Fannish Friday (early): Favorite Non-human characters

[lirazel]

Who are your favorite characters that aren't human? For the purposes of this discussion, this rules out ghosts, too, and also characters who were once human but became something human adjacent (say, vampires or angels or werewolves) or were something else but became human (Anya from BtVS).

Let's talk about cool characters who were never human in the first place! With an emphasis on those that feel actually other or whose lack of humanity is a central characteristic.

There are characters I love that aren't technically human but that pretty much are at least in how they act (Vulcans and Bajorans from ST and Lorne from AtS all come to mind). But

Here are some of mine:

+ Data is my favorite ST: TNG character. I know he acts very human, but his otherness is built into his story--I really think that all the most moving moments, especially from the first few seasons, were built around him and his attempts to understand his own humanity or lack thereof. We love an android!

+ And speaking of ST, everyone's weird boyfriend Doug Jones does a fantastic job of making Saru on DSC feel like something other than a human. Frankly, any Doug Jones character feels otherworldly!

+ I won't spoil it by going into detail, but I really love the alien character in Some Desperate Glory

+ The faerie characters in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell feel super other to me

+ All of the animal characters in Robin McKinley's books are very lovable

+ Selver from The Word for World Is Forest is totally emotionally understandable and yet still feels very alien to me

What about y'all?

Comments

[lirazel]

I think sometimes you get vampires that were turned so long ago that they've become something other by virtue of the distance of time from their human lives.

This is true--I do feel Ysidro from the James Asher books feel appropriately not-human, and the monk vampire character in the first book provided my favorite vampire scene in fiction for this exact reason. But in general, vampire characters seem to be me to be written like "people with over the top emotions" and not "something that is Other," which is what I was going for in this particular post.

The sentient spaceship 'mindships' in Aliette de Bodard's far-future Vietnamese history/mythology-inspired Xuya space opera universe;

COOL!

I could go on — I have such a long list of answers to this question!

Feel free! I love your answers!

[dolorosa_12]

The vampires in the James Asher books are exactly what I was thinking of — and Con from McKinley's Sunshine as well. (She's so good at using subtle hints to indicate his inhumanity — the way he moves, his facial expressions, the fact that he never uses a single contraction when speaking, etc.)

'People with over the top emotions' is probably a good description of most vampire characters, though — you're so right!

A lot of my other answers here are from medieval literature, which doesn't have characters so much as tropes and archetypes (it's very fanfiction-y in that way, actually, although of course fic does very much dig into the characters' psychology).

One such character I love is Suibne from Buile Shuibne ('The Frenzy/Madness of Suibne'), who starts out as human, but then gets cursed by a Christian saint, experiences what I can only describe as PTSD from battlefield trauma, and becomes what the text describes as a birdlike person — he grows feathers, he flees in terror from human beings and human habitation, he leaps from treetop to treetop, all the while spouting the most beautiful, heartbreaking poetry about the wild beauty of the natural world, simultaneously lamenting the loss of his human life and celebrating the strange, painful freedom of his new existence.

Another text of this nature that I love is Immacaldam Choluim Chille ocus ind Óclaig oc Carraic Eolairg ('The Colloquy of Colum Cille and the Youth at Carraic Eorlag'), which is really, really weird, even by medieval Irish standards. It involves a saint (Colum Cille) encountering a supernatural youth, and separating from his travelling companions to converse with the youth. When he returns, his companions ask him what they discussed, and Colum Cille refrains from answering, saying instead that 'it is better for mortals not to know it.' So the implication is either that his saintliness makes him somehow not mortal, or, the act of moving apart from his companions and discussing whatever he discussed with the otherworldly youth rendered him inhuman. I'm not sure if this was the original medieval authorial intention, but the effect on a modern reader (or on me at least) is haunting, unnerving, and uncanny.

Other nonhuman characters that I love (that don't require paragraphs of contextualisation re: medieval Irish literature) include the titular golem and djinni from Helene Wecker's novel, the dragons in Rachel Hartman's books, and a lot of the characters in various Victor Kelleher novels that aren't technically human, but to explain why would constitute a spoiler (since most of his novels are science fiction books grappling with the question 'what does it mean to be human?' in very concrete, literal ways).

I think you would like de Bodard's Xuya universe — and a lot of it is available for free as short stories online, so you would be able to get a sense for it before committing to paying any money. Most works in the universe are standalone.

[lirazel]

YES! McKinley and Hambly both do a magnificent job of conveying Otherness to their vampires. I was thinking more like, say, BtVS or IwtV, which feel much less Other to me.

THIS WAS SO INTERESTING! Thank you for sharing! I know very little about medieval lit, so I wasn't familiar with most of these, but it was fun to read about them!

Orma! <3

I think you would like de Bodard's Xuya universe — and a lot of it is available for free as short stories online, so you would be able to get a sense for it before committing to paying any money. Most works in the universe are standalone.

Interesting! I'll check them out--thank you for the rec!