Someone to identify with or someone to cheer on?

This topic comes up from time to time, that much I will admit, but I don't think I've ever been able to put it down to a single sentence before, not like this, anyway, so I figured I might as well as this question directly:

When experiencing a good story, do you need someone to identify with, or would you rather have someone to cheer on?

Let me expand on this a little. I've often heard talk about characters in movies put into them for the sole purpose of having the audience identify themselves with this character, who is usually the protagonist. So if you're marketing a movie to teenagers, you have a teenager in the lead role, whereas if you're marketing your movie to geeks, you put in a geek who ends up being badass.

One one level, I can see how this could be effective. If we relax and let our minds wander, then an immersive movie or story can make us almost feel like we are actually in the story itself, experiencing these events for ourselves and having a grand adventure such that we would not normally have in real life. Games with silent protagonists tend to rely on this heavily, subtly implying that it's YOU playing the game even if the character you're in control with actually has a name.

It works by pulling you into the story, by letting you imagine that your long-held fantasies can be realised, at least for a little while. It makes you question what YOU would do under these circumstances. How would you act? How would you react? How would the experiences change you?

But I recently realised there was a completely different means of enjoying movies, games and stories without actually having to pretend YOU are in it, and it's pretty much the same way that you can enjoy sports. I mean, yes, there are fanatics who speak about their favourite team as "we" despite having no connection to them other than disconnected fandom, but when you sit down to enjoy a good football or basketball (or baseball if you HAVE to) match, you don't really try to pretend you're in the field flailing around. Let's face it - not all fans of sports make for decent sports stars.

Instead of trying to tell you that "this is you," a lot of stories do what professional wrestling does - they give you a face to cheery for, they give you a heel to boo and they send them into the ring to fight each other. Sometimes the face wins and you're happy about it. Sometimes the heel cheats and you're angry about it, wanting to see him pay. Sometimes the heel wins clean, making you appalled at the tragedy. In essence, sometime you don't need to dive into the story in person in order to enjoy it. You don't HAVE to have yourself in it to know what to cheer for, when the story gives a clear, distinct, defined hero to cheer for, sometimes that's enough.

The reason I ask this is because how one chooses to enjoy a good story tends to reflect on how one makes characters to play, here more than most other places. Some make a "mini-me" and enact themselves through that, others make action figures and they watch them fight.

So what do YOU prefer? Do you prefer to identify yourself with protagonists, be they your own or other people's, or do you prefer to have a distinct character to root for? When you make your City of Heroes characters, do you try to make them "like you," or do you prefer to give them their own distinct personalities that may not hold the same beliefs as you?

It's just interesting for me to know.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

So, just to give that annoying non-answer that everyone hates: That depends.

It depends mostly on the medium. I have no need to identify with characters in books, films, plays or whatever non-interactive medium you can think of. I'm not Luke Skywalker, but I'll happily admit to have cheered him on the first time I saw him do the Death Star run. Likewise, I just reread Lord of the Rings. I don't identify with anyone there, but it's fun to read about all these characters and what they do in a world on the edge of despair.

Frankly, I hate the blatant "you're supposed to identify with this guy" character inserts where none are needed. Transformers comes to mind. I'm seeing that for Optimus Prime. Yeah, we need a human-robot liaison, and that can be anyone, but does it have to be a teenager every time? Even as a teenager myself I thought that was tacked on. But Optimus Prime battling Megatron? Awesome! Go you big truck-robot guy! ...what, you died AGAIN?!

However, just to turn it upside down, when playing video games, I can't help but self-insert in the character I play. No matter what game it is, if I can't identify with the character, I get bored really fast. God of War comes to mind. Kratos is a fierce warrior, but he's also a big jerk. I simply cannot identify with him at all. Big, angry, and hates everything. I have nothing in common with Kratos, and even though I'll happily admit that the God of War games are well crafted beat 'em ups, I cannot play them.

