and now, yet another spin-off
6 Feb 2006 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouThe previous thread got me thinking about nicknames, and not just the specifics of what we call lovers. I think one of the issues in fanfic (or any fic) about nicknames is that often writers don't actually think about the characters as individuals, complete independent individuals, and assess how a 'real' person might react. The characters are pixels to be moved about on the screen, and aren't always accorded serious thought in terms of 'would this person really permit this nickname to be used, let alone actually appreciate it'?
I didn't really have any nicknames in school, except for one or two very close friends, each of whom had their own personal nicknames for me. So my first major introduction to the power of nicknames was when we attended my mother's college reunion and some woman came running up to my mom, calling my mom by her maiden name. Mom was disgusted with this (though she smiled and chatted cheerfully like a good Southerner); after the woman left, my mother commented, "she called me by my last name, and I hate that. Only friends can call me by my last name, and she and I weren't friends in college." The woman had pre-empted a level of intimacy between herself and my mother, and for my mother, this rankled.
Now, multiply that by ten, given that the majority of fandoms I like are ones in which the male (and often female) characters do have the power to kick the average mortal's ass for presumptions (even if not all would). I can easily see Neji, in Naruto, not even pausing to respond other than to stab with two fingers and disable the person who dared call him Ne-chan if this person were one that Neji didn't see as having that right of intimacy -- and then he'd keep walking. Heero? That gun that never actually shoots Duo or Relena? I think we'd see it fired damn fast if he were called Hee-kun, let alone Hee-chan. Quatre might just ignore the nickname altogether, and not dignify it with a response. Trowa would stare blankly, perhaps; Wufei would level the person with a punch. Naruto would bristle, Sakura would punch the person, Ed (FmA) would go into fits, Alphonse would politely dissuade the person.
There's a second level to it, too, I think. Hinata might be the only person who could use the honorific (passing somewhat for a nickname in this context) of Neji-chan, but this isn't just because they're cousins. It might also be because Neji, in his delightfully warped way, sees her as a non-threat and thus her use of a nickname (which indicates a level of emotional intimacy) is not a danger to him. Think of your younger siblings or younger cousins who call you Dayday because they can't pronounce 'Kathy' or call you 'Cousin Wobby' as a holdover from the days when the R was a hard sound to manage. They get a free ride on an otherwise ridiculous nickname, but if one of your friends were to tease you with the name 'Cousin Wobby' you just might get a bit aggravated -- even if this is an otherwise good friend. It's still calling on a level of intimacy and back-history that's above and beyond, or different, from what you have with that friend, and we rarely allow such areas to mix and match. Wobby is your nephew's name for you; Rob is your friends' name for you, and to mix them feels wrong and uncomfortable somehow. Why would it be any different for a character? Some level of versimilitude is what we seek, after all.
Nicknames, to a certain degree, are infantilizing. "Babe," "pookie," "sweetie," are ones I've heard lovers use with each other, and there is a level of babying that does make sense--it creates a sensation for lovers of being protected, of being take care of, of being sheltered, just as young children are by their parents. But come on; the characters I appreciate are not characters who might really take well to being protected and sheltered; it's their very independence that attracted me in the first place, their strength against the odds, their determination to be strong on their own two feet. These aren't likely to be people to say, "oh, yes, treat me like I'm five!" as if they haven't spent the entirety of the series (and possibly pre-series) struggling to be treated like anything but a helpless infant.
(I suspect the infantilizing nicknames are as much a way of cutting these overly strong characters down to size as the tendency to turn the boy characters into girls and the girl characters into psychotic bitches.)
And it's not just who accepts a nickname but who uses it, too. Naruto uses 'Sakura-chan', but IIRC, he doesn't use an honorific for Sasuke. Duo never uses an honorific for anyone, and neither does Heero. Relena gives all the males her age a -kun honorific. Konohamaru gives Naruto the 'big brother' nickname, doesn't he? Anyway, Naruto using 'chan' for Sakura is, I think, indication of his attempt to claim some level of emotional familiarity with her as a female teammate (and as an extension of his crush on her), that is, as opposed to -san. But, as I understand it, the honorifics in Japanese are a great deal like my mother's experience in college: one's last name, used by friends, is actually an indication of greater closeness than one's first name. Look at the difference between, say, calling to one person, "Miss Sakura!" versus "yo, Uchiha." Even Americans, lacking formal honorifics, would see the second as being of greater familiarity and likely equality (at least from the perspective of the speaker). If the second person addressed turns around and punches the speaker and says, "don't call me that," then we'd know this familiarity was presumptuous on the speaker's part. And if the first person addressed frowned and said, "please, just call me Sakura," then we know the speaker was actually introducing more distance, not less, by the use of title plus first name.
