I will neither explain myself nor apologize (actually I will probably do both in the comments).
Navi, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (WHAT IF EVERY TIME I TRY TO TALK TO SOMEONE ALL THEY HEAR IS THAT NAGGING “LISTEN“ BELL)
Immortan Joe, Mad Max: Fury Road
Denethor, The Return of the King
Principal Snyder, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Henry VIII, literally any adaptation of the life of Henry VIII
Roman, particularly that scene where he turns down the girl at the Sin Say Shun Awards with the “I’m into hard sci-fi” line, Party Down
Rumplestiltskin for some reason??
The mean mom from Titanic and also Billy Zane in Titanic
The witch, Rapunzel (I swear I won’t steal any of your children, I just identify with people who steal things that are beloved by others)
Gaius Baltar, Battlestar Galactica
Mary, Downton Abbey, 100% of the time, she can do no wrong
Prince Joffrey, fuck you
Distressingly and unwillingly, Tim McManus, Oz
Charlize Theron in Monster but not Aileen Wuornos in real life
The dog from Duck Hunt
Jenny Schecter once, for just a minute, but I have to be honest
Kathy Najimy, Hocus Pocus (I know she’s FUN but they kill children!)
Gaston, Beauty and the Beast
goodbye forever, sorry I’m like this
The older I get, the more I see Principal Snyder’s side of things.
The longer I work in public education, the more I see Principal Snyder’s side of things, and also simultaneously hate him more because of experiences with administration.
Rewatching Buffy when you identify with Joyce is a surreal experience.
Buffy was SO disruptive to the learning environment.
Who doesn’t want to scold entitled teenagers/a giant demon snake?
I can forgive you for everything, but not Gaius Baltar.
See, Baltar is the only one I understand.
It was toaster-cylons for me.
Yeah, I totally feel for the Cylons. I can’t get past Baltar’s smarm.
Yep, I’m with you there. He’s *delightfully* smarmy.
But really he’s an angel or something for the Cylon monotheism?
(If I could go back in time I don’t know about baby Hitler but I sure would kill the very last BSG episode. Just the last one.)
That last episode was severely aggravating. It was such a cop-out. And it left various important questions unanswered. If it was JUST a cop-out ending but they at least tied up some of the loose ends, I’d probably have been okay with it. I’m cutting myself off before I have a mini-stroke.
I feel like they could have tied everything up by saying “Kara’s piano playing dream dad was a Cylon, that one model number that we never speak of, she’s the real first hybrid, and that’s why she can resurrect and disappear and knows All Along the Watchtower, the end.”
But noooooope.
WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS WHY WHY WHYYYYYYYYYY
Nope this is now my headcannon, nothing else is true, also Galactica never broke her back she’s fine and floating around New Earth in case we need it, SHUT UP I CAN’T HEAR ANY OF YOUUUUUUU
The last episode made a friend retreat into his room and not speak to anyone for a week. When he came out, he refused to remember that the finale happened and that he had watched it.
Now he denies the existence of BSG completely.
MTE. Baltar I can support. So deliciously low, plus he has Chip! Six in his head like, ALL THE TIME, who wouldn’t want that.
Same here. I don’t think it’s because I particularly liked Baltar, but I was always hoping Baltar and Six would work out. The whole star-crossed lovers thing, I guess.
Also, he’s kind of sociopathic, but I don’t think he was like that right off the bat. He was definitely sleazy, from what we saw, but not on the same level. I think the whole being responsible for near-genocide thing would push anyone past sanity into madness.
same
I read that and I had to stop and think about the comment I was going to make because jesus.
Something like “how are you allowed to have a website Mallory. is life just chaos”
Baltar looks out for Baltar.
No way, Gaius 4-Eva. But I am a slightly sketchy scientist atheist so …
I love Gaius Baltar SO MUCH and I think he’s one of the most fascinating characters on BSG
COME AT ME HATERS
He is my favourite after Madame Airlock, even though his plotlines were always BANANAS.
Obviously Roslin and Starbuck are top of the list of “Best BSG/sci-fi characters of all time”, but Baltar is highly underappreciated for how hilarious and genuinely self-serving he was in the most brilliant way.
My favorite was when became a cult leader after we beat his treason charges. Because OF COURSE HE DID.
Baltar was always always always a complete delight to have on screen, despite (or perhaps because of) how much I might have wanted to ram his face through the back of his head sometimes. Of all the ringers they put characters through on that show, his was the one that got most of the pathos out of the way right up front, leaving the rest of the show for Baltar to just Baltar the shit out of being Gaius Baltar. Yeah, he doomed humanity by (unwittingly) giving the cylons access to the defense mainframe, and he does spend at least 2 minutes in the miniseries feeling awful about that, but then it’s 4 fantastic years of pretending he wasn’t just yelling at a bulkhead when someone walks in on his conversations with an imaginary Tricia Helfer, going on vision quests to Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre, hitting on Lucy Lawless, being a really terrible president while lounging smugly in piles of adoring women, and being a marginally better cult leader while lounging smugly in piles of adoring women. But, you know, in a good way.
Crap, now I want to re-watch the series, but my DVDs for the first two seasons are with a friend across state, and anyway I’m at work to boot. Guess I’ll settle for rocking out to the soundtrack for now.
You are a good person with good opinions and I will join in rocking out to the soundtrack (specifically, the video of Bear playing Prelude to War on the piano because it is the most badass piano video of all time)
You are correct in all things. (Including totally ignoring the last episode, which does not exist.)
The bananas plotlines are, for me, a source of my affection, not an impediment.
My husband and I had a song for him whenever he did something great and Gaius-y. He kept me in the show when everything else had dissolved into mostly un-watchable mush.
Oh, please please share the song!
I really, really need to know this song.
I love him but I lack his cunning/ luck. I would definitely be one of his cultish-supporters (as much as I wish I were more like Roslyn).
I want to be Roslyn when I grow up.
I kissed James Callis on the cheek once at a party. He later grabbed my ass when we were getting a photo together. Quid pro quo or something.
I will seize literally any opportunity to recount this.
And I certainly won’t begrudge you that.
YESSSS thank you.
I adore Gaius and totally ID with him. My description on G+ says I’m “Baltaring my way through life” because he works so hard for self-preservation but half the time it seems he has NO EARTHLY IDEA what he is doing and yet things seem to work out for him pretty good and that’s kinda me.
Also he’s hilarious.
BALTAR WAS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER.
This is why we are friends
HE KNOWS ABOUT FARMING.
Baltar always delighted me in the way that unrepentant Slytherins tend to (Narcissa Malfoy, AZULA*, Ellen Tigh, Lady Macbeth, et al), but his whole story is one of the reasons I will defend the finale to this day.
* apparently I mostly write about Azula in all-caps and so that is what my phone expects.
I think we may be the only two people on the internet who defend the finale. Hello new friend! 😉
Hello friend!
The finale is not perfect but it has Baltar’s story, and Anders’s physics monologue, and Chief’s reaction about Cally (Tory’s whole deal was …not well-executed, but that moment almost made it wort it), and also the spinoff we would have gotten of Admiral Hoshi and President Romo Lampkin.
MY PEOPLE! I liked the finale, I thought it was good. Perfect, no, but neither was the show in general.
Please write a defense of the finale so Mallory and Nicole can publish post-haste.
I appreciate James Callis’ acting ability for portraying a character who I wanted to punch more than any character in basically anything I’ve ever watched. He has to be skilled to make me feel that strongly.
The only person I feel more strongly about is Number Six/Tricia Helfer who I have a mad crush on.
I will never ever hate you for this, and I couldn’t agree more with his inclusion on this list. Gaius Balthar is every human ever born, distilled down to their essence.
Right?! I get the feeling many people who hate him are uncomfortable becuse they recognize that deep down in their littlest heart of hearts they, too, have a tiny voice telling them to fuck everyone else and take care of ourselves–at least sometimes. It’s just how well we can ignore it that differentiates us.
Yes, I feel like if you don’t identify with Baltar’s selfish cowardice AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT, you are probably being less than completely honest about yourself.
Yes. As much as I wish humanity had a little more Roslin or Adama or Starbuck at their best, Baltar’s selfishness and flailing and insecurity and pretentiousness and morality that’s highly dependent on his circumstances and options is so very much our species.
I think humanity is Adama, and Roslin, and Starbuck and Gaius and a little bit of everything. We do have this little voice tell us to fuck everything and save our skin. But your eventual choices matter more than the various voices. It is normal to see where Gaius comes from but to identify with him means you identify with the choice of thinking only of yourself. Gaius is not bad for having a strong sense of self preservation, but for choosing not to battle it at all for the greater good and instead follow it blindly.
I don’t identify with him, but I do love him, and I can’t explain why even a little bit. Like, anyone who says they hate him, I totally get it.
And this is totally unrelated to the fact that the character and the actor are on my list of People I Find Attractive to a Degree Disproportionate to Their Actual Level of Attractiveness.* He’s a nice looking man, but my physical reaction to him far exceeds what it should be, objectively-speaking. Can’t explain it.
*at the top of this list is Michael Ian Black, who I find sexier than almost any other man. And not in a “he’s funny and that makes him even cuter” kind of way, but in a very primal kind of way.
I’m popping back into this thread just to say that the line in that GIF is, bar none, my favorite Baltar line of all time. It’s so terribly, delightfully awful.
Ah, sweet prince. Gaius Baltar is a treasure and a gift.
this is literally my first indication that there are people out there who dislike Gaius??????????
(i watched relatively recently so the cultural conversation was pretty over)
“Rumplestiltskin for some reason??”
Yes, I can see that.
(Even though I don’t know you in real life.)
Question for Mallory as well as other Toasties who identify similarly: do you think you would have had the same downfall as Rumplestiltskin (i.e. crowing your own name loudly into the night for all to hear) or would you have triumphed in the end?
I would probably get caught singing about how great I am, a la “my name is Alexander Hamilton”
Would you care to elaborate more on that reason? And are we talking like, fairy tale Rumplestiltskin, Once Upon a Time Rumplestiltskin, or “sideways through the particles” Rumplestiltskin?
Fairy tale Rumplestiltskin. I think it’s the cackling and the frustrated foot stamping.
…Oh wait, that’s me.
I signed up purely so I could cyber-five you for the Vivian Vande Velde reference. Re-told fairy tales are my jam, so finding that book was like finding the pot of gold at the end of a very nerdy rainbow.
I identify with stomping my foot so hard in frustration that I disappear into the ground.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/litt…
This story made me cry (everything makes me cry).
Oh, this is really good.
Came here to say exactly this. Pretty much verbatim.
Here to plug the delightful “Rumplestiltskin Problem” stories by Vivian Vande Velde.
If you only explain one of these in the comments I would like it to be Charlize Theron in Monster but not Aileen Wuornos in real life! What an excellent film for a person who wants to cry.
this is because I only saw one scene of Monster on Youtube and never watched the actual movie
Wasn’t she horribly abused and raped multiple times? I remember feeling very very bad for her in the movie, and I will never watch it again because it was too upsetting.
I don’t know, I only saw the scene where she went ice skating and shot someone
Note to self, never ice skate with Mallory Ortberg
Boy, that scene escalated really quickly.
I believe so, although the main bit I remember is her girlfriend giving her up to the police on the phone and there was that big slow pan out to all the tapes and police and things.
Sounds like we’ve both got some ice skating to watch on YouTube, in conclusion.
Yup, that’s why she was the only one I *did* understand.
Rewatching Buffy isn’t weird for me, because I was the kind of person who identified with Giles even in my teens and that hasn’t changed.
Jerry in Parks & Recs.
His coworkers are such dicks, seriously.
Ditto. All the piling on Jerry/Larry/Gary was the one sour note in P&R for me – though I do love the good cheer with which he accepts the bullying
The creators said they realised after a while that the show had developed in such a way that it seemed wrong among all the sweetness, which is why he was really happy and had a hot wife and generally a really lovely life and ended up mayor of Pawnee for 100 years or something in the ‘what happened next?’ bit at the end of the series.
The subtle tone changes in the mocking over the course of the show is one of the things that is most jarring when I start up the early seasons again. But, yeah, I do love that they give him all the happiness in the world as the counter, plus they’re picking on their white guy (as opposed to, say, Family Guy and Meg).
It just continued so long after every other character grew up and changed a bunch! It never made sense to me that the writers never changed direction with him either. (Ben’s constant bewilderment at Jerry’s hot wife always made me laugh, though, but definitely as a joke on Ben and not on Jerry. BEN THIS IS NOT THAT DIFFICULT.)
I love watching the episode where Jerry accidentally introduces Millicent to Chris. It’s so delightfully awkward.
I loved that Ben eventually declared himself Jerry’s friend. (…Ben and Jerry?) And I’m glad the writers course-corrected, because everyone being mean to Jerry always bugged me.
Ben’s bewilderment (“Does she think he’s a friendly hat?”) is one of my favourite things.
They gave him the biggest penis the town doctor had ever seen as well.
I don’t identify with him, but I wish I could. He was enlightened. He was so happy with his life that the pettiness of mere mortals couldn’t touch him.
Parks and Rec! I found that so so hard to stomach. Also, I know she is seen as hero to many, but I also found Leslie Knope to be a really troubling character. They had one episode where they mentioned her tendency to steamroller everyone, and then dropped any concerns with that.
I had a boss that was VERY MUCH like Leslie Knope and it was the worst situation ever. She ran three people not just out of where I worked, but out of the profession entirely (including, eventually, herself).
Omg spaghetti cat avatar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Hce1dwmNI
Tammy 2 forever.
Now that I think of it, I really do identify with Tammy 2.
Ethel Beavers or bust.
o captain my captain
I love Jerry and everyone’s persistent meanness killed me, I was so proud of Ben.
Ugh, they were so awful to him. It reminded me of crappy toxic friendships before I learned how to be assertive.
My family behaved like that every time there was more than one of them in the room with me (critical mass!)
I had to stop watching because of the Jerry bullying.
I love Jerry/Gary/Larry!
Billy Zane in Titanic is, as far as I am aware, the closest anyone has ever come to matching Nicolas Cage in delightfully over-the-top hammy intensity. It’s really something.
My gold standard for that is Alan Rickman in both Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
speaking of characters we inappropriately identify with…
Honestly, I can totally identify with anyone who thinks Robin Hood is an annoying punk. See also: Richard Armitage in that BBC show (or in the first season, anyway)
Richard Armitage was so attractive in that show.
That show was demonstrably terrible, but I stuck with it solely for Richard Armitage and his eyeliner.
when i read this i had a reflexive shiver of excitement
RICHARD ARMITAGE
off to watch north&south again bye
ungggggggggggggggggggg
Also:
GUYLINER
As an adult, I find the rape scene way, way more upsetting than when I first saw it as a 12-year-old. It’s all, “haha, Alan Rickman is brilliant in thi- yikes, rape scene, holy shit.”
(And I’m still annoyed that nobody has a Nottingham accent.)
I noticed the last time I watched it that they really played up the comedy during his attempted rape of Marian, which was… an odd choice.
Yep. Alan Rickman in Die Hard for sure.
Chew that scenery, my man.
I will happily identify with Alan Rickman in anything. Maybe ‘identify with’ isn’t quite the right word …
If you enjoy Billy Zane chewing his way through a movie, you will adore him in (and everything about) ‘Only You.’ Not to spoil it for you, but THERE IS A DRAMATIC WIG REMOVAL.
https://lebeauleblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/…
Look for “Blood and Concrete”. You won’t be disappointed.
Billy Zane is far and away the absolute best part of Titanic. I only wish we could have gotten more scenes with him. Rose, girl, marry him and spend your life covered in diamonds, how is this not preferable to skinny poor Jack? honestly.
Not a specific one, necessarily, but like… every character in space horror media who absolutely loses it when they’re launched into the abyss of space and subsequently start a death cult/unleash a mutagen on the rest of the crew/pick up murder alien eggs? That would be me. (I recognize this about myself and therefore will never voluntarily become an astronaut, no matter how cool I think it is.)
Also, “creed arms into a sea of haters” is the best tag on this site, and this site has so many good tags.
I am happy whenever the “creed arms into a sea of haters” tag pops up even when I am among the haters (my Luna is not an antivaxxer and will never be) (goes down with this ship).
I am pleased with how much use that tag has gotten.
I had to google what this phrase meant, I did so very gravely, and was not disappointed with the abrupt and delighted shriek I emitted. My coworkers are still staring at me.
PRINCE JOFFREY???????
That’s the only one that gave me pause.
i keep getting him mixed up with King Jaffe Joffer and may i just say, i suspect they are not the same person after all
He’s just a badly raised child, for pity’s sake.
I’ve always thought of him as a classic sociopath. there’s only so much upbringing can do when you’re “neurologically atypical.”
He’s his mother’s son, alright. Just not as smart or as subtle.
eh, he has two perfectly nice siblings who are not monsters.
Didn’t Cersei say in one episode that they said of the Targareans that it was a toss-up whether they’d be normal or insane, because of the inbreeding? She basically said she thought Joffrey was the way he was because he’s the product of twincest.
He comes by it honestly. I’m preeetty confident Joff is a Targaryen anyhow. Double grand-bastard of Joanna and Aerys II.
I’m only a few episodes into Jessica Jones and I know what he’s going to do or be revealed to have done so I won’t put him on this list, but so far I identify HARD with Kilgrave
all he’s done is kick down some people’s door, shove their kids in a closet, demand they feed him lamb, and yell at the TV, IT ME
what… did you think happened at the end of the first episode
he makes someone shoot their parents and that is BADASS
MALLORY NO
IT’S SO METALLLLL
It is really NOT METAL MALLORY
MALLORY
GIVE ME SOME LAMB
I AM JUST GOING TO WAIT HERE UNTIL YOU WATCH MORE EPISODES AND THEN WE WILL NEED TO HAVE A SERIOUS DISCUSSION ABOUT THINGS
YEAH I DONT THINK YOURE GOING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT THIS LATER, GIRL. IM SORRYYYYYY.
I’m FASCINATED by Kilgrave, specifically how he became the way he was. He’s awful but I confess I completely sympathized with him when he was in the noisy coffee shop and screamed “SHUT UP!” so everyone did. The only time in the whole series I envied him his powers.
(I also kept wanting him to run into a deaf person, but it never happened. Such a lost opportunity.)
KILGRAVE IS IRREDEEMABLY AWFUL but there is that one really satisfying moment with the neighbor *slinks back into the shadows*
But…but…but… I get that, but…but…JOFFREY?!! And Kilgrave?! I can forgive everyone else on this list (I totally get Snyder) but…. no!
kilgrave, yes, same. there’s a part where he says to jessica “WE ARE INEVITABLE” and i was just like, yep. me.
David Tennant playing evil does “self-centered narcissist driven by subterranean emotions that occasionally break the surface and crowd his face all at once in key scenes so plainly that you can SEE his motivations and they are, for a moment, yours” so well that you can totally relate to him, before the terror kicks in and you go AUGH NO GET HIM OUT GET HIM OUT HOW CAN I BE SO SCARED OF SOMEONE WITH SUCH NOODLY LIMBS
That’s why he’s my favorite!
Yeah, this one stumped me too. The only identifiable quality I could find in him personally is that he plays the game of thrones completely without scruples, which is a decent strategy for winning. However, I feel Littlefinger had sort of the same strategy and was either less sadistic or at least let other people do his sadistic dirty work for him, giving him a teeny bit more likability.
Okay, Joffrey is without scruples but also without any forethought or organizational skills! He has no plan! He is just a petulant kid who throws temper tantrums but also happens to have an inappropriate amount of power with which to throw them.
