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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 boyand 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!
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
I would love to hear your journeys with particular characters, either in the comments or in your own post!
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I'm kind of surprised you've never had a character you love ruined for you by canon. Lucky you!
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(eg when I had my horrible breakup with Doctor Who many years ago)
I had a horrible breakup with DW (rage-quit after what happened to Donna), gave it another try (the Ponds, whose era I genuinely loved despite its unevenness), got super annoyed again (the Melody plotline), and drifted away from it. A clean break would have been better!
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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.
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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.
Oh no! I'm so sorry! That is truly awful!
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