Why Type Fictional Characters?

26 May, 202026 May, 2020Marissa

I love typing fictional characters. Partly it’s the same part of me that enjoys studying English literature in an academic setting. I like analyzing stories and character motivations, and writing deep-dives into why something works the way it does. It’s also partly about my interest in typology. I like thinking about how Myers-Briggs® types show up in actual people and fictional characters can provide a nice way to analyze that.

It’s this second reason that starts to get at why I think it’s useful as well as entertaining to type fictional characters. Discussing the personality types of fictional characters gives us a chance to exercise our typology skills without running the risk of wrongly interpreting real people’s motivations. My friend might not appreciate me micro-analyzing their every word and action to figure out what their type is but Tony Stark, Scarlett O’Hara, and Luke Skywalker don’t mind.

Typing fictional characters also lets us use them as examples when we’re describing personality types. One of the first questions my mom always asks if I’m talking about a specific type is, “Do I know any of them?” Sometimes I can give her an example of someone she knows in real life but more often I’ll use a fictional character as an example. They’re a great way for us to see examples of how a single type can look in different for different people based on their individual preferences and personal background. And it also shows that we can relate to people even if they don’t share a type with us (such as the INFJs I’ve talked with who relate to ISFJ Cinderella).

This brings us to the reason for today’s post. I ran out of time to write a full-length post for Tuesday this week because I was working on a post for my other blog, Star Wars Personalities. Susan Storm asked me to guest post about the Myers-Briggs® types of Star Wars characters, and I got that post done with plenty of time to spare (I’ll share a link with you when she publishes it). But then I got distracted writing a full-length post about Princess-General Leia Organa’s personality type. Here’s the link if you’d like to click over there and read it.

“The Runaway Bride” Book Review

3 March, 202026 February, 2020Marissa

I’ve been a Jody Hedlund fan for some time now, and I was thrilled to receive a copy of her newest book The Runaway Bride to read and review before its release. This is the second book in her Bride Ships series. You can click here to read my review of the first book, A Reluctant Bride.

England in the 1860s was not a good place to find a husband. By the early part of the decade, there were about 600,000 more women than men living in the country. And when employment options are limited, especially for women of noble birth, and marriageable men are hard to come by a 25-year-old spinster doesn’t have many options. Especially when her stepmother wants her out of the house. That’s the situation Arabella Lawrence finds herself in when she agrees to marry her father’s employer. The man is old enough to be her grandfather, and he turns out to be anything but gentlemanly.

Fleeing what would certainly be an abusive marriage, she takes passage in one of the Columbia Mission Society’s bride ships bound for Vancouver Island and British Columbia, where men outnumber women approximately 10 to 1. Their need for respectable, Christian wives is Arabella’s chance at a new beginning. Upon arriving, she instantly attracts suitors with her compassion, charm, and fiery red hair. The most persistent are two very different men — Lieutenant Richard Drummond, a gentleman and naval officer, and Peter Kelly, the local baker. Read more →

No Life for the Wicked: Looking at Redemption in The Rise of Skywalker

8 January, 20207 January, 2020Marissa

As many of you know, I’m an avid Star Wars fan. As such, you can imagine my excitement going to see The Rise of Skywalker last month wearing my ’50s style Anakin-inspired dress. I’ve seen the film twice now, and both times left the theater in tears. I hated the ending, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment, and found it a heartbreaking, hopeless conclusion to the Skywalker story that I’ve been following my whole life.

Many people love this film and I don’t want to take away from their enjoyment of it or criticize them for disagreeing with me. I’m glad for those who could enjoy it, and saddened that I cannot since it’s the first Star Wars film that I haven’t loved despite whatever flaws it might have. I do, however, want to talk about a choice made regarding one character’s fate. And since I’m a Christian blogger, I want to talk about how much it relates to some Bible scriptures I happened to read the night I saw The Rise of Skywalker for the first time.

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Warning: major spoilers follow for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

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5 Things We Can Learn about INTJs and ENTJs from Fictional Villains

6 November, 20196 November, 2019Marissa

One of the most common stereotypes around Myers-Briggs® types as they relate to the world of fiction is that most villains are NT types. Not all of course (I even have a whole post about the comparatively rare NF-type villains), but it does seem that an unusually large percentage of bad guys in fiction have an NT personality type. Specifically, we see the INTJ “Mastermind” filling the ranks of villains probably more often than any other type. ENTJs might come close, but they’re less often stereotyped as the villain. Maybe they just have better PR teams.

Magneto, Voldemort, Moriarty, Hannibal Lechter, Tywin Lannister, Emperor Palpatine, Rumplestiltskin, The Master, Saruman, Light Yagami, Lex Luthor, Scar, Maleficent, Jaffar — they’re all iconic villains from fiction who are typically typed as INTJs or ENTJs. When taken to a villainous extreme, these clever, calculating personality types can be absolutely terrifying. I even included one villain on each of my lists 7 Fictional Characters You’ll Relate To If You’re An INTJ and 7 Fictional Characters You’ll Relate To If You’re An ENTJ because they villainous versions of these types are such an integral part of fiction.

Casting these types as villains makes for some of the most calculating, clever, and creepy antagonists in fiction. But what (if anything) does it tell us about real-life INTJs and ENTJs? Are they secretly as evil as their fictional counterparts? Or do we stereotype these personalities as “evil” because we simply don’t understand them?

Every person has the potential to use their talents and gifts for good or evil; to choose the light or the dark. This holds true for INTJs and ENTJs, and we do them a great disservice if we assume they’re evil or treat them as the villain without getting to know them as they truly are.

