Billy Talent and Characterisation
I am amused that a webcomic can describe my life with such accuracy.
On the bus home yesterday afternoon, I was struck by the sudden, overwhelming urge to go home and listen to Billy Talent, which I haven't done for a couple of years. (I'd like to say since high school, but that is probably a lie.) After about twenty minutes of humming Billy Talent, various to myself, in between dozing, it occurred to me that this was because the person next to me was listening to Billy Talent through his headphones-at top volume.
Normally, I find myself annoyed by loud headphones on public transit: I'm usually either trying to get reading done, or attempting to sleep, or writing something (or occasionally writing a paper), so the irritating distraction of random buzzing is not particularly welcome. To be honest, I am just generally not a happy bus-goer as a general rule-I always end up next to the smelly person (which could refer to B.O. or overpowering perfume), the noisy person, or the clueless person, who refuses to let me out, and OMG that's my stop and... Fuck, I guess I'll be going on a little walk.
Or, like a couple of nights ago, two buses will have to break down before they finally get us on one that will take me home. I went through three buses over the course of a fifteen minute bus ride.
However, after much pondering, I have come to the conclusion that buses have their perks: they help me get caught up on much-needed sleep, I can edit my papers on my way to class, and every so often they make me go home and dance around the flat to Billy Talent.
On a tangent that sounds slightly less like a Public Service Announcement, and the real reason for this post... I've been thinking a lot about characterisation lately, as I've been poking at some original fic (in between working on my exchange fic and trying to stay on top of my graduating essay and working way too much). I've always been aware that characterisation in original fic is a much bigger, scarier animal (generally with more pointy fangs) than characterisation is in fanfic, but it is actually proving an easier transition than I thought it might be.
I generally have a couple of standard fannish character interpretations that I like to play off of, and it's a bit of a relief to have this huge field of possibility hovering before me in the land of original things-but that's simultaneously a problem. I'm much too indecisive, especially about this sort of thing.
In an attempt to change this, I am now examining what draws me to characters, what makes me relate, what makes me want to take them home and rip off all there clothes, and what makes me want to curl up in a ball and weep (or run away very quickly).
When I peer past the terrible writing and the general lameness of plot to glance at the characters from the first novels I began to write (and occasionally finished), I notice lots of things. Mostly things that need to be improved, need to be made consistent, etc., but there are two main things. In my early, early teens I had a tendency to write terrible Mary Sues, and the slightly dorky, loveable guy had a tendency to win out in the end. The Mary Sues often had red hair, green eyes (both things I wanted in my youthful days-which were pre-caring about Lily Evans), and mad warrior skillz. They were also quite good at coming up with sparkling retorts in difficult and stressful situations. All of these were things that I wanted. Sometimes I was even subtle enough to give them versions of my name.
I know.
On the bright side, my early Mary Sues seem to have killed my tendencies in that general direction, and I have since developed a fondness for various other types of characters.
I still like the nerd boys, but that shouldn't surprise you. If they're a bit shy and socially awkward, I'm probably ready to fling myself into their beds and beg them to take me. Of course, it's always fun to give any sort of stereotype some depth, but I also enjoy playing with rakes and giving them some depth beyond their extreme sexiness, because extreme sexiness is boring and if that's all they've got going for them, they will be terribly lonely when their looks fade and they have to start relying on Viagra to get it up. I don't much like rakes in of themselves (the Earl of Rochester being an exception), but give me a twist and I'm there...
There are endless reasons why I don't particularly like reading or writing Mary Sues-in the case of self-insertion, my aversion comes from the fact that I know myself. I spend quite a lot of time in my head, and have a pretty strong grasp of how my mind works, and what makes me tick-so writing about me isn't particularly challenging. I like watching people and trying to understand them (even when I don't like them very much), and while part of that is finding similarities, an even larger part is looking at and absorbing their differences. Writing is not my way of saying that I understand people and can now tell you about them; it is the process of examination, the attempt to crawl into the headspace of someone who may be similar to me in some ways, but is completely different in others-it's less restricting and analytical, I think, than outright psychology, and much more fun. When I come across someone else's self-insertion, I tend to view it as lazy, as if they don't want to put the effort into building a new character or try to understand someone other than themselves (and it often results in the 'woe is me' effect).
I also view Mary Sue-ism as a form of objectification-yes, the Mary Sue is talented and smart and good at everything the author deems important, but isn't that just another way of saying that this is what women should be? (Or, in the case of Gary Stus, what men should be.) Isn't it implicitly critiquing the inverse of whatever the author's Mary Sue is? Tess Durbeyfield is Thomas Hardy's ideal woman, his Mary Sue of sexy, strawberry-filled dreams; although you can find depth in her character, it's almost in spite of the narrator's portrayal. She is an object, to which Hardy points in order to show the Plight of Beautiful Women everywhere-but the narrator hinders us from seeing past this image of the perfect woman.