You are totally right. I was just trying to figure out what Mallory might find identifiable about him. But really I guess it is about me, and the fact that I identify with villains who are competent and gleeful in their mayhem and are untroubled by conscience or personal connections.
Competent villains are the best villains!
Also true for Killgrave!
I mean, I envy him his total freedom. There is no gap between Joffrey’s will and Joffrey’s actions. What he wishes to do, he does. There are time I wish I could smirk around a throne room kicking everyone and making petty-baby demands until the entire world gave in to me out of sheer exhaustion.
He’s like a bite-sized Henry VIII!
He’s Caligula, his power makes him insane.
He played the Game of Thrones exactly like a twelve-year-old boy would. (Maybe a boy sociopath. Maybe just a boy.)
Tommen would never as a 12 year old!
TRUE. Give him another kitten.
i kind of secondhand like him because he’s the product of cersei and jaime, aka the couple that i VERY WEIRDLY identify with.
yeah i don’t get Joffrey. When Tyrion slaps him it is one of my favorite moments in the entire series.
Denethor going nuts is absolutely how I’d act if my country was being invaded by its neighbor, a blighted hellscape ruled by a fallen angel with armies of orcs, trolls, and wraiths riding on pterodactyls.
Also, let’s be honest, Aragorn’s claim to the throne of Gondor is EXTREMELY SKETCHY.
Pitch us this immediately.
On it!
Seriously, isn’t claiming the throne by way of being ~Isildur’s Heir~ practically the equivalent of some guy with Tudor blood in 2015 coming to usurp the Queen? Isn’t there a statute of limitations on being royalty?
But QEII is holding the throne in her own right, she isn’t purporting to hold it in stewardship for someone of a different family!
Sure but by Denethor’s time the Stewards are basically kings of another name (patriarchal primogeniture and all that), and it’s been like a thousand years since Gondor had a “real” king. I know the Men of Gondor are honorable as fuck but that’s a long time!
I am womanfully resisting the urge to look up exact dates in Appendices A and B, I’ll have you know. =>
But yeah, long time! But also, he doesn’t press a claim to the throne until he’s helped save Minas Tirith and defend the whole of Middle-earth against Sauron, at which point Faramir’s like, hey, it’s all yours, so I think it’s not just ancestry that’s being relied on, here.
I cannot tell you how happy this thread is making me. This is why I read the Toast comments.
…please do though, hahaha.
He definitely gets points for deliberately avoiding a civil war while they were still fighting Sauron and for, you know, saving the country. And it’s not like lines of succession are ever pure and unsullied by popular opinion. The way I see it is his claims are semi-legit but he maneuvers himself into the right place at the right time, and nobody else wanted it. Aragorn: pretty good at politics for a dude who lived in the woods for 80 years.
Also, he totally should have married Eowyn and not for feelings reasons. Way to shore up your power over the REALMS OF MEN by marrying an elf whose relatives have retreated across the sea forever.
I agree with your argument about the political efficacy of a marriage to Eowyn, but I always viewed Arwen as a legitimacy thing too. Like all of Aragorn’s legitimacy comes from descent from the Numenorian kings, so what better way to cement that then marrying the niece of the first king of Numenor? Also having children with extra long life spans cause of an elf mother can’t hurt, especially since the Numenorians are super bad at having children.
Good point! Though, would their son have an extra long lifespan (as in longer than Aragorn’s)? I assume Arwen chose mortality before conceiving, but does that affect the genes she passes on? I have no idea.
I’m intrigued by the eventual weirdness that would come from a kingdom of normal-lifespan commoners ruled over by effectively immortal half-elven kings! Seems simpler to just marry into the horse-lords…
Or, at the very least don’t let the only possible threat to your rule marry into the heavily militarized nation at your doorstep, that seems like a bad move, however much he assures you he has no interest in the crown and however nice and soft his hair is!
So no one will ever live as long as Aragorn did again, but his son Eldarion lives to at least 175. Aragorn decides to die at the age of 210. (Quite literally he decides that he has lived long enough and gets to choose when he dies).
There is definitely weirdness there, but from the point of view that leaders like Victoria or Louis XIV got a lot of legitimacy from the fact that very few people could remember when they weren’t the monarch, it makes some political sense.
I just realized I can remember more random things about LOTR than I can about my dissertation that I am currently writing.
And yet authority is not given to Denethor to determine the hour of his own death, for so the heathen kings of old did.
I’m just saying, bit of a double standard there.
And if I were Faramir, I would much rather be Prince of Ithilien than Steward (or King) of Gondor. Once you get all of Sauron’s hordes out of it, Ithilien sounds lovely.
yes, it’s also the ‘healing hands’ which although not properly explained are said to be the mark of the rightful king. If I was a Gondorian, and I was given a vote, I’d prefer a king who could heal me with his hands than one who digustingly eats chicken and cherry tomatoes whilst forcing Hobbits to sing for him.
No no no, movie!Denethor is an abomination, one of the very worst things about Jackson’s adaptation!
But it’s true, ideally you want your leaders to be multi-purpose instruments not unitaskers (slices and dices! No, wait.).
I always imagined Faramir gratefully handing Gondor over to Aragorn with a giant good riddance, and then going off to be Eowyn’s house-husband.
and you know how archaic the claim of the Stewards is, too, cause if it were any more recent they’d be the Flight Attendants of Gondor
But it’s in living memory if you ask the Elves!
The Elves are all leaving Middle-Earth! They don’t get to have a say in its political processes.
Yeah! Aragorn can be king of Arnor if he wants. Just, you know, rebuild it, I guess
You Might Be A Geek If you see this comment, settle deeper into your seat with glee and think, “Oh yeah, now shit’s getting REAL.”
This whole thread has just been me pulling up a chair and looking expectant.
BRING ME THE TOLKIEN NERDERY.
https://comparativelysuperlative.wordpress.com/20…
There’s no need for me to rewrite everything when someone else has already covered it. Long story short, Isildur was never a ruler of Gondor, so you can’t exactly inherit Gondor from him, seeing as how it was never his to begin with.
true true BUT I object more to the whole “going mad and forever trying to kill your youngest son because he reminds you of your dead wife or whatever unexplained grudge you have against an angelic David Wenham.”
Agreed. I can see being sympathetic to the “going mad because of an evil overlord with mind-bending powers literally within sight of your house.” But I can’t forgive how he treated Faramir (even before the attempted immolation).
Look if you want a long-lived wife in Middle-earth, maybe don’t marry someone named Finduilas.
My favorite trivia from LotR films is that Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn, “accidentally” called David Wenham by his nickname, Daisy, in front of the whole cast. DAISY. I’ve loved them both (more) ever since. She then calls him Daisy throughout the actor’s commentary in the LotR extended editions.
Denethor’s tragic psychological complexity stands out like a sore thumb in _LotR_ (I say this from a place of love, truly). I might’ve capslocked at his bad parenting decisions throughout my Tor.com posts but yeah, I totally identified with him at points, too.
He’s one of the characters with interiority and psychology in the middle of a Medieval romance, and it’s kind of jarring.
I hope you mean in literature and not in film cause in the film his table manners are so upsetting I don’t even care about any of the rest of it. set that man on fire and throw him out a window to teach him how cutlery and table linens work, don’t even bring his stupid son into it
my own spirited defense I save for Shelob and not even just because she’s a plucky independent woman trying to make it in a man’s world although that’s obviously part of it.
Now imagining a Mary Tyler Moore show where Shelob moves to Minas Tirith and tries to make it as a reporter, but keeps getting in trouble because she can’t resist eating literally everything in her path.
I have stars in my eyes for you right now.
poor shelob’s just a walking Cathy cartoon isn’t she
This is the best comment thread I have EVER seen.
Seriously. The grin on my face as I read all this cannot be matched.
My SO just got miffed because he thought I was laughing at his guitar playing. I hate/love you guys.
AAAACCCKKK
*vomits unlight and despair*
Single female spider,
Fighting for her client,
Flashing sexy mandibles,
And being self-reliant.
[Heart Eyes Emoji]
“She served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness.”
Shelob for mascot of The Toast, tbh.
wouldn’t kill her to read Caroline Knapp’s Appetites: Why Women Want but you could say that about most of us, right
tolkien on the other hand could use a little reminding that healthy people don’t categorize our food as “good” or “bad.” eating is not a place for moral judgment, shelob understands that. “endless brooding” is just another way of saying mindfulness after all
“A willing foe and last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.”
had already commented above on his chicken/tomato grossness before seeing this- I AM SO PLEASED I AM NOT ALONE. Perhaps book Denethor was the height of elegance when eating but Film Denethor needs to be thrown into the sea if only for his atrocious table manners.
See also: Boromir. Oldest sibling, strong sense of duty, just a tiny bit rash and emotional, voice of reason and bitter experience in midst of sea of squeamish, overly optimistic civilians who thus far have never killed anything but time and large meals. While your country burns, this bunch of soft-handed tea drinkers come up with the dumbest, unsafest plan you’ve ever heard, while the actual solution to your kingdom’s and family’s problems is JUST. RIGHT. THERE.
The hobbits are soft-handed tea drinkers, sure, but the elves and the dwarves? The elves especially have gone ten rounds with Sauron before!
You mean the elf and the dwarf? Can’t recall any plurals…
Ugh… Guys. Guys. This thread is reawakening all my Gondor family feelings. I don’t have time to reread Tolkien. I don’t have time to reread Tolkien. Ah fuck it. [insert Tina Belcher groan here]
I will forever love Boromir for schlepping the wood up the side of the mountain when Gandalf acts like it’s the dumbest idea he’s ever heard, and when the Hobbits are turning into damn icicles, he just goes all, “can we light the fire noooow, Gandalf? Or is this still a dumb-as-fuck idea from the guy who has all shield no brains?” Love. Forever.
I have more feelings about Boromir burrowing the fellowship out of the snow than is possibly healthy.
I KNOW IT BECAME A MEME AND THUS LOST A LOT OF EMOTIONAL RESONANCE BUT ‘ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR’ THAT WAS SERIOUSLY THEIR STUPID PLAN AND HE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO KNEW BETTER.
THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLAN
THE HOBBIT IS ADORABLE, BUT WILL DIE WITHIN FIVE MINUTES
WHY DOES NOBODY SEE THIS BUT ME
NO, IT’S NOT SO STUPID IT’S BRILLIANT. IT’S JUST STUPID
WHY DO YOU WANT US ALL TO DIE
FOR REAL
YEAH LET’S JUST SEND THESE COMFORTABLE CHILDISH NOOBS TO THE HEART OF ENEMY TERRITORY
NO IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT THEY GET TO BRING ONE ELF, ONE DWARF AND ONE EXTREMELY VALUABLE RIGHTFUL KING, NOT EVEN IF THEY ALSO BRING AN OLD WIZARD
WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN A PARTY OF SKILLED RANGERS OR ELVEN SCOUTS AT LEAST. WHY HOBBITS.
IT DID NOT HAVE TO BE HOBBITS
I had no sympathy for Boromir as a reader but all the sympathy as a movie viewer. Because Sean Bean. This is how I have learned how shallow I am.
No, movie!Boromir was genuinely more sympathetic in actions, not just because Sean Bean; the little bit of training the hobbits, the pitching the Council scene away from pride, those were good changes.
OMG yessssss.
Boromir wasn’t the Bad Guy. He was the voice of reason and tried to use said reason with an overly-permissive Lone Wolf, an elf, a dwarf, and FOUR HELPLESS HOBBITS.
Faramir is a bit more schmoopy, but Boromir’s not a bad guy.
AND ALSO your son that you like less has a portentous dream — and as much as I love Faramir, let’s be honest, that dude is probably ALWAYS reporting that he’s had a portentous dream, like every single morning’s breakfast conversation involves the recitation of a poem in a dreamy voice — and your other son insists on following this dream’s instructions to head off in search of a place that he doesn’t actually know where it is, but it’s definitely hundreds of miles away across dangerous territory, instead of staying here to lead your army against the orcs, pterodactyls, etc., AND THEN the pain-in-the-ass wizard who spent several years lurking in your library a while ago turns back up after your son’s been gone for like A YEAR and tells you “He’s dead, sorry. Magic ring got ‘im.”? Denethor is an asshole, but I can’t pretend I would maintain my equanimity in that situation either.
No kidding, and it doesn’t help that you’ve got a magic cell phone but that asshole Sauron keeps tweeting you Vines of your country’s imminent downfall.
Jesus Christ, this website and all of you are wonderful.
I think I just sprained my upvote finger.
I am just SO HERE FOR THIS WHOLE SUB-DISCUSSION.
That is all.
I have nothing to add to this thread beyond the low, long keening noise Sam makes when he’s worried about Frodo because I’m so overwhelmed by how great this is.
Oh yeah. Me coming late to this thread has basically been:
Lady Maryyyyy, she is my favourite and can do no wrong. (Even though I also love poor sad muppet Edith and want her to be happy and feel like she got the absolute worst end of every stick on that show.) She is the icy bitch queen with a heart of very slightly slushified ice that I sometimes long to be.
Also, spoileriffic real talk for the Brits, Americans close your eyes:
Even though I loved Cousin Matthew to pieces and he was so adorable, I think Mary and Henry Talbot are actually better suited, due to both being icy forceful bullying weirdos who will have the most Snow White-looking children in the history of ever. I would 100% find Henry Talbot terrible if he were with anyone but Mary, but they are exactly the same kind of terrible and I love it.
/end Downton rant.
THE BIT WITH CARSON AND LADY MARY, THOUGH
Every time they interact I cry. Ughhhh my heart. They love each other so muchhhhh.
The story about Baby Lady Mary and the silver!
Man, if we wanna talk about who we overidentify with, Edith is it for me.
Poor Edith. Her wedding made me sob, with the veil going down over the bannister and her throwing away the tiara, it was so so sad. Any time she was even a little bit happy (with Strallan, with Gregson, with Marigold, with lovely Bertie Pelham), it all goes to ratshit. And she just keeps rolling along, not feeling sorry for herself too much, just doing what needs doing, trying to do the right thing, somehow surviving having a glamorous barracuda with a bob as a sister; she is the actual hero on that show.
(I apologise for having FEELINGS about this stupid overwritten soapy nonsense.)
I identify with Edith. Edith ends as an independent woman. She has her child, she has her own business that she actively participates in, she makes most of her own decisions about her life, and she rolls with the punches of her sucky lovelife by telling Mary some plain truths (read: that Mary is a bitch and Edith is making up with her because they are family and will probably need each other some day).
Mary is spoiled and singleminded–her goal is to have Downton, from the very first episode, and the series ends with her mostly having it and being content. Edith’s character shows so much more growth.
‘glamorous barracuda with a bob’ wins everything.
Just here to say that when they killed Matthew I flat-out stopped watching. I ended on the episode where everyone wore cricket jumpers (so, a high point), and then just… never turned it on again.
A+ strategy, would pretty much recommend
oh man I stopped for a while after that. and then I was with my mom and she was watching and lo: the horrible that was anna’s rape. I quit for good.
downton, I cannot take you!
I recently was rewatching older seasons and stopped at Anna’s rape like NOPE BYE PEACE.
I quit Downton Abbey after I read the reviews of that episode but before I watched it – & I did the same for Game Of Thrones. This worked out well, no regrets.
I basically refuse to accept anything after Sybil came back from Ireland.
Downton opinions are so different for everyone, lmao. Like for one, I used to feel really bad for Edith but I thought the plot where she gives her baby to this poor woman, let’s her bond with it, then not only takes her baby back but basically LOSES THEIR THEM FAMILY FARM was just pretty much awful and selfish?? But wrt that I think it’s more just shitty writing tbh.
But also I think Mary/Henry have absolutely no chemistry and I hate that she married him because it was so random and rushed and she had more chemistry with TOM okay.
Ughhhh, you are so right, though. The bit with their farm was TERRIBLE, I can’t believe that happened, just so that Daisy’s undad could have a farm after she botched everything up.
The whole thing with the Drews and the baby could have been solved SO EASILY if Mr Drew had sacked up and just told his wife the truth. Because from her perspective, it must seem like the craziest thing ever, this aristo coming and stealing her baby, but the actual situation is sad and you would kind of get it, through your rage. Why Robert didn’t swoop in and actually manage the situation is beyond me, though.
With Mary/Henry, I just assume that that is how spacealiens from the Planet Icy flirt, you know? The last episode was bananas and the pacing of their wedding made zero sense, but I love that they are the same kind of awful and controlling and broken and it totally worked for me as a dynamic.
Yes. I was into it when they met in last year’s Christmas episode and then this season all the chemistry just completely drained away. I really wanted her and Tom to hook up.
TBH, since I have no idea who Henry Talbot is, none of Mary’s beaus suited her as much as Richard Carlisle aka Ser Jorah Friendzone.
Lady Mary is very boring when she isn’t sexing someone to death.
Ser Jorah Friendzone, I am dead. A+++++
Lady Mary is definitely the best. I saw someone in an earlier comments section say that she was horrible and deserved terrible things to happen to her, and thought, ‘aha! That is the genius of Lady Mary! 3 of the MOST terrible things happened to her and she is so resilient and made out of teflon it made you forget.
A guy she said ‘no’ to several times barged into her room and demanded sex, she acquiesced because he was hot, he died in her bed, and then her sister leaked the story out of spite ((which everyone seems to forget that Edith did btw)) , then her favorite sister died in her arms, and then her husband, who she worked for TWO SEASONS to finally be able to marry, died in a car crash while happily on his way home from her just having a baby. Those things are all pretty terrible.
I like Edith more now but I’ll never forgive her for selling Mary out in the first season and all the bad things that have happened to her are karma for that, IMO. But I hope she goes and lives in her flat and hangs out with the BYT’s and meets Nancy Mitford and has her write for her magazine.
I way over-identify with poor Thomas though. I’ve only seen a few episodes, and not all from the same season, but I’m pretty sure he’s meant to be a villain? I just feel really badly for him.
Thomaaaaaasss!
I identify with the hell out of Thomas, because I know that as a queer myself, if I were in the past there’s no guaranteeing that my not-being-able-to-be-out would make me act really mean and horrible, particularly when everyone around me is being all smug and heterosexual.
If the Christmas episode is the last episode, I want them to give Thomas a boyfriend and I don’t care how contrived and stupid it is.
Also while I don’t identify with her necessarily, I love O’Brien because damn, she’s just so beautifully evil.
I LOVE THOMAS.
Mallory, if you’re reading this– I had a dream last night that I was hired to be your secretary and my salary was to be 300 dollars an hour.
I guess there’s nothing to add to that…needless to say I’ve never awoken so elated.
Once Upon A Time made me crush on Rumpelstiltskin so hard for a couple of years. Mmm.
Robert Carlyle will do that to a person. I was obsessed with Hamish Macbeth for the longest time, and later I realized it wasn’t that the show was great (although . . . it was), it was that you can’t not like Robert Carlyle.
I love him. Even Begby was compelling, though horrible and to be feared. I started watching Once Upon because of him, and he’s great in it, but I could never sustain enough interest in the show to keep up with it.
I did not know about this Hamish Macbeth show! lemme see if I can stream it……..
If you cannot find it using the regular methods but are interested, I can probably help you out. Using only legal methods, of course.
…I have to give you fair warning, though, that 90s fashions do feature prominently in the show.
ugh!! all my friends made fun of me for my weird crush on him!
Rumplestiltskin in OUAT is one of the best fictional characters of all time in any media. He’s the sole reason I didn’t give up on OUAT in some of those seasons (and I’m glad I didn’t give up, because I’m actually loving this season a lot).
