Question of the Day: What's a character in fiction that you think gets a bad rap in popular consciousness, and why do you think their reputation is unfair?
Corollary to yesterday's Question of the Day: What's a character in fiction that you think gets an overly positive reputation in popular consciousness that's unearned, and why do you think it's unearned/misplaced?
@ami_angelwings a kinda recent and super fucked up situation: Robert from Cat Person. If you read the short story the idea is he's a kinda-predator and why Me-Too is needed. Except you read the article by Alexis Nowicki, the woman whose life was cyber-stalked by the writer Kristen Roupenian, and Roupenian wrote the whole fanfic on Nowicki's life without Nowicki ever knew about it, except the real relationship Nowicki was in was respectful and consensual and absolutely the opposite of what made the fanfic so popular. It's implied that the real Robert soon committed suicide.
@ami_angelwings But I'm sure it's ok considering that Kristen Roupenian really made herself a name, made a killing (in more way than one) by hopping onto the Me Too bus.
In the end the one defining Me Too moment in literature was literally a woman violating another woman for personal gain, while framing a man as the villain.
@Bigshellevent wow I'm just reading about this now, I never heard about it before
@ami_angelwings I kinda hated the first short story anyway but because it's essentially written for the very specific type of rich white women. Turned out the real Margot is actually an incredible human being as well, another thing Roupenian altered for her own benefit.
@ami_angelwings a sub set of readers really seriously over identify with Humbert Humbert, much to Nabokov's horror.
Edit: these people are not common, sure; but it's bad enough to make the writer nope.
@ami_angelwings This is going back a bit, but Fionn mac Cumhaill. He's generally regarded as second only to Cuchulainn as a hero, but in the actual legends he's really a huge dick. It's his dad who deserves most of the praise he gets.
@ami_angelwings Varric from Dragon Age, people like him because he's like your funny friend but he really comes off to me as your obnoxious Centrist "no politics" guy who wants to maintain the status quo because it's all he knows. I don't hate him, to be clear, I just don't get the hype.