Cold Aramis

[la_marquise]

I've been thinking about characters and how we become invested in them -- and, indeed, how we become invested in other people's characters. On some level, it makes sense that I'm invested in Gracielis and Thiercelin and Jehan and Aude and Owain. They started out in my head. It is a delightful surprise when people not in my head like them too.
But I also invest hugely in other people's characters. I care about them, I want to spend time with them, I want to see them succeed and grow. Most of the time, this stays within sensible bounds, but every once in a while the irrational button goes off and that weird little inner voice says 'mine!'
I am all about Aramis. Those of you who've known me a while will know this. Aramis is my ur-hero, my archetype, my perfect fantasy. If Aramis is in it, I will read it (or watch it), even though I know that the only true fix will come from reading about him in the works of Dumas. I am possessive of him: when another person mentions investment in him, I can feel myself bristle. My Aramis (my> marquis!>). It's crazy. This is someone else's creation, built on a minor figure from French history about whom we know almost nothing. I don't want to share him. There is currently a series of mysteries featuring the Musketeers which I buy and read religiously even though the writer -- in my head -- has my Aramis all wrong. In my head, I know he's not mine, he's a character everyone can read about and think about. My adult self knows to play nicely, and is delighted when someone writes something or films something where they have him right (for my value of right). My child self wants to hang on to her things.
I'm not the only person who does this, I suspect. We can become extraordinarily attached to characters and react very badly when something happens to them, even in canon, that hurts them. In my head are various other places where certain characters did not die, did not leave, did not make choice X. This love for the fictional, this engagement, is clearly something we can all do. There is something about Aramis that just works for me, that resonates with me, that works with the way I work, something archetypical, perhaps, that slight, dark, dangerous thing.
So, here's my question: do you do this too? And why?

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: I think this is because I'm story driven, rather than character driven. My initial love of SF&F came from the ideas, and when I was initially reading the golden age SF (I'm an SF fan first, with most Fantasy having been a poor second place, LotR excepted, during my youth), the presence of cardboard characters wasn't a problem for me.

(This is no longer the case - there are novels that once I'd have thrown across the room in despair at the lack of anything happening, and conversely, novels I once devoured that these days I find unreadable.)

The consequence of this is that I read huge amounts of fiction without ever getting caught up by any individual character, because at the time characters weren't important, and it's now probably too late for any character to hook me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Interesting. Looking down the thread, indeed, I wonder if there is a male-female thing going on here, or at lest a continuum?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

LJ has already devoured one answer.

Of course. It's why people write fanfiction for thirty years about the same characters! It's why I won't read badly characterised fanfic about series I adore. It's why I stop reading certain comic book series for long periods and then leap on them with joy when another writer takes over or they are rebooted. It's why I don't much like TV series remakes and why I would never, ever watch certain film remakes. It's why, when a character I adore in a series of books starts going in the 'wrong' direction or does things that seem to me, in my little privileged bubble, distinctly out of character, I stop reading. (Looking at you, Katherine Kurtz.)

And, I am deeply invested in some of my own characters - indeed, the latest project started, a long time ago, on a 'how did X meet Y' basis. Changing them is so hard, even when its necessary.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes. That is very much how I feel. (Notably, indeed, about the Deryni books, which I used to love.)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Deryni books (or the Muskateers . . . sequels? offshoots? spin-offs?), but totally "yes!" to the comic book reaction. I hate hate hate hate hate it when someone takes a character I adore and suddenly changes them in ways that do violence to my conception of the character. And the more I love the character(s), the less likely I am to tolerate this sort of thing. Also quit reading certain comics numerous times in the past over this.

Was not happy about SEVERAL character developments in BtVS s6, either. If it wasn't for OMWF I'd say that not ending the show over the contract dispute after s5 was one of the worst things to happen in the history of TV-dom.

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Mine is Alice, from Alice in Wonderland. I now actively avoid versions of Alice (whilst being simultaneously drawn to them, a bit like Pringles) because my nine-year-old self stomps her foot and insists that they are doing it all wrong.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I'd never read fanfic about certain books because I don't want really want anyone else's fingers on characters I love.

Good characters will carry me through an otherwise weak novel, whereas the reverse is almost never true.

I care enough to cry my eyes out when my favorites die, even if I've read the book before. I especially love a truly noble death, or one after having saved the world. Add some ghosts, a lot of dealing with the consequences of having made mistakes, throw in some heartbreak and I'm yours.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Boromir!
Yes: I do that too.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I definitely identify with characters, and over a (long) period of time my version sometimes morphs out of all recognition. I have written at least two 'original fiction' characters who are based on other people's creations, but with complex transforms -- of personality rather than experience or life events -- that make them Not The Same Person.

As You Know, Bob, I write fanfic: and this is mostly because I engage with the characters.

