on love interests
So. I was vaguely remembering how Leverage was described as a Five Man Band on tvtropes, and went, ”Okay, does that make Sophie the Chick? No, Sophie is the Lancer. So Parker is the Chick. WHOA SYNTAX ERROR DOES NOT COMPUTE.”
Of course, when I went back to check on the page, of course it did say that Parker as the Chick is ”very subverted”. So this isn't about Leverage as such - rather, it's about the Chick, and my reaction to her, and why my reaction to Parker is so very different.
Keeping in mind that I was still basing my thoughts on vague recollections of what the tropes entailed, what I remembered of the Chick was someone who a) is the token female, b) has feminine qualities such as a lot of compassion, and c) functions as a love interest to one or more of the characters.
For anyone who has seen Leverage, this is obviously not Parker. For anyone who hasn't: Parker is not the only woman on the team, she's notoriously bad with any kind of social interaction (apparently, Word of God is that she has Asperger's), and well into season 2, it's still very reasonable to assume that she's asexual. (Which is pretty damn rare for any character who happens to be a cute, agile blonde in her twenties.)
Now, I love Parker to pieces. She's one of my favourite characters in the world right now. And it was pretty clear to me that part of what I like about her is that she's NOT the Chick.
This intrigued me. I have long since discovered my general antipathy for heroes (it's sidekicks all the way for me), and the why and how of that, but I had never considered my feelings towards the Chick. So now I did.
Parker is of course an extreme example - most female characters, and indeed most male characters, fall closer to Chickification. The conclusion I reached was this: I can love a token female character. I can love a female character who possesses stereotypically feminine qualities. I can love a love interest... but not if being a love interest is her main function.
This, btw, does not mean I hate the characters in question, or that I don't consider them awesome. There's just a certain distance between me and them; I have subconsciously already brushed them aside as "not written for me", no matter how awesome they are. And some of them are awesome. Juliet O'Hara is awesome. Elizabeth Swann is awesome. I honestly don't know what it is that makes them none of my business. Possibly I have been conditioned by my childhood, where Diana Palmer-Walker could work for the UN and display l33t judo skills - whenever the plot didn't call for her to be a damsel in distress. (See also Maid Marian in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves.) I tend to suspect that the awesomeness is conditional, that it will be sidelined for whatever is needed to make the romance work, and this suspicion remains even if canon has never gone there. It just means I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when I like the character and root for her, I don't get attached; I don't trust the feeling to last. (Though if there aren't any other women in the show, I may still try to make the most of the one I've been given.)
OTOH, it's not as if my beloved sidekicks never get treated as accessories to the hero, or dumbed down so they'll be in need of rescue. Or horribly killed off, for that matter. So I don't know.
Keep in mind, also, that I'm talking about love interest as a main function. Lots of people are love interests without that being their main function. I think one reason Sophie in Leverage works for me despite clearly being a love interest and fitting better into the Chick type than Parker does, is because her primary function is as the Lancer. Her place in the show isn't dependent on her desirability.
Writing this, I do wonder where Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane falls into all this, because I love her to pieces and she is indubitably there to be a love interest... but at the same time, it feels different. It's a partnership, it's Lois & Clark; they work together, the romance features as heavily or non-heavily on both sides, and the show goes right on after they've become married, with Lois being even more integral to the plots than before. (Season four sucks in a lot of ways, but I love the way their marriage is portrayed.) Decades of Superman history aside, the show writers managed to make this one more like Moonlighting, which is no mean feat considering that one character is Superman and the other is, y'know, not.
Anyway. Back to the love interests who are, clearly, mainly love interests. Sometimes, as I've said, they're awesome and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes they're awesome but horribly mistreated by the show. I was very frustrated watching Reaper (and this is written by WOMEN, my GOD!) for the way Andi was treated. She was clearly smarter than Sam's other friends, she should have been brought in from day one - but she was kept in the dark because he didn't want to ruin his chances or romance. Meaning a whole bunch of needless and irritating complications. It was like nails on a chalkboard, every episode, and I was so relieved when he finally stopped keeping secrets from her and she could be every bit the useful ally she was clearly qualified to be.
