lirazel: Extreme closeup of Roy and Keeley from Ted Lasso ([tv] offside you turnip)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2023-07-21 09:45 am

Fannish Friday: Character U-Turns

On this ridiculously hot Friday (in most of the northern hemisphere, anyway), tell me about a character who you either started out loving and ended up hating or started out hating and ended up loving. Or both! With an emphasis on it being unexpected--if someone had told you you'd end up loving/hating this particular character, you wouldn't have believed them.

Love to hate ---> Giles from Buffy. I was always a big fan of the character, and then in season 6, they have him abandon Buffy because she needs to "stand on her own," even though her mother just died, SHE JUST DIED, she's trying to deal with living again, she's raising her teenage sister on her own, and she has to pay the mortgage??? And did I mention that she's, at most, 20 years old??? It's truly insane.

I know that this decision was made because Anthony Head wanted to spend more time in the UK so they needed to write him out of the bulk of the season, but I can think of a half a dozen ways to do that that would have kept him from abandoning Buffy.

Buffy is my woobie anyway, so it isn't surprising that I would resent anyone who betrayed her, but wow, this feels personal to me. It even affects me when I go back and rewatch earlier seasons! And I hate it because I loved that character before this!!!



Hate to love ---> Jamie Tartt from Ted Lasso. He starts out the show just this arrogant asshole who doesn't know how to properly treat Keeley, who you have loved from the first episode. You're set up to see him as a villain. And then you get the reveal of why he's that way, and while that doesn't excuse it, it does help contextualize him.

And then! Then the writers gave him one of the best redemption arcs! And it's subtle! You barely even realize it's happening! Until one day you realize...Jamie's become a really good person and you love him! He's become one of your blorbos! (On a show filled with blorbos!)

I'm still not quite sure how they pulled that off--I need to go back and rewatch the show to figure out how they did it. But wow, I am so happy the writers did that! I adore that boy and ship him so hard with Keeley and Roy!



I would love to hear your journeys with particular characters, either in the comments or in your own post!
sawthefaeriequeen: (Default)

[personal profile] sawthefaeriequeen 2023-07-21 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Love (or at least Like) to Hate – Johnny Lawrence on Cobra Kai. He had potential at first, and Billy Zabka was certainly entertaining, but as the show went on, his macho stuck-in-the-80’s thing got quickly unfunny, he kept pointedly NOT apologizing for his past bullying, and he was an increasingly shittier dad to Robby. And then of course the creators decided to self-insert their straight-dude asses even more by having him knock up his Sexy Lamp of a girlfriend (I feel so bad for her actress) at the ripe old age of fifty-something so he can start off all over again with a kid who is Not Robby. I’m so done with him, lmao. (Karate Kid era Johnny can stay though.)

Hate to Love – Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights! I didn’t THINK I’d ever even like the angsty Lancelot side of a teen show love triangle but then! So many other things went down and he -somehow!- became my fave and I also ship him crazy hard with Lyla? Not quite sure how all that happened. I’m still stuck on the end of season 3 (?) where they lose and he leaves his cleats on the field.

Interesting how the same character jock-type can provoke such different reactions.
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[personal profile] sawthefaeriequeen 2023-07-21 03:58 pm (UTC)(link)
It’s SO frustrating. I mean Johnny was never my fave; Daniel and Robby are. But I at least expect development from the main character and yet…nope. Oh well. I still have Chozen, who ended up being a better Johnny than actual Johnny.

Haha, I know Vince or maybe Matt should probably be my best boy, and yet it’s Riggins? Stranger things have happened!

Re: Giles, the only way I continue to like him after S6 is because I pretend he was on a mission for the Council or got devoured by a portal or something. I mean it’s a supernatural show! So many easier ways to do it! “Oh I am so conflicted and will sing about it, but I’ll abandon you anyway” was such a weird way to write him out.

And then there’s his patronizing terribleness in S7...
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[personal profile] sophia_sol 2023-07-21 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
...huh, I just thought back through a variety of my fandoms and to my surprise, apparently I don't really do this. I can go from hate to love or from love to hate on a fandom or a canon as a whole, or I can go from conflicted to a different flavour of conflicted on a character, or from "I don't care" to hate or "I don't care" to love, but I don't seem to really ever do a full 180 in terms of how I feel about just a specific character!
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2023-07-21 05:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I think that the thing is, I pretty much exclusively get into canons after they're over. I only very rarely become invested in active canons! Which means I already know what to expect from character arc issues going in and can be braced for them. And then the few times I have followed active canons....if a character I love is ruined for me by canon, then it's probably part of a bigger overarching issue with canon and the whole of canon is ruined for me. (eg when I had my horrible breakup with Doctor Who many years ago)
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[personal profile] sophia_sol 2023-07-21 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I divorced the show near the beginning of season 7, the third season of Moffat as showrunner, which was the point at which all the stuff that Moffat prioritized,* which is the opposite of what I wanted, finally reached a threshold where I couldn't ignore it anymore and the whole thing came crashing down for me.