Apropos of nothing, I was on a panel once about why there is little fanfic based on Golden Age SF -- and argued that this might be because old-skool SF tends to rely less on character and more on plot, thus giving the character-hungry reader less to engage with.

Hmm, should do a poll: "Do you now or have you ever engaged with a work of fiction to the extent of self-insertion? ... of identifying with a character? ... of making up more story?" I would be surprised if there were many people who could give a resounding 'no' to all of those. I think we all did it as children.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Sounds like a good poll to me.
Writers are analysts, too: we all do that thing of thinking about someone (real, fictional, whichever) and examining them and warping them. Gracielis grew out of my attempts to do Aramis. Which I can't do, because I'm not Dumas. But I did find a new character out of that process.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

There's a B7 story of mine - it's even on the net - where I was accused at the time of Mary Sueing with an own character, despite her being a Fed officer and being in love with another OC of mine who I occasionally wanted to slap. Actually, I was Mary Sueing like mad with Cally.

And, incidentally, Cally is one of the characters where the series got it wrong, wrong, wrong - but it also contradicted itself so I ignore the canon wrongness, because it contradicts canon.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I think we all did it as children.

No, no and no.

(Answers to your three questions, not emphatically saying you're wrong.)

So, not all of us. I think I always take a story told me as a given, that it's someone's creation, and I've never (AFAICR) felt any inclination to try to alter their story rather than invent my own.

Children may in general seem to enjoy doing re-enactments of favourite scenes from books and films, but I honestly don't think I ever did, not of my own accord anyway. Generic pirates, or Cowboys and Indians, yes. But specifics? No.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

"Do you now or have you ever engaged with a work of fiction to the extent of self-insertion? ... of identifying with a character? ... of making up more story?" I would be surprised if there were many people who could give a resounding 'no' to all of those. I think we all did it as children.

Even seeing someone else say they never did any of these things, I have trouble imagining anyone who enjoys reading (or even watching films/television) NOT identifying w/at least some of the characters. I sometimes identify strongly with several in a single work.

Cause yeah, "characters I'm passionate about or have been at one time" easily tops a 100, and the list I identified with while reading tops the # of books I've read. Which is a lot. And who hasn't wanted to jump into a story and save someone, or kill someone, or meet someone, or date someone, or what have you?

Errr, well, somebody, clearly. Tho I'm still boggled.

(no offense to said someone by my degree of bogglement; it's just . . . mind-blowing.)

[inamac.livejournal.com]

All the time. Both my own characters, some of whom have been with me for years, and have never been committed to paper because even I am not sure I want to delineate them too closely, and other people's. John Constantine, for instance, who has been thoroughly messed about with to the extent that I sometimes have to go back to Swamp Thing 37 just to remind myself that he's fundamentally unchangable. As far as I'm concerned, large chunks of his so-called canon simply Do Not Exist.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I have that reaction to The Son of Porthos, which was sanctioned by Dumas and published under his name, but was not written by him. It doesn't fit with the rest of his work and, to me, Is Not Canon. Because Aramis was never that stupid.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I get terribly invested in characters--used to "fall in love" with them as a kid. One of those crushes lingered for years. Also intensely invested (though not in love with) my own characters, especially the ones who walked into dreams and then walked out into the storyverse. (I'm sure what that means is my subconscious cooked them a little longer than the others, or maybe they function as archetypes for me.)

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about "falling in love with the character," but I certainly know that I get fascinated by them. Granted, it's usually some minor character that gets mentioned a few times that I find really interesting but what the hey. I also think it's completely normal to speculate about such characters we do find interesting. Writing about such characters (whether copyright has expired on them or not) is more a way to refine one's own take on the character... or setting... or some other little detail that needs to be explored further.

But I also find other's reimaginings and interpretations of characters that I like, such as Alice in Alice in Wonderland really interesting in their own right. Some of them will make sense, some won't and others still will resonate. It seems more important to me to realize that writing derivative characters is a reaction to the original text, rather the same way an "inspired by [insert noun here]" character is.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I tend to be more interested in the minor characters, too -- they can be tantalising, so that I want to know more, whereas the main characters are very well covered and discussed.
Nice to meet you, by the way.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure.

Does realising in the middle of more than one novel that a certain character is Aramis trying to sneak in under a different name count ?

(I hate working with Aramis, because he just won't ever tell me what's going on.)

I think a lot of what I do in general is in dialogue with a bunch of stuff, including other fiction and fictional tropes as well as real-world stuff - I know that where I started with Vega Victrix was "I am sick and tired of supposed heros who demonstrate their ability to make 'difficult moral choices' by saving the person they love at the cost of a bunch of strangers, and aggonising about it for years afterwards but never actually doing any different; how would it be to start with a person who was saved in that situation and considered it a betrayal ?" It's not always as direct as my d'Artagnan thing by a long shot though.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

(I hate working with Aramis, because he just won't ever tell me what's going on.)

