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

[anna_wing]

Yes! Book Holmes is actually a very decent person, despite his, ah, little quirks. I would love to be a friend of his. Just, as you say, not his flat-mate. Maybe his next door neighbour.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[swan_tower]

Is that how you write, too, then?

. . . I have no idea? <lol> Seriously, I am the worst at having any ability to judge What My Writing Looks Like. Some very obvious things are visible to me, like the importance of setting and culture, and there are a few things I have to consciously ration because otherwise I'd do them in every other story (e.g. characters with names made out of English words; I read both Elfquest and Mercedes Lackey at an impressionable age, as well as some other books with the same element). But other things are very difficult for me to see with any kind of clarity.

Interestingly, the one place where I feel like I can very firmly say "yes" is with The Mask of Mirrors (and the Rook and Rose trilogy more broadly). In part this is because it being a collaboration means I have no choice but to consciously articulate a lot of what I'm doing and why; in part it's also because the series is in some ways unabashedly iddy. And since my trope list is basically a guide to my id, there's a lot of overlap. Duality (and therefore contrast) is built into Vraszenian religion, with the Faces and the Masks; large numbers of our characters are liars whose secret sides only get revealed later. One of our particularly well-dressed characters has, without us planning it at the outset, become the guy we regularly find excuses to strip down at least partway. I just opened up the trope file and scanned through, and while they're not all in there -- no soulbonding, for example -- rather a lot of them are, and especially the ones that have to do with contrast.

[sovay]

One of our particularly well-dressed characters has, without us planning it at the outset, become the guy we regularly find excuses to strip down at least partway.

That's delightful.

I just opened up the trope file and scanned through, and while they're not all in there -- no soulbonding, for example -- rather a lot of them are, and especially the ones that have to do with contrast.

I am unironically glad you have leaned so far into your premise, and also that you get to channel your id so directly. (And that your id plays so well with your co-author's, otherwise I imagine said collaboration would have screeched to a halt in the spitballing stages.)

[swan_tower]

(And that your id plays so well with your co-author's, otherwise I imagine said collaboration would have screeched to a halt in the spitballing stages.)

The earliest spitballing stage actually involved making a list of tropes each of us liked. Which wasn't quite the same as the list I keep, because my part of it had things like "swords and dueling" and "the divine as a numinous presence with meaning in characters' lives," while my own list is more focused on the moments that evoke a strong emotional reaction from me rather than the general building blocks of a setting or narrative. There was quite a lot of overlap between us, though -- in fact, we went through each other's parts of the list and asterisked everything we concurred with.

. . . and then we realized that like half of what we'd listed was already in that stuff we'd been writing as ancillary scenes to the game Alyc was running, so why not just file the serial numbers off that instead of starting from a dead halt, so that part of the process came to an earlier-than-anticipated end. But yes, the driving force behind the collaboration was "we like a lot of the same things! What if we wrote a story together, with those things in?" :-)

[thisbluespirit]

"We'll always have screaming" is truly not the community motto I strive for!

Well, fandom is far too large and disparate to truly be a community; we just make lovely friendships and really great communities within it. Outside, is the rest of fandom & the internet screaming, but I don't really know what anyone can really do about that, other than manage our particular spaces within fandom and platforms as best as we can. (Unless they make us all do video under our real names so that we can see the people we're talking to and be fully accountable and see the consequences of trolling and screaming and spamming and hate, but that would be pretty dreadful too, I think!) But, I mean, fandom was toxic and divided when I found it and it's stayed that way - but platforms like LJ were so much better at being able to avoid it if you wanted (unless you were unlucky) than global tagging sites where everyone's shouting in the same space. The screaming was always there, and you could still here the echoes from afar. :-/

I did not in fact make this post thinking particularly about problematic faves, but the overlay of moral panic onto fandom should just catch on fire and disappear, as moral panics in general should.

Moral panics really really shoul; absolutely.

I'm just watching Game of Thrones finally and everyone's problematic, but in really interesting and compelling ways. And at the same time I'm thinking, well, reblogging stuff is going to be fun, isn't it? (Do I stan for incest, manslaughter, murder, underage, torture etc etc by my choices? :lol)

On the positive side, you reminded me of my tumblr list of faves I'm working on, so I went and made some Seventh Doctor gifs, including this one, which is probably some sort of metaphor for how to deal with this kind of thing in fandom:



And that was a good thing. ♥

[ashlyme]

*I would totally hang out with Holmes!*

I was probably a bit harsh there - my comment would have been a bit longer but I had an incoming call from a friend. I couldn't share a flat with him; I wouldn't mind being some London eccentric with a shop of curiosities who Holmes taps up for some recondite knowledge and a smoke. It'd also depend on who was Holmes. Brett, Merrison: yes. Cumberbatch is completely stabbable.

