LEAVE BRITTANY ALOOOONE (or: Defensiveness of Fictional Characters)

so! getting defensive of fictional characters--especially irrationally so--is a Very Common Phenomenon in fandom, and is responsible for a huge chunk of fandom wank as a whole, but interestingly enough i rarely see people really sit down to examine types of defensiveness, how they manifest and how they work, etc, unless it's guessing what's going on in someone else's head (usually a stan who has gotten way out of hand to the point where awed commentary happens).

i think it's a real shame that conversation doesn't happen more often with less judgment on one side and more self-awareness on the other, because it's actually a pretty damn fascinating subject! especially given how it intersects with trauma.

me, for example, when i get defensive it's usually triggered by/for characters who i feel like were created to Deserve Hatred and Dehumanization and Bad Things For Being Bad, especially if there's any kind of double standard working against them in the narrative. it feels like i have to dig my heels in and Stand Up for Them against someone who can literally warp (the fictional) reality in order to gaslight me harder into agreeing that they deserved it/are inherently Bad for doing things the othe characters get away with scot-free. (boy that projection tho.) this also extends to the fandom of the thing, usually, sad to say. there's other stuff at play there, but i think that's the core of it, really.

(this lead to copious draco in leather pants+other cringey bad discourse from me as a smol and a teenager who couldn't really articulate why this stuff upset her. don't be like me kids. don't be like me)

so yeah, i'd be interested to hear other people weigh in on this kind of thing, even if it's not exactly like what i just described! pinging @furrylatula and @MayaaFeys, since they expressed interest.

 

Well excuse me, who let you into my head? Which id to say, same hat. For me this happens with characters I relate to in particular ways, though how strong it is can vary.
Fun variation (Fun not included): The flipside being brainwasps say I am therefore always and forever wrong about the character and writing them wrong and woobyfying them.

 

WHAMS SAME HAT BUTTON HOLY SHIT

cue obsessively rereading every possible detail to do with them that i possibly can to Make Sure I Understand Correctly, and punch-in-the-gut spiraling badfeels anytime i realize/feel like i Missed Something and Therefore My Interpretation is Garbage and Overreacting+Making Excuses

(which also means having to endlessly reread canonical things that are really really upsetting to me over and over hahaha)

(...wow, i'm not kidding at all when i say this kind of thing hits me hard in the gaslighting defense mechanisms, am i. it fuckin blows)

 

Same beret. (Which is to say same, but I have a larger, actual hat that goes over it.)

For me it's definitely a projection issue. I try really, really hard to not get defensive publicly, but the fact remains that my core experience with fiction and fictional characters resonates around how hashtag relatable they are to me. If I cannot relate to a fictional character in at least some way, I tend to hate them or at least dislike them, and I have a hard time liking them as a character separate from myself. I can if I in some way look up to them as I would a person, like they act in a way I would like to act or have a profession I'd like to pursue. If a character doesn't meet either of those two things? Forget it. I hate them and the horse they rode in on. (Not necessarily true, but I can't think of any exceptions to the rule at present.) And my getting defensive when people dislike or mis-characterize (read: characterize differently than me) those characters comes from a much more complicated brain issue which is... I hate myself, blah blah blah depression. I however cannot stand other people hating me, kind of in a this is my job not yours kind of way, and since I project so heavily onto any fictional character I can get my grimy little hands on, people hating or disliking them feels like an initial attack on me, my behaviors, my interests, and/or people like me.

As for the getting defensive when I'm wrong about a character, oh, abso-fucking-lutely, god. I hate being wrong and god fucking forbid I'm wrong about the character I stan for.

 

it's hard to explain exactly how i project on characters and get defensive of characters and i don't know how intense it is. but yeah, this is a thing i do, particularly with norm the genie from fairly oddparents. and i've been doing it with him for at least eight years, so it's been a thing for a real long while and is a nice, comfortable habit. i think i've kinda sorta defined my fandom identity around him and i like that. i like being the Norm the Genie Person. there's something real nice about that, something about it that makes me feel like i have a role and am inimitable.

and norm's, well, norm's who i wish i was, sorta. not entirely but i love how he snarks and stands up for himself and goes after what he wants and doesn't take anyone's shit.

and he's got an angsty backstory and he's hot and just yeah... gets me in the id, you know...

and i like that there's a lot about him that can be filled in with headcanons, a lot of room to make him 'my own' and a lot of opportunity for competing, canon-compatible headcanons.

and i roleplay him, which sometimes makes me defensive 'cause, when i'm doing that, people judging norm and people judging my roleplay skill and characters interacting with him... it all ends up feeling very interconnected. particularly when i fuck up and make norm more of an asshole that i want him to be right then - and that's happened at least twice and it makes me feel like an incompetent asshole. but most of the time, i'm fine and the boundaries don't get blurred. i know that the characters and players are separate, i know i'm not norm and i try to make sure i apologize when i do fuck up.

and please, please, please don't look him up on tvtropes. i was so embarrassingly wrong about him on there, eight or so years ago. embarrassingly cocky about it too. (but, sometimes, i wish i could be cocky like that again. it felt kinda nice, nicer than being anxious all the time does.) and yeah, i know this means you guys might just get curious and look him up on tvtropes just 'cause i mentioned it and haha, well, that's natural and i can't stop you, if you do.

i'm feeling groggy so i should probably shut up now and go to sleep, but yeah - i felt like i just had to comment immediately there. why? i dunno, i just did.

