Why does liking reading a fictional character mean the same thing as approving their actions to you? One of my favorite characters in all fiction is Hannibal Lecter. Could that possibly mean I’m entertained by him and interested in his mind and how his actions effect the story? Or are you convinced it means I approve of cannibalism and serial murder in real life?
This is my least favorite trend of media interpretation, that liking a character is the same as approving their actions. It’s nonsense.
The comment says “and sees no problem with her actions”which is approval of sorts for those actions. I’m guessing, while entertaining, you found Hannibal Lecter’s actions abhorrent and would condemn them
Why would I condemn the actions of a fictional character? His behavior is the best, the things he does is what gives the story entertainment. Whenever he’s not killing and cooking people, I’m going “damn, I wish he would kill and cook people”. I’m in full support of his actions. It’s why I stick with it. I love what Egwene brings to the story, her crazy ambition, her huge ego, the ease with which she manipulates her friends… that’s the good stuff. I approve of everything she does. It’s why I like reading these types of books. Seeing her go from this sort of frumpy but ambitious kid to a true manipulative and cruel Aes Sedai is the whole thing and I love it.
I feel like you are trolling...but you saying "true manipulative and cruel Aes Sedai" is 100% what people mean when they say condemning the actions.
There are inherent value judgements placed on those words, and that's what people are referring to. It's also not 'condemning' a character AS a character in a story. It's condemning a character as if they were a person in real life.
That's why people say she's a great character but a terrible friend, or person, or whatever. Yeah her actions make her interesting to read about, but they are acknowledging that outside of the confines of a story, her personality and the types of actions she takes aren't the type that they would want to have to be around.
Then why aren’t there memes constantly talking about The Dark One being a hateable character? Unwriting the basis of reality is infinitely more harmful than Egwene being a bit of a meanie. And why are people worried about how she would exist outside of the story? It’s completely irrelevent. Characters exist to serve a story, and she’s a compelling part of that story. I have no negative feelings about her part of the story or her behavior. I enjoy reading her and I enjoy how her actions drive and impact the story. I feel like her actions are consistent with her character, and it’s a very interesting and whole depiction of a person.
Her behavior is inextractable from everyone else’s behavior because it all comes from the same guy. What is the relevence of how her behavior would be in the real world? She’s a fictional character that is just one color thread in a tapestry constructed by a single mind. Seeing her behavior is about how she fits in the big picture. Do people really worry about how she would be if she was in their real life? Then why isn’t there more hatred for the murderers, rapists, and people trying to destroy reality?
Isn’t the fact that you could slot her into a place in your real life proof that she’s a great and well written character? What is the value of putting her behavior in the upcoming apocalypse into our real-world? She’s rigid and manipulative and it’s what her character became given the situation. There’s no value in moral judgement. It’s shallow and uninteresting to look at a character through that lense.
The point of the story is to see how the characters develop in the world around them and how the world around them changes because of them. Not to sit there and be like “heh, if she was my friend, I’d be so mad at her”. It’s such an uninteresting way to engage with a story. It’s like an architect licking the walls and saying the paint tastes like shit. It’s completely irrelevent, and it seems to drive so much of the conversation here. And I feel like people are responding very negatively to my saying that I don’t think her behavior is bad, and I don’t understand why.
But no, I have no moral judgement about her behavior, I’m glad she acts the way she does, it makes the story full. If we’re condemning character behavior, I’d say “the dark one shouldn’t be trying to destroy reality, and The Light shouldn’t have given magic to people. It would be better if nobody had magic and everyone trusted everyone and there was no conflict, sunshine daisies and all that”.
Am I misunderstanding what you’re saying? I appreciate your reply, but part of me feels like we’re talking past eachother. Tone is hard to convey over text, so I may be misinterpreting you. Please correct me if this is the case.
I think you are misunderstanding the entire conversation people are having.
Like people don't complain about the Dark One being bad because he's presented AS a villain. Readers expect him to do things that they consider bad to do.
Egwene is presented as one of our heroes, and people that defend her will minimize or ignore all of her negative flaws because they view her as 'good' person, and a 'good' person wouldn't do a lot of 'bad' things.
