I know I talk about video games too much here, but hey, video games deserve good writing too lol In one of my favorite series, Fire Emblem, each character tends to have either A: a singular defining trait, B: a character defining 'joke' (One character's defining trait is that he naps a lot) or some combination of the two. A good example of a Fire emblem style character trait/joke would be like a couple of my OC's. One is a woman who's a human with rabbit ears, she loathes vegetables and loves meat in spite of her animal side/beast form. Another OC is a Cougar, both literally and figuratively. She's an older woman (well comparatively to the cast of the game, she's in her 30's) who likes younger men (she's not really creepy about it, just flirty with slightly younger men) but she's also a Kimomimi (human being with tails/ears of a particular animal) of a Cougar, and can transform into a monster version of one. so the joke goes both ways. How do you feel about character jokes like this? I try not to use them too often but if something really amuses me I slap it on there.
With any character development, it's all boils down with what kind of story are you trying to tell. Archetypes and singlar trait characters are good for certain types of stories, but not good for all types of story. That kind of character development wouldn't work well in a game like Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice which requires layered character development and making a joke would have undermined the game's entire point. But it works good in games where it's more laid back and maybe even quirky. Final Fantasy IX those types of characters worked well too, but that one is a far more light hearted game.
Most people have some things about us that are funny to others. When a reader spends long enough with some characters, they hopefully will start to pick up on those things and say "ah - that's just like her." A simple joke characteristic though, where a character's fantasy-elements make them inherently comical, I would associate more with children's stories or cartoons. It's harder to relate to because reality stops real people achieving such levels of contradiction. There are vegetarian butchers, and bald hairdressers, and in my car once I was crashed into by a road safety inspector - but when a writer does these things more extremely/starkly via fantasy, something is lost perhaps. Truth is stranger than fiction, and maybe ironies like this are more relatable when they are left to happen naturally. My suggestion would be that for these things to be genuinely humorous, it's better if the writer frees the character from the constraints of any built-in gags, lets them be themselves over the course of the plot, and then picks out or highlights any ironies in whatever the character decides to do. I would say she should flirt with a younger man because she likes him, and then if it's funny she could realise a while later that this character motive has made her a metaphorical cougar as well as a literal one. The OP doesn't mention why the character is a literal cougar - sensitivity: there should be a good reason outside of disparaging older women's sexualities. What is this talking-animal treatment of the character adding to the story? And conversely, what is the story adding to the reader's understanding of the habits and physiology of real cougars? How does someone sit on chairs with an animal tail? If chairs are bespoke to each species what do they cost? And how do restaurants configure their seating? Is everyone at risk of spinal problems? How do a cougar's ears actually fit into the side of a human skull? Does a larger auditory cortex take up enough cranum-space to impair their reading ability? In the visual arts, one can get away with murder - but to write a character with cat's ears convincingly is a vast undertaking compared to what jokes can be made from it. I think, anyway.
The fact is (as you are most certainly aware) most video games had only skin-deep writing, and a lot of Japanese RPGs in particular (and a lot of Japanese fiction in other forms as well) rely heavily on stock characters and established archetypes. That makes for shallow characterization, and only in a shallow characterization can a "joke" be a character-defining trait. There was a time when no one would really bat an eye over bad writing in video games. That is changing, slowly but surely. Modern western single-player games like The Witcher 3 complements an amazing open-world gameplay with top-notch storyline that genuinely makes players think, ponder, laugh, and sometimes cry (most of them caused by their own choices). Successful indie game developers such as Supergiant Games explored different modes of storytelling in their acclaimed titles such as Pyre and Hades, Their characters were complex, realistic, relatable, multi-dimensional, and still funny. Japanese games, meanwhile, seem to lag behind. I watched the trailers for Tales of Arise and Scarlet Nexus yesterday, and I only felt cringey. The dialogues were trite, the storyline extremely cliche, and their characters look like they could only go down the same characterization paths their classic predecessors from twenty years ago used to take. Characters being solely defined by a single joke element used to be okay in video games. Customer's taste evolved, though, and I don't think game developers can excuse bad writing with "innovative" gameplay and better graphics much longer.
