edenfalling | [Meme] Top 5 things to keep in mind when writing various characters

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[Meme] Top 5 things to keep in mind when writing various characters

As seen around in various places:

Pick a character* I've written and I will explain the top five** ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

* Try to make it someone I've written either often or recently in order for me to answer.
** May not actually be five.

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Susan Pevensie (Chronicles of Narnia), for

branchandroot

Ginny Weasley (Harry Potter), for

silverblade219

Haruno Sakura (Naruto), for

silverblade219

Prince Rabadash (Chronicles of Narnia), for

hungrytiger11

Dave Strider (Homestuck), for

askerian

Aravis Tarkheena (Chronicles of Narnia), for

rthstewart

Lucy Pevensie (Chronicles of Narnia), for

snacky

Uzumaki Naruto (Naruto), for

vehrec

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Susan (Narnia)!

Book canon only. Disney!Susan is not as irritating to me as Disney!Peter, but I think she was equally changed from the books.

1. Susan likes to feel that she is doing something useful. This is an extension of her generally practical approach to life and also of her family position as surrogate mother. She is the one who keeps her siblings focused on the here and now.

2. Susan likes boys and men, both in Narnia and in England. She is interested in romance and probably uses her beauty as a tool to attract male attention. Lewis seems to think this is a bad thing, given the mess with Rabadash and the scorn Polly, Jill, and Eustace heap on her in TLB, but I don't. (I don't know if she's also interested in women, but she definitely is interested in men.)

3. Susan was called "The Gentle" for a reason! Note the scene in Prince Caspian where she hesitates over shooting the bear, and also the part where she doesn't want to embarrass Trumpkin by showing him up in an archery contest. She can be as snarly and bad-tempered as the rest of her family, but violence (physical or emotional) is never her instinctive reaction... except sometimes with her siblings, which I suspect is because she trusts those relationships to be solid enough to withstand any minor bout of pettiness on her part, just as she forgives her siblings for their similar failings.

4. This, I think, is why the argument with her family after they were all banned from Narnia turned so bitter -- because that bedrock trust got ripped away when she felt none of them understood her reaction to their fate. I am of many and varying minds as to what caused the initial split, but I am quite sure it was the lack of trust that hurt the most.

5. Susan's relationship with Lucy is very important to both of them and they've gone through a lot of big events together -- note how Lewis tends to pair them off at the same time he pairs the boys, so they're the ones who witness Aslan's death and rebirth, and the ones who ride through the waking of Old Narnia in PC -- but it seems to get sadly neglected in fic. This annoys me. Sisters are awesome! So I try to make sure Susan thinks a lot about Lucy, or at the very least mentions her sister, every time I write her.

So much yes to Susan and Lucy. And one of the things that pisses me off the most is that we never get Lucy's pov on what happened after they were exiled.

I was going to ask for Susan (did her in my own version of the meme :D) but since you've done her, can you also do Lucy?

1. Lucy finds joy in life. This is not to say that she can't be serious, or angry, or sad -- because she can; we see her in all those moods in canon -- but her default state is enthusiasm (or at the least good cheer), and she assumes all people are potential friends until proven otherwise.

2. Lucy is not a plaster saint. She can be selfish -- note her misuse of the book on the Dufflepuds' island. She can be snarky and silly. She can be wrong. She does have a deep connection to and faith in Aslan, but that doesn't remove her essential humanity.

3. Lucy is both a healer and a warrior. This goes all the way back to the gifts she receives from Father Christmas, though I think that is more an acknowledgement of the way she healed Tumnus emotionally by her very presence, and the way she fought to make her family believe in Narnia and understand that they should do something about the Witch. They are both active roles, which is interesting when compared to Peter and Susan, both of whom receive one active gift (sword, bow) and one passive gift (shield, horn). I should maybe write a fic about that someday...