[ashlyme]

That's a great gif. I thought about writing a comment about "the Doctors I love" versus "the ones I feel close to", but we'd be here all night. Enough to say I've been rewatching early Pertwee and I find Roger Delgado's Master a damn sight more likeable than the Doctor. And as for S & S...

[sovay]

On the positive side, you reminded me of my tumblr list of faves I'm working on, so I went and made some Seventh Doctor gifs, including this one, which is probably some sort of metaphor for how to deal with this kind of thing in fandom

I am delighted to have contributed to the creation of this highly relatable gif.

[sovay]

I thought about writing a comment about "the Doctors I love" versus "the ones I feel close to", but we'd be here all night.

I totally want to hear about the difference!

[sovay]

Maybe his next door neighbour.

That sounds like an excellent compromise. I had been going to say, and has the additional benefit of keeping a person outside the flat while Holmes is conducting his chemical experiments inside it, but I really did spend the better part of a school year growing slime mold in my basement and the bacteria to feed it on, so I don't really have much moral high ground here that isn't sticky.

[sovay]

I wouldn't mind being some London eccentric with a shop of curiosities who Holmes taps up for some recondite knowledge and a smoke.

I can see it. You might also run a very fair line in obscure books.

It'd also depend on who was Holmes. Brett, Merrison: yes. Cumberbatch is completely stabbable.

I don't know Merrison's Holmes at all. Radio?

[sovay]

But yes, the driving force behind the collaboration was "we like a lot of the same things! What if we wrote a story together, with those things in?"

Awesome!

[ethelmay]

I can see their point, but admittedly I've only seen The Force Awakens, in which I actively disliked watching Kylo Ren and pretty much waited for him to be off-screen (it was a long wait), whereas Rey I liked very much. Driver I just thought was miscast. I could see him potentially being fun to watch in something else.

[sovay]

Driver I just thought was miscast. I could see him potentially being fun to watch in something else.

He's great in Midnight Special (2016), which is where I first saw him.

[anna_wing]

I did not care for the character at all in the first film, but persevered (as you say because of Rey), and was rewarded with The Last Jedi. I had no expectations of The Rise of Skywalker, given the director, and therefore suffered less pain than I might have.

But my favourite character by far, the one whom I found most sympathetic, turned out to General Hux, so I'm no one to talk about dodgy character preferences either...

[thisbluespirit]

To be fair, it is hard not to like Roger Delgado more than most people! (Poor Three! ♥)

[thisbluespirit]

XD

I also have one for What To Do When You Find Yourself In The Middle of a Ship War:

[sovay]

I also have one for What To Do When You Find Yourself In The Middle of a Ship War

Beautiful.

[sovay]

But my favourite character by far, the one whom I found most sympathetic, turned out to General Hux, so I'm no one to talk about dodgy character preferences either...

What do you like about him? (I have seen none of the sequel movies, but do not care about spoilers at all.)

[anna_wing]

(a) Domnhall Gleeson looks really good in a sharp uniform (I fancy the uniform jacket in, say, red Thai silk, though the less said about the jodhpurs the better...His ankle-length greatcoat in the second film was also particularly fine; I discovered that there are whole sites on-line devoted to Star Wars costuming, and one had a very nice, clear line-drawing and description for the coat; in a cream or ivory-coloured wool/cashmere mix, perhaps, with a sari-silk lining in some cheerful colour. Some day, post-COVID19 when I get to travel somewhere cold again). He also has a nice voice.

(b) I sympathise with the trials of an honest bureaucrat trying to do his job, get things done, and conquer the Galaxy (as one does), while being stymied at every turn by his barking-mad space-wizard bosses. Having to work with someone like Kylo Ren, not to mention Snoke/Palpatine, would drive me up the wall too, though hopefully not to the point of blowing up whole planets...

(c) I did like the way that even though he had to die ignominiously to do it, everyone who had ever injured or abused him or indeed crossed him seriously in any way (his father, Snoke, Palpatine, Kylo Ren, Admiral Brookes, General Pryde, the Sith Eternal, the First Order, the Final Order, Leia Organa) lived to regret it, though in many cases not for very long. I think Finn and Poe and Rose were the only ones who survived, probably because of being too small fry to bother with. And assuming that both the New Republic and the Resistance promptly fell apart into anarchy five minutes after the last film ended, he could probably count those kills too. Not bad for a Force-null 34-year old.

[thisbluespirit]

I would make a Seven's Guide To The Internet but I am pretty sure that his actual method would be to feed the trolls till they burst themselves and then let Ace blow them up to be doubly sure, which I don't think would work for any of the rest of us.

[sovay]

He also has a nice voice.

I thought I hadn't seen Domnhall Gleeson, but it turns out I have seen him in several things where he did not leave much of an impression, so clearly I just need to find the right role.

I sympathise with the trials of an honest bureaucrat trying to do his job, get things done, and conquer the Galaxy (as one does), while being stymied at every turn by his barking-mad space-wizard bosses.

I'll just leave my feelings about Admiral Piett here.