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yvannairieSo I know hating characters because they come "in the way" of your ship is bad, but I wish that was something we could at least talk about, you know? :/
I have certain characters that I'd probably like if they had zero contact with certain other characters and I've never seen conversations about why this happens, even though I've read a lot of smart people write a lot of smart words about why the opposite (i.e. starting to like a character based on their interactions with other characters) is such a common occurence.
The dynamics of liking things are discussed a lot more, which is pretty fascinating on its own. And I guess it might be asking a bit much because a) nobody really likes talking about things that make them feel bad and b) culture is so overwhelmingly negative at the moment anyway that reinforcing their happiness is preferrable to most people.
It just feels unbalanced because lately the "you can like ANYTHING for ANY REASON" message has been growing in volume, but it still feels like if you dislike something you're supposed to accept that you're Doing The Thing Wrong And Shut Up.
And that's unsatisfying.
(But then again at the moment we probably can't have sensible conversations about why things are Bad without it turning into a fight or posturing of some kind.)
I have certain characters that I'd probably like if they had zero contact with certain other characters and I've never seen conversations about why this happens, even though I've read a lot of smart people write a lot of smart words about why the opposite (i.e. starting to like a character based on their interactions with other characters) is such a common occurence.
The dynamics of liking things are discussed a lot more, which is pretty fascinating on its own. And I guess it might be asking a bit much because a) nobody really likes talking about things that make them feel bad and b) culture is so overwhelmingly negative at the moment anyway that reinforcing their happiness is preferrable to most people.
It just feels unbalanced because lately the "you can like ANYTHING for ANY REASON" message has been growing in volume, but it still feels like if you dislike something you're supposed to accept that you're Doing The Thing Wrong And Shut Up.
And that's unsatisfying.
(But then again at the moment we probably can't have sensible conversations about why things are Bad without it turning into a fight or posturing of some kind.)
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Date: 26/1/19 01:38 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26/1/19 07:23 (UTC)no subject
Date: 27/1/19 20:15 (UTC)This is actually a really interesting thought! Thinking about myself, I realized I'm more likely to do off-the-cuff "here's why I liked this" than I am to do off-the-cuff "here's why I didn' like this", and in general if I'm analyzing something I didn't like, I'll demand more from myself re: the argumentation and polish. In general a more neutral, dissecting tone, if that makes sense? (I do rant and rage and seethe about things I don't like, but that's generally in private chats. If it goes out in public, I'm squeeful or neutral.)
I think it's partly due to (expected) backlash – my experience is that in a lot of settings, saying "This thing didn't work for me due to these reasons" will get lots of backlash à la "But it worked for me!!!" if fans get a hold of it. OTOH, if I know the audience agrees with me, we can go into a loathefest in the comments.
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Date: 27/1/19 20:22 (UTC)I get the feeling that if we wanted to have an open discussion about why some stuff doesn't work, we would have to a) find a group of people who it doesn't work for who are capable of expressing it without "hating" on it and b) somehow have the conversation somewhere where people who like it can't.... I don't want to say "pollute", but.... interfere? With the process of working it out?
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Date: 27/1/19 20:59 (UTC)wankmeta accusing posts about negative opinions of being 'pissing in people's cheerios'? I mean, not even comments or replies, or 'if you post it in the main tag' or 'if you post it in the main comm', but just like... posting about something you hate in your own journal is still considered offensive by some people.And I THINK those people are in a minority! But I also think we all know about them which is why people tend to be more hesitant about coming out with their negative reactions lest their motives be mistaken for "just to make people sad".
That said, I do see negative reactions in general in people's posts about things that they've watched and read and things in fandoms, even specific characters. They just usually wind up with extra disclaimers and a cut tag to spare people's feelings.
And of course when we talk about people who 'get in the way of a ship', as you put it in your post, they have historically been the recipients of a lot of vitriol within fandom, both het and slash, and easily within living memory, so it's easy to see why many people tend to be suspicious that someone writing about how they hate that character is just projecting their shipping desires onto them.
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Date: 27/1/19 22:24 (UTC)I remember when I started to use Tumblr, I was super delighted to be away from Extremely Critical Nitpicky Content into a space where most meta was positive/gushy in tone and no "taste" was "bad", just different. It makes on a gut level perfect sense to me that that feeling of athropied skills to describe why something doesn't work is because the format didn't really properly allow for it.
Anyway the rest of your comment is also 👌👌, that's just the bit that really... oof. That's just really oof.
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Date: 28/1/19 00:46 (UTC)[tumblr's functionality was not the only contributor to this Thing, but it was a big one - a global tagging system that ended up moderated by some kind of mob rule, when the mob was completely formless?? i literally don't know how anyone ever did fandom on tumblr but i salute you who did, so you can bring your tales and advice forwards ]
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Date: 28/1/19 10:45 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/1/19 13:36 (UTC)It's just... write write write, work work work, trying to deliberately push myself out of that comfort zone where passive interaction and the mere exposure effect did most of the work for me to a space where it's Totally Allowed to be like "yeah, this convo is good -- lemme link to one I've had about this elsewhere on the site".
