/lit/ - Literature

Because they have no character of their own (yet).

>>20476214
I don't get it

>>20476214
Because most readers are women and women can only understand the actions of characters as endorsements of those actions by the author.

>>20476214
because they need to base their entire personality around something.

>>20476259
Hmm but women don't play video games nor watch movies, yet the same demand appears there

>>20476214
to feel better immersed in the pathos of the story

>>20476214
I don’t understand it either. Of course you want the character to be understood. But I don’t care for them being the same as me. Rather it be the opposite

>Work is BAD because main character is UNLIKEABLE

Why is this so common?

>>20476214
Narrative self and experiential self

You self-insert every time you read fiction, doesn't matter if you're consciously aware of it

>>20476324
Idiots are common

>>20476332
No, I do not.

>>20476214
Why do you need so many cocks up your ass?

>>20476338
>doesn't matter if you're consciously aware of it
Do you know what "unconsciously" means?

>>20476298
Plenty of women play games and watch movies. My gf used to play more fucking video games than me.

>>20476214
People used to take the characters as something they could analyze, maybe learn from them or get inspired by heroes.
These days narcissism is running rampant, and a narcissist doesn't want any other hero but themselves as they are.

>>20476214
>Why do people need to identify with characters?
https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/16/6/541/6143004

>>20476396
Wonder how this works with real life people like celebrities or artists

>>20476298
They absolutely do watch a ton of films, and identification is demanded from films.
Vidya is already identified with you, since you govern a character as you wish.

>>20476214
Asking this is proof that people here don't start with the Greeks. It was explained by Aristotle perfectly.

>>20476214

Identifying with a character doesn't mean you have to be like said character personally. Just that they behave in a way that has some sort of internal logic, however far it may be from you.

>>20476374
>claim a person does something unconsciously
>they refute it
>affirm they are wrong because they just don't know they are doing it unconsciously
you are retarded, unconsciously

>>20479121
Are you fucking stupid? No, seriously, I want to know how you completely missed the point of my first post just to state some inane nonsense. You didn't affirm anything you stupid jackass, I told you to look up the "narrative self and the experiential self". There's plenty of neuroscientific studies and psychology literature dealing with this topic. You aren't refuting anything, you're just misunderstanding what the term "unconsciously" used in colloquial terms means. EVERYBODY who reads fiction, or watches films, or reads comic books, whatever the fuck experiences this

Yeah next time put a little bit more thought before you waste time writing out dumbfuck shit like this. The reading comprehension on this board is fucking non-existent. Maybe go back to your anime or your vidya games if you don't understand this

>>20479121
Are you fucking stupid? No, seriously, I want to know how you completely missed the point of my first post just to state some inane nonsense. You didn't affirm anything you stupid jackass, I told you to look up the "narrative self and the experiential self". There's plenty of neuroscientific studies and psychology literature dealing with this topic. You aren't refuting anything, you're just misunderstanding what the term "unconsciously" used in colloquial terms means. EVERYBODY who reads fiction, or watches films, or reads comic books, whatever the fuck experiences this

Yeah next time put a little bit more thought before you waste time writing out dumbfuck shit like this. The reading comprehension on this board is fucking non-existent. Maybe go back to your anime or your vidya games if you don't understand this

>>20476214
Every work in progress needs a template

>>20476214
this is just how modern cinema is constructed; you're supposed to identify with the protagonist and live through him or her and feel those specific feels; it's called "vicari(o)us" and it's sloppy dumb writing imo, bordering on brainwashing even.

We explored today how Greek and Roman Theatre was not like this at all, and I will quote,

For example, let us consider the film ‘Titanic’ with a Greco-Roman style Interlude at the end of each major act.

Each interlude would consist of an overt mockery of the various characters of the previous act, or perhaps it would tell another story as to how the ship was constructed with serious flaws ‘on the cheap’ by greedy industrialists which would result in the ship sinking, the interlude, at any rate, would be lampooning the obviously false pretences at ‘possessing virtue’ by the characters and the possibilities of their ulterior clown-like motivations to be doing whatsoever they are doing in the play-proper; Rose, for example, could be portrayed as a complete slut who is screwing everybody on the lower decks, the overbearing suitor she is supposed to marry could be portrayed as a terribly fraught little man desperately trying to win the affections of Rose who he believes is a pure and innocent little thing and his overbearingness in the play-proper is shown to be just a tough-guy act, and so on and so on; the possibilities are limitless and crucially ‘each possibility’ represents what we would probably call nowadays both Realism and Surrealism – or it is anyway an “inversion of false pretences” where the sombre or pious nature of one character is turned on its head or where the lovable character is shown to be a heinous villain, and so on and so on.

>>20479913
Can we get a ROMAN SUPER EDIT of titanic where every scene is followed up with a Family Guy titanic themed cutaway gag.

>>20479841
>EVERYBODY who reads fiction, or watches films, or reads comic books, whatever the fuck experiences this
but this is also defined as a form of psychosis to make-pretend that when you read a book you're reading about yourself in the book, or on television, etc. the ability there to actually consider the broader scenario wit the characters is actually absent if you think about it.

I'm not the guy you were replying to btw, but whatever he's saying may have an ounce of validity in principle.

