character identification poll

[rm]

Quick and dirty, but of interest due to random convo with copperbadge:

[Poll #1541697]

Comments

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

There is this tension, for me, between identifying strongly with a character because of their desires and their emotional/intellectual relationships/circumstances -- and being very unlikely to identify with a character whose life situation looks too much like mine.

I don't identify with young, struggling academic-types in the 20th or 21st century, or young queer women in same -- there's too much commonality, I can't stop thinking about the way my life looks in comparison to theirs.

But identify with characters who are in complex, negotiated, queer emotional relationships, especially if those relationships involve questions of devotion, multiplicity, compromise? HELL YES. To painful degrees sometimes. (Neal, in White Collar, is fucking with my head in terms of how much I want to have his life. In distressing ways, because he's a liar and a thief and not a good person in most of the ways I'm not a good person...)

Or identify with people whose projects are wholesale devotion to some intellectual or spiritual task? Also yes. (Rodney McKay; Emilio Sandoz in The Sparrow (do you know that book?); Kit Marlowe and Matthew in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age series; Leoben, in BSG...)

But if their lives look like mine, I don't end up doing that thing where I can cry for them and do.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, you and I have to have coffee and talk about how uncomfortable Neal is making us. I wonder to what extent its our NYC upbringings too.

And I do know The Sparrow mainly because I read it because everyone said I'd identify with Sandoz, which I don't, actually.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

I bet there's something to that, actually. The city helps you be that kind of liar, the kind where you believe it too, until you don't.

And really, we ought to have coffee. Just in general.

(As for the Sparrow -- did you ping on Sofia instead?)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I did, somewhat, but not too strongly on anyone in that book, really.

And true true. We should. Also, I think NYC private school, in particular, makes everyone a liar. The criteria for getting by are so weird.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

That book hit me very strongly a couple of times -- but I read it first when I was a religious studies major and trying very hard to fall in love with God, and a second time when I was alone in Turkey for several months, so I think I was primed for it.

Email me? I don't know what your schedule is like, but this weekend is pretty unscheduled for me.

... and yeah. NYC private schools teach you how everyone is a liar, all the time.

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

There is this tension, for me, between identifying strongly with a character because of their desires and their emotional/intellectual relationships/circumstances -- and being very unlikely to identify with a character whose life situation looks too much like mine.

Yes! IAWTC.

Deep structural similarities help, but surface similarities get in the way.