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rev_yurodivyBecause I can't help but beat a dead horse. Well, here's something I should have done way earlier...characters. This is something that needs a lot of attention, in my opinion. Characters can make or break a story-- I'm much more willing to put up with a shaky plot but awesome characters than visa versa.
Unfortunately, a common problem in fanstories is that people like to stick a little too closely to the tried-and-true character concepts used previously in Tales. It gets old. Variations on existing themes (and deconstructions. I like deconstructions) are alright, but a little variety won't kill you. So, without further ado, let's move onto some typical Tales archetypes, and why you probably shouldn't write them (and a few that you should consider, possibly with alterations.)
The Idealistic Hero: He's optimistic, a firm believer in the power of friendship, totally naive to the ways of the world, typically dumb as a post, race-blind, and burning with passion, or something. There's just one problem: the idealist hero is just getting kind of old in most people's eyes. The vast majority of Tales heroes fall into this category in some way or another, with only a select few exceptions.
Generally speaking, he's just hard to do right from being so overdone. Even if you are able to write him well, people are likely to instinctively roll their eyes at his antics. When it comes to social change, things come far too easily to him. I disagree with the majority of the fans in that I don't think the depictions of racism and other -isms are all that biased or extreme-- look up the Dalits or read some of the articles on autistics.org or the Autistics Demonized blog if you don't believe me. What I will agree on is that just making a speech or defeating a certain key figure in a movement won't end that discrimination. Things are far more deep-rooted than that. It takes years of slow change.
And, really, that's the thing. The Idealistic Hero is basically Marty Stu, Tales-Flavored. That's not to say he can't be written well, just like any Marty Stu can, but it's extremely hard. You're probably safer to just avoid him altogether. His "flaw" is that he's usually book-dumb, but that doesn't really get exploited enough to be considered one. In fact, it's usually just played as a gag, much like clumsiness in certain female characters.
Now, for something I haven't seen done? A female version of this type. The closest I've ever seen to such is probably Farah from Tales of Eternia.
How to Improve: Put this kind of hero in a bleak, pessimistic world where his impulsiveness and stupidity actually have consequences (usually making things worse), and see how long that idealism lasts.
The Hero's Clingy Counterpart: I tried to come up with a witty name that implied clinginess* and all I could come up with was "statically electrified laundry." I didn't really like how that sounded. D: Also, this archetype will henceforth be referred to as "Counterpart" for brevity's sake, also because I really don't want to abuse this wireless keyboard. It is currently whispering to me, telling me to use chatspeak, but I am resisting its devilish charms.
Crazy? Me? No...I just Catalyzed into a Wunder Genius**!
*ahem* That aside...ugh. This is one of my least favorite archetypes. It really shouldn't take a lot of brainwork as to why this is offensive, since it lives up to all the harmful stereotypes of femininity. On top of that, she's an utterly bland and forgettable character. She almost never has any character conflicts, and anybody who doesn't think she's a shining example of purity is a total jerk-- either an Insufferable Genius (see below) or one of the villains.
She is usually very dependant on the hero, almost disturbingly so and freakishly close to Dependent Personality Disorder...except this is not portrayed as being a bad thing. Folks, seriously, wiki that condition before you start writing this character. It's eye-opening. Estelle sticks out as the worst in my mind-- she seemed to have extreme trouble making her own decisions and flip-flopped like crazy. Of course, she tended to have her choices made for her, another common trait of the Counterpart.
How to Improve: How about actually showing the problems inherit with Dependent Personality Disorder? Like separating her from the hero (or whoever she happens to be attached to) and watch her fall apart? Or how she can never make decisions on her own? I think you get the idea. ;)
The Insufferable Genius: Brilliant but irascible is the best way to describe this character. S/he has incredible expertise in a certain area, and s/he's not likely to let you forget it any time soon. That certain area is not people skills. S/he often loses her temper easily when dealing with people who aren't on his/her level of cognitive functioning. Typically, whenever there's a problem with fonons/aer/whatever, they're on the front lines spouting some technobabble.
