![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaEverything about my responses to fiction I learned from reading Homestuck: That I can care about a big cast, especially when background characters are given stealth characterization; that the right sort of characterization can redeem even the worst character; that unusual storytelling devices can be even more immersive than normal ones, because they are more visible, demanding, and—when successful—convincing; that second-person narratives are a particularly potent unusual and immersive storytelling device; that self-awareness treads a delicate line, but when it stays balanced it allows for a story to get away with the outrageous and achieve the affecting; that there is indeed media out there that suits my sense of humor (excepting Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff); and most of all, that:
I form two major connections to characters: emotional, and intellectual. These rarely overlap. I understand and sympathize with Vriska, who is aware of and confident in her internal morality—effectively amorality—but can't shake the lingering regret that this morality distances her from society, despite the fact that her regret directly conflicts with her awareness and confidence. In other words: she's a monster without regrets, except that she has regrets. I understand the anxiety of conflict between identity and community, I sympathize, I grok her if you will; but I don't obsess about her as a character, despite her fascinating role in the story, despite what we share. The bond is purely intellectual.
Meanwhile, I do obsess over Karkat. I don't identify much with his personality (even our respective self-hatreds have different grounds), although I think he's adorable; I do latch on to his obsession with relationships. I understand and share his attempt to approach intellectually what falls largely under the jurisdiction of emotion, and the potential and limitations he creates in that attempt fascinate me. He turns every relationship—his own and otherwise—into a meta-relationship, dooming it to failure in his constant attempts to comprehend and define it, pretending a certain distance from its development and eventual destruction on account of his intellectual interest, but betraying intense emotional need in his unflagging obsession with the issue. It appeals to my shared fascination with the topic, and sympathetic pitfalls of the same, and gives me everything I look for in a character: intense and troubled social interactions, in which the most intense and troubled may actually be the interaction with oneself. He's my ship and shipper in one convenient package, with the bonus analysis that I demand or else create myself; he has a mainline to my id, and that's what it takes to make me obsess over a character.
Discovering that distinction explains so much.
Homestuck also taught me that I've been waiting for quadrants my entire life. That's almost trite given fandom's obsession with the same, but quadrants are essentially a canonical institution for unusually intimate relationships, which is my primary interest in any media (oh hi Karkat, I see our kinship again). They're not perfect, but they're a breath of a fresh air and a promising start.
I form two major connections to characters: emotional, and intellectual. These rarely overlap. I understand and sympathize with Vriska, who is aware of and confident in her internal morality—effectively amorality—but can't shake the lingering regret that this morality distances her from society, despite the fact that her regret directly conflicts with her awareness and confidence. In other words: she's a monster without regrets, except that she has regrets. I understand the anxiety of conflict between identity and community, I sympathize, I grok her if you will; but I don't obsess about her as a character, despite her fascinating role in the story, despite what we share. The bond is purely intellectual.
Meanwhile, I do obsess over Karkat. I don't identify much with his personality (even our respective self-hatreds have different grounds), although I think he's adorable; I do latch on to his obsession with relationships. I understand and share his attempt to approach intellectually what falls largely under the jurisdiction of emotion, and the potential and limitations he creates in that attempt fascinate me. He turns every relationship—his own and otherwise—into a meta-relationship, dooming it to failure in his constant attempts to comprehend and define it, pretending a certain distance from its development and eventual destruction on account of his intellectual interest, but betraying intense emotional need in his unflagging obsession with the issue. It appeals to my shared fascination with the topic, and sympathetic pitfalls of the same, and gives me everything I look for in a character: intense and troubled social interactions, in which the most intense and troubled may actually be the interaction with oneself. He's my ship and shipper in one convenient package, with the bonus analysis that I demand or else create myself; he has a mainline to my id, and that's what it takes to make me obsess over a character.
Discovering that distinction explains so much.
Homestuck also taught me that I've been waiting for quadrants my entire life. That's almost trite given fandom's obsession with the same, but quadrants are essentially a canonical institution for unusually intimate relationships, which is my primary interest in any media (oh hi Karkat, I see our kinship again). They're not perfect, but they're a breath of a fresh air and a promising start.