Rumple and Regina are the reasons I kept with the show right until Hook and his guyliner showed up and I found a new reason to live.
I don’t know who it is on the OUAT casting team that keeps going, “You know this fairy tale character who has never once been thought of as sexy? What if we cast someone really, really attractive in that role?” but I hope that person never leaves. (Merlin almost edges Hook out, in my eyes, and that’s saying something)
If that awesome individual could maybe have a conversation with whoever it is in the writers’ room that keeps going, “Hey, you know the only black character we have? What if in a crazy twist absolutely no one could see coming, that character were suddenly killed? Or suddenly evil? Or suddenly revealed to be dead all along and actually an evil white lady (THEY DID THAT TWICE)?” that would be great, too.
I can’t unsee him yelping ‘I said take care of him, not take care of him!’ in The 51st State. (Or, really, any other of his dialogue.)
This is my life.
I blame Robert Carlyle for my terrible decision to continue watching Once Upon a Time past the first season. But I can’t say I didn’t get anything out of it–crying in baffled delight “I swear I didn’t care about Rumplestiltskin’s love life yesterday!” during Skin Deep is one of my fondest TV memories.
SAME. My poor husband has had it with my strange TV crushes.
We are 100% meant to identify with Mary. The series opens with us alone in her bedroom before she puts on her face and starts the day. No other character gets that treatment.
Even if that weren’t so I LOVE HER FOREVER
I love that everyone in the comments is like “INAPPROPRIATE? What else can we do but worship our beautiful ice queen?” Lady Mary forever.
Whenever I am faced with outrageous behaviour I am not witty enough to counter with one perfectly thought out remark I channel Mary’s arched brow. I don’t know if it works but it makes me feel so much better. Mary4Ever.
Immortan Joe, Mad Max: Fury Road
Jesus Christ, Mallory.
LOOK I GET IT, I AM SHOWING YOU MY MISERABLE AND WRONG HEART
Brave woman. There’s definitely some face silvering, hood-riding, diesel crazed warboy in all of us, surely.
Searching for “immortan joe cosplay”, it’s striking that >2/3 of the cosplayers are women.
To be fair, most cosplayers are women, and Fury Road in particular is a lady-heavy fandom.
so you use antlers in all of your decorating, is what I’m getting out of this
God, I identify with Gaston so much. Like, with my close friends I’m slightly lecherous, and kind of oblivious? and tend to pick out things with antlers? And my bff and I often talk to each other like we’re Gaston & LeFou? And his song is my favorite thing ever???
I’ve always thought of Mallory as especially good at expectoraaaaaaaaating, tbh
I sometimes forget that that line refers to something other than Hannibal.
…I’ll show myself out.
Antlers and SKULLS SOLDERED TO EVERYTHING.
That is good! That is good.
Yes, that is also good. But it is not what is best in life. Conan!
OBSERVE CRUELLA DE VILLE. FEEL PECULIAR AND UNWELCOME KINSHIP AND COVETOUSNESS FOR HER LIFE AND SOUL. GRADUALLY EMBRACE THE FEELING AND COME TO DELIGHT IN IT, LIKE A SECRET FRUIT ALWAYS KEPT RIPE IN YOUR POCKET.
I think the thing no one wants to admit is that we all identify with Jenny Schecter, just once, for the briefest of moments.
I will fully own my Schecter identification at least through the first couple of seasons and w/r/t her relationship with that starlet. It’s parallel to my Hannah Horvath identification. Like, I don’t want to relate to them, but I have to admit that there are a lot of real similarities, and mostly not good ones. (Though as Mallory has pointed out before, in the The L Word universe, we are ALL Alice.)
God, I hope I’m not Alice.
I only watched the first season, so perhaps she goes batshit afterwards, but based on season 1 I see no reason to hate Jenny. Marina is the one who seduced – and kept on seducing – her! It was Marina who invited Jenny over to dinner so she and her dysfunctionally-open-relationshipped girlfriend could fuck with Jenny’s mind. The only thing to hate about Jenny (in season 1 at least) is her writing.
SHE WENT BATSHIT LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE
When you say that you “inappropriately” identify with Mary from Downton Abbey, you mean because it is WILDLY aspirational, right? Lady Mary is perfection incarnate and the entire show exists purely as her showcase.
Hashtag REAL TALK right there. She’s a perfect beautiful frozen flower of a queen and I stand in awe of her.
I want to say something clever but
the dog from Duck Hunt
has reduced me to giggling through my tears.
The way he giggles is EXACTLY how I laugh when I’m embarrassed that I find something funny, right down to the hand-covering-the-mouth gesture.
Gaston, yessssss.
TBH his reaction to learning of The Beast was perfectly rational, given his limited information. Holy fuck there’s a giant monster living in a castle near here, and what’s more it’s already terrorized one villager and kept another captive for MONTHS? Fuck yeah I’d want to go on a raid! (XP and loot aside.)
this is why I can’t relate to Gaston. I’d stay safely in the tavern and lock the door.
That’s totally fair. I admit that a good portion of my identification with Gaston is aspirational, not because we’re actually similar.
THROUGH THE MIST/ THROUGH THE WOODS/ THROUGH THE DARKNESS AND THE SHADOWS
IT’S A NIGHTMARE, BUT IT’S ONE EXCITING RIDE
SAY A PRAYER/AND WE’RE THERE/AT THE DRAWBRIDGE OF THE CASTLE
AND THERE’S SOMETHING TRULY TERRIBLE INSIDE
IT’S A BEAST! HE’S GOT FANGS, RAZOR SHARP ONES.
MASSIVE PAWS, KILLER CLAWS, FOR THE FEAST
HEAR HIM ROAR, SEE HIM ROAM
BUT WE’RE NOT COMING HOME
‘TIL HE’S DEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAD!
GOOD AND DEAD!
KILL THE BEAST!
Tim McManus. Oh, dear.
I KNOW, I sometimes worry I am as ineffectual and self-serving as he, and it fills me with cold fear
I re-watched the Hunchback of Notre Dame recently and sympathised far more with Frollo than any other character. To be fair, I also read “The Prince” and found its advice to be very reasonable for people in that situation.
The Prince is good advice for anyone in any situation.
Disney’s Frollo is such a bizarre presence in that movie, constantly feeling the JUDGMENTAL EYE OF GOD watching him and fighting this vividly portrayed lust (ugh that moment when he smells Esmeralda’s hair!), while the rest of the characters deal much more toned-down Disney versions of problems and cavort with singing gargoyles. Making Frollo the sole bad guy isn’t really fair to the story, either; he’s not a good person, but he really thought he was, and it’s significant to the story that the people in power generally eff things up, which is kind of ruined if you make Phoebus a decent guy.
Frollo really was plopped down in the middle of a completely different movie than the one he was trying to be in. So much tone whiplash.
“Lalala sometimes bad things happen”
“PSYCHOSEXUAL DRAMA”
“Dadedah – wait, what?”
Yeah, I remember thinking when I read it that, given the context, it made a lot of sense.
Oh, and sorry for the double comment, but the blog Ex Urbe has an excellent series of posts on Machiavelli and where his ideas come from and how he was trying to formulate a politics that would save his city. The first post is here.
Yes to Principle Snyder & Lady Mary.
Was hoping for some random horror movie villains though with the picture. I would have gone with the ballerinas from Cabin in the Woods, every role by Jodelle Ferland, and Mama (Guillermo del Toro).
I … kind of think Roman is the best person to identify with on Party Down. I suppose Henry is OK if we’re talking about the finale and the finale alone, but Roman seems so much more together than some of the others, like he’s accepted his fate rather than deluded himself into thinking this is a pitstop on the way to stardom.
lol but the shit he says about women thooo
wait why did I start off defending him and then throw you under the bus for defending him, sorry
I identify with the most garbagey parts of EVERY CHARACTER, Mallory!
That’s an RDD!
(I’ll leave the meaning of that last D up to the reader)
This is maybe why Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday is my favorite episode. It’s such a nice moment for Roman.
Doesn’t EVERYONE relate to that “oh god you love the WRONG PARTS of my fandom, this is OVER,” moment when Roman turns her down because she MISLABELS fantasy as sci-fi?
I was like “ooooohhhhh yeah, nope I get it. Ugh.”
Totally. It goes along with my view that I’d rather you disagree with me politically than agree with me for stupid reasons.
Oh god, deeply ashamed, there was one piece of Kid-Holocaust-Lit where I hated the main character so much I wouldn’t say that I *identified* with the Nazis, but I certainly wasn’t worried about the main character’s potential death.
“She”s in the attic!”
*cringe*
I fortunately had nice, socially acceptable feelings about Anne Frank, and whatever the protag’s name was in Number The Stars, and anything else i happened to read in the genre as a kid.
And then, as an adult, I wondered what had been added to the genre in the meantime, and…. that was a mistake.
What was it? Now I have to know!
The Devil’s Arithmetic.
That’s the one where she goes back in time, right?? That book gave me probably the most vivid nightmare of my life when I was a kid. I don’t even remember many details about the book itself, just the nightmare.
Oh, that was not a good book. I read a lot of kid-lit Holocaust biographies and histories in grades 4-6, and I remember really, really not being into The Devil’s Arithmetic. (Anne Frank and Me, on the other hand, was superb, and also brutal.)
I have been trying and trying to phrase these lines so that I’m not making bizarre claims about “unpleasant reading experiences” in re. Holocaust lit, but seriously, there was something really weird about how unsympathetic the main character was.
Yes. If I were trying to write something in which an innocent child that the reader assumes is about to be slaughtered by Nazis was THAT unsympathetic, I would have trouble accomplishing it, and yet.
Ha, as soon as I read your first post I knew you were talking about The Devil’s Arithmetic. She was so annoying! But hey, even annoying assholes didn’t deserve to be killed by the Nazis.
Certainly. No one deserved to be killed by Nazis. Except, perhaps, the Nazis that were killed by other Nazis. Also, surely the Nazis killed some people who were legit bad people, even if they did it for other reasons, so while I’m anti-death penalty, I’m sure there were some murders and rapists here and there that the Nazis killed where I’d feel comfortable making an argument that they “deserved” death, even if I wasn’t entirely convinced of it myself.
I suppose my feeling was not so much that this character deserved death so much as she REALLY didn’t deserve a book.
Ha, I was going to tell that story.
I identify with Rumpelstiltskin too! The woman promised her kid to him, he just wanted her to keep her promise!
It’s not even like he wanted to eat the kid! He just wanted to raise a child, is that so bad??
It’s not like the kid’s real father, who started all this trouble in the first place, would be a better choice.
She should have just married Rumpelstiltskin in the first place, since basically all she wanted was to survive. Given the choice between a king who threatened to kill you for three nights in a row unless you perform a ridiculous, impossible task, and the slightly strange man who saved your life for trinkets, can literally spin straw into gold, and clearly has a strong paternal instinct, I would think the latter would be infinitely preferable
Same with the witch from Rapunzel! She finds some sleazy thief on her property, stealing her shit, and when he whines that he really wants food and can’t go grow his own for some reason she trades it to him. How is it her fault he is spectacularly bad at negotiating? And then later some other sleazy creep tricks her stupid daughter into letting him into the house and impregnates her and can you blame the witch for pushing him out a window?
The character I most identify with in BSG (and according to my friends it makes me wrong and weird, although they agree that we are alike) is Romo Lampkin.
It wouldn’t be weird, except the whole “dead cat in a duffel” thing.
I promise I don’t have that. But I do deeply understand the impulse. And I am slightly insufferable, occasionally manipulative with questionable ethics who somehow weirdly ends up in charge of things.
I think that’s probably because Mark Sheppard is just AMAZING. I LOVE him as King of Hell in Supernatural (although I haven’t watched the most recent season! if there are spoilers that he isn’t anymore, don’t tell me!!) – he just makes the most stupid nonsense awful bullshit seem relatively sensible.
I don’t ID with his Supernatural character (which is great) I do with his Badger on Firefly and his character on Leverage because I am great at being a petty middle-manager who will do anything to save their own butts.
what?? that’s EXACTLY what crowley is tho (we’re talking about crowley right? i mean he is still king of hell but…intermittently, or rather it doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore)
yes i would like a supernatural spinoff webseries that is just crowley and dean getting progressively drunker in bars and i miss the parts of last season where that is literally all that was happening.
Crowley’s got more mommy-issues than me and King of Hell is a little too much responsibility. His character entertains me but if I were to choose a Supernatural character that I over-identify with it would be a toss-up between Bobby and Chuck the Prophet.
um mine would clearly be that weird fangirl who only ever wants to talk about dean and sam gettin smutty wit it? i guess that is my entry on this list. also this may be a doxxy comment if anyone in my grad school class reads the toast but i recently saw “ginger snaps” for the first time and she is in it and i spent the whole movie being like WHO IS THAT GIRL and then i was a teeny bit embarrassed when i figured it out because who watches supernatural
BECKYYYY! Yes! I too freaked out when I saw Ginger Snaps for the first time last year. She is great.
I love Mark Sheppard, but whyyyy the accent!
He already has a great british accent; what idiot looked at him and thought ‘He should be Irish.’ Can Mark Sheppard do an Irish accent? No? Ah who cares, no one will notice.
I NOTICED AND IT RUINED HIS RUN ON THE SHOW.
Benny from Rent. He just wanted his lazy-ass hipster friends to pay rent! That’s not an unreasonable expectation!
The moment you begin identifying with Benny rather than the rest of the cast is the moment you’ve reached adulthood.
At least for me, that moment coincided pretty much with when I started paying rent.
This hurts my heart to admit it’s true.
Yes. I vividly remember the first time the soundtrack came up on my shuffle and I was like “…wow, Benny is actually the least selfish person in this play.” It was an uncomfortable moment for me.
Yes, oh god. I went to see Rent again as a homeowner (after being the most insane Renthead in the universe at 12 years old) and left being like, welp, I got old, I guess.
Jesus yes.
Also everyone from Reality Bites who isn’t Winona/Ethan, because OH MY GOD FUCK ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE.
Even Ethan! It was a difficult day for me when I realized that Winona should really have given Ben Stiller the doofy idiot a chance because Ethan in Reality Bites is THE WOOOOOORRRRRRSSSST. The worst.
My 16 year old heart broke a little that day. And then I went and paid my bills like a responsible adult.
Oh, I meant that I identify with all the other characters a little, but those two are Godawful.
And yeah. Ethan is the worst, but Winona is the demi-worst (stealing from your parents is totes cool if, I don’t know, they’re Establishment?) so I feel like Ben Stiller deserves better too.
Ohmygracious I forgot about how she basically rips off her dad and LAUGHS ABOUT IT.
For God’s sake Elena, look at your life. Your poor sad sack dad was just trying to help you out a little and you stole from him.
(Except also that scene where Elena and Troy get together initially makes my heart race to this day. Stupid adorable losers)
Seriously. And those soulless corporate slavery gigs everyone turned down were stable creative jobs.
“All I want out of life is the opportunity to make movies!”
“Hello yes we will pay you good money to make movies.”
“HOW VERY DARE YOU!!! YOU DON’T DESERVE MY ART YOU NECKTIE-WEARING PIGS (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻”
And the one movie he ended up making was just a three-minute montage!
Would having a stable job REALLY have taken time away from creating that?
He couldn’t have done that on the weekends or nights like the rest of us do?
Yeah, by the end of the musical, here is the entire artistic output produced by the group:
Maureen: 1 lousy, on-the-nose performance art piece
Mark: 1 3-minute video
Roger: 1 song
That took you guys a year?
I can never get over the fact that the song Roger produced is pretty dull and forgettable (at least to me). I don’t have a problem with the fact that he spends two hours singing some very good songs about not being able to write a song; I can suspend my disbelief that much. But I can’t believe that the writers of Rent didn’t go, “Okay, we’ve been building this up from the very first song, we’ve gotta make sure this blows all the other songs away.”
The fact that “One Song, Glory” is so much better than the song he eventually writes is really the Achilles’ heel of Rent.
Ugh, this is the point that my douchebag ex-boyfriend always made, and it kills me to admit that he had any point.
I hated that song he wrote by the end so much.
But One Song, Glory? Ugh, be still my heart.
thisssss. I can absolutely forgive the amount of creative work being tiny, because it has to fit in a stage show. But it so sets that song up for a ‘that was it?’ reaction.
I feel like this is kind of a problem in any show about Artists where the Art is shown, as The Affair is (hilariously) proving right now. (Noah Solloway is THE WORST.)
Well, to be fair, Jonathan Larson died right before the first preview performance off-Broadway. I imagine there would have been some tweaking and re-writes if that hadn’t been the case.
I also have some thoughts about Tom Collins destroying a bunch of expensive equipment and probably a lot of people’s dissertation work at MIT.
ACTUAL REALITY
Maureen had more creative work going on, it was all just TERRIBLE. We see a bit of it before Take Me or Leave Me.
Genuine question: How much is the audience supposed to view “Over the Moon” as schlocky and terrible and how much are we supposed to go “YEAH TELL IT TO THOSE YUPPIE SCUMBAGS”? Because I have always preferred to go with the former interpretation, but I have a sneaking horrible suspicion that we are intended to think the art Maureen does is good…
No no no, it’s okay, they’re supposed to be making terrible art. (Except for “Your Eyes”, which is supposed to be good in-universe.) Maureen and Mark might be making objectively bad art, but they’re doing it their way…and Maureen is okay with selling out if it gets her attention, because she’s the wooooo~oorst!
See also: “Mr. Holland’s Opus”, where Richard Dreyfuss spends decades writing two and half minutes of shitty band music.
And then they killed his dog!!!
okay, I do not condone dog murder but as someone who lives next to a very loud and generally grotesque-looking dog I am willing to give them a pass on that one
Have you read David Rakoff’s essay “Isn’t It Romantic?”, about Rent and making art?
HA! I missed this and just commented to reference the exact same piece! May Rakoff live in my heart 5ever.
God yes. I haven’t read the piece, but I heard the excerpt on the This American Life tribute episode and every time someone starts talking about Rent I want to play it for them and just point to it like “This. This is the truth about Rent.”
No! Now I will! Is it in a book or on the web?
It’s in his book Half-Empty, but pretty widely available on line from This American Life.
LOL I also did not read far enough in my need to post about that.
but what is money when life is so much more???
+1 exploding sparkle heart
Benny’s idiot friends didn’t deserve him, and are generally terrible (I saw “Rent” too late in life, and so I never identified with those assholes.)
You must listen to the clip of David Rakoff talking about Rent! I love how much he hates everyone in it! Especially because he’s like “I’ve known a lot of artists in Brooklyn and all the things we did to get by but guess what, WE PAID OUR FUCKING RENT.” Ugh. so good. (IMISSYOUDAVID)
here for reference: https://soundcloud.com/missjessicadavis/david-rak…
I’ve heard it! It was very validating because up until then all the opinions I had heard were firmly along the lines of “but they are ARTISTS, they do not live by the same rules as us mere mortals” which is so infuriating.
There is a whole essay in his book Half Empty, and an audiobook with the whole thing!
It’s also such a good piece to listen to if you are trying to write but feel like nothing you’re making is very good, because part of the point of his essay: you’re only an artist if you’re making art, but if you sit down and do the work instead of just hanging out, that’s it, you’re an artist.
I always liked this Ira Glass quote about the taste-talent gap that kills a lot of artists’ careers.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
That’s so true! And I think sometimes the only thing that keeps me writing is the one great sentence out of 100 that I read the next day and think, oh, wait, that’s actually good. And then maybe it’s 2/100, or 1/10, and suddenly the work goes from trash to mediocre, and with editing to fine, but then you have a whole piece that’s fine, instead of a piece that makes you want to tear your hair out. I hope.
