Let’s face it, we all felt emotional attachment to character(s).
But what makes them so real?
Is it the quirky mannerisms that make one unique, can it be certain archetypes that we can relate to our own lives, or can it just be simple as we believe that they are real therefore they are.
I wonder, do you?
I’m a bit confused. Is the question, “What makes a character ‘human?’” or “What makes us emotionally attached to characters?” Or maybe both?
Perhaps here there is the contentious assumption that a certain level of ‘humanity’ in a character is required for a reader to connect and emotional engage with characters or even the narrative, if I am not mistaken in interpreting this really interesting topic.
I think this question dwells more on why we empathise with characters, and with what methods or techniques writers effectively enable this, i.e. narrative empathy, so I’d just like to start off by sharing these two small readings:
http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Narrative_Empathy
There’s loads and loads of papers out on the topic, ranging from neuroscience to media studies, so I doubt I have much of my own to input just yet.
In short, empathy.
We feel attached to characters when we can share their experiences. Its not like you’re going to have gone through anything like many characters would, but you can often symbolically relate to them.
Who hasn’t wanted to improve themselves? This is a major theme in Little Busters! and Riki growing stronger is a major part of the narrative. You may be able to relate to Riki’s weakness, or his just wanting everything to stay the way it is; fun and easy. So when we see Riki grow we gain hope that we too will be able to get stronger.
I for one do not like quirky mannerisms in characters. Yes they make them “cuter” but this can divert focus away from them actually being human. Back to Little Busters! Kud or Komari easily could have fallen into the pit of being nothing more than “Wafu” or “Happiness!!” but they didn’t. Just like Riki they were both given parts for readers to relate to. Kud had the regret and guilt she felt about her mom and Komari had her doubt and longing to learn more about her brother she doesn’t remember. These are very human feelings.
People generally don’t really have much in the way of quirky mannerisms in real life unless they’re trying to. What makes a character “human” is the character being “real.”
This is a pretty tough question! And pretty appropriate, considering we have stories like planetarian and Harmonia in our midst. I think the most important point in this discussion is that just having a character labeled as “human” is not enough; we, as readers, need to feel that these characters are more than just figments that were brought up by the author. We need to feel these characters’ existence.
I think there is no silver bullet to making a character feel “human”. There are many subtle points that an author has to think about when making their characters. For example, overly using a trope (say, tsundere) will make their character feel less human and more artificial. But they also have to balance the personalities of the characters to make them more interesting. Another important part is, as mentioned earlier, empathy: we feel characters as more real if we can empathize with them. Granted, empathy is a very subjective thing, but as long as you can hit a good number of your readers, I think that suffices.
I think another important part about making characters feel human is motivation. In order to feel that characters are real, we have to see that they have a motivation; not just a motivation in the story, but a motivation that drives their life and their characterization. I think that’s one common aspect that I’ve found out of the most “human” characters I’ve read. If the author can make a character’s motivation believable, whether it be a good or an evil one, then they become one step closer to making us, as readers, believe everything the character does as something that a human character would do.
This is a very interesting question that I believe is telling of one’s subjective approach of media in general. Considering that, I’ll say it right away: all of the below is just my opinion.
I must start by questioning the word “real”. I’d say that our “emotional attachment” is hardly a matter of the characters being “real”; if anything, it’s precisely what they have that reality doesn’t which makes them so potentially powerful.
First of all, there is the way we envisage fictional characters versus how we view real people. Wittgenstein said that “art is the object seen sub specie aerternitatis” (there’s a very good anime that touches upon the subject called The Tatami Galaxy). To put it shortly, media allows us to see the characters under many different perspectives: we put together various pieces of their personalities, see the many angles under which they can be approached. There’s no greater proof of this than how commonplace the “this character is so one-dimensional” complaint is. But: do we really look at the people around us in such a way? We generally, due to circumstances and our own biases, get only one angle on people, or at least tend to define others by one general trait. We all know that guy whom we’ll define as “very funny”: but obviously he’s much more than just funny. “Someone” is at least the addition of all angles under which people describe them, if not more (knowing the limitations inherent to language and whatnot; there are surely aspects of one’s personality that cannot be expressed).
So, on a very basic level, I believe the fundamental difference between fictional characters and real people is that we approach them in absolutely different ways.
Secondly, let me quote Oscar Wilde: “Art itself is really a form of exaggeration; and selection, which is the very spirit of art, is nothing more than an intensified mode of emphasis.”
As we piece together the different aspects which make a character who they are, we find that aspects of their personality are intensified. It is not how “real” these aspects are that makes the difference (though everything finds its source in some perception of reality), but how intensified they are. Everything is romanticized; even the Realist movement is so (see Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, in which Georges Duroy is corrupt, a characterization which finds its sources in Maupassant’s own journalistic experiences, but is at the same time a thoroughly successful and charming fellow, elements which make him a romanticized character, for he is far more fascinating than most truly corrupt people you’ll find out there).
