On Character Bashing in Reviews

[kriadydragon]

Has anyone ever received a review that bashed your favorite character? Or if not bashed wasn't particularly kind to your favorite character? Did you come to the character's defense? Ignore the bashing? Not say anything at all?

There's this reviewer over on FF.net who I find both amusing an exasperating for this reason. Their favoritism is painfully obvious. They don't just come to their favorite character's defense, they practically woobify him, while at the same time... not bashing the other character per se... but not really saying too many nice things about them, either. What gets me is that they'll do this on stories that are obviously other-character centric, by other-character fans. But it won't be "poor other-character" it's always "poor favorite character, can't other-character see what they're doing to fave character?" Yes, I know this isn't new or anything, I've just never seen it done so much by a single reviewer, and it's made me curious as to what the authors (specifically the authors of other-character centric stories) have to say in response (but because it's FF.net, I don't know).

I recall an SGA story I did - I'm thinking it might have been Castles in the Sky - where someone reprimanded Carson rather harshly in their review and I was really uncomfortable about it (I'm pretty sure I, politely, came to Carson's defense. In fact I would be quite surprised if I didn't considering how defensive I can be, but I can't be sure since it was on FF.net). I also recall reading a story by an obvious McKay fan and a reviewer who kept bashing McKay. And I mean really putting him down. I was surprised by this since I thought it was obvious who the favorite character in the story was, but apparently it wasn't obvious enough for this person.

Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm writing an HP fic where nobody is remotely nice (Marauders era) and my reviews are like a war between the Sirius lovers and the Snape lovers, and I just want to say to both of 'em, "Yeah, Snape's screwed up, and Sirius is on the right side, but hey, Snape's trying to join magical Nazis, and Sirius is a bully who almost got somebody killed, and neither of them are helpless little woobies, and neither of them are omg completely evil and should die, m'kay? That goes for Remus, Lily, James, and assorted side characters too!"

I brought it on myself. This is HP fandom, after all, so I've mostly just been letting it go.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Heh, I often hear stories of the HP kerfuffles, and the Buffy kerfuffles, and how they make other fandoms look pretty quiet and sane ;)