Sent from my iPhone
I love this a lot. Thanks for posting it; I can always stand to hear it again.
There is a wonderful comic that illustrates this quote that I love so much. Here’s a link: http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-f…
The fact that Ira Glass automatically assumes he has “good taste” and is “interesting” makes me want to punch him even harder than usual.
What are haters going to do, Tay?
And what should we do, Mr. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson?
This is beautiful, thank you.
This reminds me of when middle-school me tried to get my mom to watch Rent with me, and she didn’t make it past the first song (“WE’RE NOT GONNA PAY RENT!”). She and my dad had done the “starving [ballerina/opera singer] artist” thing in their 20s, and she started yelling about how they could at least go temp part-time (that offended my 13 yr. old sensibilities, but I definitely get it now).
I minored in theatre in undergrad and thought very hard about majoring in it too – the one thing that really pushed me away (aside from the part where all my talent lies in the literary arena) was the sheer number of theatre majors at my college who honestly, wholeheartedly, super-identified with Rent. Not ‘thought of it fondly as a show that had an impact when they were younger’ but ‘take it as an aspirational model’.
Because really, I still think of it as being a very teenage thing. It does all seem terribly romantic and such when you’re 13, but surely by the time you’ve started working in theatre or other creative fields, you start feeling a bit more practical. Surely?
Rent was certainly of its time. some things in it still stand, but the “I don’t wanna make art for the MANNNNN” does not, and the creative world has basically stopped biting its thumb at the idea of “selling out.” which I am eternally grateful for, because… student loans, man. gotta get paid.
the era of the side hustle is upon us. I relate to Benny. And Joanne. I love Joanne. she’s a lawyer with a day job, but damn if you’ll be able to make her wear a bra.
Joanne was the BEST! Except for her apparent penchant for terrible girlfriends.
And they could have, I don’t know, tried working at a nonprofit or something.
God I love/was Joanne. Down to the terrible but adorable girlfriends and the loathing of underwires.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: all right-thinking people should identify with Joanne. Benny’s still an ass in many ways, but Joanne’s only failing is falling for Maureen.
Maureen’s thing with the diet coke cow seemed so, so deep when I was in middle school.
It happens to us all!
Rent actually opened on Broadway a few months before I started middle school and the cast recording definitely made its way to my suburban Tennessee school by the middle of the school year. It seemed so deep and edgy at the time but in retrospect, it’d have to have been pretty appealing to a broad audience for it to have made it to us so quickly. That just makes it all a bit more hilarious to me now.
I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.
Like, it’s not “selling out” to get a damn job that allows you to make enough money to also do the art you are ~passionate~ about! Every artist I know has a pays-the-bills side gig! ALL of them!
Also, Benny was going to help FUND your dumb projects, you assholes. Presumably out of the goodness of his heart, because I don’t see you doing anything particularly nice for him.
And if they agreed to not let the crazy lady (yes I know her name is Maureen, but I like my name better) hold her goofy protest, and let the project go through, he was going to let them keep living in their building for FREE.
NEW YORK CITY COSTS MONEY, YOU ASSHOLES. Just visiting makes me feel like my wallet is bleeding. You friend is going to flat out give you a place that even in the ’90s must have been crazy expensive. I have a lot of really good friends, but I don’t think any of them would essentially give me $30k per year out of the goodness of their heart, which is what Benny’s offering.
I am getting worked up now.
I hope Benny’s business plan works out, he deserves so much better. Come to think of it, so does Joanne, so maybe she can handle the legal stuff for him.
Really, if you are highly averse to both paying rent and to doing any work that isn’t entirely self-directed, you might do better to think about a small and economically declining town where at least the rent you don’t want to pay might be proportionate to your income.
Oh my god right?
I’d argue that doesn’t even count as inappropriately identifying with someone. It’s completely appropriate to identify with him.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. Benny is the only one with a plan! He’s right! His poor dog!
I will never get tired of hearing David Rakoff’s rant about Rent.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/ep…
(section 8)
” So when they think the title anthem of the show, “We’re Not Going to Pay This Year’s Rent,” followed by a kind of barked cheer of “rent, rent, rent, rent, rent, rent, rent,” my only question is, well, why aren’t you going to pay this year’s rent?
It seems that they’re not going to pay this year’s rent, because rent is for losers and non-creative types. Rent is for suits. By contrast, they are the last bastion of artistic purity. They have not sold out. And yet their brilliance goes unacknowledged, so fuck you, yuppie scum.
I know what it’s like to feel angry and ignored. I lived in Brooklyn a long time ago about a block away from a prison. During the day, the neighborhood bustled with lawyers, judges, criminals, bail bondsman, private detectives. I lived on a block in a little two-story building that once been a couch house in the 19th century. And the basement had a red dirt floor. On the ground floor below me was an office that did– what, exactly, resumes? I can’t remember.
What I do remember is the man whose office it was. Raul was knee-bucklingly handsome. If my life had been different, like– I don’t know– if I were a hot girl with a driver’s license, I could have put on a tube top and gone outside to wash my car in slow motion or something. But, alas.
Once during the day– it must’ve been the weekend, because I was at home– I could hear Raul having sex in the office downstairs. I skittered around my apartment like a cockroach on a frying pan trying not to make any noise while desperately looking for a knot hole in the crappy floorboards. Eventually, I just lay down flat against the tile of the kitchen floor, listening.
Lying flat against the tile of my kitchen floor, listening to someone else have sex is essentially my 20s in a nutshell. I was robbed in that neighborhood twice. And there were days when it hardly seemed worth it to live in a horrible part of town just so that I could go daily to a stupid, soul-crushing, low-paying job, especially since, as deeply as I yearned to be creative, for years and years I was too scared to even try. So I did nothing. But here’s something that I did do. I paid my fucking rent.”
Okay, I get what everyone is saying. I even agree with most of you. I’ve read all 55 of the comments, I promise.
But.
This wasn’t Benny saying “Hey, guys, maybe, going forward, you guys could pay rent? Let’s talk about what would be fair.”
This was Benny saying “Hey, I know I told you guys you didn’t have to pay rent for the past year, but, actually, no, I need you to give me a year’s worth of rent on a half hour’s notice. Despite the fact that this apartment is so shitty that it’s probably not up to code. I will use this as bargaining power to get one of you to interact with your ex that you are very reasonably low-contact with right now.”
I mean, I suppose that it’s possible that Benny actually has been trying to get these dudes to pay rent for a while and we just don’t see that, but it’s certainly not obvious if that’s what’s been going on.
That part is indeed wrong of Benny. If he wanted to start collecting rent, he should’ve just worked out something for the following year. However, I got the impression that his wife’s family bankrolled the purchase of the building and so I have the feeling that it was a pretty informal agreement that went south partly because the others had a problem with Allison and made it known. And I can’t blame a guy too much for feeling like maybe he’d been taken advantage of by people who’d decided they didn’t want his friendship any more because he’d married into money and moved into business.
Still jerkish behavior, but understandable.
“Do you guys know that play ‘Rent’? Yeah. Like, I don’t understand how they thought they just didn’t need to pay rent, like, at all.” – Broad City (couldn’t find a video/gif but this scene!!)
They don’t owe any rent. He’s only pretending he wants rent to pressure his friend into getting his ex girlfriend to not say anything about his gentrification plans. He told his friends/former roommates they could live there rent free. That’s why he bought the building in the first place!
Nicole please delete this comment
It’s hard to sympathize with a guy who sprung a year’s worth of rent on people having told them they didn’t need to. (They weren’t going to pay rent because they *couldn’t*- he’d done this knowing they couldn’t.) And what about how he tries to slut-shame Mimi in front of everyone she tries to date?
I mean, yes but also he was working with his father in law to gentrify the neighborhood, skyrocket rent prices, and take out a homeless tent city with no plan or inclination towards putting shelter space or any services in the neighborhood anywhere so that they could build a probably over-priced recording studio.
Like, yeah they should have paid their rent? But Benny was also a fucking dick.
I hate all “Which Friends Character Are You” quizzes because they never give me the correct answer: Mr. Heckles
Narnia’s White Witch is this to me.
somewhat in the books.
75% as portrayed by Barbara Kellerman in the 1988 adaptation.
ONE BILLION PERCENT as portrayed by Tilda Swinton in the 2005 films.
the kids were annoying as heck, and she was glamorous and powerful and interesting and motivated. why would I NOT want to be her? plus I have harbored an irrational (rational?) hatred of Jesus Lion my entire life, even when I was a Christian Teen Nerd
Barbara Kellerman played ALL the witches in those adaptations and she does not get enough praise or credit or slavish devotion for doing so, she was pretty much the best part.
holy shit, did she? woah dude.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen those. the only thing I remember about it is being vaguely traumatized by Mr. Beaver, hating the lion, loving the witch, and the way whatshername smallgirl used to gasp, “oh, ASLAN!!!!!” at every juncture.
Lucy’s unfortunate overbite. That’s all I can think of when I see the 1988 movie.
(I am a terrible person)
Yes, I loved that touch! Kid!me was even more scared by her in The Silver Chair than TLTW+TW.
But god I do wish they would do The Magician’s Nephew with Tilda Swinton.
My friend’s toddler identified strongly with Edmund, as she was 100% onboard with the idea of selling your siblings out for candy. I love her so much.
HEY! LISTEN!
you just want to help, is that so wrong?
Richard Papen from The Secret History. I’d probably do the exact same stuff he did. I also identify with many bad guy characters played by handsome British actors in action movies, like Alan Rickman in Die Hard and Gary Oldman in Air Force One.
Aw, Richard wasn’t so bad!
ehhhh Richard was pretty bad.
He does cover up two murders, and even plans to help them commit one. Because he values the picturesque at all costs.
I just like that book, is all.
Good lord, yes. My favorite of the Secret History kids was always Francis (precious, hypochondriac ginger darling), but I cannot deny that I would’ve 500% been Richard if put in that situation.
I can also totally understand Camilla’s love for Henry.
Me too. What I wouldn’t give for some scenes of that and less of Richard moping and having symbolic, drug-fueled nightmares.
I just realized that in the dream, defying-space-and-time casting (in which Philip Seymour Hoffman is Bunny, natch), Francis is totally played by Tom Hiddleston.
I once had a nightmare in which young Gwyneth Paltrow bought the rights to book so that she could play Camilla.
I really need this to be a kdrama though, so that Lee Soo Hyuk can play Francis, Lee Sang Yoon can play the professor, and Shin Sung Rok can play Henry. Actually, now that I think about it, they did kind of make it: White Christmas.
I just want Lee Soo Hyuk in pince nez.
The only thing I would probably not do is freeze half to death in a shed all winter rather than ask ANY of my rich friends if they have a couch to crash on. Jesus, Richard. Swallow your pride before you get frostbite.
I would have at least bought a heater. I feel like having lived in CA is no excuse for not knowing what a heater is.
I am totally 100% Richard, except for when I am 100% Henry. Also, that book was recommended to me by my own mentor (“I loved him more than my own father. I loved him more than anything in the world.”) I’ve never quite gotten up the nerve to ask whether he intended it as a cautionary tale.
I identify with Nurse Ratched. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Samesies.
It helps to remember that Randle Patrick McMurphy, the “hero” of OFOTCN, is a child rapist.
That is a major factor.
HOW DID I NOT REMEMBER THAT?
I identified with Nurse Ratched anyway, but … that seems like a pretty important plot point for me to have completely forgotten.
Honestly, 40 years later it reads like Castration Anxiety: The Movie.
I was genuinely surprised when I watched the movie for the first time, as I thought she was going to be Evil Incarnate. But she really is doing the absolute best she can with the resources and knowledge that she has. She’s such an interesting, incredible character. Here’s my further thoughts: http://letterboxd.com/infamoussphere/film/one-fle…
Oh, hey, I agree with all of your thoughts! The real villain, I think, is a world that doesn’t understand mental illness.
Oh absolutely.
It’s just so packed with misogyny. And for people who only know the movie, it definitely glosses over how McMurphy’s “heroic sacrifice” of an attack on Nurse Ratched is SEXUAL ASSAULT, that the reader is meant to endorse.
Kreia from KOTOR 2: She GETS that the whole Light/Dark binary of the Force and Star Wars good/evil morality in general is bullshit, and her whole narrative can be read as a feminist refutation of the narrow patriarchal ignorance of the Jedi order (totally awesome essay on this here). Plus, she’s droll as fuck.
Meredith from Dragon Age 2: Sure she’s a fascist (and I’m pro-mage-rights all the way), but damn it in the end she was RIGHT about the Kirkwall mages and Orsino and she’s far more sensible than anyone else in that fucked up city. Pity about the red lyrium thing.
Yes, exactly! I’m also pro-mage and despise the Templars, but…….yeah, she was right.
<spoilers for Dragon Age 2>
You see, what I would have done if I were knight-commander would be to uproot the entire Kirkwall Circle and move it somewhere else in the Free Marches. Even if I don’t have the resources to understand why, I’d know from statistics alone that Kirkwall’s definitely haunted and a horrible place for a mage circle.
What I wouldn’t do is oust the viscount in a military coup, install a new weaker viscount as puppet, do nothing to fight increasingly rampant crime and poverty in the city, clamp down on mages to force them into a state of hostility, illegally turn mages Tranquil for minor offenses, craft mysterious and rare and dangerous red lyrium into a sword rather than send it off for study, seize power directly as a despot once my puppet viscount is killed despite the local laws, and send to Val Royeaux for the Right of Annulment so I can murder hundreds of imprisoned mages before the Chantry boom. Meredith was the entire reason Kirkwall was so fucked up.
CO-SIGN
Oh sure, I’m not saying she’s NOT an incredibly ineffective leader who fucks up everything in horrible ways…but I’m forgetting where I was going with this. Oh yeah, at least she doesn’t turn into a Harvester like Orsino! (WTF Orsino.)
She might have been doing it all wrong but at least she was DOING something! She was totally right that there was something especially bad about magic in Kirkwall and it’s not her fault she didn’t know it was because the city was built to be an ancient murder blood rune.
EXACTLY
Yeah, there’s something wrong with magic in Kirkwall, because of the aforementioned ancient murder rune, but I am fairly confident that there is no situation where abusing the magic users under her care is going to do anything but make the situation worse.
YESSSSS, Mary. So. much. Someday, I want to take my breakfast in bed just like her. Also, we could totally bond over our various misadventures.
Also, which Rumpelstiltskin? Like, classic Rumpel or like Once Upon a Time Rumpel? Not gonna lie, my real interest in Once Upon a Time Rumpel is that he’s weirdly attractive.
The stealing things beloved by others reminds me of the great John Mulaney bit about the guy who steals antique photos from parties because they’re “the one thing you can’t replace.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOlaxIbH0o
There’s this one episode of iZombie where a guy kills his neighbor in a drunken rage because he thought said neighbor had killed his dog. My roommate was disturbed by how much I sympathized with the murderer.
Even Liv was sad they caught that particular killer, I think.
yes, but…i couldn’t get past the part where he tried to pin the blame on the neighborhood minority youths.
so i still came down on the “he’s an entitled asshole” side.
The guy did kidnap his dog, though! That was not a nice man!
Also, I feel like there have been a lot of misunderstanding-based murders this season? Like the guy who killed that frat bro because he had the same name as the guy whose drunk driving had killed his dad.
i find Blaine really endearing and i get giggly when he shows up, and considering he kills teenagers (and his own grandpa)…i’m really questioning my choices in life
i think they misstepped by making him too spike-esque, he’s much more lovable than he has any right to be
Mine are Paris and Emily from Gilmore Girls. The more exquisitely horrible they’re being, the more I want to be them.
okay, but Emily is the most rational Gilmore woman 1000%. That’s just the truth. And Paris knows what she wants and she’s not willing to compromise. I admire her for it.
Rewatched the first few GG episodes recently and was completely full of love, admiration, and sympathy for Paris and Emily. Those women were magnificent.
I was just coming here to say Paris. Her life was super stressful and kind of sucky but she could legit do pretty much everything better than everyone else.
i want to feel this way about paris but she’s SUCH a bitch to people. though at least she owns it unlike smarmy whinebeast rory who is never responsible for anything
Oh, man, I will never forgive Peter Jackson for fucking up Denethor and turning him into a secondary antagonist when Tolkien is utterly clear that he’s the yardstick by which Aragorn is to be measured, and that he is the only man in Gondor, if not the damn world, who could’ve held his shit together while Sauron is literally trying to melt his brain and will into oatmeal with the palantir. The text is explicit! He’s the only one with the chutzpah and grit! Denethor digs in and holds the whole damn country together for nearly 50 years despite outright genocidal war banging on his front gate to come in. But no, Jackson gives us Aragorn as ultimate hero, ignores the text, ignores how Aragorn deserted the Gondorian army when he and Denethor were serving together as young men (because Aragorn is just a hotter octogenarian), and the whole thing is a propaganda piece to prop up Aragon’s crappy claim to the throne that previous Stewards hundreds of years ago already declared invalid. Aragorn waltzing in and claiming Gondor as Isildur’s heir is the same as some shmuck claiming Egypt because he’s Ramses’ heir. The distance from both the lineage and the rule is thousands of years! But he’s the protagonist and divine right of kings and aaaargh.
In conclusion: Denethor for Steward, 3018, because who wants a scruffy ranger with no government experience for king?
I completely agree (see my comment above) that Aragorn’s claim to the throne is nuts, but that’s all Tolkien, not Jackson. I’ll give you that Jackson makes Denethor much nuttier and frailer than he is in the books, but it’s weird to lay the valorization of Aragorn at Jackson’s feet and claim it’s a betrayal of the text when the book absolutely portrays Aragorn as the True and Rightful King of Gondor and Arnor. He even has healing hands like some batty old Stuart!
In the appendix, however, Tolkien basically admits that Aragorn’s bid for kingship is totally useless. It’s just because he’s “supposed” to be king that it works. But by having Denethor be just as noble, just as competent, just as functional as Aragorn, the text doesn’t allow Aragorn’s kingship to be a sure thing — it allows for him to come into it because Denethor gives up and Aragorn takes up the mantel of leadership (with support from Imrahil for reasons, IDEK). In the film, though, because you get Batshit!Denethor from jump, there’s never any tension or any sense that Aragorn might not have a valid claim — he’s got the only valid claim because there’s nobody else competent around! That’s what I mean by Jackson creates this propaganda piece, and that’s the betrayal of the book — he won’t allow for any of the tension Tolkien lays out. He makes Aragorn the only dependable person in the room, and he does the thing where Aragorn deserves to be king because he doesn’t actually want to be a king in the first place. Denethor’s grip on power becomes a symptom of his madness and a reason why he deserves to be deposed, a sign of the corruption of the Stewardship when Tolkien never intended that at all. Jackson has real issues with people who believe they have the right and ability to rule, and treats that certainty as a problem. His heroes are people who don’t want to be heroes, almost to a one, no matter how the text reads.
[applause emoji]
But I find that if you going to play the divine right/ancestral blood will out card, it’s not fair to make everyone else *also* suck just because th don’t have the right parents
I love the Denethor Society that has sprung up around this post.
I may have met my husband because of our mutual love for Denethor. This is either the best thing to build a relationship upon or the absolute worst, but hey, five years out and no dying of sea-longing or whatever, so.
I have actually identified with Jenny Schecter more than once and I am sorry to admit it like this.
