poll results: Jossverse characters
Apr. 2nd, 2005 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wisdomeagleSo if your attention span is longer than mine, you might recall that about I month ago a polled you (and all of fandom with you) on your Jossverse character preferences. Still busy procrastinating on my thesis, I finally present to you the results.
I'm not going to restate the questions I asked; if they've slipped your mind or you never saw them before, I encourage you to check out the original post.
Writing Characters
Writing Characters' Emotions:
I asked about how people feel about their ability to capture characters' emotional state when they're writing fic. The seven easiest characters to write, according to my pollees:
Spike (107)
Xander (101)
Dawn (95)
Willow (94)
Wesley (93)
Tara (92)
Giles (90)
It's interesting to note that, with the exception of Wesley, all these characters are B:tVS mainstays. I'm not sure how else to generalize, except that all these characters were title credits characters for at least three seasons, with of course the exception of Tara, who's an anomaly because by all rights she should have been in the credits S5/6. All these characters are also "normals" -- with the exception of Spike. I'm fascinated by the ease fandom seems to have in writing Spike, given that his life experience is so different from ours. More male than female characters made it into this top seven list, but on the whole it's pretty balanced.
I asked another question about writing characters emotionally; I asked responders to choose the characters they found especially difficult to write. They are:
Drusilla (59)
Angel (56)
Illyria (49)
Lindsey (47)
Oz, Buffy, Lilah (44)
Darla (42)
Connor (41)
Unsurprisingly, lots of villains made it onto this list, and the remaining three vamps in Angel's line: Angel, Darla, and Dru (which causes me to wonder even more what's up with the whole Spike thing! Any insight would be greatly appreciated). Many of these characters are recurring, but I suspect the reason they're hard to write and the reason they recur is the same: Lilah, Lindsey, Darla, and Dru are villains.
The two title characters, Buffy and Angel, also made this list, which leads me to suspect that writing Heroes is difficult for people.
But there's more than one aspect to writing.
Writing Characters' Voices:
I asked these questions the same way I did the preceding ones.
Characters whose voices are easiest to capture:
Spike (100)
Xander (94)
Cordelia, Giles (86)
Anya (83)
Willow (82)
Wesley (77)
Dawn (75)
Tara (74)
First, I'd like to note that these numbers are on the whole lower than the numbers for "ease of writing emotionally," suggesting that voice is just overall harder for many writers.
Again, we're confronted with the list of BtVS mainstays, with the conspicuous absence of Buffy herself, Angel, Oz, and Riley. With these exceptions, everyone who's been in the BtVS credits is on the list of characters whose voices are easy to write. This list also seems to mirror the above list, dealing with emotions, with the addition of Cordy and Anya.
I think a general inference might be drawn that when B:tVS was created, its characters had a unique way of speaking and thinking that many viewers can identify with and replicate easily. AtS, lacking the general coherence of B:tVS, isn't as easy to mimic.
We should note that three Brits, Spike, Giles, and Wesley, have voices just as easy to capture as the Californian Xander, Cordelia, Willow, and Dawn and a 1000-year-old ex-demon from Sweden, which suggests that the difficulties of a characters' speech aren't directly related to life experience or nationality.
Some characters are especially difficult to write technically. The characters whose voices are hardest to capture are:
Drusilla (67) (Let's hear it for the lady!)
Doyle, Angel (50)
Oz (49)
Illyria (47)
Gunn (45)
Lindsey (43)
Lorne (42)
Connor, Darla (42)
Buffy (40)
We note right away that we're looking at more AtS characters than BtVS, and that the category we're tentatively saying is BtVS's mainstay, white teenagers from suburban California, isn't highly represented -- with the exceptions of Oz and Buffy herself.
On the other hand, we've got characters who are English and Irish (Dru, Doyle, Angel), were raised in other dimensions (Illyria, Lorne, Connor), who grew up poor (Lindsey, Gunn), and most notably, who aren't normals. Except for Gunn + Lindsey, each one of these characters had some supernatural element (vampire, half-demon, werewolf, God, full demon, vampire-spawn, Slayer). However, as we noted above, a vampire (Spike) is also the easiest character to write, as are characters who probably grew up poor (Tara) or demon (Anya).
