Humans are very concerned about “favorites”. Favorites can tell us a lot about other people, or reveal things about ourselves, and can lay the base stones for bridges of communication. We seem more actively interested in what others choose as their favorite things than in our own choices about it, which on the face of it may seem paradoxical but when you think about it, we already know what our favorite things are, and why. Or do we?
When we’re children, we’re pretty much obsessed with favorite things. “What’s your favorite color? My favorite day of the week is Thursday! What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? My favorite animal is an echidna! Which park is your favorite? My favorite dress has blue ribbons.” It’s a good way to learn about each other, and ourselves. Back then, we certainly did know why most things were our favorites – for a while when I was seven or so, my favorite color was a particular gentle sea green because I had encountered it for the first time in an art deco book and become entranced, my favorite animal was a mongoose because I’d just read the Just So Stories and was obsessed with Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and by extension mongooses in general, and my favorite book was Watership Down because I strongly identified with Fiver.
As we get older, many people keep on having favorite specific things – a favorite book, a favorite frying pan, a favorite breed of dog – but we also tend to relax about it, having several “favorite” movies depending on mood or setting, for example, and practicality starts to weigh in: most of those of us who have a favorite pen like it because it writes so smoothly, not because it’s funny or pretty or big or small. Our interests in others’ favorites remains just as keen but we smooth it into conversations: instead of badgering someone about their favorite vegetable and kind of meat and dessert topping and cheese and snack, we tend to ask, “What kinds of foods do you prefer?” Instead of, “Who’re your favorite band?” it’s “What kind of music do you like to listen to?” And we rarely, if ever, ask each other what our favorite dinosaurs are anymore.
There’s something very personal about favorites. Most of them, unlike that pen that never cramps your hand or the pair of slippers that send your feet on a vacation, are essentially irrational. Nobody can tell you that something is your favorite the way they can, depending on the circumstances, tell you you have to eat it or submit to it or do it for your job or whatever. Why would one person prefer saffron yellow and another ashes-of-roses? Why does a solid, blocky shape for a home appeal immensely to someone, while a neighbor craves delicate lines and well-lit spaces? It’s possibly the only thing in each of our lives that is entirely up to us. Sure, some things are loved by association (a great many of my individually collected favorite things are purely sentimental in value, because of the stories and settings they evoke), as others are hated, and biology and psychology account for plenty of it (it’s possible for a sweet tooth to run in a family, phobias or what makes us viscerally irritated aren’t a choice, and so on), but basically, your favorite things are your favorite things, whether or not you ever tell anyone else about them. I know someone who is not in the slightest ashamed by some of her favorites but also holds them to be personal, lest others judge; one of them, something very specific, I do myself, but I do it in public, flagrantly, all the time. It’s wear a purse that looks like BMO, the little sentient computer from Adventure Time.
That anyone would judge someone by this – by a favorite thing – and that anyone would choose to avoid judgment by keeping the preference private is by no means weird. What other humans like is a glaring spotlight into their personalities, into their very, if I may, souls. Sometimes we decide to cloak some of these things because they might clash with an inescapable work or social environment, at other times out of self-protection, sometimes because it simply isn’t anybody else’s business. What we choose to share or withhold about ourselves (by
wearing a t-shirt, by hiding a sculpture, by displaying a book or reading it on the train, by avoiding certain foods or activities around certain people, by using a color on our clothing or home, by not buying the shoes or car we really wanted, by talking or not talking about our fandoms, and so on) is not only a deeply personal choice, but also changes according to our moods, circumstances, goals, desires, and habits, as well as over time. The degree to which it does so varies by person. One friend of mine, when she feels happy and confident, will throw on dressy clothes and tend to show more leg and be more elaborate with her hair. Another expresses the exact same emotional state by wearing a slightly brighter shade of her sober, subtle lipstick, and once, when feeling especially ebullient, actually wore, under her pinstriped business trousers, very faintly lemon-yellow socks. She told me, rather giddily while revealing them to me and only me, that she felt like a crazy rebel. What we’re into, and what we do about it, and how we feel about it, is uniquely up to us.
