As a continuation of the previous article, that did make me think why I like some books and characters, while I absolutely detest others.

If a character doesn’t function in a way that makes sense, if they don’t act realistically in their circumstances, if they don’t act realistically for their intelligence, level of knowledge and so on, I just can’t abide them. For instance, Amelia is one such character. She is incredibly obstinate and stupid, and simply refuses to draw the most reasonable and logical conclusions from her circumstances and the situation she’s in, and deliberately acts in the most inappropriate and unreasonable manner, refusing to learn and understand what the reality is telling her. It’s absolutely jarring. Edward Cullen, in the “Twilight” series, is another such character that’s getting on my nerves, because he obstinately refuses to learn what reality is telling him, refuses to listen to smart people, tries to control other people’s destiny in ways that make everybody miserable, and for what – he has a fixed set of ideas about selfishness and refuses to revise them despite quite obvious lessons that present themselves. Basically, it’s a character that refuses to accept God’s providence and his own feeling of rightness because he’s overriding it with his own intellectual concepts as if they were God. As a result, he almost gets everybody killed and creates an incredible amount of suffering. As I said, I absolutely revile the character.

Martin Riggs from “Lethal Weapon” is the opposite. I love that character. He’s incredibly fucked up when we first encounter him. His wife died in a car accident and she was all he had. He’s suicidal, in permanent emotional anguish, and he’s stumbling through that and trying to do his job as a policeman, hoping to die a hero fighting armed criminals, but somehow always manages to survive and defeat them, because he’s both lucky and good at his job. He’s great at killing people, and yet he only wishes he could have his wife back, and he can’t, so killing himself to be with her is the only thing he can think of. Gradually, as he helps his partner save his family, he finds purpose and comes out on the other side of his terrible grief. It’s an incredibly realistic portrait of a virtuous person experiencing terrible tragedy and trying to pick up the pieces of their life, sort themselves out and find new purpose, while life doesn’t wait for them and instead showers them with an avalanche of rocks.

I love characters that are normally preoccupied with their own stuff, but when a crisis happens, they rise up to the occasion and do whatever the situation requires to resolve things. I find the fumbling, insecure, weak people who get confused and do pathetic or evil things to cover up their failings jarring and abhorrent. I just can’t identify with that; also, all the people I hold in contempt are like that. Weak, no responsibility, no accountability, projection, justification of failings, failure to learn and improve. Yuck.

I can identify with Salvos who woke up completely ignorant in a strange world and is trying to create more of the good stuff that she can comprehend, and fight the bad stuff she encounters. She figures things out as she goes, she never has it easy, almost everything is against her, but she’s inherently virtuous, and she’s virtuous by choice. She could choose evil, but she didn’t, and it’s not an accident that she didn’t. She just abhors certain things as a matter of principle. She theoretically could level by killing as many people as she can find, especially if nobody would know. However, she never does. Her moral core is so strong, that a monster can put her to shame by stating that she came to its home and is trying to kill it in order to harvest its body parts, and for no good reason other than her selfish ones. She really stops to think about it, and changes her opinion and actions. This is a realistic way a virtuous person would act. They don’t automatically know things because they are virtuous. Their idea of virtue needs to evolve; you can’t just put a label of “monster” on a category of beings and then treat them like non-entities, especially when they think, feel and offer good points, they didn’t attack you to justify your response, and you invaded their home in order to murder them. She does the “oh wait, that’s not actually a good thing to do, is it?”, and then she acts upon this realisation. She does what a smart, good person would do.

Edithe is also a very believable character. At one point she tells Salvos to ignore what people think because people are idiots, to which Salvos responds “but you did something like that, too”. Edithe replies “Yes, and by people being idiots I mean myself in particular. I was an idiot and you showed me that I was wrong. That’s just how it is”. I like that – no self-justification, no holding on to past mistakes. You fix it, and you realise it was wrong and you were an idiot. You don’t keep being an idiot just to keep pretence that you were born smart.

So, in essence, the characters I love aren’t those who were born smart and omnipotent and can solve all problems with a flick of the wrist. It’s not a situation I can identify with. I can, however, identify with people who are forced to figure it out as they go, they have strong principles about what’s wrong, and keep revising ideas about what’s good and right as they evolve. Also, I love characters who focus under pressure, and can’t stand those who fall apart under it. I can’t stand “comedies” where everybody is confused, virtueless and fumbles and acts sinfully under pressure. I’d rather have my nails pulled than watch those. Things where someone experiences difficulty and tragedy, but gets their shit together and rises up to the occasion, those are my cup of tea.

I love characters that just get shit done. A good example is Eric Northman from “True Blood”. He sees a problem, he sees that he should do something about it, and then his actions look like a mathematical tree-balancing solution. He takes what he needs, does what needs to be done, tries to get maximum good with the least amount of bad side effects, and then just goes on with business as usual. His actions are determined by the needs of a situation, not his own egotistical considerations. In that, he’s the polar opposite of Edward Cullen, who’s trying to be good so hard, he ends up causing disaster after disaster.

Obviously, I identify with characters who embody things I can personally identify with. I can identify with being in all kinds of disasters and ignorance and trying to figure things out from scratch. I can identify with fucking things up and then learning from it and trying better next time. Basically, it’s the characters that are similar to myself, or at least how I want to be, and how I want to react in difficult situations. If I can’t see myself in a character, if I can’t see myself making their choices, I nope the fuck out.