Analysing negative feelings at their root must have some value

[yvannairie]

So 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.)

Comments

[yvannairie]

... I mean, I read you and I feel you, and realising that the kind of aggressive unilateral "If you like X you're you're a grossnasty with no taste and here are all the reasons you're a terrible person for having the wrong opinions about it" culture was literally eroding my coping methods in real time was my wake-up call to get the fuck off my previous platform.

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