(all other characters I’ve inappropriately identified with that I can come up with right now are boring and therefore not worth mentioning)
I am trying to decide, like, if you’re going to identify with Jenny Schechter, is it worse to identify with her
A) in the early seasons, when the writers still thought they needed a “straight girl falls for woman and discovers the queer world” character for the straight audience
B) later seasons when they’d realised their audience was basically 120% queer and everyone hated Jenny so they just made her more and more awful?
(The bit where Jenny writes “fuck you!” on her body because she’s realised that the creepy housemate has stuck cameras everywhere is amazing, though.)
i know we have already covered this, but Miranda Priestly, 100%.
She just needs people to DO THEIR JOBS.
“By all means, move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me”
^^^ me in 90% of situations
God, me too. I moved to NYC because everything was allegedly faster-paced than my sleepy college town in NC. Why does everyone walk so goddamn slow??! I mean, I know I’m a speedwalking freak, but people in business suits walking to the subway have ZERO excuse.
fuck slow walkers
doubly fuck them when they’re walking 4 abreast on a sidewalk
triply so when they’re walking 4 abreast and can’t reorganize into an organized single fucking file line when they see oncoming pedestrian traffic.
OMG bad sidewalk etiquette KILLS me.
This is one of those things that reliably sends me into a seething rage. MOVE. OVER.
Also the “I’m hearing this and I want to hear this” little hand thing she does when she wants everyone to stop talking.
YES YES YES
I feel like anyone who has ever had to manage a team of people identifies with Miranda Priestly at least a little.
oh so you do in fact know my life
100%
I cannot wait for the day I can make people do their jobs just by looking at them.
DO YOUR FUCKING JOB LIKE I NEED YOU TO. Ingrate.
We are all Gaius Baltar
I wonder what it says about me that I identify with Peggy Blumquist. Especially in this week’s episode.
Peggy is the first character I thought of when I saw the headline.
After this week, I’m pretty concerned.
I just want to know the reasoning behind most of these
Nobody else has mentioned Mary Bennet yet? Or would that be a cliche?
(Seriously, I feel so protective of the three youngest Bennets who get, like, zero good parenting. And I secretly hope that Mary moves in with Anne de Bourgh and they can just be quiet and boring and happy together like the Ladies of Llangollen, free from the mothers who either ignored them or ceaselessly talked up virtues they obviously didn’t have.)
Also, how could I forget about Percy Weasley? Middle child who longed for order and prosperity and respect after a childhood of chaos and poverty and always being teased?
I was just thinking Caroline Bingley actually!!
I am forever and always here for Caroline Bingley in all her prickly glory.
There’s a pretty good book about Caroline Bingley by Jennifer Becton, called, unsurprisingly, “Caroline Bingley: A Continuation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.” She also wrote a book about Charlotte Lucas (“Charlotte Lucas: [ditto]”). It’s satisfying to see those characters get happy endings.
I loved both of those books! But somehow there is still the hunger for more. I think it’s because I got so sick of my classmates slamming those characters during high school English class that now I just want them to have a million happy endings each.
And Blanche from “Jane Eyre”- she’s just trying to get a well-to-do husband, which is the Leaning In of upper-class pretty girls in her time.
yes.
Also Mrs. Bennet, who is just trying to get good husbands for her daughters notwithstanding her husband’s naked contempt for her and refusal to do anything but the bare minimum to provide for his family.
Pretty sure Mallory’s with you on this, based on Texts from Jane Eyre
I wrote a whole Toast comment way back when about how Mrs. Bennet was just doing her best in a shitty situation and Mr. Bennet was the true villain of P&P. I’ll see if I can find it.
Anyone else identify with Mary? Goody goody who shows off too much oh middle school me I’m looking at you.
Also Basil from Dorian Gray, evil Willow Rosenberg, Dr. Horrible, Heinrich from a little night music, Jem Finch (it should be Scout), and Aaron Burr (from the musical, not real life)
evil Willow Rosenberg
I said to my partner just this evening, “you know how Dark Willow plans to destroy the world because she feels so bad about the amount of suffering? I can identify a lot with that. Is that normal?” He looked horrified.
DARK WILLOW YES.
Someone wrote a fantastic modern Pride and Prejudice fic with Mary Bennet as the lead that made me realize exactly how much I would be her if I were one of the P&P sisters. I’ve linked to it before, I think, but I will evangelize it forever: I’ll Write You Harmony in C
Oooh!
And is Col. Fitzwilliam the hero? He and the low-key, kind, sensible Grandisons are the unsung heroes of P & P.
He’s one of the love interests! She also borrows from some other Austen novels to supply more characters. 🙂
“it’s hard to distrust someone who looks like he cuddles puppies when he’s not kissing orphans”= Crispin Bonham Carter IN A NUTSHELL. And now he’s a schoolteacher because he’s too sweet and unselfish to be an actor (I am an actor when I’m not being a librarian so I can say this.)
that is AMAZING where did you find it and how can I get more?
And Lydia, too- rejecting the double standard of acceptable sexual behavior and running off on a probably-poorly-conceived-but-nonetheless-appealing adventure!
And she’s a child and nobody’s worried about *her*, they’re worried about how she’ll affect their reps. Lydia is making a gesture towards life in a very stuffy and circumscribed world.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries recognizes the awesomeness which is Lydia!!!
PERCY IS MINE. PERCY IS SO MINE AND NO ONE EVER GETS IT. Percy does everything right because he thinks that’s the road to love and yet he’s always playing second fiddle to Eldest McFangearrings and Dragon Boy and the Dread Twins of Chaos. And if I wrote the books he would have reconciled with his family a lot sooner because REALISM; I think she withheld it for maximum effect, but in my version, Percy’s spying for the Order as early as Half-Blood Prince.
He does want to reconcile earlier, but with the family being watched it takes him a long time to safely make contact. In the meantime he is using his status as “the good one” to gather Intel.
You *know* he protected his half-blood ex-girlfriend. He “lost” her file.
Yes on Mary, especially because I feel like that so would have been me. Sorry I’m not naturally effervescent enough and hide my massive anxiety with learnings. (I was not as blown away by Longbourn as a lot of people seem to have been, but the portrayal of Mary with regards to Mr. Collins definitely got to me.)
I would most certainly be Mary, and I thought the book treated her rather shabbily. Sure, she can be a bit silly, but she’s all of 18 or 19 years old and mostly just seems to want to be left alone to be herself.
I read a lovely fan fic about Anne de Bourgh awhile back where she slowly managed to ease away from her terrible, gaslighting mother and set up her own life. I hadn’t quite noticed in my reading of the book that someone who talks constantly about her adult daughter’s ill health might have some motives for wanting to think her child helpless and weak.
100% would read Mary Bennet/Anne de Bourgh. (How did I not know I wanted that?)
Have you read this one? http://archiveofourown.org/works/4230141
As I’ve gotten older, I can more and more see the Grinch’s side in the Dr. Seuss story. Of course, I don’t condone breaking-and-entering and burglary, but I can understand the frustration of dealing with noisy, noisy neighbors. :p
of definitely yes – that is a running joke at our house, and my husband has a Grinch hat for the season, to forestall any greeting whatsoever!
Diane from Cheers.
Anyone who tries to kill MacGuyver.
Oh, yeah, I definitely identify with Diane more than any other character from that show.
I hate MacGuyver so much. He is such a little jerk. I too love anyone who tries to kill him or thwart his plans.
Plus Murdoch is hot as fuck. I had a years long crush on Michael desBarres from that role alone.
Have always wanted to be Carla. Have always been Diane.
My girlfriend said I would identify most with Groves on the first season of “Oz” before we started watching. I was annoyed to find out that a) it was the character that eats his parents and b) she was absolutely right.
voldemort, but not any of his sad-orphan stuff, ONLY his desire to make horcruxes and the execution thereof.
all mine are humans though.
Oh my god that’s brilliant.
“Lol in order to kill me you have to murder seven innocent children. Good luck, heroes!”
Can I be your Dragon. I excel at leveling withering glares at bumbling fools and working behind the scenes to make sure things get done.
yes, nice to meet you. our aims and temperaments seem compatible.
(but full disclosure: none of my human horcruxes are what you’d call “innocent.” still totally human though, so.)
mine’s Angus Filch the squib. to not only lack magical powers but to be janitor at a wizard school? what a sad bastard
oh godddd, yeah, i could never really hate filch. (i could never hate a man who loves his cat that much.) but the squib thing and the janitor thing. you can clean things up with MAGIC, GUYS. let him be an accountant or something.
I just rewatched Chamber of Secrets and got SO UPSET when his cat was petrified that I too would have murdered Harry Potter just for being present at the scene
The cat’s the only one who needs him for any actual reason!
I know he’s not evil, but I identified with Neville Longbottom from book 1, and when he became a hero I took it as a personal triumph.
Me too!!!!
Oh yeah. Also his becoming hot. 🙂
I do love how amazingly that played out in the casting.
I have never been more proud of my talent-spotting as when Neville grew into his potential.
I completely identified with him from the very beginning, and was as proud of him by the end as if he were me.
Neville was my favorite, too, although I don’t identify with him (I don’t really identify with anyone in the HP books except maybe McGonagall). Anyway, I have a collection of Neville posts going up on my Tumblr at 9am CST on December 22 if you want to check it out. Neville-fans unite!
The two step sisters from Cinderella. Yeah, I get it. Cinderella is hot shit and all that, but as an ugly kid I REALLY wanted the ugly stepsisters to trick the Prince into marrying one of them and he’d fall in love anyway and they would live happily ever after
Is anyone into iZombie? Blaine is the evil guy who pretty much murders his own grandpa as well as orphaned teens for money and yet… his eyes TWINKLE and he’s so endearing
also the lady from the Roald Dahl short story who kills her husband, pops his body parts in the oven and feeds ’em to the cops? i really needed her to not get caught and i was so happy she didn’t (help me???)
Blaine is so evil, but he is so much fun to watch.
He’s incredibly charming. Him singing Danny Boy and flirting with Peyton two eps back really helped me understand my attraction to him.
that Roald Dahl lady! I had forgotten about that story til just now. She is definitely a hero. She’s so clever!
Deliciously enough, the Roald Dahl story is called Lamb to the Slaughter! It’s actually not the husband’s body parts, it’s the leg of lamb with which she has hit her husband over the head, killing him.
ah my bad!
Final line is something like the cop licking his fingers, wondering where the murder weapon is, and saying “I bet it’s right under our noses…”.
Heh.
I like your version though, it ramps up the gruesomeness by a significant amount.
what does it say about me that i’ve cannibalized a story i read when i was 11 years old
I love that story. She’s such a sympathetic murderer. (She didn’t plan to do it! It just happened! And her awful husband totally had it coming. And then she rallied and came up with the perfect way to hide the evidence and pass it off as someone else’s crime.)
I actively rooted for Sark to outwit Sydney in Alias, so I have been on the David Anders twinkly snarky train for a decade.
By season 3 I was definitely rooting for Sark over literally anyone else on that show. DAMN YOU ABRHAMS!!!
Me, too! I’ve never told anyone that before.
I have always identified with the sisters from Cinderella because I grew size 10 feet as a 10 year old and have never had super cute, well-fitting shoes. :'(
Tell me about it, my big-footed friend.
Same here. I have bought too-small cute shoes and explained it as “when I am queen, I will have no need to walk!”. Screw Cinderella and her little rat feet.
One of the many reasons the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella rules is Stepsister’s Lament, which is vindication I never knew I wanted. “WHY can’t a fella ever once prefer a girl who’s merely me?”
Oh why would a fellow want a girl like her,
A girl who’s merely lovely?
Why can’t a fellow ever once prefer
A girl who’s merely me?!
See, to me it seems TOTALLY REASONABLE to complain about a dude ignoring all his party guests in favor of some random hot girl he just met five minutes ago.
The step-sisters and the prince. I can get behind that, that is an OT3 fanfic waiting to happen.
The girl in the first Hunger Games movie who starts a nice cozy fire and is immediately slaughtered.
I just couldn’t like Peeta at all after that.
HAHAHA, YEP. I made her a teaching moment in one of my classes, because you think she died because she’s an idiot who is unfit to survive in this meritocratic arena, but actually she was a child murdered by an authoritarian regime. A COLD CHILD.
Like the Little Match Girl but even worse.
You CANNOT tell us you identified with Jenny for one minute and not tell us what that minute was
Having a dog killed to get back at someone for writing a bad review of her book
Like I’d never do that, obviously, but I identified with her massive overreaction to criticism and scorched-earth policy
I just smiled so big, Mallory, oh my god
NAVI IS SO LOVABLE THOUGH?
*runs and hides*
Forever baffled and ashamed by my deep, spiritual connection to horrible Doestoevsky characters. Raskolnikov, Dmitri Karamazov, Golyadkin, I FEEL YOU (murdery stuff notwithstanding). My screen name is only a desperate act of self-deception.
Dmitri isn’t that horrible – certainly not compared to his father or the fourth brother whose name I have forgotten that starts with S and is illegitimate.
I never thought so, but I’ve met other readers who loathe him. Smerdyakov is definitely the worst, but what if I have just a tiny bit of empathy for him too…???
(PS: Even more baffled and ashamed by my now-incorrectable misspelling of “Dostoevsky”…)
Although Ivan though, the whole I’m rich and tormented schtick always makes me roll my eyes.
I feel like there is an argument for each Brother Karamazov (with the obvious exception of Alyosha) to be The Worst. I personally identified waaaaayyy to much with Katya when I first read that book, and honestly I still kind of do.
AWW, MY PASSIONATE MITYA. I also identified with him the most.
That’s okay, mine was Svidragailov from Crime and Punishment. And also Iago from Othello. Villians who do spiteful things in their last scenes, even though they know they’ve lost… yep. I see it.
Mary is a boss, worry if you DON’T identify with her. (I’m not caught up on Downton, but if Mary’s done something particularly egregious lately, that changes nothing.)
Jenny Schecter. *whispers* I knew it.
Recently finished watching Silicon Valley and I painfully identify with Big Head. That mixture of incompetence, anxiety and clueless enthusiasm.
*also a tiny bit with Jared when he gets excited about watching birds hatch
As a business side person in a tech company, I identify with Jared a lot. When he got them to work with scrum, my tiny heart swelled.
Jared is my heart.
Rumpelstiltskin is fine. He’s not really evil – he’s just playing by goblin/fairy rules, so the exchange of children for services would be fine with him (ALSO wasn’t medieval europe pretty OK with the exchange-of-children-for-material-gain? I mean that’s basically marriage and apprenticeship right?). In fact it’s actually weirdly legit. Most fairies just take kids without asking.
IN FACT a quick wikipedia-ing establishes that he was extremely above board. The miller’s daughter knew the bargain he was offering and she accepted it, and then tried to renege on her deal. True he’s exploiting an unequal power arrangement, but it’s not Stilty’s fault the king of this weird country is into abducting random peasants on the basis of rumour. He’s not a moral capitalist, but he is at least a legalistic one. Like, still a villain, but a comparatively minor one compared to the insane tyrant apparently in charge of this damn place.
Stilty: A++++++
Rumpelstilktskin is not, in fact, fine. Under modern law, his contract would be completely unenforceable because of unconscionability – that is, the terms are “so extremely unjust, or overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of the party who has the superior bargaining power, that they are contrary to good conscience.” (Thank you, Wiki!) All these fairies and goblins are shit at contract law and any third rate lawyer could kick their asses. Go back to law school, Tinkerbell!
(I guess contract law is one of the things I am super-passionate about now? IDK)
Of course, that’s modern law, but even in Ye Olden Times that shit would have been pretty hinkey. Like, “I want to marry/teach your child how to make shoes” is one thing, but “I just really need a newborn baby for reasons also I won’t tell you my name” is weird.
My two year old makes me watch Beauty and the Beast 1-2 times a day but as far as he’s concerned it should be “Gaston and the Beast” — I usually have to run it back several times so he can perform along with Gaston’s song. I…am a little afraid what this says about his future.
he will become a friend of the dash toast and be spared in the revolutionn
At least he’ll be strong, right?
HOLD THE FUCK UP are we not supposed to identify with Mary?
Oh, man, I will never forgive Peter Jackson for fucking up Denethor and turning him into a secondary antagonist when Tolkien is utterly clear that he’s the yardstick by which Aragorn is to be measured, and that he is the only man in Gondor, if not the damn world, who could’ve held his shit together while Sauron is literally trying to melt his brain and will into oatmeal with the palantir. The text is explicit! He’s the only one with the chutzpah and grit! Denethor digs in and holds the whole damn country together for nearly 50 years despite outright genocidal war banging on his front gate to come in. But no, Jackson gives us Aragorn as ultimate hero, ignores the text, ignores how Aragorn deserted the Gondorian army when he and Denethor were serving together as young men (because Aragorn is just a hotter octogenarian), and the whole thing is a propaganda piece to prop up Aragon’s crappy claim to the throne that previous Stewards hundreds of years ago already declared invalid. Aragorn waltzing in and claiming Gondor as Isildur’s heir is the same as some shmuck claiming Egypt because he’s Ramses’ heir. The distance from both the lineage and the rule is thousands of years! But he’s the protagonist and divine right of kings and aaaargh.
Louis in Angels in America!!! Neurotic and over-educated and talks too much and scared of illness – what’s NOT to identify with!!??
I identify with Joe Pitt a lot and I cry when he sheds his skin and I am very aware that Kushner does not think I need even the suggestion of a happy ending
I saw both parts on Broadway (most of the original cast), and it SLAYED me, but my classmates had to explain to me that Joe and Louis were “villains.”
LOUIS. All the worst people in Angels In America make so much internal sense, it just kills me.
Emma Bovary. Dude, who _doesn’t_ want to have a candlelight wedding at midnight?
She lost me with the spending money she didn’t have on her lover, but otherwise? Emma all the way.
When I read that book at 14, I hated her. When I got older, I hated everyone *but* her.
Tom from Tom and Jerry
YES. He is a good cat doing what cats are supposed to do.
and let’s face it Jerry is an evil little piece of shit
And Sylvester and the Coyote from Looney Tunes, for the same reasons.
On a related note, Wile E. Coyote. Road Runner is a jerk and deserves to get caught.
Was coming here to post this…
SAME
It’s not really the same? But in the last 3 years I’ve started to identify SIGNIFICANTLY more with Angela’s mom on My So-Called Life… I think this is what real adulthood is.
SHE’S TRYING SO HARD JUST THROW HER A BONE, ANGELA.
Also her husband is the WORST.
That episode where he’s on the verge of having an affair with someone who makes him feel fresher and younger just *wrecks* me. It’s not her fault that she’s human and subject to aging! It’s not her fault that the things he used to value in her aren’t as important to him now.
I have a lot of feelings about this at the moment.
YES. also isn’t he mad that she’s succeeding at her career and making more money than him??
Yes. Shiny potential love interest is considerably more tentative and early-career than Angela’s mom. So Angela’s dad gets to simultaneously feel like a co-conspirator, mentor, colleague, and person whom a younger woman is interested in, without the actual pressure of *having and maintaining* a business that’s still in the happy fun-times fantasy stages.
I need to stop, or I’m going to make myself cry.
I was kind of rooting for a divorce. ANGELA’S MOM DESERVES BETTER.
I was not rooting for a divorce, because I didn’t get the sense that she wanted one, at all. I was rooting for him to remember how awesome she is, and how exciting he used to find her ambition, and maybe to realize that he’s being hurtful and could stop doing that.
Of course I am in a LTR with someone who has been bored, for the last couple of years, with the very things that used to make them think I was a perfect cinnamon roll, so I could be projecting.
Has anyone noticed how much Angela’s mom looks like Djuna Barnes and vice versa?
