saying it here, redux

[kaigou]

Elsewhere I did a long post on fanfiction writing styles, and in discussing it with someone recently I was reminded of mikkeneko's comment when I posted on the AJU fiasco of a so-called plot twist:

You know, I've seen [what happens when] a character [is] RPd by a player who hates them -- and honestly, in the end it always leads to disaster and ruin. If you don't love yourself (or rather, if your puppet master doesn't love you) then you'll be forced to act in such ways that nobody else can possibly love you either, and that kind of unrelenting negativeness spreads rottenness through the whole center of the game. I wonder if Quatre doesn't have a similar problem with his player.

I've been thinking about this, off and on, and the long-running joke (in many fandoms) that those (characters) we love, we abuse the most. It is, after all, those who profess to adore Duo above all others who seem to be most guilty of Duosufferitis. The following are just my theories, but you're welcome (of course, as always) to jump in and suggest, point out, and argue me wrong or right, as you please. More the merrier, etc.

First, I think in fanfiction the all-consuming fear of Mary Sue'ing -- which is easily done even to a canon character -- does push some writers in the opposite direction, at least superficially. Rather than let our favorite boy(s) always get the good stuff, we argue we're not MS'ing them because, look, we just put them through a car accident, then a gunshot wound, then let a house fall on them, and oh, their dog died, too. They're not winning! They're not perfect! We are not MS'ing!

But after giving so much thought to what I -- for lack of any better ideas -- called a fanfic-style of fiction -- I think it's more that this protesting-too-much on the MS is just an unconscious coverup of a secret wish we all hold: to be wronged, and in the end, to be righted. I'm not sure it's entirely a wish, per se, which might imply it's something we want. It's more that it's something we've all experienced -- but that in real life, twelve times out of ten, we never get the payoff. We never get the vindication, we don't get to be prom queen at the end of a hellacious senior year, we don't get the peachy contract after being dissed by cruel managers, we don't score the bestest deal ever on a house after being treated like poverty-ridden crap by the bank. We get kicked in the teeth and we keep going.

More than that: when we get kicked in the teeth, it's nothing personal. That's perhaps one of the hardest things to learn, growing up. The world is not fair, but it's not-fair not because it's out to get you-as-you. There is no grand scheme that sees you, or I, or anyone -- truly -- as so significant that we must be beaten down, personally, into dust. Nope. We just happened to be walking past as the random foot kicked out, and whammo, got it in the teeth again. There is no conspiracy, there is no greater meaning, there is just, "well, shit," and so there can be little blame. No, your high school nemesis didn't lay in bed at night plotting ways to make you thoroughly miserable. Fact is, any nemesis, in truth, probably gave us little thought other than passing amusement if we were there when the feet were flying.

Deep down, I think, it's a human trait to wish it were personal: then, we could say, there must be a reason behind this, if it were. As Twain observed, "of course truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense." If our lives were fiction, we'd expect a reason, an active force pushing these hells upon us. The obvious conclusion is that having determined that source, we could stop it, take it out, take it down.

I look at that too-common thread in fanfiction, and repeatedly see the same underlying schema: the character is the focus of misery, the conspiracy does exist, the bad guy is psychotic but obviously so only to Our Hero (Relena, anyone?). The Big Bad has no coherency, no consistent motivation other than as a means to torment Our Hero. Gun shot or unjust prisoner of war, it's the miseries of the high school clique taking random potshot amusements at socially-inferior peers, jacked up a thousand-fold -- except that in fiction, the hero -- our stand-in -- does, in the end, win the day.

There's different ways to do it. We can write the hero as finally shooting his nemesis, or perhaps the emotional comfort comes not from outright vengeance but from gaining the sympathy and love of everyone else, now that they've all recognized -- however belatedly -- the torture and agony created by the conspiracy. A revenge story, or a hurt-comfort... both require, however, that we wade through a hell of a lot of pain and suffering by the character, letting the conspiracy and misery build and build.

I think, too, that as readers, it's easy to relate to this kind of situation. It's not like we've not been there; we might not have the most dangerous men in the Earth Sphere gunning for our tails, but we have had to face down the quarterback of the football team when he's looking at us like we're lower than green pond scum on the bottom of his hundred-dollar running shoes. So we extrapolate the frustration, the helpless fury, the isolation, the humiliation, and -- as much good fiction does -- we enjoy it jacked up to eleven... and we relate to the character suffering, we can empathize, with the value-add of knowing we'll get the payoff: there is someone to blame, that when the chips are down, our boy will evade the solid kick to the teeth, and win the girl, win the day, win the war. As we abuse those characters we love, it's not just from fear of MS'ing. It's also a wish fulfillment, for pain to have meaning, for misery to have purpose, and for all of it to have an end: wrapped up in vindication, retribution, victory, etc.

This, then, is what I think about when I consider Mikke's words. Yes, if you were to write a character that you dislike intensely, I think the intense dislike can warp one's comprehension of that character. Just as it's damn hard to get along with coworkers who bug the living crap out of you, so it's hard to see the positive (or at least complex) motivations of a character that annoys you. Not only in the sense of little objective sense of the character as an entire entity, with all the complexities of a person, but also -- at least, this is the impression I get, sometimes -- a sort of malicious satisfaction. That is, the internal, perhaps-unadmitted annoyance with the character becomes a willingness to annoy others, instead. Maybe it's a sort of, "well, if I'm stuck with this (filled with bad/annoying/inexplicable faults) character, so are you."