4. Lucy is VERY truthful, to the point where I think lies of omission and social misdirection are difficult for her to learn. That is probably why the spell that finally tempts her to the breaking point is a spell to overhear what a friend says about her when she's not around. It's also why in LWW she wants to tell Edmund that Aslan died for him, whereas Susan thinks the knowledge "would be too awful for him." That tension between Lucy's blunt truthfulness and Susan's concern for social and emotional repercussions is probably the main source of tension between the sisters... and also mirrors the way Lucy holds tight to her memories of Narnia while Susan immerses herself in England after they are both banished from the Narnian world.

So much yes for all of this. For some reason I think the "Gentle" part of Susan is often ignored or tired to be "reclaimed" as in "Oh, she's called gentle but she also is a fighting machine," which has always seemed a little odd to me. Not that it is weird she could or would fight, but that fic tries to paint it as her main instinct.

I'd never stopped to realize that Lucy and Susan's relationship IS probably the most neglected in fandom. You get a ton of Edmund and Peter, whether on the campaign trail or whatnot. A lot of older siblings and/or younger siblings fics too. You also see Edmund and Susan (usually as diplomats or spymasters) and sometimes Peter and Lucy (often in religious/Aslan connotations)...but very little of the sisters. Expeirncing something like walking with and then watching Aslan die and rise would be something that would cause a deep bond (though I suspect one was already there). Too bad there isn't more fic of this.

-hungrytiger11

Some of the redefinition of "gentle" I think is an attempt to reconcile that title with the Susan of the Disney movies, for whom it is an awkward fit at best. And also probably a reaction against too much history of women only being valued for being meek, being sweet, being beautiful, being objects who do what they're told without fighting to make their own choices, etcetera, etcetera.

But the thing is, part of being free to make your own choices is that you get to make your own choices, and if you want to be kind, to refrain from violence, to care for the people around you, to take care of domestic things, there is nothing wrong with that. SO LONG AS IT IS A CHOICE. So for me, I am interested in writing a Susan who is a strong person and knows her own mind, and chooses not to ride to the wars, and to turn her attention to domestic practicalities, and to attempt a dynastic marriage (both for practical reasons and for romantic ones), and to turn away from being a Friend of Narnia, and to survive the loss of her whole family, and to carry on.

I have a Susan-and-Lucy-go-on-a-quest fic idea that I keep meaning to find time to write, but I never seem to have the right moment. (Also, it would be rather long.) But someday!

Sakura or Ginny?

Edited 2012-12-06 06:25 (UTC)

Hmm. I will do Ginny, I guess, and then maybe Sakura tomorrow. :-)

1. Above all, the thing to remember is that Ginny is a Weasley. She is not some delicate flower set down in the midst of barbarians. She is just as hot-tempered, boisterous, and in love with adventure and crazy jokes as her brothers. Her crush on Harry obscures that for the first four books, but you can see glimpses if you're paying attention -- the way she pesters her mother in PS/SS, the way she mocks Ron's horrible attempt to ask Fleur on a date in GoF, or hell, even the way she managed to effectively break Tom Riddle's hold on her enough to throw away his diary... and then tried to protect Harry by stealing it back while retaining the force of will to avoid getting sucked back in for several months thereafter.

2. Ginny is not actually that nice a person. She just gets narratively excused for her worst behavior in a way that, say, a Slytherin would not. In this, she mirrors the twins and also Harry himself (who gets away with using Cruciatus and then the same day calling on Voldemort to feel remorse as if he isn't being a giant hypocrite). She mostly has her heart and morals in the right place, but she's a product of the wizarding world's broken approach to justice as much as all the other characters.

3. Ginny likes Harry in particular, but she also likes boys in general and is not embarrassed by that. I suspect that as an adult, she has much more of a wandering eye than Harry does, though I doubt she'd act on it, because...

4. Ginny is incredibly stubborn and does not easily change her mind. This can be good, in the form of loyalty to her friends and her cause, or bad, in the form of unexamined prejudices. It's also probably why her crush on Harry lasted so long.

