Rapture Inside Of Me Is On The Rise

[redbrunja]

*waves*

Hey all. In case any of you were wondering, I vanished for five days to go down to Kumori Con and visit pzb. (Con report to follow, when I... want to actually write coherently, instead of just meme-ing.) I had a fabulous time, except for the train ride back (it took fourteen hours from the Amtrack station in Eugene to my house - to give you perspective, I can go from Eugene to Bellingham -which is  further away than my hometown- in eight hours HITTING TRAFFIC IN PORTLAND, TACOMA AND SEATTLE.)

So, now, last friday's fannish5fannish5:

 Name 5 characters you think are often misunderstood by fans.

1.) Katara. The people who think she's a vicious, irrational bitch are the worst, but I'm not pleased with the people who treat her like a perfect sweet healer girl who can do no wrong.

2.) Uchiha Itachi. (To be fair, I think 3/4 of the problem is caused by Kishimoto). Look, fans, I don't care how pretty he is. He killed. his. entire. family. and then emotionally tortured his little brother and oh let's not forget about when he TORTURED KAKASHI FOR FORTY-EIGHT HOURS IN KAKASHI'S HEAD.

(I'd add in Sakura, except that if I don't read fics who don't treat her better than Kishimoto does.)

3.) Inara. I think most of the people who call her boring aren't paying attention.

4.) Toph. You love her? Fine. But don't act like she's perfect and made of pure awesome. (Again, I think the creators are to blame for a lot of this.)

5.) Jareth. Is not a fluffy little elf boyfriend. He is hot like burning, though.

Comments

[mistaria.livejournal.com]

2.) Uchiha Itachi

THANK YOU! And obviously agree. I hate all the fanbrats who constantly squee over these characters who've done horrible things and don't ever try to redeem themselves (and, y'know, just plain don't give a fuck in general that they did said awful things).

It's like the Joker fans who honestly think the Joker wouldn't kill them.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Yes! It's like, if you love the characters who do horrible things, fine! I personally love a well-done villian. That said, don't act like they're all fluffy bunnies, or wouldn't hurt you if you were there.

[pikabot]

And besides, he's kinda boring.

No kidding. Actually, he WAS sort of cool for about the space of five minutes, when it seemed like every aspect of Sasuke's backstory was a massive Xanatos Roulette orchestrated by him in order so that he could attain the ultimate power. That...didn't last long.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I know! Wanting Sasuke's eyes made the whole thing make SO MUCH SENSE!

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think he's much more enjoyable as a pyschotic string puller instead of the dumb yet murderous pupper Kishimoto wrote him as.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Jareth? Suspiciously date-rape hallucinogen Jareth? (I'm sorry, the drugged fruit dance scene was very pretty but entirely skeevy to me.)Jareth, the kidnapper of small children?

Oh, yes. This is a fluffy elf boyfriend. Please tell me that they don't actually CALL him an elf. Seriously. Even if you're lying, please tell me this. *is kind of glad she never read Labyrinth fanfic*

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, never called him an elf, nope, not once.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

*blink* Wait, who writes Jareth as a fluffy elf boyfriend, and at what point in their childhoods did they skip reading all the Fair Folk and Grimms' tales detailing the long ancestry of goblin and fae lore from which his archetype descends, including their extremely alarming sociopathic narcissism and pitiless kidnapping tendencies?

One may, of course, lay some of the blame on Tolkien's post-Hobbit nobly enlightened superelves and Disney's cute little fairies, but. Still. Argh. Faerie is scaerie, man.

"I'm Going To Tie Her Up & Torture Her Until She Likes Me Again. Love's A Funny Thing."

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and even just considering the MOVIE, yanno, where he spends the whole time making her life harder because a.) she asks for it and b.) he likes her.

I mean, if he really wanted her, he's just going to sprint her away to the goblin world, not hang around her high school trying to date her.

Hah, what's that a quote from?

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

I suspect some of these writers may be the same girls who write self-insert Suefic involving nigh-unredeemably evil male characters being 'saved' by their (usually) chaste and glittering love. And, eventually, the same women who date and marry handsome bastards and get mistreated forever. Oh, the joy. ♥

The quote is from Buffy. Spike is speaking regarding Drusilla

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

You know, I hate to make the judgment call that people who like bad boy characters (guilty!) are going to date abusive man, but some of them.... yeah....

Oh, Whedon. That explains it. XD

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a distinct difference between liking bad boys or finding them attractive, and actually believing that (Your!) True Love Will Fix Them. The Uchiha brothers are handsome devils and interesting to write about, Azula is beautiful and deadly, and I'll admit to Black Tango being strangely appealing despite the bad personal hygiene, but I wouldn't date any of them with a twenty-foot length of steel rebar.

Agreeing to sex somebody up and shower them with your selfless affection is in no way guaranteed to effect a change in their personality and behavior. (Like my grandmother said, you can't turn a goat into a lamb with a wedding ring.)

Re: Oh, Whedon. That explains it. XD

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a distinct difference between liking bad boys or finding them attractive, and actually believing that (Your!) True Love Will Fix Them. The Uchiha brothers are handsome devils and interesting to write about, Azula is beautiful and deadly, and I'll admit to Black Tango being strangely appealing despite the bad personal hygiene, but I wouldn't date any of them with a twenty-foot length of steel rebar.

