Look, I did not want to play the role of a quintessential supporting character who wafts in and out of the main lead’s life (read: mine).
In movies and shows, we see that this character will often be the eccentric friend who is observant with a hint of overbearingness, with their own share of drama which will provide enough fodder for filler episodes. But mind you, their extraordinariness will be just sufficient to appease the viewers who don’t love but like the main character enough to not demand a whole new spin-off series for the said side character. As long as this character remains in the background all while filling the important gaps in the MC’s life, all is good and well. Take people like Janet from The Good Place, Paulie from the Sopranos or Eleanor from Never Have I Ever — all perfect caricatures of an entertaining side character, with of course, widely different personalities. One is a robot, the others a Mafia captain and a normal high-school teenage girl.
Well, since this is a personal piece, the side character trope I would choose for myself would be the awkward friend with idiosyncrasies and whims of her own. Romance would certainly be central to this character — you have to be a romantic at heart to appreciate both love and horror. Hence, someone like Amélie would be nearly perfect.
For those of you who haven’t watched this 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, Amélie is a dreamy and hopelessly romantic woman in her 20s, who embarks on a journey of making the lives of the side characters more fulfilling. She doesn’t immerse herself too much in their personal lives, she just stays in the periphery of these characters, careful never to reveal who is it who’s turning their days a bit less dim. It’s as if she wants to feel less lonely by making people around her feel less alone. Ultimately, she realises that while she was on this serendipitous journey, she learnt how to shamelessly demand for herself the exact joy that she was birthing for others all this while. For once in her life, she stopped acting as if she has to show too little of the care she feels so much for the world and became unafraid of basking in the visibility that she, as a main character, so deserved.
Which brings me to the question, what is this exact business of side and main characters? And why in the recent times, there has been a surge in conversations around them? Well, for starters, there are TikTok and Instagram. The perfectly edited reels with the perfect background music and the perfect aesthetic perfectly encapsulate the main character moments such as walking inside the Delhi metro, grocery shopping with your partner or showing off dance moves in a club. The essence of this social media movement is simple — start romanticising the daily and mundane of life as if cameras are capturing you every second, as if every moment is meant to be lived to the fullest and as if there’s nothing unnatural about being unabashedly, visible to the world. It is as Yasmine Sahid, a twenty-four-year-old actor and TikTok creator said, “TikTok and social media has made it more attainable for you to write your own story.”
Sounds like a great and first of the non-toxic trends on social media on paper, but so much more complicated in real life. Take for instance when a girl in my class complimented me for my earrings. I just blinked and mumbled a “thanks” in response. This poor reaction wasn’t owing to a lack of confidence. It was caused by a momentary shock — a surprise that oh yes, I am the main character and that I was living as a spectator of my own life during that particular moment. This moment was not something that I am entirely proud of but as this heartful quote from the Studio Ghibli movie Whisper Of The Heart goes “The rough stone is inside of you. You have to find it…and then polish it.” So, I guess it shall be a work-in-progress to find and harness my main character-iness.
There are ofcourse some saving graces for feeling a side character in your life. Your problems don’t seem too large to you. You often employ a more logical and less subjective approach to things when it matters. The world definitely seems bigger to you, which gives way to feeding the curiosity of the inquisitive ones like me. The thing is, if you oscillate between being the side and main character of your life, then it should be okay. Sometimes, we need to live the moments where we get to be the centre of attention and give our story our own voice; while sometimes it’s okay to feel less in charge and linger around your issues just enough to give you the respite you so desperately need.
Labels can be hard to deal with, so let’s just aim to roll up within the first 4–5 names in rolling credits of the movie that our lives are, and I guess that will be just wonderful.
