#anyways so the main character being established as being into the yandere love interest is . . . complicated

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

hate it in yandere horror games when even the romantic path has flavor text like "he's so fucking creepy and i hate him but also he's so handsome" like no you're godmodding im hanging up

[cosmicangst]

olympia soiree review after 100%-ing the game... general consensus of my brain worms is that the premise, its themes, the japanese cultural context, and the lore are its biggest strengths. but it needed a heavy editing hand. writers gotta trust their audience more bc we really do not need flashbacks to a thing that happened three minutes ago. it just felt like some great solid bits that were bundled up way too much w superfluous padding. as such the pace suffered and what should have been devoted to developing further why byakuya and her li would fall in love is spent on filler and revisiting info we already know

the spiciness and the sheer romance of the cg scenes are so good but sometimes it was whiplash when byakuya and her li were suddenly in soulmates mode. the individual scenes were chefs kiss but the relationship development overall felt less earned which made those scenes less impactful than it should have been. i know it's just the two weeks but cmon ive been sold less believable absurdity in less that time

anyway in terms of each route:

himuka - tbh he really didn't leave a lasting impression besides his place in the lore. my fave thing is his character design and i spent most of the route pretending this was a yuri game lmao i think his was the one where i rly questioned why byakuya fell so hard and fast (and she does that in every route but his especially i was like.... but why are you suddenly so ride or die??)

tokisada - cute! but im not typically a fan of the little bro type. when he talks about walking into the ocean tho i did cry 😢 his bad ending main menu speech is so good. i love it when men break down despondently 😌

yosuga - loved him up to That Scene. i love possessive dubcon stuff in otome but this was a character who was established to be someone who prioritizes consent and safety for the female citizens of yomu so it just seemed so out of left field and uncharacteristic. did enjoy the hades and persephone analogue vibes tho

riku - such a fan of this nerd. for some reason i felt his angst more than i did the others perhaps bc his biggest obstacle in returning byakuya's love was his own self. rly related to his desire and anxiety to live up to other people's standards and his general ineptness in romantic situations. bc it often ends w byakuya being the most forward one which i always enjoy whenever the mcs take the lead in otome. had fun w him but he and byakuya felt the most whiplash along w himuka

kuroba - enjoyed his personality for most of the game and was honestly thrown off that he ended up being the most yandere of the bunch. which is interesting considering the reveal of who his birth father actually is. was not a huge fan of how they treated sexual assault in this route. like i intellectually understand why the good ending is like that but they rly should have let that motherfucker choke. handkerchief callback was adorable tho

akaza - BIG FAN of bbq dad. his was the one i was looking forward to the most bc he was the one byakuya was the most resistant in giving a chance. and im just a sucker for decent men who give off a bad first impression bc they take things too seriously. i love his insistence of asserting himself and byakuya as singular entities and not bound by the fate of their roles which is a deft way of tying the relationship with the game's overall themes. his route felt the most believable in selling why they're compatible and why they fell in love because they went to intentional multiple dates where it truly felt like they were learning about each other. i would have liked some room to explore his faults and fears outside of byakuya but i enjoyed his route the most so i can't complain too much

other scattered thoughts

the short stories are great esp the memoirs by the supporting cast. made me appreciate them more bc it gave them nuance and complexity

SHURA 🥰 complicated women my loves. wish tho that her bitterness against byakuya wasn't also rooted in her infertility. not that the motivation is inherently bad but as one of the few female dynamics byakuya has it isn't great

hairi devolving to villainy was understandable but disappointing. wish tho that there was one character based in yomu who wasn't on byakuya's side but wasn't also a villain either.

douma reveal just doesn't sit right in the end like they're trying to establish this grumpy dad vibe when douma spent the majority of the games not just being grumpy and stoic but actively being an asshole and almost resentful

kanan i was generally annoyed with until i got through the bad endings and read his memoir and i did a complete 180 on him. earnestly really enjoy this asshole now and i find him fascinating as a villain

tsukuyomi's memoir is my absolute fave "now i water the cherry tree" just the existential resignation of it all....

don't have much thoughts on the obvious allegory and how it explores oppression as a theme namely bc im missing the cultural and historical framework w my largely western lens and i think context here is absolutely imperative to do this justice

[yandere-daze]

Honestly with all those idols fawning over you, you could very much create a cult centered around you -- their darling

Despite the Shinkai cult having been ceased to nonexistent by Madara's hands, and Kanata himself abandoning his duties as a god to become human and exist alongside them; what would stop Kanata from picking up his duties as a god again and declare you as his god/goddess at his own cult?

Would Madara and Chiaki be mad at their darling for wasting their efforts of making Kanata more humane during their yumenosaki years? Or would they join the cult centered around their darling?

gn reader

tw yandere, discussion of cults, obsession

Would the characters form a cult for the player?

