Briefly, before I get these points but so I also get down to work sooner rather than later (um, my thesis is due today):
It's just OOC to woobify Zoe. But OOC doesn't stop fans. As someone commented elsewhere on this post, in fanfic Simon* gets portrayed as the Angiest of Them All, gets raped and tortured, just needs Mal's strong arms around him and probably needs to be topped, too.
As I say elsewhere, before woobifying a character must be an angstmuffin (tho not all angstmuffins get woobified) - and Zoe isn't an angstmuffin. She doesn't have the guilt, the sense of responsibility for things that aren't her fault, she doesn't get twisted up in her own emotions and past like an angstmuffin. Mal? The closest thing to an angstmuffin that Firefly canon has (fanon is a different story). If Simon gets woobified a lot in fanfic, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he's pretty and therefore slots into certain of fandom's stereotypes for male characters even tho that renders him more or less OOC sometimes.
*I like Simon as a top, and I think Mal is a twit, but that's just me, and maybe I'm overidentifying with Simon as the smart geeky socially awkward one and geeky I mean I've thought about going pro and getting a Ph.D so I get get paid for geeking out with footnotes and theorists. Which is why I'm discussing woobiness and angstmuffins the day my thesis - on something entirely different - is due. Yeah.
...seems to follow a certain pattern: Pair exists with unequal power/worth dynamic ... Now go back to that scenario and assign a gender to the top and bottom. Switch it up. See how that changes? Some ideas are more comfortable than other, and prolly more common because of that.
Yes!
This could be a panel discussion, y'all. Who's taking this to a con?
That'd be awesome. The Angstmuffin and the Woobie: Masculinity, Canonicity, and Eroticism in H/C Fanfic or soemthing like that. Make a damn good paper, too.
Re: sorry for the incoherence
It's just OOC to woobify Zoe. But OOC doesn't stop fans. As someone commented elsewhere on this post, in fanfic Simon* gets portrayed as the Angiest of Them All, gets raped and tortured, just needs Mal's strong arms around him and probably needs to be topped, too.
As I say elsewhere, before woobifying a character must be an angstmuffin (tho not all angstmuffins get woobified) - and Zoe isn't an angstmuffin. She doesn't have the guilt, the sense of responsibility for things that aren't her fault, she doesn't get twisted up in her own emotions and past like an angstmuffin. Mal? The closest thing to an angstmuffin that Firefly canon has (fanon is a different story). If Simon gets woobified a lot in fanfic, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he's pretty and therefore slots into certain of fandom's stereotypes for male characters even tho that renders him more or less OOC sometimes.
*I like Simon as a top, and I think Mal is a twit, but that's just me, and maybe I'm overidentifying with Simon as the smart geeky socially awkward one and geeky I mean I've thought about going pro and getting a Ph.D so I get get paid for geeking out with footnotes and theorists. Which is why I'm discussing woobiness and angstmuffins the day my thesis - on something entirely different - is due. Yeah.
...seems to follow a certain pattern: Pair exists with unequal power/worth dynamic ... Now go back to that scenario and assign a gender to the top and bottom. Switch it up. See how that changes? Some ideas are more comfortable than other, and prolly more common because of that.
Yes!
This could be a panel discussion, y'all. Who's taking this to a con?
That'd be awesome. The Angstmuffin and the Woobie: Masculinity, Canonicity, and Eroticism in H/C Fanfic or soemthing like that. Make a damn good paper, too.