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Characters and Story Types (Part 2: Forgotten Characters)
10 years ago
Part 1 of this journal was an interesting journey and I appreciated all the comments which gave me different perspectives on everything relating to superheroes. Originally the superheroes part was just a subsection of this journal I wanted to make but it took a life of its own. I'm kinda glad it did as it was a very interesting discussion between commenters.
Before I continue, I wanted to make the title "Forgotten Characters and 'Perfect' Characters" but due to space on the title, I was not able.
Here is something I think I really wanted to give mention to. There are certain characters I feel we either have yet to see represented enough in storytelling OR are not brought out to light enough. I remember the speaker at the commencement speech at my undergrad university say something that has stuck with me for a long time. "Why can't an American Idol be a teacher?" The speech itself was very riveting but that line stuck. Where are all the hero teachers and why aren't they more talked about? Heck, I attribute becoming who I am to one of my high school teachers to this day! What are some other characters that we have yet to see and can you name some? There are some to me that stand out. Some of these include, the single mother, the troubled youth fighting to unlearn all the negative lessons of his/her world, the transgender just trying to live their life (I am sure this one will appear sooner or later though), the Native person telling their own story (see Avatar/Dances With Wolves told by the colonizer perspective), and many others I can not really think of right now. Like I said, do add more character types you think need to be more told.
The reason I bring some of these up is that they lend themselves well to real personalities affected by their surroundings for better or for worse. Sometimes I find myself not even noticing that there are some repetitive and unrealistic traits to a lot of characters that make them not believable, and diminish their character, making them two dimensional. Here I found this article that lists some of these:
http://mythcreants.com/blog/five-un.....racter-traits/
While they're all worth noting, I want to talk about number 2 and 3 the most as I feel like these are where the biggest flaws in writing characters lies.
For number 2: This is why I mentioned the "troubled youth" character in the earlier paragraph. I think it would be very interesting to see a more long term struggle of a character trying to unlearn everything they had learned up to that point in their lives, realizing why a change was urgent. It is almost too "perfect" when characters supposedly grow up in societies where cruel killing is glorified and yet somehow all along they "knew" it was not a good way and had to defect. Sorry, that's bullshit. The most recent example of this in movies/stories I've seen was in Guardians of the Galaxy (the movie) with the character Peter Quill. He is according to the movie rescued by the bandit group (sorry I can't remember the name of them but you know who I'm talking about). While the rest of the crew seems to have no qualms about using extreme and torturous means to get what they want, Peter Quill seems so far removed from that that it is not even really believable that he was raised by those guys. Really? Unless I'm missing some key piece of information, but even if I did, that still leaves so much unexplained.
For number 3: This one probably bugs me the most, characters that are unaffected by hardship. There are so many cases of this throughout storytelling, and even I've done this one in my own storywriting admittedly. I'll not go on and on about this one, but to make a character that is believably breathing and living, it means the character has to have realistic reactions to traumatic and negative experiences. Once again, when a character doesn't, it makes the character out to be "perfect" or "superhuman".
You might notice that in both of these, I use the word "perfect". In this context I don't mean the character is literally perfect in every way in the way they act within their worlds, but rather that the character is conveniently "perfect" for the world and narrative they exist in. The character is too perfectly equipped emotionally, physically, and spiritually to face the challenges befacing them and meanwhile the story pretends this same character is somehow going to struggle to overcome these tasks. I will give credit to storytellers though that sometimes even with these types of "perfect" characters, they do a good job convincing the audience that the subject of the story is weaker than they actually are, which is enough to engage the audience. For me however, sometimes I just grow tired and catch on too quickly now.
What do you guys think are some examples of characters that haven't been done before? What are some other character clichés that also annoy you? What are some examples of these clichés? Do you disagree and perhaps are in the school of thought that really everything has been done already? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Before I continue, I wanted to make the title "Forgotten Characters and 'Perfect' Characters" but due to space on the title, I was not able.
