To the topic creator - as a nerd who has been obsessively lurking and participating in internet fan circles for various things for like 10 years, I have an explanation that probably solves your questions about the Saanjh hate .
Also I've written like an essay here so sorry in advance, just skip ahead if you don't wanna read. 😆😆
(Sorry if someone mentioned this already, I didn't wanna skim through all 12 pages)
Have you ever heard of a "shipping war"?
I don't know if the term gets thrown around the Indian internet/fan sphere, but I feel like this is one thing that permeates every fan culture, regardless of country. In fandoms what happens generally (particularly when there is a love triangle) is that one relationship (called a "ship," short for relationship; when someone really likes a pairing/couple they "ship" it) gets very, very popular with the fans. When there's a love triangle that is a large focus of the story, two ships get very, very popular (especially if the love triangle is well written), and the fans of those ships go for each others'
throats. The fans of the those ships, the really extreme ones who ship their stuff to death, also demonize whichever character they think is the other "man/woman" coming between their favored ship. That is what a shipping war is: people attacking characters and each others' ships because they like a particular one. It even gets directed towards real life people and characters who come between their preferred relationship, even if they're not romantic interests - like people hating on Aneri, and Vandana for not wanting ArYa to happen.
One example with a love triangle that immediately comes to mind for me is this video game that came out in 1997 called Final Fantasy VII. The game had a love triangle with a man named Cloud (great name, right) and the two girls who had a thing for him, Aerith and Tifa. And
oh god. It's died down a bit recently but the fans of Cloud/Tifa and Cloud/Aerith have been literally trying to prove that their ship is best and what the creators were trying to establish up until this day.
20 years later. People used to write fanfiction (and still do sometimes) making their preferred ship get together, with the other lady being written as a completely awful person who was selfish/terrible/etc and out to wreak vengeance and hatred on the couple/character(s) to make their own preferred ship look better. Even though one of the ladies actually died in the story like 1/3 into the game. Shipping is serious business!
It was like that in the Harry Potter fandom too while the books were coming out: fans of Harry/Hermione and Harry/anyone else (but mostly poor Ginny) had the exact same thing happen to them. Some Harry/Hermione fans used to write fanfiction about how Ginny slept around with every person in their school and didn't deserve Harry ("but Hermione did!") as a lazy way to make their ship look better and vice versa with Harry/Ginny fans who didn't like Harry/Hermione and the fans of that ship.
Now if you're like me and don't particularly care one way or another it's absolutely hilarious to sit back and watch. Sometimes you might lose a few brain cells from the mental gymnastics people commit to justify their beliefs. If you're a fan who is seriously invested in your ship it's gonna be... stressful. In the Beyhadh fan circles the most popular ship seems to be Maya/Arjun, hence the dominant attitude towards Saanjh (and poor Aneri by extension) being dislike/annoyance. Of course it goes the other way too, with Maya (and Jennifer) dislike/annoyance, but Saanjh seems to take the brunt of it.
THAT BEING SAID (before someone starts throwing things at me): it's completely okay to really love or like or even dislike or hate a character independent of all this shipping nonsense. It's not a be all end all.
Some characters don't jive/click with everyone and that's completely okay. But what's not okay is to absolutely attack people( the actors, fans of actors, characters, fans of characters/ships, etc.) because they don't like what you like, or like what you dislike (it's also important to remember that actors are not their characters!!!). Saanjh has traits and actions that are annoying, and traits and actions that are sweet and endearing. So do Maya and Arjun and everyone else. That's because they're written as humans instead of weird bahu archetypes/black and white characters, and it's why this show is the only Indian show I've watched in years. What's important is that you remember at the end of the day that nobody is perfect, and the best characters reflect that.
