A distinction between squicks

[soc_puppet]

After a good deal of thought, I'm not entirely sure that "embarrassment squick" exactly describes the feeling of Oh God Please No I sometimes get when consuming media. It definitely happens a lot with situations that will and do cause characters embarrassment, but that's not the only time I get that feeling. I think I've narrowed it down to some sort of "bad decisions squick". I don't like watching (or reading, or whatever) when a character makes a decision that has a predictably terrible outcome. I can feel myself pre-cringe when it happens. It's possible, of course, that I have both, since I'm pretty sure I've been bad with flat-out embarrassing stuff happening to characters as well, but I've been having less trouble with plain embarrassment in some situations that don't involve characters making bad decisions. IDK, this may require more thought, but I might be onto something, at least for myself.

(This post is brought to you by me procrastinating watching the second half of the Miraculous Ladybug season four finale. Bad decision squick abounds! 😨)

Edit: Thinking it over, I'm tentatively calling this "shame squick", since I think that covers the bad feelings I get from both sets of circumstances pretty well. Embarrassment squick doesn't bother me as much when characters aren't shamed for whatever could conceivably be embarrassing, whereas with shame squick, I can pretty well anticipate the sense of shame and/or guilt I might feel if making those decisions myself.

Comments

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

Oh I definitely also have this kind of squick!

[soc_puppet]

It's a bad squick! I do not like it at all!

[mistressofmuses]

I get terrible second-hand embarrassment for characters. That's an interesting point about the "can't you see this will be a terrible decision!" feeling. And it's definitely worse for me when it seems like the character should know... if they're truly lacking the information, and only the audience knows it's a bad idea, it gives me less of the bad vibe. (Though sometimes not much less, depending on the quality of the writing.) I think this may be part of why "The Big Mis-" as a huge plot point in a lot of romance doesn't appeal to me...

[soc_puppet]

The first book I can think of where Bad Decisions happened that I felt comfortable reading to the end was Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. It helped that the book set things up so they actually seemed reasonable at the time, and probably also that the main character, Cat Chant, is meant to be on the spectrum.

Meanwhile, the Bad Decision in Rosemary and Rue (where Toby goes to see a shady old friend of some sort? IDK, I bought when it came out on jimchines's recommendation/review, and it's been a few years) is the straw that made me quit that book outright. While I've since become a huge fan of the Wayward Children series, I can't say I've had much luck with the rest of Seanan McGuire's stuff. The only other one I've tried was Into the Drowning Deep, and that started out with anti-captivity stuff* and a Bad Decision With Consequences On Screen, and while I keep meaning to see if I can't power through it, I can't say I've gotten there yet. So many other books I could be reading instead, and all.

[mistressofmuses]

Haha, the October Daye series is actually one I really like! I don't remember Toby's decisions bothering me too much, but she also made lots of Bad Decisions in early books largely due to isolation and a very genuine sense of treating herself as somewhat disposable; her (bad) reasoning made sense to me in terms of my reading of her character, even when they were still bad decisions. Making better choices is something of a growth arc for her, lol. But I can see it also being not to your taste!
But I do like Seanan McGuire's stuff - Newsflesh is my favorite, October Daye probably second. Oddly, Wayward Children is the one series of hers I can't seem to stick with! I always stall out at some point and get bored/just put it down and don't pick it back up. I can't quite figure out why, because I *should* like them, and all the individual characters and plot elements appeal.

Though the more I think about it, I guess I can't say that bad decisions turn me off that much, or at least not always. My usual genre of choice (for movies, sometimes for books) is horror, and that's almost exclusively built around Very Bad Decisions a lot of the time!
(And on the other side of the coin, characters that always seem to make the right decisions and never do or say the wrong thing feel really flat to me, or like the author is too self-conscious to make their protagonist anything less than perfect, and I don't enjoy that at all.)

I think it's more narrow for me - bad decisions with emotional consequences for other people are the ones that make me cringe. So "you fool! don't go in the basement!" in a horror movie doesn't bother me nearly as much as "the Big Misunderstanding" in a romance, where someone rejects their lover because they jumped to the wrong conclusions.

Buuuuut, it's all a matter of degrees. I've definitely DNF'd books for having "too stupid to live" decisions being made. Or bad decisions that can easily be avoided, and just... aren't for some reason.
Other times I feel like yeah, the protagonist WOULD make that terrible decision, and it wouldn't make sense for them to do otherwise.

[soc_puppet]

Oof, if there's one thing I can 100% agree with, it's that "Why don't I like this thing that seems like it was practically tailor-made to my interests?" is one of the most frustrating feelings in the world!


Characterization definitely plays an important part! But even when it is in character, I sometimes can't deal with finishing whatever it is. I do my best, but I find people who cannot reason their way out of a paper bag to be tiring in real life, so I'd just as soon not spend my time off with them!


Edit: There's almost certainly more I could reply to in your comment, but it's just about lights out time for me anyway, so I may take a rain check.

[mistressofmuses]

Such a super frustrating feeling! Sometimes I can come back to something that just didn't click the way it seemed like it should, and later on it works for me.

Yeah, characterization lets me forgive a lot... but only if I *like* the character. Ones that are so illogical that I don't like them would likely get DNF'd anyway, ha.

Lol, no worries. Hope you slept well!