To be fair, both of these characters have a backstory that causes them grief over the thing that their 'joke' element, which is usually explained in the later elements of their supports. The Rabbit lady's mother died from food poisoning (like it was found out to be actual poison, not rotten food) the dish was mainly comprised of vegetables. Now being a young child at the time, she assumed all vegetables are that bad, and as she got older her perception of that got more and more warped to the point where she has a physical reaction to eating them. (and even seeing them in their raw form) she's much older than an average human, but still looks roughly the same age as her fellow students at the Monastery. It's less that the joke is meant to be funny, more that, just the irony of a rabbit who doesn't like vegetables is kind of silly. She can EAT vegetables just fine, but her body naturally rejects the flavors and other factors. The comedy of it comes from the fact that unless she realizes the dish contains vegetables her body doesn't react, so in a way, it's purely psychological. Given her trauma, I'd say it justifies the joke a bit rather than you know, just being a silly quirk. It's certainly more thought than most Fire Emblem characters give it at least. Same with the Cougar lady, though her trauma isn't near as bad, she's equally long lived (and appears to be in her 30's) but most of the men she courted wound up taking advantage of her for her 'skills' (I don't think I need to explain the context of that, only that it involves beds lol) and then leaving her the next day. She eventually surmised that younger men are less subjective and more interested in long term relationships. She generally doesn't go for YOUNG men (like, kids in their teens or earlier) just like five to seven years under her physical appearance. And she only really goes after them if they form some kind of kinship first. And if she's denied in a less teasing way she'll usually stop. I should point out that this is a fantasy setting, it's generally assumed that their biology is different compared to a human. (so their human form would accommodate those changes from birth) Most in the fandom don't really think about those things you mentioned, because it's treated as a normal thing in canon. Same with the tails, it's not those kinds of details that are generally mulled over. (Kind of like in Xenoblade 2, nobody questions how Urayan ears work, we just assume that they're simply a different shape from humans) I should also point out, that these aren't the *only* defining traits they have, it's just more of a one off joke, mostly to keep in line with the rest of the series and how it likes to write it's characters. A lot of Fire Emblem characters tend to have singular jokes, but as you advance in their supports (they're in game conversations between characters as they grow to understand eachother) you see that they have more character beyond that. Kind of a 'what you see isn't all you get' kind of deal. Sure, lots of their conversations revolve around the joke, but as you get to know them better you tend to learn there's more to them than what you see at first glance. @Travalgar While I do see your point, when writing fanfiction, I find it more important to keep to series conventions even if my characters wind up being a tad more developed (see above). I think it says a lot about the writing of particular characters if I enjoy my time with them in spite of their one note ness. Like, sometimes they may be one note sure, but there are multiple sides to that note. I do think JRPG need to branch out and try different tropes, but honestly most of the time I wind up liking the characters for one reason or another, and if that happens, maybe the writing isn't as 'behind the times' as you suggest. I'm usually fairly picky about the characters I like in video games and other mediums.
Good comments all around. I'm still learning ways to bring characters 'alive' for my readers and unique traits is definitely one of the ways. The way a character moves his or her hands when talking, facial expressions and so forth. One of the ways I've been trying is to have a character use a particular expression of surprise -- something instead of an exclamation point in the dialog. Holy cow. Jumpin' Jehosophat. Oh my God. and so forth. Some of my beta readers suggested that I don't have a character do that so often it annoys my readers.
