Subject: ‘Lust Objects’ vs ‘Favourites’ and Other Definitions
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Posted on: 2010-01-25 00:18:00 UTC

I was just talking with Trojie, and we’ve been thinking that there really needs to be more terms for how agents see characters, because right now everything seems to be broadly classed into “Lust Object”. It just seems to us that the term is too narrowly defined. There are pleanty of ways to adore a character without lusting after them – Trojie and I randomly named a few in our conversation:

Mothering Instinct Objects: the ones we/our agents want to cuddle and feed and tuck into bed, like sick hobbits, or as Jay did for creatures like the Watcher.

Fluffy Adoration Objects: Trojie pinned this one quite effectively when she pointed out that imagining an attractive character being domestic and doing something like making breakfast doesn’t qualify as “lust”.

Respect Them Or Else Objects: the ones we/our agnets adore but are not, by any stretch of the imagination, romantically interested in. Dumbledore would probably fall under this umbrella a lot, as would a character like Arwen or Major Kira to non-femslash female agents.

Paired Objects: the ones who come in pairs and are interesting as a pair – either psychologically or just because they have a relationship that ought to be respected on pain of death, like Sam and Frodo, regardless of whether it’s romantic or platonic.

I’m sure there are more. These all seem to be currently lumped under the heading of “Favourites”, which isn’t inaccurate, but… well, this is the PPC. Do we often leave things simple if we can be more precise?

Honestly, I’m not really sure what I’m after here. I’m certainly not suggesting that every agent’s profile be altered to have listings for all the above sorts, just looking for ideas, I guess – trying to categorise them more accurately, since this is only from our point of view and more minds could make things clearer (or just come up alternate names for these Objects, if you can think of something better, because these aren’t too great).

In short, what are your thoughts?

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