So what are characters anyway?

[sistermagpie]

So there were these big wanks recently, and they got me thinking about the whole process of being a fan, using the examples from my own experiences, especially with The Boy (you know, the one who inspires all that wank).

Here's the exchange. Not angry face! (I have some suspicions about who this is, but that's neither here nor there.)

So I tried to answer exactly why I insist on this analysis and interest of a minor character in a children's series, and the main part of my answer that seems relevant is: "People are drawn to fictional characters for all sorts of reasons." With fictional characters, there almost seems to be two different levels. On the first level, you identify with them as if they were real people: you and people you know. Sometimes people see themselves as the character. Arguing with someone like that is impossible because it's personal. If you say Scully could quit working with Mulder if she wanted you're suggesting Esme could leave her job where she's so unappreciated as well and that would ruin the passive-aggressive martyrdom that is Esme's life. If you say why Draco seems to be doing something, you are suggesting that the person who picked on them in high school was human and not the forces of evil they are continually fighting with their own equally aggressive behavior.

slytherincess, I recall, did a really wonderful post once where she explained how she was very much like the Slytherin characters growing up--and not in some idealized way either. She learned and changed, and this was partly why she did not like people dismissing those characters as unable to do the same. Even though she identified with the characters, she could also look at their faults objectively. It reminded me of Edmund, my favorite character in The Chronicles of Narnia. I love how the narrator tells us that Edmund grew up to be a "graver and quieter" man than Peter and was Just rather than Magnificent (that Peter, still showing off). If someone accepts the parts of himself or herself that are in ugly characters (without romanticizing the ugliness into something else) they can offer a lot of wisdom about them. Even though it's them, it's not always personal, because they're talking about parts of themselves they struggled with and got to know until they weren't afraid of them.

So that's the straightforward way people respond to characters. It's always kind of fun to see that--fun or disturbing. But on another level we know they're fictional characters and are therefore free to live through them in totally different ways. You can, imo, like them because they let you live out parts of yourself you don't show the world, or approve of. It's like I said about the Thief archetype--it's not that I think stealing is cool, it's just that things about this character are very satisfying for me to live out fictionally.

So I'm trying to think about these Slytherin characters--how exactly do I react to them on both those levels? First as real people--well, I'd never be friend with them. Draco reminds me of different people in different ways, but here's two in particular. A girl I knew at camp, D1, and a boy I knew at another summer program, D2. Hated them both. D1 was generally mean, and while I usually stayed off her radar she occasionally would pick on me for no reason (we were in the same tent--imagine being stuck with Draco for rest period). That was awful. D2, for whatever reason, targeted me the first day and went after me whenever I was around--and what was worse was that this was a sailing thing and I had never sailed and had no idea what I was doing there, while he was an expert with his own boat. I seem to recall him locking a younger boy in a locker for several hours--yeah, he was charming.

So I hated both these people. D1 wound up leaving camp a bit early. Her father was a photographer who came to take pictures at the camp. Mysterious drama ensued. Her mother, stepfather and sister came to get her. Her best friend informed us her father was not allowed near her, as there were some sort of abuse charges--either spousal or child--in existence. D2 stayed the whole summer, but I did learn his parents were both psychiatrists, and that his beloved older brother had committed suicide.

My reactions to these revelations was pretty much the same:

1. A pleasant feeling of schadenfreude: You make me miserable, and you are miserable. Good. Be miserable.

2. Firmly deciding that their being hurt did not excuse their hurting me--this is such a strong belief for me it drives me crazy when people accuse me of trying to "excuse" bad behavior in fictional characters. Really, I don't. I would just rather stop it than punish it.

3. Some guilty fantasies about what it would be like if, the next time they taunted me, I said I could certainly understand why D1's father hit her or D2's brother killed himself, because they were such awful people they inspired such actions. This was followed quickly by the thought that if I did say these things the person probably would not collapse in tears, but kick my ass. That was followed by the realization that I really didn't want to say these things anyway, even if it would cause them to collapse in tears, because I didn't want to hurt them, I just wanted them to leave me alone, and saying those things would be a shitty thing.

4. From that moment, everything both of them did I tried to think of from the perspective of their new knowledge. What was D1 like with her older sister and her mother? She was so mean and tough to me, but she cried when she ran out of the mess hall because her father was there. What was her father like? Did he have a creepy, "You love your daddy don't you honey?" air about him? How long had her mother been married to this new guy? Was he like her father at all, but a nice guy? Did she get along with him? Did he have to consciously work on helping her through this trauma? And how about that best friend telling us her secret and probably loving the attention as she did it? Well, what do you expect from a girl who brushed her hair 200 times a day and took 40 minutes to get her pigtails just right.