We see aspects of our reality, but expressed in intensified modes that makes them striking. In short, what makes characters attaching is not how “real” they are, but rather how they express it, making us notice it in ways we normally wouldn’t (whether it’s by making things more beautiful or uglier than they are). I don’t believe a truthful representation of reality (which is impossible to begin with) would actually hit us anywhere near as much as art does (and I’d say the first problem is that reality in a piece of media would put everyone to sleep anyway).
Thirdly, as said above, there’s the notion of “perception of reality”. I believe it is simply misguided to call something “real”, because we all have varied perceptions of reality. Nothing is “real” per se; what we call “real” is merely what fits into our perception of reality.
For instance, Romanticism and Realism may clash in the ways they view society, and represent characters with similar traits differently (if I come back to Bel-Ami’s Duroy, Stendhal wrote his own story about a man who attempts to climb the ladder of society by using his success with women to his advantage, The Red and The Black; the difference lying in their progression and the end they meet). However, it’s difficult to say one is more “real” than the other; they’re perceptions of reality, have their value, and there is no “correct” way of seeing things (and yes I’m saying Realism is no more real than Romanticism, sue me). Rather than being “real”, characters we get attached to may represent worldviews we find ourselves in (see OreGairu and its enormously successful protagonist Hikigaya Hachiman). It is the worldview they serve to express that makes them “feel real”; it is ultimately all a matter of how much we value what they represent.
Fourthly, there’s just that: the notion of meaning.
I believe this is close. Within the greater meaning that the story wishes to convey, we have characters who carry the author’s will, and it is precisely because they do so that we can get attached to them. Unlike we people of the Earth, fictional characters don’t exist just to exist; they have a define purpose which the author has attributed to them from the very early stages of the creative process. As a Death of the Author truther, I’d say that ultimately it’s up to us to interpret all of this, but meaning is something we all look for, whatever that meaning ends up being. Rather than just motivation, I’d say it’s the significance they hold, the intensity (to refer an earlier paragraph) of the meaning they convey (which can appear in a character’s convictions, see Antigone) that makes them attaching. Because in art it’s like this; all is symbol and its underlying meanings.
Finally, I find it important to consider the ways in which we are supposed to attach ourselves to character. When we say “attach”, we generally think it positive; characters have positive qualities we find valuable, fight for causes we believe noble, make realizations we think change their attitude for the better, etc. But what about characters we find admiration for precisely because we hate them?
For me there’s no better example of this than Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. In it, all the characters are defined by their downright appalling attitudes (all of which are indeed vastly intensified). But that’s where, for the admirer, the fascination comes from. Flaubert creates a tragicomedy in which everyone is desperately blind, and that becomes entirely laughable for it. Throw away the likable archetypes (Flaubert detests Romanticism and will parody every Romantic archetype), the moving realizations, for there is none of that here. But is it impossible to be taken with Emma (with whom Flaubert himself had an interestingly ambiguous relation as his correspondences prove), if only for how she tries to play with life only for life to play her and give every disillusion the reader can imagine?
Madame Bovary also ties into my earlier point about our “perception of reality”, because personally I find it hard to imagine anyone as utterly moronic as Emma and her friends. But here is Flaubert, with his perception of reality I can’t accept. And that’s perhaps why I can’t forget about his books, hate them as I may; because it presents me with something I struggle with on a personal level. And in some twisted way, I’ve “attached” myself to Flaubert’s characters.
Personal considerations aside, the book does challenge its readership. It throws this story at us that creates fascination precisely because it is impossible to like in the traditional sense of the term. No archetypes one may like or relate to, no moving resolutions or motivations; it’s all stunningly aimless. (Flaubert himself said it was a novel “about nothing”). And in reality we hardly ever love people we find detestable (unless you’re in an abusive relationship I suppose); yet fiction makes this possible.
Frankly I’ll be the very first to admit this is all very partial (I’m always learning and developing these thoughts), but right now that’s what I have.
For me, it’s not how “real” or “human” characters are, but the ways in which they work to create something greater, more stimulating than our wretched reality, and how everything they do and are has meaning. It’s the symbol, what meaning the symbol has, and how eloquently this meaning is expressed, that make all the difference. Their correspondence to any perceived reality per se doesn’t help with any of that, so I wouldn’t consider it as an important part of how “attaching” a character can be. To become “attached” to a character is to find a meaning we care for expressed in a manner that pleases us (and this is why non-human characters can be so powerful; Frankenstein’s Creature is unforgettable for what he teaches us); it is precisely because we can approach them in ways reality doesn’t allow for that they touch us. An attaching character is a character that goes “beyond” our perception of reality, so to speak.
This pretty much words my thoughts on the subject far more eloquently than I would ever put them.
Characters tend to have at least some basis in reality, but their traits and personalities are exaggerated beyond what is realistic. The “quirky mannerisms” that characters tend to have is a pretty good example of this - nobody in real life really has these sorts of traits, so in fiction they tend to make a character seem larger than life and actually less realistic. These sorts of things allow characters to be far more interesting than what we see in real life, while the basis of the characters personalities, problems and motivations remain things that we can at least tangentially relate to.
