#character variation

[aubreve-art]

Some nearly-finished concepts for a modern-day Canute that I found while clearing out my folders - my art style’s changed a bit since this time last year but I’m still happy with them, so enjoy, ‘nute nation!

[sparklingpax]

HIIII OK SO! I'm currently in my hotel and TFcon will be later today (since it's 12 am Saturday rn) and I thought I'd post this lil page where I've doodled my idea for a variation of Hawk's outfit!! Had this idea a while ago and finally got to draw it~ that variation will actually be my cosplay for the con today (minus the visor, since I didn't have time to find/make one 😳

(I'll have pics of that with other stuff I get at the con sometime today or Sunday 😌✨)

So yea! Just thought I'd share!!! ^^ ❤️💕

[ghostsleepyz]

// drawn scars

Aged variations of Daniel Matthews and Corbett Denlon for my Saw spinoff story

[aubreve-art]

Was hoping to finish my first page or so of Vancha and Gannen’s backstory this week, then suddenly realised I’ve hardly ever drawn Steve before…

Cue an emergency character design I’m going to call Anatomy of a Fuckboy. Enjoy!

(For CDF book 7 by the way - we all know this isn’t his final form 😈)

[soyyya-art]

Giant Lady | 2019

[adrawingflies]

[racke7]

In regards to “bashing“

I've been reading fanfiction for almost a decade now (holy shit, now I'm feeling old), and over the years I've grown quite used to the concept of “bashing” cropping up wherever I look.

I could go on to explain that this is a writing-technique that I've long since classified under the “bad writer”-route of using a plot and its character. In part due to how the traits that cause these characters to “deserve” bashing in the eyes of the author, are traits that are also very much present within the characters that are often glorified to no end in the same story.

This type of action generally stems from hypocrisy in regards to the author's desire to label everything in black-and-white, even if they often vocally insist on how they're see things in a “gray scale”. Their hero can never do wrong, and their villain can never do right, and they cling to this black-and-white mentality even if they convince their hero to apply some very “edgy” gray-scale type of tactics in order to achieve their goals.

In fact, bashing (and the Mary Sue trope, which is the aforementioned glorified hero that can never do wrong) is so common among fanfic-authors that I've become too enured to its presence in fics to do more than sort of sigh in disappointment every time it rears its head.

But here's an interesting little thing regarding bashing that might not be commonly understood.

Authors that make use of bashing are the people who don't actually know how to turn certain characters into actual proper villains. Instead deciding to simply create a very generic “bashing-OC” that is actually fairly reoccurring in its personality and actions, even across different fandoms.

The bashing OC:

is arrogant due to some type of “born with it” privilege

believes that everyone should do as the OC says

has a serious issue with personal boundaries (not understanding that “no means no”, both in regards to friendship and to romance)

is delusional

Amusingly enough, this actually describes Tatewaki Kuno (Ranma½) to a “t”. But unfortunately it rarely does the same for other characters.

For example:

Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and Sasuke Uchiha are all three very well-used candidates for being placed in this generic “bashing mold“ by various authors. But they actually have very little in common.

Ron has serious self-confidence issues, a horrible temper, and a tendency to say hurtful things.

Draco is spoiled, raised by racist, and has a loving and very powerful family.

Sasuke is obsessed with hate and power, and has no interest in any social ties whatsoever.

So, whilst I could see Draco forcing himself upon someone in a sexual manner because “they secretly want it”, Ron and Sasuke would never have that as some kind of motivation.

See, if Ron is rejected by a girl who then looks down her nose at him and classifies him as “below her”, he's going to hate her. He's going to look at her and know that he's not “good enough”, because that fuels on his shitty self-esteem, and that hate could easily turn into violence, and that violence might turn into sexual assault on behalf of “hurting her back”. But he'd never try to convince himself that she “secretly liked it”, he'd do it out of hate and spite and anger, and nothing else.

Sasuke is probably a more complicated case, because he wouldn't want to risk the potential social ties that comes from having sexual relations with anyone. Therefore he'd never try doing it on an emotional level. However, it's entirely possible that he might try to do it based on a logical argument on his own part. As in, he knows that he'll probably die in his quest to kill Itachi, so he makes sure that there's a “back-up” around to pick up the slack and go kill Itachi once he himself is dead. But that would likely be counteracted by various other logical arguments of why forcing himself on someone in order to have a child with them might be a really bad idea.

Three different people, three very different motivations for the same act, and as such making it necessary to apply three extremely different situations in order to achieve the same result of attempted sexual assault.

This is where the “bad writer” complaint generally appears.

If you feel the need to support yourself on a bashing-OC instead of actually using the characters given to you from within the fandom itself, then you're taking a shortcut. And if you're consistently taking this shortcut time and again in your stories, then you're probably doing it because you can't write these characters as the people that they actually are.

And in the end, if this is something that you do, then I truly hope that one day you will move beyond it, because as a person who loves reading what other people write, this saddens me greatly.

[racke7]

Writing Varied Characters

We've all heard the whole "write a super-long backstory for any character that appears"-thing. And we all know that it's more or less bull (because it's a fuckton of work and nobody gets that engaged in it unless the characters actually MATTER), but I think it's still important to have at least some vague idea of who this character is, even if they only make a brief (and in some cases fairly pointless) appearance.

So, this is my attempt to explain the importance of it all.

A group of people walking along the road come upon a man sitting up in a tree.

Who is he?

1) He's a bandit who's scouting for easy targets for his bandit-friends.

2) He's a botanist who thought that he saw some interesting plant up there.

In option 1) the bandit might strike up a conversation about the weather in an attempt to drive attention away from why he's sitting in a tree. He might use this to stall them for long enough that his bandit-friends will figure out that something is going down, or to give them time to get away and not incriminate him to the potential police officer in the group.

In option 2) the botanist might strike up a conversation about the weather, because it is of actual interest to him, since depending on the weather conditions different plants will flourish, “and did you know that we're having remarkably unusual weather this year? I'm really looking forward to see what will begin growing.”

Both options can be entertaining, but for completely different reasons.

In option 1) we get to see a man (possibly an extremely burly man) go on about a number of subjects, possibly even reaching briefly into plant-life, and most likely touching upon the weather or something similarly pointless, as he's desperately chanting “go away go away” in his mind. His face a bit stiff from keeping a polite smile that he never usually uses, and maybe he's trying to use some kind of motion or sound to signal to his bandit-friends that there are people on the road. Most likely, the group of people will either be oblivious to what in the world the odd man is doing, or they will know very well and simply snicker on the inside at him being so hilariously obvious about it.

In option 2) we get to see an adorably enthusiastic man wax on and on about plants and an endless number of things that might influence them in a hundred different ways, all the while perhaps having completely forgotten that he can't actually climb back down, or that he was perhaps on a bit of a tight schedule today. And the people will probably either be somewhat interested in what he's saying, or be silently chanting at him to shut up and let them continue walking in peace.

Interestingly enough, how the people react to the man in the tree (regardless of which option it is) says a lot about the characters in question. The ones silently mocking the bandit's obviousness, are most likely fairly used to dealing with bandits and their ilk, or are merely unusually skilled at reading a person's motives. The ones interested in what the botanist is saying, are probably either invested in the subject themselves, or simply enjoy listening to people talk happily about things.

So, even this fairly simple scenario, can be used to develop a character, and to showcase a character's various traits to the readers. And I think the best thing any writer can do to their characters is to make sure that they all react at least somewhat differently to this situation. Because if they all react the same, then you're doing something wrong.