More About Writing Characters
I combined the sums for ease of writing emotionally and writing technically to yield these as the characters easiest to write overall:
Spike (207)
Xander (195)
Willow, Giles (176)
Dawn, Wesley (170)
Tara (166)
And the characters who were hardest to write?
Drusilla with a runaway victory (126)
Angel (106)
Illyria (96)
Oz (93)
Lindsey (90)
Doyle (85)
Darla, Gunn, Gunn (84)
Connor (83)
Though I think it would be fair to say that Dru just wins this category and give her a crown of thorns.
Fun Fact: The same villainous couple contains the character who is hardest and the one who's easiest to write. Yay Spike/Dru!
Characters We Like
Interesting Characters
First, the random useless total number is 2986. That's almost 3,000 bits saying basically "yay, Joss writes interesting stories!" So, yay Joss!
The most interesting characters are:
Wesley (144)
Giles (138)
Faith (135)
Spike (130)
Angel (128)
Oz (125)
Lilah (123)
Xander (118)
Anya (117)
Drusilla (116)
Tara (113)
Doyle (111)
Illyria (110)
I should note that I had difficulty finding an appropriate cut-off point for this one; right now almost half the characters rank among the "most interesting"!
Remember that old chestnut "there are no interesting female characters"? Fandom spoke, and fandom said that's just not true! There are 7 male, 5 female, and one ambiguously gendered characters there, and our gal Faith outscored the perennial fan favorite Spike. Lilah did considerably better than her traditional counterpart Lindsey (who failed the arbitrary cutoff with 105 votes). Buffy and Cordy, incidentally, each had 108 votes, also just missing the cutoff.
Generalizing further, villains did well, especially if they had arcs of redemption. Good guys also did well, especially if they had moral ambiguity. The top five contain two Watchers, one Slayer, and two vampires, which seems to indicate that as a whole, fandom likes the mythology of its show, which is probably a good thing.
Willow's love interests were more interesting than Willow herself; Buffy's love interests (excepting of course Riley) were more interesting than she. Xander and Anya were about equally interesting, and Doyle and Illyria, each of whom was only present for half a season, managed to have compelling arcs!
By this same question, the least interesting characters are:
Riley (45) (Well... we saw that one coming.)
Harmony (71)
Fred (75) (And that one. *sniff* My gal Fred!)
Andrew (82)
Jonathan (87)
Dawn (88)
Connor, Joyce (92)
First, I should note the 100-vote difference between most interesting (Wesley!) and least interesting (poor Riley.) I should also note that these least interesting characters really break down into several subcategories, as Joyce has more than twice as many supporters as Riley. Hence the odd spacing in the list.
Well, what can we say? Family members of heroes (Connor, Joyce, Dawn) are not, as a whole, very interesting to fandom.
Neither, it seems, are one-offs who become main characters: see Jonathan and Harmony. Nor was the Geek Trio a fan favorite -- compare the very popular villains who made it into the top thirteen.
And fandom thinks Riley is boring. If anyone is surprised, then I'll be surprised. (Please note I'm not saying anything about how I feel about Riley, just that it's a well-known fact he's not a fan favorite.)
I really don't have much more insight except that, for the most part, main titles characters got at least 100 votes. And also, Fred is not boring. *sticks tongue out at fandom*
Personable Characters
I asked whether people would like these characters in real life, distinguishing "interesting" from "nice people." Observe:
Tara (139)
Giles (128)
Oz (125)
Xander, Lorne (109)
Wesley, Gunn (108)
Joyce (105)
Doyle (101)
Fred (95)
Willow (85)
Dawn (78)
[No reason for making the cutoff where I did except I wanted to show that people like Fred and Willow! Because they're my girls.]
First off, let's hear it for my girl Tara! Fandom almost universally agreed that Tara is a very, very nice, cool person, whom they'd be glad to be friends with. Yay Tara!
Lots of sidekicks here, and no villains or heroes proper. Once again, guys do ever so slightly better than girls, but not by a lot. I'd like you to note the redemption of the boring characters: they're nice! Also note, though, that Giles is well-liked on both criteria. I'm finding it difficult to be insightful about these darling, loveable characters, since what is there to say other than that they're nice?
