You know that one tumblr post that's like "do you ever look at all your favorite characters and realize... you have a type"? Well, come here to talk about your Type and why they're so appealing to you! my favorite character in any given piece of media where they show up is "you tried so hard and got so far and in the end not only did it not matter but you made everything much worse than it would have been on its own" see: Axel from Kingdom Hearts, Lucretia from TAZ, Rick from Rick and Morty, Wash from RvB, Enjolras from Les Mis... bonus points if they look underfed and run-down because they're too obsessed with their goal to take care of themself properly. Something about the particular tragedy of a character striving desperately and putting everything they have into getting what they want, only to find they've been paddling towards a waterfall the whole time, appeals to me very much. More broadly I just love me some miserable bastards.
overall my Type(s) are: cranky with hidden depths, and smartass with hidden depths. more broadly, Fronting To Cover Trauma. that’s my shit! think dave strider, karkat, beast boy, raven roth, jake peralta, swerve from mtmte, rocky rickaby, sokka, toph, shoto todoroki there’s some outliers but i just...overall absolutely fucking adore people who put on these facades of being a total hardass or being completely devil may care...and then deep down they have a gooey nougat center. i love the glimpses beneath the outer shell, and seeing them finally open up to people they’re close with, it’s just... /chef kiss. gimme that good shit.
my type is characters that are oppressed or abused or mistreated in some way and who aren't utter pure cinnamon rolls, tbh. particularly the kind that do bad things 'cause of it, and the sassy variety of My Character Type. temple from red vs. blue and norm the genie from fairly oddparents are the epitome of my type, and they roughly correspond to anders (temple) and fenris (norm) from dragon age, who are basically like What If Both Main Varieties Of My Type Were In The Same Canon. (and i should really get into the da fandom but i never get around to it, lol.) and also, pearl, i love pearl! :D:D:D and that's 'cause she - like temple - combines this type with my second type: characters who feel really intense love and devotion for another character!!! :D:D:D homura from madoka is also the intense love and devotion type, and one of my faves! :D:D:D so, yeah, if a character is oppressed or abused or mistreated in some way and isn't an utter pure cinnamon roll, i'm bound to love them! :D:D:D particularly if they are a dude.
also, i noticed, when i was on a discord server with rps that involved lots of power imbalances and oppression, that i always played the characters on the non-powerful side of the power imbalance (omegas in the a/b/o rp, captured magical creatures in the magical creature-based rp), when a lot of the other people there had more of a mix of characters.
my type is like. 99% redemption narratives/characters who have been abused or traumatized/or really morally dubious catty bitches also characters specifically who look gruff and stereotypically manly but are very empathetic and gentle people
seconding abused/oppressed/traumatized characters who aren't pure cinnamon rolls. hot damn do I love those kinds of characters. my absolute favorite is antagonistic characters who are manipulated by a villain, but learn that they're being abused and swap sides to the protagonists, and then have to work to make up for their past and recover from their abuse in general I really really love characters who are bitter and angry, and especially if they are validated for it; anger and violence in characters is very important to me. similarly loneliness or isolation in characters is really magnetic I'm also pretty down for characters who are very determinedly loyal to and protective of another character--sometimes outright obsessed--and especially if that stems from loneliness and past abuse, or the character they're protective of is someone who's been lonely and/or abused. even better if the protectiveness is or becomes mutual adult women villains who are all haughty and smug and sexual are also a top favorite. I love female villains in general really
semi relatedly to not being cinammon rolls while i like my faves having those gooey nougat centers, i definitely don’t think they’re Pure and that’s definitely not what i’m looking for gotta have a little bite to cut the sweet! a lil cronch to accent the nougat! i really really dig when their fronting is challenged or called out, and they lash out in (what they perceive as) self defense...and end up really deeply hurting someone emotionally. the “oh fuck oh shit oh no oh no” moment is just...delicious. being forced to choose between the image they’re projecting as a self defense mechanism and the people they care about, hell yeah asshole characters who genuinely care about people but are still assholes is Choice
i appear to like combinations of the following traits how does social likes people but doesn't know how to do the close thing/sees the close thing as weakness they struggle to allow themselves fucked up/grew up too fast because of Bad Shit lost a large chunk of their ability to feel things, has done awful shit and not felt gotten torn up about it because that's just life is a horrible piece of garbage who's attractive enough to get away with horrible garbage tried or succeeded at murdering all of humanity (did not realize this was such a Type for me wowyikes)
All of these are keys straight to my heart Trying hard to be a good person but... not doing great at being a good person (either in the present or in their past) Really bad at meeting whatever social-type needs they have What is this "friendship" and how do I do it Squishy center buried/repressed as far as humanly possible Emotionally jittery Chronically frustrated/angry/sad/down and prone to lashing out whenever things are especially bad SELF-SABOTAGE SELF-LOATHING Stubborn as hell and fighting to succeed even though the odds are stacked incredibly high against them
a lot of my faves just end up being possessed or otherwise having to deal with another entity piggybacking on their mind/body? Idk
Goofy idiots that use humor and self-depreciation to hide their horribly abused traumatized centers! People who want to be good people but struggle! Serious overachievers who use emotional distance as a self-defense mechanism to hide their horribly abused traumatized selves! People who as a byproduct of shitty situations demand too much of themselves! Bitter cynics who are actually huge optimistics! Good people who are not nice! Nice people who are not good!