With D2 it was even weirder, with the psychiatrist parents. Were they workaholics who made a lot of money for boats but didn't spend enough time at home? My mother always said a lot of people became psychologists to fix their own problems (heh--my sister's a psychologist)...did they struggle with suicidal thoughts too? Did D2 really look up to his brother? Were they close? Did he feel betrayed? When did it happen? How did he do it????

I didn't have all these thoughts at once, of course. I've thought about it now and again for 20 years now. Like I said, these incidents didn't make me suddenly like the person or feel sorry for them. But it did make me incapable of seeing them as just D1 the girl who's mean, or just D2 that little shit. They had families and histories and were different people with them. Most of the time you don't get this kind of dramatic information--with D1 even at the time I thought it was almost too after-school-special to be true that her big secret would be revealed to me. But I think you get more than you might think if you pay attention to people. I guess that's why the B&B scene is so significant to me in CoS--if I'd witnessed the scene that Harry did it would have totally changed my view of Draco.

So I do respond to Draco and Pansy as I would if they were real people in terms of wanting to know motivation. Only I like them...but why? I didn't like D1 or D2. I think part of it might be the nature of narrative. I don't really look at any of the kids in this universe and see myself, mostly because this universe seems to clearly come out of the head of someone very different from me. It's very concerned with justice in a way that I just am not--that's why it's so made up of power struggles. There are victims, and bullies, and heroes who protect the victims from bullies. Everyone is supposed to aspire to the hero who protects the victim from bullies--just like in CS Lewis, Peter the Magnificent is elevated above Edmund the Just (where just, imo, refers to wisdom and mercy instead of pardon and punishment).

For people who are more in tune with this personality, I think the differences between the Gryffindors and the Slytherins are more prominent. For me, not so much. I feel out of balance with the world, and that's probably why I often find Draco and Pansy refreshing. Not because they're better people than the main characters, but because they do sometimes say what I'm thinking, like that Hagrid's a menace or Dumbledore is a whacko. Or other times they're just different, not taking things seriously that the heroes take more seriously than I do, or something. Plus they're so obviously vulnerable, walking around announcing their insecurities, getting rejected and screaming about it for five years instead of accepting it and moving on. Screaming for approval and affection and continuing to love passionately and stupidly without it because you can't seem to stop it. Also maybe I think the actions of people all around him are so calculated to make him act even more badly, I am distracted by that. Most importantly, I am drawn to them for all the reasons I outlined in the post a couple down, about what the ultimate judgement on this character "says" about morality, people, etc.

The important thing is, that it's hard to say why you're drawn to a character, and it's a bad idea to assume the answer is so straightforward. It's really not always that this is the character that is like you, or the one you want to date, or the one you'd love to be if you could. I think it's just the character that says something about what you need to work out at any given time. That's why people's characters change. I knew people who read LOTR as a teenager and loved Aragorn, but years later loved Frodo. (One person even referred to coming to identify with Frodo in canon as "growing up") It doesn't mean you "were" Aragorn and now "are" Frodo, or that you used to crush on one and now the other. It can mean those things, but it could also just be that as a teenager you were working on different issues. That's one way fictional characters aren't like real people: they don't change. *We* change, and they look different because of it.

Comments

[ljash.livejournal.com]

Oh, so much in there. Yet I'm caught up in your D1 and D2 examples. I remember people who picked on me mercilessly in grade school and junior high. I never had a chance to see other sides of them at the time. I'm not sure what I would have thought. The only thing comparable is that during 4th grade two boys picked on me all year and I swore with every bit of my 9-year-old self that I would hate them forever, and then when I was 16 one of them ended up being a friend of my boyfriend. When I met him again, I got over it in about five minutes. But it did take me five minutes. I only saw him a few times so it was mostly a matter of getting over the pettiness of swearing forever when you're nine. If I'd know him more, though, I might have wondered if he remembered any of it or what he thought of it. Though he had really been the sidekick of the two so perhaps there weren't any answers there.

What you said of your four reactions intruiged me. I wonder if I would feel schadenfreude if I saw Alexa run crying from a room because her father was there. I might have. Yet I have a sense that stretches a long way into the past about how those things are on different levels; teasing and tormenting are on a different plane from having a father who makes you run crying out of the room and isn't allowed near you. Did I have that sense at ten? I think I've had that sense for as long as I've understood what that second level really is.

Sometimes, if I put myself in someone else's place and they are suffering terribly, the compassion hurts so much that I do forgive everything that they do, even though I guess I shouldn't. I do this too much, maybe, because of course they don't have the right to shit their pain on some innocent bystander.