Least personable characters:
Harmony (12)
Darla (16)
Lindsey (20)
Drusilla (21)
Illyria (22)
Connor (24)
Lilah (26)
Well, unsurprisingly, most people wouldn't befriend unsouled vampires, evil lawyers, or former Gods. Connor is a little surprising to me, since he's none of the above. I might want to make a note about gender here: Angel and Spike are both much more loved than Darla and Dru -- but it seems counterintuitive to blame gender over other factors.
I might, however, point to the fact that the least loved character, on this criteria, is Harmony, who's not exceptionally evil so much as she is, well, exceptionally stupid.
Interesting vs personable:
Good fences make good neighbors, but good neighbors don't make for good TV -- and the reverse is also sometimes true. I compared the "like them as a character" numbers with the "like them as a person" numbers. The average difference was 37.14, indicating that on a whole, these people are more interesting than they are nice. This is especially true of:
Lilah (97 more people found her interesting than nice)
Drusilla (95)
Illyria (88)
Lindsey (85)
Angel (80)
Darla (89)
These characters are villains or quasi-villains; most of them are responsible for lots of deaths. They're all interesting, but not exactly the kind of person fandom wants to befriend. Most of them are AtS mainstays.
Some characters are about equally loved for their interestingness and their niceness:
Giles, Dawn, Doyle (more interesting by 10)
Xander (9)
Oz (equal)
Lorne (nicer by 1)
Gunn (nicer by 4)
I feel almost as if Oz is the perfect character by these criteria.
Some characters are more beloved than they are compelling. They are:
Tara (26 more nice than interesting)
Riley (23)
Fred (20)
Joyce (13)
Poor darlings.
Other Character Attributes
Characters We Identify With:
One of the things I like best not only about the Jossverse, but about all literature, is reading about the lives of those people who are very different from me -- especially when I can still identify with them on some gut level. For that reason, I'm pleased that each main character in the Jossverse pings at least nine people as being somehow like them. For the purposes of statistics, though, here are the characters who are most identified with:
Wesley (71)
Tara (70)
Xander (69)
Willow (68)
Buffy (64)
Spike (55)
Dawn, Giles (47)
Faith (46)
Angel (43)
Jonathan (41)
Once again, we encounter our old friends the BtVS mainstays, along with Wesley and Angel. Our boy Jonathan finally makes a top-ten list, reminding us that deep down inside, 41 of us are short, wimpy Star Wars geeks whose only friends pressure them into taking over the world. Right?
I didn't do any demographics for this poll -- in fact, this is probably the most demographically oriented question I asked!
It's nice to find Buffy and Faith up here, and even Angel doing well for himself -- I bet Joss would be pleased to see these numbers, because they show that his characters do resonate with people. This is especially true of BtVS, but the AtS characters didn't do too poorly.
While most of these characters are high school - college age kids, Wesley, Giles, Spike, and Angel also made the list, and I think the fact that these characters are so popular according to other criteria shows that fandom (which I assume, perhaps not quite fairly, also to be made mostly of high school - college age kids, most of us female, most of us, especially since we have access to the internet and can use our internet time filling out polls, fairly well-to-do) can reach outside itself and identify with characters who are very different from us.
Both canonically queer characters made the list (though Lorne and Andrew did not)
Male and female characters are almost evenly represented.
Characters we don't identify with:
Harmony (9)
Drusilla (10)
Illyria (14)
Andrew, Lindsey (15)
There were lots of characters with numbers in the 20s; I decided not to include those numbers, preferring to address these characters we identify with the absolute least.
Vampire, vampire, God, evil lawyer... Andrew. The presence of Andrew and Harmony on this list surprised me at first, till I remembered that I phrased the question in terms of arcs. "I identify with this character's emotional arc." In those terms, Harmony and Andrew, who seem to be demographically similar to some of the most identified-with characters, have arcs that are about "going bad" and losing friends. I suspect Andrew killing Jonathan makes many people uneasy about identification. It's just not easy to identify with villains, even if, like Buffy and Willow and Xander and Dawn, they come out of Sunnydale.
