So as most of you know, I have a more personal connection to anti-shipping than most: for about two years, I was arguably the nastiest and most vicious anti in my fandom, so much so that I gained a certain level of infamy for it.
Starting to ship Reylo was a wakeup call the likes of which I’d never encountered before — not only did it cause me to examine my own past behavior and confront the extremely difficult revelation that I’d been the villain all along, but it also made me think about anti-shipping as a whole, and the things I wish I had understood when I was knee-deep in that mindset.
Things like:
1. People’s enjoyment of things that hurt you is not blithe mockery of your pain. It is not a personal slight. You are allowed to be hurt by something. You are not allowed to belittle, degrade, and shame others for interacting with it. You are not that important, and your pain is not a weapon.
2. The moment you commit yourself to a movement devoted to hatred, you have ceded the moral high ground. You have gone to the Dark Side. You are not fighting the good fight. You are an emotional terrorist actively attempting to break people down for disagreeing with you.
3. You also cede the right to be a victim. No one deserves to be suicide baited or doxxed, and neither do you. However, by aligning yourself with hatred, by actively harming others and laughing about it, you forfeit your right to be upset and morally outraged when you receive hate, when others comment in disagreement with your posts, when you are cast as a villain. You are not being bullied. You are receiving back just a taste of the pain you have caused others.
4. You. Are. Miserable. You really are. Happy, fulfilled people don’t marinate themselves in hatred. They don’t drink acid and spit it at others. You’re so desperate to avoid looking at yourself and so afraid of what you’ll see there that you’re directing all of that hatred outwards. You found a group of people who like something that makes you angry, and it’s so easy to attack them, to hurt them because you’ve convinced yourself that they’re “bad” somehow and they deserve it. But it’s not about them. It’s about you. It’s about all those dark things you hear at night. It’s the fear that you’re worthless. And it’s the high you get, the ego boost every time someone cheers you on for attacking the “bad” shippers. It’s the feeling that you’re so smart, you’re so popular, you’re so loved and you’re so, so right for everything you’re doing.
But those people aren’t there for you at night. They won’t be there when your world falls apart. All that’s left is you, and your misery, and the desperate need to make someone else hurt for it because you can’t handle it.
5. And most importantly: you’re wrong. You are wrong. Your thought process is wrong. Your behavior is wrong. Everything that you are doing as you torture and harm others and convince yourself that you’re morally justified IS. WRONG.
One day you’re going to realize that, and you’ll choke on it.
And if you did that a thousand times, it still wouldn’t be equal to all of the harm you caused.
And you can distract and deflect and justify all you want. In the end, all of those people who cheered you on will be gone. Your popularity will be gone. And all you’ll have is yourself, and every ounce of misery and self-hatred you tried and failed to run from, that you drilled into others, and the realization that even though you thought you were the hero of your fandom, in reality, you were the monster you were trying so hard to protect everyone from.
“that’s such a dangerous/wrong/bad thing to write!”
wow, so unique, you sound like you just flew in from 1785.
“they can’t communicate, its SO UNHEALTHY.”
no, they’re having conflict and
IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE UNHEALTHY. NO ONE THINKS ITS REAL. EVERY SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL READING IT KNOWS IT, STOP POLICING AUTHORS AND YOUNG WOMEN BECUASE YOU ONLY WANT THEM CONSUMING WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE MORALLY PURE MATERIAL.
Fiction affects people. And people affect reality.
Can fiction have an indirect effect on reality? Sure. But it’s not what’s responsible. People are the ones with moral agency. They are the ones responsible for what they do with the ideas they’ve been exposed to.
You want to defuse the harm you think a work of fiction can do? Target the links in the chain that actually matter:
Criticize bad ideas to change how they affect people. Don’t criticize with the aim of suppressing, criticize with the aim of discrediting. Censorship/silencing just keeps people from being exposed to ideas once, in a particular context, and leaves them unprepared when they encounter them elsewhere or come up with them themselves. A thorough rebuttal of a bad idea inoculates them against it and puts them on their guard next time they run into it.
Educate people about what aspects of a work of fiction would be harmful or dangerous in real life. If applicable, educate them on how to safely experience something similar. Don’t educate with the aim of killing their love of the fictional version–you will lose them, and it’s cruel and unnecessary. Educate with the aim of promoting understanding of how the fictional version does, and doesn’t, translate to reality.