On the other side we have characters like Guybrush Threepwood. Dorky, clever-in-a-weird-way, thinks pirates are cool. Likable and there's at least something to identify with. My all time favorite video game character, though, is Vyse from Skies of Arcadia. He is awesome, because of a relentless optimism that even I have to admit is hard to keep up with. I've seen other optimistic characters, but Vyse simply takes the cake, and he even follows up on it. I've even added one of his lines as a somewhat of a motto: "Impossible is a word people use to feel better about themselves when they quit." Plus, he gets the girl(s), and there's nothing wrong with that. I actually bought Valkyria Chronicles for PS3 because he had a cameo. Turns out, the lead character Welkin Gunther is a pretty good character, too.

So just to confuse the matters even more, I hate empty characters. Dragon Age comes to mind as a recent example. I make my own protagonist, and 20 hours later, I just don't care. The game happens around my character, sure I get to pick how thins turn out, but I'm just a spectator to the events that happens to all the interesting characters. Morrigan is cool, Leliana is fun, Alistair is a kind of dorky knight, and "the Carth". But my own character? Eh, he's... a warrior who usually picks the "nice guy" options. And that's about it. He's just boring. I'd much rather play a character that's a part of the world itself. Consider this, you could remove the main character of Dragon Age and just play the NPC party members, and there would be little to nothing lost storywise. So why is he/she/it there? Now Mass Effect's Sheppard, she's a fun character. Yes, "she". Sheppard is female, and no one is ever going to convince me otherwise.

And how does this affect my CoH characters? Hmm, I don't really know. I make my characters with a clear concept in mind and play them thereafter. Even if it's not the mechanically best way. I cannot play just another Fire/Kin, I'd need to know why he or she has fire and kinetics powers, how they'd act with it and their motivations for being Heroes (or Villains now). I've got a Forcefield Defender with a protective streak, calling her maternal doesn't begin to cover it, I've got a Stalker who's a pro, pay on time and she'll kill anyone you want, I've got a legacy Hero trying to live up to her fallen mentor's name. Every single one of my active characters can be summed up like that. Currently I'm leveling a Scrapper who's motivation is simply that she likes the adrenalin rush of fighting, and if she can be a hero at the same time, so much the better.

So, to sum it up. I like to cheer for characters I watch, but I have to be able to identify with characters I play.

Definitely someone to cheer for. Couple reasons. Main reason: intentional 'audience surrogate characters' are usually conspicuous by their boringness. Secondary reason: with the notable exception of Jack Harkness, GLBT characters always lack awesome, so I don't really want to identify with 'my demographic' in fiction. Also: heroes are more fun to watch than joes.

Talking like a Rikti: why I am doing it: unknown.

I almost always need someone to identify with, so I can imagine being them and think about how I'd react to the situations they're in - it's what helps me get into a movie or a book or anything else fictional - so there needs to be at least one active female character for a start

I'm not sure how I would apply this to CoH/V since I'm not a roleplayer (nor I find any canon character particularly interesting), but as far as cheering goes, I've found myself cheering on Butters from South Park a lot lately.

I'm in the identify group when it comes to playing. When it comes to the movies, I'll enjoy either kind more dependent on the plot's quality, not the delivery. Most of my characters, though, are based on some aspect of myself. It helps me when it comes to roleplaying, as I can easily decide how the character would react by putting myself in the position.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow I mean, yes, there are fanatics who speak about their favourite team as "we" despite having no connection to them other than disconnected fandom....

At the risk of derailing the thread, I'd like to just say something on this topic. I'm not a sports fan. I can't tell you the last time I've watched a sports event on television that wasn't my home team in the Superbowl/Stanley Cup games. Despite this, I do understand where this "we" comes from.

Imagine yourself as one of the players on the team. It's a big game for you for whatever reason. You run out to the field in your home stadium... but you don't have a single fan in the stadium. No one cares. Imagine there's not even anybody watching TV to see if you win. What's worse, the stands are filled to the brim with fans of the other team. You and your team are the only people who are trying to win, but this other team has an entire city cheering them on, willing them to win.