For me, there came a time, somewhere in my mid or late twenties, when I realized I didn’t even seem to have any favorites at all anymore. I tried, for some reason fleetingly concerned about it, to dredge up anything I found to be the paragon of whatever it was, the pinnacle of effort regarding this kind of thing, that which I
held in greatest regard. I did find a few, broader trends and a couple of specifics. Artichokes have simply always been my favorite vegetable, as long as anyone in my family can remember (I'm told that at nine months old I cried inconsolably when, at a restaurant, I saw someone else eating one; eventually, one was provided for me to gnaw at and tranquility was restored). A favorite fruit eluded me then and still does, though… Strawberries? Raspberries? Pomegranates? Wild peaches? Avocados? Satsuma plums? Pippin apples? Nope, can’t do it. They’re all just so good!
This is how it remains for me regarding most things (Sicilian vs. Hunan vs. Cajun vs. Japanese vs. Ethiopian food? PICK one? Are you KIDDING?) but some of my preferences, I realized suddenly a year or three ago, seem to have refined a bit into at least a few identifiable trends. I have several favorite movies, several favorite directors, several favorite TV series. A few favorite times of year, more than one favorite artist, multiple favorite performers. In a few things, however, it turns out that I do have a clear favorite, in most cases without being able to fully articulate why the things I like about this thing distinguish it, for me, above the others which share these same attributes. And when I put some of them in a row, they’re pretty eclectic.
I have a favorite author (Kurt Vonnegut), but he did not write my favorite book (Rachel Maddux’s The Green Kingdom). Neither of these two authors wrote either of my tied-for-favorite stories (The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi
and Border Guards by Greg Egan). I do have a favorite beer – it’s Guinness – but when I’m not in the mood for a stout (or, as is far more normally the case, can’t afford any), I like a number of different kinds of beer. There’s witbier and lager and Belgian triples and IPA and just ever so many good kinds of beer! I have favorite characters in three of my top several TV shows, but not in most of the others (and in some of my favorite shows I don’t like anybody all that much). The three who do step out of their respective fictions to my favorites list are Prismo from Adventure Time, Pablo in Ash vs. Evil Dead, and in Steven Universe, my favorite Crystal Gem is Bismuth (she protects and she builds, two of my strongest-held personal values). My favorite Avenger is Hulk. I don’t really have a favorite genre of music at all, let alone album or song. My playlist jumps randomly through funk, hardcore rock, classical, jazz, folk, percussion, ragtime, classic rock, boogie-woogie… I like music. I certainly don’t have a favorite kind of art to create. There’s writing, which I’m doing right now, painting, line drawing, stonecarving, clay sculpture, beading, woodburning, photography, embroidery... and those are just the ones I’ve been fiddling around with in the past few weeks. My favorite literature genre is science fiction, though. No contest.
The important thing to remember is that nobody else has to understand why something is your favorite. Even you don’t have to. I couldn’t possibly explain why my favorite genre of horror cinema is… really messed up. I’m talking “House of 1,000 Corpses is fucking hilarious” messed up. And yet I despise cruelty in any form. It also doesn’t matter whether you feel like using your
favorite things to broadcast stuff about yourself or not. For a long time, I didn’t, but now in my cronehood I want to. Now I wear fandom t-shirts and watches, science fiction themed jewelry and slippers and house robes. In winter I’m thrilled to go out in my Jake hat and Lady Rainicorn scarf. I have a Toothless hoodie with a freaking tail and wings on it, and a Deadpool backpack dangled all about with ships (the Serenity, the Millennium Falcon, and so on) and assorted other fandom keychains (Iron Man’s Infinity Glove, for example, and Stormbreaker and BMO and No Face). If you don’t want to do that with your styles, that’s not only just fine, it’s right. Is there something you keep close to your heart but stored away somewhere, and only peek at it sometimes? Is your favorite something actually someone else’s possession and you covet it in secret? Or is it something you never share just because it's... yours? That’s nobody’s business but your own. You do you.
Stay well, and love what you love.
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basically our favorites are religion difficult to explain rationally, and not necessarily shareable.i thought i'd read all of bacigalupi stuff. but misserd people of sand off to amazon i go.PUMP SIX is very dark and a kittle horrifying.