OH HEY DID SOMEONE SAY TRAUMATIZED AND NOT CINNAMON ROLLS BECAUSE HOLY SHIT ME TOO THANKS i mean obviously amethyst and pearl spring to mind for me. and damara! and god i know there are others but...i'm just a sucker for "has a tragic backstory and is realistically fucked up by it and isn't some ~*pure sweet baby*~" as a character type. also, dorky kids, preteen/young teen girls especially? aradia, connie, mabel...the list goes on, but any character that i can look at and go "oh hey, that was me in some way when i was 13" is Very Good. also most of my fave characters are female. not exclusively by any means, but very disproportionately so?
i'd also like to add on that most of my faves are male, and that's a gender identity thing for me, mostly. like, i can have female faves and i have a few but the dysphoria i sometimes get from identifying with female characters make it really hard for me to have a lot of them - since my faves tend to be characters i identify with in some way. and the fact "traumatized" is what i identify a lot with should've clued me in earlier to the fact that i do have trauma but, lol... i front a lot, and put a lot of my identity into appearing okay and in control so... i ended up denying that i had it and trying to hide that stuff, even though, now that i think about it, it feels kinda obvious.
oh man, traumatized characters who reacted to that trauma in the least productive ways possible are MY JAM. when you can say "i can see the root of your behavior, but man that behavior is really still shitty and not even helping you in the long term." Spoiler: possibly too much Real Talk for a fun thread about fave characters which is, of course, rooted in my guilt and fear about being a Bad Survivor, about my own reactions to trauma being unhelpful or counterproductive. it might feel safer in the moment to manipulate everyone around me and not allow myself to get close to anyone, but long term that's just going to make things worse. so i work on it, and talk about it in therapy, and it helps and i'm getting better. but it's also REALLY SATISFYING to watch fictional characters give into their worst instincts and worst coping mechanisms, in ways part of me wishes i could do even though i know it would be terrible for everyone involved, myself included. i also really love charismatic villains of all varieties. i love the charming sleazy politician type who don't ACTUALLY care about anyone, they'll just say whatever it takes to whoever they need to in order to get what they want. i also really love the Dennis Reynolds-esque type who lies and manipulates because they love lying and manipulating and who is overtly getting off on it. and i love the complicated hero type who is definitely Doing Good but just might be doing it for some of the wrong reasons. like Matt Murdock/Daredevil: he's standing up for people who can't defend themselves and picking up where the justice system fails, but he also definitely enjoys punching bad guys. maybe a little too much.
I think my most favoritest type of villain is The Wizard in Wicked and I wish I could play him on stage Also Judas from JCS but I am a bad Catholic and don't consider him a villain at all
Manic Dickheads and Depressed Assholes Manic Dickheads are the comic relief, the snarky assholes, the usually semi-gleeful and amoral characters of their respective settings; Jordi Chin and Wrench from Watch_Dogs is a good example, but so are some characterizations of Starscream, Knock Out from TFP, Whirl and Rodimus during parts of MTMTE, Newt Geizler from Pacific Rim... You know, the Funny Guy of the two-guy background duo. Like, I want some dudes that are designed from a narrative standpoint to Be A Joke, but if you actually dig into that a little, you start wondering what the hell is informing all of those Jokes in the first place. (Bonus round: being the villain to a Depressed Asshole's hero, because snarky, excitable villains are my fucking jam.) I feel like Depressed Asshole should stand for itself, but, well, Starscream in other characterizations, Cyclonus and Megatron from MTMTE, Aiden Pearce from Watch_Dogs, Jessica Jones from the Netflix series, Fenris and Cullen from Dragon Age, Saren from Mass Effect... People who've had a shit hand dealt to them and decided that alcohol or revenge (or both) are the ideal way to deal with it. The gruff white action hero of the character world, I will eat that shit UP, cast Vin Diesel in anything as a dude with issues and I would die for him, please god give me more characters that may or may not be trying to do good, but they're going about it in an intensely self-destructive and toxic way. They want to be better, but also, they deserve a shot in the nuts probably. (Bonus round: the only person that can get them to Feel Things is the Manic Dickhead, whether that's because they're the villain of this piece or the second character in the two-guy background duo, but either way, YES.)
morally dubious fuckheads &/or "revenge won't bring back the people i cared about but it makes me feel better therefore worth it" types also, massive mental and physical changes joe miller, amos burton, clarissa mao (all from the expanse) for the first type bobbie draper (again, the expanse), mal reynaulds (firefly, at.. certain points), garrus (mass effect) for the second type for 3rd category: miller, adam jensen (deus ex), morgan yu (prey), river tam (firefly), shuos jedao (ninefox gambit), etc etc etc look i can probably define my type as "joe fuckin miller"