>>20479923
IF YOU WILL IT DUDE, IT IS NO DREAM.

>>20479121
>>20479928
>Hearing a story and imagining yourself in it is literally psychosis. I never do it because I'm the most self aware man in the world.
On today's episode, a bunch of autists step in dog shit trying to argue that they're just too smart to understand empathy. Find out what happens on this installment of "The Dumbest Fucking Thing You've Ever Read"

>>20480205
No one is saying that retard, just that you don't do it with every single story or every form of narrative you encounter.
>Yes you do, you just aren't consciously aware of it
reddit psychology

>>20480205
>just too smart to understand empathy.
pfft
you're talking about base sickly pathos (lit. vicariously suffering the suffering of others) as if it's not the greatest known and most widely evidenced and most easily demonstrated flaw in all human reasoning.

>>20479121
>they refute it
>No, I do not.
Are you retarded?

Because otherwise why would you care what happens to them?
Don’t get me wrong, your main character doesn’t have to be relatable or even likable, but you MUST have at least someone to root for.
Otherwise no one will care how the story ends if everyone is a jerk, see every GRIMDARK media ever where the darkness is so overwhelming and everyone so unlikable that people drop the story altogether.

>>20480231
>No one is saying that retard, just that you don't do it with every single story or every form of narrative you encounter.
or any - i would say; who actually does that with 'any' narrative?

I can't even begin to imagine the actual 'human' who watches television and projects themselves into the story due to identifying with one thing here or there going on in the story to one character.

e.g. watching an old comedy movie, you see a man being hit on the had with a saucepan, you were once hit on the head with a sucepan and you identify with that character and begin to become very upset to see 'the suffering' (pathos) that you've projected onto a simple bit of cinema.

I've never met such a person, except perhaps chris chan or somebody anyway with mental problems (this thought process is a verbatim psychosis), or a very very very small and highly impressionable child whose brain hasn't developed yet.


What the other guy is arguing is that 'we all do this', we don't. Contemporary media producers like to imagine this is what is going on but it's not really valid in how most people actually operate in the majority:

If it was more valid for more than a few outlyer mental cases, then a television show would literally be brainwashing the entire audience when it was aired, for instance, and propaganda would be far more effective if this was the case, it ought go without saying. That actual humans are nowhere near as reactive or easily impressionable as contemporary theories like to pretend.


Anyway I don't really know where either of you were coming from originally.

>>20480290
That's the point retard
>You believe eating your own shit is good, unconsciously
>"No, I do not."
>Do you know what "unconsciously" means?

>>20480312
>but you MUST have at least someone to root for.
why?
Nothing at all in life is clear cut like that. This 'hero/villain' dichotomy as a cultural thing is extremely dumb; it's just ripping all avenues of exploration out of any given issue, replacing it with a prestructured set linear predictable narrative; which turns every story like that into the same story, which I, for one, became bored of as a small child after seeing it more than once.

I mean, I liked the Sopranos when it was still on; the comedy and intrigues and watching the scenarios play out was great, but at no point did I find myself suddenly identifying with any of the characters. They were all flawed personalities; they were charactes designed that way, so how would one come to the notion of 'empathizing' on some grand level with a character here or there when you're watching a scripted comedy where the characters are 'written' to fail - you know what i mean?

>>20480343
ed.
honestly I don't think people remember that all media is entertainment and fiction, and not real - or if protrayed 'as' real then more than often only one side of a thousand of thousands of differing perspectives.

stupid humans

>>20480205
>, a bunch of autists
you need to look up the actual definition of what that means before calling your own intellectual failings out and displacing them onto people smarter than you are, dumb dumb.

>>20480312
>Otherwise no one will care how the story ends if everyone is a jerk
but that often is the case.

making one of them into the hero and one of them into the villain always comes across as story-ruining and contrived and not even nessecary.

you know like where one character in movie, who you already know is set up as the villain, just suddenly and for no actual reason whatsoever does something 'bad' to justify them getting murdered by the gang of 'heroes' later on? yeah it's a little fucking obviously bad writing.

when you find a movie that does not do this you find a movie that you find stays with you a lot longer. geez i wonder why.

>>20476214
genuinely lacking a soul and thus incapable of any sort of empathy or even viewing things detached from their personal sentiments

>>20480384
they have too much empathy perhaps, that it can overflow onto a davey dog cartoon character and cry out in fear and genuine terror every time davey dog is hit with the giant mallet by the cruel owl.

>>20476214
>people need to identify with characters
Only autists need to (normalfags too, since they are other type of autists).

>>20476214
Which people need to identify with characters? People who life in an eternal state of solipsism.

fig.1

>>20480492
>Which people need to identify with characters? People who life in an eternal state of solipsism.
exactly

>>20480231
>No one is saying that retard
Yes, at least one person is saying that. Do you speak for everyone? No? Then eat shit. If I'm not talking to you it's not your job to respond.

>>20480243
>as if it's not the greatest known and most widely evidenced and most easily demonstrated flaw in all human reasoning
I get it, your brain is just too high functioning to relate to the rest of us.

>>20480353
>calling your own intellectual failings out and displacing them onto people smarter than you are
You're not quirky and unique. You're not special. You're not particularly intelligent. Take a step back and look at this retarded discussion you're actually trying to have.