But, see, in fiction, those questions don't have to matter. I've gotten into arguments about Snape that are about these things. And of course Snape's behavior is not excusable or dismissable. He shouldn't be allowed to roam around loose tormenting Hogwarts students the way he does. But because it's just a story, I can focus on some parts and not others. I can read the books and wonder about the story of Snape, and everyone else drifts to being a minor character. And when I do that, I am deeply moved. Maybe more moved than I am by Harry's story.

I'm not really moved by Draco in canon. We can come up with all kinds of theories and backstory, and we can create a moving story that is given life only by the words in the text, but I wouldn't say that story really exists in canon. I find Draco moving only when I read the stories with an eye on an added character of Rowling-the-god, who creates and judges and squashes Draco under her heel because that is his use and his purpose. To me, that meta-reading is bound up in the blanket dismissal of Slytherins that comes across from Harry, the narration, and the society of Hogwarts in general.

I have to admit that on my first read I did not really notice the House cup being stolen from the Slytherins in that particularly cruel way. I didn't notice because I hadn't really cared about who got the House cup. It may have been important to the characters but I really didn't care about it. (Possibly because I could see that the awarding and detracting of House points was arbitrary and ridiculous and that caring about its outcome was to submit yourself to an undeserving authority.) I was too busy in that scene being happy that Neville got 10 points for trying to stop Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I had felt very sorry for Neville in that scene. I was glad for what Dumbledore said about him.

(as you'll notice, this is all quite rambling and random and not exactly a reply to your post. :) I actually have a reply to a specific quote but this is already too long so I have to split it up.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Totally agree on the meta story with Draco--you're right, it does add dimensions to the character that probably would not be there otherwise in canon. If he got sympathy in the books I probably wouldn't feel the need to take up the cause!

The only thing comparable is that during 4th grade two boys picked on me all year and I swore with every bit of my 9-year-old self that I would hate them forever, and then when I was 16 one of them ended up being a friend of my boyfriend. When I met him again, I got over it in about five minutes.

I remember another boy who used to be mean to me because we were both friends with this one family of kids and I think we both saw each other as a threat. I was better friends with them, I think, so maybe that's why he was ruder to me. Anyway, I only really knew him when I was about 6 and then when I was 12 we were going to visit this family who had moved away. My mother suggested (I'm not sure why because it's not like something we really would have done) that we take this boy, who went to a different grade school so I didn't deal with him much now. I said absolutely not--I hated him. My mother said, "He was 6 years old then." I said, "Not to ME. He's just Andrew to me--why should I like him now?"

I was sort of right and wrong, really. I do think that the personality you have at 6 is you, and that was really what I was referring to. Not that he would tease me now but that he was a little jerk and so probably still was. But also of course at 16 a person is going to have better social skills and no longer have whatever reasons they once did for picking on you.

In some ways with Harry and Draco types in canon they might really be friends by this point because they're two leader boys in their class--it would make sense for them to deal with each other civilly, respecting their positions with their respective houses. Sometimes I wonder if it's Harry's refusal to do that that exacerbates things.

It's really more discussions that move me about Draco, actually. Canon often just makes me feel icky--like watching him get turned into a slug just makes me feel like I'm watching somebody tease an animal or something. It's more demeaning than moving and I think that's the point, that we shouldn't be moved. So it's only after the story's over and I can think about it from the other side that it's moving.

Also ITA on the house points thing--it always amazes me anybody in the school submits to that. Who cares? I'd think.

I'm trying to remember exactly how I felt that day at camp...see, nobody knew what was going on at first. I think she wasn't in whatever activity in the morning, then at lunch she either got up and ran out or ran in to get something and was sort of crying and ran out. So I knew something was up but had no idea what it was. I can't remember if I found out before or after that her father was there. So I never saw her with her father. I could watch it sort of distantly. It was probably more like a story happening. But it's always a complicated experience, I think, seeing someone you don't like brought low. Harry gets that in the pensieve with Snape, but that's even a bit different because Snape is an adult. The pensieve cuts him down to size from the very first because he's suddenly a teenager, so he's robbed of power right at the get-go.

[ljash.livejournal.com]

I said absolutely not--I hated him. My mother said, "He was 6 years old then." I said, "Not to ME. He's just Andrew to me--why should I like him now?"

With the kid I knew he was then 16, and obviously a nice guy. It was the promise I had to get over--the promise to myself that I had made when I was helpless that someday I would hate when it mattered, because I could do nothing now. The promise that it wasn't all just free; that they couldn't just hurt me and it wouldn't matter.