I’m starting to identify with Helen Morgandorffer.
Helen Morgandorffer was already pretty awesome back when I was about the same age as Daria. Smart, tough, a dedicated parent, great hair and clothes… what’s not to like?
This is happening to me as I go back to a novel I first conceived of at age 19. . .all of a sudden my deus ex machina adults are goddamned people with their own inner lives.
Carlotta in Phantom of the Opera. The older I get the less Phantom is about a chorus girl torn between two lovers, one ~~romantic~~ and one ~~troubled~~, and the more it is about a woman who loses her talent, her career and her family to a bunch of dudes and their machinations.
omg. I never thought of this, but totally. And she was brave! She did not give into terroristic demands!
In the original book, it’s much clearer that the Phantom is an insane obsessed stalker. Too bad Carlotta and Christine couldn’t have teamed up because all of the men in that book were trash. Erik was insane, and the managers were clueless and Raoul is supposed to be a dumb horror movie victim but somehow lives?
“Little girl, he wrote me that FEELINGSOPERA a long time ago.”
“What? We have a special bond! He is the Angel of Music embodying the spirit of my dead father!”
“He did a cold read of you when you entered the Opera House on the first day.”
“He showed me things I’ve never seen before! He made me feel things I’ve never felt before! I’m so torn!”
“Prosthetics. My, you are really an innocent!”
Thank you – I came in to post that. Sure she’s a diva – in the 19th century opera was one of the very, very few places a smart and talented woman could flourish, and playing the diva is what you were supposed to do. If you didn’t cultivate a huge personality you were nobody. Sad little Christine who is only pulled out of the chorus because she’s cute and just sort of lets men use her is hardly anyone to sympathize with. Carlotta is pretty much the only thing I like about “Phantom of the Opera”.
And as for opera characters: The Queen of the Night.
They took her daughter— I’d be throwing opera-sized tantrums, too.
(Granted, she herself has a tendency to barter Pamina like candy, but hey, nobody is a perfect mother.)
Magneto as played by Michael Fassbender. Humans ARE terrible and annoying, and who hasn’t wanted to escalate all situations to murder really quickly?
David 8, also as played by Michael Fassbender. I seem to have a thing for unacceptably blond androids.
YES. he’s like a space Hannibal Lecter. He just wants to see what happens!!!
He’s SO DUMB, though. Like, in Days of Future Past, he’s SO CLOSE to a great plan, namely to have the Sentinels (which he can control, through magnetic superpowers) attack non-mutant humans, which would have gotten them decommissioned stat. But no, instead he has to lift a stadium to make his grand point, making it so so easy for the government to continue their anti-mutant propaganda.
/rant
I honestly never pay attentive to his plans because I am being distracted by his hotness, but you make a very good point.
HE’S JUST TRYING TO IMPRESS HIS BOYFRIEND CHARLES.
Well how about they go make out (preferably somewhere I can see them) and I’ll take charge of pro-mutant propaganda. Let’s just say I have IDEAS about how seduce the world to the mutant cause. I’ll be their Eli Gold, basically.
I’m pretty sure his power relies on being a MASSIVE DRAMA QUEEN. If he can’t be ridiculously flashy while throwing metal around, it just won’t work.
Controlling Sentinels is insufficiently flashy.
Um, Magneto always and forever, in every incarnation. From the time I was a little kid, which, looking back, is pretty disturbing.
Also Agent Smith in The Matrix. “This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. ”
I particularly identified with him whenever having to clean up vomit, feces, mucus, God, so many other things, from the various children and animals I’ve had to take care of. Cat litter might be the worst.
I found him killing Nazis in First Class extremely appealing, would watch an entire film of hot young Magneto just tooling around in Argentina killing Nazis.
Glen Weldon of Pop Culture Happy Hour said there should be a spinoff called Hot Magneto: Nazi Hunter and I’ve never wanted anything more.
My main takeaway from “Fury Road” was that being a War Boy looks INCREDIBLY FUN and I (fairly sedentary, always use my turn signal) left the theater each time I saw it wanting to HIT THE GYM, GET SWOLE, and KILL SOMEONE WITH MY CAR
all that to say, Mallory, I would follow you to Valhalla, shiny and chrome
Edgar the butler in Aristocats. Madame Adelaide couldn’t at least leave him half?
Oh no no. He would have had it all *after they passed.* Had he taken care of those delightful kittens for a cat’s natural lifespan, he would have had it all (and in that time as guardian he would have been master of the house). No quarter for Edgar.
The two dogs in Aristocats! Why are they in that field!? Do they have no home?!
This is so not the point, but I always identified with like, debonair potentially-morally-questionable male characters, which now as a young woman bothers me. My big ones as a kid were Robin Hood and Wesley from the Princess Bride. Also (since I just made my partner watch both of these movies) Dmitri in Anastasia (but sure, also Anastasia) and both Tulio and Miguel in The Road to El Dorado…
don’t you dare say anything bad about miguel or tulio
oh no, of course not! I love them! Somehow I can still quote them too which I did extensively two days ago 😉
just saying, like, I identified(identify?) with them while simultaneously knowing I wasn’t really meant to and it was uncomfortable
there were not nearly enough debonair, morally-questionable woman characters who got to go on fun adventures, in cool boots and wielding a dagger, in kid-movies. Relating to those boys is inevitable :/
I am hard pressed to think of ANY, but if anyone has any recommendations…
We were just talking about Pippie Longstocking. Maybe not debonair, but everything else, yes.
Yes! I have a deep and abiding love of Robin Hood, but whenever I’d imagine Robin Hood as a child (teen, etc) I basically imagined being a female Robin Hood. And there’s a cute guy there too obviously, but mainly I was the real Robin Hood.
I get really happy whenever leggings and tunics come around in the fashion world, because that means I can look like a fashionable person, but really I’m just living into my childhood dream of wanting to be Robin Hood.
Samesies! I definitely attempted to write a Robin Hood where Robin Hood is a girl story when I was in middle school or high school.
Dmitri can GET IT.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dianabruk/ways-dimitri-fr…
I was just talking about this on Twitter the other day. I always ALWAYS forget that his voice was John Cusack.
I really really strongly identify with Jessica Jones, but that’s probably not that uncommon.
I was telling Mallory I actually identify a lot with Trish and Malcolm, actually. I do kind of ID with Jessica, but not as strongly.
I think it’s the alcohol+withering “don’t fuck with me vibe”+anger combo that makes me go “Girl we are sisters.” But with less major trauma on my part.
Cersei Lannister. Michaela from HTGAWM. I think my common thread here is “control issues” maybe?
cersei x 1000
Cersei is the perfect example of how maddening being an ambitious woman in a patriarchal society can be.
Lena Headey as Cersei is a gift that neither the show nor we the world will ever truly deserve.
Cersei in the books is terrible most of the way through, but Lena Heady is an amazing actress.
Shouldn’t Mr. Burns be on this list? Please explain.
*whispers* Marc Maron (I feel obliged to dislike him but I find him very lovable)
Marc Maron is so great tho he speaks to me on a spiritual level
Yes very much so
Is it perhaps telling that I have identified with Voldemort on more than one occasion?
as long as it wasn’t Umbridge it’s totally cool
All we have in common is our love of kittens. (I look awful in pink.)
i love when dumbles is like “tom riddle loved being at hogwarts so much that he wanted it to be his home forever and he would’ve done anything to stay” and harry is like ………………………oops and the elephant in the room is usually me being like UM, POTS AND KETTLES, DEAR ALBUS
Mine are Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Amy in Gone Girl.
I am very-pro-Amy (okay, I love any character who shares a name with me). She had a solid plan. Nick is the worst. I swear-to-god didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to like her/ be rooting for her until I had a convo about the book with some friends. Amy is who I could be.
The only thing I don’t get about Amy is why she would go back to Nick. Let the dude hang.
For the power-gloat! She can make him her slave and torture him more. And then finally do away with him in an especially cutting way. He’s a liability if he’s not under her power.
I WANT to be more like Amy. At least I’m self-aware enough to know I’m not?
Seriously, after reading that book I thought “okay, i need to up my organization game by …. a lot”
This is why I love Gone Girl. 90% of the women I know who saw that movie were like “Yes obviously she’s a murderous psychopath…buuuuuuut she kinda has a point?”
Agree on Amy. One of those things I feel like I can’t really tell most people, but I was like “Yes! She figured out how to actually DO something about her partner being a massive douchecanoe, while most of us just have to deal and be sad when that shit happens.”
Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias from Watchmen.
…Yeah.
Oh, yep. Yep. I get that.
I mean, even aside from the Grand Plot, can you blame him for killing the Comedian?
Killing the Comedian was a goddamn public service. And I definitely have a super-villain-y side that says, yes, the grand peace plan would work. (it obviously wouldn’t it’d fall apart in ten minutes so dumb but still)
ALL OF THE THINGS above. Plus what’s not to love about purple/gold and cats and ancient Egypt and having your shit terribly together?
I remember someone making a meme saying that him killing the Comedian wasn’t about the Comedian being a dick, or the danger he posed to Veidt’s plan; but because the Comedian burns his map, and the pettiness of it just worked for me as a headcanon, and frankly, made me love Adrian.
When I saw Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet this year I found myself – for the first time ever [even though I’ve seen various versions over the years and studied it at university] – sympathising with Claudius. Claudius!!
I just kept thinking ‘Yeah, wow, you don’t want a mad Prince going round killing old men willy nilly’.
And I felt like I was cheating on Hamlet. [And he was **Cumberbatch** for Christ’s sake!!]
Goes to show what a good job Ciarán Hinds did!
So I was reading your comment and going “really? wat? Really? seriously? ….Oh Ciaran Hinds, well that explains it”.
I have to say I didn’t immediately hate Claudius nearly as much, which probably attests to the same thing. I wouldn’t say I sympathized, but I understand. Then again, I was pretty distracted by how utterly amazing Cumberbatch was (IMO, and probably many others).
Wow, ok, I just realized who that was. I knew he seemed familiar and that I should know who Ciaran Hinds is but it just now clicked…Caesar!!! No wonder.
I’ve always identified with Gertrude.
I think I got that when I saw at least clips from the David Tennant/Patrick Stewart version. And I like David Tennant a lot more than Benedict Cumberbatch (reason 517 I am a traitor to my generation).
what did you think of the production? I had such mixed feelings about Cumberbatch’s performance. But The Ophelia was wonderful, as was Claudius!
I liked that they gave Ophelia a personality, and Gertrude more of one too!
I frequently find myself thinking that Claudius is making a sensible argument when I read Hamlet. People’s dads do die! It is sad but survivable!
Oh, and Laertes. Going along with the king’s plan to kill Hamlet was the only way to get justice for her father’s murder, what’s not to be sympathetic about?
I … I identify with Edith. 🙁
Oh, me too. I hate Mary.
Ugh yeah, I am pro Edith. She has no luck, and Mary is just there dating a million men and going “oh, I can’t decide.’ Meanwhile Edith can’t even marry an old dude. Also, Mary did nothing during the war whereas Edith actually got off her arse and learned some skills. And how come Mary gets a happy ending and not Edith – with that rando marriage episode – it’s like Julian Fellowes is just pointlessly mean or something.
Any Disney villain, honestly. They get to be flamboyant and they don’t give a f-ck about how others see them. Ursula is probably a very good representation of a majority of the Toast commentariat, when you think about it.
Ursula for sure.
so the “Dirtbag Mallory Ortberg” post is forthcoming, then?
also, for me: Scar, Captain Hook (cartoon some, Dustin Hoffman THE MOST), and the creepy candy kidnapper in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
I also identify with the Kid Catcher, and desperately want Noel Fielding to go back in time and play that role
you have given me An Intense Wanting!!!!!
(also thank you for knowing the character’s proper title, I already had to google to make sure I was remembering the right actor for Hook, and I was too ashamed to google something else for the same comment)
<pedant> Isn’t the proper name of the character the Child Catcher? </pedant>
Wait, aren’t most Mallory Ortberg posts Dirtbag Mallory Ortberg posts?
Did I hallucinate this, or was there a period of time on the ‘Pin where Mallory did something so terrible that she had to change her username and all of her bylines to Evil Mallelis?
I thought evil melis was the Hyde to regular melis’ Jekyll and was actually a separate commenting account.
Pretty sure that the unofficial motto of the toast dot net is “Dirtbag Mallory” … right?
Dear Dirtbag Prudence?
Maleficent. Old school Disney movie Maleficent. I like to think she is my shadow self.
When I read about the plot of the new Maleficent movie, I was so pissed off I refused to see it. I liked it when she was just plain evil and liked to fuck with people.
Sorry if this displays twice, my phone is weird today.
God yes. Ol’ school Maleficent was a stone cold badass sorceress with a pet raven, who could turn into a dragon at will. She was petty and vindictive as all hell and wanted everyone to know it. The live action movie turned her into a misunderstood fairy baby-sitter with a tragic past and it makes me so mad thinking about how well Angelina could have played balls-to-the-wall evil Maleficent if they had but let her.
Yes. This.
I work with pre-schoolers, and my new class adore Maleficient (they can’t pronounce her name, although they try heroically, the closest they’ve gotten is ‘Falificent’.) They’re not aware of the heinous movie, or really that she exists outside the Disney tie-in novel, which is the way it’ll stay if I get my way. Their favourite thing is to skip to the page where she’s a dragon and stroke the illustration lovingly.
The evil queen from the Snow White and the Huntsman movie. I mean, pretty much just all evil queens in general, but her motivation seemed especially solid to me.
Also CHARLIZE THERON, hello.
YES! Queen of my heart.
ABSOLUTELY. I really, really wanted her to triumph at the end, which is part of the reason why I’m looking forward to the prequel so much. She lived in a world where you were either a victim or a conqueror – she basically watched her whole family die/be enslaved (not totally clear on what happened to them), and IIRC it’s heavily implied that she was further victimized/sexually assaulted by other men before she takes over the kingdom by marrying & murdering SW’s dad. If I grew up in those harsh circumstances I would 100% use whatever magic I had and any means necessary to get to the top and make sure I would never again be hurt like that or let any man have power over me. Plus her costumes were some of the most beautiful clothes I’ve ever seen and EXACTLY how I would dress if I were a queen, and her powers were rad as heck. so yeah I’ve got lots of Ravenna feelings…
“Plus her costumes were some of the most beautiful clothes I’ve ever seen and EXACTLY how I would dress if I were a queen”
Seriously, what is Queen Elizabeth II doing with all those pastel suits?
Oh my gosh, yes! I remember leaving that movie feeling really bummed out in such a weird way and that feeling sticking around for the rest of the day.
Ravenna was such an interesting and tragic character that had been living in this incredibly violent, patriarchal world that had knocked her around in pretty much every way imaginable. Her anger and focused desire to hold onto the power and status she’d worked so hard to claim seemed totally and utterly justifiable to me and hell yeah I would have used my powers in exactly the same merciless way had I been in her position. She knew what happens to a women without power in her world, she’d suffered it. Mercy is for the weak in that universe, forget it!
Then there’s naive, blank-expressioned little Snow, who has be sheltered from everything, had to be saved by a man and taught how to fight by a man, and movie wants us to cheer for her? After crafting the Queen into this ball of womanly anxieties that’s obviously going to hit way closer to home for most of the audience?
And I don’t know what it is about Charlize, but she always has this way of drawing you into any character she’s playing, even the most reprehensible ones. Maybe because she always seems to be playing the most competent character in the room surrounded by buffoons when she does. As well a her showing you little flashes of vulnerability that make you want to sit her down, make her a chamomile tea and tell her you totally get it and everyone here IS a total idiot, you know, your work is just the same.
But yeah, bring on that weird-ass combination prequel/sequel. More badass Ravenna wearing the fuck out of the world’s most stunning black dresses and drippy gold accessories with crows and magic and evil Elsa sister. I’m so in.
If anyone is familiar with The Emperor’s New Groove, I always feel like Yzma was unfairly maligned. Her boss is a spoiled manbaby and her assistant is totally incompetent, but SOMEONE has to rule the kingdom, okay?
WHY DO WE EVEN HAVE THAT LEVERRRRRR
Also, I find that “SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER” is a reasonable solution to a lot of problems.
Yzma 4ever. Her genius was clearly being underutilized.
The fact that Eartha Kitt was her voice certainly didn’t hurt
JEANIE BUELLER
YES yes yes yes yes
also the Principal too. Ferris is such a piece of shit
My sister sat through the whole movie saying “Cameron is right! Why isn’t anyone listening to Cameron?!?!?”
YES. And Cameron.
I get so upset when the police dispatcher won’t take her seriously! Ugh, TONE POLICING. Jeanie rules.
I WAS JUST GONNA SAY!!
Jeannie Bueller, professional buzzkill, all day every day.
YES! There was an intruder in her house! She thought she was going to be attacked! WHY THE FUCK DID THE POLICE NOT SEND ANYONE?!
It’s Always Sunny:
Charlie (no regrets, he’s the best)
Dennis (i’m sorry)
I had a crush on terrible Dennis. The more terrible, the better.
I think Dennis is redeemable! I mean, the show goes to great lengths to play up the whole “Dennis is an awful monster sociopath” thing, but he’s just overly self-involved, which can totally happen to normal non-sociopaths.
Also I find him incredibly attractive so I am willing to give him a bit more leeway.
And poor Charlie! Charlie is amazing! Just… dumb.
Dennis, specifically when someone from outside the Gang comes in and isn’t enormously impressed with him and his whole world comes crashing down violently and immediately
You’re totally positive you don’t like Dennis strictly because of the implication, right?
Charlie is the funniest, shame he can’t read at least he’s got knowledge of bird law going for him.
charlie’s illiteracy is in my top 5 running gags. it’s unfortunate that they really leaned into the waitress running gag, because it’s the only thing about him i can’t stand.
1)Almost any villainous character in a Johnathan Coulton song, especially GLaDOS. Why yes, I’m a passive aggressive megalomaniacal murderous AI!
2)Aaron Burr, sir.
3)Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada movie. Andy is an incredible baby with a milksop boyfriend who will throw her over five minutes after the credits roll for an NYU first year.
The true villains of that movie are clearly the boyfriend and friends. They are so unsupportive! How else are you supposed to make it in the city! Why don’t they have jobs? Boy is a CHEF – where are his ridiculous hours? And then the friend is like, I saw you maybe flirting with someone once for five seconds – WHORE! It’s all nonsense.
Especially when in the same sentence as their whiny ‘OMG, you work too hard!’ bit, they’re all ‘Thanks for the freebies from the job we keep criticising you for doing!’
“a milksop boyfriend who will throw her over five minutes after the credits roll for an NYU first year.”
I’m SCREAMING, this is a top-notch insult.
Although I admit I identify with Andy a bit, but only when she’s in her groove and kicking ass at her job, not when she gives it all up for said milksop. Like, what are Giuseppe Zanottis for if not stepping over those weaker than you?
When I first heard Hamilton I was confused because surely we were supposed to identify with Aaron Burr, sir, and think Hamilton was insufferable.
My theory is that Hamilton is told from Burr’s perspective for all of the same (really good) reasons that Jesus Christ Superstar is narrated by Judas— Because it allows the audience to take slightly different, slightly removed, slightly more complicated perspective on historical characters.
It’s more dramatic in JCS, because Judas=evil and wrong is a story and characterization that’s been told a lot more with a lot more detail than the Hamilton/Burr stuff, but it accomplishes the same stuff of being able to more clearly show that Hamilton had strengths and weaknesses, and so did Burr, and as much as shooting Hamilton was NOT a good choice for Burr… You understand how he got there.
