Fanon characterisation and access character: feminisation or heroinisation?

[cimorene]

I had a thought about the cross-fandom reappearances of certain characterisation tropes, or elements of characterisation, so that the badfic!fanon characterisation of Patrick in Fall Out Boy RPS resembles, to a significant degree but only in certain elements, what I once called the AngstyGothTeenie characterisation of Rodney McKay in SGA's bad/mediocre fanon (what I also might call the Wraithbait characterisation). (I don't mean to suggest that these stereotypical characterisations appear only in badfic, merely that they are most clearly and strongly repeated there - in, sort of, the fannish collective unconscious.)

There's been a lot of meta about the feminisation of one half of a slash pairing and its distribution throughout different fandoms over time, the heteronormativity inherent in that choice, and the inheritance, especially in early slash, from the traditional romance genre. But I don't even want to necessarily call this particular modern phenomenon feminisation, although there is no doubt a connection to that. I want to talk about making a character emotionally/physically insecure and needy, clingy, passive-aggressive, etc. To call these traits inherently "feminine" is undoubtedly offensive as well as inaccurate, but in the context of the traditions of the romance genre it can be argued that those traits are markers of the feminine role.

My thought was this: that the strongest concentration of traits from that particular "Romance Heroine" role grab-bag tends to cluster around the most popular fannish access character. The definition I found describes an access character as "a person like us, who enters a foreign environment, and has the same reactions, questions and concerns we would have in that world"¹. Obviously, however, a "foreign environment" is not a requirement for an access character, because every fannish source text - RPS fandoms as well - has to offer a character to identify with. And it's also important to note that an access character is necessarily a matter of perception, because different people do identify with different characters. I'm choosing to talk mostly about a "most popular" access character, or perhaps I should say a "fanon access character" here - that is, the dominant access character for, as it were, the fannish shared universe's access to the [fannish idea of] the universe of canon.

Especially in this [post-]modern age of fandom, the character whose point of view writers first identify with and use to get a grip on the imaginary world of the shared universe does not necessarily coincide with the point of view character they choose for purposes of writing. It's very common that, to return to the romance genre metaphor, a slash story is written from the "Hero"'s point of view, while the other half of the pairing remains the focus of the author's and reader's intended identification. It's also common that the most potentially offensive or most feminine markers of the Romance Heroine role are avoided, while the access character is still given identifiable traits such as a certain limited physical and emotional insecurity (without the story informing us, against our certain knowledge, that he is short, slender, beautiful, adorable, tiny, etc., which was historically very common). (For a fascinating, detailed commentary on the Hero/Heroine roles, though not in the specific context of the romance genre, see saeva's recent post Narrative Function; Or Why I Should Learn To Tell Myself To Stop. Note, however, that the romance hero and romance heroine's lists of qualities are not exactly congruent with the lists she discusses.) And unlike in yaoi and many animanga-based fandoms, the "Hero"/"Heroine" division does not (at least at my first glance) seem to be too closely connected to the general preferences for who tops and bottoms in bed - at least, not anymore. (Note: I could be totally wrong about that. It would be really cool to do some research about it, you know, if that were possible.)

The application of these Romance Heroine traits - or markers - to the access character could be unconscious projection, because the author identifies with him, or could be flags set to place the story within the context of the romance genre tradition (though again, probably unconsciously!). The latter explanation appeals to me, but I think fails to explain the proposed congruence of "Heroine"/access character as successfully as the former. A combination of the two works best for me, and of course, there could be other factors.

This theory could explain the dominant fanon "choice" of which character to feminise/"Heroinise" - it's the most popular access character (although it does not explain why that character is the most popular choice for writers searching for a character to relate to, consciously or un-. However, it may well be that that is explicable too, through some other means²). I've seen the question countless times (and posed it myself!) - why is he the girly one? And that "choice" often seems random.

The most common object for heroinisation in an age-gap OTP such as Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan or Harry/Snape is the younger, for obvious reasons. But in a more equal pair, such as Bodie and Doyle, Rodney and John³, or Jay and Silent Bob, the logic isn't obvious. I've spent many an hour scratching my head over stories making Doyle tiny, slender, fragile, delicate, shorter, and even like a "baby ballerina", when in reality the two actors are nearly identical in size. The theory I have been offered to explain why his character is overwhelmingly the one heroinised (instead of more 50/50 as the equality in size, looks, bad 70s fashion, etc etc might suggest) is that his hair is curly. The suggestion that his permed jewfro was enough to overwhelmingly tip fanon in that direction is a bit of a stretch for me, though not completely impossible. But from the characters' backgrounds - London beat cop versus mysterious mercenary past abroad - Doyle as fanon access character makes a lot of sense.






