i was wondering if you could talk a bit about the creation/genesis of your characters :3c i really love them all and there's a realness to them that i have a hard time developing in my own work
Sure! Many of them started or start off either from tropes or things that I experienced or that I see in other media or real life that for some reason or another really hit home. I’ll cut it since it’s a bit long.
For example, Jehan’s...well, perhaps he’s a bad example because I’m realizing more and more that Jehan is in many ways me but a lot of his character is definitely centered around Loss of Stability, especially in formative years, and how to deal with that, along with mental illness and coming to terms with that past and with sexuality and with sexual experiences, including unwanted ones. So coping with trauma and growing up when life decides to scramble your growing up years, in essence.
Tiefer started as the pervert priest trope because as a child I remember being shaken to the CORE when the scandals came to light. Because priests were on par with teachers (but holier!) and teachers are like basically your parents away from home when you’re a child -- so them? Having sex? With KIDS?! That’s just WRONG. This was a genuine source of anxiety and fear as a pre-pubescent child and when I was creating Tiefer as a pubescent teenager, I guess the fear arousal of this supreme boogeyman that went against everything I’d been taught got crisscrossed with general hormonal arousal, ha! But jokes aside, in all honesty, making Tiefer this sexy, almost approachable, older-but-hot silverfox was something of a purposeful decision because I actually wanted to play to the (too often true) fact that we as humans love to think we can spot the abusers, the bad guys, but in reality we can’t -- it’s usually the person you wouldn’t expect because they’re very charismatic. That’s a real thing that happens and it inspired that aspect of his character. Also, some of Tiefer’s development regarding his own abuse as a child and his eventual role as an abuser was based on not “the abuse cycle is totally true!” because it’s not, though obviously if all you learn is bad behavior it may be harder to do good behavior, but more on the view that at the end of the day, you have to make a choice. Everyone does. And sometimes in the face of difficulty, people decide “fuck it!” And Tiefer made that decision and it cost Jehan dearly. This too is the reality of being human beings with free will and that reality of free will definitely is a question that nags at me and so I created characters from it.
Annemarie, Caleb, and Adam all come from tropes -- slutty meangirl mixed with white trash, virginal ingenue mixed with every exorcism movie girl ever (but a guy this time!), washed up rocker with a good heart -- that I then developed characters out of based on people I’d met, experienced (for good or bad firsthand), or read about.
Michael, that psycho altarboy, actually came from three Law and Order: SVU episodes (as well as just about every episode with a child who’d probably be diagnosed with conduct disorder and who would in layman’s terms be called a sociopath.) The earliest episode is 3.10 “Ridicule” which is the one where those three women (one of whom is played by the same actress who went on to play Casey Novak) rape a male stripper and basically the question of “can men be raped” was put on trail. The second episode is the episode 9.03 “Impulsive” where a male teenage high school student (who was also a minor) raped his female teacher, which went against the grain (yet still kinda plays to the tune of “male aggressor, female victim”.) The third episode is the episode 15.07 “Dissonant Voices” where a 14 year old and 15 year old girl set up their former vocal coach and local school music teacher (who’s also openly gay) for molesting their siblings -- going so far as to plant sex toys in the classroom -- and almost get away with it. That last one is super powerful not only because it shows, like many an SVU episode does, that power is relative and ANYONE can be a victim and ANYONE can be an abuser no matter their age, sex, etc. but also it’s a powerful reminder to not let your preconceived notions get the best of you and always care about the truth. While SVU showed a man could be raped by women (or more broadly as the penetrator rather than penetrated), a adult authority figure could be raped by a minor teenager, and that even barely-outta-preteens could manipulate and coerce not only other minors (specifically children minors) but adults, I wanted to show/emphasize with Michael a combination of all those: that even adult male authority figures can be victimized, that false accusations can be serious matters, and that "consent” given (”given”) under duress or threats isn’t fucking consent (in short, rape isn’t always “do this or die” it can be “do this or else I’ll tell everyone you raped me and then you’ll be in trouble”.)
(Side note: if ever you want to be depressed, go look at how different organizations and places define rape -- it really disproportionately screws over male victims of rape in various ways, especially male victims who’re never penetrated and who’re often basically denied their existence.)
Basically, a lot of my characters evolve from shit I’ve dealt with or seen, tropes I come across and kinda wanna play with, things that really struck me or are important to me, and uh Law and Order: SVU. But I mean, I think if you’re struggling with developing ‘realness’ in a character, the way around that is find something done to death and remix it (a la tropes) to something more three-dimensional or pull from things that have or had a profound effect on you (either personally from life or that just really got to you) because then obviously it’ll have a real, human touch.
