Inanimate Objects as Characters

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There’s a world of characters all around you that you probably rarely think about. Which is honestly reasonable, because they aren’t really people, are they?

Let’s talk a bit about personification, projection, and what we can learn about our own world from Patrick Rothfuss’s book The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

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[TheTaleFoundry]

Sign up for a free 30-day trial of audible and get any audiobook of YOUR CHOICE for FREE! Including The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which we talked about in this video! It's a great way to support the show for free!

[abbythesandpit]

“Have you ever bumped into a desk and apologized to it?” When I bump into a desk I usually swear at it. The two types of people.

[TheVolgun]

I've loved Tale Foundry for a few years now - but I feel like I don't state my appreciation enough. Thank you for putting so much passion, work and knowledge into these videos, I enjoy them so much and learn even more. Thank you!

[TesnuzzikArt]

When I was little, my older sister often threw tantrums and one day during lunch she had stormed off to her room, and my mom couldn't convince her to come back downstairs. Getting a little desperate, she decided to tell her that the slices of bread were really sad and crying on her plate because she wouldn't come eat them, but that just made my sister respond with a grumpy "no". Returning to the kitchen, however, my mom found me sobbing really hard because I felt so bad for the bread :')

I actually did personify objects a lot during my childhood, and though it's not as bad anymore as back then, I still find myself doing it nowadays. But I ended up using these ideas as an inspiration for a characters powers in a story I'm working on right now, which I'm having a lot of fun with, and this video only made me more excited about it :D Thank you for talking about this topic <3

[Jasonwolf]

In my story, mana when it's consumed, or more accurately, burned it screams. Nobody is quite sure if its just a sound or something more. The main character compares it to a hawk, but there's an emptiness left in its wake.

Seeing as mana is primarily burned as propellant in firearms, its hard to say if the feeling is from the mana scream or from the gun firing.

[shrubby-ovyw]

Terry Pratchett put it best: "Imagination, not intelligence, is what makes us human"

[longshot]

I might choose not to watch this video, in favor of reading _The Slow Regard for Silent Things_ myself. Because honestly, if it was worth an entire fifteen minutes of video dedicated to it, I think I want to experience it firsthand.

[EDIT] Why was this so popular? I just felt guilty for stopping three minutes in!

[Jasonwolf]

Yes to all the questions. It's a known symptom of autism, that we can overly attach to objects, we can feel more strongly and that the objects really are kind of alive.

I think it's neat.

[GhostCryProductions]

Considering we have sayings like, “if only the walls could speak, ” I’d find it more strange if we did not invest any care into what thoughts inanimate objects could have; even if we know that isn’t true, what if?

[rafellus]

An interesting personification I found is the Human created spaces like buildings at night or empty rooms. Liminal spaces is probably an example, yet there is so much to it.
A gothic cathedral in Barcelona, may seem noble and melancholic. As an artist, is always worth exploring the feeling or mood a building could give, if the viewer contemplates it enough.

[solalabell]

Objects as characters is one of my absolute favorite… tropes? Literary devices?

[magic_cfw]

From the title, I thought this was about how to design "inhuman" characters, or characters who have not only different beliefs/culture but fundamentally different thought processes. Like how most stories handwaive demons as "oh, they're destructive and they can't be reasoned with" as enough characterisation to why demons do demon things. I admit I am very limited in reading stories, but the closest I have seen this been attempted is in "Frieren at the Funeral", where they explain demons as nearly identical to humans in capacity for thought, but lack the concept of malevolence. Another is a video which tackles the idea of communication and how it may differ between different types of beings, humans use words, computers use code, godly beings use imagery, etc.

I guess I have been trying to think of this myself, or in how to create a character which has conceptual abilties which humans do not and which aren't hand waived away. I appreciate that this is nearly paradoxial since I am a human trying to think of a concept which cannot be fathomed by a human, but if i can't think I can at least invoke that feeling I hope. A sense of knowing that something is logical but not one explained using human concepts.

[justafoxolotl]

I watched this looking for a video, but I find myself now questioning my way of existing.

[Sztefa]

Makes me think how one of the things I like to imagine is that even if objects are just, well, objects and don't have souls, they can develop one if they're cared for. Because those who care about it pour their feelings into it. Pour parts of their own souls. And depending on how realistic the world it can either be a mirror situation (you smile and get a smile back) or the thing can actually develop a soul and sentience. Imagine having a cybertronic dog, built from scratch. And you treat it as a real friend and take care of it that once someone rewrites the program to make the dog attack you, the dog fights back against it because the feelings are strong enough to oppose the program.

Besides... why does it matter if a thing has a soul or not? Why not treat it well by default? Regardless of if the thing feels it's surely healthier for us to treat it well rather than take our anger on it "just because we can and it's ok 'cuz it can't feel." If you emanate rancid vibes the world around you, much like a mirror, will reflect them to you. So why not be nice, patient and understanding and get back those things instead?

[CattywampusWoods]

I personally say hello to my house and plants and such every day when I leave and come back, and I find it makes my day a lot better to treat things that I know aren't sentient, as if they are. It's like giving compassion to the world itself and it humbles you by giving it back.

I even ran into a particularly low hanging branch, and rather than getting annoyed when it poked and prodded at my face, I just laughed it off thinking "I deserved that for not paying attention to where I was going, that was a very good and light-hearted prank the world decided to just play on me. Okay I'll be more mindful of where I'm going next time!"

[wayroad]

If locations can be characters, so can objects.

[bloxnirogaming]

I do feel like we do give objects a bit of life. Sometimes situations and objects react to our desires thoughts/ and feelings. Like asking a mechanism to work and it does.

[Broomer]

I find myself doing this a lot with machines. I imagine most of them as temperamental and quitters. During work some times the signal is bad and it feels like if I use my phone while in a bad place it just doesn’t work the same way than if I started in a better area. I think to myself “come on you lazy phone! Just because I woke you up in a bad place you’re just going to quit on me?”

My PS4 is an old man that can still do the job but struggles every step.

My Car is such a trooper and reliable

[puppygirlman]

3:35 I can hear the excuses now: "I'm sorry professor, but the Haloed-Hair Girl stole my homework."

[justsomejerseydevilwithint]

When I write, it's not me making the story. The story already exists, somewhere out there in the infinite multiverse, and it NEEDS to be told. It's like the original meaning of the word Genius; there's these spirits of knowledge that occasionally possess worthy artists or inventors, and channel divine knowledge through them. When I find inspiration, I do not imagine a story, I FEEL its presence, and when it recognizes my ability as a writer, it SHOVES its way into my fingertips, FORCING itself to be told. I can barely keep up with my brain and hands. I _hear_ the essence of it in my mind, all its beats and emotions and soul, and through my knowledge of language, I let it into our world. I tell every emotion, every important bit of knowledge, in exactly the pacing it desires. And when I'm done, the story has unfolded before me, like sunlight pouring out of a star. I have no choice in the matter, either; when the story finds me, it will pester me untill I let it out; I once tried to leave the ending of a short love story ambiguous, but when I went to bed that night, the rest of the story just kept pounding at my brain, NEEDING to be told, so I got out of bed, went to my keyboard, and wrote it all out. It's even on Youtube, in the comment section of a the video that inspired it, under my alt. account's name, "Monster? No. Defineable? Never." The video is "The writer" by Lucas King, and the story is "The writer and the poet". By the time I was finished, the story had quadrupled in length. I ontended on writing the final part the next day, but It wouldn't let me sleep untill it was finished.

So I know for a fact that stories ARE alive. They NEED to be told in as true a form to what they are as possible, I am just the Messenger.