Another complication is that there is a difference between liking stories based around 'character', and being particularly interested in human characters. After all one might be a mountain climber, but not care for mountaineering films.
For the most part characters in fiction are a lot less complex than real characters. Also they don't generally put a bomb under your ideas in the way real people do.
Put it like this. A racist person might see Hal Mellanby and think to him/her self 'ah, but in real life black people aren't clever enough to be top scientists - it's just BBC political correctness' (or whatever racist people think in the privacy of their own minds). But in real life if they are confronted with a black person who (say) explains quantum mechanics to them, they don't have this escape do they? Real life puts a bomb under preconceptions.
The same with your ideas on sexism, love, self-sacrifice, totalitarianism etc.
So, I often find ideas, milieux and plots more interesting than fictional characters, because I frequently think that fictional characters are simplistic, rigid, and implausible. They reflect the author's prejudices, and reinforce the readers'.
Only if a character is very well done (or, I suppose, to be honest) reflects my particular prejudices and priorities, do I value that character very highly. The best character descriptions of all are those which make you recognise something in real life that you have never noticed before. But crikey, I think you almost need to be Jane Austen to pull that trick off again and again.
Alison
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