I don't know what I think of such promises now, because the idea still gets me. The fact that all that tormenting and pain just doesn't matter and never did because the person just gets away with it. Though I suppose if they're not assholes later in life then they've learned something, somewhere.

Interesting thought with Snape and then pensieve--that it cuts him down from the first second because he's suddenly a teenager. And a dorky, unattractive one at that. But I think all that is just a continuation of mirroring that spell and seeing some of Snape's memories. Those moments seemed even more fragile to me: Snape as a baby crying while his father screamed at his mother, Snape sitting all alone in a room zapping flies with his wand. I mean I can see why the one with James would be the most embarrassing to Snape and why he'd hide that particular one, but the others were even more startling to me. With the pensieve, Harry was so concerned about the implications of his father that he didn't care much about how it made Snape look. But when he mirrored the spell he went into a horrified denial and thought that he never wanted to see inside Snape's head. He didn't want those memories; he didn't want to know.

AAARGH too long again.
:P

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I think of such promises now, because the idea still gets me. The fact that all that tormenting and pain just doesn't matter and never did because the person just gets away with it. Though I suppose if they're not assholes later in life then they've learned something, somewhere.

Yeah, I know just what you mean. I guess the trouble is that if the only person caring is you, then you're just hurting yourself with the memory. The best case scenario is that you become friends with the person and then if you remind them of it they are sincerely sorry--then they are the one who has to live with it. For me, I find it much harder to live with behavior of my own that I don't like rather than other people's.

But you're right it can't just be that it doesn't matter, because look at James. He may have wound up being a nice guy, but what he and his friends did as a teenagers *did* have a big effect on Snape and changed Snape's life. In fact, the very idea that they were just given a free pass over it seems to be one of the main sticking points with Snape. Like remember when Harry throws it in Snape's face that James saved his life and Snape wants him to know that he didn't do it in a heroic way--you know that Snape hates the fact that James gets a heroic quality from that too!

[ljash.livejournal.com]

Like remember when Harry throws it in Snape's face that James saved his life and Snape wants him to know that he didn't do it in a heroic way--you know that Snape hates the fact that James gets a heroic quality from that too!

Heh. Yeah, that one must have really pissed him off. And James really did get a free ride with it, and showed no signs of having reconsidered later. Sirius said that he's not proud of it, but that it's not signifigant. And then Snape of course proves them right by joining the Death Eaters. So it's all good.

Was that in book 3 that we first learn of this? I think it must be because that introduces Lupin and everyone. At the end of book 3 Snape dissolves almost entirely--it's the craziest I've ever seen him. Probably all of this was in the past and now suddenly everybody's back and he couldn't take it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it was in Book 3, because that's where the whole thing comes out. I agree it must be incredibly frustrating for Snape. Honestly, the main thing about his character to me seems to be very much like Draco's, that he's just demanding a certain respect that he feels like he never gets.

[ljash.livejournal.com]

About the house points: I can totally see why a kid would fall for that, even though it was unfair from the beginning. Kids'll care about things like that even if they think it's unfair. But by book 5, I would think they'd stop caring. I mean, if Draco is going to be granted the power to give and take house points and to use it with the childish glee of a 10-year-old, I'd think they could conclude that House points aren't worth a whole lot. You get a cup. Whoop-de-doo. They're dealing with people dying; why do they even remotely care about house points? And yet they still do--it's baffling and a little annoying. But then book 5 was full of people getting pissed off about things that shouldn't have mattered.

Actually, I want to ask your opinion on something. Now, it seems to me that in each book (beyond book 1) there's some life lesson and it's tied in to the major magical learning of that year. The ridikkulous (sp?) spell was actually a profound maturation of the kids. I guess the protego ? one was the next year's. It's something that was valuable to learn and had a metaphoric meaning and tied in to the plot of the book in some way, at least a little. The 5th book's big spell seemed to be Occulemency (I dont' remember how to spell any of these, can you tell? :) and the opposite, legillimency or something. Since everything in book 5 was about people getting under each others' skin in petty ways and punching their buttons and making them nuts, I thought occulemency was supposed to be about developing a thicker skin and learning to not let those things bother you. Except everybody failed. Harry never learned the spell. Snape, who was supposed to be an expert, still chafed and snapped at Sirius.

I mentioned this to a friend and she said that she thought the occulemency was about lack of communication and lack of sharing, which is why it was supposed to fail. Dumbledore never told Harry anything, which is why things went wrong. Harry didn't tell Dumbledore anything, which is why things went wrong. So Harry never learned the spell because it was the wrong thing to do, all of which was proved by the end.

What do you think? It could be we're both right; Snape kept teaching it like it's about hiding your feelings so people can't get at them and use them against you. But the flip side of that is barriers and lack of intimacy and trust. They go together. But all that seems to complicated for what Rowling was trying to say--or if it's not then the implications are horrible.

