1. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    Fanfiction Character Mess

    Discussion in 'Character Development' started by EstherMayRose, Apr 19, 2017.

    I'm having difficulty with an original character in a fanfiction story. I wanted to make her a nuanced, flawed, yet likeable character, but now I'm just confused.

    She's the seventeen-year-old daughter of a canon (shown in the show) couple who both had abusive parents. She's also the crown princess of a nation, but she's not really worried about that yet. Because her parents were both under strict discipline as children, and also busy ruling a country, they let her and her eleven younger sisters do pretty much what they like, and this means that they often misbehave, with my character (we'll call her M) often organising quite spectacular schemes.

    Here's where the difficulty comes in. She has two sides to her character. Around her friends, family, and boyfriend, she's quite silly, kind of cute in a way, and a little bit quirky and off-beat. She is, however, trying to be made Head Girl of her school, so she's trying to be good and responsible, as well as studying hard for exams. This is one of my problems, as this is the side she displays more often, yet it's the less developed side.

    The other side comes into play as she is, as her friends put it, in "mission mode". This is often applied during her unofficial war with her grandmother, or when the children of the other canon characters are around. As she's the oldest of them all, she's elected herself leader, and most people look up to her. However, one boy (who we'll call T) is fifteen and questions her leadership, thinking that he would do a better job. M refuses to take orders from a boy two years her junior, and T exposes quite a nasty side in her. She's desperate to cling onto her power, so she can often put him down very condescendingly, actually asks her younger sister to gag him at one point, threatens to gut him (although she doesn't mean it), and this often makes her snappier with the other children. She views the children in terms of how well they fit under her command, and she likes most of them as they do what she says.

    One of my other problems is the way the other characters treat her. Her siblings don't see a problem with how she behaves, having been raised the same way, and the younger kids are all thoroughly in awe of her. Her friends often joke around with her about her less admirable traits , and she's even sometimes compared to a canon antagonist who was mentally ill, having the same drive and lust for power, but no-one sees this as worrying. Her parents turn a blind eye, believing that having the freedom to develop on her own and have fun is the best thing for her.

    So, if none of the characters see her as a flawed character, how can I make her bad points come across as...well...bad. I'm also, to be completely honest, worried that I'll turn people off as they'll think I haven't noticed that M isn't exactly the super-awesome-badass that the kids make her out to be. I had the idea of her boyfriend ditching her as she's more focused on her leadership and her schemes than on him, and I also wondered if she could be covering up insecurity - but what would a crown princess who's always had everything handed to her on a silver platter be insecure about? I also have a nursemaid who gets angry at them a lot more easily, but I don't know if she'll be enough to get the message across.

    So, thanks for reading, sorry for long-windedness, and in summary: How can I develop her better side so that it's as prominent as her bad side, how can I still keep her likeable, considering how she treats the other children, and how can I have her faults trip her up in a way to stop and take a look at herself when everyone gives her an easy time for being royalty?
     
  2. Seren

    Seren Writeaholic

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    Wow, she sounds like a really interesting character! I don't think you have as much to be worried about as you think - well, there is nothing to be worried about, actually.

    You definitely don't need to concern yourself with how to get across her bad points as being bad. I understand that those are bad points about her just by reading that little paragraph about those flaws in her - and nowhere in that paragraph that I can see did you actually call them "bad points". I just understood that by using my own conscience. We all judge characters as soon as we meet them, and while what other characters think about them contributes to that, we usually see more of their actions than any singular other character does and so our opinion is mostly formed on our own. Just because the other characters don't always acknowledge her flaws as being flaws does not mean that the reader will not. What you have described will mostly go against their morals.

    In addition, I don't think that the readers will think you don't know what she does could be bad. The fact that you have included them will probably say enough. Besides, you don't ignore it completely: you said that her friends joke about it with her. While they don't acknowledge her flaws in a serious manner, they do acknowledge them. However, having a bigger pointer to it - her boyfriend ditching her (somewhere between the middle and the end, I would presume, as things get more climatic) sounds like a great idea. In fact, having him be one of the very few characters who does see her flaws could give it more impact for the readers, because they might start to ask the question, "Who is right and who is wrong here?" and confusing them morally is always great.