1. I know I've seen the term "access character" at large in fandom before, but I don't know its origin or theoretical context, and the only use of it I was able to find via Google was this column about POV and movies. Any context/references anyone could add would be appreciated.

2. For example, qualities fans have in common with that character such as perceived geekiness, intelligence, or creativity, or a background in academia (Blair or Fraser are examples of this, although John is too, to an extent, especially with that whole Math Thing). Alternatively, a practical or ironic attitude in contrast to those of the other characters (Teyla's patient common sense, Ray Kowalski's and Rodney's snappy comebacks). A classic example of an access character would be the companions in Doctor Who, who represent humanity and the 20th (21st) century Earth worldview while transplanted to exotic places; in this sense, most of the cast of SGA seem to be plausible choices of access character.

3. I'd say that in SGA fandom overall, the AngstyGothTeenie fanon!Rodney that I describe is not overwhelmingly popular; in fact, the teenaged angst/hysteria elements are pretty much absent from the main lj-based portion of fandom I've read in. However, that particular fanon characterisation was so remarkably clear and widespread at the time it made its impression on me that I find it merits analysis, even if by some chance it has vanished even from Wraithbait now. The proposed link between access character and heroinisation wouldn't necessarily have to apply only at a fandom-wide level, in any case.

Comments

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to see how this plays out in SPN.

SPN text marks Sam as the more feminine, heroine-like character -- it's not just subtext, Dean canonically calls Sam girly. Sam is also younger, has longer hair, is psychic, cries more, is sensitive, needs protection, etc etc. Sam is also coming back to the supernatural world after trying to be "normal" for a while, so the text also sets him up to be the access character.

*But* most fans seem to prefer Dean (http://mecurtin.livejournal.com/411150.html), so there's a real tension there between conflicting impulses to heroinize. I'm not familiar enough with SPN yet to see how this plays out in either good- or bad-fic -- the latter in my experience being a lot closer to the collective unconscious, or at least Id.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hee, yeah, I thought about whether to call it the Id instead, but I do think the "collective unconscious" captures something about fanon - I mean, the individual concepts often are not unconscious on the parts of the individual authors, but as an entity, fanon is like a fannish unconscious, in the way that it fits together into a sort of cohesive whole which anyone well-read in the fandom could describe to you, you know, and which so many authors draw on in different combinations at will.

But more to the point, I was going to say YES! Because I haven't watched spn from the beginning but I have shared the livingroom with a religious watcher from the beginning, so I have a sort of... two minutes of watching out of each half hour perspective on it, with the occasional full or mostly-full episode. That was more than enough for me to pick on the girly!Sam coding, yet when I read some of makesmewannadie's J2 recs, I was surprised to discover Jensen not just constantly bottoming, but distinctly feminised.The most striking example was the one where he was a Mafia princess and Jared was a big, bad hitman who fell in love with the mark and decided to save him instead. I asked wax, who reads a lot of the RPS, and she confirms that those interpretations are dominant.

Wandering in from metafandom

[marinarusalka.livejournal.com]

I think the fandom response to the SPN boys gets skewed by the fact that Sam/Jared is so much taller and generally bigger than Dean/Jensen. The camera work on the show tended to minimize the difference for most of last season, but these days they don't even bother. Fanon will often impose a significant size differential even where none exists, so when one does exist, I can certainly see that fans would pounce on it.

I read very little RPS, but I suspect that there, the effect is magnified by the fact that Jared tends to come across as very confident and gregarious in interviews and public appearances, while Jensen comes across as introverted and somewhat awkward.

Re: Wandering in from metafandom

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yes, wax mentioned that shyness as a factor too. There was some kind of kerfluffle about whether he had Aspberger's. So like... he's autistic! He must be the girl!

I find that one a lot easier to buy than the height difference, actually. I don't contest what you say. You're definitely right about fandom imposing a height difference. I can't count the number of times I've been flung violently out of a story by the wrong person standing on tiptoe/leaning down/etc etc. But I have a hard time seeing fanon traditions building up with that as a basis, or even seeing the hypothetical first fanfic writers thinking "Well, he's shorter, so he can bottom, that will be sexy!" Of course it's possible that people did that, but I can't help looking for a little more explanation.