Granted, I'd rather have them lack people skills than be brilliant in all fields, it's at least a character flaw. On that note, if s/he does have people skills of some sort, s/he is usually pathologically obsessed with some sort of bizarre subject. Raine has ruins, Guy has machines, and so on and so forth. If this character happens to be young-- as in younger than sixteen-- somehow they become insufferable, and usually have a massive chip on their shoulder to boot. They'll usually take offense to being called "kid." Either way, they'll somehow end up coming off as, at best, bizarre, and at worst hard to deal with.
How to Improve: Good question. I'd like to see a character who's "field of brilliance" is psychology to the point where they're matchless manipulators and incredibly charismatic. Also note that intelligence is not inversely proportional to social-ness, 'kay?
The Relatively Old Dude: Diversity is good! And what's one way to have a diverse cast? Have a diverse range of ages! Therefore, you need old people. Or at least an old guy. (There aren't any old women, as they won't provide eye candy. Except for Pray Tell, but I'm not sure if she counts because I wrote her.)
...Except for some reason, "old" in this case means "over thirty." This would be just peachy if we were going by how things really were since before the advent of the Industrial Revolution and progresses in medicine, where people wouldn't be expected to live past thirty-five. Except we see people easily twice that in most towns. What? Either way, his alleged old age is constantly made a joke of, often by the Old Dude himself. He usually claims physical decrepit-ness whenever asked to perform any kind of physical task.
The Relatively Old Dude often serves as a wise mentor to his younger party members if he's of the calm, stoic type. Conversely, he may be snappy and sarcastic (though frequently in a tongue-in-cheek way that may fly over the heads of innocent party members.)
How to Improve: Can we have someone over the age of thirty who doesn't constantly call attention to his or her age/has others do so? Please? And if you absolutely have to, can it be because it's actually uncommon for people to live to that age because life expectancy in that world sucks?
The Obligatory Traitor: Look, it's liek a guy who the party trusts...BUT HE'S REALLY SPYING ON THEM BEHIND THEIR BACK OMG DOUBLE AGENT.
...The problem is, more often than not, he's incredibly easy to see coming. He's either the irritating, nerve-grating snarky twit who seems to have trouble getting along with everyone, or the easygoing, unassuming person. It's also incredibly rare for this character to be a female (I say incredibly rare because I *think* it does happen at least once in the main series.) Bear in mind your savvier readers are going to see him coming a mile away most of the time, and they will be looking for him. He's a series staple, and generally pretty predictable.
How to Improve: I'd recommend avoiding this guy altogether. It's a frustratingly common plot point, and there are way better things you can do with your plot.
The Melons Girl: If I ever have to see this character type again, I will find out where you live and kneecap you with a .22 rifle, so help me God.
And now that we have that out of the way, let me talk about why this is irritating. More often than not, Melons Girls are remarkably two-dimensional. They have huge boobs, and they're either ditzy, innocent in that they simply don't know when they're being hit on (or when someone's hitting on them), or they're stern and irritable (for hilarity*** when somebody does hit on them.) For reference, Judith is by far the worst offender of this, with Nanaly being a close second. Both of them have very little character growth, another common problem with the Melons Girl.
Yes, there are women who have bust sizes tending towards very large. If you meet these people, you will observe that they usually don't try to call excessive attention to it-- not adults, anyway, teenagers might but even that's not as common as you would think because, believe it or not, girls actually tease and mock other girls who are more endowed. See also Mean Girls (by Rosalyn Wiseman) and Reviving Ophelia (by Mary Pipher.) This type is offensive because it's unrealistic and limits the female character primarily to a physical attribute and a single personality trait that never seems to change.
How to Improve: I would pay somebody to show the realistic consequences of that kind of body type (meaning the broomstick-with-melons-taped-to-it-physique) which is to say horrific back problems. However, I am highly broke and can only pay you in lemon cookies.