Like. These are the underlying worries beneath “fiction affects reality,” aren’t they? Worry that someone will absorb messed-up ideas that aren’t adequately disclaimed/discredited in the text. Worry that someone will try to act out something that looks fun and exciting in fiction but is dangerous in real life. So cut out the middleman and go straight to the person whose choices affect reality. Don’t smack the book out of their hand, just tell them: I know you like that ship, but it’s okay if a similar RL relationship sets off all your alarm bells and leaves you scrambling for the exit. Because no matter how romantic the ship is, IRL that would be abuse.
Fiction needn’t be educational and fiction doesn’t always have clear-cut endorsements of who’s in the right. But the discussion that happens around fiction can include both.
(Omg, if you’d written to me back in Feb. of this year, there was a blogger @somniferousdelusion, now deactivated ;A; who said Magnus was their fave character, this blogger could have been someone you might have had good convos with… Does anyone know if they just changed urls?)
No, I don’t think AR has ever been asked about writing a full novel about Magnus, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did! What are you drawn to about Magnus? There’s plenty of room for fanfic/headcanons about him, so if you are so inclined… write it for us!
I feel like if you want a book about Magnus you must be fascinated with him in some way, so I don’t mean to trample you if you do, but from all my time in fandom, I can say that Magnus is probably considered among the Absolute Worst if not THE MOST Problematic character in the whole series.*
>>>Quick interlude, on the subject of Problematic characters: I found this great essay by Warren Ellis. Here’s a taste, with my emphasis added in bold:
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
*….Which could be good for him bc AR has been taking the Absolute Worsts and putting them on pedestals lately. I don’t know what you’ve read so far, but as you may be aware, Magnus tells his story, albeit briefly, in Prince Lestat.
Magnus is also in Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis in a snazzy new… erm… “form”?, so we’ll probably see more of him, but my money is on AR focusing on how cool he is now, and not really digging any further into his past or forcing Lestat to have any difficult conversations with him, which they sort of briefly had in PLROA.
There was a Magnus RPer, @theycallmemagnus, gone inactive now, but you might find good stuff in their archive, might reach out to any active RPers you find there, who may be into talking about the character.
// Hey, just adding my 2 cents here, after 10 yrs in this fandom I don’t think there’s any kind of general consensus on who’s the “worst” character in the VC series, and I don’t think it’s really a relevant question either. We see Magnus as an antagonist because he’s mortal!Lestat’s personal bogeyman and Lestat is the narrator, but the same could be said of many beloved characters in the series if their stories were told from a different perspective.
As someone who read the series, spotted the former cult leaders and torturers and went “THIS ONE. THIS ONE IS MY BABY”, don’t feel bad about liking Magnus’ character just because he’s a villain.
He’s a brilliant medieval alchemist who successfully attained eternal life (how many alchemists can say that they actually ACHIEVED the Ultimate Goal??) by figuring out how vampires turned each other and then replicating the process by capturing a vampire and “stealing” the Blood! And then he lived for centuries and eventually went mad! It could be taken straight from an early 20th century horror story à la H. P. Lovecraft or M. R. James, and I for one think it’s awesome.
(ETA: original post edited after reblog, so consider reblogging from OP)
Great addition, @bloodyvampchrons! (The part I removed when I edited the post is under the cut.)
I will 1,000% defend anyone’s interest in any fictional characters, for any reason. @awareofwhatsaforementioned did not express anything other than an interest in learning more about this character, specifically: whether the author would write more about him. That’s all.
Not all fiction is written as propaganda. Not all fiction is written for wish-fulfillment. Fiction may not exist in a vacuum, but it also is, in the end, just a story. It can be shelved, burned, critiqued, enjoyed, by any reader who encounters it.
Problematic characters are there to antagonize, to provide friction, obstacles, whatever the author intends for them to do. Maybe even to be a Hate Sink:
“A Hate Sink is a character whose intended role in the story (the role the authors made for him/her) is to be so despicable that the audience wants him or her to fail just as much as they want the heroes to succeed. However, this individual doesn’t have to be the main villain of the story, or even a villain at all.
…A Hate Sink [provides] an easy target for the reader/audience/player’s contempt where there may not be one, and can serve as a foil to more likable Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain characters.
Essays and books have been written about it, so I’m not going into it in depth, but the issue I see again and again on tunglr dot com is Black and White Morality. From TVTropes.org:
“Good versus Evil. White hat versus black hat. The shining knight of destiny with flowing cape versus the mustache-twirling, card-carrying force of pure malevolence. The most basic form of fictional morality, Black And White Morality deals with the battle between pure good and absolute evil.