There's an energy there. I don't know what to call it, but these teams wouldn't play near as hard if nobody cared. Every fan counts.

After much pondering I'd say I am almost entirely in the "someone to cheer on" camp where action and hero movies and stories are concerned. However in the romance category I would like to identify with the geeky loser guy who gets the girl.

I must know I'd make a lousy hero and I need someone with a lot more skill to rescue me from trouble.

Always, always, always: someone to cheer on. Stories (in movies, games, whatever) that have a character who's supposed to be someone like me inevitably only succeed in irritating me.

This the prime reason I have so very little use for romantic movies, I'm supposed to imagine myself in that position, but then the substitute me does something that's infinitely removed from what I'd do that the very attempt simply angers me. I understand that you need drama and conflict in order to get everything to 90 minutes, but in so doing you lose me. I have yet to come across an exception.

I guess I'm admitting here that I'm not particularly empathic outside of an academic sense. No, actually I don't care if the guy gets the girl or not. Most of the time he acted uncommunicative or actively like a jerk anyway, so it'd be okay with me if the girl moved on and found someone that hasn't been around to waste all our time.

It goes for action movies and regenge stories too though really. I want justice to prevail and the wrongs to be righted, but again, there's always a disconnect in the middle that makes it very clear that I'm just watching someone else do it. Video games are better about it, especially ones with characters I've created, but there's still a gap.

My characters here, obviously, are never me or intended to be so. I actually did create a version of me once to see how close I could get physically, and it came kinda close, but then it fell apart. I knocked a bad guy out, and rather than pick up the hammer he'd dropped and brain his buddy with it, who was also attacking me, I was stuck with brawling. There the simulation ended and I was just controlling some dude who kinda looked like me if I had a more chiseled chin. He got deleted later, didn't like the sets.

I can go either way. I imprinted something fierce on Chell in Portal, right up to telling the final enemy where she could stick it. Which probably sounded pretty dorky when it's just me and my computer monintor, but I did it anyway. Link is also a wonderfully executed heroic cipher. I know I wasn't the only one yelling at Morpha to put me down. Playing a game with a character like that feels like walking through the adventure world yourself, sampling all it has to offer.

It falls flat sometimes, too. I didn't really care too much about the Lone Wanderer in Fallout 3, but the setting was interesting enough to keep me on the hook. The "I'm a floating gun" character even reached the pinnacle of deconstruction in BioShock.

At the other extreme, you have characters like Kratos, Solid Snake, and JRPG protagonist #291. These characters have personalities, goals, and aspirations, and it's my job as the player to help them accomplish things. Playing games with these sorts of protagonists feels more like I'm reading a book or watching a movie. It's enjoyable, but maybe not necessarily so interactive.

When these characters fail, it's usually because the audience doesn't react to the main character quite like the writers hoped they would. And that's going to be more subjective than "the player character is hollow." I can't see myself playing Prototype because I already don't like the main character, but I hear some people love the guy.

But there are ways to try to resolve the dilemma. Commander Shepard is essentially the perfect way to stand in the middle and reach for both ends: give the character a goal, but let the player choose from variations on personalities and methods. Heavy Rain does the same thing with n characters simultaneously. (I should probably take notes while playing that one.)

That doesn't always go right, either. The Grey Warden tried to have his cake and eat it too, but mostly fell mute while interesting things happened in the vicinity. That occasionally made me wonder why everyone in the room was suddenly looking at me for a decision, when I could well have been in the corner staring at cracks in the walls up to that point. Hideo Kojima created Raiden for MGS2 because you, as the pasty clueless mass of flesh that you are, will empathize with the pasty clueless androgynous protagonist. I don't think I need to rehash how the fandom reacted to that, but even trying to put a "blank" character in a series like MGS may have been a mistake from inception.

MMOs have to have enough flexibility in presentation to cater to both ends...and to the person that wants to farm White Silver Paladins and rolled a Pestilence-specced Hellmage because they're good at that once they hit level 43.14159. CoX does a very good job of that, but the moral choice systems--where they exist--add a little edge of Commander Shepard.