I do really enjoy collaborative writing, I'm now on a bunch of Discord servers that have meta/hc/worldbuilding channels for us to roll around an idea as a group until it takes shape. DW is just that, except I don't have to worry about "missing out" since it's not even in real time.
(although maybe I should try the homework thing too, considering how well the Daily Tarot Card thing makes me just sit my ass down and write)
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Date: 27/1/19 21:01 (UTC)This is the hard bit! I've found that private ragging sessions with my friend can help me figure out my thoughts/the "what" of what doesn't work, and then later digestion will bring out the whys. In semi-public (multiple people, not on the open net) with other people who didn't like the thing, it was mostly a venting/ragging session, where we all agreed with each other's points and offered slightly different takes on it. In semi-public with people who did like the thing, I very reasonably elaborated what didn't work for me and why, but the responses all felt like they were missing the point – trying to explain away my issue with authorial intent with character motivation, or just saying that they liked it, because of $thing in their personal life. So, yeah. I think the best place to figure out why something doesn't work might be a DW post on one's journal (lowish traffic) with lots of noodling, and hoping the typing process or the comments will elucidate.
(And watch me use "doesn't work for me" vs even "dislike"! It really does go deep.)
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Date: 27/1/19 22:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/1/19 08:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/1/19 05:57 (UTC)Unfortuntely for me, my brain is very Annoying and whenever I see someone dislike something, it automatically tends to assume they're like, extra knowledgeable or intelligent or just have really good taste. Any of my own thoughts and feelings are completely subsumed to that - obviously they know better!! Somehow?
And like. If it's something that, at that point, I really liked and thought was high quality? This is the kind of shit that can hit me really hard!! All of a sudden I feel like a complete fucking moron for being dumb enough to have positive feelings about that thing. Even though I know that is a wildly unreasonable reaction, I need to immediately take myself away and distract myself or it'll just fester and I'll obsess over it and it may well permanently damage my ability to enjoy a thing :( And if there's any slight hint in that post that the person is angry at the thing or people who like it, now I don't just feel dumb, I feel guilty. I was Supporting A Bad Thing!! (read: a thing one person, somewhere in the world, didn't like.)
But even if it's a thing I like but think is flawed? (And I'll often obsessively think over the flaws of something just so I can be prepared if I think other people will be maligning its quality.) Sometimes it still hurts!! If anyone asked me about the new Doctor Who season (my first ever!! :D) I'd talk about how I love the new Doctor and it means so much to see her and some of the episodes have been really interesting, but I'd also make it clear that almost all of the episodes have been pretty uneven and flawed. But when someone else says that... it still makes me feel bad, for some reason!! I honestly can't even explain it. I just...want to focus on the happy and good things, y'know?
And that's not even getting into the fact that, as a content creator myself, and one with hyperempathetic tendencies, I can't hear people getting angry over content without imagining all the people who worked really hard to make something they honestly thought people would like :( To try to bring happiness to the world but only make people sad and angry instead: that's my worst nightmare!! And people can get SO PERSONAL over content they don't like...
I dunno. Overall, negativity just tends to have a really big impact on me. It can affect my mood so strongly. Being in a room where everyone's just so happy and loving things is one of the best feelings!! But obviously, we need spaces to discuss more negative things - I mean, I really hate this new norm of 'sad queer stories are bad, only Perfectly Pure Always Good queer stories' because uh actually queer angst is really important to me!! But... it's just delicate.
I mean, I guess that's the underlying rationale: we're already dealing with so many awful things that have a big impact on the world, that it feels bad to see people bringing more negativity over something that doesn't really matter. But people's feelings do still matter, and I don't want to tell anyone they can't express themselves.
It's just... man, I've come across some blogs that seemed really cool and the person really interesting! But they just could not keep their negativity under a cut, or could not stop getting really hostile with that negativity. (Even if it's something I know nothing about, hearing people say shit like 'if you wear a shirt like this it's not just legal to murder you, it's morally required' makes me flinch!! I can't stop myself from, in some small way, imagining that happening to me? :( ) And so, welp, I just had to not follow them. To block them, even.
Which is the best case scenario! Multiple times I've ended up following someone who was quite negative but who I somehow built up as the Ultimate Arbiter of Taste but I just ended up feeling so stressed keeping up with their blog. I felt like I had to because it's Bad to just avoid opinions you disagree with. But there was just no benefit in the end to following them, aside from the rare occasions we agreed and I'd get to feel so Validated. Overall, it was just bad.
So........yeah, I'm the kind who takes it way too personally when people just want to express negative feelings :( But for what it's worth I've never complained to anyone about it to them - only in my own head. n.n;;
and yeah the whole culture of I Can't Just Dislike This So It Must Be Problematic is so awful as well :( It just hurts everyone involved.