Word. Also, your grandmother sounds like a hoot.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I would tend to blame the endless run of Tokien imitators even more than Tolkien himself here, at least if you consider his entire mythos; go through the Silmarillion and the various unfinished stories of the First Age, and you'll find no shortage of elves who are arrogant and hubristic and oh-so-far-from-perfect. Really, a lot of the crap that goes down in LOTR, in a long-term view much of what's happening is really the final acts of patterns that were set in motion by very bad decisions made by elves centuries or millenia before...

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

*nods* Honestly, can we do away with the pseudo-Tolkienverse altogether? It's been so done to death that any "fantasy" story taking place in a world not basically European, vaguely medieval, and inhabited by gorgeous Aryan elves, covetous Scottish dwarves, tricksy English hobbits halflings, and wild-card humans is considered "edgy" and off the charts. And even the variations tend to still be on that theme.

One of these days I'm going to write a fantasy novel couched in traditional Greek mythology. Or possibly Japanese. And then we'll see who's cool, oh, yes. Bring on the naiads and yukionna, baby.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Urgh, yes, it's all those dreadful second-and-third-and-worse blurry-Xerox wannabee Tolkien clones (TERRY BROOKS I'M LOOKING AT YOU) that pretty much drove me away from fantasy for DECADES. Tolkien worked because he had an ear for language and was deeply immersed in myth and history, and was writing to feed his own obsessions rather than trying to fit a commercial formula. Unfortunately, once his books succeeded, far far too many hacks decided that all they needed to do was copy the most obvious surface elements -- bricklike multi-volume tomes with a checklist of default fantasy races and a quest plot -- without seeming to do much in the way of reading and research beyond D&D books and/or other hackneyed fantasy writers as unoriginal as themselves...grrrr.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Please do! I personally have such a soft spot for kitsunes.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oy, what is it with people trying to fluff-ify things? Toph, I love her in large part BECAUSE she is flawed and abrasive and socially awkward. She's funny and awesomely badass, but she's also, y'know, TWELVE, with all the immaturity and self-absorbed thoughtlessness that can go with that. And I love that, she's not a perfect Good Little Girl, she's not the Saintly Token Handicapped Character, she's just herself, warts and all. And Jareth is sort of stalkery and menacing and manipulative and scary -- that's part of what makes him so hot! Turn him into fluff and you've got an entirely different character, who may still look DAMN good in skin-tight trousers, but is probably a lot less interesting to read about...

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

So much word.

I went back and forth on Toph a lot watching the show, and then fandom made me go permanantly back.

And SO MUCH of Jareth's hotness comes from how creepy he was.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nods* I hear that. For me, the odd moments of bitchiness and conflict are part of what made Kat and Toph so refreshingly *real* -- they weren't one-note sweetness-and-light all the time, Kat wasn't the stereotypical nurturing healer chick who's utterly helpless in a fight, and Toph for all her tomboyish badass snark had moments of vulnerability and insecurity. They weren't perfect, sometimes they lost their tempers, made bad decisions...in other words, they acted like three-dimensional human beings instead of cardboard cutouts. And I really, really liked how their relationship was awkward and conflicted at times: in too many series, it would have gone in one of two ways: "ooh, we're going to be best friends forever, because we're both girls!" or "we're going to be bitchy, catty backstabbing rivals forever, because we're both girls". The way it was set up, Kat seemed to have unrealistic expectations at first that there'd be all that girl-bonding going on, but then the reality of the big differences in their ages, personality types, etc. deflated that fantasy pretty quickly; with time, I think they both came to have more respect and understanding of each other as individuals, but they were just so very different that I'd have trouble ever seeing those two being totally buddy-buddy. (I'm a little sad we didn't get to see more Kat/Suki interactions once she joined the Gaang, OTOH, because in terms of age and interests and personality I think there could have been a lot more potential compatibility for a serious friendship there; whereas Toph strikes me as the "one of the guys" sorts who's probably going to form friendships more readily with boys.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

All I can say is:

Word.

Kat/Suki interactions once she joined the Gaang, OTOH, because in terms of age and interests and personality I think there could have been a lot more potential compatibility for a serious friendship there; whereas Toph strikes me as the "one of the guys" sorts who's probably going to form friendships more readily with boys.)

Yes! I would have loved to see that so very much.

[okroginator.livejournal.com]

*unapologetically guilty of loving Itachi waaaaaaaaaaay too much* ALSO, IT WAS ACTUALLY 72 HOURS, KTHXBAI

KATARA IS AWESOME, WHY ARE MY FELLOW AVATARDS FAILING AT UNDERSTANDING THIS??

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with loving Itachi. Just love Itachi and not that fluffy misunderstood woobie that lives in your head.

(See? That's even worse! God, now I want to hunt Itachi down and kill him again! *is guilty of loving Kakashi waaaaaaaaaaaaay to much*

BECAUSE THEY SUCK! AND THINK THAT EITHER A GIRL HAS TO HAVE NO DARK SIDE OR BASICALLY BE A MAN WITH TITS TO LIKE HER!

*too lazy to sign out of writing journal*

[capslocky-joy.livejournal.com]

I love Itachi because dammit, he's a guy who can drown his best friend and murder his entire family and torture a guy in his own head for three days and yet abhor violence and frequent dorky tea shops and make funneh faces and weep tears of blood before dying for the sake of his little brtoher, whom he couldn't kill but breaking his arm and effing with his mind is A-OK. (THAT SENTENCE IS A TRAIN WRECK, LOL)

WTF MAJOR SUCKAGE, AVATAR FANDOM. D8

*don't worry about it*

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Yes! And if the majority of his fans would stop FORGETTING about the murder and the torture it would make me head so much happier!