You say a lot of people were against her from the beginning. Now maybe it's just the particular people on my flist (I have a LOT of fans of Firefly there) but I saw a lot more worry over Sam than of Keller at the beginning. Except for the people that were adamantly against anything not Carson, most people I saw were excited by the addition of Jewel to the cast. I know I was.
I think it's definitely a difference in the groups we were hanging out with at the time. Up until late last year most of my fandom interaction had been limited to one mailing list hosted on Yahoo Groups, and people there... well, there was a lot of teeth gnashing over Sam, and there was a lot of the Carson backlash too (oh my, was there!), but there were a lot of people that I don't think fit either camp that were already judging the character before she even made it to screen. I mean, I could go track down the original conversations, but they gave me a headache to start with. It was basically knocking at everything from Jewel Staite's age to calling her a Mary Sue before she even made it screen. So, in that way, I've been a little predisposed to be protective of a character that I felt got a raw deal from fandom from the start. (Which I think more relates to my only attempt to join the SG-1 fandom as a Jonas fan during season six. It... kind of ruined a lot of the show for me.)
Of course, that particular mailing list has gotten progressively nastier and more negative to the point where I don't even post there anymore. Which is sad, because they were the ones that really got me writing in this fandom in the first place.
They gloss over pretty much all of Keller's flaws, especially any potential flaws in her romances and in doing so, I think it weakens the characters and relationships, rather than strengthening them. If you present a flaw, you can address it, over come it. Ignore it, and you sway dangerously into "oh-so-perfect Mary-Sue" territory.
This, I can't argue with one bit. I think I was saying to xparrot a while back is that I've filled in a lot of the blanks with Keller, so the glossing doesn't really bother me like it normally would--but that's not to say it's good writing, because it so isn't. And while the lack of addressing the character's personal flaws I found occasionally annoying, I found the whitewashing in the "romance" full-blown irritating. I mean I tried, I really tried to make things make sense in my head with what I knew of the characters, provide valid reasoning for XYZ so that the end of "The Shrine" didn't ruin a squeetastic episode for me... and then this. Rargh.
See, and for me, part of the problem with the poorly-written romance is that it just was the final nail in the coffin for an ep I really just *did not* like.
I think the Martin Gero interview did it for me. I can't even think about this episode now without getting irrationally angry. Which is really stupid, because it's just a television show. Oh, he set me off but good. Those things I was still okay with last week? Kind of buried under a big pile of disdain right now. I'm not sure if I can ever watch this episode again, and will have a really hard time accepting it as canon.
I DID IT AGAIN (part one)
You say a lot of people were against her from the beginning. Now maybe it's just the particular people on my flist (I have a LOT of fans of Firefly there) but I saw a lot more worry over Sam than of Keller at the beginning. Except for the people that were adamantly against anything not Carson, most people I saw were excited by the addition of Jewel to the cast. I know I was.
I think it's definitely a difference in the groups we were hanging out with at the time. Up until late last year most of my fandom interaction had been limited to one mailing list hosted on Yahoo Groups, and people there... well, there was a lot of teeth gnashing over Sam, and there was a lot of the Carson backlash too (oh my, was there!), but there were a lot of people that I don't think fit either camp that were already judging the character before she even made it to screen. I mean, I could go track down the original conversations, but they gave me a headache to start with. It was basically knocking at everything from Jewel Staite's age to calling her a Mary Sue before she even made it screen. So, in that way, I've been a little predisposed to be protective of a character that I felt got a raw deal from fandom from the start. (Which I think more relates to my only attempt to join the SG-1 fandom as a Jonas fan during season six. It... kind of ruined a lot of the show for me.)
Of course, that particular mailing list has gotten progressively nastier and more negative to the point where I don't even post there anymore. Which is sad, because they were the ones that really got me writing in this fandom in the first place.
They gloss over pretty much all of Keller's flaws, especially any potential flaws in her romances and in doing so, I think it weakens the characters and relationships, rather than strengthening them. If you present a flaw, you can address it, over come it. Ignore it, and you sway dangerously into "oh-so-perfect Mary-Sue" territory.
This, I can't argue with one bit. I think I was saying to
See, and for me, part of the problem with the poorly-written romance is that it just was the final nail in the coffin for an ep I really just *did not* like.
I think the Martin Gero interview did it for me. I can't even think about this episode now without getting irrationally angry. Which is really stupid, because it's just a television show. Oh, he set me off but good. Those things I was still okay with last week? Kind of buried under a big pile of disdain right now. I'm not sure if I can ever watch this episode again, and will have a really hard time accepting it as canon.