Sometimes, they're not awesome. Andi leads my thoughts naturally to Sarah in Jake 2.0, who didn't only have love interest as her main function - it was her only function. Fortunately, the show figured out early on that this was a dead end (some shows can drag such a situation on for ages), and Sarah was written out, giving the love interest part to Diane, who already had another function in the show.
On a sidenote, yes, of course I love Diane for being geeky and smart and because I can relate to her, but I do think her having a non-love-interest-related primary function also features into it. Afer all, I'm not wild about Fred in Angel, who is just as geeky and smart, but who spent the better part of her time on the show being treated like a prize to be won. (It didn't help that her awesomeness was very conditional - she seemed to have whatever skill the episode needed her to have, never to be seen again.)
And sometimes... sometimes they're Lonnie Henderson from SeaQuest. Whom I once upon a time wrote a list about detailing all the way I hated her. And the thing is, now, many years after the fact, I can't remember a damn thing about her personality or background. I remember that half the crew fell in love with her at one point or another. I remember what she looked like, and that I could never figure out why people found her so hot. I remember my frustration when Brody, too, fell in love with her. (Because I wanted him for Freddy, what with him being the only one apart from Hudson to notice that she existed. Later, I wrote Freddy as lesbian, though of course that meant I had to write an OC love interest for her, since none of the women on the show noticed that she existed either.) But when it comes to Lonnie Henderson the character, I don't remember anything about her. Interestingly enough, neither does Wikipedia. (OTOH, it doesn't remember anything about Freddy either.) I hated her beyond the telling of it, and now I can't even remember her opinions on anything.
So it seems that when I can find no function to a character beyond the love interest, I pretty much erase her from my mind. Maybe it's because I'm a gen girl at heart. I ship, of course I do. I even sometimes have OTPs. But perhaps my general world view just isn't romantic enough.
Or maybe that's not the reason at all. What do I know? All I know is that along with heroes (or hero-shaped protagonists), I now can add love interests to the pile of "people who generally don't do it for me."
P.S. What about guy love interests, designated to be just that? Truth be told, I can't think of many. There's Buffy's various boyfriends, who only ever worked for me after they were dumped. There's West on Heroes, the only character on that show I truly hated. There's every single guy on Gilmore Girls, who pretty much come off as so much noise, to me. So I think the feeling probably goes for both sexes; it's just rarer for boys to fill that particular role.
Of course, when I went back to check on the page, of course it did say that Parker as the Chick is ”very subverted”. So this isn't about Leverage as such - rather, it's about the Chick, and my reaction to her, and why my reaction to Parker is so very different.
Keeping in mind that I was still basing my thoughts on vague recollections of what the tropes entailed, what I remembered of the Chick was someone who a) is the token female, b) has feminine qualities such as a lot of compassion, and c) functions as a love interest to one or more of the characters.
For anyone who has seen Leverage, this is obviously not Parker. For anyone who hasn't: Parker is not the only woman on the team, she's notoriously bad with any kind of social interaction (apparently, Word of God is that she has Asperger's), and well into season 2, it's still very reasonable to assume that she's asexual. (Which is pretty damn rare for any character who happens to be a cute, agile blonde in her twenties.)
Now, I love Parker to pieces. She's one of my favourite characters in the world right now. And it was pretty clear to me that part of what I like about her is that she's NOT the Chick.
This intrigued me. I have long since discovered my general antipathy for heroes (it's sidekicks all the way for me), and the why and how of that, but I had never considered my feelings towards the Chick. So now I did.
Parker is of course an extreme example - most female characters, and indeed most male characters, fall closer to Chickification. The conclusion I reached was this: I can love a token female character. I can love a female character who possesses stereotypically feminine qualities. I can love a love interest... but not if being a love interest is her main function.
This, btw, does not mean I hate the characters in question, or that I don't consider them awesome. There's just a certain distance between me and them; I have subconsciously already brushed them aside as "not written for me", no matter how awesome they are. And some of them are awesome. Juliet O'Hara is awesome. Elizabeth Swann is awesome. I honestly don't know what it is that makes them none of my business. Possibly I have been conditioned by my childhood, where Diana Palmer-Walker could work for the UN and display l33t judo skills - whenever the plot didn't call for her to be a damsel in distress. (See also Maid Marian in Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves.) I tend to suspect that the awesomeness is conditional, that it will be sidelined for whatever is needed to make the romance work, and this suspicion remains even if canon has never gone there. It just means I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when I like the character and root for her, I don't get attached; I don't trust the feeling to last. (Though if there aren't any other women in the show, I may still try to make the most of the one I've been given.)