I dunno man. On a personal level I don't like negativity I can't avoid;; but, as always it's about balancing competing needs, and I don't at all think it'd be good if people couldn't express their negativity somewhere.
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Date: 28/1/19 08:04 (UTC)But, like, at the risk of sounding harsh, I don't really see how your bad parsing of negativitity (or mine) has bearing on the conversation? Like, ultimately your unhealthy relationship to the things you read is a "you" problem, not the problem of the person who wrote them in the first place. The way you described it sounds really more like responding to tone than substance, and I do sympathise, I just feel like that's a degree removed from having the conversation about why we have negative responses, and rather gets into how someone might about them.
IDK my feelings about this aren't consistent at the moment. It's been a long walk for me to get where I can look at someone's negative response to something I have a positive response and say, with serenity and confidence, that their emotions are their own, and have no bearing on mine. Having that confidence in my own emotions, though, is what brought this on -- feeling incomplete because I granularly understand my own positive feelings but not my negative ones.
Good luck, though, if you don't wanna look at negativity then I hope you don't have to! We're ultimately talking about fandom, an elective thing we do for fun, and nobody should have to do it in ways that are distressing or uncomfortable :'33
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Date: 28/1/19 20:25 (UTC)I completely empathize with this and have had this happen to me way too many times to count. But I feel like it really only works if most of the fandom is already positive about the thing you love. I got a wake up call when I found myself at the opposite end. Finding people who agreed with me about disliking the thing was a relief. And it strangely helped with what yvannairie mentioned about having confidence in my own emotions.
There absolutely should be space for both positivity and negativity. I just wish it wasn't so polarizing and full of bad faith takes (on either side. Is there anything more annoying than having to defend the people you disagree with because people on your side are being deliberately obtuse?) I feel like there'd be a lot less wank if negativity wasn't seen as a personal attack. Idek, I'm just rambling at this point.
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Date: 28/1/19 20:48 (UTC)>I feel like there'd be a lot less wank if negativity wasn't seen as a personal attack
I think this is an astute observation, and I don't know how to start solving it, because I don't think I've ever personally phrased negativity to be a personal attack? The only time I remember that happening was someone pointing out the Unfortunate Implications of a thing I'd said, which I found to be entirely fair. Like, it's just not a thing I do, I wouldn't know where to start addresing why it happens.
But it's definitely a thing! There is someone on this post expressing that they feel like the thing being called bad is somehow passing judgement on them. It is not self-explanatorily nonsensical. For frank discussions about why something doesn't work or why we don't like it, we'd first need to firmly establish that bad taste doesn't a bad person make, and that quality does not necessarily translate to enjoyability.
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Date: 28/1/19 21:12 (UTC)Part of it is that tone is hard to parse over text, another is that everyone is so primed to defend themselves at the slightest hair trigger that they misinterpret and sometimes assign blame where there is none.
I think a lot of it has to do with the current cancellation/problematic/anti culture as well. If someone disagrees that this Thing is Good, then it is possibly Problematic! and we all know if something is Problematic, you are Bad for liking it. So you must prove it is Good so you will not be Bad.
Sometimes I want to nail 'bad taste doesn't a bad person make' to people's foreheads. in mirrored writing as well, so they can brush up on that lesson as well. But yeah, no clue how to stop it or start solving it, beyond being the change we wish to see in the world?
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Date: 28/1/19 21:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/1/19 21:09 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28/1/19 21:14 (UTC)which
definitely ended up going to hell in the end.
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Date: 30/1/19 04:15 (UTC)There are plenty of really good reasons not to like something. Certain ships of fandom yore never pinged with me because the characters canonically are pure sodium and water and those do not make the good sparks when they mix, assuming they remain mostly their canonical selves.
Or they violate my personal rule that requires ships to make sense for their setting.
Others get to enjoy those ships, but if they want to give me Discourse that my opinion is categorically wrong because I'm hating on their ships, well, if I remember it at the moment, they get one of the Four Disclaimers. (Borrowed from the radio program Whad'Ya Know? (Not much! You?)) I get to not like things. I get to think their execution was sloppy, or their characterization was awful, or they don't actually have an excuse in these modern, well-connected times to mess up Japanese honorifics by making a character's name contain one as if it were part of the name.
Which is a dislike, but not something that makes the program inherently problematic and any of the people who still enjoy it terrible.
I do think there's a higher bar set for dislike posts than like posts, though, because there is value in examining the why you don't like something, because it's often insightful, either in that you've discovered a preference, or you may have discovered some detritus that you thought you had all cleaned up. One of the things I really like about dislike posts is that when someone who takes the time and is willing to show the audience the reasons why they dislike, it helps me figure out where my own ideas are about it. Like posts don't always do that kind of depth work. Nor should like or dislike posts have to.
I think I'm getting long and wordy, but I agree with the post - there needs to be space for people to talk about what they don't like and want to see better in both canons and in fanworks.
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Date: 30/1/19 06:39 (UTC)