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

[sg1jb]

>"...a designated victim who has to be written OOC in order to play that part effectively?"<

Just chiming in here with a quick comment -- I do not believe for a moment that a strong character need be written OOC to be a "designated victim". I have no idea why one might feel the phenomenon of victimisation has to be equated with character weakness. While there are many fics out there that tend to do just that, imo that's simply a problem with the author's skill and perspective, not with the character or the phenomenon itself.

I really do strongly disagree with you that victimhood, as you put it, implies and requires passivity. Far from it, imo. Being victimised -- being subjected to oppression, hardship, and/or trauma -- is simply (imo) an plot event that is inflicted upon a character, nothing more and nothing less, and for me the very best fics are the ones in which the strength, resilience, and tenacity of a character are illustrated by all that happens to them, and shine through *because* and in spite of the victimisation.

Imo.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I think where you and I are disagreeing here is that my reading of 'victim' in fic is the character as a passive receptacle of whump, someone who has to be rescued because that's their function in the story, to cast a reflected glory on their manly rescuer.

Of course, being victimised doesn't make you a victim. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any alternate term for 'victim' that I can find that doesn't have that passive lie back and think of Abydos connotation to it, and it's certainly the one that the worst offenders hold hard to.