 The DANDERE and YOU PSYCHOLOGY One of the least popular female character archetypes, and for many reasons, one that tends to fade into obscurity on the mainstream venue, the DANDERE, just like the others within the dere group, has a unique trait that defines an intrinsic nature, it poses both a definition of identity with its own set of psychometric and behavioural tendencies, and at the same time, a source of interpersonal conflict, it presents itself as an obstacle that her romantic interest must learn how to deal with and successfully manage before getting her to .. dere. A type of character which is ironically remarkable because of her unremarkable traits, deceitfully complex, because unassuming as she might seem, the truth is the most extreme features of her nature relate closely to a series of patterns observed in an actual personality disorder.  Kuroki Tomoko (NL) in what is otherwise an ironic statement. But to get into that subject we would need to understand how a personality becomes a personality disorder in the first place, and also try to find a better way to identify the defining traits of a DANDERE while we are at it, now obviously, the first limitation we are faced with is in the very definition of the word DANDERE, that is, the fact these characters are only unsually heard of, one could even forget they exist because of their lack of presence, but that ability to remain under the radar is also a strong point and part of the character itself: a DANDERE tends to remain quiet, even when there is a reason for her to speak her mind and make her presence known, hence the DAN on her name, which comes from the Japanese word DANMARI. But don't mistake her reticence for apathy or indifference, because a DANDERE always has a reason to remain quiet, and if you get lucky and the character is actually able to vocalize (as some of them don't even have a voice actress), once she has cleared her mind of all possible arguments against her need to say something, she is sure to surprise everyone with a sudden surge of speech that rarely goes unnoticed, the resulting impression will be expectedly much stronger and lasting that any other character's regardless of how articulate they may sound, this is a form of conditioning that causes viewers to anticipate and react, they will feel it's got to be important if the character that never speaks finally decided to say something.  It's not always this extreme Probably not the last time that the nature of a DANDERE plays in favour of creating some kind of expectation on the viewers, the character itself, in her introspective struggle, seeks to evoke sympathy, and this leverage can be used many times as a device to build up emotional tension within a story, but since of all of this conflict takes place on an introspective level, the exposition needs to rely on other, unconventional resources for storytelling in order to convey what is going on in the scene, and of course, the best way is to present the viewer with a monologue, off-screen, or non-diegetic type of exposition, which becomes a central and/or recurrent theme in the (few) examples when a DANDERE is given the spotlight.  Kuronuma Sawako (NL) Note that only the audience and herself are aware of what's being said  Miyazaki Nodoka (NL) is suppressing her own thoughts inside her mind Indeed, the platonic and fantasy prone aspect of the DANDERE girls' mentality is both a charm point and what dooms the character to become an outcast holding a schroedinger box full of what if's, and that's when we enter the psychological subtext behind the construct of DANDERE, because it is almost mandatory for her to find this behaviour as something undesirable that she could do away with, but is unable to find a working solution to the problem and is constantly frustrated at her own inability to overcome this barrier which prevents her from doing what she would want to do in a given situation, in that sense, we have a character who holds within herself two different and mutually opposing trains of thought, a conflict is created and when the moment comes for a course of action to be decided, her choice is to avoid the conflict, now how will this avoidance manifest itself, that's when it gets complex. Incidentally, substitution of normal means of communication, such as spoken language, with more indirect, impersonal ways is actually a recurring theme with certain examples of DANDERE-like characters:  From right to left, top to bottom: Jun Naruse (NL) displays a form of selective mutism, so she uses her cellphone to communicate. Pleinair #75 doesn't speak, whether she is mute or not is a mystery. Moeka Kiryuu #225 has difficulties communicating without her cellphone. Eucliwood Hellscythe #175 communicates through written notes. Not counting the cases where speech is not possible or impaired, one could say a DANDERE is an escapist of sorts, an avoidant personality, which constitutes itself as defense mechanism against a sense of perceived impending failure, and is a source of discomfort for the subject, that is how a vicious cycle of avoidance and confrontation starts for our unfortunate and helpless girls. Neverending, in the cases where it crosses the line to become a personality disorder, and comes with the additional burden of adopting compulsive self-critical introjections, chastising their own actions, thoughts, and eventually losing control over them, as their unusually keen self-awareness becomes everytime more distorted and comes to be replaced by a fault finding figure of self-deprecation, the most extreme forms of which come with crippling negative psychological symptoms, including depression. But not everything about the DANDERE personality has to be dark and despondent, in reality, when used in anime, this archetype has the virtue of being the most honest dere that there is, her inability to suppress her profuse emotional responses, coupled with her tendency to be overwhelmed by them, makes her the most obviously happy person when she dere's, they can't hide their joy, even if they wanted to. A trait which will of course cause the unsuspecting viewers to MOÉ with the cloying display of unadultered sweetness that ensues, fulfilling a most basic purpouse for anime female characters