The point of characters

SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK DISCOVERY

 

 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

 

 

SO BE AWARE

 

 

 

I'm nearly to the end of the extant Discovery episodes, oh no! I have four left. I probably have to catch up on Nanowrimo today but I'll finish it this week some time. Then on to Strange New Worlds, I guess, though I just sighed and looked up and to the left in exasperation IN ADVANCE because I've been seeing gifs and stills of a very stupid episode on Tumblr in which the ship gets transformed into a children's book.

I can't even express how much I hate that kind of premise. It's not cute. It's not charming. It's stupid and annoying. It's just to get the cast into fun outfits and out of their comfort zone, from what I can tell. It feels so utterly condescending and hateful. Like you think viewers will eat any old garbage, so give them garbage. Or worse, you think the viewers are such idiots that they will like this. 

It takes me out of suspension of disbelief entirely. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

So anyway, I guess that's up next, since this is Star Trek and Star Wars summer, if I ever get done with the existing Star Trek and go on to Star Wars. 

I loved the episode I saw of Discovery last night so much, even though it was a super trite premise: away team has to acquire X object, must go into some sketchy underworld and fight and play cards to win it. I'm yawning just thinking about it. There's an episode of every sci-fi show where they do this. There's a bad one or two in Agents of SHIELD. There's a bad one in EVERYTHING. So I was scowling and looking around for other things to do while it rolled on by.

But then! The writing on it! It was absolutely hilarious, came at everything from funny and unexpected angles, turned every expectation upside down, played very fun games with us and the characters. I was so delighted! I went and found the writer and followed him on Twitter. I was CHARMED. I was DELIGHTED. That's especially hard to do when I'm braced for dread that way. 

I laughed out loud. Do you know how hard it is to make me laugh out loud? I'm a stoic hermit type person these days. I talk only to the dog, as a rule. And to Duolingo, in Norwegian. I speak much more Norwegian out loud than English these days. 

And! It's so great to see actors like Sonequa Martin-Green and David Ajala given amazing twisty turny emotional angles to act, mostly during that card game, which could have been deadly otherwise. There were layers upon layers. Martin-Green in particular is an absolutely world-class actor given almost nothing to work with most of the time, so this was hilarious and awesome. Ajala is also astonishingly good and usually given like three colors to use instead of a whole palette. 

There was an odd Tig scene where she was not given anything funny to do, which is so bizarre. Why waste her on a dumb flat scene? She seemed annoyed too, honestly. I like how Tig can't hide her emotions. Just like me.

They're writing out that super boring (and completely implausible) boyfriend guy. Seriously, they extracted the memories of a former Trill host from the symbiont and put them into a synthetic body??? Idiotic. I hope they write out the super boring and pointless character of Adina, who seriously has no purpose whatsoever on the show and is an equally idiotic premise, a human host for a Trill symbiote. Maybe if they get rid of her, we can have Tig back much more. Stay on Trill! Never come back! 

This all makes me think of the POINT of characters, their use and role in storytelling, which is something Discovery does very poorly, to be frank. They don't seem to know what they're doing in terms of telling a story using an ensemble. Witness all the useless undeveloped bridge crew. It feels like someone who thinks nobody else but them has a full and vivid life. They do! Nobody is actually background in real life! Everyone is the star of their own show!

That to me seems like an emotionally stunted or unsocialized person. And I say that as someone who only lives with a dog and again, speaks Norwegian much more than anything else, and that's to my phone. 

Okay, what's the purpose of characters? They should each play a role in the storytelling. They should each be on the road somewhere. Everyone should have a story they're working out. But also they should be part of the LARGER story. So with Discovery, that would be something like: how do we deal with loss, how do we accomplish our goals in this new world, how do we make new lives here? Discovery's goal this season should be finding its place in the new world. They're doing that some? But to make it work fully, each character should be making new connections.

Ways they ARE doing that: stupid Adina, who's from the new era but you'd never know it, lovely Book, who's from the new era and connects with Burnham and has a whole developed backstory at least, and this Vulcan woman who is president of the planet or something and likes Saru. That's all relationshippy stuff, except Adina, who as I mentioned is nothing. The ship has new technology. Otherwise? It's the same show as before. I think that's very odd.

I think things will be different in a thousand years in so many ways. New food and new media, just for instance. Hey, have the crew get into those things. Whole new ideas about life! New philosophies, new religions. 

