"This is no joke: I was mentally going over a list of fixers
and damn if I could understand why they do what they do.
Don't tell me it was nobility of character: that's a rare
quality and I don't see why fixers would have more than the
general population."
Mario, that's a damn good question. And it's easy to spin it
off into another -- why do we identify with these characters,
these losers (I'm assuming most of us do, at least to some
extent)? And I'd say that over the decades, they are become
even more the losers, and often recognize themselves as such.
Tanner, to use your example, is pretty damn self-aware about
his outsider status and the great price he pays for it in
loneliness. And he tossed away a legal career on the inside
to pursue this role.
I don't really know why we find this so appealing. Perhaps we
see ourselves as losers (even if we are not so far outside or
have more trappings of success) and wish we were as noble as
these characters. Or maybe we wish we had the balls (as
presented in the genre, could just as easily be seen as a
failure of character in the real world -- was Flitcraft a
hero for pursuing a new life or a coward for deserting his
old one?) to walk away from all of our responsibilities and
walk the lonely path. That lonely path can seem appealing (in
a self-pitying kind of way) during those moments when
everyone in your real life seems to represent nothing but
obligation and/or betrayal.
Mark
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