hi ! it's been a while, but life's been a lot. i'm glad to be back !! lately i've been thinking about how formative character analysis was to me a few years back, and how much about myself i've found out thinking about why my favorite characters are my favorites. it's pretty hard to overstate that impact, but either way, i really like reading people write about their favorite characters; i figured it was about time i gave something back to that ecosystem. these aren't in any particular order or anything, and they're only loosely clustered by "why i like them" in a few categories that'll be more explicit as i explain for each character. mostly, i sorted these for aesthetics... oh, but the images i chose for each character are important.
Carol Ferris, the first Star Sapphire... i said these weren't ordered, and they're not, but the Star Sapphire Corps emblem is still my only tattoo. Really quick, they're my favorite lantern corps because they were incorporated as one in my favorite kind of "redemption arc": one that takes a misunderstood villain/anti-hero and redeems the story around them or the hero they conflict with. In the case of the Star Sapphire Corps, they started out as a bunch of aliens called Zamarons and their one champion, named Star Sapphire. The same way Green Lantern has a power ring, the Star Sapphire had a gem also called the Star Sapphire that could shoot mysterious beams and had/gave the wielder a bunch of love and attraction themed powers. It was a pretty dated 1960's "battle of the sexes" kinda thing, but Carol was always the more interesting of the two to me. Go figure.
Accident or no, she was written with real psychological dimension in a way i can't really recall seeing in comics of this era giving many characters at all. It'd be sort of a part of her tradition as a Green Lantern villain; she was always conflicted and always the kind of character i could empathize with. In the 1980s Steve Englehart expanded her backstory to include the fact her father raised her like the son he wished he had; her name Carol is a "feminine corruption" of his own, Carl. There's also this space demon called the Predator that possesses the void left inside her when Hal leaves her, and as its later revealed to be a feature of being the one champion the Zamarons have all harnessed their hopes on. Her attachment to Hal is intertwined with this part of her past. He was only in her orbit as a test pilot to begin with because of the dysphoric way her father saw her, but because of the role she was pushed into, she met someone who saw her for who she is.
After Geoff Johns's 2004 reboot of Hal's continuity Carol settled into a more heroic role alongside the newly formed Star Sapphire Corps. This is the part that took her from a character i saw myself in and who invested me in the story, to the kind of symbol i would want tattooed on my body. Like all power rings, the Star Sapphire rings seek out their wearers, and they specifically go for people (mostly women) experiencing traumatic heartbreak. From pinning all their hopes on one person, Carol, with disasterous results to her well-being; to sending out fragments of power to save anyone who feels the same way she did, at a time. Carol herself kept a ring, of course. With the overwhelming power of the Star Sapphire dsipersed among heroes chosen for feeling like-and-as-much-as she does (and an amicably-enough-ended fling with Kyle Rayner on the New Guardians) she's returned to Hal's life as a fellow Justice Leaguer and steady partner. No one ever talks about it, but Carol Ferris's journey to healthy attachment is one of the most dynamic character paths in comics, if you track down enough back issues to see it through.
i'm gonna be really brief about Kawaragi Momoka, i have the worst crush on her and its soo embarassing to still get fictional crushes. i know i just went on and on basically implying that i want to marry Hal Jordan when i grow up and that's not incorrect but that's kind of a different thing. It burns me up inside that Momoka isn't real, dude. I feel like calling her "cool" is an understatement. She has the exact kind of effortless punk-rocker confidence i'm alway struck dumb by. all her flaws lay me out dead. thorny though she may be it's like she's bristling with Cupid's arrows. plus if Nina is anything to go by i'm her exact type. if nothing else, she'll always be dear to me as an outlet for unhelpfully yearning after someone i once knew. actually, thinking of how she relates to Nina, i think my crush on her developed from "infatuation" into "formative fictional crush" seeing her tell Nina, with so much love, exactly what she and I needed to hear. how the shame she feels for being the unrecognized victim is not because she did anything wrong. there's a lot of power in someone who is so confident and so prickly being the one to say something that kind. it means the most, coming from that kind of person. just because everyone else is content to blame Nina doesn't mean Momoka will ever go along with it... if there's one person i'd ever want in my corner it's probably her. i don't know what else to call that besides "a crush, even on a fictional character".
