Except that it's constantly the female characters, specifically Sara, that are excluded, and yes, it is problematic.

At this point, I'm afraid I've left the comm. I don't feel comfortable filling prompts that I find to be frankly misogynistic. It's too bad, because I get quite tired of all the explicit porn in WC fandom and would like there to be a place that is for gen of all kinds, but every time I see "no Sara!" or "Anyone but Sara," I get very uncomfortable.

Edited at 2011-06-19 09:13 am (UTC)

ditto. It's a cross fandom trend too. Everywhere I look, it's female characters getting the hate poured on them.

I also like Sara quite a bit, but that doesn't negate the pattern. Hell, I was kind of hoping WC fandom would be a change from A:tLA where everybody loves to bash Mai, but no.

Why I am not surprised about this post of you? Oh right, because I read all the meta submitted to the weekly roundup...

Until now, I refrained from answering your frankly insulting accusations towards people who dislike Sara. It's your journal, and you are entitelt to your opinion. But now you come here in a community, in which everyone has been very good about accepting each other likes and dislikes, to tell us your opinion in a fairly insulting manner, and I have had it.

There are seven female side characters in White Collar so far and only one of them rubs me entirely the wrong way...how is that misogynistic? (An accusion which es especially riddiculous since to my knowledge, every "no Sara prompter" here is female). My reasons for disliking Sara have nothing to do with what you suggest...if you are really interested in my point of view instead of what you perceive to be my point of view, I refer to my journal and my essay about the femals side characters in white collar.

What do you think you will archieve by posting your concerns public instead of messaging Kriadydragong privately? The specification of the rule has already been discussed in the com. Four or five memebers, mostly writers, including some people who like Sara, have voiced their opinion, and all of them were okay with specifying which characters a prompter wants in the story. If tomorrow nearly everyone would specify that they want stories about Sara, I wouldn't leave either, I just would skip the prompts until something closer to my interest pops up.

You know, for someone who spends so much time to warn about fandom wanks, you certainly have a knack of starting one....

Actually, it's not just Sara. It's also Kate. And I fully expect it to come about every single unattached female character introduced in the future. I'm not going to cite spoilers, but there are going to be more female characters touching Neal.

And it is absurd and disgusting to see the repetitive misogyny. I love writing gen, but I will not come here and fill prompts that completely unnecessarily mention that they don't want a regular character or a canonically important character just because they're women.

That said, I think kriadydragon's rule changes are good ones. What I would like from misogynist members of this comm is to go start their own no-women comm. Or, since that's unlikely, to actually think how necessary it is for their prompt to include the words "no Kate or Sara".

Actually, it wasn't a rule change, just a clarification. Character bashing was always forbidden, and nobody ever bashed Sara (or Kate) at all, we just made our preferences clear.

And I really would be careful with this word "misogyny". It is quite insulting. I would explain you my reasons for my dislike towards Sara, but this is not the right place for this. We want to keep the com free from this kind of discussion.

Disliking a character is one thing. Requesting the elimination of most female characters from fan works is misogynistic. And if you stop that behavior, I'll stop using the word.

Okay, so please explain to me how excluding Sara and maybe Kate from requested stories is "most female characters"? Lemme see, there are the seven regular female characters on the show: Elizabeth, Diana, Lauren, Alex, June, Kate and Sara. And excluding two is "most female characters"? Also, I think in round 7 there was only one person who requested in one prompt for Kate to be excluded. One prompt. Overreact much? (Edit: Upon rechecking, sorry, there were two. But still.)

I mean, clearly you're as hell-bent on putting the 'misogynistic' stamp on us as we are to bristle because we find it insulting. (Which it is.) With all the back and forth that's been going on here, I don't see this going anywhere but headed towards wank war.

I am still very disappointed and also personally affronted that the person who started this whole discussion had to do it in this comm. Clearly, you have a big problem with the general negativity towards Sara Ellis in the White Collar fandom. But, please, take it out on the outspoken Sara bashers, and not on a handful of decent people who respectfully declined having a story written for them that has a character in them they are not fond of.

And please stop using words such as gross or disgusting to describe people in this comm. It is personally insulting and even though I'm not a touchy-feely person, it has hurt my feelings to the point where I think about it at night before I fall asleep. Which, keeping in mind that we're talking about a frickin' TV show, is kind of ridiculous.

Yes, I understand that we're hurting your feelings by behaving what you call misogynistic, but our intention is not to go on a personal vendetta against the Sara fans. Our intention is merely to have stories written for us that we wish to enjoy, and if that means Sara should not be a part of them, there should be room to respect that. Bashing us for that particular fact is, quite frankly, disrespectful and libelous.