In that sense, writing a character who does nothing but propel the conflict, who seeks the eternal conflict and shit-stirring, is a warning sign of an author who doesn't really 'get' the character, or doesn't care for it, as much. Or perhaps the constant push to cause conflict outside is a symptom of having little sense of the character's internal depths, and therefore no notion/ability to indicate the character's internal conflict -- yet we know, as writers, that conflict drives a story. So we try to create it, but doing so -- successfully, solidly -- means letting that conflict boil up from inside (ie, character-driven plot). But if you don't really 'get' what's on the inside...

But knowing that when we empathize too much with a character, that we might unconsciouly let the character play out a wish fulfillment of Being the Victim -- with, of course, the hope of Victim Kicks Ass being the last chapter -- I don't think it's entirely accurate that all RPs are necessarily screwed by a player who secretly hates his/her character. I think just as many might be screwed -- or perhaps I should say, warped out of plumb -- by those players who love their characters too much.

Perhaps this is due to overcompensation. If you are playing a character for whom you feel a great affinity, maybe even more than great fondness, it's almost as bad as dealing with someone who perpetually annoys you -- except in this case, you're blind to the bad, instead of the good. Seems to me, what with the MarySue whispers always hanging about in the back hallways of the fanfiction world, that writers instinctively associate "love my character" with "one step away from slapping a tiara on her and claiming she's queen of the world."

*cough*

If you do like your character, and feel empathy for him/her, it's also going to hit you closer and harder if someone sidles up and says, "the only reason you want the story to go in that direction is because you're soft on him/her." To say, soft on him implies we're weak as a writer, that we have a place we'd rather make down-coated fluffy to protect the character's fall, the implication of favoritism, even. Second only to that -- and a much more subtle tweak -- is the critique that when character A enters the scene, the author's attention diverts instantly, and thus every scene is All About That One Guy. Other characters abruptly blend into the woodwork, and the author's fascination with this One Guy becomes overwhelming and obvious... usually, though, to every but the author. When you do let an author in on the reactions of Those Not Quite So In Love, it can be a real cold-water wakeup.

It's also a great deal harder to argue that you'd objectively pick Outcome A, when you know for certain that you also have emotional investment in Outcome A, regardless. Would you, really, then, pick that Outcome, for the good of the story? Or are you really picking it because you want this character to have the down-down-down, so you can revel in the final shooting-up of the retribution shoot-out? Sometimes it's easier, too, to accept and let go when a critique comes down hard halfway through the creative process, a true wrench in the gears (and sometimes it's not intended as such, but a writer in the wrong headspace, and it's a wrench nonetheless).

The third thing that occurs to me when I consider this, is that for some characters -- who may have begun with spunk and spitfire -- that as they wane, and lose the author's interest, the character himself becomes flat, boring, and repetitive. Rather than come up with something to fire the character up -- again, the issue of internal conflict driving the external events (that is, the character's actions/reactions) -- it's easier to let the character slide into a sort of author-specific stereotype. Okay, that's not quite the right word, but I mean: a once-vibrant character fades to nothing more than a series of repeat actions, and that's a stereotype -- defined by cardboard, simplistic, easily-measured gimmicks, habits, appearances -- even if this 'stereotype' is the author's own and only exists for the duration of that story. The One Guy may have started with flashes of his own motivation which throw him into conflict with other characters, but at some point the author got bored, got tired of the One Guy's perspective... or worse, realized along the way that authorial perspective on Issue A isn't in line with the character's.

(I've seen this kind of tilt halfway through published stories, when I deconstruct. At some point the character, say, argues for a specific political position; after that he becomes this blank automaton: perhaps we see him making his favorite coffee, he's around for the group scenes, he has a line or two that seem to echo his earlier story-dialogue but don't seem quite as fresh... It can, and does, feel like the author hit this difference of opinion halfway through and said, "crap, I can't write him out of the story, so... I'll just kinda ignore him. I sure don't want to deal with this attitude that I just don't get, personally." It's especially annoying, to me as a reader, when the author's evading a character who'd stated a position that I, personally, do agree with! Sheesh.)

The lack of internal conflict pushing outwards, the internal motivation that drives a character into -- and out of -- conflict/plotlines -- might be a sign less that the player hates his/her character, and more of just sheer exhaustion and/or boredom. I can only imagine you would get tired writing just one character, all the time, and having to play the politics of any group, trying to argue for what's best for your character, juggling everyone else's demands against the storyline and your own wish to have a little bit of teeth-kicking -- but not too much -- and to get some of that kick-back for you & yours, too. It's got to be tiring, especially if your'e playing a Nice Guy who isn't expected to -- or perhaps, in a group mindset/interpretation, even allowed to get a kickback.

I can't say authors have quite as much of an issue at that... any given novel, there's going to be five to fifteen (or more!) characters running around, from bitplayers to main stage, and when it comes to whose motivation will win the day, that one author's word is law. Besides, you get bored with one voice, you switch to the next, see what the stage looks like from there.

I wonder if this is part of the reason Solacium had what, three? four? different Heeros over the course of three years...