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votes
Which character from a story has impacted you most significantly, and why?
From book, painting, song, movie, television show, comic, manga, sculpture, etc. — it’s all fair game. Also, feel free to include figures from religious texts, which sometimes get left out of such discussions, but which are more than welcome here.
As always, don’t be pricks about people’s choices; to each their own.
In addition: Spoiler tagging encouraged for anything that might ruin a plot.
As an Asian American, Joy from Everything Everywhere All At Once resonated with me the most, if you've watched the movie you'd know why but I definitely don't want to spoil it!
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I almost cried watching that film and Joy. It felt amazing and weird to feel so seen by a film/character.
The main character in Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher, which examines how people whose beliefs conflict with the conservative community they live in respond to those pressures.
There is one scene where the main character attends a Promise Keeper's rally...
(It's not called Promise Keepers, but as someone who attended those rallies as a teenager and was made deeply uncomfortable by them, that is definitely what it was).
There is a speaker who tells everyone to write their greatest fear on a card and surrender their fear to Jesus by putting it in a fire (or something). The main character, who is struggling with his faith, writes, "My biggest fear is that I'm not a part of this anymore." Then he runs way.
That hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it.
My own unwinding is a result of a ton of personal experiences and changes, not this one book, but that scene still embodies my own struggle to this day.
If it counts given he was a non-fictional, but real person: Wolfgang Leonhard, when I read the first part of his autobiography, and later on the second part. Not sure if there's an english version to the second, but the first was released as "Child of revolution".
Leonhard grew up in the Sovjet Union in the 20s, rose the ranks to become one of the highest ranking communist renegades when he fled eastern Germany in the early 50s. He shared a few biographical similarities with my father. And that was the catch. My father was the best you can imagine, however he couldn't talk at all about negative feelings / bad things at all. He then just shook his head and politely refused to talk. Reading Leonhard's biography helped me to understand this trait, and I felt that I got access to my father's way of thinking or the reasons he couldn't talk at all about certain topics. My father and me always had a
goodwonderful relationship, but Leonhard helped me to understand him. Bonus points: My father was so happy when I told him about the book (I kept away the about him part), and he told me he read it as well, already back in the 50s or 60s.A fictional character with a high influence on me would be the harder part, but I guess the correct answer is Alan Alda / Hawkeye Pierce in MASH. There's one specific episode I loved as it was so bittersweet. They get a hopeless case on christmas and know this soldier can't be saved. They are already about to turn off the machines when they see a family picture and some loving words in his wallet. So they keep the machines on and do everything - not to save him, but to save him until midnight so that the beloved husband and father doesn't die on christmas. These attempts ultimately fail shortly before midnight. So Pierce stands up and puts the clock forward until five minutes after midnight, so they can still write the past-christmas date in the death certificate.
So, where's the impact on me? My grandmother always loved to see the standard 8pm evening news in Germany. She died in my hand at 7.57, but my father (who was the only one in the room except me) was sitting with the back towards the clock, so only I knew the time. I told the staff in nursing room she died at 8.05 pm as I wanted her to watch the evening news a final time, as she would have wanted to. Only years later I found her death certificate doing some paperwork, and then I told the story to my parents. They had a good smile and agreed that would have exactly been what she would have wanted. Grandma also loved to play harmless pranks with everyone - and she wouldn't have missed the opportunity to be involved in a final prank.
Absolutely, and it got better over the seasons. I guess if they had continued like in the first three seasons the show would long be forgotten as yet another oh-so-funny series with by and large interchangeable cast. With the fresh blood season four onwards the characters were far better distinguishable and not just Alan Alda's sidekicks anymore, and the turn towards an anti-war show was for the better. To see characters like Margret developing and growing across the eleven seasons was just wonderful and - as far as tv can be - believable.
I like the show so much that I never watched the final episode. I know what's happening, I have the DVDs with every season on my shelf, but for me the show never finishes if and as long as there's still one new episode waiting for me.
Uncle Iroh from Avatar: the Last Airbender has somewhat shaped (or at least amplified) my own personal values, including showing empathy and kindness to the people I care about, even if the person is lashing out at me, even when they say things that hurt me. Somewhat also for showing that there is a boundary and a limit to that kindness, and if someone crosses the line, it’s difficult but important to not yield that line until the person shows remorse and understands, not just recites, why they shouldn’t have done so.
I never thought this deeply about Uncle Iroh before. Thanks for this.
Just in case: spoilers for Gladiator, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Godfather series and "Harrison Bergeron" below
TV: A duo instead of one, but the Elric brothers from Fullmetal Alchemist (specifically, the 2003 anime). Their relationship, and the traumatic events that shaped it at the start of the series is such an expression of sincerity amid such loss. It's stuck with me for almost twenty years now as one of the most compelling displays of two broken souls who manage to keep the other going.