So, uh, yeah, I definitely think you’re supposed to identify with Aaron Burr, and that the structure of the musical is organized to promote that.
Ohmygod my mind is blown with the JCS comparison. I’ve always thought the Judas narration was brilliant. LMM does lots of nods to other shows– I wonder if that was a conscious nod or what.
Are you reading my mind? I keep thinking about writing an essay comparing Burr and Judas. I love them both so much :/
I think it’s also structured somewhat like Wicked, to lead us to the realization by the end that neither is good or evil, just flawed people trying their best.
I agree with this reading, but identified with Hamilton anyway. It was really uncomfortable for me because I saw all my own worst traits in him, and really understood how A.Burr could shoot the little shit. I think I identify with them both, actually, and not in the good way, in the ‘oh, god, is that really how I am?’ way.
I haven’t seen it in for ever, but I think maybe I felt that way about Emily Blunt’s character? Andy’s snottiness about getting what is a highly coveted job and her open attitude about it grates on me like whoa.
GLaDOSSSSSSS
Miranda Priestly is intensely, fiercely awesome. And tolerated whiny Andy much more than she should have.
Like, it’s a job, Andy. Wailing about how your boss is pissed that you failed to do your job isn’t cute. Whining about how a very casual business-casual look gets you side-eye from your *colleagues* in the *fashion industry* doesn’t make you relatable. Disappearing in the middle of the work day when your immediate coworker is busier than you are to cry yourself into a makeover? REALLY shitty, Andy.
And she is very, very lucky that she wasn’t canned and didn’t have her professional reputation ruined for wandering past the foyer of her employer’s HOUSE. Like, even if you’re invited to a party at a friend’s house, you don’t just walk into their bedroom and scan the tops of dressers and then get bashful because you see an open box of condoms.
Miranda (and Emily) aren’t the bad guys.
ben stiller’s character in reality bites.
(but still not as much as janeane garofalo’s character, thankfully.)
The fact that I identify with Littlefinger, but am obviously not at all like Littlefinger, proves that I am actually Prince Joffrey.
I strongly identified with the eponymous dome in Under the Dome.
So much so that I often wish I was a dome in other TV shows and movies, so I could wreak havoc on stupid plots, characters, and character arcs (I’m looking at you, Got-Ham).
I just feel fondly towards domes in general, they’re architectural marvels
Protecting idiots from themselves or toying with them, as the mood strikes you?
(I never saw or read Under The Dome, but the Onion AV Club reviews were fun.)
I feel like the Dome was doing a service to society by keeping all those idiots away from the rest of us
Roman, particularly that scene where he turns down the girl at the Sin Say Shun Awards with the “I’m into hard sci-fi” line, Party Down
Ugh, Mallory, I am so with you on that one. I’M SORRY, WORLD AT LARGE.
SANSA STARK. Especially in the beginning. Fuck yeah I want to sew pretty things and marry a prince and live in King’s Landing. And she’s trusting to a fault, like me, and can be blind to how bad people are until it’s too late. I rant at people who disparage Sansa. She’s the most realistic character in the whole show.
Seriously. Yes, what an awful person she is for believing what her parents told her.
YES, Sansa is my favourite character! She gets so much undeserved hate!
YES. Like how fucking DARE this little girl act like a little girl? And she spends basically the entire series as a captive of one person or another, so ugh, what a dumb bitch for… being routinely victimized??? Trying to keep her head attached to her body by playing it safe??? I guess it would have been better for her to get herself killed like her idiot father?
I HATE Ned Stark for being such a dummy and getting himself killed. SERIOUSLY NED? “Hmm I figured out the terrible secret that Cersei had the last guy who had my job murdered for figuring out. What should I do with this information? Oh, I know, I’ll TELL CERSEI THAT I KNOW ABOUT IT. I’m sure she won’t have ME murdered like she did the last guy in this situation!” Way to get yourself and then basically your whole family killed you STUPID PIECE OF GARBAGE.
I really hate Ned Stark.
Also I… maybe identify a bit too much with Cersei. But she’s just a lady trying to survive and thrive in a misogynistic world!
THIS. She’s literally a child at the beginning of the series and had spent her entire life learning how to be a proper lady. What was she supposed to do?
Also, can we talk about her mental fortitude? Joffrey shows her Ned’s head on a pike in order to get a reaction and she gave him nothing but sass.
I haaaaate how GRR Martin writes her chapters though. I swear the only time the word “tummy” is in the series is during Sansa chapters. Ugh. She can’t have stomach pains? Her chapters seem to have more juvenile wording than any of the other Stark children. It’s irritating.
Oh, also, Dwight Schrute.
(really just that time where he proposed to Angela with a bullhorn. THIS IS HOW LOUDLY I LOVE YOU.)
TOTALLY Dwight Schrute! He’s just passionate! Sometimes I think my coworkers look at me like Oscar looks at Dwight – just utter bewilderment – because I am passionate about dorky/nerdy things that they just can’t comprehend.
It made me really happy that Dwight got a happy ending. In general, I relate way too much to the rule-followers and hard workers than the adorable slackers who get rewarded for being Cool.
I just loved the narrative joy of Angela/Dwight being the clear foil and parallel to Pam and Jim. Their relationship was actually far more interesting to me than Pam and Jim’s. Not necessarily because of their personalities, but the trainwreck quality paired with a weird sort of cuteness as opposed to the pure fluffy awkwardness of Pam and Jim was really satisfying.
Lady Maryyyyyyyyyyyyy. She’s DIFFICULT and PERFECT and I LOVE HER.
So I’m going out on a limb here because I am ASSUMING she is a performance art character, but Ann Coulter.
(ducks, hides, makes donations to various civil rights and reproductive health orgs)
And Lady Mary, obviously.
Oh, AND Gollum/Smeagol
yeah I’m pretty sure Ann Coulter is a more-reliably-in-character Colbert
The other one: The Soundkeeper in Phantom Tollbooth. I know. I KNOW. I don’t even have a “but secretly she’s the good one!” justification. She is the worst. I have nothing to say for myself.
President Laura Roselin; at all times I would 100% do exactly what she did in every situation, even when, as the viewer of the show, I know I was supposed to disagree with her.
Ditto. Even when she was abandoning her principles in ways that were obviously disagreeable, I knew she was doing it to keep everyone alive in a horrifically unideal circumstance, and I’d almost certainly do the same. I mean heck, I would rig an election too if the alternative were Gaius Baltar, despite just having spent 10 minutes effusing over how much I delight in his every moment on screen. I like him for the very reasons I would never actually want him to be in charge of anything more important than the office soda machine.
lee adama when he is at his whiniest and most terrible
Scar! Although I’m not sure if it’s ‘identified with’ or ‘Jeremy Irons as a lion caused my sexual awakening at the age of four.’ But he’s so much more fun than Mufasa, who’s a massively smug hypocrite (seriously, that ‘When we die, our bodies become grass, and the antelope eat the grass’ line reminds me of anyone who’s ever tried to justify their massive privilege by arguing ‘It’s just the way the world is! Bla bla trickle down economics’) And it’s not his fault a natural drought hit the pride lands during his rule! He’s being unfairly blamed for historic events!
To be fair to Mufasa, there’s a big difference between being rich and being an obligate carnivore, but there’s something super weird about how the lions demonize the hyenas. Scavengers are an important part of the circle of life, dude.
I definitely felt bad for Scar. He probably wasn’t so bad a dude until his brother started lording everything over everybody! Maybe he overreacted but like, dang.
Oh my god YES I totally forgot about Scar!
Mallory is 100% Randall from Recess.
Rawls on The Wire. Anyone who hates McNulty that much has my undying allegiance.
“These are for you, McNaulty.”
I suspect that we were not supposed to identify with Bunk so much, but I did, for the same reason.
Bunk & Fremon are the heart of the show if you ask me.
In terms of people we’re not supposed to identify with, I sided with Prop Joe’s outlook on the streets on multiple occasions.
My 2 favorite Prop Joe moments:
“Ain’t easy civilizing this motherfucker.”
“For real, I’m living life with some burdensome n***as.”
“Hey, my name’s Prop Joe. You ever steal from me, I’ll kill your whole family.”
I loathe Lee from prep with every fiber of my being because I identify with her so much. I have gotten myself to be assertive by telling myself not to be like Lee.
Mrs. Danvers. And, Rebecca.
Jareth in Labyrinth, right up to the point when he wants Sarah to stay…she’s such a whiny brat
Just saying, I would’ve stayed. Rwar.
Me too, and I’m marginally less whiny so I’m clearly a better choice
When I was a kid, I never understood why she wouldn’t want to stay, and I understand it even less now! (Also, why was “You have no power over me” so hard to remember? She had all the way wordier parts of the spiel down. The last line was seriously the easiest bit!)
it’s not FAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
my friend and I made a drinking game while watching Labyrinth where we drank every time she whined/complained, but it turns out that’s less of a game and more of a “steadily drink through this entire movie”
Seriously. Much like Rumplestiltskin he was just doing what she ASKED him to.
Morgana from Merlin
Nancy from the Craft
Allison from the Breakfast Club
Mary from American Mary
I just try not to analyze this too much
I always identity with any good bloody rape revenge.
Pretty much every mean stepmother and the whiny best friend who is whimsy averse in a rom com.
Thaaaaaaaaat’s me!
Collins from P&P. The Trix rabbit. Every Disney animal sidekick and no Disney princess. All the times the LOTR orcs express hunger. Young gay lovesick burgeoning-fascist Dumbledore. The Horse from the Horse and His Boy. And Lasaraleen for some reason despite our zero similarities.
Why would those stupid kids never share their Trix? They always had like a whole box! It always upset me. If a talking rabbit shows up, he can have all my damn cereal.
I one thousand per cent identify with the Doubtful Guest.
#subjecttofitsofbewilderingwrath
#mytowels
#mytureen
#scarfwon’tquit
Yes! I felt the same way about the poor Trix bunny! Those selfish kids.
Collins? (raises eyebrow) If there’s a reason, I’m curious, because Mr. Collins.
Sue me for being uncool and poor!
Lasaraleen Tarkheena, who loves her life and her world and her ditzy self-presentation and who swans through her scenes and TOTALLY saves Aravis when Aravis could not have done it. Yes.
SAAAAAME
Aravis and Las forever. All the things you could do on that litter, ladies.
(I identify with all the Calormenes. I didn’t understand the book was troublingly racist I JUST THOUGHT CALORMEN WAS COOL.)
The food sounded AMAZING, too.
Breeeeeeee!! Horse and his boy was my jam as a kid (I was horse *obsessed*, running off to Narnia with a talking horse? FUCK YES PLEASE.)
Bree was so very sarcastic. And noble. ‘OMFG WHAT IF HORSES DON’T ROLL IN NARNIA’ bless.
Aravis and Hwin where also super favs of mine, Hwin was brilliant at shutting down Bree.
I haven’t really ever seen Beauty and the Beast, maybe just snippets. You have basically replaced Gaston in my mind, and yet I have to assure you that this is somehow a compliment.
Yeah, all these are fine, but I don’t think anyone else in the world has ever identified (somewhat) with Anakin Skywalker.
It’s my secret shame.
While I agree with you on this one after giving it some thought, I’d like to think that my ability to speak and not be a horrifyingly creepy pervert when placed in similar circumstances would actually be way better than his.
My secret secret shame is that I’m probably wrong.
It’s fine, I’ve been there. Although mostly I ID with Anakin because I can’t talk to girls either.
I have always wanted to play/be/marry Gaston. Some day it will occur, and the world* will be my oyster. So it is written. So shall it be.
*or at least a diminutive henchman and 3… were they triplets? sorority sisters? Greek Chorus members? idk
smug, prissy, with a good sense of humor and excellent tweed jackets no I didn’t indenity with Dr. chilton off Hannibal too much at all despite the fact that I literally owned one of his outfits.
Remember the time the ENTIRE VIEWERSHIP went from not caring about Chilton to having him as, like, their favorite character within the span of one episode?
ALL YOU DID WAS COUGH UP AN EAR
EAT HIM. EAT HIM. KILL HIM AND EAT HIM.
…
NOT FOR EATING. OMG FREDERICK
Let us not forget “is one of the first characters to realize he’s in a show called Hannibal, and that it fucking rhymes.” Well done, Frederick.
Margaret, in Boardwalk Empire. Actually, all the women in Boardwalk Empire, except for Angela Darmody, who is too stupid to live and should never have chopped off her long beautiful hair in favor of an unflattering and unfashionable bob.
ALSO Marisa Coulter from His Dark Materials. Babely, super-intelligent woman who not only is tolerated in a man’s world but also sweeps the floor with everyone except her rival/One True Love? SIGN ME UP. (Minus, of course, the kidnapping and murder and soul-stealing of young children bits)
Yessss. Gaston. There’s something about bombastic male villains that I totally identify with.
Related: Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog
(TBH I might just like to sing along with them while in the car by myself. It’s hard to tell.)
My two.
Walternate from Fringe. Starts off a maniac, then we get more backstory and everything he does makes sense. Walter did steel his son from him and take him back to the other universe which I suppose would cloud anyone’s judgement.
Pete Campbell from Mad Men. Such a sympathetic grimy little pimp.
I love Walternate! And Walter. And Fringe.
I wanted to punch Pete Campbell in the face about 70% of the the time, but the other 30% I really felt for him. (There’s no way I can entirely dislike a character who practically goes into mourning when he has to leave Manhattan to move to Connecticut. I feel you, Pete Campbell, I feel you.)
So many good ones have already been said, but I want to add Nelly Dean from Wuthering Heights, because we both share SO MUCH Catherine Earnshaw haterade. Just sipping it down. Delicious.
And Amy March. Which is weird, because I am not very like her, except maybe that we share an aggravating practicality and think that manners are important. Maybe I also have a thing for the frivolous foils to the serious protagonist, because I also really love Ginevra Fanshawe from Villette.
Sam the Eagle, Javert, Percy Weasley, and humorless buzzkill law-and-order types everywhere.
I also always identified with Amy, probably out of defiance because it was so obvious we were supposed to identify with Jo. (Which I also did.)
Same! She is also petty and vengeful and I resemble that.
It’s not necessarily full-on relating, but I do like Amy’s “yeah, I’m not cut out for poverty” and her generally (unspoken by necessity in that family) that she can be a good person without dramatically giving up all her nice things. Also, I feel so awkward about the part where she has to tell Jo she’s the one being taken to Europe because, well, sometimes not being openly disdainful and bratty to a lonely, elderly relative has its rewards. (And omg her will.)
YES, I feel the same way about Javert and Percy Weasley. Chauvelin from The Scarlet Pimpernel also.
Snape.
The boyfriend in Julie & Julia because holy crap was Julie annoying as fuck. (See also: the boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada.)
Allison in The Breakfast Club
The judges in Pitch Perfect (both judges and both films)
But mostly Snape.
I mostly just wanted to see Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci in Julia because the other Julia was so whiny. You work a boring office job in NYC and you cope by stress baking, big whoop. It’s probably just as well the Julias don’t meet because Meryl Streep would wipe the floor with Amy Adams and steal Chris Messina away. :/
Fanny Price has every characteristic that I hate about myself. I am absolutely Fanny, and she is the worst.
I vaguely remember identifying with various Batman villains as a teenager because Batman is so awful.
Tyrion Lannister (book version– note that this is a very different character from the tv version). To the point where I was willing to Fight The Internet about it from 2013-2015.
Also Cersei and Jaime, same family, same series. Never Joffrey though- sorry Mallory!
I identified with Jenny Schecter for a second too, but that second was more like three seasons. Oops
Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl
Circe in the Odyssey– she turns men into pigs, ok?
On that note, Morgan Le Fay from Arthuriana
The Ozarks hillbillies who robbed Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (Like… wealthy/coastal/academic types are just… not my people)
Many of literature’s “nice guys” such as Snape
(No I’m not sorry)
Not sure whether this is verboten or not, but Dwight Schrute?
Okay this was surprisingly freeing, carry on with your bad self Mallory.
blair waldorf, tho. like what other woman character in gg WOULD you identify with? definitely not blake lively and i wish that lil j or georgina were a little smarter in their awfulness but they’re just too annoying to love
See I have not seen the tv show so this influences my feelings about everyone in GG. Lil j = Jenny? I think?
But in the books Blair is a holy terror- she’s basically 1% girl and 99% pure envy and resentment. It’s great. (In the books her bff Serena is like… this innocent angel who gets everything she wants without really working for it and Blair HATES her for it. Which I LOVED.)
fair! i have not read the books. i think i read half of the first one and it seemed so bizarre to my high school self that i could not go on. but the show — which i did not watch in its entirety till after college — was such a gloriously repulsive shitshow that i will wish till the day i die that i could be one tenth as tiny and adorable and pathetic as blair at her peak. also though, from a narrative rather than a narcissistic perspective, the show (like, i assume from what you’re saying, the book) sets blair up as a character whose entire self proceeds from her insecurities, all of which are embodied from the first minute of the pilot in the effortless beauty of serena poop der poopen. how could you not empathize with that!?
Lindsey from Angel, because…well…fuck Angel and the high horse he rode in on.
YES
I can’t control my evil hand!
Stop it, evil hand, stop it!
I adore Lindsey. And that boy can sing!
Lilah, too. Scrappy, nervy, signed-on-for-perpetuity Lilah.
(Also, a number of people, having seen the entry way to the law firm where I work, are convinced I’m actually employed by Wolfram and Hart.)
Seivarden Vendaai. Also, Station in the first book. She just wants this troublemaker away from her people!
Oh man, I feel guilty about how much I identify with Seivarden. And not for the ” struggling to deal with her shit and become a better person” part but for the “arrogant shithead who refuses to cope as soon as the universe doesn’t revolve around her and things are *hard*” part.
BOTH OF THOSE. ALL OF THIS. AND THE TOTALLY IRRATIONAL LOYALTY. and just. Seivarden.
Brenda Leigh Johnson from the closer so much so. I think we’re supposed to like her but not identify with her–and I am so her. All the bad parts, from the “do this for me!” to the “here is my justification for my actions! when you try to use the same justification, I will argue against it. you see, unfortunately, I don’t think of something logically and then pick my side, I pick my side and then come up with logical arguements to support it.”
Javert from Les Mis. He’s just DOING HIS JOBS also has the best songs
JAVERT!
I played him in a weird non-musical les mis adaptation in high school and have been trying to convince everyone of his greatness ever since.
Have you read the brick? He makes PUNS while arresting people! He tag teams with Useless Marius to catch crims! He is WONDERFUL.
Brenda from Six Feet Under, because seriously, fuck Nate.
NARM!
I found that moment to be far too funny. Nate is the absolute worst.
I have identified with most of the Six Feet Under characters at some time or other, but yes, Brenda! I got the sense that a lot of fans haaaated her, but come on, she was dealing with kind of a lot.
I thought you said Rip van Winkle instead of Rumplestiltskin for some reason and got kind of indignant. WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO SLEEP FOR YEARS???
As a kid I way too often identified with the fussy, rule-following, annoyed types. Archimedes from The Sword in the Stone is my spirit animal.
Alternately: Zazu from the Lion King.
In the replies to this comment and to similar comments, I feel like I have found my people.
MISS. HANNIGAN. When I was little I thought that woman was evil incarnate; now I see, she just had the wrong job! And a substance abuse problem. And was starved of adult interaction. Yes, I’m at home with my three-month-old what of it?
Also, when Rooster tries to kill a child, Miss Hannigan is Not Having It. A night off from caring for an orphanage full of children? YES. A payoff? Sure. Actually offing Annie? HELL NO.