Hmmm I actually don´t think current Kanata would start his own cult again, even as a yandere. I think he´s pretty happy to be human because that gives him a chance to be with you! I think he might start to see you as a god though, maybe? So he might start treating you as someone "superior" to everyone else.

The main reason why I don´t think a cult would be started by the self-aware characters? This is kind of petty but most of them are too possessive and jealous for that, even if there are ones that treat you like a god and worship you. Being in a cult with everyone else means that they all worship you and offer themselves up for you and that would mean sharing you in a sense! They are the only ones that truly adore and love you as you deserve, the others aren´t worthy of even sending a glance your way!

They also want you for their very own, not to be shared with the others under any circumstances so I assume pretty much everyone would protest against joining a cult where your "love" needs to be shared with all of its members. They would much rather monopolize all of your time and have the others stay away. They don´t need to join a cult to build their own shrine of you!

I want to reference a different post I made some time ago where I talked about how the fans would act around the player. Please give it a read before continuing here!

Anyway, in that post I described that the fans would kind of be like dolls without their own thoughts. They aren´t established characters in the enstars games and are just faceless people that don´t have any real importance ( they´re even a game mechanic). So they probably wouldn´t be self-aware like the characters or even actual individuals with their own thoughts and feelings.

They´re part of the game and as such, the game itself twists everything to be as welcoming to you as it can. So it´s only natural that the fans that listen to the new lovesick lyrics of their favorite idols would soon grow to favor you as well! The game immediately erases such ugly feelings like jealousy and instead turns them into love for you!

So remember how I said the idols wouldn´t form a cult because they all want to have you to themselves? Well, that doesn´t really apply to faceless masses of people that are suddenly very interested in you, right?

I mean, they are artificial, they are told by the game itself to love you so it only makes sense that they would get obsessive, right? So maybe it isn´t too far off to say that the crazy fan club might one day turn into a cult where they can properly worship you.

They don´t care about having you for their own, they aren´t *actual* real people. They only exist to adore and serve you.

[mc-critical]

Asking because I’ve seen you say it on here: What is it that you disliked about Mahifiruze and Aysë as characters (writing or otherwise?)

It's not a problem of sympathy alone, because while these characters have quite a few offputting qualities and have certainly done some heinous deeds, it would be unfair to judge them only by that. There are way worse people in the franchise, which turn me off way more, after all. (*cough* MCK Turhan *cough*) Sympathy-wise, I'm overally ambivalent towards both Ayşe and Mahfiruze and if we only take that into account, I can take or leave them. It's their writing, however, where things take a different turn. Almost everything went wrong there.

The critical problem I find with both of the characters is that they're engrained in one and the same character archetype the writers refuse to get them out of. That brings harm not only to their characterization and the way they're built up, but also to the sympathy we're supposed to feel for them, because, more often than not, it didn't have a ground to stand on. It's true that archetypes often risk to make a character bland and one-dimensional, but the way they went with it is strange and unfortunate, because this all could've been averted quickly.

Magnificent Century's character core is mostly built on archetypes of a soapy drama and Magnificent Century: Kösem seemed to be following that trend. I understand that choice, in a way, because well, it could've just been easier for them, they could've thought they would win their former MC audience once again, playing it "familiar" and "safe". Thing is, the whole franchise overally does pretty well with archetypes: they either subvert them, deconstruct them or break them entirely later, either (in the case of MCK where we saw many previously established MC archetypes) use them with some core conceptual changes and a different theme in mind, which, as far as writing goes, worked very well with many characters. (see: Dervish - Ibrahim; Dilruba - Mihrimah; Atike - Mihrimah; Davud - Rustem, etc.) The thing is though, the writers didn't give Ayşe and Mahfiruze any of that and their archetypes felt like they only were in the beggining line, going almost nowhere beyond that and making the characters feel very often as cardboard cutouts as a result. They're going with archetypes, but they somehow give only a single fraction of these archetypes to figures that play a relatively big role in the story.

Comparisons to other usages of the character archetype of Mahfiruze and Ayşe's help even less, because everything now not only turned out to be a bad concept, but and a shaky, underdeveloped attempt at something done way better before. Mahfiruze and Ayşe both fit in Mahidevran's early season 1 archetype - the rejected, jealous woman, previously valued and loved by the Sultan, which loses everything quickly, planning and ready to do anything to take the rival down, including petty sneers, irrational decisions and will for murder. But even at its worst, Mahidevran's characterization was balanced overall, having moments where we could sympathize or condemn her respectively and had character fleshing out come to the surface as often as the reducement to this one sole archetype, which was lacking severely in Ayşe and Mahfiruze. I'll talk about the similarities they share with Mahidevran only briefly when I analyze them, because I'm admittedly very biased when it comes to this (especially with the double standarts I encounter with the YT comments, where the same people judge Mahidevran and Ayşe by the exact same metric and yet, they love one and can trash the other all day, eh.) and I don't want that to take over the topic at hand so much.