The clean break was not good in my case lol. Doctor Who was a show that was very meaningful to me and it felt crushingly awful. I couldn't even think about the show without crying for years afterwards. I was able to move on from it eventually but honestly it was a defining grief of my mid twenties.

* the doctor is totally chill with violence, rather than his violent impulses being something that comes out when he's at his worst! the doctor is the most special boy in the universe, and his companions have to be special too, rather than the point of the show being that everyone is special in their ordinariness! the doctor is very much not asexual! misogynistic jokes are funny! every story needs to be about WORLD-ENDINGLY-MASSIVE plots that last all season and are all about Moffat making sure you know how clever he is! and so forth.
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2023-07-21 10:52 pm (UTC)(link)
thanks <3 on reflection I think it was probably a good thing in the end for me to learn how to not make a piece of pop culture quite so integral a part of my identity that losing it was so painful, but it was definitely a hard lesson to learn!
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[personal profile] gryfndor_godess 2023-07-21 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm too tired rn to think original ideas, but when you said Giles, I went YES, and when you said Jamie, I went YESSSSS. Fully agree!!

It even affects me when I go back and rewatch earlier seasons!

Same. My main feeling is "fuck that guy," which is a shame.

The only original example that immediately comes to mind is not a character but a person, but given what SPN fandom is, it kind of feels like the same thing lol?? But anyway, I was SO obsessed with Jensen for a period (like, the way I was in love with Leo in 2nd grade when Titanic came out and with Tom Felton and Daniel Radcliffe as a teen), and then I was very disenchanted after the first con I went to, and after a few years I reached a place of grudging appreciation where I could acknowledge that he's human and imperfect and still an amazing actor, and THEN he had the fucking GALL to create that disgusting prequel show WITHOUT EVEN TELLING JARED, and now, well, I'm not even sure I want an SPN reboot anymore :))) And for me, that's really saying something.
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[personal profile] lebateleur 2023-07-21 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Hate to love

Oh, this is easy: the Queen of Attolia, for all the obvious reasons as the plot developed after the conclusion of The Thief.
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[personal profile] seekingferret 2023-07-23 09:59 am (UTC)(link)
Love to Hate the most obvious one for me is Dr. Carson Beckett on SGA, he was a delightful comic relief character for the early seasons until one episode he performs a wildly unethical, bordering on Mengele-ish, medical experiment on a prisoner of war and um... the show then tried to ask you to keep thinking of him as the delightful comic relief character and it just fundamentally didn't work for me, and I was very happy when he died.
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[personal profile] seekingferret 2023-07-24 09:56 pm (UTC)(link)
It takes it seriously, but yeah, I don't know if that's better. That episode is mostly from the victim's POV, and he ends up becoming a recurring villain who relentlessly tries to hurt the people who did this to him (i.e. our 'heroes'), which, you're like, yeah, you're using cartoonishly evil tactics but I get where you're coming from.
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[personal profile] chestnut_pod 2023-07-24 03:08 am (UTC)(link)
Honestly, most of the examples I can think of where I wasn't meant to go on an emotional journey with a character, but instead went along that road of my own volition, are more because of fandom/fanon than because of canonical (mis)treatment.
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[personal profile] elperian 2023-07-24 05:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Giles' betrayal in S6 always haunted me, although the initial betrayal was in - what - S3, I think? When the Watchers have him put Buffy through some kind of torture device? And I *loathed* that he didn't stand up and protect Buffy from that, at least, even if he couldn't protect her from being Chosen, etc etc.

I have, in hindsight, accepted that I actually like this type of character: Sawyer (Lost), Duke (Haven), Three (Dark Matter), aka the criminal with a sorta heart of gold but who more importantly is sub to a woman I care about. Every time I resist the initial intro of this dude, and then he's like "boss lady <3" and I'm just...."ffs, fine, I guess", because I also love her.
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[personal profile] elisi 2023-09-04 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Can you tell I'm going through old tabs? *g*

Buffy is my woobie anyway, so it isn't surprising that I would resent anyone who betrayed her, but wow, this feels personal to me. It even affects me when I go back and rewatch earlier seasons! And I hate it because I loved that character before this!!!
See this is very interesting, because although it was so obviously the wrong thing, it never bothered me? S6 is the season when everyone falls, and they fall because of their strengths. (I have literally written an essay on this, in case it might help?)

Also someone mentioned the S3 episode about the Slayer test (Cruciamentum? unsure about the spelling), and I feel the need to defend Giles. He sabotages the test halfway through by telling Buffy the truth, which ends up costing him his job as her Watcher.

He's not re-instated officially until S5 (Checkpoint). ^_^

I think that is enough waffling for today...
elisi: (Clara (FACE))

[personal profile] elisi 2023-09-06 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
But I cannot be rational about it, possibly because of my own fear of being abandoned by my literal parents.
Ooof, that makes a lot of sense. :( :(