I've often seen this argument ("people pay disproportionate amounts of attention to flat ten-second male characters") levied at male characters who actually have a fairly strong characterization, just not a ton of screentime – see nearby comment about Arthur and Eames! Sometimes it seems like people don't necessarily have a robust sense of what "one-note" or "three-dimensional" actually means in the context of a very brief media appearance, akin to the way "strong female character" gets warped to mean "woman with no realistic flaws or foibles."
That's not to say I disagree that fandom itself is sexist (and racist! can't forget racist!!) about how it doles out meta and fanon love – it absolutely is – but I also feel like the whole "briefly-appearing white male characters get inexplicable amounts of love!" tack ignores the genuine disservice that media regularly does to its briefly-appearing female and/or nonwhite characters, which does actually contribute to why people tend to be less interested in building out those characters' empty spaces.
Basically, I feel like the "fandom is too interested in otherwise uninteresting white male characters just because they're white and male" thing gets applied with a very broad brush, and I typically want to hear what characters someone thinks are "otherwise uninteresting" before I'm sure we're on the same page. Like, I see this sort of thing said a lot about – brace for controversy – Kylo Ren and General Hux, who have more works on AO3 dedicated to their ship than Finn and Poe Dameron do. While I'm upset there isn't more Stormpilot content, I can also clearly see why Kylux captured shipper's imaginations and grew legs. The interplay between Kylo and Hux is clearly meant to be intriguing and entertaining, whereas you can see by the second movie that the filmmakers went out of their way to keep Poe and Finn apart. Poe and Finn are mainly just straightforward allies that are adorably terrible at flirting, whereas Kylo/Hux has a "reluctant allies" + "shifting power dynamic" thing going on. It's not actually that surprising that people find Kylo and Hux so interesting to write kinkfic and crackfic and all manner of darkfic about – that kind of stuff is classic shipbait! Consequently, I'm much angrier at the filmmakers for shutting down the chemistry between Finn and Poe than I am at the fandom for shipping a ship served up for them on a silver platter.
Then there's questionable examples like Mycroft/Lestrade from the BBC Sherlock fandom, which is eyeroll-inducing, as the characters have never met in canon, but it's unclear what f/f ship would make more sense.
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Date: 2018-12-18 12:30 am (UTC)That's not to say I disagree that fandom itself is sexist (and racist! can't forget racist!!) about how it doles out meta and fanon love – it absolutely is – but I also feel like the whole "briefly-appearing white male characters get inexplicable amounts of love!" tack ignores the genuine disservice that media regularly does to its briefly-appearing female and/or nonwhite characters, which does actually contribute to why people tend to be less interested in building out those characters' empty spaces.
Basically, I feel like the "fandom is too interested in otherwise uninteresting white male characters just because they're white and male" thing gets applied with a very broad brush, and I typically want to hear what characters someone thinks are "otherwise uninteresting" before I'm sure we're on the same page. Like, I see this sort of thing said a lot about – brace for controversy – Kylo Ren and General Hux, who have more works on AO3 dedicated to their ship than Finn and Poe Dameron do. While I'm upset there isn't more Stormpilot content, I can also clearly see why Kylux captured shipper's imaginations and grew legs. The interplay between Kylo and Hux is clearly meant to be intriguing and entertaining, whereas you can see by the second movie that the filmmakers went out of their way to keep Poe and Finn apart. Poe and Finn are mainly just straightforward allies that are adorably terrible at flirting, whereas Kylo/Hux has a "reluctant allies" + "shifting power dynamic" thing going on. It's not actually that surprising that people find Kylo and Hux so interesting to write kinkfic and crackfic and all manner of darkfic about – that kind of stuff is classic shipbait! Consequently, I'm much angrier at the filmmakers for shutting down the chemistry between Finn and Poe than I am at the fandom for shipping a ship served up for them on a silver platter.
Then there's questionable examples like Mycroft/Lestrade from the BBC Sherlock fandom, which is eyeroll-inducing, as the characters have never met in canon, but it's unclear what f/f ship would make more sense.