5. Ginny doesn't seem to have a lot of friends; she insinuates herself into her brothers' social circles instead. This speaks to me of a somewhat isolated childhood, and also specifically a lack of experience dealing with other girls. She has in many ways what I think could be considered a stereotypically male approach to life -- very brash, loud, and in-your-face -- while also trying to cover that a bit in the trappings of stereotypical femininity, like dresses, hiding her interest in flying (at least until she's older), dreams of romance, etc. It's as if she wanted to define herself as "the girl" to differentiate herself from her brothers (a problem Ron also struggled with, you may recall, though without that ready solution) but didn't quite know what being "the girl" meant she should do, aside from some surface traits. And so she is awkward dealing with her roommates at Hogwarts and falls back into her old pattern of trailing after her brothers instead.

Manga only, and also may not be viable for events much after Sasuke's first post-timeskip appearance, since I keep not getting around to reading past that point and anything I know from later on is based on Asuka's reaction posts. (Yes, yes, I am a bad fan.)

1. Sakura is quick-tempered and prone to lashing out. She spends a lot of time trying to repress that trait, since girls are "supposed" to be the ones who are polite, cute, calm, giving, nurturing, solicitous of others' feelings, etcetera, but she never gets rid of it. In fact, I think the main reason we don't see Inner Sakura much (if at all?) after the timeskip is that she learned, via Tsunade's example, that it is possible to be female AND be angry AND express that anger. Her violence is more controlled and calculated and less like an explosion after too much pressure.

2. Sakura is socially awkward and has a deep fear of being excluded or left behind. I don't know if she had childhood friends before she joined the ninja academy, but it's clear she was very isolated there until Ino adopted her. Combine that experience with her civilian background -- Lee aside, Sakura is the only young Leaf-nin we see who doesn't have a ninja family, and thus had no help from relatives to teach her special jutsu or just check over her training -- and she has the perfect setup to feel like a misfit. Her intelligence probably did not help things, since that's the sort of trait kids can tease each other mercilessly about. ("Teacher's pet" is NOT a good nickname to have.) And that history of painful exclusion can lead to her suppressing her own needs and desires in order to remain part of a group. She works on her feeling of inadequacy through the series -- her early arc with Ino is a big part of that -- but she still has moments of feeling like a third wheel, even in Team 7 where she ought to have the most emotional support.

3. Sakura is both a romantic idealist and a practical realist. She believes with all her heart in love, trust, friendship, teamwork, etcetera... but she also learns that life is not a fairy-tale. Sometimes things go wrong and you can't fix them. Sometimes you have to settle for second-best. This sets her up in contrast to both Naruto (a romantic idealist down to his soul) and Sasuke (a cynic, which is to say a romantic idealist who thinks he's a practical realist). I think the series is leaning toward validating Naruto's approach to the world, but in real life I'd be very glad to have Sakura on my side making contingency plans. (In that way, she is a much better ninja than either of her teammates, incidentally.)

4. Sakura's parents are living at the start of the manga. They may be slightly overprotective, or they may be perfectly ordinary and she's just expressing typical irritation toward authority figures. They are civilians. Presumably they survive all the events of the story (or at least are rapidly brought back to life...) since she never mentions them dying. And aside from that, we know NOTHING about her family.

Now, the external reason for this is that Kishimoto doesn't care about Sakura except insofar as she serves as a foil or love interest for his two main characters (Naruto and Sasuke), but working solely from an in-story perspective, the way Sakura's family so rapidly drops out of her frame of reference is interesting. It implies that ninja are largely cut-off from the civilian society of Konoha, except in casual business transactions. The two populations don't socialize. Sakura can't tell her parents a lot of what she does with her life because it's classified, and she doesn't want to tell them most of the rest, because her worldview has diverged too much from theirs and also they wouldn't understand her choices without background she can't give them. Unlike her fellow rookies, whose ninja parents frequently pop up as supporting characters, she has effectively lost her parental support.

That ought to play into her sense of social isolation and her need to be useful and prove herself as a ninja. Because she can't go back; she's burned her bridges, even if there is still love on both sides.