    Finally, being royalty gives you plenty to be insecure about! Everyone. Is. Watching. You. And they have really big expectations. It has the potential to make someone extremely insecure.

    I think that you've actually balanced her out pretty well, with lots of good and bad, and I'd love to read about her. May I ask what show this is being written for, by the way, or is that a secret?
     
  3. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    Thanks for all your help, Seren! You're a star! (Pun absolutely intended! ;))

    You've really set my mind at ease, except for one question: how can I keep M likeable? One thing I forgot to mention: the story spans twenty years, so we start off with the canon characters as teenagers, as they are in the show, and watch them become parents, then see the kids grow into teenagers. So we see M grow from everyone's favourite baby, who can only cry and gurgle and reach vaguely for things, to, as her friends put it, "resident evil genius".

    Another character I've recently run into difficulty with is M's younger sister, N, aged thirteen. I've run her through my go-to Mary-Sue test, and it said that she isn't one, but I'm still worried that she's too perfect. She's definitely the prettiest of the sisters, and she's very clever. I wanted to show how the parents' political careers affected the children (especially since they've implemented radical reforms because the previous ruler was the main antagonist), so I had the mother be attacked when she was six months pregnant, and N had to be born right then and there, or else the mother might die. The doctors said that N probably wouldn't live to be an hour old, because she was very weak, but she managed to pull through, and got stronger every day. She's mostly OK now, but she couldn't walk until she was seven, and so she spent most of her childhood reading and amassing a vast collection of random facts on pretty much any topic that may come to mind. She's the cleverest girl in the year and is the first for about four hundred years to get full marks on her final exam. She's also very calm (once managing to hold it together when her sleeve is on fire!) and is the only sibling who has inherited this from her mother. She's been described as "annoyingly perfect" by her sister, and although she's quite withdrawn around other people, she's comfortable around her siblings, the people she spends most time with in the story. Because of her brains, I'm worried that she is what I've heard called a "supercrip", someone who has some kind of superior ability to make up for a disability, which is offensive as well as bad writing. Could you help with her, too?

    Oh, and the show it's for is "Avatar: The Last Airbender".
     
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  4. Seren

    Seren Writeaholic

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    No problem. I think M will still be likeable, although it's hard to say without reading what you've written/will write. Still, as long as she has one redeeming feature, I think that will do it. You say that she's not worried about being crown princess - so that must make her calm and confident. Those are two good things already. Furthermore, you've said that she can sometimes be silly and quirky in a cute way. That will make her extremely likeable, especially because quirky characters tend to warm a lot of people's hearts. She has ambitions as she's trying to be Head Girl, and she's working hard for her exams, so she is capable of motivating herself and isn't lazy. Those are a whole lot of positive traits! As long as we see those coming through in her, even if it isn't all the time or as much as her bad traits, then that's okay. She will still be likeable, even if the reader doesn't like everything about her. After all, sometimes we love to hate characters. And sometimes we're very on the fence. No one is good or bad. We do "good" things and we do "bad" things, and sometimes it is hard for us to make up our minds if we like someone, both in fiction and real life, because they do a lot of both. Your readers don't have to know for sure if they really like her. I suppose they just have to connect with her and to like her enough to not want to see her coming to any harm. One of the rules for creating an antagonist is that they have to be someone we love to hate: we have to connect with them. They need to have some kind of redeeming quality, instead of being all bad. So, if that applies to villains, I think it can certainly apply to your protagonist.

    I'm trying to think of some unlikable protagonists in fiction that readers still tend to care about. The first thing that leaps to mind is Asking for It by Louise O'Neil, in which our protagonist is a popular girl who is mean to a lot of people, but can be nice every now and again. The readers like her enough to care about the fact that not only was she raped - which is, admittedly, a topic many people feel strongly on no matter who the victim is - but that she gets treated differently afterwards. I know when I was reading it, I didn't like it if any characters were mean to her, despite the fact that she could be like that. Another character a bit like that is Hanna from Pretty Little Liars. I'm currently reading the first book, and despite the fact that she deserves to get caught for some of the things she does like shoplifting and stealing cars, I panic for her and wish that she hadn't been, because she has positive traits. Sometimes, characters are meant to be a little unlikable. The key thing is that we connect with them. And I think that would definitely be the case with your seemingly well-rounded character.

