Thoughts on fannish characters (or: It's too damn hot to clean the house)

[lyore]

There's been a lot of meta floating around about fandom, femslash and, by extension, female characters, and it's prompted me to take a good hard look at my character preferences, and why I like the characters I do.

Comments

[ceresi]

I have been thinking about this ALL DAY and I've finally decided my most favorite characters are the ones most like me? Which is either kind of endearing or very egotistical, I'm not sure which. They tend to be reserved, geeky, insecure, with bonuses for trauma and emotional issues. I usually have a more outspoken character as a runner-up, though. My issues, let me show you them.

Doctor Who: Martha, Rose
Torchwood: Ianto, Gwen
The West Wing: Sam, Zoey
Bandom: Gerard, Patrick, Pete
Vorkosiverse: Ekaterin/Gregor (it's a tie, Ekaterin = my ♥ but I adore emo woobie Gregor), Miles, Cordelia
Star Wars: Bastila Shan, Tycho Celchu, Carth Onasi, Revan (usually female), Mirax Terrik, Jaina Solo, Kyle Katarn, Ahsoka Tano (too much SW canon!)
Naruto: Hinata, Naruto/Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi
Yugioh: Yugi, Seto, Joey
Harry Potter: Remus, Sirius, Draco, Harry
Tortall-verse: Kel, Daine, Toby
Baldur's Gate: Imoen, Jaheira, Kelsey (he's fanon but I've been playing the game with him so long that he feels canon), the PC (who I usually play as female)

Vicarious life experiences FTW!

[lyore]

Interesting! Before I sat down and listed them, I would have said that I have two definite 'types': geeky scholars, and rebellious bad boys/girls (bonus points if they have a tragic past). And I still have these preferences, but it seems secondary to whether or not they are the main character or not. (Of course, this probably means I'm more likely to like a show where the main character has strong aspects of at least one of these types - it's a chicken-and-egg type thing, I suspect

Re: Vicarious life experiences FTW!

[with_apostrophe]

the closer a character resembles me the more likely I am to comment on or even criticise their decisions, because I can see echoes of my own experiences and choices.

This is fascinating, because after much thought a few years back I determined that something akin to this was the reason I didn't much like Elizabeth Weir from Stargate Atlantis. Of all the characters she was the one most like myself, and while I'm not really all that much like her, there was enough of what I idenitifed as "my" behaviour and attitudes in her to make it too much like looking in a mirror.

I'm a hell of a lot harder on female characters, but I celebrate all the more so when I do find female favourites. Vala, for example, in season 9-10 of SG-1 beats even Daniel (big crush there) in my favourites stakes.

Re: Vicarious life experiences FTW!

[lyore]

For me it tends to be Sam Carter, but yeah. A few too many similarities for me to divorce myself fully from her actions.

[greeneyedlady]

Hmm... This is a topic I have pondered myself, ( here is an old example that probably no longer reflects my current understanding), and one conclusion I have come to is that I generally do not like the main characters as much as the side characters. I am mostly involved in manga fandom, which usually has a "designated hero," or in many girls' manga the "guy the heroine is so obviously gonna wind up with that we don't really need a whole series."

I usually find these characters, well, just plain boring. A television example would be Jack from Lost (yawn). I can't really explain why. Maybe it is because there is a certain "cookie cutter" aspect to them that makes them all seem kind of similar. Maybe it is because vast portions of fandom are always rallying around them and I would rather retreat to a peaceful corner to write about the fascinating side characters. Another theory I have is that I don't like to be told who I am supposed to like best through hierarchy

[lyore]

You're right - a lot of main characters can be rather similar, especially for series with strong genre conventions. Characters I think of as 'my' main characters are generally pretty diverse, although I can certainly identify general character archetypes. But then, if I found the main character boring, I probably wouldn't be watching the show!

I think one of the benefits of liking main characters is the amount of fic etc, but it definitely makes the signal to noise ratio of good fic to bad fic must higher.

I will refer to my favorite male character and my favorite female character because I am appreciating them on entirely different wavelengths.

That's interesting. I sort of do this, I guess? (For secondary characters, anyway.) I'm pretty sure my appreciation of female characters is affected by how much I like seeing confident, competent females on TV, since those are really the only common characteristics of the girls that I love.

*poor person's edit*

[omnicat]

I pass by randomly via metafandom. :D

I'm too lazy/scatterbrained to list them right now, but I've put some thought into this every now and then, and I've noticed that I gravitate toward die-hard fanning of two types of characters: ones I identify with, and ones I really really admire on some level. (This is an inadequate description, because villains tend to fall into this category to. It might be more accurate to say, "characters who have traits I'd admire if they were used for good, even if this is not the case in the story". But let's keep it at "admirable" for simplicity's sake.)

The ones I identify with are almost invariably socially awkward. Raised by wolves, culture shock, alienating trauma, just plain lack of understanding of how normal society works, that sort of thing. The ones I admire generally have nerves and/or backbones of steel, strong moral conscience, will stand firm in extreme cases where others would shrink back for whatever reason, some self-effacing tendencies. It's kind of embarrasing, because I also tend to

Re: *poor person's edit*

[lyore]

I would have said I have definite character types ('geeks' and 'bad boys/girls') but, looking at the above list, it's still subordinate for me, to them being a main character. Or perhaps, I need both - for the main character to be one of my 'types' for me to really become fannish about a series? Hmm.

Villains are different, for me - I think 'type' dominates here. I gravitate towards bad guys with at least some degree of moral ambiguity - something which shows me that perhaps things could have been different.

Very interesting response, thanks!

[akamarykate]

I read your post via metafandom, then went outside to do some work, and thought and thought about it. If I were to do a list like yours, I think the favorite characters would be mostly female, and mostly secondary characters.

...and now I'm wondering: do I gravitate toward sidekicks and secondary characters because that's where we find more female characters, or do gravitate toward female characters because, in my fandoms, that's who the sidekicks/secondary characters tend to be?

I don't know if that makes sense. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure if I have the favorites I do because they're female (and just happen to be "secondary" in the narrative) or because they're sidekicks/secondary characters (and just happen to be female)?

Anyway, it's really interesting to think about. Thanks for this post!

[lyore]

No, I know exactly what you mean. It's really hard to pin down the cause and effect in these sorts of cases, especially if you're in multiple fandoms where the distribution of genders between main and secondary characters is roughly constant (with male characters as the leads and female characters as the sidekicks, which is depressingly common).

Thanks for answering!

[amonitrate]

ooo, here via metafandom, and I was *just* thinking about this last night. And I think I'll write up something more, but the essence is that when I was younger all my heroes were women/girls, and somewhere that shifted. And I think it shifted when I started watching television rather than reading books, and I think it shifted around puberty/high school, and I think some of it has to do with that internalized "male gaze," and I think it has to do with the fact that for such a long time the only options for cool characters in tv/movie fandoms were male.

That's changing, with Buffy and BSG especially.

[lyore]

Yes, the availability of 'cool' female characters definitely affects things - particularly if, like me, you have a bias towards the main characters. *fingers crossed for more main female characters for me to fan*

Interesting you have the shift between books and TV. Mine stayed fairly constant, for the same reasons - I read primarily sf-fantasy, particularly when I was younger and a more voracious reader (TV fandom not taking up all my time!), and my selection was limited to the books in my local library, the majority of the heroes/POV characters were male. Guess who I identified with...

If you write more, let me know - I'd be interested in reading it.