There some great posts out there (like this one from Introvert, Dear) combating the whole “INTJs are villains” thing. Today, though, I want to take some of those villainous stereotypes and see if we can use them to learn something about the real-life INTJs and ENTJs in our lives. Read more →

“A Reluctant Bride” Book Review

31 May, 201926 February, 2020Marissa

Several years ago, while I was in college, I stopped reading Christian fiction. The more I learned about writing and literature, the less impressed I was with the inspirational market. I felt the books were poorly written and too preachy. I don’t like shoe-horned themes or author agendas shoved in my face even when the author and I share a faith.

Then a few years ago, I gave it another chance after a review of Francine Rivers’ book Redeeming Love* caught my eye. That book was so good it convinced me to give the Christian fiction market another try. And I’m glad I did, or I wouldn’t be writing about the book that’s the subject of today’s post.

please note that links in this post marked with an * are affiliate links, which means that at no additional cost to you, I’ll receive a small commission if you click on the link and make a purchase.

Jody Hedlund’s A Reluctant Bride kicks off her new Bride Ships series series with a heartwarming slow-burn romance. This historical fiction novel, set in the Victorian era, follows the story of Mercy Wilkins. Mercy — a compassionate, selfless young woman who grew up in one of the poorest areas of London — follows her sister’s advice to immigrate to Vancouver with a group promising jobs. It’s only after she’s on board the ship that she learns the women sailing with the Columbia Mission Society will be offered jobs only temporarily. This is a bride ship, and those traveling on-board will be expected to marry once they arrive — something Mercy has no intention of ever doing.

As one would expect from this type of story, there’s a man on board this ship with the potential to change Mercy’s mind. Lord Joseph Colville is heir to one of the noble families of England. Since the death of his parents and brother, he’s been delegating his political and social responsibilities to his aunt and focusing on his passion for medicine. He’s the doctor aboard the bride ship and fully intends to continue traveling for a few more years before settling down. But when Mercy becomes his assistant, they both start thinking that maybe marriage wouldn’t be so bad. Unfortunately, he’s supposed to marry someone from his station and she’s supposed to marry one of the men waiting in British Columbia.

I’ll not spoil anything about the ending for you, since I hope some of you will decide to read this for yourselves. But I will say I loved the characters. The faith elements weave through the story naturally and the plot kept me turning pages eager to see how events played out.

I always appreciate when historical fiction engages with the characters’ time period in a believable fashion. Lord Colville’s choice to work as a doctor and romance a poor working-class girl is an unusual one. However, it’s handled in a way that seems fairly realistic — including the reactions of people around them and Joseph’s and Mercy’s own recognition of the challenges they face. Parts of their romance remind me of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,* which is one of my favorite books.

I’d never had the chance to read and promote a book pre-release before, so I was very excited when Jody Hedlund opened up applications to her Reader Room group, and even more excited when I became part of the release crew for A Reluctant Bride. I love her YA medieval romance series,* and I wasn’t surprised to enjoy this book as well.

A Reluctant Bride will be out on June 4th. You can click these links to order it and to learn more about Jody Hedlund’s work. (A note for those who, like me, enjoy print books: you won’t be disappointed with this one. The cover is absolutely beautiful, the paperback feels amazing, and pictures can’t do it justice.)

Sherlock Holmes and The Trouble With Typing Fictional Characters

6 February, 20195 February, 2019Marissa

Discussions about Sherlock Holmes’ Myers-Briggs® type can get pretty heated in the online community. He’s either an INTJ or INTP and whichever side you come down on (if you care about this sort of thing) is worth passionately defending. I’ve weighed-in on this myself in a blog post arguing that Sherlock as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Sherlock BBC series, Robert Downy Jr. in the Sherlock Holmes movies, and even the Basil of Bakerstreet version from Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective are all INTPs.

I do think that’s the best-fit type for all three of those versions, but they aren’t the only portrayals of Sherlock Holmes. We ought not forget, for example, the original character in the stories penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve been reading and re-reading several of those for my Classics Club book list and Sherlock doesn’t seem very much like an INTP in those stories. In fact, the only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that he’s a Thinking personality type.

Typing People Who Aren’t Real

Sherlock Holmes and The Trouble With Typing Fictional Characters | LikeAnAnchor.com — image courtesy of The Sherlock Holmes Museum

That brings us to the second part of this post’s title: the trouble with typing fictional characters. Though I love looking at fictional characters’ personality types, there are limits to how accurately you can type them. It gets especially tricky in the case of someone like Sherlock Holmes or Batman because so many writers and actors have been involved in portraying this character over quite a long period of time. There’s bound to be some inconsistencies in how each creative sees the character they’re working with. Plus, I doubt very many of them think about the character’s Myers-Briggs® type and how they can keep it consistent in every portrayal.

Going back to Sherlock Holmes as our example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sometimes writes him in a way that looks like ISTJ, sometimes more like one of the NTJ types, and sometimes with traits of a TP type. He also calls Dr. Watson by two different first names (John is used three times, James once), so I think it’s safe to say Doyle wasn’t all that concerned with consistency. In any case, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were written about 30 years before Jung published Psychological Types, so we know he wasn’t relying on those theories when writing the character.

So Why Type Fiction?

Since it’s difficult to type fictional characters with a high degree of accuracy, why do it? For one thing, it’s fun. It’s one of the ways to turn an interest in Myers-Briggs® into an entertaining pastime as well as a useful hobby.

Typing fictional characters can also sharpen our skills typing real people. It gives us a chance to study how characters react and puzzle out which psychological functions they’re using based on what they say and how they act. In addition, well-written characters provide familiar examples of the different types to use in every-day conversation. If someone asks me what an ENTP or ISFJ, for example, looks like in real-life then Tony Stark and Samwise Gamgee are there to help clarify things.

Do you enjoy trying to figure out fictional characters’ personality types? Tell us about your favorite characters and what you think their types are in the comments!