I'm not quite that unlucky, but I do find canon-Eridan fun to read and really interesting. I would love to read Eridan redemption fic based around what he actually did and then trying to find a way to get past that. Instead people write about how Feferi and/or Kanaya are to blame, the bitches. Or else they ignore all that and write hero Eridan while bashing Vriska. Or the girls just disappear.
That's pretty harsh. I'm not really involved with Homestuck but I do have an interest in villains generally, and in my experience there have been a select few cases where it really wasn't the villains' fault they were evil (and this was glaringly obvious from canon). From what I do know of Homestuck characters, Eridan doesn't seem to be one of these, in which case trying to blame his behavior on some other character is missing a pretty crucial aspect of who he's supposed to be.
And yeah, character-bashing is annoying too--I don't even like it when it's directed at characters I hate.
In Eridan's case, they specifically blame the characters he murders for his murdering them.
There actually were extenuating circumstances (they thought they were all going to die so he decided to defect to the guy planning to kill them all) but no one seems interested in that when they could be blaming his victims for not being supportive enough.
I hate it when that happens. It's vaguely Mary-Sue-ish, in a way: no matter what the Mary Sue does he's never to blame--it's always his victims' fault for not dropping everything to take care of his wants/needs. And if there were, as you said, extenuating circumstances you'd think the fans who really cared about Eridan would be trying to work with those, rather than throwing them out the window and blaming someone else for his problems.
And there could easily be a sexist dimension to it as well. It's enough to make one wonder what would happen if the characters' personalities and situations were exactly the same but their genders were switched around. Would people still sympathize with a female Eridan who attacks a couple of boys?
Well, that's what's actually really interesting and yet frustrating about Homestuck! It's got a large cast of mostly gender-balanced characters, so you actually get someone very similar to Eridan who's a girl, as well as having characters who are similarly victims other than the two girls. The problem is they're not exactly the same, so when is someone reacting to gender and when is it another difference? And even what's the same runs into issues of how the comic itself frames it - stuff happening front and center and often is more likely to stick in people's minds than stuff that happens once off to the side.
So the end result is that almost certainly there's sexism in play, and there's certain recurring themes that are tied to that, but it's really hard to tell what's behind everything. And an extra axis of the whole Eridan thing is that some of it's just about making things resolve in a less terrible way for the whole group, with the murdering and all.
Really friend, if the whole lack of time powers isn't enough of an obvious hole in this, what am I getting out of it by secretly hating everything and just pretending to hate it for reasons I'm writing exhaustive meta on and complain incessantly about?
I mean, come on, if we're going to be speaking of characterization, surely my own should feature into things.
Well first, someone writes "Violet tears prick at your eyes. Why did she try to stop you? Even more than that, you saw the look in her eyes. Why did she try to kill you? She forced your hand, couldn't she just trust you?" and then I make a post saying "I hate Eridan fans so, so much." with a link to what's angering me today.
Also, I resolve to write more of the meta, but as you can see from the last sequence of posts I sure haven't actually made any progress there.
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Date: 2013-01-13 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-03 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 09:57 pm (UTC)And yeah, character-bashing is annoying too--I don't even like it when it's directed at characters I hate.
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Date: 2013-02-10 03:26 am (UTC)There actually were extenuating circumstances (they thought they were all going to die so he decided to defect to the guy planning to kill them all) but no one seems interested in that when they could be blaming his victims for not being supportive enough.
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Date: 2013-02-11 04:31 am (UTC)And there could easily be a sexist dimension to it as well. It's enough to make one wonder what would happen if the characters' personalities and situations were exactly the same but their genders were switched around. Would people still sympathize with a female Eridan who attacks a couple of boys?
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Date: 2013-02-12 05:26 am (UTC)So the end result is that almost certainly there's sexism in play, and there's certain recurring themes that are tied to that, but it's really hard to tell what's behind everything. And an extra axis of the whole Eridan thing is that some of it's just about making things resolve in a less terrible way for the whole group, with the murdering and all.
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Date: 2013-02-12 04:25 am (UTC)i know for a fact that you insult people that claim to prefer him as a villain, just for being in some form an eridan fan
i know you can't properly argue with any eridan fan because you take anything they do as proof that you are right
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Date: 2013-02-12 05:16 am (UTC)I mean, come on, if we're going to be speaking of characterization, surely my own should feature into things.
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Date: 2013-02-12 06:47 am (UTC)why do you go to such lengths to hate eridan and eridan fans
what did they ever do to you
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Date: 2013-02-12 05:48 pm (UTC)Also, I resolve to write more of the meta, but as you can see from the last sequence of posts I sure haven't actually made any progress there.
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Date: 2013-02-12 07:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-12 05:49 pm (UTC)