I really find the 'every man' characters to be problematic. Perhaps because my own sensibilities often lie outside the norm, perhaps because I overanaylze underlying motivations for stories' creation, I just find them to be something of an assumption. When that character comes on screen or into a story complaining about the things the creator thought you'd complain about, sekking the things they think you're after, it pulls me out of the viewing/reading/playing experience.

Why? Creators in games, movies, novels are telling you their story. there's no way around that. Their story will have its own assumptions, paths, and nuances. If they're good, these will give the feeling of continuity, give a certain logic or path to their creation. If the story seems to make a certain action make sense for the character to do, and gives the personality a reason to do it, I'm right there with them. But when they turn to me, nudge me and say this is what anybody would do, amiright?

You may question this last point, as I did basically say "if it makes sense to me I'm on track" and then turn around and say "if the character's doing what I'm supposed to have done, it's no good." Here's where the creator steps in: they can present me with a situation I'd never think of, nor could I have predicted it...but when the character makes their choice, given the information the character tells me about the systems in play, the character's personality, and the overall situation, the character can do things that I would never think of and still be an interesting and relatable entity. The best creators can make characters that stand for thing repelant and still make them seem 'realistic' in their own world.

The thing for me is this: does the character have enough nuance/motivation/history to seem like their own entity? if so, their personality does indeed become interesting. But when the character is painted with bland strokes of charcature, stereotypes, and rote archetypes they aren't. And to be honest, many of the various media's 'everyman' characters are the worst of these.

When I make characters in this game, I'm doing just that. The stories assosciated explain pasts, reactions, and/or motivations...but they don't have to be mini-me's. In fact, I only made one character once akin to myself, and I couldn't stand it. It just didn't make sense in the setting in which it was placed, doing what it did.

Characters with their own thoughtlines are interesting in that you have to look at things cockeyed, around a corner, or with a change of glasses from your standard viewpoint. I immediately know what I'd think I'd do if you present me with a situation; but put me in the shoes of, say, a young woman who lives in a dreamworld, a grizzled ex-inmate dealing with new freedom and despondancy, or an optimistic but amnestic radiocaive ex-corpse, and it's a bit different.

Someone to cheer for. I'm a girl. I don't get anyone to identify with in the kind of genres I like. The protagonist is still nearly always a guy. When you do get a female protagonist, the circumstances are usually so extreme that they make her difficult, if not impossible to identify with.

When I make characters, sometimes I make "this powerset and this powerset would be awesome together," but sometimes I make CHARACTERS. I've never had a problem coming up with characters that are interesting to me. The only problem is making characters that are interesting to me and that fit the powersets I'm interested in playing.

Like others, a mix of both.

My main hero is meant to be ridiculously over the top when it comes to his personality. He's meant to be the very epitome of heroic, unendingly positive (if somewhat clumsy and prone to mistakes) and intelligent to the point of super science. He's the guy you see bust into a building through a skylight and think 'Welp, no more reason to worry!' He does have flaws, but not to the point he can be identified with except by egotistical or delusional readers (both of which, he is on some level.) So, he has to have an evil character who forces him to screw up, forces him to make questionable choices he wouldn't normally make, and who is so twisted that if the hero WASN'T as heroic as he was, things wouldn't end well.

But the majority of my others, namely my secondary villain, my hero's sidekick and all the characters in between, have human, realistic traits. They have good points, bad points, they make mistakes, they make the right choices, they make wrong ones. None of them are perfect, but they're not unrealistically prone to screw ups either.

For me, when someone is classifying themselves as a hero, they HAVE to be someone to cheer on. It's nice if you can put yourself in their shoes, but it's even better if you can't imagine doing what they do to keep people safe. They go to such extents to the point it's difficult to imagine doing what they do. When a fire fighter rushes headfirst into a burning building, people don't think 'I could do that.' They think instead about how dangerous it is, and sometimes are in awe of the risks they take.

