Thinking about how the misinterpretation of Owain by his fellow kingdom members (specifically Nom) contributes and exasperates the already present mischaracterization of Owain by the fandom.
There are so few Nom centric fics that don’t mischaracterize Owain and that saddens me because their dynamic is so cool if you can understand both of them from their own perspectives. But because Nom as a character fundamentally misunderstands Owain, so does the audience that consumes the story from Nom’s perspective.
It’s a really interesting paradox that you can only really see in MCYT because it’s one of the only places where you get each characters’ perspective separately and actively have to seek out others. The mischaracterization of certain perspectives by others is not necessarily a flaw, but a feature. If Nom were to understand Owain’s perspective, the story would’ve been intrinsically different than it is now and by extension, the characterization of Owain by not just Nom main’s, but the wider fandom would be intrinsically different.
Then you get into the concept of whether or not it’s truly mischaracterization or simply the perspective. Personally, I think it’s mischaracterization if the consumer does not recognize that the characterization is only that way because of the perspective. Otherwise, it can be used as a very interesting storytelling tool to use perspective characterization and then reveal the objective characteristics. Which is what was done in canon in Nom’s perspective to a certain extent, though I think it would’ve been expanded on farther had the series had more time.
You also have to consider whether or not objective characterization is possible in a format like this. Is the character’s perspective the objective characterization of themself or simply another perspective of the character just with more insight into motivation and emotion? I think it depends on the individual consumer’s perspective which very interesting to think about.
I don’t know if any of this made sense. I wrote it while sitting on a swing so it might not even make sense grammatically. I’m just having thoughts about stuff and need to share
