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

[sobsister]

Have you ever heard of Julie Czerneda? She has a series around a shapeshifter character called Esen, whose species (there's a handful of individuals, who are all sort of blobs that separated from an eldest) is/are kind of archivists/anthropologists/spies - they can consume the dna of other species and take on their form and modes of thought. There's a lot of fun stuff about how bodily form shapes how people/cultures interpret and interact with the world (Czerneda is a former biologist and it shows in the range of alien species Esen meets and sometimes transforms into). Each time Esen shifts into a different species, her personality shifts somewhat too, so you have this really interesting exploration of the continuity of the self in different environments and when different people know her as particular versions of herself. It's also a very fun on take on the 'Horrifying Space Blob that Eats You' trope, because Esen really does have to consume living tissue, and from some perspectives she would be/is terrifying. On her first solo 'mission' embedding in a culture, she accidentally reveals herself to a Human scientist, whose response is less fear and more OH THIS IS SO COOL. And they become best friends and have to hide from other humans whose response is way more OH NO SHAPESHIFTING KILLER BLOB FROM OUTER SPACE and eventually they create a library of cultures together. I really love Esen.

[lirazel]

I have not heard of her, but that sounds SO interesting! I am putting that on my to-read list right away because it sounds incredible! Thank you for the rec!