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

[edenfalling]

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

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Aravis!!

[edenfalling]

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...

[edenfalling]

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.