Let's talk meme

[petronia]

From fahye:

Pick a character I write, and I will give you the top five ideas/concepts/other I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to depicting them accurately. This includes both original characters and characters about whom I write fanfic.

Actually, you can extend that to any character I've read a lot of fic about... not that you'd know necessarily, of course. XD My voracious and not-particular-picky fic consumption is (among other things) a way of honing my own ideas of characterization against Fandom, like window shopping or a card-sorting exercise. Right, right, wrong, right, hmm, wrong, poor taste, right. Reading is what creates the model. Writing only introduces quirks.

Or, pick up the meme so I can ask you.

Or-or, I was taking Ask Me Anything questions on my Tumblr the other day - click link, ask me a question?

Comments

correcting typos, I was nearly asleep writing this

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Schuldig~~~~~~~~ Maybe this is not TBD!Schuldig, though, this is grown-up Schwarz!Schuldig. The one who prowls around my head like an outdoors cat.

1) Novelty-seeking. Like to the point of genuinely enjoying unpleasantness, as long as it's new and unexpected unpleasantness and you can't quite predict what it's all leading up to. I was writing about Kagetora up there, how he's all emotion inside, and Schuldig is all sensation.

2) Maybe as a corollary to 1, has an immense aptitude for just rolling with it. Not much truly gets under his skin - Crawford and the spectre of institutionalization basically cover it, and both are devils he knows very well. Shit happens, mostly it is lulz. He never stops to think about how his life is effed up because that would imply it could theoretically be normal like everyone else's, and he's not a human being, really.

3) My favorite Schuldig was ladyjaida's, because she made his telepathy a physiological trade-off. My Schuldig, if anything, is just hyper-environment-aware. He sees a lot too, he takes stock of rooms and people and does these spot checks. He's good at dealing with the noise, actually - he got overwhelmed, he self-medicated, but in the TBD setup, everyone else with that talent is catatonic or dead.

4) Has a fraught relationship with authority. At base it might be learned helplessness - there's this bit in one of the stories quoting Kipling about being born in captivity. He was raised in a facility, then essentially locked in the attic for a while, then out on the street, then back to the facility. Altogether maybe 3 years of non-institutionalization, out of 21, and he wasn't what you'd call un-beholden then. He won't die for his freedom, I think, principally because way deep down he has no inner conviction that freedom exists for him. Someone will always be skulking around with a bear trap. And if he didn't buy into the discipline and maintain it internally he would actually be dead, so.

This feeds into Crawford's thing, because Crawford's issue w/r/t freedom is existentialist. Given his talent and all. XD; Crawford was born free and stays free in his own head. He looks for power and answers and it's obviously easier to get them from the side of the ppl doing the oppressing/institutionalizing/whatever. So he throws Schuldig under a bus when he feels he has to, but it actually bothers him more that Schuldig isn't free than it bothers Schuldig. He systematically does more about it. Schuldig genuinely has no idea that that's one of the drivers of the Plan, Schuldig's eventual right to self-determination.

5) Is a drama llama on an epic scale but you would try to force a reaction too if you could read everyone else's minds but one. Actually his feelings for Crawford are uber-simplistic and even rather generous; Crawford could probably reduce the drama incidence by 90% with a daily cuddle. Obviously this is the part Crawford genuinely has no idea about, it would never occur to him in a million years.

I like this a lot esp #1-3 :D

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

And had never directly considered #4 but it is /right/ in terms of making sense of a load of other traits that go with the character - impulsiveness, lack of long-term planning &c. #1-4 combined make up a major point in favour of me taking to any fictional character: poise. The quality of being precisely and unselfconsciously oneself. And never mind whether that poise corresponds to any kind of external ideal whatsoever. #5 is just cute. XD

Please to do Johnny Joestar? Or JoJo character of yr choosing. *sparkles* Or Crawford, actually, although it rather feels like the most important point has been discussed above viz. Crawford and Schuldig's differing thoughts on freedom.

Re: I like this a lot esp #1-3 :D

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Poise, yes, precisely. He can afford to be impulsive, too, in a way normal ppl can't: TBD-verse, this is someone who's constantly criss-crossing the globe with no need to worry about 1) money and 2) not speaking the local language.

I can do Johnny... there actually is stuff to say about Crawford, mind you, so little of it came through in the actual fic. XD;

Re: I like this a lot esp #1-3 :D

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

Crawford would be interesting because you actually seem to have a complete idea of Crawford where many people don't. I've been guilty of writing Crawford as a cipher because I'm not sure what his purpose and thinking style is - is he pragmatist or idealist; opportunist or meticulous planner? I tend to associate 'let's change things!' with 'heroic and dumb', and Crawford obvs isn't that, so ... ?

Johhny is less of a mystery, but I wouldn't have the first idea where to start writing him because I don't know how to reconcile 'derp derp derp this is a song about cheese' with 'OH MY FUCKING GOD WE'RE GOING TO DIE, genuinely traumatised here' XD Although at the same time that is what's awesome about SBR; the increasing interest in character psychology hasn't been accompanied by a reduction in capslocky WTF. Seriously though how /does/ Johnny go to the toilet? D:

n.b. I haven't read the scans for a while but apparently the dimensional portal has hit the fan, as it were. XD

Re: correcting typos, I was nearly asleep writing this

[naiyad.livejournal.com]

Loved this. I'd never really considered your point in #4 before, and that's real food for thought. It's interesting to think about the balance of 'anti-authority' vs 'learned helplessness' in his personality. Probably because it clicks so well with how he seems to be able to survive anything and yet be so self-destructive at the same time.

Lady Jaida's Schuldig was the first Schuldig that really clicked for me, followed closely by Mami-san's. Speaking of Lady Jaida, would you happen to know where I could find her 'Unmitigated' fic? It's listed in her WK fic timeline list thing over at her ff.net account, but it's not actually there.

Also, Crawford needs to get a clue on the cuddling business. ♥

Re: correcting typos, I was nearly asleep writing this

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Rolling, I'm not sure I considered #4 per se before I wrote it down here. Not in as many words - I'm pretty sure that when I was writing TBD I didn't know the term "learned helplessness", and also not mature enough to have an adult perspective on how your childhood/adolescence can subtly warp your mentality. But I knew Schuldig was a product of his environment, yanno? And that a lot of the conflict between him and Crawford stems from authority and power issues.

Alas, I wouldn't know what had happened to Jaida's fic. >_> It's been a really long time since I'd reread!