The one woman with the breathing tubes, Dahl? I don't know her name. She's not a regular. She went off and found the descendants of her family, something EVERYONE should have done. I'd have done it immediately, first thing. I want to know what happened to everyone! What did they do for work? Did they have families? What did the families do? Where did they live? How is this not a huge throughline of this season? Everyone should be trading stories. Oh yeah, my sister/brother's descendants moved to X planet and started a freaky new religion entirely based on avocados. Your family and my family were on opposite sides of a war we're just learning about and are mortal enemies. I don't know, something! 

Again, it feels emotionally stunted. How can only one person do that? Did Burnham ever look up what happened to Spock? We know the end of that story, so she should, too, depending on which universe this is in, old Trek or new Trek. (That's a whole thing. And I get why they don't want to get into it. But she could say: Yeah, it's extremely surprising, or something. ACKNOWLEDGE it. We JUST left Spock.)

A thousand years is a whole lot of generations, I know. But wouldn't you want to know? How long did so and so live? What ever happened with that show I was watching? Even if you find out you will never get to see the end of whatever show, that would be a thing. This is LOSS. This is what matters in life. 

Think about moving to Norway. What would you miss? What if communications go down? What would you want to find out? I'd be going nuts trying to find out about my siblings and niece and nephews. Even if I got Rip Van Winkled I'd want to find out the answers. 

I don't think they're dealing with that curiosity and grieving process properly. This is a whole show focused on trauma and they're ignoring that major trauma. Essentially everyone lost everyone but each other. That has to be so utterly distressing and we're seeing none of it.

Give someone a small child living with their partner back on Earth, my goodness. Imagine them combing the archives, trying to find ancient records, coming up with a picture from Ancient Instagram where they were eating pie on the fourth of July. Try to explain to a modern times person what those rituals were about way back then and feel that distance and loss. 

Oh, we all used to listen to these songs at the winter solstice holidays. No, we didn't like them, but we played them anyway. We'd have missed them if we didn't play them. Can I sing one? Sure. And burst into tears singing a Christmas carol. Or a ubiquitous tv ad everyone knows. 

So much wasted opportunity, while we're just chasing the not very interesting Big Bad. It's a bubble thing. It's just a bubble. Not a lot of personality. But then, not boring and stupid like the Orion lady with the poorly fitting pants and the constantly shifting accent, so that's a plus.

Oh, right, the point of characters. Well, they should have a point, is my point. 

As I'm building the world of my current novel, I'm thinking a lot about this. Right now I have three main characters, one of whom is nearly always off-stage, and seven who are in the main character's past, though I want to bring them over and establish them as part of the team. So that might solve the problem. You need more than two, even if it's a mystery solving duo.

Consider the Lord Peter books. Early on you had Lord Peter, Bunter, and Charles Parker, then added Gerald and Mary and the Dowager Duchess, then of course added Harriet Vane. But that's pretty much the only recurring characters. Young Gerald, later. And some of Peter's friends, like the Honorable Freddy. I think the Chief Inspector, right?

But in any given book, there are only a small handful of important recurring characters. 

This is helping me see who I need to add. The aunt should have young but connected friends from university. Her best friend and roommate. The boy she likes or liked. And her mentor. That's plenty right there, but she can have a million friends all over the country she can call on when she's in a pickle.

This is all making me rise up above my story and think about the point of the stories I'm telling. Solving a mystery seems so straightforward, but you're always making SOME point when you do it. Every character has a meaning even if you don't want them to--especially if you don't want them to. How do you think we feel about Rhys and Bryce, two utterly generic characters who don't even talk most of the time, one Asian and one black, getting pushed to the background and not even given any personality traits? That tells us something, even if you don't want it to. 

I want everyone in my stories to have their own agendas and journeys they're on. Nobody is fully formed unless they do. Even if we just get a glimpse of it, it's there and it makes them pop into 3D. 

Here's how terrible I am. I used to drive ride share so I'd meet a LOT of people briefly. They are not always good at showing you the depth and breadth of their rich and complex lives in ten minutes of small talk, but that doesn't mean it's not there. But I have vivid memories of people saying they were madly in love with someone they met online, then showing me a picture of someone. This is why I'm terrible: I was always like, how did you two even pick each other out of all the other people, when there's nothing to make you stand out? 

