*Ack* Sorry for how long it's taken me to get back to you on this, but after all the different interesting arguments for and against arising over the last few days, your question was the final piece falling into place on a theory I'd been forming. So I started writing it up, and as it began to transform into another long essay all on it's own (the main point of which I'll touch on briefly, further down), xparrot pointed out that I still wasn't fully answering the real question and that lead to another sort of realization, more about fanning in general, that now I want to do a full paper on or something and man do I miss university and um...oh look, random tangent. Sorry. ^_- Anyway, I'm gonna try to quickly sum up and if it doesn't make sense, or you'd be curious to hear it more in full, I'll be happy to go on (probably at too great a length ^_-). Err, anyways:
So, the question is - why are we willing to love John and Rodney despite the flaws, but not Keller?
The true, candid answer: because we don't like her. So many of us question her flaws, seek them out, balk at brushing them over, because we want to justify our dislike. But then we've got to ask, is it really these flaws that made us dislike her in the first place or something else?
xparrot asked this, and it made me start to think. What was it about her, at the heart of her character, that caused that true dislike. Before the logic kicked in, the evidence from the show, the long, prolix essays got written, what started that emotional response?
And I think (maybe) I've put my finger on it. Whether we like a character or not is 100% bias to our own personal tastes, different for every person. But I do think there are trends that the majority tends to follow.
Picture a giant scale, with all the positives of a character on one side, and the negatives on another. Exactly balanced, and we're ambivalent about the character, take 'em or leave 'em. Add a negative or positive, remove one, and the scales tip up and down accordingly, until a point, when the scales get too overbalanced, and you fall completely into character love or hate. At that point, the weighing stops, and really, no matter what happens (apart from a total character retooling) your opinion's not gonna change.
In the case of Keller, I see it as a combination of lacking positives and building negatives that has weighed her down into dislike for a lot, and outright toppled the scale for many others. The question isn't whether she has these flaws. They all do, as you pointed out. It's does she have enough lovable traits to outweigh them.
Two of the strongest, heaviest positives that seem to be fairly universal across the board are humor and (in the case of action/sciFi) badass-ness. Rodney, John, Ronon, Teyla, even Woolsey and the most other minors all are one or the other or in most cases both. But Keller doesn't get to be either, at least not very often. Hands down the episodes/scenes I liked Keller most were "Trio" (funny) and the part near the beginning of 'Adrift' when she's on the gurney, flying through the halls working on Elizabeth, calmly shouting orders left and right (badass). But those moments are few and far between. And every time she shows just the opposite, she's unconfident or wavers, whines or puts herself down in a way not played for laughs, those negative or annoying traits negate the pluses.
The essay above, talking about her lack of motivations, the other essay I had planned, talking about the negative weight levied against late-comers (ie characters added later to the show, who have to work doubly hard to prove themselves to the already established characters and thus the viewers, and how I don't think Keller did this), the romance (I see romance as a very polarizing, incredibly weighted element in any series, and handled well boosts the positives significantly, but, done poorly, crashes down on the negative resoundingly), the Mary Sue tendencies, the possible breakage of one of the larger OTPs in all of fandom, etc. all weigh heavily against her. And, for many of us, the positives are just not strong enough to compensate for all those negatives.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-28 01:40 pm (UTC)So, the question is - why are we willing to love John and Rodney despite the flaws, but not Keller?
The true, candid answer: because we don't like her. So many of us question her flaws, seek them out, balk at brushing them over, because we want to justify our dislike. But then we've got to ask, is it really these flaws that made us dislike her in the first place or something else?
And I think (maybe) I've put my finger on it. Whether we like a character or not is 100% bias to our own personal tastes, different for every person. But I do think there are trends that the majority tends to follow.
Picture a giant scale, with all the positives of a character on one side, and the negatives on another. Exactly balanced, and we're ambivalent about the character, take 'em or leave 'em. Add a negative or positive, remove one, and the scales tip up and down accordingly, until a point, when the scales get too overbalanced, and you fall completely into character love or hate. At that point, the weighing stops, and really, no matter what happens (apart from a total character retooling) your opinion's not gonna change.
In the case of Keller, I see it as a combination of lacking positives and building negatives that has weighed her down into dislike for a lot, and outright toppled the scale for many others. The question isn't whether she has these flaws. They all do, as you pointed out. It's does she have enough lovable traits to outweigh them.
Two of the strongest, heaviest positives that seem to be fairly universal across the board are humor and (in the case of action/sciFi) badass-ness. Rodney, John, Ronon, Teyla, even Woolsey and the most other minors all are one or the other or in most cases both. But Keller doesn't get to be either, at least not very often. Hands down the episodes/scenes I liked Keller most were "Trio" (funny) and the part near the beginning of 'Adrift' when she's on the gurney, flying through the halls working on Elizabeth, calmly shouting orders left and right (badass). But those moments are few and far between. And every time she shows just the opposite, she's unconfident or wavers, whines or puts herself down in a way not played for laughs, those negative or annoying traits negate the pluses.
The essay above, talking about her lack of motivations, the other essay I had planned, talking about the negative weight levied against late-comers (ie characters added later to the show, who have to work doubly hard to prove themselves to the already established characters and thus the viewers, and how I don't think Keller did this), the romance (I see romance as a very polarizing, incredibly weighted element in any series, and handled well boosts the positives significantly, but, done poorly, crashes down on the negative resoundingly), the Mary Sue tendencies, the possible breakage of one of the larger OTPs in all of fandom, etc. all weigh heavily against her. And, for many of us, the positives are just not strong enough to compensate for all those negatives.