 

Holy shit am I same hat wrt characters made to be hated. I also get really defensive of dumb characters/ditzy characters/comic relief/butt monkey characters, when they get ignored or just treated as one note characters when everyone else gets to be explored emotionally. (Irma was my first crush, save her from getting the worst, least interesting stories) Other than that, if I feel like people are using double standards I get super irrationally defensive. Like basically all the Sea Salt Trio discourse. It feels like people who like Xion think Axel is an abuser and people who like Axel think Xion is a manipulative interloper and chhhhrriiissttttt

 

Irma from WITCH?

 

The very same

 

i get very defensive of characters i care about a lot and i think it's partly because like.... a lot of my experience with people saying they dont like stuff i like is in the form of Your Fave Is Problematic And You Should Feel Bad.

that + i have issues with feeling like if someone disagrees with me then i am automatically and objectivly wrong, they are right, i should change opinions, and also i should feel bad.

sometimes i can be like "shut up i love my trash children" but i also hate calling anything i like trash or equivelent because it makes me feel bad. people criticizing my favorite characters also feels like people critisizing me, even if it's not a character i personally relate to :/

 

Those comics were my childhood, I need to reread them.

Same hatted. I do my best to keep the latter under control but yeah. i can call someone my problematic child/fave/baby, but trash just. I get why people do it but i can´t, I don´t do the calling myself trash thing either.

 

My defensiveness tends to flare either because I am overly attached and relate to a character/find them eerily like someone I love irl or because I have a MORAL STAKE IN THIS HORSE RACE. Sometimes the categories mix a bit. Aranea Serket is a case of them mixing.

 

mmmmm yeah this happens to me sometimes. funny enough, it was tvtropes that really kicked it off in a couple cases. having read and enjoyed a character, seen their complexity, enjoyed what they represent, and then realizing that more than a few people read the exact same thing and came away from it with a hackneyed, reductive stereotype? to see my deeply important fave get wedged into a shitty stereotype box because that's just legitimately how someone understood them, or because they think it's better that way, or funnier, or easier to cry over, or jack off to, makes me fucking furious

this doesn't really mesh well with my desire to respect other fan experiences and legitimize varying interpretations of canons. I pretty much settle for being massively honked-off in the privacy of my own head. but make no mistake: I'm Still Mad

(this also happens in certain circumstances where I genuinely feel like the content creator is doing their character/s a disservice, but that gets into meta territory and there's no objectively Right answer. ask me about my lengthy and complicated opinions on the Abhorsen trilogy, I could go for years)

 

The moral stake tends to be that I'm very, very insistent on no one being beyond redemption, for the curious.

 

fun fact: i used to be a gamzeestan, while at the same time having a bit too much interest in true crime if you catch my drift. i used to be quite the edgelord.

currently, i am only particularly defensive about my ocs

 

Same! *Zahhaks, Team Skull, and various Fire Emblem comic relief characters have my shield, always*

Edit: Forgot to mention Team Skull.

 

im rly easily triggered by fef hate bc i based a lotta my identity on her so i guess that belongs here ;;
it scares me really easily idk a lotta the attitudes in it remind me of stuff my abusers told me so !

 

does defending how AWFUL a certain character is count? because i dont tend to take a lot of character criticism personally (except for one time a while back but ill get into it later) but i have a compulsive tendency to debunk anything that even remotely pings me as cronus apologism and i am very vicious about it. since he is my favorite character (as well as one i project a lot of shit on for various reasons) it miiiiight count? idk tho

 

I get like that with Aradia and Connie, especially because so much of the criticism I've seen of them has just been "they're boring!" and I'm all "UM EXCUSE YOU" there.

I can get like that with Damara criticism, but only when it's like...outright false. She's my trash wife and I love her because she's awful (and because DELICIOUS ANGST).

Amethyst and Pearl are kind of in the middle there--I get pissy when people outright hate on them, but I can also understand why people might not like them? It's the difference between "I personally don't like this character because she pings (x) issue for me" and "this character is bad and evil forever." I've seen both, especially with Pearl.

 

i get defensive of dumb/ditzy/comic relief characters too, like jerry from parks and rec. all their teasing him reminds me too much of childhood bullies and makes me Rage

 

I was doing some reflection on this earlier, and the type of character I get overly invested in and tend to be defensive of (although mostly just in my head because I hate confrontation) are definitely people who have been through shit and are angry about it. They tend to be villains or antiheroes because of tropes about anger, but that's not a requirement. (Steve Rogers is the heroic example I can think of off the top of my head.) I have a really hard expressing or sometimes even feeling anger, so seeing characters get angry over bad shit that's happened to them is one of the ways I can connect to it and process it. Because of that, I get upset over them easily. Not necessarily over people talking about the bad stuff they did - although sometimes I have to sit on my hands about it - but more over people not acknowledging that there are valid reasons for that anger and completely vilifying the character.