Fictional characters I've been compared to
Nov. 9th, 2022 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerIn approximately chronological order, starting when I was a teenager. Other people made the comparisons; I selected the quotes.
High school
Lucas from Empire Records
“Always play with their minds.”
Daria Morgendorffer from Daria
“I don't like to smile unless I have a reason.”
"Daria, people judge you by your expression." "Yes, and I believe there is something intrinsically wrong with that system. I have dedicated myself to changing it."
College
Victor Frankenstein from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious- painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour- but besides this there is a love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.”
“This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation- deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”
Hugh Conway from Lost Horizon by James Hilton
“There was also in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness, though it was not quite that. No one was capable of harder work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulder responsibility; but the facts remained that he was not passionately fond of activity, and did not enjoy responsibility at all. Both were included in his job, and he made the best of them, but he was always ready to give way to anyone else who could function as well or better. It was partly this, no doubt, that had made his success in the Service less striking than it might have been. He was not ambitious enough to shove his way past others, or to make an important parade of nothing when there was really nothing doing. His dispatches were sometimes laconic to the point of curtness, and his calm in emergencies, though admired, was often suspected of being sincere. Authority likes to feel that a man is imposing effort on himself, and that his apparent nonchalance is only a cloak to disguise an outfit of well-bred emotions. With Conway the dark suspicion was that he really was as unruffled as he looked, and that whatever happened, he did not give a damn. But this, too, like the laziness, was an imperfect observation. What most observers failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple- a love of quietness, contemplation, and being alone.”
20s
Peter Wiggin from the Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card
“Peter was not insane, not in the sense that he wasn’t in control of himself. He was in better control of himself than anyone she knew. Peter could delay any desire as long as he needed to; he could conceal any emotion.”
30s
Brendan Frye from Brick
“I want to see The Pin.”
So, there are some common threads there. Basically, "kinda weird but don't eff with him"? Perhaps I should be thankful if that vibe is what got me through junior high and high school without being bullied. (Maybe being on the wrestling team helped, too.)
Reading all this brings to mind two other quotes.
"I was a brooding boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music. It is the smell of home." –Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone
"By this curious turn of disposition, I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness, how undeserved, I alone can appreciate." –Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Spoiler: I'm actually a total sweetheart.
***2023-01-09 Edit***
Oh, I remembered another one, perhaps the one I find most flattering, also from my 30s: the "people who knew the Way" from chapter 15 of the Tao Te Ching:
"Cautious, oh yes, as if wading through a winter river.
Alert, as if afraid of the neighbors.
Polite and quiet, like houseguests.
Elusive, like melting ice.
Blank, like uncut wood.
Empty, like valleys.
Mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water."
(That's the Ursula K. Le Guin rendition, btw.)
***2024-07-18 Edit*** Yet another, from the same person who tagged me as the Tao Te Ching person: Chad, portrayed by Pete Davidson on SNL. I guess they kind of cancel each other out.
High school
Lucas from Empire Records
“Always play with their minds.”
Daria Morgendorffer from Daria
“I don't like to smile unless I have a reason.”
"Daria, people judge you by your expression." "Yes, and I believe there is something intrinsically wrong with that system. I have dedicated myself to changing it."
College
Victor Frankenstein from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious- painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour- but besides this there is a love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.”
“This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation- deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”
Hugh Conway from Lost Horizon by James Hilton
“There was also in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness, though it was not quite that. No one was capable of harder work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulder responsibility; but the facts remained that he was not passionately fond of activity, and did not enjoy responsibility at all. Both were included in his job, and he made the best of them, but he was always ready to give way to anyone else who could function as well or better. It was partly this, no doubt, that had made his success in the Service less striking than it might have been. He was not ambitious enough to shove his way past others, or to make an important parade of nothing when there was really nothing doing. His dispatches were sometimes laconic to the point of curtness, and his calm in emergencies, though admired, was often suspected of being sincere. Authority likes to feel that a man is imposing effort on himself, and that his apparent nonchalance is only a cloak to disguise an outfit of well-bred emotions. With Conway the dark suspicion was that he really was as unruffled as he looked, and that whatever happened, he did not give a damn. But this, too, like the laziness, was an imperfect observation. What most observers failed to perceive in him was something quite bafflingly simple- a love of quietness, contemplation, and being alone.”
20s
Peter Wiggin from the Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card
“Peter was not insane, not in the sense that he wasn’t in control of himself. He was in better control of himself than anyone she knew. Peter could delay any desire as long as he needed to; he could conceal any emotion.”
30s
Brendan Frye from Brick
“I want to see The Pin.”
So, there are some common threads there. Basically, "kinda weird but don't eff with him"? Perhaps I should be thankful if that vibe is what got me through junior high and high school without being bullied. (Maybe being on the wrestling team helped, too.)
Reading all this brings to mind two other quotes.
"I was a brooding boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music. It is the smell of home." –Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone
"By this curious turn of disposition, I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness, how undeserved, I alone can appreciate." –Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Spoiler: I'm actually a total sweetheart.
***2023-01-09 Edit***
Oh, I remembered another one, perhaps the one I find most flattering, also from my 30s: the "people who knew the Way" from chapter 15 of the Tao Te Ching:
"Cautious, oh yes, as if wading through a winter river.
Alert, as if afraid of the neighbors.
Polite and quiet, like houseguests.
Elusive, like melting ice.
Blank, like uncut wood.
Empty, like valleys.
Mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water."
(That's the Ursula K. Le Guin rendition, btw.)
***2024-07-18 Edit*** Yet another, from the same person who tagged me as the Tao Te Ching person: Chad, portrayed by Pete Davidson on SNL. I guess they kind of cancel each other out.