Jessica Drew, the clone one from the 1610 Ultimate Universe, was the first comic character I ever really connected with, besides maybe Swamp Thing. we'll get there. this was in maybe my first year out, i didn't know any other transfems and my "friend" group at the time really liked making me the butt-monkey. it was a really intensely lonely time that i thrived in nonetheless just by keeping my head down and trying to focus on myself. in the middle of this desert, i one day found an oasis; and that was the TPB of the ultimate universe's clone saga. i'd only picked it up on a whim since i'd read something about this version of jess having a lot of transfem fans–this is because she, being an unaltered clone of peter parker, is also a trans girl, for all intents and purposes. she broods about "not being that boy, or being a boy at all", and at a time i didnt have any trans "representation" aside from a few quakingly perfect positive caricatures, her existential angst spoke to me like nothing else. It still does. Even for all the clone stories i've read since there's maybe one that reaches the same level to me as the 1610 Clone Saga, in terms of being about what this kind of character is about to me.
Oh god okay Misaki... i don't think there's a way to relate to any character in Welcome to the NHK that's not intensely, perhaps uncomfortably personal. but of course i always really felt like her; in the past being so constantly depersonalized and sorta numb to it, i really related to the way she clings to Satou at the end. especially knowing the extent to which the novel was semi-autobiographical i always really admired the way Takimoto Tatsuhiko was able to break through the mental fog that comes with depression and show someone suffering past the ability of his sort-of self-insert's ability to see.
Nowadays i look back to how i related to her and i feel like it was posturing. it wasn't, it was genuine as ever; but i feel it that much deeper now that i've given my all to be there for someone and been left worse off than i was found. don't worry about that, it really deepened my connection to the book and her character. no matter how you look at it, the plot is a pretty unrealistic fantasy, right ? on the first read especially it hit me that "there being a plot at all to this kind of life is completely unrealistic." but the specific unrealisms of the plot are just as much wish fulfillment for the Misakis who may be reading. "two people who earnestly believe they have nothing to bring to the table but love, and have nothing in life but each other" is really really hard to make work. if applied to real life, its almost as maliciously unlikely-bordering-on-delusional as "this kind of shut-in life has a plot." but it's not real life. it's a ventfic, a harsh and kind "what if?"; those nights with Sato, Misaki is asking for the same thing i plead to the starless sky for.
i don't have too much to say about my connection to Heather Mason. It's been embarassingly long since i played Silent Hill 3 and i really do feel like that game is so strongly self-explanatory that i struggle to talk about it without feeling that im just repeating things its telling me. i do really connect with her aesthetic persona; not necessarily her fashion sense or anything but more so everything that is communicated by looking at her. i always really related to her listless expressions and the circles under her eyes. the soundtrack, too, conceptualized as "something a teenage girl might listen to," feels so much like a part of her. wandering around the mall to Lost Carol is evocative of so many of my formative experiences as a girl, and I Want Love got me through the first relationship where i felt my partner just couldn't understand a girl's feelings. the inciting incident, too... i'm being vague on purpose, but just the feeling of wanting to talk to your dad, but you absolutely can't reach him, no matter what, is captured really well in this game. i think that's pretty universal but it always hits me hard. i played this around the time i read the 1610 Clone Saga with Jessica Drew so another girl protagonist in a genre (psychological survival horror) i'm already drawn to was again like an oasis in a desert. i latched on to her as a character pretty hard and definitely remember feeling very strongly about her wanting both agency as a person and recognition as a woman and daughter, and in going through something no adult should have to as a teenager.
As previously stated, i think the soundtrack distills this aesthetic persona of hers down perfectly, so i just used the cover from it here.