Granted, all this is really something that boils down to "think about the characters and the situation before tossing this shit out." It's almost impossible to do rules-of-thumb, since a good writer could convince you of just about anything at any time. But we do, as social creatures, have some very clear (if rarely verbally defined) personal rules about the use of names in particular places. If you're at work and your mother comes by to take you for lunch and calls you by a childhood nickname, you're probably going to rankle, even if you don't show it outwardly -- your mother has, in your place of work as an adult, just reduced you (however unintentionally) to the state of a child, by reminding you of that part of your relationship. But when the family gets together at Thanksgiving? Everyone might be calling you by your family nickname and you wouldn't think twice. Duo might, upon occasion, call Heero 'Hee' or 'Ro' or even 'Yuy' but if 'Heero' is what we see Duo using in a business (or battle) context, then any deviation is going to be noticed by Heero and possibly remarked upon. If you've ever worked with someone you're dating (or living with), then you probably are aware of the discomfort if your lover slips and calls you 'pookie' while at work: that's your 'with-lover' persona, not your 'now-at-work' persona. We don't often like to have the lines crossed.
The reason it's impossible to do rules-of-thumb is because there are times when using inappropriate nicknames can be a strong, if subtle, demonstration of character interaction. A character who creates nicknames for everyone is someone taking familiarity before it's granted; it might be a sign of insecurity, or clinginess, or arrogance that s/he controls the speed of familiarity. A character who consistently refuses nicknames shows distance, refusal to grant intimacy. Using a personal nickname in a public/impersonal environment could be a way for one character to 'jolt' another; say, if Wufei were about to go ballistic, Duo calling him Wu-kun could be a skillful (if suicidal) way to distract Wufei from his fury with another point and transfer it onto Duo. With friends, sometimes we do that, and claiming a level of familiarity (or distance) is a much subtler -- if only because we react without thinking and don't always process why we're reacting like that -- way to manipulate.
And now, my lovely independent sap-hating minions, discuss!
I didn't really have any nicknames in school, except for one or two very close friends, each of whom had their own personal nicknames for me. So my first major introduction to the power of nicknames was when we attended my mother's college reunion and some woman came running up to my mom, calling my mom by her maiden name. Mom was disgusted with this (though she smiled and chatted cheerfully like a good Southerner); after the woman left, my mother commented, "she called me by my last name, and I hate that. Only friends can call me by my last name, and she and I weren't friends in college." The woman had pre-empted a level of intimacy between herself and my mother, and for my mother, this rankled.
Now, multiply that by ten, given that the majority of fandoms I like are ones in which the male (and often female) characters do have the power to kick the average mortal's ass for presumptions (even if not all would). I can easily see Neji, in Naruto, not even pausing to respond other than to stab with two fingers and disable the person who dared call him Ne-chan if this person were one that Neji didn't see as having that right of intimacy -- and then he'd keep walking. Heero? That gun that never actually shoots Duo or Relena? I think we'd see it fired damn fast if he were called Hee-kun, let alone Hee-chan. Quatre might just ignore the nickname altogether, and not dignify it with a response. Trowa would stare blankly, perhaps; Wufei would level the person with a punch. Naruto would bristle, Sakura would punch the person, Ed (FmA) would go into fits, Alphonse would politely dissuade the person.
There's a second level to it, too, I think. Hinata might be the only person who could use the honorific (passing somewhat for a nickname in this context) of Neji-chan, but this isn't just because they're cousins. It might also be because Neji, in his delightfully warped way, sees her as a non-threat and thus her use of a nickname (which indicates a level of emotional intimacy) is not a danger to him. Think of your younger siblings or younger cousins who call you Dayday because they can't pronounce 'Kathy' or call you 'Cousin Wobby' as a holdover from the days when the R was a hard sound to manage. They get a free ride on an otherwise ridiculous nickname, but if one of your friends were to tease you with the name 'Cousin Wobby' you just might get a bit aggravated -- even if this is an otherwise good friend. It's still calling on a level of intimacy and back-history that's above and beyond, or different, from what you have with that friend, and we rarely allow such areas to mix and match. Wobby is your nephew's name for you; Rob is your friends' name for you, and to mix them feels wrong and uncomfortable somehow. Why would it be any different for a character? Some level of versimilitude is what we seek, after all.
Nicknames, to a certain degree, are infantilizing. "Babe," "pookie," "sweetie," are ones I've heard lovers use with each other, and there is a level of babying that does make sense--it creates a sensation for lovers of being protected, of being take care of, of being sheltered, just as young children are by their parents. But come on; the characters I appreciate are not characters who might really take well to being protected and sheltered; it's their very independence that attracted me in the first place, their strength against the odds, their determination to be strong on their own two feet. These aren't likely to be people to say, "oh, yes, treat me like I'm five!" as if they haven't spent the entirety of the series (and possibly pre-series) struggling to be treated like anything but a helpless infant.
