He spends all afternoon hunting the moon

[sovay]

I don't feel it should be a controversial opinion that not all favorite characters are figures of identification or representation nor should they be treated as such, but I finally managed to articulate to spatch why the expectation to the contrary bothers me so much, aside from the normal number of times since childhood that I have had to fend off people taking statements of narrative interest as a kind of personality quiz: especially these days, it feels like an extension of personal branding, this idea that your clothes and your reading material and your writing music are all advertisements of your ethics or politics or allegiances—assertions, not even reflections, of your identity—and everything you like must be recognizable as a you sort of thing as opposed to sometimes just the most interesting writing in the book or acting on the screen. Yes, everything tells you something about a person. No, it's not the TAT, and it's especially not the weighing of the heart. I hadn't had any dust-ups with purity culture in fandom lately, so I wasn't sure why the subject was on my mind, but it turns out that today was the twenty-year anniversary of my beginning to keep a list of favorite characters in literature and media whenever I ran across them. I did it to find out if there were patterns. I wondered at the time if my tastes would have changed entirely in twenty years. The answer turns out to be a relatively solid "no," although it interests me that in some cases I could still produce a short essay on the character in question and in others I barely remember their source material or why they appealed to me. More aggravatingly, it reminded me how much I miss live theater. Some of these people I can revisit, but that opera from the Yale School of Music in 2005 or that play from the Trinity Rep in 2009 are memory alone. I can tell from the dates when I started really watching movies.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

and everything you like must be recognizable as a you sort of thing as opposed to sometimes just the most interesting writing in the book or acting on the screen. Yes, everything tells you something about a person. No, it's not the TAT, and it's especially not the weighing of the heart.

It is such a frustrating trend!

And that list sounds fascinating - what a good idea to have had & kept. ♥

[sovay]

It is such a frustrating trend!

I feel it's worsened since I started keeping the list, too. Or maybe I just wasn't in the relevant fandom spaces in 2001 to see how bad it had already gotten.

And that list sounds fascinating - what a good idea to have had & kept.

Thank you! I'm glad I did. I still add to it.

[thisbluespirit]

I feel it's worsened since I started keeping the list, too. Or maybe I just wasn't in the relevant fandom spaces in 2001 to see how bad it had already gotten.

No, it really wasn't then, not that I could see, either. There was plenty of w*nk as ever, but not that specific kind as a big thing. It seems to be partly to do with sites that work by global tagging - much harder to stay in your own fandom lanes; much easier for people to get annoyed and then to justify that annoyance & acting on it with morality. (But only bad people would ship that/like a villain etc.) I suppose when the next type of site comes along, we'll have a different type of screaming at each other again, but I suspect as long as we have the internet and fandom, we'll have the screaming). Yay?

[anna_wing]

I remember even in 1988 being dismayed that a publisher felt the need to include a note saying that the views of the characters of the novel in question did not necessarily reflect those of the author.....

It is indeed much worse now.

[sovay]

It is indeed much worse now.

Confirmation appreciated. Argh.

[anna_wing]

I am not much on social media, but most recently I ran across something similar on the periphery of Star Wars (Sequel Trilogy) fanfic fandom, where there were apparently people getting their knickers in a twist over how anyone could ship Kylo Ren and Rey (because he's an evil abuser or something, and it's an evil, abusive relationship etc etc). The fact that Adam Driver had more charisma and screen presence than the rest of the cast put together couldn't have had anything to do with it, oh no....

[asakiyume]

When you phrase it in terms of the odious personal branding, you get at another thing that's hateful about it--the capitalist commodification of it all. What features does this model 1.0 Sovay have? Why she comes equipped with interest in this suite of characters and familiarity with this package of literary sources. Definitely worth checking out, eh? Eh??? --Yuck. (That said, I feel just a tad implicated because yesterday I tagged spatch on Twitter and said that he ought to show you this, and I phrased it in terms of your liking the Mountain Goats. But man, the thing is just pure funny! And I definitely don't make assumptions about you based on your liking the Mountain Goats beyond that you like the Mountain Goats.)

[sovay]

What features does this model 1.0 Sovay have? Why she comes equipped with interest in this suite of characters and familiarity with this package of literary sources. Definitely worth checking out, eh? Eh???

Congratulations, that's terrifying.

It really does feel that way, though: here is your identity which you are supposed to present to the world (and God forbid your identity shift over time, either you're cheating or you got it wrong the first time) and all of your lifestyle decisions should be in service of building that recognizable identity, because how are you supposed to get anywhere if you aren't in a constant state of self-signaling? You are your own best publicist. (I hate being my own publicist.)

That said, I feel just a tad implicated because yesterday I tagged spatch on Twitter and said that he ought to show you this, and I phrased it in terms of your liking the Mountain Goats.