I wonder if this might be what's been holding Fire Emblem and Xenoblade back from releasing book series, despite the obvious commercial potential. Fire Emblem: Awakening - the book of the game! It's all the character skits and cut scenes they voice-acted, but now it's available printed out. If I'd worked for Nintendo they'd have made millions off that concept. But even moreso, I wonder if there is an entire unrealised market for books with a 'skip-dialogue' button. It's often a sorely-missed feature in video games - and it could work for books too. Especially on Kindle. sensitivity: can't a rabbit just choose to eat vegetables or not? In the same way as human vegetarians. Does there need to be some kind of trauma driving this, instead of it arising within the character's own person and agency? What if some readers map the rabbit and her experience of poisoning to - I don't know - vegans and some kind of anti-vegan ideation? I worry it's close to implying aversion therapy could "cure" veganism. And with the cougar, why is liking younger men accompanied with a justifying trauma? Doesn't that risk carrying a value-judgement? Why is she made to appear to be in her 30s? Since when has that mattered? Real women sometimes work at that - it's a priority within them, it can involve sacrifices - but when a fantasy character is given youth by their author in order to make them attractive to younger men, that might be felt to subtract an aspect of the human experience. I think I'd be more interested in this character if she looked whatever her age is in cat-eared-lady-years and pulled younger men using convincing dialogue. And if that's important to her character arc I'd consider making her a different animal - specifically to distance her from the symbolic implication that older women who have sex with younger men are somehow predatory and bestial. The 'cougar' label isn't applied to men with the same age gaps - it's an inequitable derogatory term. There is a school of thought that the word cougar is empowering or should be reclaimed - but an author imposing the label on a character and making it literally true for her IMO runs against that (and possibly even moreso if they are a male and young author - not that the OP should be assumed to be). It's just that the character doesn't adopt the label for herself, and is precluded from doing so by her physical attributes. I'd suggest to show whatever the more-to-them is to the reader at first glance, since that's the character - and then develop it through its own consciousness of how it shapes and determines the plot. @Travalgar 's post alludes to games being thinly written. And I think backstories are part of the problem. Backstories are a plot device - they are one of the simplest (and .: weakest) ways of telling the reader a character's motives. - Why's Kwai Chang Caine on-screen again? It's been 63 episodes already! He's still looking for his father. - Okay. They have no inherent interest value, because they don't show the character developing. Unlike a flashback, they are in a static past, outside narrative time, and dead to the reader. Kung Fu (tv series, 1972) understood this and took a minimalist approach. None of this is any reflection on game writers. They haven't learned their craft by reading other video games - they're professional writers, they read books. The problem is they're asked to produce mountains of text on short deadlines with next to no brief, and on a right-first-time basis with zero or grossly inadequate editing-and-revision and no access to other writers for critique. My favourite types of game writing happen in the situations where they haven't had time to translate a Japanese original or the visuals haven't even been done, so they plough on regardless and heroically do their own thing. Or where people haven't been paid enough and hand in dialogue that cleverly mocks the visual story. It's inevitable that stock characters will come out - and recurring jokes - it's just to get them to the end of the word count.
They are pretty good comments all around, although I should have pointed out that the story is in a fantasy setting, so stuff like the inner ear stuff is accounted for in the biology haha. Having something unique to say is a good thing, but it's good to keep in mind that if it's done too often, people will find it annoying. My Rabbit lady says 'Gag me' when men she don't like makes advances on her, she says this because she misinterpreted this as human girls way of denying said advances. She doesn't say it super often though, I think I only have had her say it a total of three times so far. There's an otherwise good character in Persona 5, ruined by overuse of a catch phrase. He says 'For Real??' like, a LOT, and it's annoying. If you decide on an actual catch phrase, I would suggest you avoid anything like "Courage is the magic that makes dreams into reality." Like I like cheezy stuff, but even I groaned at that one heh. Edit: @evild4ve I do see your point, but as I said it's only one facet of their personalities. For the rabbit lady for example, she's often cold, some would say stoic, but as she warms up to you, she becomes warmer, a bit mischievous, possibly even playful. I think I only reference the 'character' joke in one of her supports, the other times it's brought up it's only mentioned in passing. As for the 'justification' I guess that's the wrong word for it. That said at least she has a reason to dislike vegetables that much. It has little to do with her being a rabbit (though that is part of the joke I'll admit) more to do with her psychological trauma that she must overcome to grow as a character.