Edited at 2011-06-20 06:19 am (UTC)

No, there are only 2 regular female characters: El and Diana. This season, there will be 3: Sara.

Everyone else is a recurring character. One of whom (Kate) was Neal's one and only established motivation for s1-s2.

For the record, Kate's storyline was an absolute disaster. The actress was terrible. I still haven't figured out if she was supposed to be evil or good or a plot device. Sara has had her characterization rebooted at least 4 times now. These women are not written well on the show. That has NOTHING to do with these characters' potential in fan fiction. I can name dozens of fan writers who write Neal and Peter more consistently and reliably than the show - and not surprisingly they write the women better too. That is the solution, not refusing to have them EXIST in fandom.

Requesting their elimination from fiction is offensive. I find it disgusting. The wholesale erasure of these women is misogyny. Particularly that omitting these women omits the only women regularly on the show not old, gay, or married. That being young and heterosexually available makes them unwanted speaks for itself. It is shaming and pointless on a gen community. See sahiya's post below.

Do you see the difference:

The difference between the prompt "Neal and Mozzie have a heist"
Characters: Neal and Mozzie and Peter
Don't want: Them to get caught.
Want: Peter to chase them

and

"Neal and Mozzie have a heist"
Characters: Neal and Mozzie and Peter
Don't want: Sara or Kate, them to get caught
Want: Peter to chase them

is that the second prompt pointlessly introduces the hatred (the MISOGYNY against these women). You have under characters the people you want in the fic. Asking to exclude women is unnecessary. That you take time out to do so suggests that you don't just want the opportunity to prompt, you want the opportunity to ERASE most of the women on the show from fandom. And that is offensive to me.

I and others might fill the first one. A lot of people are going to skip over the second one, because it is OFFENSIVE.

You can dislike a character all you want. Don't put them under 'characters'. But putting that you don't want an entire gender (unless they're married or old or gay)is going to earn the misogyny label every time.

Yeah, but if the first one gets filled, the writer perhaps fills it with a story in which Neal and Mozzie have a heist and Sara helps them because she is sooooo in love with Neal. I certainly wont enjoy a story like this (but I would enjoy a story in which Alex helps...makes much more sense, too). And I would come into the bad situation either to pretent liking the story for the benefit of the writer, or to tell the writer that I don't like his work, not because it was badly written, but because he poked at one of my dislikes.

This is a gen community. Your worry about Sara's motivation is irrelevant. Also...on the show they're having sex. Sara helping him, frankly, makes a lot of sense.

Can I ask a simple question, just out of curiosity? Here it kinda sounds like you're not so much begrudging the fact that most folks here wouldn't like to see Sara included in their stories, but more the fact that there are so few stories that actually feature Sara (or maybe I just haven't come across them). Sounds like you're hell-bent on convincing us that having Sara included in our stories is the way to go.

If your intention is for people to write more gen stories that actually feature Sara, why go on a crusade that is likely to cause the exact opposite?

"No, there are only 2 regular female characters: El and Diana. This season, there will be 3: Sara. Everyone else is a recurring character. One of whom (Kate) was Neal's one and only established motivation for s1-s2."
Same difference. We have seven regular or recurring female characters on the show. Excluding two of them in a "do not want" prompt still doesn't mean it's "most" females on the show. Unless your math works different from mine.

"These women are not written well on the show. That has NOTHING to do with these characters' potential in fan fiction. I can name dozens of fan writers who write Neal and Peter more consistently and reliably than the show - and not surprisingly they write the women better too. That is the solution, not refusing to have them EXIST in fandom."
While that may be, I'm not sure that helps my personal case. I have zero interest in writing or reading about Sara in my stories. I have no desire at all to take her character and redeem what may be considered bad writing on the show's writers' part. And, yes, (broken record alert) I know that you call that misogynistic.

"Requesting their elimination from fiction is offensive. I find it disgusting. The wholesale erasure of these women is misogyny."
*puts fingers in ears, loudly humming, "La la la la la la!"* I don't even know what to say to that anymore.

"Particularly that omitting these women omits the only women regularly on the show not old, gay, or married. That being young and heterosexually available makes them unwanted speaks for itself."
Okay, and that kind of generalization and allegation is what I find offensive. You're implying that the reason I don't like Sara is solely because they're going to pair her up with Neal, perhaps out of misguided, subconscious jealousy? Yeah, far from it. I want Neal to be with a wonderful, kickass woman in a stable relationship. I want him to come a little closer to that white picket fence existence he secretly dreams of but will never openly admit to. And IMHO, that will not happen with Sara. But, hey, I might just be capable of keeping an open mind. The rest of season three might even change my mind. Sara might grow on me. That is entirely possible—and only time will tell. The Neal/Sara stills I've seen for episode 3x03 actually look kind of interesting.

