#fandom comparisons

So, a post that got reblogged to a collection archive from one of my sideblogs set me on to thinking about something: In certain fandoms, what kinds of characters are more prone to being hated / getting flak than others? It really seems to depend upon the tone of the canon and the fandom, but a common thread in story over what characters seem to be controversial is this: Moral Imperfection. Now, I don't mean villainy here. On the contrary, it seems to me that "perfect villains" are actually well-liked. Characters that you are "meant to hate" more often than not seem to get a fandom of people think they are "cool" or "sexy." Maybe there's just a no strings attached thing going on, because they aren't that complex. Better villains, ones that are more humanized, whose motivations are explored, will attract more of a hate-dom as well as a fandom, it seems. A good example, I find, is in one of my fandoms I'm not much into anymore: She-Ra and the Princesses of power. Horde Prime is someone I'd characterize as a "perfect villain" in that he doesn't have any motivation beyond enslaving the universe and making everything into his personal cult. People who like him seem to just find him hot. Hordak, on the other hand, a character given emotions and vulnerabilities, has his fans and his haters and his haters REALLY hate him (and his fans)! He is not good, nor is he a perfect evil. And then, on the good, but imperfect side of things, over in Trigun... well, there isn't a widespread hatred for any of the characters. I've seen some people have a personal hate for this or that character, but there's no wave of unified hate or factions against any character. We're all just chill there and the main controversy is in arguments over storytelling elements in the various iterations (two different animes and a manga). However, the character I think I see get the most flak is my personal second favorite in the series: Rem Saverem. She is a firm Good character. In fact, she does a heroic sacrifice to save a significant portion of Humanity. She doesn't get a lot of screentime (although what she gets is significant to the main story). She's long dead by the time-setting of the main story. She is imperfect in that some people in the fandom take her love and peace and importance of all life philosophy in a strict-literalist manner and blame her for many of main character Vash's problems. Some blame her for antagonist Knives' problems, thinking that she didn't do enough to pay attention to him when raising them both. In the manga and second-anime versions only, which both explore a storyline the first anime did not, she didn't do enough to save someone else, someone of Vash and Knives's species, who had horrible things done to her in the name of Science. She was not an active participant in the horrors, but didn't have or take enough power in stopping it and a big part in her saving Vash and Knives' lives and raising them as children is born of her regret. Her entire character is about second chances, but because she was a Good character who had a passivity-flaw and "wasn't Good enough" during a key time, well, she gets a lot of hate for being imperfect. And yet, that's why I freaking love her. And I love imperfect villain Hordak, and many others in grand ol' fiction-land. But, I don't know, it seems like a lot of people in fandoms are uncomfortable with nuance and the nuanced characters tend to be the ones that get dunked on a lot.