Betty Draper gives me exactly the same response.
Mary from Downton Abbey has never done any wrong and never will. Anyone who says otherwise is an Edith fan.
I love Mary and Edith both. I just wish they would figure out a way to team up and take over the world.
Randall Graves from Clerks (Less so Randall in Clerks II. Way less so.)
Randy from Scream
. . . Oh, God, why were the first two people I thought of both the vaguely annoying pop-culture-obsessed friend from cult 90s films who share the same first name? I guess I didn’t realize that I identify with a really really specific niche of character.
Oh. And Dr. Prunesquallor in Gormenghast.
Hill House. The house itself.
i am so afraid of Hill House that after reading your comment i got up and locked my bedroom door and windows so it doesn’t…. come at me? i don’t know. i’m scared.
I once met a randall video store clerk when such things existed. I watched him be randal to a couple of customers.
Obviously, we became close friends. It was the dream of my 90s.
OH MY GOD I have a note on my phone full of these. My biggest one is the narrator from Rebecca. I remember my class discussing her in college, and everyone was in total agreement about how whiny and insecure she was, and I just thought, “Oh, no.” I’ve never read a better description of my social anxiety and constant inner turmoil.
See also: Mary Bennett, Eleanor Vance from The Haunting of Hill House.
As for Jenny…I’ve told myself before I am “an Alice,” but the truth is, I am a very narcissistic brunette writer who came to the realization I like girls while in a relationship with a dude. I’d like to think I’m a better person than her, but who am I kidding?
… We aren’t supposed to identify with the narrator of Rebecca?
Eh, personally I think we are since she’s such a blank character. I just remember my professor going on and on about how unsympathetic and annoying she was!
yeah, I spend the better half of Rebecca just thinking, “welp, THIS sounds familiar…” :/
Oh my god yes, Eleanor!!
Okay though but can we talk about Peggy Hill? Everyone I know seems to hate her but DAMN IT SHE MEANS WELL AND I LOVE THAT ABOUT HER.
I love Peggy Hill! Who are these silly people who hate her?
Right!?!
Like… SpaPeggy and Meatballs? It’s not even that clever, nor does it flow well off the tongue but MAN if it isn’t iconic. Also, yeah. Some people just don’t appreciate her high opinion of herself or her self-confidence. She sees the importance of the little things and even though sometimes she expresses herself in irritating ways, she is almost always vindicated in the end!
“gaston, but a girl” would be a pretty great shtick, tbh
IDK if it counts, but generally, the idea of/portrayal of people who “obeyed” in the Milgram experiments.
Also, the moment in Harry Potter book seven when Ron points out their aimless camping plan is stupid as hell and books. (Of course, this may be because I hate camping.)
And even to a very limited extent, Petunia, although that’s more of a general interest in the siblings left behind when their brother or sister is deemed Special.
I mean…the people who “obeyed” all the way through the final voltage level were MORE THAN HALF of the participants, so really there is no reason not to identify with them. They are us.
(I also like Petunia and 100% believe that the only reason she was so mean was because COME ON, imagine finding out when you are a kid that a) magic is real, b) your sibling has magic powers, and c) you do not and never will. I would resent everyone too!)
Youtube has some footage from the experiments. It is a fascinating, excruciating watch. There are also two dudes who decide they don’t need to comply. They are kind of a microcosm of my feelings about humanity. They may not be the majority, these right people, but they will always be there.
There’s a really interesting essay by Lauren Slater where she manages to track down two participants, and the compliant one talks about how it changed the whole course of his life, from being a deeply closeted law student to an openly gay activist and inner city teacher.
Also, there’s a goddamned gorgeous Dar Williams song about it that always gives me the shivers–I feel like it really conveys something about the layers of constructed compliance that a lot of the references don’t.
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/dar-williams-buz…
This makes me cry literally every time I read it, I am crying a little at work just reading a paragraph of it, but it’s wonderful. It’s a beautiful little fic about a Petunia who’s not quite such a caricature and a different path things could have taken and I like it so very much more than the actual Petunia in the actual books.
Thank you, that was gorgeous!
I wonder how Mallory would feel about Joe McMillan from Halt and Catch Fire? Smug, corporately smarmy jerk who is also unapologetically bisexual during the AIDS crisis.
For me…hmm, who’s the worst person I can think of.
I…identified with Jeffrey Dahmer in his various portrayals…. 🙁 not because I want to kill or eat anyone, more that I felt so bad for him for having impulses that he couldn’t seem to control. It didn’t even seem like he liked killing people, more that he liked dead bodies. There’s a few moments in the Jeremy Renner movie where he’s just killed his first victim and he’s so visibly freaked out and upset about it that you can’t help but feel for him. It’d be a lot easier to think of him as just pure evil but he’s more like…the worst potential of everyone? Look, I don’t know, I’ll see myself out.
Oh, and read Derf Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer, because that book is sad as f.
I AM SO LATE BUT FINALLY I HAVE AN AVENUE TO PUT THIS DOWN.
Amy Dunne. Gone Girl. Yep, evil/sociopathy personified. All I can say is, I’ve felt that same kind of betrayal that she did. And I also felt all emotion, reason, common sense fall away when that happened. I wanted nothing more than cold, calculated revenge. I wanted to hit as far below the belt as I possibly could. I wanted to be the smaller person- the smallest person possible. I was wild and irrational and, yes, a crazy bitch. Maybe I’m different from her in that I wasn’t blatantly play-acting to be the kind of person other people are looking to be around. I don’t know. But I do know that I regret not a single thing I did or said to him in the aftermath of that relationship ending. In fact, I wish I’d done more.
WHELP NOW WE ALL KNOW WHAT EVILS I’M CAPABLE OF, HAVE A GREAT DAY FOLKS
I am fairly open about my Team Amy leanings. Her only flaw was her terrible taste in men, because Nick? Come on. But the woman had focus, mad planning skills, the ability to improvise and the ability to use her anger as her servant, not be a servant to her anger.
I like to think that she has the baby, realizes she doesn’t have the energy to deal with keeping Nick on his leash while also raising a child, then engineers a way for him to “leave” while she’s “struggling with PPD.” She manages to ruin him in the media for once and for all, get him declared legally dead, then rock it as a single mom who reinvents herself as a lifestyle brand devoted to helping women “write a new story when the old one gets too dark.”
I just feel such rage whenever her parents show up. That “Amazing Amy” thing (and needing her to drain her trust fund–when she’s already carrying her asshole husband) is just so manipulative and fucked-up. Like, I feel like maybe I’m supposed to think, “wah wah wah poor little rich girl,” but it sucks to be encouraged to rely on something and make plans accordingly and then have the rug jerked out from under you.
Her parents were an immediate giveaway.
so much identification with amy–she does things i would never do because you know they’re awful, but they’re all things i kind of long to do.
also sadly with the main drunk chick from the girl on the train. I too became basically an alcoholic for the period in my life where I was being emotionally abused and manipulated. it was kind of chilling to read, remembering how close I was to becoming that.
The character I identify with most is Allie Brosh’s Simple Dog.
“WHY HAPPENING?” is an extremely frequent phrase in my internal monologue.
I am not even sorry about identifying with Jenny Schecter. My shame is dead. If someone with the last name Merkin crossed me, you wouldn’t be able to get me to stop shouting “that vagina wig” either! And frankly I have a lot of respect for anyone who carries through outlandish and disproportional revenge plots.
Oh and almost everyone in any Agatha Christie who murders for money and/or to hide a secret. So…all of them? If you don’t want one of your heirs to murder you with a letter opener, try NOT using your money to manipulate them! Honestly. Also murder is the most efficient and cost effective response to blackmail, and I can’t fault them for being pragmatic. I’m sure it’s prohibitively expensive to throw lavish, secret-laden dinner parties while also paying off a blackmailer.
Lots of villains, particularly supervillains, are easy to empathize with precisely because they either had real bad childhoods (Magneto in the concentration camp, Doctor Doom losing both parents when he was quite young, etc.) or are the kind of ungainly nerds who always seeming to be going up against heroes that look like the sort of jocks who traditionally pick on real nerds.
I’m going to go with one that may be a little obscure, or maybe not: Harold Lauder from Stephen King’s The Stand, the dorky would-be writer who thinks he has a chance with Frannie (one of the POV characters of the book), gets friendzoned, and responds by assassinating some of the governing council of the good-guys’ community. He’s not a very sympathetic character for most of the book–which is really kind of interesting, because he seems to be based at least in part on a young Stephen King–but there is one moment when I really felt for the guy. It’s after he’s moved to the survivor community in Boulder, Colorado, settled in his own place, and is part of the group that goes around collecting and burying the corpses of the people who died of the superflu, and one of them nicknames Harold “Hawk.” Harold goes home, brooding about how they must be making fun of them because he still thinks of himself as the loner that has no friends… and then he realizes that that’s all in the past, that he literally outlived all of his teenage tormentors in his hometown and that, even if he didn’t get with Fran, there are still plenty of other people he could go out with. If he wants to, he can just drop it, bury it with all the other dead parts of his past. Tragically, he doesn’t, but he came so close. I happened to read the book in the expanded edition at about the same time that I’d managed to break out of my post-college rut, and was about to go to graduate school and do something more interesting and rewarding with my life than become yet another bitter and underemployed college grad. Harold was like the ghost of Halloween Jack past.
It kills me every time that Harold doesn’t just drop hid evil plan at that point and become Hawk 🙁
That part really resonated with me, too. Especially that he signed his death note/confession “Hawk”.
I didn’t even think of Harold when I was reading this post, but I definitely identified with and felt for him when I read the book.
Nellie Oleson and a not insignificant number of other spoiled nightmare brats. NO-ONE CHOOSES THEIR SHITSHOW PARENTS DAMMIT
(Drawing the line at Jeffrey “Other Nellie” Baratheon.)
Poor Nellie Oleson. She’s caught in this cycle of competition with Laura for her entire childhood, and not once does she win. When she’s bratty at her party, Laura gives her leeches, and when she tries to boss the other kids, everyone refuses to play with her, and when she shows off her new fur muff, Laura gets an even better one from the Christmas tree, and when she talks about the teacher behind her back, Laura makes sure the teacher finds out, and when she hits on Almanzo, Laura marries him.
Joffrey. JOFFREY. Argh.
Autumn in New York: Death
I know she’s awful and tortures kids but I’ve always kind of identified with the Trunchbull.
(also I can’t help but feel if she’d lived in a society that didn’t push women into “traditionally feminine” roles like school teaching and had instead been free to say, pursue a career in professional sport things would have turned out differently)
there are some great defenses of Trunchbull going around on Tumblr!
Any of the Heathers
I have an inner Heather Chandler. I can admit that.
all of the Heathers
SO MANY characters in Armando Ianucci’s political satires (Veep, The Thick of It, In the Loop). They’re all either ruthlessly conniving or utterly mediocre, and I regularly switch between the two depending on my energy level.
And that’s why I’m happy with my decision not to study politics.
I was horrified when I realized that I totally identified with Dorian Gray.
Amy March. I have never been A Jo, I have always been An Amy.
*whispers* I always related to Beth. She’s too shy to go to school! She loves kittens and plays with dolls even when she’s too old for them!
thank you! I am always a little scared to admit this, because so many people think Beth is pathetic. But also, really, how kind of hard core is she in keeping her family’s commitment to the Hummels (?) when their family is basically falling apart with Marmee gone?
Captain Hook. Since I was a small child.
Also Professor Snape in books 1-4.
I adored Captain Hook so much I couldn’t bring myself to read the book when I realised he got killed at the end.
Then Jason Isaacs played him and now I’m lost in All The Jason Fanfic where he doesn’t get killed, though sometimes Pan does, muahahaha.
Never mention the OUAT pretty boy in my presence, though. He is not the Captain!
Winona Ryder during her shoplifting phase.
The older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son.
As the firstborn of six, OH MY GODS AND MONSTERS YESSSSS
The teacher in the inspirational teacher movie who is not the inspirational teacher, but the one who goes home at 4:00 every day and wishes the inspirational teacher would just let her drink her coffee in the faculty lounge in peace.
I compiled a list of inspirational teacher movies along with some analysis as a project when I was getting my degree in education. My professor loved it and continued to use it long after I graduated. I come from a long line of teachers, and as my father would say, “That movie is showing us Jamie Escalante on his best day! That’s not teaching! Where’s all the constant paperwork?” My LEAST favorite hero teacher is Robin Williams’ portrayal of John Keating in _Dead Poet’s Society_. No responsible teacher would directly encourage a student to defy a parent’s wishes. There are ways of being encouraging and supportive without causing family ruptures. I empathized with Mr. Perry (OMG, played by Kurtwood Smith!). Of course he wants his son to have a sensible, productive career as a respectable citizen, and not grow up to be some feckless actor, who would probably end up being a character in _Rent_, refusing to pay his rent.
April Ludgate Dwyer at her most inappropriate.
The civil servants in Yes Minister. You mean we’re not supposed to sympathise with the people who know what they’re doing and have to deal with bumbling new politicians coming in and trying to change things?
Also, just to be as eloquent as Sir Humprey.
Amy Elliott Dunne. My reactions to some of the stuff she did were entirely inappropriate. I definitely let out a few cackles where I shouldn’t have. Saw the film around 20 times to date, still love her. Sigh.
I don’t identify with him, but I think that the actual hero of Netflix’s Daredevil is Wilson Fisk, and the show should just be renamed “Kingpin: The Story of a Chubby Loser whose Sheer Ambition and Ruthlessness brought him to the Pinnacle of Power.”
He is such a loser- i just want to hug him and tell him that it’s okay not to be smooth.
I TRULY LOVE HIM
I have a deep and abiding decade-long crush on Vincent D’Onofrio, and his Fisk did nothing to weaken it.
Delores Umbridge. Also Paul von Oberstein.
Oh man am I really the only person on the Toast who identifies with Darth Vader
Like, all six movies worth of him?
No. No, you aren’t.
I totally identified with the character of Anne from the sketch show Little Britain.
I mean I know she’s a man dressed as a mentally ill/intellectually handicapped woman who occasionally breaks character to answer his cell phone, but I just really feel like I KNOW her.
Jenny Schecter is truly the nadir of this list.
The witch from Rapunzel I can get. That lady totally stole her lettuce for no good reason! Couldn’t she just ask for some or maybe, I don’t know, buy it at the market like a normal damn person?
Jackie-O from House of Yes
Nick Dunn
Nellie Oleson
Dave Lister
The Borg
And absolutely Baltar. The part of me that identifies with Baltar is the part that loves myself best.
I wish I identified with Dave Lister, but deep down in my soul there’s a tiny Rimmer looking out, hating me from the inside.
Oooh, thought of another one – the entire cast of Archer. However insanely self-absorbed/ destructively impulsive/ outright psycopathic in the case of Cheryl/ Carol they are, I think they’re all adorable and flawless.
*Cherlene
I have always loved Mystique’s contemptuous superiority and I regret nothing
Ok so mine are:
>Pete Campbell from Mad Men
>Theon in Game of Thrones
For some reason I feel like, *intensely* protective of these smarmy, selfish little man-children even though everyone else (justifiably) hates them. It’s something about the combination of them being self-centered assholes but at the same time also really vulnerable and naive….they do various levels of terrible things but it’s driven by how insecure and sensitive they are and how they are super proud and push people away because they can’t admit that they feel Pain and it makes me want to protect their dumb baby faces……………………………. I maybe kind of might relate to that a lot………….(I wonder why I relate to that in male characters primarily?) I just want to be an unrepentant little butt like Pete Campbell sometimes. Yanno.
Also:
> Lucy Snowe in Villette
Obviously I don’t think we’re ‘not supposed to identify with her’ exactly since she’s the POV character, but when we read Villette in my Brontës seminar there was much discussion from the professor and basically everyone else in the class about how Lucy is ‘not a sympathetic character’ and ‘difficult to relate to’ since she’s so ‘cold’ and ‘unfeeling’ and ‘hides her emotions’ and stuff like that and I was like… ????? I read this whole book relating wholeheartedly to Lucy like, ‘how did CB put all of my life feels onto the page like this’ and now everyone is saying that this character that I related to with all of heart is basically unlikeable in every way and posing the question of why anyone would write a book with such a ‘challenging’ main character…….ok……interesting…….hmmmmmmm… perhaps I will not share my thoughts at this time…
I basically walked out of that class like ‘i’m going to continue to live my cold, scaly SLYTHERIN LIFE full of emotional issues while relating to Lucy Snowe and y’all CANNOT stop me’
This so weirdly liberating to talk about I am not surprised there are so many comments on this post!! There are definitely more questionable character identifications in my past that i can’t remember because bad depression memory
I…identify with Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch. Like, a whole lot.
Sooo…. I have this essay that I’ve been trying and failing to write for the past five years or more, and though it’s not about George Eliot, part of it has to do with Mr. Casaubon. I have the draft saved on my computer under the name “Key to All Mythologies.” It seemed appropriate.
I’ve realised I’ve never identified more with a line in anything than when Hamilton says he punched a guy because “he looked at me like I was stupid, I’m NOT stupid” so like, there’s that
That whole monologue made me *wince* with recognition in a soul-deep way, and made me want to apologize to anyone who ever interacted with me in any way when I was 19.
The recognition-cringe for me came at, “Oh, am I talking too loud? Sometimes I get overexcited, shoot off at the mouth– I never had a group of friends before. I promise that I’ll make you all proud.”
That dramatic fall into self-conscious? The need for approval? The over-sharing? Yeah.
Yeeeeah. That too. All of it. Oh, A.Ham.
Every single crazy old woman in a Dickens novel.
Also Bertha in Jane Eyre, because I’m pretty sure that any 19thC man who married me would immediately lock me in an attic for my own good.
Yes to Bertha. She has my sympathies. Her husband is horrible to her, and yet I still find things to like about him.
I am much more a Bronte-lover than an Austenite. The Brontes are so much more twisted and dark.
I want to be Miss Havisham SO BAD.
I feel like I can post this because of that wonderful “how to tell if you’re in a Stoppard play” article from a couple days ago: I identify SO MUCH with Bernard Nightingale from Arcadia. I also want to be right all the time and am generally insufferable!
oh also Dan Egan from Veep. I can’t even justify that one but whatever this is a place to get things off my chest
Oh my God, yes to identifying with Bernard! Like, personality-wise I’m a lot more like Hannah, but there’s something about the weird obsessive energy that Bernard brings to the study of literature that I really identify with. “If knowledge isn’t self-knowledge it isn’t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing ‘When Father painted the parlor?’ Leave me alone, I can expand my universe without you.”* On an intellectual level I don’t agree with that at all, but on an emotional level it makes a disturbing amount of sense to me.
*quoted from memory so the wording may be wrong.
Percy Weasley UGH
WHAT???
explain yourself!
(you don’t have to. but i need to know.)
He just wanted everyone to follow the damn rules. Was this too much to ask?
(Obviously I can’t condone his behaviour later in the series, but it did serve as a useful road map of how not to treat my own family lol)
Gaston’s greatest fault was his infatuation with Belle. They were a terrible match, which he probably knew at some level, but…infatuation.
Seriously, he discovered that the woman he was “in love” with AND her fruitcake father had been imprisoned by the Beast, and he’d heard about that guy/beast. And she was making excuses for him, despite his horrible temper and cruel actions. Beast’s “true nature”, as Belle described, was behind a huge, violent, angry shell.
Why the hell WOULDN’T Gaston assemble a group to protect the village when a glimpse of said Beast indicates that he’s still raging in his castle?
Why has no one said the Trunchbull yet? Seriously, no one else identifies with her besides me?