Hulk ! one of the characters i think about the most. when i was growing up, i was huge into the marvel movies, and Hulk/Bruce Banner was always my favorite of those even then, as if without thinking. without getting too much into it i was a really angry kid, equal parts from getting picked on at home and school as much as from the medication roulette i was on to attempt to fix it. a lot of people looked at me as a kind of monster child, my parents included, and growing up their view was absolute. for there to be a character who deals with a lot of the same things as i did–who at a baseline is mild-mannered and intellectual, but who loses that intelligence in a rageful transformation–and yet, is still a hero... it meant a lot, and still does. as i've gotten older, i've fallen off with the movie universe and finally read more of the comics Hulk comes from; knowing more than the "man or monster" tagline from ish no. 1's cover has only made Bruce Banner's story more personally resonant. to oversimplify, Peter David's landmark run on the character established the (green) Hulk persona was created by Bruce's childhood abuse and bullying, and the body of the Hulk was created by Bruce's choice to save Rick Jones from a gamma bomb test. there's so much more than the questions of "man or monster" at play, really. Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk is maybe my favorite superhero comic ever specifically for how it grapples with the philosophy, metaphysics and psychology of "the strongest there is".
This specific picture is a Ken Steacy pin-up from Marvel Fanfare no. 22. the strongest there is, kneeling in the sand before the firey column that created him. it's a powerful image at first glance ! and the character's psychology only makes it hit harder. as with my favorite portrayals of the Hulk, it goes back to his origin. he kneels in the sand, his musculature still recognizably human. what we see of his face is recognizably Banner. he holds his hand up futilely shielding himself from a light that shines like a knife. we can see his bones in his fingers, the delicate web of his palm, and the shadows of a grimace. the remains of his clothes whip around desperately clinging to a body that no longer needs to be shielded from any elements.
Lucy/Nyu, from Elfen Lied. Given how much i just said about Hulk and his monstered/othered story resonating with me it might be surprising to hear i don't resonate with the x-men very much. aside from a few storylines and character details i feel like they really tend to shy away from the real meaning of "being hated and feared by society", the outcomes of that. Elfen Lied is my X-men. its portrayals of dehumanization are as seemingly random as they are cruel, and the story takes pains to at least imply they are motivated by misifiring scattershot evolutionary responses like disgust. the diclonii are literally demonized for the fact of their horns. in the world Okamoto Lynn paints here, that unchecked repulsion, built entirely on prejudice and preconception–hate and fear–leads people as young as children to commit over-the-top atrocities and vast organizations to fearfully venerate them as the next coming of humanity. And yet–any way you look at it, evolution is a will-less thing. It's not even something with a shape, besides the beaks of finches, and the bullet holes in wings of planes. evolution did not decree that child should have killed Lucy's dog nor does it ordain the diclonii as a superior race. many humans, made stupid and irrational by hatred of what is and terror at what may be, have decided that all on their own. despite the events of the plot unfolding as a tragedy, the sadness comes from how avoidable this all was; like most tragedies, it's an incisively motivating work in the inverse of the depressing picture painted. "It didn't have to be this way," is a hollowing refrain invoked with every kindness Lucy/Nyu's adoptive family show, and every day of a happy, peaceful life they may give her.
As stated, Lucy has an alter named Nyu whom she regressed to after escaping containment; I only say "regressed" because Nyu for all intents and purposes is a child's personality. It's very clear that it's a trauma response for the character, and also clear that Okamoto has an age regression/wetting fetish. looking at his other works bears this out. one way or another though, the agere stuff draws from parts of Elfen Lied's necessarily upsetting depiction of dehumanization that might affect its release, and that's the part that really can't be changed. also, i dont think its wrong to have weird kinks, and i would defy any author to write a story without making it about some kind of fascination, moe, or fetish of theirs, at least a little. we all like involving the things we like in stories we tell, for whatever reason we like them. or tell them.
