fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3108 ]

[ SECRET POST #3108 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3108 ⌋

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What are yours, and what are your feelings towards them?

Bucky Barnes

When I watch the films I LOVE him. He's not my favorite, but I enjoy his role and character.

In some fics, he's great too.

But in SO MANY FICS and MUCH of fandom, I just find him irritating. It's one of those things where I have to regularly re-watch the movie to remind myself of why I liked him in the first place.

Gandalf and Galadriel

For Gandalf, he's really manipulative at times. I mean, he's doing it for the right reasons but I dislike how he meddles in the affairs of Men, and he's always morally right. He's willing to sacrifice pretty much anything to achieve his ends. But his path does lead to the end of Sauron and he does seem upset a few times by endangering the Hobbits. I guess it's just not enough. It's hard to see if he really can see humans and hobbits (short-lived creatures) as anything but pawns or charming toys. I have this sense that he wants to end Sauron more so he can go back to Valinor than anything else.

For Galadriel, I feel like I should like her more than I actually do, and I have a hard time articulating why. I want to support a great female character but I guess I dislike the way that everyone who meets her in LOTR says you can't speak evil of her, she's so great, you don't know what you're saying Eomer, etc. And reading more of her back-history doesn't help; I still feel ambivalent about her. She just rubs me the wrong way but I wish I did like her.

I'm not sure how much I agree with you on Gandalf. I mean, he is most decidedly manipulative, but I didn't see that much of it in relation to Men. Hobbits moreso, I would have thought, with railroading Bilbo onto the Lonely Mountain quest being a big example of that. Most of his major meddling with Menfolk (Gondor, Rohan) happened after the shit had already hit the fan in a BIG way, if I recall correctly, and in most instances he didn't seem to have a lot of choice. Things were usually already in crisis by the time he arrived.

Even before that, though. Almost all his major meddling that I remember happened after he discovered Thrain and Sauron at Dol Guldur. The Enemy was already moving. That was his motivation for setting up Thorin on his quest (get rid of the dragon, prevent Sauron from having a northern flank), and all the arranging he did with Aragorn and the White Council. Sauron moved first, building his armies, collecting rings of power, things like that, and Gandalf only majorly got into gear after he realised that. I don't think it's particularly manipulative, or a sign of him trying to move things along in order to get home faster, when he was mostly reacting to a looming crisis that was already underway. Sauron was planning to steamroll Middle Earth with Gandalf in it, which is around the point where most people would want to kill the guy ASAP, I think.

(Putting Bilbo into the line of fire was still an odd and manipulative choice, of course, but I think in that case he mostly wanted a non-dwarf on the quest in case of, say, gold sickness rearing its head, and hobbits were about the only folk out there that the dwarves didn't currently have a grudge against or suspicion of, and also a people he was particularly fond of and inclined to trust. Frodo and the others were mostly an accident, stemming from Bilbo somehow, in all of Middle Earth, having managed to stumble on the one bloody thing everyone and their dogs had spent centuries searching for. Frodo has to take the Ring to Rivendell because it came from his house and Gandalf can't afford to touch the thing. Frodo himself chose from that point on, and the others chose to go with him. Gandalf didn't have a lot to do with that choice, beyond trying to keep them alive after it).

I don't know. Manipulative implies to me that he was doing for his own goals primarily, and while there was an element of that in that he was actually sent to fight Sauron in the first place and he is always working towards that goal, by the time we see him actually acting in any major fashion, he's mostly responding to the situations on the ground. He spent two thousand years knocking around Middle Earth before that, and most of what he did was explore, keep his eye on things, and semi-regularly try to fight the Evil in Dol Guldur and figure out what the heck it was. He turned down leadership of the White Council, never seemed to stay in any one place too long, and doesn't seem to have taken that much of a political stance in any one place. He's more of a roving troubleshooter than anything.

I also do think he cares for individuals, short lived though they might be, and sometimes even at the cost of larger goals. Minas Tirith is the big example of that to spring to mind. In the middle of a massive battle for the historical main bulwark against the Enemy, he chose to leave the main fight and go with one hobbit to save one man from essentially his crazy father. He chose Pippin and Faramir over pursuit of the Witch-King himself and potentially a large number of lives if the battle turned worse on them in his absence. In the most ruthlessly pragmatic sense possible, Pippin and Faramir were not important lives at that point. They're not important to the battle, they're not really important to the future after it even if everyone does survive (Gandalf has the true King incoming, he doesn't necessarily need the Steward), and Faramir is already mostly dead at this point. Gandalf goes to save him anyway, mostly, as far as I can tell, because Pippin asked him to, and because he always liked Faramir himself. So. I think he does value individual lives, regardless of their relative importance to the cause.

