When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters

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Title:	When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters
Creator:	Lucy Gillam
Date(s):	January 7, 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	fiction writing, hurt/comfort
External Links:	When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters/WebCite
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When Bad Things Happen to Good Characters is an essay by Lucy Gillam.

It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.

It uses three fanfics as examples:

• a gen TS series called "Happy Families" by Sharon
• an unnamed Herc slash series by Aramis
• a TPM series called "Searching" by Esmerelda (available at the Master-Apprentice archive)
• nod to the term, Cult of the Pallid Hunter

A Response

See Subjective Characterization a.k.a. Are Bad Things Really Bad?.

Excerpts

I should preface these ramblings by saying that I love h/c fic. Always have. Also, when I'm not reading fanfic or rhetorical theory, most of the stuff I read is pretty violent: occult fiction, sci-fi, comic books, murder mysteries. The tv I watch tends toward the action-drama side (never been a big sitcom fan). I'd rather watch a good John Woo movie than a chick flick any day (I'm *drooling* over the new MI movie).

So I've never understood why certain fanfic stories (or more often series) make me finally turn away in serious squickdom over the violence inflicted on a character.

Except I finally realized: it isn't the violence. It's the excessive victimization. Now, that may sound odd coming from an h/c fan - I *like* to see characters put through the wringer. So what are the squick factors? Let me explicate by example. I'm using three series chosen for no particular reason other than they're the first three I thought of.

These 3 series have several things in common: 1. One character (Blair, Iolaus, and Obi-Wan) is repeatedly subjected to various forms of abuse from multiple assailants.

Blair is (I'm working from memory, here) shot, stabbed, kidnapped several times, becomes addicted to drugs, made to think he has AIDS, loses his hearing, loses both kidneys *and* the first transplant, sets himself on fire, and a few other things I can't recall (I may be mixing in stuff from some of Sharon's other stories, but this particular series is about 14 stories long, and something nasty happens to Blair in each one).

Iolaus is raped, beaten, nearly raped, raped again, date raped - and this is all by different people. Pretty much everyone he meets tries to rape him.

Obi-Wan is kidnapped and assaulted by slavers, becomes addicted to drugs, assaulted with intent to rape, and tortured and raped by a pirate.

Now, I'll admit that part of what squicks me about these series is characterization. I've long railed against "helpless, weepy Blair," have no patience for what Helen A. Handbasket (did I get that right?) calls the Cult of the Pallid Hunter, and I prefer my Obi-Wans adult and competent, thanks. But I can't put my whole reaction down to characterization, because what finally drives me nuts is the abuse of the characters. And I've had some trouble figuring out why this should be so when two of my all-time fav TS stories are Susan Williams' "The Devil You Know" and "Masks," a really brutal rape and recovery story, and I've got Sandy's rape recs bookmarked right next to Jedi Hurtaholics and the Angst Archive.

So the seeming pointlessness of the suffering isn't the problem either. Am I dealing, then, with a combination effect? Bad characterization, lack of comfort, and pointless suffering? Maybe. But the strength of my reaction to this stories (I have been known to explode at the fifth or so atrocity with a good, hearty "Jesus H. jumped-up Mother of God," my most powerful, if somewhat mangled, expression of sheer exasperation) indicates something more at work. I've finally, I think, boiled it down to one simple, gut level reaction: if I were any of these characters, I'd kill myself.

Fan Comments

Lucy looks at the sorts of h/c which don't work for her. She looks at several examples from different fandoms and hits on a lot of points I've thought of as well (such as the practically unrealistic repeated, violent hurting of a character, or the extent of the extreme hurt). This is certainly very subjective, but it's definitely the sort of thing that makes you think about what you do and don't like in h/c.