Mahfiruze has the problems I listed above to a much lesser extent than Ayşe, but that doesn't mean they're not present at all. She has a very familiar character role and personality - she is a mother to the eldest heir of the throne and gives jabs and insults to her rival. And.. that's all there is. It's undeniable than Dilara Aksuek's Mahfiruze definetly had a tough act to follow, since the former Mahfiruz screamed potential and promise the latter character was expected to fulfill, but they did the barest possible minimum. (and I don't think Dilara's a bad actress by any means: she acted amazingly in the show Istambullu Gelin as Ipek, an arguably similar and much better written character.) It definitely felt as more of a regression than a progression, because Mahfiruze had no fleshing out or development at all. Her meanness to Kösem seemed central to her character, she barely had any interactions with the rest of the cast and what is worse, used her as a plot device for a plot-line with Ahmet's enemies and then when her role was fulfilled, they.. killed her off just like that without any warning or elaboration. She was the very definition of a one-dimensional obstacle to Kösem that seemed to exist only for the sake to be an obstacle to Kösem. It was as if she didn't matter. And when she did, it was only as a narrative instrument to stir the conflict between Kösem and Osman (which I find very interesting, but I feel it would've been way more impactful if Mahfiruze wasn't only... this.) It was as if the writers ran out of stuff to do with her, which is a very lazy copout for me, because she could've had interesting storylines, if only they just wished to "shake up" the traits of her archetype for a bit.

Ayşe's character is where this repetitive problem shines through the brightest. We can argue that the love triangle plot and Farya's Mary Sue stance ruined it all for her from the get go, but for me, the foundation of her character is what truly did. Ayşe wasn't used simply as a plot device as much, she wasn't even underutilized at all, she was put into an archetype which undermines how different she is as a character in practice and the greatly dissimilar circumstances she's under. They tried to fit Mahidevran's S01 archetype in an environment it would never do in the first place. It not only becomes a stagnant, more over exaggerated repetition of a concept and forces unnecessary drama to prop another character up, it way too often puts a sole angle of Ayşe's character into focus, making Farya the center of her writing. Not to mention that for long, we didn't have a cohesive reason to root for her, her early love for Murat being the thing that was the least fleshed out about her and could make her too obsessive and yandere at times. Her interactions are criminally underdeveloped, as well, and unlike Mahfiruze, that could honestly be cut shorter except for Osman, they were something Ayşe desperately needed. We got only hints of her relationship with Kösem, Silahtar and Gevherhan and that was far from enough. Most of her scenes were either with her maid or Farya. Her alliances with Gülbahar and Sinan respectively were... fine interarion-wise, to be honest, but writing-wise, they only enforced the fairly consistent endorsement of the soapy aspect of her character beyond any measure.

Now, I can't doubt the development in her later episodes, where the writing admittedly improved. I'll always love her scene before the death of Gevherhan and her message to Murat, because that's the Ayşe I wish I saw more often. The self-awareness she gained of how Murat screwed her over was amazing and something I wish happened more gradually and over the span of more episodes. But it was all somehow "too little, too late" for me and it didn't completely save her messy writing. And it's a crime, because Ayşe played a much bigger role than Mahfiruze in the narrative, she was basically a main character and she got robbed of a good, organic fleshing out and arc.

Ayşe was the most egregious example of the severe flawed writing of repetitive archetypes and catch me forever mad about it, because she could've been much more. It's a mistake that had no business being there at all. And it was anyway.

[otonymous]

Lucien and The Lure of Forbidden Fruit (MLQC Character Analysis)

Hello dear readers!

I’m sure that everyone knows by now that Lucien is my favourite MLQC boy (even after the events of chapter 13), and I’d like to take this opportunity to explain why.  Needless to say, this analysis will be lengthy and include lots of spoilers (for certain Lucien-related dates and the main story, up to and including chapter 14), so the rest will be posted after the break!  

Please keep in mind that I know next to nothing about what’s happened in the story beyond the new chapters released in the English server, so apologies if my theories prove incorrect to those who know better 😆

In response to the lovely Anon, on a superficial level, Lucien is exactly my type: tall, dark and handsome, and a genius to boot.  I love my men intelligent with a side of suave, someone who isn’t afraid of wearing his feelings on his sleeve — and this sexy professor delivers.  But I swear my reasons for loving Lucien extend beyond this paragraph 😂 Please do me the favour of reading on!