(I suspect the infantilizing nicknames are as much a way of cutting these overly strong characters down to size as the tendency to turn the boy characters into girls and the girl characters into psychotic bitches.)
And it's not just who accepts a nickname but who uses it, too. Naruto uses 'Sakura-chan', but IIRC, he doesn't use an honorific for Sasuke. Duo never uses an honorific for anyone, and neither does Heero. Relena gives all the males her age a -kun honorific. Konohamaru gives Naruto the 'big brother' nickname, doesn't he? Anyway, Naruto using 'chan' for Sakura is, I think, indication of his attempt to claim some level of emotional familiarity with her as a female teammate (and as an extension of his crush on her), that is, as opposed to -san. But, as I understand it, the honorifics in Japanese are a great deal like my mother's experience in college: one's last name, used by friends, is actually an indication of greater closeness than one's first name. Look at the difference between, say, calling to one person, "Miss Sakura!" versus "yo, Uchiha." Even Americans, lacking formal honorifics, would see the second as being of greater familiarity and likely equality (at least from the perspective of the speaker). If the second person addressed turns around and punches the speaker and says, "don't call me that," then we'd know this familiarity was presumptuous on the speaker's part. And if the first person addressed frowned and said, "please, just call me Sakura," then we know the speaker was actually introducing more distance, not less, by the use of title plus first name.
Granted, all this is really something that boils down to "think about the characters and the situation before tossing this shit out." It's almost impossible to do rules-of-thumb, since a good writer could convince you of just about anything at any time. But we do, as social creatures, have some very clear (if rarely verbally defined) personal rules about the use of names in particular places. If you're at work and your mother comes by to take you for lunch and calls you by a childhood nickname, you're probably going to rankle, even if you don't show it outwardly -- your mother has, in your place of work as an adult, just reduced you (however unintentionally) to the state of a child, by reminding you of that part of your relationship. But when the family gets together at Thanksgiving? Everyone might be calling you by your family nickname and you wouldn't think twice. Duo might, upon occasion, call Heero 'Hee' or 'Ro' or even 'Yuy' but if 'Heero' is what we see Duo using in a business (or battle) context, then any deviation is going to be noticed by Heero and possibly remarked upon. If you've ever worked with someone you're dating (or living with), then you probably are aware of the discomfort if your lover slips and calls you 'pookie' while at work: that's your 'with-lover' persona, not your 'now-at-work' persona. We don't often like to have the lines crossed.
The reason it's impossible to do rules-of-thumb is because there are times when using inappropriate nicknames can be a strong, if subtle, demonstration of character interaction. A character who creates nicknames for everyone is someone taking familiarity before it's granted; it might be a sign of insecurity, or clinginess, or arrogance that s/he controls the speed of familiarity. A character who consistently refuses nicknames shows distance, refusal to grant intimacy. Using a personal nickname in a public/impersonal environment could be a way for one character to 'jolt' another; say, if Wufei were about to go ballistic, Duo calling him Wu-kun could be a skillful (if suicidal) way to distract Wufei from his fury with another point and transfer it onto Duo. With friends, sometimes we do that, and claiming a level of familiarity (or distance) is a much subtler -- if only because we react without thinking and don't always process why we're reacting like that -- way to manipulate.
And now, my lovely independent sap-hating minions, discuss!
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no subject
Date: 6 Feb 2006 09:11 pm (UTC)I've got the same thing going on. There are folks who've met me as Sol, and if they start calling me by my real name, I feel odd, as though they're moving into territory not occupied by Sol. People who knew me pre-Sol (of which there are few, but there are some), calling me Sol feels odd, as though they're trying to relate to me on a level that's never been part of our friendship. And the strangest is that while I've cosplayed Heero a few times, I really only tolerate being called Heero by maybe seven or eight people.
... which sort of makes me wonder about the Naruto universe: Characters relate to each other on a first-name basis in ways that don't really reflect (not 100%) what I understood of japanese culture. Any possible reasons?
I'm not really sure; I'd not really noted the honorifics other than Sakura's and Naruto's uses. I do note that it may be sort of like GW, where the use/lack of use is more to contrast characters, but it does seem those characters who consistently use honorifics are standing on a bit more formality/distance. The cases that I can think of in which none are used are usually in what I'd call a 'work' environment: Sasuke, Naruto, Neji, Kiba -- I can't recall them using honorifics. But Lee and Sakura use them, almost exclusively, and it seems to be that these are two characters for whom their position is often tenuous; Sakura distinctly feels herself weaker through the first major arc, and Lee feels himself inadequate for lacking the jutsu skills of his classmates. Their use of honorifics may be as a reminder (to themselves, and to others) of the level of their interaction/intimacy.
That might be my theory on it, but I'd still love to hear what others think (especially those who've noted the honorifics and can point out specific instances).