(And it also gives more validity to the people who heavily criticized Dumbledore for making Harry do this incredibly intimate spell with Snape when they hated each other. And I have to agree with that. No matter how you look at it, this spell is more intimate than almost anything.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

But by book 5, I would think they'd stop caring. I mean, if Draco is going to be granted the power to give and take house points and to use it with the childish glee of a 10-year-old, I'd think they could conclude that House points aren't worth a whole lot.

Heh. That was EXACTLY what I was thinking in OotP. Wasn't it obvious by then that points were completely arbitrary? Honestly, I don't think I ever would have been able to get myself to care about them, but it seems ingrained in some people. I remember reading a book that took place in the 40's at an English boarding school and the main character kept getting points taken away by the prefects because she said, "Okay," (which was slang to them, only she'd spent the war in the States so to her it was normal speech). Then the girls would get angry because she was losing them points. Finally she said, "So stop taking them off me, you idiot! IGNORE me when I slip up." But it was like they just never thought about how stupid the whole thing was.

Really interesting thoughts on Occulamency (however you spell it!) and the spells they learn each year. It was definitely too intimate for Harry to be doing with Snape--or really for any student to do with any teacher. It shouldn't be done with anyone one doesn't completely trust, I think. I thought maybe it was about seeing someone for what they really were, being in someone else's shoes--like Harry feels Voldemort's hatred for Dumbledore, and feels humiliated along with Snape. But then there's also the other things that you mentioned about communication and not letting anger take over. I suppose one way it would be interesting would be to think about the emotional and understanding overlapping--you understand where a person's coming from, then you almost have to let go some of your own pov, which was where a lot of Harry's anger was coming from. But then it's not like Snape or anyone is *happy* to be seen from their own pov. Snape doesn't want Harry to see him that vulnerable--it just makes him feel vulnerable in front of Harry.

Man, it's a really hard concept--no wonder it doesn't work and everything falls apart. Meanwhile there's Dumbledore keeping himself safe in his office, guarding his *own* vulnerabilities, supposedly from Voldemort. So he's the only person who doesn't get anything used against him--and he's the one who has also been able to do legimens all this time, but has never used it to figure out anything important. (That, perhaps, is just another one of those traps that the books fall into with too-powerful spells--once you have mindreading and time travel, can any obstacle really not be overcome?)

[anehan]

(That, perhaps, is just another one of those traps that the books fall into with too-powerful spells--once you have mindreading and time travel, can any obstacle really not be overcome?)

I agree, it's defifnitely dangerous to have such powerful spells.

There's of course the question of the morality of doing those things. It does seem that Dumbledore uses Legilimency, what with him appearing to know 'everything'. On the other hand, he may just be good with reading people or he may, as some fanfic suggested, I think, that the portraits are his spying network. Perhaps Dumbledore doesn't use Legilimency because it's morally dubious. (Although he seems to do other this that are morally questionable.)

And how does Legilimency actually work? When Snape does it to Harry, he gets images that seem to be humiliating to Harry. Did he specifically search humiliating memories? Also, it seems so very obvious that he is doing Legilimency what with the memories being so powerful. So, can a very skilled Legilimens be more subtle?

And how do you exactly interpret the memories? I mean, you may get random memories, and I think it's difficult to know whether they are real memories or just fantasies or dreams. Also, if you see the memories out of context, it may be difficult to know what they mean.

So many questions. I hope future books will have some answers.

[ljash.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's way too complicated. But I think that such a spell could be learned from a teacher. I guess. Or maybe only adults should learn it like that, but then Harry needed to know it right then. But it certainly should be someone he trusted. He might have been able to learn from Dumbledore. Maybe even someone like McGonagall, whom he seems to trust (though he would still be embarrassed). But Snape was outright his enemy, and the whole thing was humiliating. It wasn't great for Snape, either. Harry wasn't happy to see Snape's childhood and have to see Snape as a person--I wonder how Snape felt about seeing Harry being victimized? He acted like it was all very funny but I'm not sure what he felt.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wonder if that was a natural defense for Snape--or if he just went in with the same blinders people always have for their enemies. Sort of like how when Harry sees Draco taunted by Lucius he thinks it's funny, but if he saw Ron spoken to that way he'd probably be angry. Snape may just have this idea in his head that Harry is just like James so he really is able to get pleasure out of seeing him humiliated.

But still yeah, there's just no way doing this with Snape could have turned out well. It's the more realistic version of all those fanfics where Harry and Snape have to have sex to help the cause. They don't like it.