As said here, a work that just perfectly imitates real life with perfectly realistic characters would probably be kind of dry and boring. It’s the fact that characters can be so larger than life, but still relatable that makes fiction so powerful for me. In that sense, I’d strongly agree that what makes it so easy to get attached to characters is precisely the opposite - the fact that they are not reflections of reality, but so much more.
I think there’s a pretty strong separation between a character seeming real and seeming human, because it’s what these characters communicate through their wild subversion of reality that really shows us the strong emotions the creator/author/whatever was feeling when they created these works.
Hmm…I might need to come back to this once I have time to flesh out my ideas a bit more…I actually very rarely think of characters themselves as “real” and if I do I probably don’t like them (Is this too telling of my IRL personality :sunohii:)
That said most if not all of my favorite characters have emotions or motivations that feel real me. That link, the emotional/motivational connection I have is how I connect on a deeper level than when I experience media where the characters stay largely as archetypes.
In a broad sense, I sort of use archetypes as a quick “in” with a character, so I quickly get a feel for how I perceive them and how I think they perceive the world, and from there a character becomes more “human” to me with their ability to subvert archetypes, or at least what contrasts with other characters I would put in the same archetype.
A classic example would probably be Evangelion: its characters are considered “human” because of how well fleshed out and established their personalities and motives are; be it through their past or their day to day interaction with other characters. With the basis of their action taking after their personality which is shaped from their own personal past, the reasons behind the mindset that they take is logical and human to us because we understand and possibly relate to where they’re coming from.
A complex character and a human one are almost birds of the same feather, yet at the same time being human doesn’t guarantee that you have to be intricate all the time, particularly in the way that other people perceive you. We may not fully understand the random masses of the people that we observe everyday, but we still acknowledge the fact that they are human (not that they actually are to begin with) because we know of the humanity that they possesses simply through their action, which is nothing short of the realization of a “background character”'s humanity through their action and reaction in a situational scenario that they’re placed in. (but then i realized just how confusing this got, am sor)
And yeah, the ThePlasticSpork pretty much said it all, writing a character for the sake of fulfilling the textbook definition of a human would make them straight up bland because without the sense of investment that us as an audience gained through the narration that serves as a base to weave together the dynamic and “larger than life” role that a character is able to unravel to the audience what would be their tangled array of motivations, regrets, anxiety, and hopes would we be able to see them, not just as characters who embodies qualities that make them human and relatable, but perhaps are even indescribably more human than the people around us.
I don’t believe that a truly realistic character - that would be, effectively, an actual human being somehow placed into a fictional setting - would be boring per se, but rather far too complex. Getting to know a real person takes far longer than one would normally spend with any fictional work, a work consisting of truly human characters would have to be impossibly long to convey the same depth as one with more exaggerated ones.
I don’t think they’d be all that complex, but the character would definitely be less distinct than your average anime character, the main reason being that people are personality sponges. They might have the traits of a kuudere to some, but they’re also gonna be a joker in a group, energetic alone, lackadaisical around family. People aren’t usually defined in general but defined in scenarios, and that is where the perceived complexity comes from.
Personally, though the show is getting a lot of hate for some reason, I think the first arc of Seiren did a good job at making a more human-like character than most shows of its type. One of those things where I can’t, say, put them in a personality group, yet I could easily say how they’d react to a situation.
A truly realistic character would also completely depend on the reader and their ability to empathize with them and understand them. It would also be very difficult to discuss or gossip about reading a character like this.
For a character to actually be human, the reader would have to know that:
So even though humans are complex (and an entire discussion could be had on how complex they are), a character can only be ‘human’ if they are far more robotic instead. Even if the writer has a great ability to understand the interpersonal workings of many different personalities and types of people, it still has to be greatly simplified. This makes sure that not only can the material being made accomplish what it sets out to do, but that the reader can be part of the experience without needing mental gymnastics.
In short, a character is ‘human’ because they are a human subset within one or a few snapshots in time. You can relate to it, you can really dislike them, or they can even emotionally change the way to see things forever, but it’s still a subset.
Have you ever read “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens? One of the characters, Whemmick, has a goofy habit of popping in and out of the book as he does his own shenanigans and they weave into Pip’s story. He also has a “business” and “casual personality” that changes depending on whether or not he’s at the law firm he works at.
I wanted to bring him up because an interesting piece of advice I’ve been told about characters is that they should appear to have a life outside the context of the story. They aren’t spending their whole day trying to be the strongest fighter or getting their band to Botacon, y’know?
Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from, definitely seems like it can fall under the character being more relatable since we see them acting like us outside of their more fantasy life.
And no, I haven’t read Great Expectations but it sound familiar, maybe it was on the list of book that my English class was supposed to read at one point (lol)
