Becky is not all fangirls

[rusty_halo]

I didn't dislike that episode nearly as much as I expected to. I appreciated that:

* Becky wasn't a subject of complete ridicule. Her loneliness and longing for connection was portrayed with quite a bit of sympathy. This might actually be the most character focus SPN has ever given to a female character. :P She even got to be a hero at the end--she was strong enough to reject the demon deal, and brave enough to return and stab the demon to save Sam.

* But the show didn't treat her drugging and molesting Sam as acceptable. It was genuinely upsetting, and Sam was appropriately angry and unforgiving.

I'm reading other peoples' reactions, and so many people are angry and upset and feel that Becky is a personal slight against them, or against all fangirls. I just don't see it.

Becky is a pastiche of a certain type of fangirl. These people do exist, and because they're more likely to, say, spend their life savings paying for front row seats at Creation cons and groping the actors during the $125 30 second "photo with the actor," they are the type of fangirl that the writers and actors are more likely to encounter. The sane people who stay home and write instead of spending their life savings stalking actors are inherently more under-the-radar to the creators.

Frankly Becky is a kinder characterization than I would give. I still have traumatic memories of being lied to, used, and sold out by my own so-called friends so that they could get closer to James Marsters. I've seen people mortgage their houses to get closer to him, move to California to be near him, steal his leftover water glass as a souvenir, run a convention so they could peer through the window of his cabin or roll around in his used hotel bed, or use their industry job to meet with him for ~legitimate professional reasons~ and then tell me later that they secretly believe he's their soulmate and are just waiting for him to realize it.

Seriously guys, if you're not that kind of crazy, BECKY IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

Those people are only a small percentage of fangirls. The rest of us can continue being awesome and creative and innovative and amazing, and recognize that Becky is a pastiche of something that exists, is unfortunate, but is not us.

ETA: I took Becky's hypen comment (Rosen-Winchester) as a direct reference to this. TPTB know that most fangirls are not like that--just because they're parodying it doesn't mean they think we are all that way.

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[soundingsea]

Heh, I'm with you on this one. Fans (boy or girl) can be fucking insane. Becky actually was relatively sympathetic here. I was really happy that they highlighted how the nonconsensual stuff with Sam was NOT okay (and I'm really glad they didn't 'consummate').

[rusty_halo]

Yeah, same here. I would have been angry if they'd tried to keep Becky as sympathetic as they did and had her actually rape Sam.

[alizarin_nyc]

Great post. I can relate to Becky, but yes, I'm not her. I thought that the episode wasn't so awful, but mostly just over the top. I must admit I was relieved that Becky said the marriage hadn't been "consummated."

[rusty_halo]

I was annoyed that SPN played such a cliched trope straight (the loser fan who has no life, really? after they already called that trope false in The Real Ghostbusters?).

So I'm annoyed that it was a poor episode, but I don't feel personally insulted, because Becky clearly is not most fangirls.

[janedavitt]

I appreciate what you're saying -- and was utterly disgusted by the fallout from the pregnancy announcement -- but my feeling is that the show shouldn't be doing this, any of it. It should be telling its own story, not shining a light on fandom. It's wasting a precious 41 minutes of episode on an in-joke 80% of viewers won't get because fandom is a small part of the viewers, always has been, always will be, no matter how important we think we are.

The whole deal with Chuck writing the books (that not many people read), so there's a SPN fandom in canon with people like Becky is just so damn coy and artificial it sets my teeth on edge.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. It's like they forget that the majority of the audience are are not really really invested in the show like those of us in fandom are, and so most of the casual fans are just going to be sat there going wtf at jokes about "Sam girls" and "Dean girls" or at fans of the ~book series~ wanting Sam and Dean to sleep together.

It's just so self-indulgent at this point. It's not like there's anything actively bad about most of the meta episodes taken on their own, but looking at it in the contest of the overall series, it doesn't work for me at all. The season 2 episode (Hollywood Babylon was it called?) was actually much funnier to me because, while it did have some inside jokes like the network people asking for more light in the horror scenes, the episode itself is about a film-set that Sam and Dean are visiting. And that sense of removal is crucial to me, and works so much better than Sam and Dean going to a convention with people dressed as past MotW from the series and deconstructing the entire show

[rusty_halo]

Thanks for commenting!

If you're interested, I replied to janedavitt below re: why I like the meta.

[janedavitt]

Yes, me too. I want to watch a show about them, not us.

[rusty_halo]

I'm sorry you don't like it. I love the meta episodes, though I didn't love this one and didn't think it was particularly meta (it was more about Becky as a serious character than about the relationship between the fandom and the show).

IMO the meta is one of the few things SPN does that is actually innovative. It shouldn't be hard for mainstream viewers to extrapolate the meaning (how hard is it to figure out what "Sam girl" and "Dean girl" mean?), and even if they don't, why should I care that they don't get it? I get it and appreciate it. ;)