I don't think "wanting to show a friend a thing you're pretty sure they will like" is the problem we're talking about here.

*hugs*

[strange_complex]

I really like the idea of the favourite character list. Does it include brief glosses of the character types (e.g. 'Joe Bloggs - villain who seeks but is tragically unable to achieve redemption')? Or it is literally just names?

[sovay]

Does it include brief glosses of the character types (e.g. 'Joe Bloggs - villain who seeks but is tragically unable to achieve redemption')? Or it is literally just names?

For books, it's names and sources; for film and TV, including the actors' names; for stage productions, including the actors' names and the relevant companies. I clearly assumed when I started the list that I would always remember who these characters were and what I had liked about them. And I do in fact remember the majority of them. But also every now and then we get a situation like, "Well, obviously I liked the hitman Gillie in the comedy-thriller Behave Yourself! (1951) because he was played by Hans Conried with a wild Cockney accent and delivers his report to his boss played by Francis L. Sullivan while said boss is soaking in a sunken bathtub and Gillie is snacking on grapes with sort of absent-minded nerves, but just about everything I can remember about Antonia Hodgson's The Devil in the Marshalsea (2014) is that it's a historical crime novel set in the debtors' prison and Tom Hawkins was the protagonist, I liked him especially why?"

[sholio]

I don't get it either. I had never actually had the experience of encountering a fictional character that I really, truly identified with until a few years ago (Peggy Carter - it was interesting to me because that's such a rare thing for me that I really noticed it). It's just not how I typically engage with fiction; I want to be caught up in their world, not entangled with mine. I never had self-insert fantasies either - I mean, for me, any fictional experience is about the immersion, and trying to put real-world me in there breaks the fantasy. (I remember my sister talking about her own self-insert fantasies when we were teenagers and being baffled by it. I would never have even thought of the concept if she hadn't told me about it - this was pre-internet - and I genuinely couldn't see the appeal, since for me most of the fun was in the characters dealing with their world and relationships. My real-world self had no part to play!)

Obviously there's always some level of empathy and vicariously experiencing the world through the characters, but not usually in a way that translates to "I see specific aspects of myself in these people", let alone "This is an element of my identity." (Which there's not really with Peggy either, but it was just interesting to actually feel that for the first time in my life, that close identification with a character in a way I didn't normally.)

There are certain things I very predictably like in fiction, but I don't think it's something that can be used for a litmus test of me as a person. I remember someone once, in an online discussion, calling me a psychopath for finding the protagonist's abusive guardians more interesting than the protagonist - but I'm drawn to twisty, emotionally fraught character relationships, and characters with a lot hiding below the surface, whaddya gonna do about it?

Anyway, I feel like this has accelerated with recent fandom, and especially with people not just identifying with characters but projecting onto them - so a character doesn't really work as an identification object unless they also share all the elements of your identity that are important to you. Which is harmless fun as long as everyone agrees that it's a game of let's-pretend; of course the problem is that it doesn't always stay that way. The same character can't be 22 mutually contradictory things, and two different people insisting that they factually, objectively are some contradictory subset of those things, especially with the fraughtness that comes from thinking of the character as an extension of yourself, is a guaranteed recipe for an interpersonal explosion.

And if you're coming from that view of fandom - a view that is completely alien to my own experience of fiction - then you're also going to collide headlong with people who love characters with unsavory character traits, not really understanding that they're loving them in a very different way than your own love-object identity-brand kind of way.

[jesse_the_k]

Ah! Thank you for these words -- like you I've never wanted to insert myself in the fictions I explore. Hadn't realized this was an option!

[sovay]

I had never actually had the experience of encountering a fictional character that I really, truly identified with until a few years ago (Peggy Carter - it was interesting to me because that's such a rare thing for me that I really noticed it).

That's so neat! Do you know what it was about Peggy?

I also do not interact with fiction primarily through self-identification. I can remember two instances of self-insert from my childhood and in neither case was the character actually me so much as an invented role within the world. What I have been able to identify in several, especially childhood favorites is that they were telling me something important or giving me a framework within which to think about something about myself or the world, but I classify that differently from feeling that a character is just like me—or I'm just like a character. I have deep and enduring feelings about a whole lot of fictional people I would not want to be. Occasionally I worry I have ended up as some of them anyway.

for finding the protagonist's abusive guardians more interesting than the protagonist

It does happen more often these days, but I consider it a relatively recent development in my relationship with literature and media that I can like a protagonist best. What was the story?

but I'm drawn to twisty, emotionally fraught character relationships, and characters with a lot hiding below the surface, whaddya gonna do about it?

My favorite character in A Thread of Grace (2005), Mary Doria Russell's novel of Jewish-Italian partisans in World War II, was the ex-Nazi doctor with a bad conscience and a worse case of TB. He has an unanswerable moral problem and his efforts to live with it—and the novel's low-key but steady refusal to let the reader forget what he's trying to live with—interested me more than anything else in the book, including the character I am fairly certain was the author's favorite; I could appreciate the one, but I was fascinated by the other. This was considered by my friend group fairly typical at the time.