The Irritating Lech: He'll hit on about anything with a pulse and two X chromosones, and that's his primary character trait. Blessedly, female PCs usually either don't get his blatantly obvious advances or do and ignore him. NPCs are another story and seem to be infinitely more likely to fall for his...uh..."charms." Nonetheless, the jokes are always overused, and just get very old very quickly. For some reason, you can never have someone who is subtly perverted, they have to show it off all the time. Let me reiterate: it gets old. Why not show off their other personality traits for a change? Just for kicks, yanno.
(Notably, this character type occasionally crosses over with the Relatively Old Dude, see also Vesperia's Raven.)
How to Improve: Gender-invert for hilarity****.
The Femboy: A perennial favorite of fangirls, the Femboy is all the cliche heroine personality traits...except, well, he's a boy. Somehow, these traits which are usually hateful in a female character become much more tolerable in a male character. Perhaps it's because Femboy is typically given more of a chance to stand on his own and comes off as less codependent, or maybe he's just a breath of fresh air in general. Femboy is generally accepted to be a character type mostly endemic to fanstories, though there are a few canonical examples-- namely, Ruca from Tales of Innocence and Emil from Dawn of the New World.
Femboy is a tried and true character type by this point in time, and generally he' s a lot more tolerable than the previous archetypes. However, in my eyes he wears out his welcome very quickly if not written well. Just like the female Counterpart, being completely spineless is more of an irritant than endearing.
How to Improve: Don't make the same mistakes made with the Counterpart. Codependency is rather creepy and unsettling...unless, of course, that is exactly the vibe you want to give off, which would be kind of cool too, just make sure it's shown as a bad thing.
All in all, these are the major Tales/FanTales archetypes I can think of. However, if you have any suggestions as to other archetypes, or how I can improve my current listings, I'm open to ideas. ^_^
*Suggestions welcome.
**This extremely obscure reference is to the brilliant Genius: the Transgression fangame for the new World of Darkness. The Wunder/Apokalypsi Catalyst is basically my personality, bottled into Essence of Extra Crazy, right down to the obssession with bizarre minituae.
***If by hilarity you really mean "totally unfunny hijinks."
****Hilarity here meaning actual hilarity.
Unfortunately, a common problem in fanstories is that people like to stick a little too closely to the tried-and-true character concepts used previously in Tales. It gets old. Variations on existing themes (and deconstructions. I like deconstructions) are alright, but a little variety won't kill you. So, without further ado, let's move onto some typical Tales archetypes, and why you probably shouldn't write them (and a few that you should consider, possibly with alterations.)
The Idealistic Hero: He's optimistic, a firm believer in the power of friendship, totally naive to the ways of the world, typically dumb as a post, race-blind, and burning with passion, or something. There's just one problem: the idealist hero is just getting kind of old in most people's eyes. The vast majority of Tales heroes fall into this category in some way or another, with only a select few exceptions.
Generally speaking, he's just hard to do right from being so overdone. Even if you are able to write him well, people are likely to instinctively roll their eyes at his antics. When it comes to social change, things come far too easily to him. I disagree with the majority of the fans in that I don't think the depictions of racism and other -isms are all that biased or extreme-- look up the Dalits or read some of the articles on autistics.org or the Autistics Demonized blog if you don't believe me. What I will agree on is that just making a speech or defeating a certain key figure in a movement won't end that discrimination. Things are far more deep-rooted than that. It takes years of slow change.
And, really, that's the thing. The Idealistic Hero is basically Marty Stu, Tales-Flavored. That's not to say he can't be written well, just like any Marty Stu can, but it's extremely hard. You're probably safer to just avoid him altogether. His "flaw" is that he's usually book-dumb, but that doesn't really get exploited enough to be considered one. In fact, it's usually just played as a gag, much like clumsiness in certain female characters.
Now, for something I haven't seen done? A female version of this type. The closest I've ever seen to such is probably Farah from Tales of Eternia.
How to Improve: Put this kind of hero in a bleak, pessimistic world where his impulsiveness and stupidity actually have consequences (usually making things worse), and see how long that idealism lasts.