Anyway, as with Hulk, at the very origin of the split between Lucy and Nyu is humanity. Not the drive to save another, but the starving need to be one's own hero in a maze of metal, concrete and painful experiments. It is Lucy's very struggle to escape from the machine that would make her into a weapon of eugenicists that leaves her leading her fractured innocence into a world that sees her as a monster for reasons she can never understand. As a whole, this character represents one of the most important stories in my mind. everything interesting about Elfen Lied is best exemplified in her, so this picture is really dear to me. I couldn't honestly tell you if it was Lucy or Nyu but just seeing the peaceful face of someone who's been put through so much from the worst of humanity's impulses... it's incredibly healing.
it's hard to talk about Ryougi Shiki or the Kara no Kyoukai series without invoking a phrase that better describes a later character: "love me for who i am". if i had to try, i could talk about her aesthetic persona. as with Heather Mason there's something strikingly identifiable about a girl wandering listless around industrial landscapes; her expressionless expression, often read as displeasure, hits on a similar level. i think the reason for this feeling expressed in persona are even more resonant here, though. well, there are a few moments that really stand out about shiki's character to me. her love for strawberry ice cream born from Mikiya's active care for her in the first movie and the scene in the restaurant in (if i remember right) movie five where characters try to determine her gender. and of course the ending of the seventh film. the mystery of who Shiki is unravels over the course of the series, with Mikiya by her side. of everything to do with Shiki's past, neither the at-birth assigment of the male SHIKI personality to her dissonant soul/body nor the pain and evil that assignment inspired in her dissuade him from loving her. she has done awful things, and awful things have been done to her; Mikiya holds her just the same. as Kalafina's "Sprinter" played the same motifs from the first movie's score i realized i had a new favorite character from my first watch, and Ryougi Shiki remains closer to my heart than almost any other, for precisely who she is.
this image is also sourced from a soundtrack cover, this time from the score to the first Kara no Kyoukai movie. aside from the .hack//sign OST (also composed by Kajiura Yuki) it's the most beautiful score i've ever heard and perfectly indicative of her character as conveyed in the films' style.
Once again, these aren't ordered, but like, come on. Of course the character i got my online nickname from is gonna be in the free space, if for no other reason than predictability. There's so much about Iwakura Lain that i just instantly identify with. much like her i was a serious late bloomer with technology, in a way that alienated me from my peers, but i've quickly closed the gap and honestly probably surpassed most non-experts in my generation? (most of my closer friends are in tech, and im like a guppy compared to them, but most people i see make me feel like a big fish in a very small pond. i guess this is slightly stolen valor.) like her, i was too tired after each school day to do anything but wear the comfiest clothes i could in the coziest, safest corner of my room. i viscerally identify with the shot of Lain slumping into her bed in her iconic bear pajamas. as the story progresses there are so many incredibly identifiable moments. so much about Cyberia reminds me of my experience growing up on the internet, going from shy, unsure introductions, to a traumatic event and eventually, a much more self-assured return. Each of those states is retained in the view of each of her three aspects; i wrote about this before but the premise of Lain involves "this girl looks like she has a fractured, mortal mind, but in reality, everything she does makes perfect sense." you would expect a show like this to pick apart her psyche looking for something "wrong," no matter how empathetic the portrayal; serial experiments lain is as a friend to its main character. as expected for a "God of the Wired," that world takes her whole perception of it seriously. instead of "none of your fears are real" it's "if they are real (and they are, she really is being gangstalked) you are fully prepared to handle them."
When i put it like that it sounds like a power fantasy. it's not, at least not any more than any other denpa work is, and like NHK i really classify serial experiements lain as something more like a really, really excellently made ventfic–by which i mean, an outpouring of personally fascinating angst set in an aesthetically interesting world which is textually embodied by its main character. her visual characterization really speaks to me. the things you only know about characters, and people, if you're very close to them.
also if you wanna give this a shot, this is me tagging you to do it. as i said this is the kind of thing i really like to read.