays with him or her...that character becomes a part of who we are and anyone who sees them differently be damned. Argue all you want...but in reality you are just talking to the hand.
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Date: 2013-03-17 02:51 am (UTC)I saw him as a sort of lost soul...who somehow lost who he was by trying to be what he thought everyone else wanted. He was so busy manipulating how he was seen, so busy putting up walls, that no one could see him. I liked the contradictions.
I often ship characters and relationships in stories that are subversive or contradictory. Spike struck me as very feminine in some respects, he manipulated people like women do in stories not like men. Using his sex appeal, using the female gaze to his advantage, using language and word-play. Since he couldn't physically overpower the heroine or her friends, due in part to the chip, he used other means - often language or manipulation.
Yes.