My opinion on the Maya character discussion:
Another thing people should remember is that
you can really like/love and sympathize with a character but not condone their actions. I personally love Maya (AND SAANJH, to everyone who hates her for shipping reasons 😡). I have a bunch of favourite characters from spy/military fiction who do absolutely terrible things that make me want to hit them with a rolled up newspaper but I still love the characters because you see them at their high point/virtues/good actions and low points/flaws/bad actions: you see their character arcs and always know what's driving them as people. That's what makes a good character (which all the characters in Beyhadh are!) - how human they are. Like I said, things aren't black and white: labelling characters and such as "negative" kinda contributes to that view and makes for very boring shows. TV writers and executives usually listen to the audience and give them what they want to increase ratings, and pushing for that might make them listen and the show will become less complex/more boring. 😔
I love Maya because she's not entirely good or bad morally; not a villain or a heroine. Some times it's hard to tell if she's an anti-villain or an anti-heroine and I find that fascinating. I don't want her to be the killer of that pandit (and this is what I gather overall from other people I've talked to who have watched the show too) because I want her to be a hero or because I don't want Jennifer Winget to play a "negative" role (I honestly had no idea who any of these actors were until I started watching the show 😆 ) - not to say that there aren't people who don't want her to be the killer for those reasons. I don't want her to be a killer because she's so different from what you usually see in Indian TV/film (and even Western ones, to an extent). The show has done such a good job of peeling apart her mind and showing her as a grey character who came from a troubled childhood and has a lot of terrible issues from that (possessiveness, insecurity, control issues, extreme jealousy, anger issues, obsession, etc). Probably, she's going to have some kind of mental health disorder (anxiety/stress related or borderline personality disorder most likely - or even bipolar, severe depression, or something like that) because a lot of people come out of those situations with them in addition to those terrible issues. Seeing the way those issues affect her relationships with the people around her - especially Arjun, who she loves - is why this character is so interesting. Maya is so interesting because she is the show's most focused on flawed female character (who usually get the short end of the stick in terms of writing and character development, as people really seem to like having female characters be perfect and don't like it when they aren't) who does awful things, but the writers take care to show her at her best and worst. Because of that one always knows where she's coming from, and even though she's doing things that are very questionable (which are usually directed at Saanjh :(((( ) one gets where that stems from. She's very sympathetic and one kind of wants her to find some peace with herself and in her life. But again, you can understand that and not condone what she does.
I'm waiting to see how things in the show go, but I'd find it really disappointing if she is the killer because she becomes less of a character who is dealing with these very serious, believable, and realistic psychological issues, and becomes more of the usual kind of "psycho woman in love with a man - but wait don't worry his sweet, nice friend and/or alternate love interest is there to save him right when she becomes a crazy love driven killer!" sort of thing that I find very trite, especially in romantic thrillers.
There's no way at all to justify killing someone out of jealousy/possessiveness/anger/so forth. I know Maya is emotional, but
making her a killer is giving a very definitive black action to a character who has thus far been very grey and complex. There's a big difference between bluffing and threatening someone (which Maya is shown to do) and actually carrying through with those threats and murdering someone because they said something you don't like. I don't expect her to be a hero or to develop into one, but even if her personality flaws wind up destroying her relationships with the people around her and she winds up dying alone (without being a killer please) or something, that'd be a lot more tragic and interesting to watch than just another "psycho killer woman in what she thinks is love" thing that permeates literature/media across countries. For once I just kinda want to watch a female character with these issues/have a mental disorder and deal with all the bad/good that comes from them without being a murderer and criminal.
EDIT: I read some of other the posts at last and if Saanjh is the killer I would probably have to shut off my TV and go do something else for the night.😆 I guess overall it really depends on how the writers do it, if they do make Maya or Saanjh the killer. Anything can be good if it's well executed. I mean for a romantic thriller it'd be trite (wow unstable woman in obsessive love with a man kills someone, that's original), but if they want to make a full-blown tragedy I guess it could work? But then they'd be changing the genre and nature of the show and it would be strange. It would have bad implications overall if they make her mentally ill and use that as a reason for why she does bad things (because why is mental illness always used a reason for characters doing bad things?? I mean I get that really mentally ill people do things like that without realizing but Maya is shown to be very high functioning if she is ill. What kind of implication does that send out, you know?)
AND NOW I'll stop talking. Sorry for the essay. 😃
Edited by aeriym - 8 years ago
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