What is it about her that I don’t like?

Posted by Meesh in Mouthing Off with Meesh | 5 comments

Black Dagger Brotherhood: Xhex
Character discussion by Meesh

Yesterday there was a small exchange on Twitter between Sue and me (a kind exchange, nothing tense), as well as a few other BDB fans, about Xhex, one of the female characters in the Black Dagger Brotherhood. No one seems to be able to stand her except for me, at least that was the general consensus. I was kind of surprised at the intense feeling of dislike everyone seems to have toward a woman I see as almost a hero and it made me wonder how people can read a book, see a movie, whatever, and get such a different impression about a character as most others do.

Xhex kicks ass. Not much else to say. She is as tall as a man, is described in masculine terms, right down to her haircut. She is as lethal as any of the males, except the brothers, but they’re special and I think she might at least give them a run for their money. What’s not to love about her?

She is emotionally stunted, closed off, cold. Again, very masculine reactions to rejection and hurt. Women typically bond over pain. They gather friends around them, scream, cry, bash, eat ice cream. Women don’t withdraw and build walls around themselves that no one can penetrate. Xhex does. She pulls away, lives alone, and puts off a “stay the fuck away from me” vibe. People who know me know that I react very much that way – except I just wish I could be even a fraction as deadly looking. I’m not a girl. I don’t get hurt and get weepy, start worrying about how big my ass must be, call up all my friends and go shopping. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to need people when you’re in pain. I just grew up in a family where weakness was exploited, so we all learned to rely on ourselves only – no sharing that kind of thing for fear it would be used against us at the dinner table. I admire those traits in Xhex. I know how lonely that is but I also know how it’s preferable to being turned on and attacked.

So when Xhex treats JM badly, I see it as a defense mechanism. And after their encounter, JM turns around and uses the exact same defense mechanism, but no one thinks badly of JM for it. Why? Because men are supposed to shut themselves off. Men are supposed to be stoic and hard, to swallow their hurt. The saying “take it like a man” came from somewhere, right? Xhex doesn’t behave as a female does and that is off putting to women who can’t comprehend doing that. It must have looked like she was being a bitch. It looked to me like she was trying not to get hurt again. I can relate.

And I think that might be the crux of it. If we can relate to a character, no matter how flawed, no matter how stupid they behave, they are more likable to us.

Let’s now turn to another Black Dagger Brotherhood character, Phury. I want to strangle Phury. Punch him in the face. Kick him in his manly bits. Grab him by the ears, shake him really hard and say “Get over yourself already, dude!” Almost everyone else I talk to about him feels the same way, although maybe not to the degree I do. Except for them, he has redeeming qualities. Even though he drives them nuts, they can understand why. He does some very selfless things, but they only make me dislike him more, because he’s such a damn martyr. No one should be that self sacrificing. It doesn’t mean you’re stronger when you give up everything for everyone around you, especially when you have this whole “oh woe is me, my life sucks so bad because I have to give up everything for my brother’s happiness” thing going on as well.

Z would “make” Phury beat the shit out of him, because if Phury didn’t do it, Z would just get someone else to do it. So Phury felt like he had to do this thing that ripped him apart inside. Again, don’t get it. Tell him no. Let someone else do it. What difference does it make who is pounding on Z’s face? Does Phury think it hurts less when he does it? No. He suffers his brother as the burden Z makes himself into. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t admire that at all. My grandma used to always tell me not to suffer fools because it really doesn’t help the fools and it makes you more foolish. It bothers me that Phury felt almost sanctimonious about how he shouldered the pain he did for his brother.

Okay, this is harder for me to explain than I thought. It’s not selfless if you do something because it bolsters your image of yourself. It’s like giving to Haiti then telling everyone how much you gave and how you had to go a whole month without soda because of how giving and selfless you are. It cheapens the gesture. That’s what Phury did in my brain. He cheapened his sacrifices. I didn’t buy that he did it for Zsadist alone. He did it as much to fulfill some image he had of himself in his head. It didn’t come off nearly as selfless to me as I think it did to everyone else. Again, I can’t understand what would make anyone wallow in self pity the way that male does. I don’t want to understand.

That leads me to my second conclusion. If we can’t understand the motivations of a character, it’s much harder to empathize with h** which in turn makes that character harder to like.

From the perspective of something non-BDB, look at Underworld. In the first two movies, the lycans aren’t heroic. They are the bad guys. It’s hard to really rally behind them in their fight because we don’t know them well enough. Then you watch Rise of the Lycans and you see the history between the lycans and the vamps, and suddenly the vamps are rather detestable and it’s so much easier to see from Lucien’s point of view. I became very sympathetic to his plight and I haven’t watched the first two movies with the same attitude since. Rhevenge wasn’t a sympathetic character in the storyline until Lover Avenged, then suddenly we really saw him, saw that he was so much more than a drug dealing pimp. I think that might happen with Xhex if she gets a chance to tell her story.

As I’m writing this, I’m trying not to laugh at myself. Sue will get this joke. I hate Jane from the Twilight Saga. Just absolutely hate her. I don’t like people who are spoiled and act like Jane does, treating everyone around her with disdain. I keep begging Sue to write a chapter (in Finding Forever) where some wolf jumps her and eats her. Preferably slowly and with great relish. Sue and I had a conversation one night where she tried to make me see things through Jane’s eyes. And I understood exactly what Sue was saying. It just didn’t make me like Jane more. I still hate her. So even though I know all this stuff why I feel the way I do, I still can’t make myself change my mind about her. And so it goes with Xhex. I don’t really expect anyone else to suddenly see it my way and decide to like her. Who knows. Maybe I just have penis envy, as in wanting to own one, not just use one once in awhile. I have been accused of that once or twice.

Oh, and I could be dead wrong about all of this. It happens. If you don’t agree, please say so. I really like getting other points of view about these things. It’s why I write them.