"... is that the second prompt pointlessly introduces the hatred (the MISOGYNY against these women). You have under characters the people you want in the fic. Asking to exclude women is unnecessary."
But is it? I am not in the writer's head. The writer might decide to include any character in the story I'm not mentioning because the might be particularly fond of that character or because it fits with the storyline. And as the requestor, it'll make for an awkward situation because I'd hate to have someone spend time and effort on something that I can only dismiss with, "Thanks for writing this for me, though I gotta say I didn't really like the part where you wrote xxx."

"I and others might fill the first one. A lot of people are going to skip over the second one, because it is OFFENSIVE."
I and others might fill the second one because I don't find it offensive and would never even have given the exclusion of certain characters a second thought. I mean, come on, you can't project your own misgivings onto other people when you don't know them.

"You can dislike a character all you want. Don't put them under 'characters'. But putting that you don't want an entire gender (unless they're married or old or gay) is going to earn the misogyny label every time."
Now you're putting words in people's mouths. No one here ever posted "Don't want any women in my story" or even "Don't want Neal to be with any women". When did we go from "Don't want Sara or Kate featured in my story" to "Everyone at collarcorner is a misogynist because they want all women excluded from their stories"? Can you not see that statements and generalizations like that hurt people's feelings? They certainly hurt mine.

Now, I'm not even bitter. Just disappointed that a general negativity towards Sara when Eastin made her a regular had to be taken out on a group of people who really didn't deserve it. There is a time and place to harp on the Sara haters, but collarcorner is the last place I'd expect for that to happen. Maybe we were easy targets. Still doesn't make it right.

I don't think it was 'right' of you to turn collarcorner into a uncomfortably misogynistic place.

Not going to argue all the things brought up on either side at this point, but I would just like to point out my reasoning in one specific case you may have seen.

In this prompt
I mentioned as a last-thing by-the-way that I would rather the story didn't include Kate. This is the only time that I have mentioned not wanting a specific character in a prompt. My reasoning here was as follows:

Logically, the story is likely to be set pre-series. In a pre-series story, it's reasonable to think that someone might include Kate as a character, since she was a big part of Neal's life. However, in this particular story I really, really wanted to see interaction between Neal and Mozzie, and how Mozzie would deal with that kind of situation. I expected the result would probably be quite a short story, and I was afraid that Kate's presence in the situation would draw attention away from the dynamic I really wanted to see highlighted.

Now, honestly, I would've had no objection at all to her making an appearance in the story, provided that focus didn't end up shifting. And maybe it would've been better to phrase it that way. But I know that I have a tendency to over-explain my prompts as it is, making them unnecessarily long and potentially confusing, so I've been making an effort to keep them concise. That was just the simplest way I could think of to get the idea across.

So. I don't know if all that really helps much, but as it's entirely possible that that post of mine contributed to what you feel is a bad situation... I thought walking you through the reasoning in one specific case might help reassure you that it's not necessarily even a case of not liking or wanting a character so much as trying to get across an idea as concisely as possible. *shrugs*

However, in this particular story I really, really wanted to see interaction between Neal and Mozzie, and how Mozzie would deal with that kind of situation. I expected the result would probably be quite a short story, and I was afraid that Kate's presence in the situation would draw attention away from the dynamic I really wanted to see highlighted.

"Please focus on Mozzie and Neal's meeting."

That's all. Explains what you want, doesn't erase or bash female characters.

but I will not come here and fill prompts that completely unnecessarily mention that they don't want a regular character or a canonically important character just because they're women.

Respectfully disagreeing! It's not unnecessary to mention which characters and relationships you want in your fill. You're requesting a story from someone, you're asking for what you want. It's okay to want a story that you'll actually enjoy reading.

And: just because they're women? That's kind of a gross distortion of the situation. Most of the folks who are clarifying these prompts have well-reasoned explanations for why they feel the way they do. They're not misogynistic, they happen not to like one or two of the characters on the show. And that's okay.

This is a gen community. Canon relationships are not to be highlighted/dominate a story. So it is wholly unnecessary.

You might want to take care to respond to the right comment next time. It was pure chance I saw this.

