Villains are More Fun
The Week in Selfies: 8/3/20 - 8/9/20
Hello. This is me in clothing form:
Yes, a flawed gem.
Another Newsletter. Similar housekeeping things:
It’s August now. SOMEHOW. And I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. This organization for this month is Stop AAPI Hate. If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher about the project, you can always find more details of the project on my About page.
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When we reach 100 subscribers, I’ll start taking selfie submissions which I think will be FUN.
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“In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be.”
- Roxane Gay, “Not Here to Make Friends,” in Bad Feminist
Anyone who knows me or is in the slightest bit familiar with my playwriting knows that the so-called “likability” of characters is a hill I will die on. This moniker is often thrown around in terms of work that is created by women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC and it automatically creates a false equivalency between “likability” and merit. Not only that but it is entirely lazy criticism. “Unlikable” is a word that means nothing. It's a word used when there is a refusal to have a deeper interaction with the work. I do not think there is a fully likable person anywhere. A person I like very much, you might hate. I could think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread and you could insist that bread is growing mold.
Besides, villains are more fun.
Given the option to read about, read for, play, dress-up as any character in a work, I will go for the unlikable person nearly 100% of the time. They have the best quips, the best costumes, and are often more future minded than any other character. Sure, that future might be to blow up the world but they know what they want and they will go after it.
I discovered Roxane Gay, bestselling author, professor, and great twitterer and newsletter writer, years ago when I first read Bad Feminist. Reading “Not Here to Make Friends,” a chapter/essay in that book, created an immediate imprint on my heart. She so succinctly and eloquently put into words the inherent issues with likability in literature (and, in life, to be honest) that it helped me understand something that was tickling my brain as I grew in my writing. Unlikability became my battle cry. I reread that essay before sitting down to write today and I can tell you that chapter, at least, holds up. It’s an argument well worth reading.
Unlikable characters are full of flaws. They can make rash decisions without considering the consequences. Or they make deliberate decisions with consequences that may be devastating. An unlikable character is always trying something which, you know, in literature, media, entertainment, sports, what have you, is important to move the narrative along.
To me, unlikable characters have a greater sense of who they are, simply because they are often experimenting with who they are. They seem to understand something that many of us struggle with; you can change. You will change as you grow. And things that defined you, that you or others thought made you “good” will likely not serve you at some point and then you must recalibrate. Coded into their very nature is a knowledge that not everyone will like you; you cannot please everyone.
And, I cannot overstate, they have the best quips and the best outfits.
Being unlikable is being human. Sometimes being human means dressing up for a weekly themed happy hour as a horrendously selfish and abusive aunt to a boy who will eventually have adventures in a giant peach. Sometimes it means making a decision or setting boundaries in a way that may feel selfish. But, at the core, all these things are just figuring out how to be a human in this world. And why apologize for being human?
Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps, this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don't dare be so alive.
- Roxane Gay, “Not Here to Make Friends,” in Bad Feminist
Monday, August 3, 2020
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
*wistfully looking through a window* Much drama. Very serious.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
An instagram filter strikes again.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
I made it to the water!
Friday, August 7, 2020
Aunt Sponge. What a gem.
Saturday, August 8, 2020
ART.
Sunday, August 9, 2020
Triple? Load? So many jokes, so little time.
This week, paying subscribers learned about the time following a rule was more trouble than it was worth. If that sounds intriguing to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.