Re: Wandering in from metafandom

[marinarusalka.livejournal.com]

But I have a hard time seeing fanon traditions building up with that as a basis, or even seeing the hypothetical first fanfic writers thinking "Well, he's shorter, so he can bottom, that will be sexy!"

Oh, I definitely don't think it's anything as deliberate as that; I just think there's a sort of instinctive response in fandom, to attribute "feminine" traits to the smaller person. (Fanon!Iolaus in HtLJ fandom is a particularly egregious example of that. Your average romance heroine would sneer at fanon!Iolaus for being a giant wussy crybaby.)

And there's other factors involved, too. Dean's role in the fucked-up Winchester family dynamics appears often to have been that of peacemaker/caretaker, a function traditionally filled by women. And one of the interesting things about Sam's character -- or at least one that fandom picked up on as particularly interesting -- is the dichotomy between his puppy-eyed, sensitive nice-guy demeanor and his imposing physical presence and violent training. Canon emphasizes the former part, so fanon focuses more on the latter.

[norah.livejournal.com]

I really do think there are insights you can only gain by braving the scary id of fandom through badfic. I applaud you for boldly going, but I am afraid I have little to add to this...it sounds plausible? *g*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hee. You know I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it in some crazy twisted way! ;)

One thing I like about it is that while it would probably never have emerged without my badfic-immersion habit (I've been immersed for a week now!), it seems to apply to and in some way explain my thoughts about the more subtle and nuanced and less-fanony world of the upper layers of fanfiction, too.

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

Fascinating post. Thank you.

I've been wondering myself how and why fans tend to identify with one character over the others.

One superficial reason that occurred to me is that if the reader identifies with Rodney in a McShep story, it means that it positions them as the vicarious love interest of Sheppard. Obviously that's far too simplistic an analysis, but I think it's probably an aspect of it. Sheppard is so clearly constructed as the heroic alpha male (although I'd argue that JFlan's performance, whether by his choice or by deliberate direction, sometimes undercuts that intent), so in the traditional het romance paradigm, that would make him the pursuer, and also the unknowable other (not the viewpoint character) that the reader is "trained" and expected to want.

I like your analysis though. I can tell I'm going to be thinking about it for a while :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I like this too! It's also a very likely explanation for how writers choose their access characters. It wasn't completely foreign to my thoughts as I was writing, but the rest of the part about romance conventions never got fully developed. :) I'd love to think and talk more about those, though, because you're right, and I think it's fascinating the way the hero and heroine tropes interact. Do we choose our access characters in the first place through identification (Rodney because he's smarter than everyone else, or because he's snarky!) or by default because he's not who we want to fuck (ie primary romantic interest in Spock = identify with Kirk? I used to promote this theory, but I've encountered a number of fans, including wax, who say they always identify most strongly with the character they're personally most interested in fucking. Perhaps that says more about them than about the theory, though!).

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

I'd like to talk about it more too. :)

Do we choose our access characters in the first place through identification ... or by default because he's not who we want to fuck?

Great question. Of course I don't think it's has an either/or answer. :)

Let's get personal and specific for a minute. I've written two major pairings in my fannish career: Orlando/Elijah and John/Rodney.

Lotrips fascinated me for a lot of reasons, and it was primarily Elijah who was my access character (I wrote from his POV first and most consistently). Both Elijah and Orlando were too young at the time for me to take seriously as sex objects. What interested me was: that Elijah was such a bizarre mix of grown-up, sophisticated and experienced (due to his child star career), and youth, passion for kids-stuff like hacky-sack, and lack of formal school-going; then he was placed in a high-stress role, at the transitional moment of his life from kid to adult. It was all about identification for me, as it parallelled a lot of this stress I was feeling about my PhD.

Then, because I believe that in a good romance the reader has to be able to fall in love with both characters, I *learned* to identify with Orlando, mostly on the basis that he was just learning to cope with being beautiful and popular, and the baggage that goes with that. That was great training as a writer, finding my way into a character on purpose. But it was really never about the sex--and that's why my fics tended to be more about friendship/romances than sexcapades.

So in this case, I don't identify strongly with Elijah because of sexual attraction, and I'm not wanting to be in the vicarious Orlando's-lover position either.

