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terajkPick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.
This one sounds like a TON of fun. XD
This one sounds like a TON of fun. XD
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 12:23 am (UTC)1. Kid is not a person. (This colors all the other things.)
2. His obsession with symmetry is a) just a part of him amidst lots of other things, but b) pervasive and doesn't separate out neatly from the rest of him and c) several things at once, including a perceptual filter. Which affects what kinds of things he thinks are Important when describing a room or something.
By the same principle, hen I'm writing Toph Bei Fong from Avatar, for instance, I have to remember that she doesn't have a visual frame of reference and is very aware of spatial layouts. Or like how Ryouga from Ranma 1/2 has no concept of space whatever, which is hilarous because his impairment is a scarily-accurate representation of mine and yet I ALWAYS FORGET THAT. So I'll be agonizing over the Most Precise Directional Word to Use for, like, five minutes before realizing he won't know, either. XD
Also, Kid isn't just any not-a-person; he is a personification of Order in the Universe/a Lovecraftian madness god. (Which, to be honest, makes "I'm an abomination!" retroactively HILARIOUS.) So I write all the above a little differently than I would a human being with OCD. For one thing, Kid actually can affect the universe directly in ways no human could, and bringing balance to the world is in his job description. I don't know if I can put into words exactly how this is different, except that local-Kid was always that way.
3. He's not ashamed about being that way. At ALL. (This is in direct contrast to Ryouga, who admits he has no sense of direction but gets angry if other people so much as mention it.) He's capable of embarrassment--like when Black*Star and Ox are doing something stupid and Kid re-evaluates why he's friends wih them at all--but all Kid said when Black*Star broke a cone off the school building was: "You knew how I'd respond." His dad is pretty nonchalant about it, too. ("Kid-kun sure is difficult! Well, bye, kids!")
4. As a god, Kid is a little apart from human affairs. I don't know where Ohkubo intended Kid and his dad to be on the Sliding Scale of Shinigami and Grim Reapers, but I think part of the reason Death City is in Nevada in the middle of a desert is because that's really far away from the Real World (i.e. Japan.) Since Kid spends a lot of time with humans in their natural environment, he's less outside-of-things than his dad by human standards, but still. (Kid thinks "you've recovered from your injury!" is a good excuse to throw a party; his dad thinks "Hey, my son is kidnapped and we haven't even saved him yet!" is a good excuse to throw a party.)
5. But Kid cares very much about humans in general and his friends in particular. (The couple of times he's lost his entire supply of spoons, there's been an element of HUMANS IN DANGER FUCK). Sometimes there's a thread of compulsiveness in it, and sometimes he's just in the damn way (e.g. when Maka and Black*Star were frustrated with each other and Soul told him to let them handle it). He will defy his own father in the interest of protecting humans, even if he doesn't know them personally.
6. He can be a rich bastard/dickk/brat. Like how he's like: "I don't need to study for this test because I'm a shinigami" and "Just because a test has the word 'super' in front of it doesn't mean it's a big deal" and then busts into Liz and Patti's room without knocking when THEY were trying to study and wouldn't leave them alone. (Okay, they weren't trying that hard, but still.)
And then! His father calls him back from this battle he was in and is like: "I'm glad you're OK!" and Kid is like: "Father, will you stop talking and hurry this up?" and Lord Death made a sad face.
And sometimes he does stuff in my head and I can't tell if he's being protective/obsessive/or a dick. And that is THE BEST.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 01:06 am (UTC)2) The "shinigami are Lovecraftian madness gods" thing is later in the manga. (I always thought the Kishin was, what with the being asleep for 800 years and spreading madness and hanging out in the background while all these other villains tried to use his power). At one point someone says "the Great Old Ones" (Lord Death is one of these--there were Eight Powerful Warriors altogether, Asura included, but Asura killed a couple of them) are beings whose existence drives men to madness.
Kid gets trapped in the Book of Eibon (which is a book in the Cthulhu mythos), so the other kids go in after him. And the Index of the book, which is an entity (and the Madness of Knowledge) who likes books and chats up Maka because she likes books, too, says (read right to left):
(I like to think "fragment of the Great Old Ones" is literal and Kid is, like, a piece of his dad that broke off. But then I like weird things.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 06:29 am (UTC)Zuko!
Date: 2012-12-04 03:14 pm (UTC)2. Tenacity, which is a lot like Azula's tenacity. (Although he isn't a prodigy and learned everything he knows through lots of hard work. I also really like that, even after all this work and growth, he isn't able to defeat Azula on his own.) I mean, when his dad sent him to find the Avatar, he wasn't expecting to see him again. Even Iroh treated the whole thing as a vacation. But Zuko never lost sight of his mission, to the point of unhealthiness. (Iroh keeps trying to get him to relax/enjoy this awesome vacation, and Zuko is like: "This is a complete waste of time. For EVERYONE!")
3. His ability to relate to people is...not that good. (Although Azula's is worse.) When I write him, it ends up broader than "socially awkward": here is a story where he trains Aang, and there's a small thread of cruelty in it because that's how his father taught him.
4. His heart really is in the right place. Really.
5. He has many and complicated feelings about his horrible, abusive sister and has a right to ALL of them, even if it makes them a PITA to write together. (Okay, they are a PITA more because I keep going: "OH GOD I'M DOING THIS WRONG" than because of anything either of them are doing.) Like, if Azula isn't there he can get like: "I am the worst brother I should spend more time with her" but if she IS there they get into huge fights and he's like "You are a TERRIBLE PERSON." Which is, you know, trufax. It doesn't help that he's not as good at arguing with awful books as she is. (Some of this is because I have no siblings so my 'this book is terrible' radar doesn't ding as much as with, say, a horribly ableist book). Although this one book was like: "No matter how awful your family member is to you, remember that they don't mean it!" and Zuko was like: "The fuck is this bullshit?" and I'm still looking for ways to encourage this.