There don't seem to be many modern versions of Tess (thank goodness)-instead there is a tendency towards the opposite sort of character (think spunk, not that there is anything wrong with it in moderation). It may be creating a new, subversive binary opposition, in which different traits are being favoured, but it's still a binary and it's still blatantly one-sided. I don't think that people fit neatly into categories or can be divided up on the basis of which traits they espouse-to begin with, most people aren't that organised, and, as my Shakespeare prof was so very fond of saying in the course on tragedies, anyone who does perfectly fit their half of the binary to that degree is probably a sociopath. (For the record, I'm not saying that people who write Mary Sues are sociopaths, but I am saying that any real person who acted like a Mary Sue would probably have some serious problems.)
At the moment, I am beginning work on my graduating essay, which is about Jane Austen's development and use of free indirect speech. One of the major things that it does is build characterisation-you get to see the character through his or her eyes without the use of first person. It's an incredibly useful technique, and one that I am resolved to use as much as is humanly possible. Until I started reading up on this, I don't think I fully understood how completely brilliant she is at not just writing believable people, but moving them from point A to point B convincingly. Really, it's the ultimate in showing, not telling-each of her characters' journeys could be summed up in a sentence or two, but by showing it to us from the character's perspective, and gradually leading up to it, making the moment of recognition tangible to us, it becomes the reader's journey as well. I don't think that the free indirect speech would be nearly as effective without imperfect characters-they wouldn't need that moment of anagnorisis, that moment when the characters see themselves as they really are. Mary Sues don't need to move from ignorance to understanding; they're already perfect.
So, erm, that's what I don't like. What I do like in the land of characterisations isn't nearly so specific; mostly I want to read about people I can believe in. I like capable heroines with a head on their shoulders (probably in part because I'm not very sensible), but that doens't mean they can't have their own anxieties or fears or touches of neuroticism. I like slightly awkward, slightly dorky boys, especially when the (obviously sensible) girl picks them over the overly charming and unnaturally attractive option. I like reading about characters who make mistakes and learn from them, prickly characters with squishy underbellies, and quiet, bookish characters who live completely inside their heads. I like characters who can't always master their fear, and run away as often as they stay, characters who don't know how to stand up for themselves, and characters who hold people at bay with their bitch factor. I'm willing to be sold on practically everything.
When you shut the door on the Mary Sues, so many more possibilities pour in through the window, and each of them has the potential to be fascinating.
This was meant to be a nice, concise post on what makes me interested in a character, so apologies for the amount of time I spent on the soapbox. (And I didn't even say everything I wanted to.) But I'm curious... Agree? Disagree? Are you as horribly indecisive as I am and hover somewhere in between?
On the bus home yesterday afternoon, I was struck by the sudden, overwhelming urge to go home and listen to Billy Talent, which I haven't done for a couple of years. (I'd like to say since high school, but that is probably a lie.) After about twenty minutes of humming Billy Talent, various to myself, in between dozing, it occurred to me that this was because the person next to me was listening to Billy Talent through his headphones-at top volume.
Normally, I find myself annoyed by loud headphones on public transit: I'm usually either trying to get reading done, or attempting to sleep, or writing something (or occasionally writing a paper), so the irritating distraction of random buzzing is not particularly welcome. To be honest, I am just generally not a happy bus-goer as a general rule-I always end up next to the smelly person (which could refer to B.O. or overpowering perfume), the noisy person, or the clueless person, who refuses to let me out, and OMG that's my stop and... Fuck, I guess I'll be going on a little walk.
Or, like a couple of nights ago, two buses will have to break down before they finally get us on one that will take me home. I went through three buses over the course of a fifteen minute bus ride.
However, after much pondering, I have come to the conclusion that buses have their perks: they help me get caught up on much-needed sleep, I can edit my papers on my way to class, and every so often they make me go home and dance around the flat to Billy Talent.
On a tangent that sounds slightly less like a Public Service Announcement, and the real reason for this post... I've been thinking a lot about characterisation lately, as I've been poking at some original fic (in between working on my exchange fic and trying to stay on top of my graduating essay and working way too much). I've always been aware that characterisation in original fic is a much bigger, scarier animal (generally with more pointy fangs) than characterisation is in fanfic, but it is actually proving an easier transition than I thought it might be.
I generally have a couple of standard fannish character interpretations that I like to play off of, and it's a bit of a relief to have this huge field of possibility hovering before me in the land of original things-but that's simultaneously a problem. I'm much too indecisive, especially about this sort of thing.
In an attempt to change this, I am now examining what draws me to characters, what makes me relate, what makes me want to take them home and rip off all there clothes, and what makes me want to curl up in a ball and weep (or run away very quickly).
When I peer past the terrible writing and the general lameness of plot to glance at the characters from the first novels I began to write (and occasionally finished), I notice lots of things. Mostly things that need to be improved, need to be made consistent, etc., but there are two main things. In my early, early teens I had a tendency to write terrible Mary Sues, and the slightly dorky, loveable guy had a tendency to win out in the end. The Mary Sues often had red hair, green eyes (both things I wanted in my youthful days-which were pre-caring about Lily Evans), and mad warrior skillz. They were also quite good at coming up with sparkling retorts in difficult and stressful situations. All of these were things that I wanted. Sometimes I was even subtle enough to give them versions of my name.