Villains, though, are hard to write for and still keep them interesting. Sure, the occasional villain you're MEANT to hate it useful for propping up a hero even more, but to me, if villains are ALWAYS, 100% on the 'want them to lose' side, they're not being done well. Obviously, if the hero and villain are respectively good and evil on some level, you'll want the hero to win in the end, but if you never question it even for a second, it's just no fun.

Interesting question.

I prefer a well-crafted character and a good story to "I want to pretend I am this person having their adventures." I enjoy good stories, clever plots and I honestly =like= different perspectives, seeing things I might never have thought of, watching people make choices that make sense for them but that I might not necessarily agree with (obviously depending on the nature of those choices).

I play characters that have done things that I personally disapprove of, or wouldn't do myself, ever. Yes, all characters we characterise will hold some measure of ourselves in them; but it's interesting to see how far you can stretch that sometimes. Of course, when playing a character in a game, I have to find something vaguely redeeming in them or some way to empathise with whatever plight they face or you get too much of a disconnect and you can't portray them as well as you should. Dialogue gets wooden.

I don't watch many movies. So few of them have situations that I want to pay witness to or be involved in.

That said, I lean heavy to the cheer on factor if I am dealing with a heroic personality.
If dealing with a Villain I need something to identify with or I won't understand what twisted them to this point.

Taking that into consideration my ability to identify with many situations doesn't make this as much of choke point as it might seem.

I find it easier to be "someone else" if I have a 3d perspective. The ability to pull back and see the world, see the person in it.. and strive to relate to how they are viewing things is grand.
Floating guns are always -me-. I rewrite the story in my head to facilitate the fact that Gordina Freeman is doing these things. -grin- The short of it is, in a game where I am expected to react on instinct and twitch "I" must be entirely present. Thus I cannot pull out of the "kill box". If anything a few hours later I look up and wonder what I have been doing.

MMO's run the risk of that for me as well, and it has ruined more than one character I set out to create. I suppose it is called scrapperlock here, but having delt with the symptoms years earlier in Quake I just call it the box. There is nothing in view but what dies next, and anything that prevents that is taken care of on the way. This kills my characters. I become too present in them and any story they have is washed away.
I suppose at that point I am identifying but I find it frustrating to see work of weeks, sometimes years disappear in a frantic afternoon spent trying to progress.

I hear this a lot: "There wasn't a character I couldn't identify with, so I hated it."

That baffles me, yet it's so common that I have to assume this is the default feeling for most people. However, being an INTJ, I'm used to not really comprehending people's behavior in some instances.

For me, I require that a story be logical and internally consistent given the ground rules. That's the bare minimum. For me to really like it, I need clever dialogue and an engaging plot, as well as cool ideas. This applies to movies and books. Games are a different animal entirely since casual games are just hand-eye coordination affairs while others are intellectual exercises. RPGs like CoH need a well-told story, but also fun game dynamics.

Some of my all-time favorite movies feature characters that I neither identify with nor feel like cheering on, but they completely satisfy every other criterion I have. I think Citizen Kane, Casablanca, A Few Good Men and Sunset Boulevard are amazing films and have watched them innumerable times, but there aren't any characters I'm identifying with or cheering on in those movies. That's not to say I never do it. I definitely rooted for Val and Earl in Tremors and I absolutely identified with Brad Pitt's character in The Mexican.

After reading some other people's responses, especially Ironik's, I think I should clarify I have a very broad definition of "someone to cheer for." In a work of fiction I can "cheer for" someone who is not heroic at all, who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, who is completely unlikeable and out to do the wrong thing, if they are a compelling and interesting character. I want them to succeed because I want to see what they will do next. More to the point, I want them not to die, because then they won't be able to entertain me anymore.

Yes, that means I do cheer for the villain and the hero at the same time. It may be a foregone conclusion that the hero will win, but you can at least hope that the villain will be back for the sequel.