... And that was a long comment. Um. I apologise.

When looked at properly, like you have, one can see the truth in Gandalf's actions. The problem comes when you put yourself in the mindset of the characters, especially those in The Hobbit, like Bilbo or one of the dwarves. Gandalf does not let them know what he's up to, even later when he makes it to Erebor, and it comes off as feeling a bit manipulative due to lack of information.

I say this from the POV of my RP character, who in one timeline, is there through the quest to Erebor and knows just as much as anyone else in the Company about what Gandalf is really up too. All she could do is try and mitigate the danger she could see the Company facing, not the larger plot Gandalf was involved in.

I think for me, on the issue of Galadriel, it's that I am so used to faulty characters and feel there is more interest in them having faults that a character as idealized and faultless as Galadriel feels... annoying?

I've seen it said that Tolkien tends to put female characters on pedestals, and the one who has the highest pedestal of the lot is Galadriel.

Adam Parrish in the Raven Cycle. He's SO frustrating and I get that part of that is intentional, that we can't figure out Adam because he can't figure out himself (and from what MS has said, we're also supposed to think he can be an asshole, so that's good), but I like him so much in some moments and just cannot stand him in others, and I would really like to settle on an emotion.

Hermione Granger

She's a fascinating, complicated character with a lot of depth but all of the things I find interesting about her get erased by most of fandom to the point where I cringe whenever people start gushing about her and her wonderful role-model ways.

Like, yes she's super smart, and clever, and passionate, and she works damn hard for what she believes in. She's a very good friend, if she's not fighting with you. But she's also ruthless, controlling, overbearing, judgmental and unforgiving.

I enjoy her role in the books (I didn't like the movies), but the way fandom treats her just makes her so unpalatable to me.

Yondu Udonta (movie version). He's certainly got a ton of less than favorable traits and is pretty divisive. He's got a certain charm about him that I find very appealing. I like the purely "Chaotic Neutral" characters, too. And I'm a sucker for raspy southern accents as pronounced as his. But I wouldn't say he was a great father figure to Quill at all, and I don't rush to defend his actions, either.

At most, I strongly believe he's not a villain in the sense that Ronan and Nebula are (nor would I be quick to call him a 'hero', either), it's just that Yondu does things by his own rules and those aren't always in line with what we generally consider to be "good" or "nice". If that makes any sense.

(It doesn't hurt (or is that help?) that the guy playing him is probably a complete 180 in personality, too, ehehe)

Edited 2015-07-09 00:56 (UTC)

I agree with everything you said! And I like Chaotic Neutral characters too.

Loki.

I find him entertaining to watch as he goes around causing problems for everyone(himself included), I do agree that he's overused to some extent but I still like seeing his face, I pity him sometimes but not where I think he's blameless for his actions but it can be difficult to state that without being accused of being one of his crazy fans who justify all the bad things he does.

He's vicious, cruel and manipulative, a supremely massive shit-head and I love him for it.

Maedhros. Mostly because on the one hand he goes through some horrible stuff and I want to hug him. And he doesn't participate in the first kinslaying, though he doesn't try to stop it. But at the same time later on he does do horrible things and while I do think that what he experienced in Angband changed him, still that doesn't excuse the things he did. So he's complicated and interesting and I both want to cuddle him and smack him.

I feel that way about his father.

Jean Descole from the Professor Layton series.

Guilty of so many crimes, and capable of great levels of compassion and selflessness. Caused much chaos in the name of revenge. Helped people down on their luck... or those just downhearted. Redeemable.

I don't know whether I want to slap him, hug him, or grab his pigtails and pound him raw on the dash of the Bostonius.

Shakespeare's Richard III

On the one hand its terrible propaganda of what, for all intents and purposes, seems to be a fairly neutral historical figure that has been slandered for the sake of the Tudor family.

On the other hand he's such a cool villain. Seriously. So cool.

The Doctor.

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[ SECRET POST #3108 ]

Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about

Re: Characters you have complicated feelings about