5. That all sounds like I think Sakura is a tragic, angst-filled figure. She really isn't! By and large she is cheerful, friendly, upbeat, interested in exploring new places, learning new techniques, and meeting new people. She genuinely enjoys her job as a medic-nin, both because she likes helping people and because she likes being strong. She has developed a lot of self-confidence in her skills over the course of the manga and that confidence is justified! She sometimes acts as the Only Sane Man when dealing with the ridiculously overpowered characters around her, but she can be just as ridiculous in her own way. In other words, do not let the issues I talked about in points 1-4 drown out the rest of her personality.

I was going to ask Sakura but if you're doing her anyway...!

Dave Strider!

1. Dave is hilarious. Over the internet, this is mostly on purpose. In person, it's mostly not. This is because it's a lot easier for him to control his image online and project someone who is closer to what he imagines Bro to be like, while concealing some of his own awkwardness.

2. Dave is incredibly verbal. He talks all the time, whether anyone is listening or not. He will leave giant wall-of-text messages for his friends when they're away from their computers or otherwise ignoring him. He makes fun of Rose for her pretentiousness and mocks unfamiliar words, but he has a pretty extensive vocabulary himself. He likes to play with language, both in the form of rap (at which he is, frankly, not that good) and the form of bizarre metaphors, which frequently get away from him and/or lead him into seriously non sequitur topic jumps.

3. Dave is highly creative in at least three fields: art, music, and words. We don't see much of his photography, but we see a bunch of his artwork, hear some of his music, and watch him in the process of composing (bad) raps. He seems to constantly be making art of one kind or another, regardless of his mood or external circumstances.

4. Dave is reactive, not proactive. He doesn't want to be a leader. This is not to say he's a perfect follower -- he spends a LOT of time arguing with Rose about her various plans -- but he never really comes up with an alternate one, just a slight variation on hers (wherein he would die instead of her). He also doesn't like or look for change, which I think helps explain why he's so uncomfortable on the meteor -- he and Rose are outnumbered by the trolls and are thus under more pressure to change their culture to fit in than vice versa -- and why he's so upset at the idea of meeting the alpha!kids and having to deal with someone who is Bro-but-not.

5. I sometimes suspect Dave may suffer from clinical depression, given his conviction that he doesn't matter compared to his friends (or to Bro), his suicidal impulses, and his growing feelings of social isolation.

I think this ate my last comment (sorry if it did not and I'm spamming)

But... Ilgamuth Tarkaan or Rabadash from Narnia

OR

Arthur from Inception

It would be hard to do Ilgamuth, since he hardly exists in canon! I will start with Rabadash, and possibly do Arthur as a bonus. :-)

1. Rabadash is cruel and whimsical in his application of that cruelty. He is used to getting his own way in a system set up to enforce a fairly rigid social hierarchy, which also glorifies the use of force (primarily in a military setting, but presumably there is some spillover), and reacts very badly when he feels he has been thwarted. He is a prime example of power corrupting.

2. That said, he is a good military commander if someone can pull him to heel long enough to think strategically instead of emotionally. His plan to invade Archenland and Narnia was quite sound (the part about being able to keep Anvard, maybe less so), but once he realized the Archenlanders were prepared, he should have given it up as a bad job, or at least detailed a small force to continue into Narnia and see if the stated purpose of capturing Susan was still viable instead of throwing his whole army against the walls in a useless siege. That was temper and spite, pure and simple.

3. He is an intelligent and well-spoken man, able to be courteous when he wishes. He is physically brave. He dislikes hypocrites and flatterers (even as he fails to understand his own hypocrisy or to tolerate criticism of his own failings). There are a lot of reasons people would follow him, despite his failings. (Blood inheritance will not win undying loyalty, generally speaking, though it will certainly get you a foot in the door.) He HAS to have a good side, or there is no way on earth he could have remained his father's heir and then held Calormen together after the hideous public humiliation he suffered after HHB, particularly since his ability to use violence as a cowing technique was greatly limited by his reluctance to let his generals and Tarkaans go to war without him.

