![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Character Assassination (or How to Destroy a Canon Character in One Easy Lesson)
What do writers of fanfic like to do most? That should be obvious - take the characters they know and love from a television show, movie, or book and put them in new situations, or expand on canon experiences. What do readers of fanfic like most? To read about the characters they know and love in these new situations.
So why, in God's name, do so many writers completely ignore who the characters are?
I'm speaking, specifically, about A-Team fanfic, but this can be asked of any - Harry Potter, Buffy, Star Trek. The fandom doesn't matter. The genre - het, gen, or slash - doesn't matter. The story doesn't matter.
The characters do.
The CHARACTERS do.
We love our characters. We love the nuances, the experiences, the unanswered questions. We love how they react to circumstances. We love the interaction between them.
So why do so many authors completely ignore them when they write? And I do mean, ignore them. In TAT, the guys are Special Forces soldiers who have been through war, POW camps, being chased by the military for years - they face bullets, bombs and fists as if in a game of basketball. They thrive on living on the edge. So what do so many writers do to them?
They make them cry.
Now, crying isn't all bad. Given extreme enough circumstances, any man will break down. But a familiar scenario is that one of them gets the crap beaten out of them, and one of the others sits down and cries in anguish.
Who the hell is that guy?
This happens in all genres - het, gen, slash. ALL genres. The author wants to tell a story, and they use the characters in their fandom to tell it. Great. Fantastic. But suddenly the characters are doing things and saying things that they never, ever said on the show, in the movie, or on the pages of the book. Doing and saying things they would never dream of in canon.
These are not the characters we know and love and want to read about in new situations.
These are strangers.
These are OCs.
Of course, one has to make an allowance for slash. And I know - there are definitions of slash ad nauseum. For my purposes, we're talking about our characters having a sexual relationship with another character of the same sex. In slash, by this definition, the guys are acting out of character. We accept that, because of the genre. We accept that. But that doesn't mean that our Special Forces guys suddenly become stereotypical fairies. It means that *our* guys, the characters we know and love are having a homosexual relationship that needs to be explored - as *our* guys. (And for heaven's sake, admit that it *is* a homosexual relationship, and leave the homophobic "we're not gay, just having a same-sex relationship" at the door.)
What do writers of fanfic like to do most? Take the characters they know and love and put them in new situations. What do readers of fanfic like most? To read about the characters they know and love in these new situations.
If you can't stick with the characters, the canon characters, then write an original story. Don't call it fanfic. Don't use our guys' names. Because these *aren't* our guys. Okay? Just write the story with your own characters - because that's exactly what you're already doing.
So why, in God's name, do so many writers completely ignore who the characters are?
I'm speaking, specifically, about A-Team fanfic, but this can be asked of any - Harry Potter, Buffy, Star Trek. The fandom doesn't matter. The genre - het, gen, or slash - doesn't matter. The story doesn't matter.
The characters do.
The CHARACTERS do.
We love our characters. We love the nuances, the experiences, the unanswered questions. We love how they react to circumstances. We love the interaction between them.
So why do so many authors completely ignore them when they write? And I do mean, ignore them. In TAT, the guys are Special Forces soldiers who have been through war, POW camps, being chased by the military for years - they face bullets, bombs and fists as if in a game of basketball. They thrive on living on the edge. So what do so many writers do to them?
They make them cry.
Now, crying isn't all bad. Given extreme enough circumstances, any man will break down. But a familiar scenario is that one of them gets the crap beaten out of them, and one of the others sits down and cries in anguish.
Who the hell is that guy?
This happens in all genres - het, gen, slash. ALL genres. The author wants to tell a story, and they use the characters in their fandom to tell it. Great. Fantastic. But suddenly the characters are doing things and saying things that they never, ever said on the show, in the movie, or on the pages of the book. Doing and saying things they would never dream of in canon.
These are not the characters we know and love and want to read about in new situations.
These are strangers.
These are OCs.
Of course, one has to make an allowance for slash. And I know - there are definitions of slash ad nauseum. For my purposes, we're talking about our characters having a sexual relationship with another character of the same sex. In slash, by this definition, the guys are acting out of character. We accept that, because of the genre. We accept that. But that doesn't mean that our Special Forces guys suddenly become stereotypical fairies. It means that *our* guys, the characters we know and love are having a homosexual relationship that needs to be explored - as *our* guys. (And for heaven's sake, admit that it *is* a homosexual relationship, and leave the homophobic "we're not gay, just having a same-sex relationship" at the door.)
What do writers of fanfic like to do most? Take the characters they know and love and put them in new situations. What do readers of fanfic like most? To read about the characters they know and love in these new situations.
If you can't stick with the characters, the canon characters, then write an original story. Don't call it fanfic. Don't use our guys' names. Because these *aren't* our guys. Okay? Just write the story with your own characters - because that's exactly what you're already doing.
no subject
It seems to me some people take characters to one extreme or another. They are either much nastier than we know them to be, (so we can guess which character the writer doesn't really like) or they become a paragon of virtue. They're idealised with the way women would like men to be, senstive, able to talk about their feelings. They remove any inconvenient sexism, or other old fashioned attitudes.
I'm not sure why they want to make them so idealised. We know they have flaws, we like them anyway. We know they're as insensitve and emotionally repressed as most men, we still like them anyway! All these things make them more interesting to write about anyway.
If a writer doesn't like a character's attitude about something, they should write a story where that's challenged, perhaps the character will even learn to think again about their ideas. But just surgically removing any bad attitudes is cheating.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
http://www.circleofcrones.com/page16.html
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I agree with you, Star, that some of it is laziness. Often I don't know who these guys are; they use the names of some of my favourite characters but I'm disappointed to read and realise that I don't recognise ANYTHING about them. They are just strangers with familiar names. It's one thing to try to capture something about the characters and not quite get it right, it's entirely another to throw them out altogether.
Oh I have to start writing again, I love these discussions. :)
(no subject)