Ramblings about Fandom and Female Characters

Sep 07, 2012 21:53

I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out (mostly in a lurky way) in Supernatural fandom, and I’ve often been kind of perplexed by the reaction to female characters on the show. No, don’t worry, this is not the rant about OMG WHY DO YOU GUYS HATE WOMEN SO MUCH, IT’S YOUR FAULT WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS. ( Kind of the opposite, actually. )

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liliaeth September 8 2012, 02:32:46 UTC
honestly, I find many of the male characters that get gushed about, are given the same character development that the female chars get.

I mean, I like Cas well enough, but onscreen, he hardly gets more character development than Ruby or Meg. And don't even get me started on Gabriel who got maybe one or two good scenes as compared to Jo who's far better developped on screen.

I think people do have a tendency to be more forgiving of male characters and more instantly cling to male characters and imply them with character development, because we're used to identifying with males. Whereas most women are by far more demanding of the female characters and instantly calling them 'love interest' when they're far more than that onscreen. But that doesn't mean that said development of male characters is something actually shown onscreen.

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livilend September 8 2012, 02:51:28 UTC
Those are definitely good points--maybe the fandom just has a tendency to get excited about fairly minor characters in general? I've never understood all the excitement about Gabriel, when he showed up in like four episodes, total.

And as far as Cas--it's true that because so many people are so invested in his story, what we see on screen gets kind of blown out of proportion and given more significance than it actually has. On the other hand, I do think he's been written as a more complex character than either Ruby or Meg. He's gone through so many changes, from his original unthinking obedience, to starting to question that, to trying to become a god, to becoming crazy!Cas--I can't really think of a woman on the show who's had such an important character arc. Even if it sometimes happens in a jarringly short amount of screentime.

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liliaeth September 8 2012, 18:45:05 UTC
Honestly, a good character doesn't need all that many eps to develop. Take Charlie, she was a fully developped character in only one episode ( ... )

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livilend September 8 2012, 23:23:21 UTC
I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of Charlie--I feel like they spent a lot of time showing us reasons why she was awesome, but maybe not a lot of time showing us how she was a real person? If that makes any sense?

With Ruby, I agree that all that stuff is there, but I feel like you have to sort of dig for it. Maybe it's because we never really get to see what things look like from her perspective until right before she dies. At the end of season 4, I was really fascinated by the possibility that she actually cared about Sam and thought she was doing the right thing, but we didn't get to explore it because she died. Although, actually, that's a lot like what they did with Cas in season 6--we hardly got any of his point of view until the very end of the season.
I totally get what you mean about Cas, though. From just reading fanfic, you could think he and Dean were these passionate, tragically separated soulmates or something, when I think the show just means them to be kind of good friends who help each other out sometimes. I ( ... )

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