Yes. Precisely, damn his eyes.
I have to chase Valdarrien out of my writing with a big stick, too. He's dead, blast it, he just doesn't believe it.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Oh ye gods yes, I used to fall in love with all sorts of characters as a kid - perhaps most notably Chrestomanci, about whom I am completely irrational. The most recent example is the Inkheart trilogy, which I got a bit obsessed with. I *cannot* read fanfic about it and I probably won't even see the next two films, just out of a sense of you don't get to touch that.

The more I get into larping the more this happens to me there, too. On Monday I caught myself getting really quite upset because it looked like everything was about to go horribly wrong for my favourite PC. It's not even only about my own characters - there are a few other people's PCs who can cause the same reaction.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Robin Hood is Mine. And that movie? All wrong.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Which movie? The latest (which I refuse to see) though I may get the DVD? Costner? The TV episodes cobbled together? Connery? (Refused to see because hate Connery.) Flynn? The hilariously bad Son of Robin Hood?

I have time for The Adventures of Robin Hood which is perfect of its period, and I find the Costner thing a good laugh, but other than that...

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I think it may well be a gender-based thing, because, yes, I very definitely do this, although mostly with TV not books. And usually a kind of ideal of the character, not even cannon, but something that resonates with *me* and gets me interested - this can even last past the series going into a downward spin. It's not usually the actor (although there have been one or two exceptions to this, where I like the same actor in a different show, perhaps because they're still playing much the same character!) - it's a quirk, a little thing, a twist of the lip or a sparkle in the eye ... and yes, it's what made me write fanfic in the old days, too.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

There is definitely some kind of link between that fascination and the urge to write, isn't there?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well...I'm not sure. Is my reaction to That Programme partly symptomatic of investment in the character of the Doctor as he used to be?

I certainly remember being keenly attached to Blake and his chums and especially the Liberator, and my two and a half B7 stories sprang from a desire to make the last series (and the last episode of series three), not so much unhappen, but become irrelevant, but I don't think there was any one of them (apart perhaps from Zen) with whom I bonded especially deeply.

Again, with my own characters I sense there's a distance. Maybe it is a gender thing.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can 'fall in love with' a character. (the first one I really remember have that feeling about was Brandoch Daha -- go figure -- I remember almost nothing about The Worm Ouroboros now except that I had a 14 yr old 'crush' on that one character).

In terms of ur-characters, though, no. On that level, I am only that deeply invested in my own characters.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's only Aramis that hat happens with with me, outside my own characters (though some of them are very annoying sometimes).

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I don't think I feel like that about characters that are re-used (except for those sequels by another hand). I do however get cross with films that use myths and then strip all the magic out, whether it's Arthur, Robin Hood or the Greek myths. There should be magic in there!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I can manage without magic, but I hate it when they are given modern makeovers, so that the hero isn't an aristocrat, for instance, or he/she becomes American, rather than his/she original nationality.

[hakumeiun.livejournal.com]

Am I resurrecting a dead thread? I hope not. Yet, even if I am, I think it makes no difference. you've given me an opportunity to talk about the thing I love best: the people in my head.
So. Not all the people in my head are mine by creation. I have to admit that. Even so, in some strange, mystical somebody-dropped-five-dollars-on-the-ground-and-I'm-going-to-pick-it-up sort of way, they have become mine.
It is for this very reason that I avoid fanfiction like a political rally. Characters in fanfiction are so rarely ever written to the standards I have set in my head. I think, Alec would never say that! or Felix would never be drawn in by such an obvious, clumsy taunt, and then I get offended. Offended like somebody called my child stupid.
Yet now and again, when the mood takes me (usually a bored, had-too-much-to-drink mood), I turn to fanfiction (and its little brother--slash fiction) in the hopes of finding one brief moment of reintroduction with one of the tenants in my brain. And when I find something done right...
There is almost a magical quality to meeting a beloved character in an unfamiliar place, under a set of unexpected circumstances.
I should, it occurs to me as I write this, get out a little more often.
But then I would have less time to read, and less opportunity to write.
Alas!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, I see exactly what you mean, and I do the same thing myself sometimes. I will read almost any book based on The Three Musketeers, for example, because I have read all Dumas ever had to say about those characters, but I am always hoping for another flash of that magic, another moment with those people, and sometimes I get it. The same with fanfic. And the characters in my head that are mine have their roots in some ways in the books I have read and loved -- they grew on the shoulders of those giants, they began in me trying to write something with that same kind of feel to it, that wonder that I had discovered in the books I loved most. Valdarrien is not d'Artagnan, but he owes something to him on some level: Gracielis began with me thinking through the Aramis situation -- what does it really mean to fail as a priest? I loved Swordspoint because it presented me with the same textures and flavours yet was something wholly new, wholly original. (I must own that I usually want to shake Felix, but I like Mildmay hugely and I adore Mehitabel.)
Lovely to meet you!