A few thoughts on victimhood...

[graculus]

Every fandom has one. The character who always gets it, the one who's more often than not in peril or injured so that the other(s) can rescue him. It's a staple of h/c and always has been. Whether it's Daniel Jackson or Illya Kuryakin (or Obi Wan Kenobi, Harper, Blair Sandburg... the list is endless), there's always one character who gets to be 'the designated victim' more often than not. Often much more often than not.

What puzzles me is how much making those characters any kind of victim, with all the passivity that implies and requires, takes a warping of what we see onscreen beyond all reason. What most of us like about those characters in the first place is their strength of character (call it stubbornness if you like, sometimes that's a more accurate description) and yet writers apparently think nothing of utterly stripping characters of that so that they can be victimised with impunity.

In the worst examples, said victim is tied to the metaphorical railtracks like a silent movie heroine while the manly hero (every fandom has one of those as well, it seems) rescues them. It's bizarre. Because, frankly, you could whump Illya Kuryakin or Daniel Jackson till doomsday and neither of them would just lie there and take it - they'd both be trying to escape under their own steam, snarking at their captors while they did so. They'd suffer the consequences, of course, but neither of them would let a little thing like more pain stop them from trying to do what they could. It's in their nature.

Is there a fandom out there where the risks experienced by the characters are more evenly spread? One where there isn't a designated victim who has to be written OOC in order to play that part effectively? If there is, I'd love to hear about it.

Comments

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Good point, and I'd totally agree. Chalk Harper up as another character who, canonically, tends to fight like a feral creature with really nasty toxic teeth when anyone tries to victimize him, but who is absolutely the fanon sacrificial virgin and helpless chew-toy. With Harper, I can see why the fandom does it, to some extent - because he literally *looks* small and vulnerable and cute, a line of argument he tries to use on any aggressor dumb enough to fall for it.

Also, canonically, to some extent Harper has been the one (like Daniel or Illya) who falls over, gets broken / kidnapped / impregnated by Magog, and it's the manly men men - Tyr or Dylan (like Jack or Napoleon) - who've rescued him. But he certainly never takes the aggression lying down, any more than Daniel or Illya do. When any of them become passive, trembly, moist-eyed little victims in a story, is usually the point where I grab my coat and say tutty-bye to the fic in question.

I'd very hesitantly suggest that Atlantis is bucking the trend, one season in. On the show, honours are about equal between McKay and Sheppard as to which one gets whumped and which one rides to the rescue. I guess it helps that David Hewlett, who might have been landed with the vulnerable little geek-boy role, is clearly a big strapping lad who isn't going to be picked up and rescued by anyone in a hurry, least of all Sheppard, who he probably out-weighs by half as much again.

In fic, there doesn't yet seem to be a consensus about whether it's Shep or Rodney who's the bigger victim - McKay has emotional baggage which tempts the wussy-fiers, but then again, Sheppard seems to be sitting on some kind of emotional time bomb, not yet revealed. I've read about even numbers of stories where each of them is either the virgin or the manly hero - and I think they're competing for the titlw of Beloved Adored Object in the fandom. I guess time, and another season or two, may tell!

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I guess it helps that David Hewlett, who might have been landed with the vulnerable little geek-boy role, is clearly a big strapping lad who isn't going to be picked up and rescued by anyone in a hurry, least of all Sheppard, who he probably out-weighs by half as much again.

I've never known little things like facts to get in the way of fandom victimhood, personally. After all, MS is hardly a shrinking violet (over 6' tall and I can personally attest to him being muscled like my own fondest dreams..) but that doesn't stop people casting Daniel as Penelope Pitstop. ;)

I've read about even numbers of stories where each of them is either the virgin or the manly hero.

It'll be interesting to see how that works out over time. Is this just the slash side of the fandom or the fandom as a whole? I assume there's gen Atlantis fic out there? If so, then perhaps some of the major villains of wussitude may well turn up in your fandom some time soon and then we'll see what happens. (Yes, I do have someone in mind - she recycles the same hideous OOC mpreg stories in a multitude of fandoms).