You think women can't be misogynistic? I'm sorry, but that is completely not the case. Women can be incredibly misogynistic, and fandom is full of women who are. If this were a one-time issue in one fandom, it would be one thing, but it isn't. As attackfish said, it is a cross-fandom problem. I see it over . . . and over . . . and over again, with female characters of a certain kind, and it bothers the hell out of me. So when I see it happen, I say something; I didn't PM kriadydragon not because I wanted to start wank, but because I wanted to call attention to what I see as a genuine problem in this comm.

The issue that I see, as the anonymous poster below puts it, is the attempt to eliminate Sara as a character. I am a not a Kate fan. The show never sold me on her and I found her grating in "Forging Bonds." But I would never put in a prompt "Anyone but Kate!" If the writer thinks Kate needs to be involved, then fine, so be it. I can be sold; the show just didn't. I don't want to deny her existence, and I don't want to deny the writer the chance to write the best story they can for my prompt.

I'm pretty much done here now. All further ranting (and I'm sure there will be plenty) will be done in my journal. But I really could not let this go unanswered.

Maybe anon has a point with the wording, maybe we are offending people and should just be more careful with it. However, as I have the intentions most of us on here(this post) do, I also can see that the misogynistic comment would be enough to ruffle our feathers.

Assumption-anon, instead of asking about our reasoning, jumped the gun and shoved 'misgynistic' down our throats. I THINK that most of us just did what the person before us did when requesting, and took out the characters we didn't want a focus on. And I agree a lot, there are Sarah haters but to say we(I was one and am shifting due to her character development) hate her because of that is so over dramatic, we accept you like her - but we don't jump the gun and call you a lesbian or a horn-dog for it. I can't speak for your sexual preferences, I don't KNOW you like that. You don't know us like that, and therefore the woman hating comment is an assumption that solely makes a donkey out of you.

There was no fact in your assumption about us anon, but here's a fact for all the people defending themselves: They don't know you, and if what I think is right, is so wrong it's laughable. If they hadn't shoved and instead nudged, we might have been more apt to listen. However I don't think we should offend anyone, even someone who is offensive, so maybe we should just change our wording a bit. I know, newbie to requesting being so vocal ;]

No I do not claim to know right or wrong in this case, I just hate seeing this happen in a comm that was so friendly. I won't lie, I was thinking that anon might like to argue just to argue, but then again anon, I don't know you =].

I have thought about different wording...but really, I don't found a really useable alternative. Naturally I could list all the characters I don't oppose to see in a story. But than somebody might misunderstand and think that I WANT to see all of them. Take the example of the "Mozzie and Neal on a heist" prompt. I really would dislike Sara being involved in this in any way. But I always try to make the prompt as open as possible...(hence my tendency to ask for a basic scenario and add some "plus" with things I would enjoy, but aren't a must)...if a writer would like to add Kate or Alex (or both) I would be okay with it. But they don't need to.


It's simply much easier to write "No Sara" as opposed to: It's okay if Alex, Kate or June are involved in the heist but nobody else. What if the writer has a good idea for a belivable scenarion which would involve Diana (or a more obscure character)? I certainly would enjoy that, too, but perhaps the writer would skip that prompt, just because I didn't happen to list this specific character.

"No Sara" is short and painless. But I'm certainly okay with a useable alternative if someone has a good suggestion.

Go start a no-sara community and stay out of this one. Seriously.

Guys, can we just please stop this childish name-calling? Hasn't enough damage already been done? Clearly, anon and sahiya have no further interest in following this comm. Please don't ruin it for everyone else as well.

Please please please stop with the lashing out. Everything that needed to be said has been said. We understand you're angry and resent us for what you believe to be misogynistic behavior. Please take your leave and let us keep playing a sandbox that we have enjoyed playing in and would like to keep it that way. It would make me very sad if you took pleasure in the fact of destroying that for those who would like to stay.

That's it, I'm putting my friggin' foot down. Enough. this thread is done and any additions will be deleted.

This community is open to everyone to make any request they want within the realm of gen. If you want things to change, then support Sara and Kate, request stories with them in it, request stories that are about Them. Think they won't be answered? Look at the user info of this comm, look at how many are watching this community. Any one of them could be willing - maybe even want to - write something Sara and Kate centric. You don't know until you give it a chance. Also, need I remind you that you can answer your own requests. For prompt challenges, you don't even have to answer a request, just pick a prompt and write a story. The opportunities to support Sara and Kate are endless.

Boycotting this comm, calling people mysoginists, insulting people and everyone arguing with each other will not change anything. Making requests, writing stories and supporting your favorite characters will.

Thank you, kriadydragon. That's the last comment I am going to add to this entry.