Re: Zuko!
Date: 2012-12-04 08:59 pm (UTC)I want to know this toooo. I loved that no one let him forget it AT ALL. I haven't seen Korra so I have no idea of the world building that goes on but I really want to know how he brings peace to the world even if he is working with the Avatar.
Re: Zuko!
Date: 2012-12-04 09:00 pm (UTC)TRUEST OF ALL STATEMENTS
Re: Zuko!
Date: 2012-12-04 09:18 pm (UTC)It was my default icon.
Re: Zuko!
Date: 2012-12-09 06:12 am (UTC)Jak from Jak and Daxter has a similar problem, but Zuko will have it simultaneously better and worse. Better, because his position is very official and he has people paid to deal with him, as well as being an aristocrat and very distanced from the people he hurt. Worse, because it's not at all obvious (to anyone not there at the Western Air Temple) that Zuko ever turned good at all, and because his political ambitions rely on people dealing with him in good faith and assuming that he's doing the same.
Personally, I find Zuko's awkwardness adorkable. When he was talking about being bad at being good, I wanted to point out that he'd made a comically terrible villain.
His heart is sometimes in the right place. However, deciding that he shouldn't allow genocide because it interfered with his self-actualization doesn't erase theft (of more than an ostrich-horse), attempted kidnapping, carelessly endangering children and thinking he has a right to take whatever he wants from the world. This ties into the first point, kind of, in that Zuko was a villain. But it's more than that, and at the same time, it's less. Zuko was, and may still be, a person who believed that he was entitled to anything. An ostrich-horse, a crown, a fancy tea set... are only specific examples of an underlying pattern. While Zuko at least endorses the idea that there is right and wrong, and that he is constrained by it (and I do give him credit for that), he seems to have absorbed a bit of his father's ideas about deciding whom to support for arbitrary reasons.
Now, none of this is to say that Zuko hasn't tried to break this pattern. His actions during that storm, as well as his (attempted) humility when he went looking for Aang, speak well of him, but trying to break a pattern doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I do also acknowledge that Zuko seems to have a moral sense in the abstract, when he isn't directly party to the issues at hand (for instance, worrying about the turtle-crab and hawk), but he seems vulnerable to anger and entitlement clouding his judgment at the times when it matters most.
I also think that Zuko conceptualizes his world and the war in terms of rigid rules. He endorses revenge and killing people like his father because they're bad. When he spoke out against being callous toward Fire Nation troops, he argued that they were Fire Nation, not that they were people. Finally, he didn't kill Ozai himself (even though he had the chance) because he perceived himself as having a highly-specific, circumscribed role which did not involve killing Ozai, even though the reason why his role was good was because it would help make Ozai dead. It seems that Zuko sees the war as having two sides, Good (the Gaang) and Bad (the Fire Nation except himself, Iroh and Mai), and helping the Good side is good and helping the Bad side is bad. Zuko usually does things because he thinks he should do them, not because he thinks they should be done regardless of who does them. It's a subtle difference, but it leads to things like leaving Ozai alive. There are a few exceptions, like saving the Earth Kingdom boy, but for the most part, this holds true for his major goals.
Because of this, I find myself skeptical that Zuko takes actions to protect Fire Nation citizens because he wants them protected; there may be an aspect of that, but I think part of it is that he believes that Fire Nation royalty should care about the citizens, in the same way that they should wear crowns and top-knots, albeit to a greater degree. I also think that he supported Aang because Aang was the Avatar and the Avatar is Good (as well as being his best alternative to a father who hindered his self-actualization... coincidentally by planning a genocide), not because supporting Aang furthered the goal of improving the world or having fewer people die.
(On the other hand, Zuko-- like Azula-- is younger than he seems. Remembering that he's only... seventeen? makes me much more inclined to interpret his actions charitably.)
And finally, your last point: yes. Some people have disabilities that make them behave in ways that make them seem like assholes. Some people are assholes. Some people are both. Like Azula, apparently.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 04:47 pm (UTC)1. He won't be 12 years old forever. In the series he's the kid most consistently written like a kid, and I have trouble aging him up in my head.
2. As
3. Despite his playfulness/Airbender lightness/the trouble he had learning earthbending, he isn't afraid to stick to his principles. I actually liked that he found a way to defeat Ozai without killing him--not because I think Ozai has any redemptive qualities at all (or because I have anything against graphic violence, which....ahahahahaha), but because Aang didn't believe in killing him.
4. Aang actually is playful, especially with his element(s). (He invented the Air Scooter, after all.) He's a prodigy, but an altogether different kind of prodigy than Azula is: airbending is natural and fun. (Local Aang once told me that air is like a living thing-slash-friend. He doesn't control it, but they listen and talk to each other and have fun together.) Maybe some of the problem when Toph was teaching him earthbending is that, while Toph certainly thinks fighting is fun, she turned into a drill sergeant and made it SRS BZNS.
5. He's lost not only his family, but his people. (Perhaps airbending takes on a new meaning then, as a connection to his culture.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 05:13 am (UTC)Yes, definitely. And it's even harder to see that in light of what those principles are. For Aang, conflict avoidance and serene acceptance of things are what he works for because they're right, not things he does to avoid facing problems.
What, or who, is Local Aang?
Unrelatedly, I just realized that the figure on the left side of your icon is Iroh facing away from the camera, not a humanoid rhinoceros facing toward it. I still see it as a rhino.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 11:14 am (UTC)