The Hero's Clingy Counterpart: I tried to come up with a witty name that implied clinginess* and all I could come up with was "statically electrified laundry." I didn't really like how that sounded. D: Also, this archetype will henceforth be referred to as "Counterpart" for brevity's sake, also because I really don't want to abuse this wireless keyboard. It is currently whispering to me, telling me to use chatspeak, but I am resisting its devilish charms.
Crazy? Me? No...I just Catalyzed into a Wunder Genius**!
*ahem* That aside...ugh. This is one of my least favorite archetypes. It really shouldn't take a lot of brainwork as to why this is offensive, since it lives up to all the harmful stereotypes of femininity. On top of that, she's an utterly bland and forgettable character. She almost never has any character conflicts, and anybody who doesn't think she's a shining example of purity is a total jerk-- either an Insufferable Genius (see below) or one of the villains.
She is usually very dependant on the hero, almost disturbingly so and freakishly close to Dependent Personality Disorder...except this is not portrayed as being a bad thing. Folks, seriously, wiki that condition before you start writing this character. It's eye-opening. Estelle sticks out as the worst in my mind-- she seemed to have extreme trouble making her own decisions and flip-flopped like crazy. Of course, she tended to have her choices made for her, another common trait of the Counterpart.
How to Improve: How about actually showing the problems inherit with Dependent Personality Disorder? Like separating her from the hero (or whoever she happens to be attached to) and watch her fall apart? Or how she can never make decisions on her own? I think you get the idea. ;)
The Insufferable Genius: Brilliant but irascible is the best way to describe this character. S/he has incredible expertise in a certain area, and s/he's not likely to let you forget it any time soon. That certain area is not people skills. S/he often loses her temper easily when dealing with people who aren't on his/her level of cognitive functioning. Typically, whenever there's a problem with fonons/aer/whatever, they're on the front lines spouting some technobabble.
Granted, I'd rather have them lack people skills than be brilliant in all fields, it's at least a character flaw. On that note, if s/he does have people skills of some sort, s/he is usually pathologically obsessed with some sort of bizarre subject. Raine has ruins, Guy has machines, and so on and so forth. If this character happens to be young-- as in younger than sixteen-- somehow they become insufferable, and usually have a massive chip on their shoulder to boot. They'll usually take offense to being called "kid." Either way, they'll somehow end up coming off as, at best, bizarre, and at worst hard to deal with.
How to Improve: Good question. I'd like to see a character who's "field of brilliance" is psychology to the point where they're matchless manipulators and incredibly charismatic. Also note that intelligence is not inversely proportional to social-ness, 'kay?
The Relatively Old Dude: Diversity is good! And what's one way to have a diverse cast? Have a diverse range of ages! Therefore, you need old people. Or at least an old guy. (There aren't any old women, as they won't provide eye candy. Except for Pray Tell, but I'm not sure if she counts because I wrote her.)
...Except for some reason, "old" in this case means "over thirty." This would be just peachy if we were going by how things really were since before the advent of the Industrial Revolution and progresses in medicine, where people wouldn't be expected to live past thirty-five. Except we see people easily twice that in most towns. What? Either way, his alleged old age is constantly made a joke of, often by the Old Dude himself. He usually claims physical decrepit-ness whenever asked to perform any kind of physical task.
The Relatively Old Dude often serves as a wise mentor to his younger party members if he's of the calm, stoic type. Conversely, he may be snappy and sarcastic (though frequently in a tongue-in-cheek way that may fly over the heads of innocent party members.)
How to Improve: Can we have someone over the age of thirty who doesn't constantly call attention to his or her age/has others do so? Please? And if you absolutely have to, can it be because it's actually uncommon for people to live to that age because life expectancy in that world sucks?
The Obligatory Traitor: Look, it's liek a guy who the party trusts...BUT HE'S REALLY SPYING ON THEM BEHIND THEIR BACK OMG DOUBLE AGENT.