Here is something I think I really wanted to give mention to. There are certain characters I feel we either have yet to see represented enough in storytelling OR are not brought out to light enough. I remember the speaker at the commencement speech at my undergrad university say something that has stuck with me for a long time. "Why can't an American Idol be a teacher?" The speech itself was very riveting but that line stuck. Where are all the hero teachers and why aren't they more talked about? Heck, I attribute becoming who I am to one of my high school teachers to this day! What are some other characters that we have yet to see and can you name some? There are some to me that stand out. Some of these include, the single mother, the troubled youth fighting to unlearn all the negative lessons of his/her world, the transgender just trying to live their life (I am sure this one will appear sooner or later though), the Native person telling their own story (see Avatar/Dances With Wolves told by the colonizer perspective), and many others I can not really think of right now. Like I said, do add more character types you think need to be more told.
The reason I bring some of these up is that they lend themselves well to real personalities affected by their surroundings for better or for worse. Sometimes I find myself not even noticing that there are some repetitive and unrealistic traits to a lot of characters that make them not believable, and diminish their character, making them two dimensional. Here I found this article that lists some of these:
http://mythcreants.com/blog/five-un.....racter-traits/
While they're all worth noting, I want to talk about number 2 and 3 the most as I feel like these are where the biggest flaws in writing characters lies.
For number 2: This is why I mentioned the "troubled youth" character in the earlier paragraph. I think it would be very interesting to see a more long term struggle of a character trying to unlearn everything they had learned up to that point in their lives, realizing why a change was urgent. It is almost too "perfect" when characters supposedly grow up in societies where cruel killing is glorified and yet somehow all along they "knew" it was not a good way and had to defect. Sorry, that's bullshit. The most recent example of this in movies/stories I've seen was in Guardians of the Galaxy (the movie) with the character Peter Quill. He is according to the movie rescued by the bandit group (sorry I can't remember the name of them but you know who I'm talking about). While the rest of the crew seems to have no qualms about using extreme and torturous means to get what they want, Peter Quill seems so far removed from that that it is not even really believable that he was raised by those guys. Really? Unless I'm missing some key piece of information, but even if I did, that still leaves so much unexplained.
For number 3: This one probably bugs me the most, characters that are unaffected by hardship. There are so many cases of this throughout storytelling, and even I've done this one in my own storywriting admittedly. I'll not go on and on about this one, but to make a character that is believably breathing and living, it means the character has to have realistic reactions to traumatic and negative experiences. Once again, when a character doesn't, it makes the character out to be "perfect" or "superhuman".
You might notice that in both of these, I use the word "perfect". In this context I don't mean the character is literally perfect in every way in the way they act within their worlds, but rather that the character is conveniently "perfect" for the world and narrative they exist in. The character is too perfectly equipped emotionally, physically, and spiritually to face the challenges befacing them and meanwhile the story pretends this same character is somehow going to struggle to overcome these tasks. I will give credit to storytellers though that sometimes even with these types of "perfect" characters, they do a good job convincing the audience that the subject of the story is weaker than they actually are, which is enough to engage the audience. For me however, sometimes I just grow tired and catch on too quickly now.
What do you guys think are some examples of characters that haven't been done before? What are some other character clichés that also annoy you? What are some examples of these clichés? Do you disagree and perhaps are in the school of thought that really everything has been done already? I would love to hear your thoughts.
There's a character in BLEACH that is my forever fandom love, because he /coudl've/ been the captain of their squad, /could've/ been the best shinigami out of all of them, but basically chose not to, because his aims were A.) To have fun B.) To continue to fight alongside his friend (or lover, depending on your view of the queer baiting the author did), and C.) He was comfortable where he was, and didn't let others pressure him into a leadership position. I like(d) it, because not everyone wants a leadership position, and being allowed to just enjoy your position in life should be a thing.
Also read Parrotfish. It was the first young adult novel I secretly read in high school that had a trans character in it. I read it because of that, but it was literally the first piece of media I actually seen it.
Quill has held onto his nostalgia (his ship is named after Alyssa Milano and then there's the whole Footloose reference). He does his best to act like Indiana Jones or Han Solo only the film shows that he doesn't quite have that hard edge Indy and Han had. He even dances to music.
Note that he's also solo-he left the gang to go at it on his own. It was because despite how much of an ass he is towards the alien female he's with at the start of the movie he does have a heart of gold. He's reluctant to return to them and part of it is probably because of his reluctance to do anything truly evil. Note that he only kills when absolutely necessary.
He's not that bad a guy just imperfect and had only his memories of his mom and of the 80's movies he grew up with to teach him how to be a man.