I just want to take a moment to wonder / baffle at how different fandoms can be. It seems like some things are constant between all fandoms - an abundance of smutfic and art, self-insert and OC character-creation fun, people inserting characters into popular memes, people making the wildest aus (Let's fanart them as werewolves!" and the like). However, there are just such interesting differences. In Spop fandom, I will never, NEVER get over how much visceral HATRED exists for Hordak on one "side" of the fandom and how much of the same kind of hatred exists for Catra on another "side" of the fandom. Additionally, discourse over Glimmer and etc. It seems like all the people in this fandom (who haven't just said hang it all to just make cute fanart and funny comics) talk about are WAR CRIMES and "who deserves redemption more?" in a show that is clearly about restoration and kindness. Horde Prime's destroying planets aside, I can count the canonical deaths in this series ON ONE HAND. And everyone's upset at all of the war crimes committed in a largely non-lethal local-to-the-main-setting-planet war on this... almost utopian planet where we'd all probably like to live. Meanwhile, over in Trigun fandom... The body count is in the literal millions and not in passing mentions of genocide Jell-O at dinner, but in triumphant arms to the sky as a burning fleet of spaceships incinerate in the sky in a deliberate attempt at a genocide (not as a side-effect of ruling). Many on-screen deaths of characters you get to KNOW. There is this huge complex moral dilemma centered around the survival-needs of a population that depends upon sentient beings that are both dependent upon them and overused and abused by them. There's another huge complex moral dilemma revolving around the justification of lethal force vs. the prices of a life of chosen, ardent pacifism. It's not a Y-7 series by any means and the manga / comics version of it gets really super dark (yet somehow Trigun Stampede made the Tesla-arc even darker, bravo, I'm gonna be sick). And yet the villains - from the mini-boss assassin characters to the ur-villain who LITERALLY WANTS TO DESTROY ALL OF HUMANITY and also wishes to manipulate his hero-brother to his side through severe traumatizing emotional torture... it's like... there are loads of people in this fandom who are "Oh, Millions Knives is my favorite character!" and it doesn't seem like anyone bats an eyelash. There are probably more fandom essays exploring Knives' side of things and why he feels the way he does and how his character-arc makes sense than even people in any way actively against him. Yes, most people in this fandom "side with Vash" (as do I), but it's like... we understand the villain here, or try to, and here's a fandom where people find sympathy for and "humanity" in the blatantly cruel person who on-screen slaughters swaths of people in some of the most gruesome ways possible. It's like, in this fandom, if someone's a Knives-fan, or a Legato-fan, or a Midvalley-fan, or even those of us who love the greatest villain of all, he who shines in the darkness, BRILLIANT DYNAMITES NEON!!! (oh, my two-episode wonder, missed you in Stampede oh so much, my sparkler-smoking baby...) it's like... no one cares? It's like "Yeah, they're great characters, aren't they?" It's just so... different. In the non-fatal sparkly princess show, everyone's scrutinizing everyone else for liking characters who do (largely non-lethal) WAR CRIMES! and then the mature-anime/manga fandom I am in where there's this whole extinction of humanity and the uses of their adjacent created-resource-species at stake everyone's like... chill. And enjoying the villains - and different ones, at that, is NORMAL.

The annoying thing with having a sideblog is being able to see someone's blog via the regular / base blog and then finding out they've blocked your sideblog for some reason and you don't know WHY. Or, in some cases, some of those mysterious likes / reblogs / supposed activity going on on your sideblog you can't see because someone blocked your regular for some reason? Anyway, managing sideblogs can be a mess. Also, I am wondering what I've done in Trigun fandom specifically to annoy a person or two. Considering that I found someone tonight via a mutual's reblogging that I was going to reblog because "Oh, how cute!" got me an error-message and I found out that I couldn't put in a reply on my sideblog name because it was faded out and "I don't know them from Adam" as the old saying goes, I'm just left puzzled as to why I got a block. I haven't been fighting with anyone in this fandom. It's not like the last fandom I was involved in very heavily where there was a LOT of fighting. Oh, well, I figure I could have been blocked over the pettiest of things. Maybe I don't ship somebody's ship. Maybe I do ship a ship they don't like or have reblogged art thereof. Maybe they just think my art is fugly. Maybe a friend of theirs doesn't like me for some reason (maybe going back to the fighty other fandom). Maybe it is something as simple as my age pinned up on my blog's welcome message. I make no secret that I'm an old swamp hag and I know that some younger people don't want to interact with anyone over 30 regardless of morality/pleasantness/fandom opinions or whatever and blocking is the easiest way to do it. I don't know, it's just a little aggravating not to *know* because I have this nitpick of wanting to know if I am doing something wrong so I can attempt to adjust my social interaction accordingly. (I think I just might have typed the most neurodiverse sentence ever...) Well, it is at least much better than how things went in the last major fandom I was in - which happened right around pandemic lockdown when everyone was losing their damn minds. The projected insanity lead to people in some branches of the fandom on a pathological need to put up callout posts dissecting people's bad takes on their problematic faves and people screaming at each other that they were "abuse apologists" and people projecting their real life traumas into everything and taking "people enjoy X-villain I don't like" personally. I'm serious about these giant rambling callout posts... It was insane. And it only all died down when people in the fandom learned to liberally use the Block button so they simply did not have to see people who had takes they didn't like on their blorbos and associated ships anymore. All in all, Trigun fans seem to behave better with simply Ghost Blocking For Mysterious Reasons.