With John and Rodney, it was one of those weird things, because I identified with *both* characters right off the bat. They were like a yin and yang for me: I'm a PhD and a geek, but I'm also a loner with intimacy issues. Best pairing ever. I could go either way. That said, I find John more appealing as a writer because he's a blank slate; there's so much room to move. And then he's also around my age, and he's physically of the type that pings me in real life, so there's an element of that too (and perhaps that's why I feel less comfortable with rps in this fandom).

Anyway, in this case I do identify most strongly with the character I'm also most attracted to. (Which would mean I end up vicariously Rodney's-lover. Such a hardship :) But of course, I've written stories from both POVs, sometimes even within the same story, so where does that leave us?

My point is that there's a lot going on creatively in these choices for me, as these brief summaries of just the most relevent factors show, but I think the main reason I've been writing these characters so long is because I could get into the headspaces of *both* sides of the pairings. Fandoms in which I strongly identify with only one character, I tend to read voraciously but not write (Smallville).

So to bring this back into the wider discussion, there are clearly patterns in fanon, as you've pointed out, and I think writers of all talent levels take some of them onboard (or already have them, if they came from romance novels, as we've speculated). Writers may deploy these themes with more or less sophistication, write them as crack, write to *counter* them (which is what I did in "Sheppard's Choice"), but they are part of the fannish consciousness. Which means that there's something going on other than personal reactions on the part of writers, but does that "something" map the same way with the same writer in different fandoms? Or even with the same writer in the same fandom, but with different stories (and different POVs)?

I'd really like to develop an explanation for the way my fannish fascination hooks into certain ideas; but trying to get to grips with it feels like wrestling with the ocean. What are your thoughts?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Which means that there's something going on other than personal reactions on the part of writers, but does that "something" map the same way with the same writer in different fandoms? Or even with the same writer in the same fandom, but with different stories (and different POVs)?

It must vary from writer to writer at least. But I also wonder if it's possible to speak in terms of trends, because if it is that could also be meaningful. For example, does a character's dominance as access character in fanon influence more writers into a) using that access character instead of the other and b) therefore also (possibly) choosing more/different tropes for that character than they otherwise might? Of course, the more fanon grows, the more we're aware of it, and that just leads to more growth. And of course, in any OTP, there will be plenty of people who identify with both halves. But then could we see, oh, bits of heroinisation on Rodney even when the writer has (perhaps temporarily) consciously chosen John as the access character for a specific story?

I used to think there were people who identified with the characters they were attracted to as a matter of course and people who identified with the other characters as a matter of course, but I never had any evidence to support that. There's no reason that identification and attraction shouldn't be two completely separate processes which just happened to intersect sometimes.

I also wonder whether there might be a significant divide in characterisation or stories between writers for whom identification is the most important process and writers for whom attraction is the most important process. When I think of just my own stories in terms of these two processes, I see differences that can result in, say, the romantic object being less dimensional than the POV character, remaining opaque to the reader through the entire story. On the other hand, in stories written with attraction as the defining characteristic, the result might be a more transparent narrator and a more detail-oriented characterisation of the romantic object. In a badfic context, where the trends are exaggerated again, you could call the phenomena "vanishing narrator" and "vanishing romantic object" (except that sounds silly - 'vanishing other' or 'vanishing interest' or something?).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is fascinatingly interesting. It chimes with my own interest in the Mary Sue. For me, it's a bit more complicated than 'identifying' (as you both suggest, in fact). I still remember learning this when I'd written a hugely long angsty fic (which happened to be lotrips), convinced that my 'Sue' character was Karl, only to receive comments from both my beta readers that for them it was obviously Dom. This made me think: I realised that the reason the fic wasn't working was that I had mis-recognised my 'Sue'. I had written Karl as the desirer and Dom the desired whereas in my unconscious writerly brain it had been the opposite.

This is when I started thinking that far from vilifying the Sue and eschewing all considerations of this lowly site of cathexis, it is, on the contrary, vital to identify one's Sue (at least, it is for me). This connects with what is commonly called pov but is a bit different, too. For example, I've written quite a few stories where I switch pov's a few times throughout. In the above long angsty fic, some chapters are written from Karl's pov and some from Dom's pov but my Sue never changed. This was the person who was most resonant with me. I'm not sure how this relates to your 'access character', Cimorene, because you're talking more of fandom / fanon as a collective thing. The collective fanon, of course, has an impact on one's personal Sue.