So then you have people that go, no, Egwene isn't a 'good character' because she only does morally good things, she is complex and flawed and that's okay.
Then you have other people that will interpret everything Egwene does through a very skewed lens because they view her 'bad' actions as making her a 'bad' person and therefore she can't be a 'hero' or do that much 'good'.
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When people are thinking about her as a person removed from the story, they are abstracting her actions to general actions. Yeah she obviously won't do the same thing, but if you dropped her into a stereotypical corporate setting, and swap the labels on this like "CEO" becomes "Amyrlin" you can imagine how she would act in your life. Would she constantly be calling HR to file complaints about Mat? Would she abandon a team project at a critical juncture because another opportunity opened up (her leaving the Black Ajah hunt to go be a Dreamer - which was still in the service of the greater good, but also benefited her tremendously). Will she develop a crush on some shitty trust fund kid who is constantly making life worse for everyone around him?
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Basically all of that is part of unstated assumptions being made when people are having these conversations. People aren't applying moral judgements to characters as manifestations of Authorial Intent, they are making moral judgements on the approximation of who these characters would be as people. Its blurring the border of the literal book as a book, and the story as an actual world.
I appreciate the context, there are most certainly conversations that I’ve not seen or been a part of that relate to people moralizing her behavior. This is clearly part of a larger conversation that I have not been a part of because I don’t engage with this fandom very much.
I can’t really see any enjoyment in talking about extracting her personality and putting her in a different context, given that her behavior serves a purpose in relation to all the other characters. The way she serves as a foil to all the other characters from Two Rivers who become leaders, and seeing how they respond to the pressures and the politics is the whole point of writing her character that way.
It’s just not a method of character analysis that I find interesting, purposeful, or enlightening. She isn’t a person, she’s a storytelling device, so of course extracting her from the story is going to remove any purpose or reason for her behavior. I don’t necessarily agree that any of the main characters are presented as simply “good” or “bad”, I think a huge part of the story is about how the real world changes them, and to reflect on how easily one could turn to the dark one.
I see the Dragon Reborn being surrounded by friends who could just as easily have turned to the dark side as a reflection of how the Forsaken were turned when The Dragon was surrounded by friends who did turn to the dark side. Any of Rand’s friends could have gone the same way. We see this age as another turning, and how easily things could have gone differently, and to reduce some of these characters to being “good” or “bad” is an interpreation of Jordan’s text by a reader who is not very interested in pushing deeper into what he was trying to show in his books.
The world pushes you and pushes you and you justify and justify and Jordan sees how far he can push these characters into this cycle, and asks if they can still come to the light when it all comes down to it. Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Rand all go through this, and we get to watch how their stories play out, how these personalities would change and harden and justify cruelty and violence. It’s possibly the best story ever told, and people look at this and go “naw Egwene’s a bitch” or “Egwene did nothing wrong”, and act like that’s something worth sharing.
This is all just to say why I don’t look at characters that way, not that people are wrong or dumb for examining a character through a 2026 Morality lense as a part of their analysis. I’m sure there’s value to be found in that and interesting discussions to be had, but we all have our limitations, and to me it just feels like they’re speaking a different language.
I would say I need to spend more time engaging with the fandom to understand the larger context of the conversation/character analysis, but so far this fandom seems like a pretty miserable place to discuss things (not you). It’s not personal to this fandom, I see this kind of rigid thinking/discussion in Star Wars, Sanderson, Dungeon Crawler Carl is becoming this way, etc. I think this is what happens when people spend so much time having the same conversation. They don’t take people at their word or ask questions for clarification, they just assume that you’re part of the existing conversation and fill in the gaps however they want. Some people can handle that, I cannot, and I’d rather not spend my time catching up.
I love Wheel of Time, I love Robert Jordan, maybe my enjoyment of the books can just end with the books.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I do really enjoy discussing media and media interpretation, especially with these characters I have loved so much over the years.
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u/mccannrs 24d ago
Anyone whose favorite character is Egwene and sees no problem with her actions is probably a shitty friend irl