…- Motivation: The villains never have a sympathetic motivation for their actions. There aren’t any Well-Intentioned Extremists,… Rather, their intentions are entirely for the sake of Evil (and may involve taking over or destroying the world).”
^Even the most horrific fictional crimes might be done by a character thinking he is doing the right thing, in his own mind.
“In Real Life, seeing the world in absolute Black and White Morality is considered normal for small children, but seen as a far less healthy trait in adults. A person who regards the people around him as entirely good or entirely evil has this.” – Black and White Insanity – TVTropes.org
Every reader can interpret the text differently, and very little is known of Magnus’ intentions. Before you cry MURDER/RAPE APOLOGIST, any reader exploring the reasons for a character’s crime =/= making excuses for it.
Creating/Consuming/Exploring dark fiction and problematic characters =/= endorsement of these things in real life.
People are accountable for actual crimes, not thought crimes.
Give me 100,000 fans like @awareofwhatsaforementioned. In my opinion, the greatest fandom crime is to chase other fans away from fandom by shaming them for having an interest in dark fiction or problematic characters.
I won’t engage in pointless unwinnable debate over what a fan is allowed to be interested in, but to make someone feel ashamed enough about what they’re interested in to the point of making them leave a fandom is a loss to us all. Think of all the friends and discussions they miss out on, all the fanworks they never get to see, or MAKE.
I want the longfic of Magnus’ backstory. I want the fanart of him as a kid, as a monster, all of it! If I’m the only one, so be it. But I don’t think I’m the only one. As I said in my original reply:
There’s plenty of room for fanfic/headcanons about Magnus, so if you are so inclined… write it for us!
I feel like if you want a book about Magnus you must be fascinated with him in some way, so I don’t mean to trample you if you do, but from all my time in fandom, I can say that Magnus is probably considered among the Absolute Worst if not THE MOST Problematic character in the whole series.*
>>>Quick interlude, on the subject of Problematic characters: I found this great essay by Warren Ellis. Here’s a taste, with my emphasis added in bold:
“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.”
*….Which could be good for him bc AR has been taking the Absolute Worsts and putting them on pedestals lately. I don’t know what you’ve read so far, but as you may be aware, Magnus tells his story, albeit briefly, in Prince Lestat.
I just wanted to pop in and remind all the fic writers & RP’ers out there that you don’t have to listen to the black & white thinkers trolling this website who want to shit on you every time you bring up something sympathetic about your character.
It’s okay for “bad” characters to have sympathetic traits. It would be boring as fuck if they didn’t. It’s unfortunate that so many people out there are too salty and dense to understand a complex character, but don’t let it get you down!
If you’re a good fic writer or RP’er it’s really important to take all facets of the character’s personality into consideration. You aren’t here to write a 2D ebul cartoon. You should be taking their motives into consideration. You should be figuring out their demeanor. If they are a charming sociopath, you shouldwrite them as being charming. That’s the whole fucking point!
Fic writers and RP’ers engage in fandom in a way that unwraps characters and tries to figure out what makes them tick. We want to figure out why they feel the way they feel, we want to figure out their temperament, we want to understand. It’s an exercise in creative empathy and there are a lot of people out there who just don’t have a creative bone in their body. They’re gonna try to shout you down for acknowledging that a character can have gray morality or be a dichotomy in some way and I hope it doesn’t discourage anyone.
So get outta my face with all this purity politics bullshit, plz & thank you. Acknowledging conflicting pieces of your character is a responsible and creatively intelligent thing to do, and people who don’t get that can eat a dick.
Don’t let it stop you!
^^^ THIS ^^^
That’s the thing that people keep forgetting: when the gothic romance novels first came out, they were pretty punk. They were very highly charged. They were sort of improper. They were bold and overt. For lack of a better analogy, they were like the Sex Pistols of that era.
me as a villain fan: This character is a fascinating and complex individual, whose complexity makes them sympathetic even while the evil things they have done can never be excused, and whose story provides an intriguing opportunity to explore the dark side of the human psyche.
also me as a villain fan: This is my smol fluffy murder child. They’re such a piece of shit, isn’t it magnificent? Aww, look, they’re still covered in somebody’s arterial spray.
I-want-my-IWTV 