What I find sexiest about all literature is the ability to crawl into other people's heads (Bakhtin's polyvocality). To this extent, I love it when povs get exchanged, so that the person who's been the 'attractant' can, with a switch of pov, become the 'identifiee'. So I also agree with what you said about it not being so clear-cut, the distinction between with whom one identifies and whom one wants. Both can be true!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I would call what you describe as "Sue" an access character. The critical point is that it's the character the writer identifies with and/or intends for the reader to identify with and use as a point of entry to the fictional universe, independent of POV (it's fairly common, for instance, to have sections of harlequin type romances from the hero's POV, but the heroine is still the access character). Access character is absolutely a trait of an individual story, an individual choice of the author's. When I talk about the access character for a fandom I really mean the most popular and most common one. While it's true that not all stories are identical, I think it's still possible to talk about fanon, in a way, as if it were a single story - maybe an oral tradition type of story, with constellations of character qualities and so on from which you can tease out the essentials. And it's those essentials that I was thinking of - the archetypes of fanon.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting analysis. I might argue that one or two particularly popular stories can drag everyone down the same alley, so to speak. If a story with a lot of impact has one character heroic and the other loaded with projected traits made more of an 'access character', then a lot of people imprint on the set up. I know I do.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I think that's actually much more true in the upper layer of fandom which we have access to through lj - the fandom which operates through interlinked journals and mostly through fairly frequently-recced stories. It seems to me that fanon consensus in the unfiltered strata of fandom - messageboards, ff.net, wraithbait and many pairing-specific communities - is less susceptible to that, though those communities often have their own "classics" on, perhaps, a smaller scale (in that there's less consensus about them). I couldn't point to any stories which are very popular on delicious, for example, dating from early enough in the fandom to have potentially contributed to the fanon of suicidal body issues Rodney. Of course all fanon is related to the other fanfiction the writers have read, but there's an intriguing process of selection going on somehow that creates the profile of the fanon, moving some traits closer to the centre and some further out.

And I didn't mean to imply that an access character is something a character becomes in a work of fanfiction by the process of heroinisation, or that the imagined heroine traits make the character more accessible. It's a functional name for the character the writer identified with in the source text (and the character she intends the readers to identify with). If I'd written an AU where SGA was just an lj RPG based on SG1 and John and Rodney were members of lj fandom who roleplayed together there and eventually fell in love, and in my story I made John a multi-fannish voracious and compulsive reader of badfic who maintained a recs page and shared all my personal views about major fandom wanks, that would definitely be me loading my access character with projected traits and it would enable anyone reading the story to tell immediately who I was identifying with, but he wouldn't be more an access character there than he is wax's in her story where he hunts and fishes while Rodney fixes the crystals in the DHD. It all depends on what the author needs in order to identify with the character, I guess.

poking my head in from metafandom

[queenofhell.livejournal.com]

Have you read this post (http://ficbyzee.livejournal.com/237647.html)? ficbyzee talks about the fanon that Patrick hates his body and is incredibly insecure, and there's some discussion in the comments and the post about female writers projecting their body issues onto their characterization of him.

Re: poking my head in from metafandom

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yes, thanks! I did read it (albeit a week ago, before I was in a position to know exactly what she was talking about). That projection is definitely a part of that specific aspect of insecurity in fanon characterisations, I agree.

[msilverstar]

It's fun to compare and contrast pairings where there's an obviously younger/shorter/thinner guy and an older/taller/bulkier guy (Viggo/Orlando, anyone?) with pairings where the guys are pretty much equal (Viggo/Sean, Dom/Billy, Orlando/Elijah). Some writers push one of the characters into the "female" role and have him be emotionally dependent, weak, and romantic, while others are more interested in seeing how it works when they're more similar and "masculine".

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Very true! And I wonder whether that has to do with the author's genre perspective, or perhaps I should say paradigm - feminising, or heroinising, being associated specifically with the romance genre paradigm, and those authors definitely coming from a romance-writing place, not just in terms of a sexual/emotional piece, but the conventions of that genre - plots and tropes and monogamy and Big Love. There are certainly a sizeable minority in fandom who come at it (kyuuketsukirui would be my first example, because she articulates her position so clearly and frequently!) from a definitely non-romance paradigm, even if what they are looking for/writing/interested in are almost exclusively stories exploring male homosexual sex and love.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Fascinating discussion. Especially the bit about writing to generic expectations and the bit about topping and bottoming.

Also: footnotes in an LJ post, *drool*.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hee! I love footnotes.