Hot Characters:
The purpose of this question was less, uh, academic, really. Mostly I was just curious.
Wesley (134)
Faith (129)
Giles (116)
Lilah (113)
Spike (112)
Gunn (107)
Tara (106)
Cordy (105)
Girls and guys? Exactly even. Wesley? Oh so hot. Evil? VERY SEXY. Tara? RAWR.
And I'd just like you to compare the top five with the interesting list
Wesley
Giles
Faith
Spike
(snip Oz and Angel)
Lilah
Coincidence? Or is interestingness sexy? Or, perhaps, is sexiness interesting? What do you think?
Least attractive characters:
Andrew (15)
Jonathan (19)
Joyce (23)
Lorne (25)
Fred, Riley (50)
Connor, Harmony (51)
Dawn (53)
Um, remember what I was saying about interestingness being sexy? Looks like we've got a mirror of the bottom of our interestingness list, which contains:
Riley
Harmony
Fred
Andrew
Jonathan
Dawn
Connor, Joyce
With the exception of Lorne, whom I think we can throw out of our discussion and conclude that fandom is racist, speciesist, and color-ist, these lists, while the orders are somewhat different, contain exactly the same characters.
Of course, there are lots of issues at stake here, but I think that we have some pretty compelling evidence for the statement characters with compelling arcs are perceived as more attractive than characters who bore the audience.
Consider, dear friends, Illyria. 94 people say that It's attractive, while only 50 find Fred especially attractive. But they are played by the same actor. Make-up does wonders, but blue contacts can't be that appealing, can they? The numbers for interesting? 110 for Illyria vs. 75 for Fred.
Conclusions
1. Fandom has lots of character love!
2. Spike is easiest to write; Drusilla is hardest.
3. Wesley is the most interesting and the prettiest AND the most identified with.
4. Tara is the character people would most like as a friend.
5. Riley is the least interesting character; Harmony is the least liked and the one people identify with the least.
6. Fandom is clearly prejudiced against the color green.
7. On the whole, people find interesting characters to be sexy.
And now that I've done the stats for this poll, I feel I can do another one. Gateverse poll, coming right up.
I'm not going to restate the questions I asked; if they've slipped your mind or you never saw them before, I encourage you to check out the original post.
Writing Characters
Writing Characters' Emotions:
I asked about how people feel about their ability to capture characters' emotional state when they're writing fic. The seven easiest characters to write, according to my pollees:
Spike (107)
Xander (101)
Dawn (95)
Willow (94)
Wesley (93)
Tara (92)
Giles (90)
It's interesting to note that, with the exception of Wesley, all these characters are B:tVS mainstays. I'm not sure how else to generalize, except that all these characters were title credits characters for at least three seasons, with of course the exception of Tara, who's an anomaly because by all rights she should have been in the credits S5/6. All these characters are also "normals" -- with the exception of Spike. I'm fascinated by the ease fandom seems to have in writing Spike, given that his life experience is so different from ours. More male than female characters made it into this top seven list, but on the whole it's pretty balanced.
I asked another question about writing characters emotionally; I asked responders to choose the characters they found especially difficult to write. They are:
Drusilla (59)
Angel (56)
Illyria (49)
Lindsey (47)
Oz, Buffy, Lilah (44)
Darla (42)
Connor (41)
Unsurprisingly, lots of villains made it onto this list, and the remaining three vamps in Angel's line: Angel, Darla, and Dru (which causes me to wonder even more what's up with the whole Spike thing! Any insight would be greatly appreciated). Many of these characters are recurring, but I suspect the reason they're hard to write and the reason they recur is the same: Lilah, Lindsey, Darla, and Dru are villains.
The two title characters, Buffy and Angel, also made this list, which leads me to suspect that writing Heroes is difficult for people.
But there's more than one aspect to writing.
Writing Characters' Voices:
I asked these questions the same way I did the preceding ones.
Characters whose voices are easiest to capture:
Spike (100)
Xander (94)
Cordelia, Giles (86)
Anya (83)
Willow (82)
Wesley (77)
Dawn (75)
Tara (74)
First, I'd like to note that these numbers are on the whole lower than the numbers for "ease of writing emotionally," suggesting that voice is just overall harder for many writers.