even when in practice the plot-driven uses for a DANDERE are limited. Now getting into the specifics of the DANDERE personality, most of what we know can be infered from the notion that they're based on avoidant personalities, but as expected, there are limitations, there is not a rule that states whether a character must be avoidant towards a particular subject or situation, but that is normally how the less obvious examples of avoidant personalities will behave, the more extreme examples tend to be generally avoidant, and their most compelling reasons to escape the conflict are associated with fear, or anxiety, but the less obvious ones can be much more subtle and selective in their motives, making it hard for anyone looking for the regular patterns to spot them in an otherwise normal setting. And then there's the subject of how does this character archetype relates to our club interests, the self-proclaimed lovers of cool and emotionless girls, what do we see in the DANDERE? and I think there are a couple of reasons why we might be interested, even when objectively we are dealing with very different personalities and base temperaments, we have at least one common factor, and that is how they tend to be quiet and pensive, more so than any other female character in the dere family, so it's not surprising either, that they were difficult to tell apart from the KUUDERE back then when it was a relatively new concept. A quick glance on two of these characters standing together wouldn't be enough, no one could tell how radically different they were on the inside, with the DANDERE showing a more yielding and fluctuating inner self, in contrast to the impervious and adamant cool girl, but what's interesting too, is the fact that these traits are not mutually exclusive, as weird as it might seem. One could think that a cool girl can't share the same traits with a personality that prefers to play the appeaser in a conflict, but there's a way for them to "coexist" if you could call it that, and that is by using the aloof aspect of the personality as a cover to conceal denial, an active form of escapism where the subject ignores the presence of that which they want to avoid, hence appearing as if there is no need to act, this demands a certain amount of determination that a DANDERE can't feign for long enough, but that is why it is more likely for a DANDERE to initiate a transition as a result of the constant pressure exerted by her fears, and develop a cool girl character as a result, even when she will regress to her DANDERE thought patterns in the absence of that resolve. So a cool girl has no reason to act like a DANDERE, but a DANDERE might have one to be cool, the cool traits are natural attractors for her personal loci, and one of the possible coping mechanisms that they can come up with in their attempts to overcome their avoidant tendencies.  Not always the best choice or results. But back on the subject, why DANDERE? do we just like quiet girls because they don't talk much? or maybe it's easier for an audience to feel empathy when they can hear a character's thoughts as if they were their own, and because of that the DANDERE makes people project themselves into their own predicament so that they can only choose to be on her side? or I don't know, maybe seeing shy girls getting flustered and feeling conflicted is just that much of a turn on? as I said before there can be many reasons, so whatever frosts your cupcake huh? That said, much of the knowledge we have about the common traits shared by DANDERE characters remains fairly baseless as of today, and without a definite character profiling for this group, we have been obviously neglecting the possible candidates because we just don't know how or where to find them. Since there are no defined criteria to segregate them, we don't know the exact number of characters that can be clearly identified as DANDEREs in our club based on the new definitions, all we know is that some of them do exist as purely DANDERE characters, and some of them are half-cool and half-dan. Suggestions on how to solve this problem are welcome. Dandere girls recognized by KDEGL in this thread: https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=142112 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=41610 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=38005 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=8498 (EL) https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=3588 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=3385 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=249 Other Dandere girls not recognized by KDEGL: https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=127322 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=50057 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=1555 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=6977 https://myanimelist.net/character.php?id=954 |
DrMondaiNashiSep 17, 2023 7:29 PM
| The way I see it there are two real obstacles to dandere characters which both restricts their ability to get in the club and makes it difficult to set any sort of fixed test as to whether or not they count. The first of these, and the unavoidable one, is prominence. Dandere characters are, as stated, often characters that are relatively in the background, and it can be hard with relatively minor characters to determine how much a character is a dandere or just a character who doesn't do much in the series unless their dandere-ness (sorry) is actively noted by other characters. The other character types in the club can all be indicated to a certain extent even with the briefest of appearances, but this isn't the case for dandere - if you start saying that a character having relatively low presence and not saying much is what makes a character dandere then that automatically gives dandere points to the vast majority of recurring but often nameless background characters in every series ever. Which would be silly. The second is the club's self-imposed rule that only dandere with low emotional profiles are accepted. I fully understand why this would be decided (the other two groups being ones that have this state by default) but it is something I've always been somewhat uncomfortable with. This is firstly because it means that, whereas all kuudere and emotionless girls are valid for inclusion if they sufficiently possess the traits of these character archtypes, danderes are only valid if they have an additional trait which has nothing to do with how much of a dandere they are. And secondly because it isn't in any way determined where this boundary lies (except being between two very different characters), which makes me at least err on the side of caution in this regard. Given that if the low emotional profile goes far enough they get classed as EG even when dandere fits the character better it's small wonder that dandere are the least common character group in our database. Any attempt to define what counts as a dandere should thus also give a clearer indication of whether any given dandere is sufficiently low emotional profile to count in the club. