Heroines & Heroes

Back in the heyday of The X Files, I remember reading a magazine article about a girl who desperately wanted to be Dana Scully - not Gillian Anderson, but the character she played. Admittedly, the girl did look a little bit like her heroine - the photo showed her standing in a bedroom crowded with X Files memorabilia, with a caption listing each item alongside its estimated value - but while part of me scoffed at such blatant wannabe-ism, another part quietly sympathised. Lacking the ability to remember a regular TV timeslot, I was never a devotee, but I'd watched enough stand-alone episodes, talked with enough fans and caught enough spruiks to feel fond of the characters. In my early teens, season finale adverts and the cliffhangers to which they alluded made my chest ache - some for shows I'd never even watched - and The X Files fell firmly into this category. After watching one such final episode, I felt physically anguished that Mulder and Scully hadn't kissed, and that they'd been separated - possibly for good. It was a powerful, intermingled and complex desire: I wanted to play God, step into the screen and push them together exactly as I liked; I wanted the show to be real, with me as an integral-but-hitherto-unknown participant; I wanted to be Dana Scully, so I could have chosen differently; I wanted to be Dana Scully, so I could have made exactly the same choices; and I wanted it all to be a TV show, except the episode would keep playing until it reached the ending of my choice.

And this wasn't even a show I routinely watched! It's just as well my friends never succeeded in hooking me on Buffy and Angel back then, because given my current level of slavish devotion to all things Whedonesque, I would have most likely imploded under the strain. Having watched both shows in their entirety on DVD, I can barely contemplate waiting months to watch 'Anne' (Episode 1, Season 3) after 'Becoming Part 2' (Episode 22, Season 2), and then a whole week more to see 'Dead Man's Party' (Episode 2, Season 3) - how could anyone stand it?

Books have a similar - but less volatile - effect, because I can normally lay hands on the next instalment soon enough that I don't need to start dosing my lunch with morphine or laudanum. Back when I was still taking my first steps in the world of adult (rather than young adult) fantasy, this was consierably easier, as just about every series I read had already been finished. Not so today, where I am forced to wait intolerable periods of time for George R. R. Martin's A Dance of Dragons in the knowledge that it won't contain Arya Stark; uncertain weeks before I can lay hands on Naomi Novik's latest Temeraire instalment, Empire of Ivory; and indeterminate aeons before I have time to re-read Vellum in anticipation of Ink, a delay made frustratingly necessary by Hal Duncan's incredible skill at manouvering a story between plural parallel worlds.

But none of this would occur if it weren't for the heroes and heroines of these stories, characters whose passionately fictitious lives are a kind of raw imaginative, well, heroine. It's hard to pin down what attracts us to some protagonists, but not others, as the kind of people we like in fiction rarely resemble our real-life friends. Which is part of their attraction: the medium allows us to lavish attention on its characters without ever asking whether or not those characters would like us. We're free to hero-worship without any of the real-life repraisals normally reserved for such behaviour - right up until the point we tip a little bit over the edge and conflate the actor with the role, or otherwise turn into Kathy Bates. It's not like loving a sports player or movie starlet - apart from there being no press-conferences or poor performances to break the glamour, there's a decrease in the opportunities for peer censorship: most people aren't devout fans, even if they do read the same books or watch the same shows, and fewer conversaional bents will turn in the right direction. So no matter how freely we might discuss our passion (or lack thereof) for various Collingwood players at work, or argue the merits of Brad Pitt over drinks with friends, character-crushes are articulated only to a specific set of people whom we know agree anyway; or at least, whom we think agree.

Enter the Kirk v. Picard debate, an historic staple of geekdom that's known and recognised as such even by normal folk. Upon finding a person who is also as committed a fan as you are to the appropriate book, show or film, there's a tendency to assume that they've drawn exactly the same conclusions and loved exactly the same characters in exactly the same way as yourself. Few things are more disappointing than being proven wrong on this point: emotionally, it's like coming face to face with Judas Iscariot, someone who has had every opportunity to see the light but who has instead turned their face to shadow. None of us are immune. I have been astonished that someone could prefer Angel to Spike, incredulous that anyone might think Roger Moore a better Bond than Timothy Dalton, and outraged at the suggestion that M. Night Shyamalan makes pointless films. Fools! I cry, mounting my High Horse of Dignity and wielding my Sword of Righteous Smiting, +3. Ignorant heathen! Bow before my superior judgement and wisdom and know ye this: The Empire Strikes Back was not a better film than Return of the Jedi!

Still, it seems only proper to acknowledge that after the initial shock has worn off, we can love these confrontations (the ones that don't get personal, anyway). Deep down, everyone thrills to an opportunity to preach from the moral highground without fear of being lynched, and as a socio-cultural outlet, you can't go past geekdom. Much like The Argument about whether one is a nerd, geek or dork, there are other traditional conflicts, rites of passage via verbal combat through which we must prove our mettle as one or t'other. Sith or Jedi? Werewolves or vampires? Pirates or ninjas? Spiderman or Superman? PC or console? Linux, Mac or Windows? Anime with subtitles, or dubbed? Such are the epic struggles of our kind, writ large on the skin of the world before Facebook ever gave them a digital outlet.

So who are your fictional heroes?