Again, we're confronted with the list of BtVS mainstays, with the conspicuous absence of Buffy herself, Angel, Oz, and Riley. With these exceptions, everyone who's been in the BtVS credits is on the list of characters whose voices are easy to write. This list also seems to mirror the above list, dealing with emotions, with the addition of Cordy and Anya.
I think a general inference might be drawn that when B:tVS was created, its characters had a unique way of speaking and thinking that many viewers can identify with and replicate easily. AtS, lacking the general coherence of B:tVS, isn't as easy to mimic.
We should note that three Brits, Spike, Giles, and Wesley, have voices just as easy to capture as the Californian Xander, Cordelia, Willow, and Dawn and a 1000-year-old ex-demon from Sweden, which suggests that the difficulties of a characters' speech aren't directly related to life experience or nationality.
Some characters are especially difficult to write technically. The characters whose voices are hardest to capture are:
Drusilla (67) (Let's hear it for the lady!)
Doyle, Angel (50)
Oz (49)
Illyria (47)
Gunn (45)
Lindsey (43)
Lorne (42)
Connor, Darla (42)
Buffy (40)
We note right away that we're looking at more AtS characters than BtVS, and that the category we're tentatively saying is BtVS's mainstay, white teenagers from suburban California, isn't highly represented -- with the exceptions of Oz and Buffy herself.
On the other hand, we've got characters who are English and Irish (Dru, Doyle, Angel), were raised in other dimensions (Illyria, Lorne, Connor), who grew up poor (Lindsey, Gunn), and most notably, who aren't normals. Except for Gunn + Lindsey, each one of these characters had some supernatural element (vampire, half-demon, werewolf, God, full demon, vampire-spawn, Slayer). However, as we noted above, a vampire (Spike) is also the easiest character to write, as are characters who probably grew up poor (Tara) or demon (Anya).
More About Writing Characters
I combined the sums for ease of writing emotionally and writing technically to yield these as the characters easiest to write overall:
Spike (207)
Xander (195)
Willow, Giles (176)
Dawn, Wesley (170)
Tara (166)
And the characters who were hardest to write?
Drusilla with a runaway victory (126)
Angel (106)
Illyria (96)
Oz (93)
Lindsey (90)
Doyle (85)
Darla, Gunn, Gunn (84)
Connor (83)
Though I think it would be fair to say that Dru just wins this category and give her a crown of thorns.
Fun Fact: The same villainous couple contains the character who is hardest and the one who's easiest to write. Yay Spike/Dru!
Characters We Like
Interesting Characters
First, the random useless total number is 2986. That's almost 3,000 bits saying basically "yay, Joss writes interesting stories!" So, yay Joss!
The most interesting characters are:
Wesley (144)
Giles (138)
Faith (135)
Spike (130)
Angel (128)
Oz (125)
Lilah (123)
Xander (118)
Anya (117)
Drusilla (116)
Tara (113)
Doyle (111)
Illyria (110)
I should note that I had difficulty finding an appropriate cut-off point for this one; right now almost half the characters rank among the "most interesting"!
Remember that old chestnut "there are no interesting female characters"? Fandom spoke, and fandom said that's just not true! There are 7 male, 5 female, and one ambiguously gendered characters there, and our gal Faith outscored the perennial fan favorite Spike. Lilah did considerably better than her traditional counterpart Lindsey (who failed the arbitrary cutoff with 105 votes). Buffy and Cordy, incidentally, each had 108 votes, also just missing the cutoff.
Generalizing further, villains did well, especially if they had arcs of redemption. Good guys also did well, especially if they had moral ambiguity. The top five contain two Watchers, one Slayer, and two vampires, which seems to indicate that as a whole, fandom likes the mythology of its show, which is probably a good thing.
Willow's love interests were more interesting than Willow herself; Buffy's love interests (excepting of course Riley) were more interesting than she. Xander and Anya were about equally interesting, and Doyle and Illyria, each of whom was only present for half a season, managed to have compelling arcs!