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kuuderes_shadow said: The first of these, and the unavoidable one, is prominence. Dandere characters are, as stated, often characters that are relatively in the background, and it can be hard with relatively minor characters to determine how much a character is a dandere But we can't include all of them, if we did, the list would be 3 times longer, and we would need 3 more admins to manage the whole selection process. I think the relevance of a character in the story is extremely important here, because the more we can get to see and understand about them, the easier it will be for us to classify and determine the traits that make them characters. kuuderes_shadow said: Any attempt to define what counts as a dandere should thus also give a clearer indication of whether any given dandere is sufficiently low emotional profile to count in the club. I was thinking we could just, screen characters for cool traits and then check if they match the APP (avoidant personality profile) just a quick multiple choice questionnarie of what the character does and does not, then grant dandere status based on that. I would need to check, but I think most of our girls who aren't emotionless already score in at least two or three of the main criteria .. I'm thinking voice and something else at least, if they have more then well, that's great because they can be accepted just for being cool. The obvious problem is what would happen to kuuderes as a result, many of them may already have avoidant personality traits, and that will cause them to be relocated eventually .. which may not be a problem by itself .. because the Dandere population is somewhere around 10% or less .. but the process of relocation itself is a hell of a chore. And the backlog of characters with borderline results on the kuudere scale would need to be revised too ... so damn. |
kiwi0fruit said: So you think that danderes with low emotional profiles are neglected at the moment and you are not sure/not certain/don't know how to solve this problem? Am I right? Why do you want them in the first place? I'm not the ideas guy here, Zettai was the one to come up with the club title, more trouble than it was worth and granted, he probably didn't know exactly what these things were when he did, we had to narrow it down and in time, adjustments have been made to identify specific traits and other objective criteria that can be measured, not all of the characters that were included back then were removed after the new definitions were implemented. Now on the subject of the Myers-Brigg typology, once again, this is a psychometric test for actual people, the prospect of believing that you can apply such instrument on a fictitious character, or even try to infer where they would be placed in the scale is too much of a hit-or-miss method, that instrument is only meant to be used in intelligent, live human beings, this may come as a surprise to you but these characters are not human, some of them are literally (canonically) not human, they are a human-like construct based on actual people or even imagination, psychometric tests have no value/relevance in here. We base our criteria in observed traits and other variants that are statistically proven to relate to certain behaviour in anime, and as such, things like "introverted" and "judging" are not valid references to describe these characters. |
| You can't describe a character according to MBTI but you can say they have traits or do things that, were they to appear in a real person, would be indicative of a person who falls into a certain personality type. Having said that, that isn't the point of this club. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kiwi0fruit said: 1) red, yellow, green apples are fine 2) red peas are fine 3) yellow, green peas are NOT fine. It makes me wonder: what? why? Because peas are more numerous and hard to count than apples, we would need over 50+ people to sit on a desk for hours in order to classify them one by one. and we're clearly understaffed, we're having a hard time just dealing with the red ones. And I did consider renaming the club to "Kuudere and Emotionless Girls Lovers" but the red tape man, and well after 7 years it would be sad for the characters who are already part of the list. |
kiwi0fruit said: You can grant them "on hold/museum" status. You can even label them when you notice them instead of marking all at once. Been there done that, the result was having too many false positives and people didn't want to bother themselves with confirming characters. |
| Might be just necroing this thread for no good reason but, there's a recent trend with girls from the dan spectrum, which I believe has to do with the concept of GAP MOE, because most of the dan-like characters these days tend to be tall and mature-looking women. Not sure how long this has been going on for, Yuri from DDLC must be the most recent example that kinda, got a lot of attention from the public eye, but then again Komi was already around there. It was presumed that most girls with this personality trait must have a corresponding body type that complements their timid and frail emotional state, but this recent trend has been getting a decent amount of traction. GAP MOE at its finest. |
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