I know.
On the bright side, my early Mary Sues seem to have killed my tendencies in that general direction, and I have since developed a fondness for various other types of characters.
I still like the nerd boys, but that shouldn't surprise you. If they're a bit shy and socially awkward, I'm probably ready to fling myself into their beds and beg them to take me. Of course, it's always fun to give any sort of stereotype some depth, but I also enjoy playing with rakes and giving them some depth beyond their extreme sexiness, because extreme sexiness is boring and if that's all they've got going for them, they will be terribly lonely when their looks fade and they have to start relying on Viagra to get it up. I don't much like rakes in of themselves (the Earl of Rochester being an exception), but give me a twist and I'm there...
There are endless reasons why I don't particularly like reading or writing Mary Sues-in the case of self-insertion, my aversion comes from the fact that I know myself. I spend quite a lot of time in my head, and have a pretty strong grasp of how my mind works, and what makes me tick-so writing about me isn't particularly challenging. I like watching people and trying to understand them (even when I don't like them very much), and while part of that is finding similarities, an even larger part is looking at and absorbing their differences. Writing is not my way of saying that I understand people and can now tell you about them; it is the process of examination, the attempt to crawl into the headspace of someone who may be similar to me in some ways, but is completely different in others-it's less restricting and analytical, I think, than outright psychology, and much more fun. When I come across someone else's self-insertion, I tend to view it as lazy, as if they don't want to put the effort into building a new character or try to understand someone other than themselves (and it often results in the 'woe is me' effect).
I also view Mary Sue-ism as a form of objectification-yes, the Mary Sue is talented and smart and good at everything the author deems important, but isn't that just another way of saying that this is what women should be? (Or, in the case of Gary Stus, what men should be.) Isn't it implicitly critiquing the inverse of whatever the author's Mary Sue is? Tess Durbeyfield is Thomas Hardy's ideal woman, his Mary Sue of sexy, strawberry-filled dreams; although you can find depth in her character, it's almost in spite of the narrator's portrayal. She is an object, to which Hardy points in order to show the Plight of Beautiful Women everywhere-but the narrator hinders us from seeing past this image of the perfect woman.
There don't seem to be many modern versions of Tess (thank goodness)-instead there is a tendency towards the opposite sort of character (think spunk, not that there is anything wrong with it in moderation). It may be creating a new, subversive binary opposition, in which different traits are being favoured, but it's still a binary and it's still blatantly one-sided. I don't think that people fit neatly into categories or can be divided up on the basis of which traits they espouse-to begin with, most people aren't that organised, and, as my Shakespeare prof was so very fond of saying in the course on tragedies, anyone who does perfectly fit their half of the binary to that degree is probably a sociopath. (For the record, I'm not saying that people who write Mary Sues are sociopaths, but I am saying that any real person who acted like a Mary Sue would probably have some serious problems.)
At the moment, I am beginning work on my graduating essay, which is about Jane Austen's development and use of free indirect speech. One of the major things that it does is build characterisation-you get to see the character through his or her eyes without the use of first person. It's an incredibly useful technique, and one that I am resolved to use as much as is humanly possible. Until I started reading up on this, I don't think I fully understood how completely brilliant she is at not just writing believable people, but moving them from point A to point B convincingly. Really, it's the ultimate in showing, not telling-each of her characters' journeys could be summed up in a sentence or two, but by showing it to us from the character's perspective, and gradually leading up to it, making the moment of recognition tangible to us, it becomes the reader's journey as well. I don't think that the free indirect speech would be nearly as effective without imperfect characters-they wouldn't need that moment of anagnorisis, that moment when the characters see themselves as they really are. Mary Sues don't need to move from ignorance to understanding; they're already perfect.
So, erm, that's what I don't like. What I do like in the land of characterisations isn't nearly so specific; mostly I want to read about people I can believe in. I like capable heroines with a head on their shoulders (probably in part because I'm not very sensible), but that doens't mean they can't have their own anxieties or fears or touches of neuroticism. I like slightly awkward, slightly dorky boys, especially when the (obviously sensible) girl picks them over the overly charming and unnaturally attractive option. I like reading about characters who make mistakes and learn from them, prickly characters with squishy underbellies, and quiet, bookish characters who live completely inside their heads. I like characters who can't always master their fear, and run away as often as they stay, characters who don't know how to stand up for themselves, and characters who hold people at bay with their bitch factor. I'm willing to be sold on practically everything.
When you shut the door on the Mary Sues, so many more possibilities pour in through the window, and each of them has the potential to be fascinating.
This was meant to be a nice, concise post on what makes me interested in a character, so apologies for the amount of time I spent on the soapbox. (And I didn't even say everything I wanted to.) But I'm curious... Agree? Disagree? Are you as horribly indecisive as I am and hover somewhere in between?