Of my lead character in Tinselfly, I have often said, well, she’s basically me.

And while that is still true in many ways, it’s time to start thinking about how she’s not me. It’s said that you can only understand things in opposition to other, similar things; in this case, I will gain a better understanding of my character by asking myself how she and I are different.

And as long as I’ve been defining the character as me, it’s been too easy to blithely ignore any criticism that I might not treating the character with respect, saying, or thinking, of course I understand her experience; her experience is my experience!

And that’s just not true.

It’s time to remove that safety net.

* * *

I thought it would be useful to express this as a handy-dandy Venn diagram:

Robin… is somewhat physically active is not afraid to get self, clothes dirty likes dressing up on occasion occasionally drinks thinks about career (later in story) might enjoy a discussion about which comic book character would win in a fight doesn’t mind being called nerdy or geeky self-identifies as a woman went to public school
	Both of us… are shy and quiet don’t use profanity like soda pop like sci-fi stories grew up in small town where many people (including one parent) worked in air/space-craft type industry spent lots of time stuck in air/space-ports remain somewhat childlike well into adulthood like fixing, creating things like exploring new places
	I… like creature comforts don’t like touching my food, much less getting dirty go out of my way to wear plain clothes can’t stand alcohol think fandom is frequently obsessive and silly find this whole idea of binary gender identification kind of weird wore uniforms to middle/high school don’t really have career goals

* * *

Well, that was fun.

So what does this get me?

Anything in the blue Robin-only section is stuff I’ll have to be extra-careful about. They range from behaviors I simply don’t engage in, to mindsets I find outright alien.

So, moving forward, what I should probably do here is start thinking, not about how Robin’s individual behaviors are different than mine but about Robin’s overall mindset and how it’s informing those behaviors.

As I type this, the following example comes to mind:

behaviors	root cause
likes dressing up on occasion is not afraid to get self, clothes dirty	Robin sees that there are times when looking nice is important, and other times when it doesn’t matter even slightly. This is a sharp contrast to myself; I want to be clean, but casual all of the time if I can help it, even if nobody is looking or cares, and even if the situation demands more formal attire.

So… from my point of view, the first two behaviors listed here seem contradictory at first glance, despite my gut feeling that both belonged in the list. But I know many people who exhibit those behaviors, and thinking about it some more, it makes perfect sense — one you get to the single root cause of those behaviors.

Similarly:

behaviors	root cause
thinks about career self-identifies as a woman doesn’t mind being called nerdy or geeky	Robin has stronger concepts of social, gender and sexual identity than I do. She consciously sees herself as a member of a variety of groups and will work (consciously or not) to preserve her feeling of membership of said groups, and will, if only in a small way, conflate herself with the group as a whole.

Et cetera, et cetera.

Well, I think this has been a useful exercise. Looking forward to doing more of it, but hopefully you get the idea. 🙂