...The problem is, more often than not, he's incredibly easy to see coming. He's either the irritating, nerve-grating snarky twit who seems to have trouble getting along with everyone, or the easygoing, unassuming person. It's also incredibly rare for this character to be a female (I say incredibly rare because I *think* it does happen at least once in the main series.) Bear in mind your savvier readers are going to see him coming a mile away most of the time, and they will be looking for him. He's a series staple, and generally pretty predictable.
How to Improve: I'd recommend avoiding this guy altogether. It's a frustratingly common plot point, and there are way better things you can do with your plot.
The Melons Girl: If I ever have to see this character type again, I will find out where you live and kneecap you with a .22 rifle, so help me God.
And now that we have that out of the way, let me talk about why this is irritating. More often than not, Melons Girls are remarkably two-dimensional. They have huge boobs, and they're either ditzy, innocent in that they simply don't know when they're being hit on (or when someone's hitting on them), or they're stern and irritable (for hilarity*** when somebody does hit on them.) For reference, Judith is by far the worst offender of this, with Nanaly being a close second. Both of them have very little character growth, another common problem with the Melons Girl.
Yes, there are women who have bust sizes tending towards very large. If you meet these people, you will observe that they usually don't try to call excessive attention to it-- not adults, anyway, teenagers might but even that's not as common as you would think because, believe it or not, girls actually tease and mock other girls who are more endowed. See also Mean Girls (by Rosalyn Wiseman) and Reviving Ophelia (by Mary Pipher.) This type is offensive because it's unrealistic and limits the female character primarily to a physical attribute and a single personality trait that never seems to change.
How to Improve: I would pay somebody to show the realistic consequences of that kind of body type (meaning the broomstick-with-melons-taped-to-it-physique) which is to say horrific back problems. However, I am highly broke and can only pay you in lemon cookies.
The Irritating Lech: He'll hit on about anything with a pulse and two X chromosones, and that's his primary character trait. Blessedly, female PCs usually either don't get his blatantly obvious advances or do and ignore him. NPCs are another story and seem to be infinitely more likely to fall for his...uh..."charms." Nonetheless, the jokes are always overused, and just get very old very quickly. For some reason, you can never have someone who is subtly perverted, they have to show it off all the time. Let me reiterate: it gets old. Why not show off their other personality traits for a change? Just for kicks, yanno.
(Notably, this character type occasionally crosses over with the Relatively Old Dude, see also Vesperia's Raven.)
How to Improve: Gender-invert for hilarity****.
The Femboy: A perennial favorite of fangirls, the Femboy is all the cliche heroine personality traits...except, well, he's a boy. Somehow, these traits which are usually hateful in a female character become much more tolerable in a male character. Perhaps it's because Femboy is typically given more of a chance to stand on his own and comes off as less codependent, or maybe he's just a breath of fresh air in general. Femboy is generally accepted to be a character type mostly endemic to fanstories, though there are a few canonical examples-- namely, Ruca from Tales of Innocence and Emil from Dawn of the New World.
Femboy is a tried and true character type by this point in time, and generally he' s a lot more tolerable than the previous archetypes. However, in my eyes he wears out his welcome very quickly if not written well. Just like the female Counterpart, being completely spineless is more of an irritant than endearing.
How to Improve: Don't make the same mistakes made with the Counterpart. Codependency is rather creepy and unsettling...unless, of course, that is exactly the vibe you want to give off, which would be kind of cool too, just make sure it's shown as a bad thing.
All in all, these are the major Tales/FanTales archetypes I can think of. However, if you have any suggestions as to other archetypes, or how I can improve my current listings, I'm open to ideas. ^_^
*Suggestions welcome.
**This extremely obscure reference is to the brilliant Genius: the Transgression fangame for the new World of Darkness. The Wunder/Apokalypsi Catalyst is basically my personality, bottled into Essence of Extra Crazy, right down to the obssession with bizarre minituae.
***If by hilarity you really mean "totally unfunny hijinks."
****Hilarity here meaning actual hilarity.