By this same question, the least interesting characters are:
Riley (45) (Well... we saw that one coming.)
Harmony (71)
Fred (75) (And that one. *sniff* My gal Fred!)
Andrew (82)
Jonathan (87)
Dawn (88)
Connor, Joyce (92)
First, I should note the 100-vote difference between most interesting (Wesley!) and least interesting (poor Riley.) I should also note that these least interesting characters really break down into several subcategories, as Joyce has more than twice as many supporters as Riley. Hence the odd spacing in the list.
Well, what can we say? Family members of heroes (Connor, Joyce, Dawn) are not, as a whole, very interesting to fandom.
Neither, it seems, are one-offs who become main characters: see Jonathan and Harmony. Nor was the Geek Trio a fan favorite -- compare the very popular villains who made it into the top thirteen.
And fandom thinks Riley is boring. If anyone is surprised, then I'll be surprised. (Please note I'm not saying anything about how I feel about Riley, just that it's a well-known fact he's not a fan favorite.)
I really don't have much more insight except that, for the most part, main titles characters got at least 100 votes. And also, Fred is not boring. *sticks tongue out at fandom*
Personable Characters
I asked whether people would like these characters in real life, distinguishing "interesting" from "nice people." Observe:
Tara (139)
Giles (128)
Oz (125)
Xander, Lorne (109)
Wesley, Gunn (108)
Joyce (105)
Doyle (101)
Fred (95)
Willow (85)
Dawn (78)
[No reason for making the cutoff where I did except I wanted to show that people like Fred and Willow! Because they're my girls.]
First off, let's hear it for my girl Tara! Fandom almost universally agreed that Tara is a very, very nice, cool person, whom they'd be glad to be friends with. Yay Tara!
Lots of sidekicks here, and no villains or heroes proper. Once again, guys do ever so slightly better than girls, but not by a lot. I'd like you to note the redemption of the boring characters: they're nice! Also note, though, that Giles is well-liked on both criteria. I'm finding it difficult to be insightful about these darling, loveable characters, since what is there to say other than that they're nice?
Least personable characters:
Harmony (12)
Darla (16)
Lindsey (20)
Drusilla (21)
Illyria (22)
Connor (24)
Lilah (26)
Well, unsurprisingly, most people wouldn't befriend unsouled vampires, evil lawyers, or former Gods. Connor is a little surprising to me, since he's none of the above. I might want to make a note about gender here: Angel and Spike are both much more loved than Darla and Dru -- but it seems counterintuitive to blame gender over other factors.
I might, however, point to the fact that the least loved character, on this criteria, is Harmony, who's not exceptionally evil so much as she is, well, exceptionally stupid.
Interesting vs personable:
Good fences make good neighbors, but good neighbors don't make for good TV -- and the reverse is also sometimes true. I compared the "like them as a character" numbers with the "like them as a person" numbers. The average difference was 37.14, indicating that on a whole, these people are more interesting than they are nice. This is especially true of:
Lilah (97 more people found her interesting than nice)
Drusilla (95)
Illyria (88)
Lindsey (85)
Angel (80)
Darla (89)
These characters are villains or quasi-villains; most of them are responsible for lots of deaths. They're all interesting, but not exactly the kind of person fandom wants to befriend. Most of them are AtS mainstays.
Some characters are about equally loved for their interestingness and their niceness:
Giles, Dawn, Doyle (more interesting by 10)
Xander (9)
Oz (equal)
Lorne (nicer by 1)
Gunn (nicer by 4)
I feel almost as if Oz is the perfect character by these criteria.
Some characters are more beloved than they are compelling. They are:
Tara (26 more nice than interesting)
Riley (23)
Fred (20)
Joyce (13)
Poor darlings.