4. I sometimes wonder if some of his cruelty is calculated to create a fearsome reputation and thus discourage anyone who might want to assassinate him or otherwise push him aside at court. He has eighteen younger brothers, so he cannot rest easy in his position as the chosen heir.

5. I am inclined to think he is not particularly religious, given his general disrespect for Calormene cultural traditions (i.e., poetry), but he is not an atheist either. Instead, I think for him the gods are more of... well, just something that exists, in the same way that a sword exists. It's there, it's potentially dangerous, but it's also potentially useful. So one makes use of it. In the same way, his invocations of Tash are highly calculated for dramatic effect -- they are showpieces, not expressions of piety. His attitude toward religion is based on what the gods can do for him, not what he can do for the gods... except insofar as their goals overlap in the glory of Calormen.

Very interesting and multi-demensional take on Rabadash. It makes sense because you are right that he must have been a pretty charismatic leader in that he got people to follow him in the first place and in that he held together the kingdom even after the curse of the ass.

Aravis!!

1. Aravis is an immigrant in a foreign land. There is no overt language barrier, of course (you know my theories about linguistic and the Narnian world), but there is probably an accent barrier, and also while both Archenlanders and Calormenes speak English, they don't always use the same phrasing. So she's always going to sound foreign unless she works very hard not to. Even if she changes her speech, she's always going to look foreign -- because Archenlanders and Narnian humans are pretty explicitly coded as British (possibly Archenlanders are meant to be Scottish or Welsh?) while Calormenes are "exotic" and based on the Arabian Nights with probably a bunch of Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire thrown in, and with skin color differences emphasized.

Given the long and fraught history between Calormen and Archenland, there is no way that will not be a problem for her at least some of the time.

I think she would never try to hide her heritage, nor would she renounce most of it. And if I continue any further in this vein, I will rewrite the entirety of "The Courting Dance" at you, so. *wry*

2. Aravis is proud, hot-tempered, and somewhat self-centered, particularly when she is young. Part of her character arc in HHB (insofar as anyone in that book has a character arc at all) is learning to consider the effects of her actions upon others, and to judge people for who they are rather than by their apparent station in life. But I think those are character traits she will always have, and she will always get annoyed at people who are (as she sees it) being stupid and standing in her way. I suspect she spends a lot of time biting her tongue and thinking up creative, poetic insults that she carefully does not hurl at people in public, but may relate to Cor at night to make him laugh.

3. Aravis is quick-thinking and decisive. When she learns that she's going to be married off to Ahoshta, which she considers a fate worse than death, it only takes one day before she plans to kill herself and she immediately puts that plan into action. When Hwin persuades her to escape to Narnia instead, she makes a new plan for that and again briskly puts it into action. Ditto her quick reaction to Lasaraleen spotting her in Tashbaan. The trouble here is that she may not always take the time to consider all her options before she picks one, which could lead to some bad decisions.

4. For all her material wealth and comfort, Aravis did not have an ideal childhood. Her mother died at some point, her older brother died, and she clearly has a bad relationship with her stepmother, which also affected her relationship with her father. I get the feeling her younger brother is a half-brother, the child of her stepmother, and Aravis has never tried to create any relationship with him (...also, he is probably still only a toddler). When she ran away, she did not have a lot of close emotional ties to sever, which is probably why that choice was so easy for her. (Probably also why suicide was an easy choice. If her own father was willing to essentially sell her to Ahoshta, he clearly was no longer an effective source of emotional support, if indeed he ever had been.) I doubt she maintains more than minimal formal contact with her relatives, and even that level of interaction may be more of a way to make them squirm by reminding Rabadash of their connection to his humiliation.

continued in next comment...

continued from previous comment

5. Aravis was raised to navigate court politics. She is very, very good at that, even if she stumbles a bit at first while learning the differences between Archenlandish techniques for saying things without actually saying them and the equivalent Calormene techniques, and also what does or doesn't count as a deadly insult in her new country's culture. For the first few months after she and Cor are married and he insists that she be allowed to attend any meeting he attends, she spends a LOT of time not-so-subtly kicking him under the table or digging her nails into his wrist under the guise of tenderly holding his hand, until he shuts up. Then she glares at him until he manages to find an approach she thinks is more useful. As time goes by and Archenland grows accustomed to her, she is able to contribute on her own instead of via Cor. By the time Ram is born, she is effectively a co-monarch.

