"Agency" is just a meaningless buzzword

[Jokerz]

A word I see used far too often when discussing comic characters - and fictional characters in general - is the word "agency". This word, I believe, has been thrown around so much and in so many different situations over the past few years that it has essentially become a meaningless buzzword people use to separate characters they like from characters they don't like.

No fictional character truly has "agency". Everything about them - what they look like, what they wear, what they say and do - is dictated by their writers and artists. They can't jump out of their concept art to tell their writers and artists what they think they should do. Even movies based on real-life people often take several artistic liberties with the subject's life in order to make a good movie.

Another good example to see why "agency" is so useless as a concept is how selective - or downright hypocritical - people tend to be about when they can believe a character can have agency. For example, discussions about when it's "okay" to depict sexualized female characters in comics. Many will say it's "okay" if the characters in question have "agency". Yet when writers try to do just that, it's often dismissed as "wank justification" or with statements like "Oh please we all know the REAL reason!" or other such statements of rejection. In other words, characters only have "agency" if I like them.

Face it: your favorite fictional character has no more "agency" than your least favorite. Fictional characters, by their very nature, are objects of their writer's/artist's will. Maybe I'm looking at things from too much of a Doylist perspective, but I'm sick and tired of people using such a subjective and ultimately false word to say when it is and isn't "okay" for characters to do something or be portrayed in a certain way or whatever the controversial subject of the month is. And especially because many of them are complete hypocrites about it too.

[Carabas]

Agency, when applied to fiction, is about the role the character has in the story, not in real life. Agency has nothing to do wth doylist versus watsonian.

Is this entire post code for "I don't like female characters when they're not wallpaper in lingerie?"

[ed2962]

The word I think misused too often is "mary sue"

[jeanvaljean]

The word I think misused too often is "mary sue"

I never cared for "dry ice."

[Shawn Hopkins]

Agency, when applied to fiction, is about the role the character has in the story, not in real life. Agency has nothing to do wth doylist versus watsonian.

Is this entire post code for "I don't like female characters when they're not wallpaper in lingerie?"

Beat me to it. For example, Huckleberry Finn demonstrates agency when, within the confines of Mark Twain's story, he decides he'd rather go to hell for defying his culture and religion than betray his friend Jim. It's not some creepy notion that Huck Finn has real person concerns.

[ed2962]

I never cared for "dry ice."

How about "icy hot"?

[ed2962]

Another one is "organic" when used to describe the addition of characters in superhero comics.

[jeanvaljean]

Another one is "organic" when used to describe the addition of characters in superhero comics.

That only bothers me when the characters are actually inorganic.

[Carabas]

The word I think misused too often is "mary sue"

"Rouge" also is very rarely used corectly.

[Sharkerbob]

Lots of words are now as good as useless with how much people throw them around meaning different things. I do agree, however, that you're taking a much more literal interpretation that is intended. I do also agree, however, that yeah, it's pretty obvious when it comes to showing off female bodies that there's no real good reason for it half the time in-universe. Like the ungodly number of anime where, regardless of what kind of series it is, there has to be an episode where the girls visit a hot spring and compare breast sizes and casually molest each other, even if they've never hinted at such behavior before. That's definitely less "exercising their agency" so much as "let's get those otaku-perv dollars!"

What about agency in terms of video games? Player agency and character agency are kinda separate, yet entwined in that medium.

[Mark Thrust]

Another one is "organic" when used to describe the addition of characters in superhero comics.

Again, that is a term that means something in literary terms, though.
For example, if I was to say that the character of Abbie Cable and relationship to The Swamp Thing grew organically under Alan Moore's writing, I would be using the term correctly, and have an awesome pun to boot.

[ed2962]

Again, that is a term that means something in literary terms, though.
For example, if I was to say that the character of Abbie Cable and relationship to The Swamp Thing grew organically under Alan Moore's writing, I would be using the term correctly, and have an awesome pun to boot.

Sure, but a lot of times what fans mean is "I don't want to see this new character in my comic book." Or "Why are they introducing this legacy hero even though the previous hero stopped selling?"

[Mark Thrust]

Sure, but a lot of times what fans mean is "I don't want to see this new character in my comic book." Or "Why are they introducing this legacy hero even though the previous hero stopped selling?"

Well, then, they are using the term incorrectly.
Just ignore them and move on.