Questions of Character

[pellucid]

Character has been coming up a lot lately in the various fannish playgrounds I've been hanging out in. Discussions of female characters at gabolange's (flocked, or I'd link) and surrealis's ( here), discussions of characters of color at sugargroupie's (most relevant bits flocked), a chat with some RL friends about J. K. Rowling's efforts to control the interpretation of her

Comments

Re: part 2 -- holy cow.

[pellucid]

On Laura: Her character actually appeals to my brains more than to my emotions--which is in no way a slight. She appeals to me the way that, say, my favorite sorts of poets appeal: I like difficult, intellectual poets--John Donne, George Herbert, T. S. Eliot more recently--where the act of analysis, the unraveling of these beautiful words until they coalesce into some kind of meaning that you can just grasp, is the whole fun of it. Laura Roslin is something like a metaphysical poet, and I suspect that some of the problem with writing her is connected to the reasons my students rarely seem to hit Donne right on the mark. You have to think about her. And I think that the reason you and I (and others) are so committed to canon in her case is the fact that canon is so rich and so cool--to diverge would be to reduce her character to something less than it is, I think, almost inevitably.

Perhaps, though, because of the way I love her brains-first, heart-second, I love her at arm's length. Sometimes I even think she's fascinating in the way that you can't look away from a car crash, little fragments of her soul left behind in the vacuum every time the fleet jumps. I'm not sure my love for her is so much the role model impulse as it is a fascinated horror that I might do the same thing in her shoes.

Plus there's just that thing she has where you have to watch her and listen to her and want her to be on the screen more. ;)

I'm quite curious about what they're going to do with Tory now (not that we'll get to see for months and months!!!); I hope it doesn't completely wreck your backstory, because I like it.

Re: part 2 -- holy cow.

[pellucid]

Sometimes, I wonder if writing fanfic is a bit like doing history. Historians can never tell the TRUTH of the past but we can try to get it to wie es eigenlich gewesen ist by using the archive. In fanfic, we try to get a character right by checking him/her with canon. I wonder if the more I train in history, the more anal I'll get about characterization...

Oh, I like this!!!!! I've been wondering the whole time these thoughts were forming how much my thoughts about character and story are related and influenced to my 9+ years of specialized literature training; I suspect there are certain ways of thinking that necessarily carry over, though hopefully never in a pedantic way. (I also love how I just compared Laura to Donne and you just compared her to Luther--not that we're predictable in our disciplines or anything...)

I didn't know you were a Regina Spektor fan. I finally got the title of your journal. I love that song, but lost it in my great HD crash of moving here.

Indeed, I am a huge Regina Spektor fan! And I think you're the first person (other than the person who gave it to me) I've run across who knows that song, since it's not on any of her albums. I love it, and I pimp it to people as "the best song you've never heard." I don't have time to do it right now, but I can help you out with re-acquiring it if you're interested. ;)