Anyway, I feel like this has accelerated with recent fandom, and especially with people not just identifying with characters but projecting onto them - so a character doesn't really work as an identification object unless they also share all the elements of your identity that are important to you.

spatch also identified the projection aspect as a major cause of ship wars and purity wank. I am probably as susceptible to headcanons as the next person with opinions, but I hadn't even gotten to thinking about it in those terms, from which you may conclude it is alien to me as well.

And if you're coming from that view of fandom - a view that is completely alien to my own experience of fiction - then you're also going to collide headlong with people who love characters with unsavory character traits, not really understanding that they're loving them in a very different way than your own love-object identity-brand kind of way.

Yep. I just wish that didn't turn into a moral judgment war of its own.

[anna_wing]

especially with people not just identifying with characters but projecting onto them - so a character doesn't really work as an identification object unless they also share all the elements of your identity that are important to you.

Yes! That is exactly it. THank you for putting it into words for me! Projection! The attitude always puzzled me, because it seemed to me different from sympathy or enjoyment or sheer interest, in a way that I could never quite put my finger on.

I want to be caught up in their world, not entangled with mine.

Couldn't agree more. What's the point of fiction if it only shows you what you already know?

[swan_tower]

I never had self-insert fantasies either

I had them, but at one remove. I made up a character for a licensed tie-in RPG when I was about thirteen, but never played the game (because nobody around me knew how to do RPGs), so in my head she became my world-hopping insert into whatever I was reading at the time. She wasn't precisely me -- in hindsight, I don't even feel like she had all that much in the way of distinct personality -- but insofar as I very much identified that character as Mine, I think she served the function of self-insertion.

[ashlyme]

I'm really wary of this - there are characters and stories I'm fascinated by but I couldn't see myself reflected in or particularly feel the need to. I'd think twice about mentioning, say, my interest in Punch and Judy to some people in case they thought I was a raging misogynist. Holmes was an early hero of mine but I wouldn't want to hang out with him.

[sovay]

I'm really wary of this - there are characters and stories I'm fascinated by but I couldn't see myself reflected in or particularly feel the need to.

Which I think is pretty normal.

I'd think twice about mentioning, say, my interest in Punch and Judy to some people in case they thought I was a raging misogynist.

I feel you do not exactly broadcast "MRA in the making," but I understand your point. That's the thing where not everything is a T-shirt logo, but people behave as though it is.

Holmes was an early hero of mine but I wouldn't want to hang out with him.

I would totally hang out with Holmes! I just wouldn't share a flat with him, because I have enough difficulty living with people as it is and the last thing I need is a flatmate who requires the household to run on his weird case schedule as opposed to my weird sleep schedule. Watson at least signed up for it, but I have great sympathy for Colin Jeavons' Lestrade who is doing his best to catch a nap on the sofa in Granada's "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" when Holmes bursts in with a cheerful cry of "Eleven o'clock, gentlemen, on your feet!" and that's grounds for murder right there.

[minoanmiss]

Well and truly said.

[sovay]

Well and truly said.

Thank you.

[handful_ofdust]

I almost always love the worst people first; I expect that about myself. It does sometimes surprise me when people who don't know me very well apparently expect something different. I mean...horror. (shrugs)

[sovay]

I mean...horror. (shrugs)

I wouldn't have you any other way.

[nineweaving]

I love Faraway Tom as a half-glimpsed figure in the wood. I couldn't hang out with him, not within a hundred yards.

Nine

[sovay]

I couldn't hang out with him, not within a hundred yards.

Binoculars.

[swan_tower]

I did it to find out if there were patterns.

I did a similar thing with narrative tropes of all kinds, though I haven't added anything new to the list in quite a long time. What rapidly emerged was that I respond to contrast: whether it's on the big level like "two antagonistic parties have to team up against a common enemy" or "character who is ordinarily lighthearted/serious suddenly shows a glimpse of their serious/lighthearted side" or the small level of "someone in a state of half-dress, ideally down from formal clothing," anything that sets up X and then contrasts it with Y is likely to get my attention.

[sovay]

I did a similar thing with narrative tropes of all kinds, though I haven't added anything new to the list in quite a long time.

Still neat.

What rapidly emerged was that I respond to contrast: whether it's on the big level like "two antagonistic parties have to team up against a common enemy" or "character who is ordinarily lighthearted/serious suddenly shows a glimpse of their serious/lighthearted side" or the small level of "someone in a state of half-dress, ideally down from formal clothing," anything that sets up X and then contrasts it with Y is likely to get my attention.

Is that how you write, too, then?