Film: It's a tie between Maximus from Gladiator and Michael Coreleone, particularly as he's represented in The Godfather Part III.
Maximus
His ability to persevere amid the agonizingly unjust loss foisted on him (you may be noticing a theme that resonates with me), and for how much emotion was poured into the ending as it relates to Maximus' journey. Wonderful lighting and music choices helped emphasize how he was at his core just someone who wanted his family again.Michael Coreleone
He stands out because he's someone who already had his moment of loss, and in a sense it left him broken. He was the good man, the war hero who let himself get roped into family drama that led him to become the very thing his father didn't want him to be. And in the end, his hubris cost him his family and left him dying alone and largely forgotten. How stories treat characters' last appearances is important to me, and the final scene of him slumping over in a brightly lit courtyard with just a scraggy dog witnessing his passing stays with me.Literature: The titular character from the short story "Harrison Bergeron." Him being an ubermensch isn't why he stuck with me, but instead his decision to embrace who he is and seize the moment amid so many societal pressures. He could've been a great artist or even someone who falls outside the norm; it was the moment he decided to cast off the very literal chains of societal expectations that made the character, specifically what his actions represented stay with me long after I first read the short story.
Bonus: Nikki from the Queensryche album Operation: Mindcrime. That theme I like of how loss defines characters shows up amid killer prog metal riffs, and if I had to answer the OP's question while being restricted to music, this is it.
I wonder if you've seen the short film based on Harrison Bergeron? It's really quite something. If so I'd be curious how similar it is to the book?
I haven't, but now that I know it exists I'm gonna check it out. The story version definitely focuses less on Bergeron's rebellion beyond what he's doing, and more on what viewers see and how they feel about it. If the film keeps that, I'd say it's a spot-on adaptation
It does just that. It's 30 or so very brilliant very intense minutes. I guess I'll have to do the inverse and give the book a go in return.
Eve from Applied Cryptography!
Only non-fiction I've ever called a page tuner. Just sad it's not updated anymore...
I was a socially rejected young teenager and watching Fiver's character arc in Watership Down inspired a thread of hope.
The gone girl from Gone Girl. Great book! The movie didn't really cut it, I think.
A second choice would be Baltimore Maryland from Transtrenders. They give a most tasteful and sensible take on nonbinary identity.
Back when I was in high school I had a kinda transitional summer where I discovered anime while I spent a lot of time alone studying for SATs. Katawa Shoujo Act 1 (of all things) came out at the same time, which fostered a love of visual novels and a generally way more sentimental side of myself I didn't know about, but I especially latched onto Hanako as a character. The game hasn't aged spectacularly, but I'll always love it for helping me separate my shyness and social anxiety away from my introversion - something about her writing helped me sort that out in my head. I've got a sketch of her from raemz and it's my most prized possession.
When I was in high school I would have answered Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park series, but in my adulthood I'd have to say it is some combination of characters from the Stormlight Archives. Specifically Dalinar Kholin with a sprinkling of Kaladin Stormblessed. Dalinar has a speech about "the next step" that always carries me through tough times, and I can't count how many times I have recited the Ideals of the Windrunners to myself. I won't say much more because spoilers, but everyone should try reading something by Brandon Sanderson if they haven't. :)
Oh, and from other media: "You're gonna carry that weight" always hits me like a ton of bricks, even over 20(!) years later.
My wife and I watched the play of A Little Life a few days ago (it was a cinema screening of the play). She's read the book beforehand, I hadn't.
It was three and a half hours of watching somebody circle a drain after they spent their entire life from 8 years old being heavily abused and then destroying everything that was good in their life because of that abuse and when finally it started working out, other shit turned up that destroyed the rest of it.
The character of Jude St. Francis will stay with me for a few more weeks I reckon.
My wife and I discussed it afterwards - at least when reading 800+ page book you put it down and reflect and recover between reading sessions. Watching the play was just watching non-stop trauma being inflicted on somebody and was exahausting and harrowing.
By the way, it was fantastically acted and produced and I would recommend it to anyone who won't have issues with the obvious trigger warnings. Just be prepared to only want to watch the Disney channel for a few weeks afterwards, or maybe cool off with something less disturbing like The Exorcist or Clockwork Orange afterwards 😮💨
I've only recently gotten into reading, and book that started it for me was Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase.
Something about the way the main character approached life with cynicism but also intrigue really interested me. He seemed to numb to the world and was quite pathetic towards most things, but he was still up for a journey and adventure, almost because he felt there wasn't much point in anything.
At least, that was my takeaway.