Other Character Attributes
Characters We Identify With:
One of the things I like best not only about the Jossverse, but about all literature, is reading about the lives of those people who are very different from me -- especially when I can still identify with them on some gut level. For that reason, I'm pleased that each main character in the Jossverse pings at least nine people as being somehow like them. For the purposes of statistics, though, here are the characters who are most identified with:
Wesley (71)
Tara (70)
Xander (69)
Willow (68)
Buffy (64)
Spike (55)
Dawn, Giles (47)
Faith (46)
Angel (43)
Jonathan (41)
Once again, we encounter our old friends the BtVS mainstays, along with Wesley and Angel. Our boy Jonathan finally makes a top-ten list, reminding us that deep down inside, 41 of us are short, wimpy Star Wars geeks whose only friends pressure them into taking over the world. Right?
I didn't do any demographics for this poll -- in fact, this is probably the most demographically oriented question I asked!
It's nice to find Buffy and Faith up here, and even Angel doing well for himself -- I bet Joss would be pleased to see these numbers, because they show that his characters do resonate with people. This is especially true of BtVS, but the AtS characters didn't do too poorly.
While most of these characters are high school - college age kids, Wesley, Giles, Spike, and Angel also made the list, and I think the fact that these characters are so popular according to other criteria shows that fandom (which I assume, perhaps not quite fairly, also to be made mostly of high school - college age kids, most of us female, most of us, especially since we have access to the internet and can use our internet time filling out polls, fairly well-to-do) can reach outside itself and identify with characters who are very different from us.
Both canonically queer characters made the list (though Lorne and Andrew did not)
Male and female characters are almost evenly represented.
Characters we don't identify with:
Harmony (9)
Drusilla (10)
Illyria (14)
Andrew, Lindsey (15)
There were lots of characters with numbers in the 20s; I decided not to include those numbers, preferring to address these characters we identify with the absolute least.
Vampire, vampire, God, evil lawyer... Andrew. The presence of Andrew and Harmony on this list surprised me at first, till I remembered that I phrased the question in terms of arcs. "I identify with this character's emotional arc." In those terms, Harmony and Andrew, who seem to be demographically similar to some of the most identified-with characters, have arcs that are about "going bad" and losing friends. I suspect Andrew killing Jonathan makes many people uneasy about identification. It's just not easy to identify with villains, even if, like Buffy and Willow and Xander and Dawn, they come out of Sunnydale.
Hot Characters:
The purpose of this question was less, uh, academic, really. Mostly I was just curious.
Wesley (134)
Faith (129)
Giles (116)
Lilah (113)
Spike (112)
Gunn (107)
Tara (106)
Cordy (105)
Girls and guys? Exactly even. Wesley? Oh so hot. Evil? VERY SEXY. Tara? RAWR.
And I'd just like you to compare the top five with the interesting list
Wesley
Giles
Faith
Spike
(snip Oz and Angel)
Lilah
Coincidence? Or is interestingness sexy? Or, perhaps, is sexiness interesting? What do you think?
Least attractive characters:
Andrew (15)
Jonathan (19)
Joyce (23)
Lorne (25)
Fred, Riley (50)
Connor, Harmony (51)
Dawn (53)
Um, remember what I was saying about interestingness being sexy? Looks like we've got a mirror of the bottom of our interestingness list, which contains:
Riley
Harmony
Fred
Andrew
Jonathan
Dawn
Connor, Joyce
With the exception of Lorne, whom I think we can throw out of our discussion and conclude that fandom is racist, speciesist, and color-ist, these lists, while the orders are somewhat different, contain exactly the same characters.
Of course, there are lots of issues at stake here, but I think that we have some pretty compelling evidence for the statement characters with compelling arcs are perceived as more attractive than characters who bore the audience.
Consider, dear friends, Illyria. 94 people say that It's attractive, while only 50 find Fred especially attractive. But they are played by the same actor. Make-up does wonders, but blue contacts can't be that appealing, can they? The numbers for interesting? 110 for Illyria vs. 75 for Fred.
Conclusions
1. Fandom has lots of character love!
2. Spike is easiest to write; Drusilla is hardest.
3. Wesley is the most interesting and the prettiest AND the most identified with.
4. Tara is the character people would most like as a friend.
5. Riley is the least interesting character; Harmony is the least liked and the one people identify with the least.
6. Fandom is clearly prejudiced against the color green.
7. On the whole, people find interesting characters to be sexy.
And now that I've done the stats for this poll, I feel I can do another one. Gateverse poll, coming right up.