    Anyway, moving onto N. I don't think she's quite a Mary Sue from your description, although it depends on what situations you put her in. Maybe she is calm enough to deal with a fire on her sleeve, and that's fine. But you must know what makes her tick. Everyone, no matter how sweet they are, has something that causes them to show some negative traits. Some people just have more things that set them off than others. So, as long as you don't let her stay calm if, say, her sister M breaks some morals that N prizes and hates seeing people break, having her being the way she is should be okay. It's all right for her to have more positive traits than negative, as long as the balance is right. It seems like it is to me. I think she will provide a good contrast to M, and I can imagine her quite clearly in my mind. You've said that she can be quite withdrawn around people, and, even if we don't see that often, we will know that she is not a Mary Sue as long as we see it often enough, which should just be every time she is naturally with others that she isn't that comfortable with, even if that only happens once or twice. Furthermore, we actually all have definitions of positive traits. Being very clever is generically a positive trait, but her sister M seems to see it as something else if she calls her "annoying perfect," and that's understandable. A lot of others probably think that too, or see her intellect as being "nerdy" and tease her, I don't know. But the point is that her positive traits may cause her a little bit of grief, too, which makes her even more grey instead of black or white.

    Then, of course, there is that disability, although if it doesn't still affect her now, or at least not as much, then I don't think she will be a "supercrip". However, I'm not actually familiar with the term, so that's just my very un-knowledgeable opinion. (As is everything, really.) I think that as long as her disability is there for either plot-shaping or character-shaping (and here it seems to be to shape her character) then it has a purpose other than being a weakness, and thus it should be all right.

    Wow, that was a much bigger reply than I thought it would be. I hope it helps! I also hope that I find this around somewhere and get to read it one day. You're much better at shaping your characters than you're giving yourself credit for. :)
     
  5. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    Mary Sue tests don't work and are nothing but fun novelty. Go by whatever's more entertaining and dramatic. Is she destroying the tension? Ruining the suspense? Circumventing any need for action sequences? Removing all moral quandaries? These are the simple questions that should be asked of a character.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  6. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Sounds like a good Mary Sue test, thanks ;)
     
  7. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    I don't believe in Mary Sue. That's a word with no meaning invented by Star Trek nerds who take issue with female power fantasies.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  8. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    https://m.fanfiction.net/s/2780799/1/His-Chosen-Destiny

    I do.

    You know, I've developed a strange fascination with this story.

    Mine is called "Warm Embers", but it's still in the early stages.
     
  9. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Do you believe in characters who destroy the tension, ruin the suspense, circumvent any need for action sequences, and remove all moral quandaries?
     
  10. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    Yes. But that's called a wish fulfilling power fantasy with protagonist centred morality. "Mary Sue" is a non academic, non legitimate, sexist internet slur that means whatever the critic wants it to mean.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
  11. Ulquiorra9000

    Ulquiorra9000 Member

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    I just have a small contribution to make: have enough "pet the dog" beats, where your lead is kind to others because it's the right thing to do. Selfless acts go a long way, I believe, and could contribute to balancing against her "bad" aspects.
     
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  12. making tracks

    making tracks Active Member

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    In terms of insecurity, that could be exactly why she has an issue with trying to gain power; everything has been handed to her so she has to know that she can earn it, and that she is supposed to be a leader because it's what she's good at, not just because it was given to her. This insecurity about whether she is fit to be a leader would also feed in to her wanting to be good, as she will want to feel intelligent, respected and worthy. She could have conflict about what is the 'right' way to prove herself. This will also help keep her likeable because worrying about if we're good enough is such a common insecurity.

    As for other people not noticing she's flawed, some of the younger kids might be afraid of her but obviously wouldn't speak up. Especially if she never does anything horrible to them personally and they want to stay on her good side. People who want to be leaders are often remarkably good at making loyal followers feel special, even if they can see that their leader can be cruel to others.
     
  13. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    Thanks. I'll think over that one. I also thought that (according to a series of trivia facts released by some of the creators), she'll be the first female ruler of her nation. I already had an aged council pressuring her father to try for a son, claiming that, despite his twelve daughters, he has no heir. It's possible that she would be worried that, when her father dies, she'll have to fight for her throne. Thusly, if she establishes herself as a ruthless leader, they'll feel that they stand less of a chance.
     

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