(Spoiler: Aravis outlives Cor by a few years, and while Ram technically becomes king at that point, he refuses to hold a coronation until his mother dies because to him -- and to most of Archenland, in fact! -- she is still the ruling queen.)

6. Aravis is a horsewoman. She was raised in horse country -- the province of Calavar is mostly gentle, rolling hills, all the way to the coast -- and learned to ride at approximately the same time she learned to walk. She never really likes Archenland's topography, though she does find the mountains beautiful. She is much more comfortable in Narnia, which is a broad, open river valley with occasional hills and forests. Archenland feels narrow to her on a physical level that is only compounded by the strain of feeling boxed in by a foreign culture.

When writing about Naruto! We have to get a baseline on a very popular character.

Caveat: these are mostly based on pre-timeskip Naruto, since I never got much past his and Sakura's first post-timeskip meeting with Sasuke in the manga. (I am a bad fan, yeah, yeah, I know.)

1. I do not believe Naruto was physically abused as a child. That would have been too obvious to cover up. But he was definitely physically neglected, even for a culture that seems to assign adult status and responsibility to people most modern societies would consider children. He was also emotionally neglected, aside from Iruka and Sarutobi (and even they were fairly distant in their attention/affection), and emotionally abused in a generalized fashion. Which is to say, he wasn't living with his abuser/s in the sense of sharing a house, but the entire village either disliked him or was indifferent to him, and that atmosphere is its own kind of poison. It is completely unsurprising that he has a desperate need for attention and a driving need to prove himself, and that underneath both those obvious traits, he is perfectly willing to set aside his own happiness and self-worth in service of his "precious people," because he's been taught all his life (in the unspoken way that the most powerful lessons are taught) that he doesn't matter, and the only way he can make himself matter is by being useful to the people who actually count. I don't know if Naruto is conscious of that thought process, but I firmly believe it's there underneath a lot of his actions and goals.

2. Naruto is a perve. He's a sweetheart and a selfless hero too, and I don't think he'd take advantage in any way other than ogling women (which is problematic on its own, but this is not the place to get into discussions of the ways that kind of invasive, objectifying behavior is frequently played for laughs in both Japanese and Western media), but he's still a perve. He wasn't like that at age twelve, though he'd clearly been spying on naked women at some point to create Sexy no Jutsu, but once he discovered hormones as well as romantic aspiration... yeah. Perve. *wry*

3. He's also an insensitive jerk at times, which I chalk up to general teenage boy idiocy. :-)

4. Naruto is an excellent improviser. This probably started as a survival trait, to cope with his isolation and neglect -- people didn't show him how to do various tasks, so he had to muddle his own way through -- and continued at least partially because he's not very good at regimented learning and is naturally impatient and wants to feel like he's doing something. Improvisation and thinking around corners are very useful ninja skills, especially when combined with luck (aka, Plot Armor), but Naruto sometimes relies on them too much, rushing in and scrambling his way to victory when a bit of preparation would have saved a lot of time and effort.

5. You can argue character interpretation in various ways, but I think Naruto's optimism and friendliness are chosen traits as much as inherent ones. Iruka's affection didn't erase years of neglect and isolation, and Naruto is highly aware that the world is neither kind nor fair, but he still reaches out to everyone he meets and believes that the people he cares about will all have happy endings. I think he is trying to create the world he wishes were real by sheer force of will.

Susan Pevensie

Here!

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[Meme] Top 5 things to keep in mind when writing various characters

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Lucy Pevensie

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Haruno Sakura

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Dave Strider

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