Comments | rat_jam: Meta: From Ten Seconds of Screentime to Ten Thousand Fanfics: Secondary Characters

catwalksalone in rat_jam

Meta: From Ten Seconds of Screentime to Ten Thousand Fanfics: Secondary Characters

Mar 30, 2007 17:00

From Ten Seconds of Screentime to Ten Thousand Fanfics: How and Why Some Secondary Characters Take On a Life of Their Own

Modded at muskratjamboree by shihadchick and shayheyred; modded for rat_jam by the_antichris.

( Secondary characters: What is it about them that makes us tick? )

Comments 7

lipstickcat March 30 2007, 19:43:52 UTC

Why are some of us compelled to do what we can to getturnbulllaid?

Uhh... *whistles and looks innocent*

When I'm writing, or just thinking about a character, I don't want everything handed to me on a plate. I don't want everything tied up neatly by the end of the show. I like to explore the small clues and expand them out. I like to create, that's the point of creative writing, isn't it? There's only so much you can explore when by the end of the series you know all of the hero's history, hangups and future, only so long before you're wandering over territory that has been trodden before. I like to find something new to say, with someone new.

And yeah, being pretty does also help ;P

ana_grrl March 30 2007, 20:06:21 UTC

When I'm writing, or just thinking about a character, I don't want everything handed to me on a plate...I like to explore the small clues and expand them out.Yes! Exactly! Me too. And the thing that I always find cool about secondary (or tertiary!) characters is that they have their odd little quirks (ie Major Lorne in SGA has this wry sense of humour that is subtle and underplayed, and I love it) that draw me in, often more immediately than the more established (and sometimes overplayed) behaviours of the main characters ( ... )

rydra_wong March 30 2007, 21:29:59 UTC

Personally, I tend to find the "blank slate" thing daunting, and compensate by clinging to any scrap of canon about a minor character.

But as for motives, you can add "sheer perversity" *g*. Obviously enough, we only tend to be shown secondary characters in terms of their relationships to the core characters, and it's interesting to reverse that, to try making them the centres of their own stories. And it can be a way to explore under-developed aspects of canon, or to look at the canonical world from a different angle.

Well I Never, What a Swell Party This Is executrix March 30 2007, 21:51:47 UTC

wot rydra said.

Also, I think that quite a few fans are somewhere on the spectrum between shy and extremely shy and it's easy for us to feel that we are not Prince Hamlet, but are just there to swell the procession--but we're also reporting on the procession.

enterincolor March 30 2007, 22:28:39 UTC

Here's my main reasoning for my Love of Secondaries, which actually surpasses my love of main characters when it comes to fandom (not to mention the random-name-characters or one-line-appearences that I grow attatched to...) -- I get involved with mostly closed fandoms.

Looking at this logically, it makes sense due to the kind of mediums I like. I'm not a television person. There are three currently-running shows that I actually watch (four, if you keep the hope that Studio 60 is coming back). I am not actively involved with any of these fandoms. There are three shows I enjoy that are off the air (four, if you believe Studio 60 is done for), only two(/three) of which I'm really involved with the fandom for. One of them ran for fourteen episodes (+ movie), one ran for two seasons. The other one I only write two characters from -- and one was a semi-main character, yes, but only for a season. (Shows mentioned, in order: House, Heroes, The Black Donnellys; Firefly, Sports Night, and Charmed [yay, Chris? *looks around hopefully ( ... )

the_antichris March 31 2007, 05:03:50 UTC

I think some secondary characters have a connection to canon (the main characters or the world) that gives them more oomph than their screen time would suggest - to take Damien Kowalski as an example, he gets only a few minutes total on screen, but he has so much potential to tell us about Ray's earlier life that he's really intriguing. And Lorne and Parrish have the potential to show us what life's like in Atlantis for the everyday people, as opposed to the heroes - though why Lorne and Parrish instead of two other secondary characters, I can't tell you. But the new angle on Pegasus, different from what we see on the show with the running around Canada getting shot at but intertwined with it, is really appealing. This works even more for closed canons, too - it can be hard to find a new angle on the canon, so a secondary character can be your way in ( ... )