OTOH, it's not as if my beloved sidekicks never get treated as accessories to the hero, or dumbed down so they'll be in need of rescue. Or horribly killed off, for that matter. So I don't know.
Keep in mind, also, that I'm talking about love interest as a main function. Lots of people are love interests without that being their main function. I think one reason Sophie in Leverage works for me despite clearly being a love interest and fitting better into the Chick type than Parker does, is because her primary function is as the Lancer. Her place in the show isn't dependent on her desirability.
Writing this, I do wonder where Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane falls into all this, because I love her to pieces and she is indubitably there to be a love interest... but at the same time, it feels different. It's a partnership, it's Lois & Clark; they work together, the romance features as heavily or non-heavily on both sides, and the show goes right on after they've become married, with Lois being even more integral to the plots than before. (Season four sucks in a lot of ways, but I love the way their marriage is portrayed.) Decades of Superman history aside, the show writers managed to make this one more like Moonlighting, which is no mean feat considering that one character is Superman and the other is, y'know, not.
Anyway. Back to the love interests who are, clearly, mainly love interests. Sometimes, as I've said, they're awesome and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes they're awesome but horribly mistreated by the show. I was very frustrated watching Reaper (and this is written by WOMEN, my GOD!) for the way Andi was treated. She was clearly smarter than Sam's other friends, she should have been brought in from day one - but she was kept in the dark because he didn't want to ruin his chances or romance. Meaning a whole bunch of needless and irritating complications. It was like nails on a chalkboard, every episode, and I was so relieved when he finally stopped keeping secrets from her and she could be every bit the useful ally she was clearly qualified to be.
Sometimes, they're not awesome. Andi leads my thoughts naturally to Sarah in Jake 2.0, who didn't only have love interest as her main function - it was her only function. Fortunately, the show figured out early on that this was a dead end (some shows can drag such a situation on for ages), and Sarah was written out, giving the love interest part to Diane, who already had another function in the show.
On a sidenote, yes, of course I love Diane for being geeky and smart and because I can relate to her, but I do think her having a non-love-interest-related primary function also features into it. Afer all, I'm not wild about Fred in Angel, who is just as geeky and smart, but who spent the better part of her time on the show being treated like a prize to be won. (It didn't help that her awesomeness was very conditional - she seemed to have whatever skill the episode needed her to have, never to be seen again.)
And sometimes... sometimes they're Lonnie Henderson from SeaQuest. Whom I once upon a time wrote a list about detailing all the way I hated her. And the thing is, now, many years after the fact, I can't remember a damn thing about her personality or background. I remember that half the crew fell in love with her at one point or another. I remember what she looked like, and that I could never figure out why people found her so hot. I remember my frustration when Brody, too, fell in love with her. (Because I wanted him for Freddy, what with him being the only one apart from Hudson to notice that she existed. Later, I wrote Freddy as lesbian, though of course that meant I had to write an OC love interest for her, since none of the women on the show noticed that she existed either.) But when it comes to Lonnie Henderson the character, I don't remember anything about her. Interestingly enough, neither does Wikipedia. (OTOH, it doesn't remember anything about Freddy either.) I hated her beyond the telling of it, and now I can't even remember her opinions on anything.
So it seems that when I can find no function to a character beyond the love interest, I pretty much erase her from my mind. Maybe it's because I'm a gen girl at heart. I ship, of course I do. I even sometimes have OTPs. But perhaps my general world view just isn't romantic enough.
Or maybe that's not the reason at all. What do I know? All I know is that along with heroes (or hero-shaped protagonists), I now can add love interests to the pile of "people who generally don't do it for me."
P.S. What about guy love interests, designated to be just that? Truth be told, I can't think of many. There's Buffy's various boyfriends, who only ever worked for me after they were dumped. There's West on Heroes, the only character on that show I truly hated. There's every single guy on Gilmore Girls, who pretty much come off as so much noise, to me. So I think the feeling probably goes for both sexes; it's just rarer for boys to fill that particular role.