Question of the day, #1

[mrissa]

So I was thinking about the recent rants from "oh noes, girl cooties in my SF" people. I was thinking about which traits of mine are most crucial to my reading experience when reflected in characters. I do not, for example, find it particularly difficult to care about male characters, or non-white characters, or homosexual characters. But I was pretty sure that if I thought about it, I would come up with some things where I really did want characters to be "like me."

What I came up with is loyalty.

I don't require a character with whom I can identify; caring is enough. But when a character is blithely disloyal to people who are showing them loyalty, I have a hard time not putting down the book and walking away.

How about you? What traits do you want to share--or at least not blatantly not share--with a character in order to care about their story?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, sufficient, no. It's easy to imagine a loyal character I wouldn't give a rip about.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

What I think I really should have said is that I'm not sure if I have any qualities that are necessary, but not sufficient, whereas I can think of a number of qualities that are very nearly sufficient, but not necessary. For example, I'll cut a lot of slack to a character who has great wit and a sense of humor, but if the character isn't gifted in that department, that can be fine, as long as they have other qualities.