But that's because I didn't get the full picture, see what I mean? (I still think it's a terrible thing to think even in passing and I'm really not proud of myself.) But THAT is exactly what you're doing with fiction if you don't give them full lives and backstories and character traits. You're making people generic, when NOBODY is generic. 

Give someone a passion for growing yellow tulips, jeez. Give them homebrewing such that they're always trying to get you to try their terrible or interesting or delicious beer or wine. How do they feel about puzzles and word games? Think of Riker and his trombone. That's such a funny character trait to give someone! Or someone had a leg replaced after a shark attack when they were a boneheaded youth and it aches when the weather changes. (Not really relevant on a spaceship.) But don't you want to know how they got into that situation? Were they being reckless? Were they saving a child or dog? Were they not listening to the warnings? Were they entranced by angel fish? Were they arguing with their brother while the warnings were given out? Every one of those options is character and gives us insight into which way they'll jump when things get rough. 

I just watched a video of someone making fancy lampshades by hand. I love that! Give someone that trait. I think I'm going to, actually. Or making complicated birdcages by twisting and curling copper wire. Amazing. Also tricky to give away, or else in great demand and bringing in a lot of money. Maybe they want to collect a spoon from every planet they visit. It's becoming a problem, so they have to store crates of them in other people's quarters. (Nobody on spaceships has enough stuff, if you ask me. Humans have pack rat tendencies. Surely other species as well.) We're also by nature fiddlers, so we knit or tinker or carve or build ships in bottles. 

I met a guy who was finishing a cross-country bike trip who was also editor of a poetry journal. 

Ugh, people are so complicated. I like sci-fi tv but have to knit while I watch it. I study Norwegian and have a weird collection of cobalt blue glass. (And cobalt blue everything.) Why are their three statues of the Virgin Mary on my desk, when I'm not religious? Wait, one is St. Clare of Assisi, patron saint of television. What's with all the bunnies? What's with the obsession with metamorphic migmatites? Give your character a fascination with certain geological formations. Everything enriches a character. They hate spiders! They love bees! They love spiders and hate ants! They memorize poetry and put it to music!

Even Spock played that Vulcan harp thing and 3D chess. Bashir played tennis growing up. Sisko loves baseball and cooking. I wish I knew even one thing Michael Burnham liked to do in her down time. We caught a glimpse of Owosekun doing pullups in the gym and suddenly knew infinitely more about her than in nearly four seasons of sitting there on the bridge. 

Owosekun's purpose thus far was to fill a spot on a standard Starfleet bridge. What I'm saying is that is NOT ENOUGH. A character isn't there just to do a literal job. They should be doing a job IN THE STORY. Supposing this is Michael Burnham's story, sure, okay, but then Owosekun is her best friend, or her workout partner, or they each try to solve Redactle before the other one.

Being the person who says "No, do it the other way" is not enough, either. Ugh, I hate that Dahl has more of a backstory than Owosekun. I'm mad on Owosekun's behalf. And we do know little bits of things about her, that she grew up in a Luddite community, that she was a pearl diver, but she needs a PURPOSE in the narrative and a GOAL of her own, as well as being part of the ongoing story, which she isn't--she's just there for it. 

By the way, they replaced Bryce (I think--the black guy) with a different but very similar looking man. It made your face-blind correspondent quite agitated because I wasn't sure if I was just not recognizing him. But no, it was a whole different guy. WHY MAKE HIM LOOK SO SIMILAR? That's not just cruel to the face-blind, it makes it seem like he's interchangeable. The way he's written, he totally is, but that's not how we treat people, not in fiction or in reality. Come on!

It's a type of storytelling that really bothers me. And it bothers me on the level of thinking that people you meet for ten minutes are boring. (Still mad at myself, yep.) It's reductive and simplistic and cheap and even cruel. Because if you think people you don't know aren't interesting, you're guilty of thinking you're the only main character in this narrative, which is selfish and egotistical and even narcissistic. That's not a good way to tell stories--or run a society. It's the root of a lot of what's wrong with our culture today. It's a bigger problem than how Owosekun and Bryce and Rhys are written.

Maybe the purpose of characters is not just to fill in space, but to be facets of a full and well-developed life. To bring other elements to the table. To remind all of us that we don't exist in a vacuum, that other points of view exist and are valid and important, that everyone is equally important.