@blueanimewriting, I see Lucien’s character as being quite complex, and labels such as “yandere” alone are not enough to encapsulate him as a whole.  Let us consider what we know of Lucien (in the English server) so far.

Lucien, aka Ares, is a high-ranking agent of the Black Swan Collective (BSC) — a super shady secret society with equally shady ambitions for the world, whose plans seem to hinge on MC’s cooperation.  In Chapter 13, it is revealed that Lucien’s kindness and attentiveness to the MC was all part of his plan to lure her into a trap on behalf of the BSC.  On the surface, everything about this screams betrayal.  But is it really?  More on this later.

Going back to @blueanimewriting’s question, a yandere is typically seen as a character with a sweet exterior who is capable of engaging in extremely violent and deranged behaviour when it comes to anything/anyone who challenges their relationship with the love interest.  In my understanding of this archetype, the aggressive behaviour typically doesn’t reveal itself until love has been established, in that either the yandere realizes they are in love or are already in a relationship. 

As we’ve seen in Chapter 13, Lucien is already highly respected and feared within the BSC, where he is known especially for his ruthlessness. The man won’t hesitate to dispatch Black Swan minions with little more than a flick of his hand, teleporting them to god knows where (we just know that the thought alone is enough to make them shake — remember Josie after her little illusory arson trick in Chap 13-1?). The man even smiled when his eye got split open as punishment for dragging his feet on his mission and not capturing MC.  There is little doubt that Lucien is no stranger to violence, whether he’s the source of it, or at its mercy - a fact that most definitely precedes his relationship with MC.

The professor’s villainous behaviour does not come as a result of him falling in love, as is typical with a yandere.  He is a man tasked with a goal, and his actions must be interpreted through that lens.  Did he stalk MC by moving in right next door?  Absolutely.  Was it out of love?  Probably not from the outset; he likely needed to monitor her as part of his mission.  Did Lucien ever direct violent behaviour towards other potential suitors for MC’s affections?  I don’t recall him ever behaving aggressively towards Victor, Gavin, or Kiro.  Lucien’s deception and manipulation seems to stem solely from his mission, not from love.

Is Lucien innately evil, simply “born to be bad” so to speak?  It’s hard to be certain at this point with the information we have.  What we DO know is that the boy grew up without both parents at a young age, and may have been deprived of the opportunity to learn about proper human interaction — love, in particular.  Hence, Lucien learns about affection by watching old Hollywood films in the cinema until the early morning hours, and reads books on how to be a good boyfriend.  He asks MC to teach him how to love in his New Light Date.  Perhaps it was just a bit of shameless flirting.  Or perhaps, he was being completely sincere.

Of the sincerity of his affection for MC, however, there can be no doubt.  Scattered throughout various dates and the story itself, we find instances of Lucien fighting his growing feelings for her.  In his Aquarium Date, he admits that he has become too involved with the girl, despite knowing he should have kept his distance.  In his Midnight Date, we witness Lucien ordering himself not to think of MC whilst clutching his chest in pain, the moment clearly illustrating that love had “taken root in his heart.”  We also catch a glimpse of the professor’s true feelings in his aptly named True Love Date, in which Lucien tries his hardest to avoid MC (likely to prevent himself from falling even more in love with her), and fails spectacularly, displaying some extremely jealous behaviour when he mistakenly thinks she has feelings for someone else.

And while I could be wrong (depending on Ares’ ultimate agenda), the strongest evidence of Lucien’s love for MC would be the fact that he dragged his feet for so long on his mission, and still let her go in the end.  If he was a total villain through and through, would it have been likely that MC would’ve escaped simply by saying that Lucien owed her a thank-you gift?  I think not.  Her ass would’ve been teleported back to BSC headquarters so fast.

So, we get to the crux of the matter, the reason why MC’s romance with Lucien/Ares will prove to be one of, if not the most, heart-wrenching ones in the game.  Their relationship is star-crossed: Romeo and Juliet, Evolver-style.  Lucien knows full well he was not to fall in love with her but couldn’t help himself and did it anyway.  MC obviously had feelings for Lucien, and even in the face of his betrayal, still initially refused to accept it (“...you are not Lucien.  He would never harm me.  Ares and Lucien have nothing to do with each other!”).  

The very image of the blood-red Lycoris blooming in MC’s dream at the beginning of Chapter 9 can be interpreted as referencing this ill-fated romance: when the flower blooms, the leaves have already fallen, and when the leaves grow, the flower has already wilted — the two can never be together.  In the same vein, Lucien and MC are desperately in love with each other, but are standing on very different sides of a war that is gradually brewing.  This is the stuff of angst-filled romantic dreams, for everyone knows forbidden fruit is the sweetest.  It is also one of my favourite romantic tropes.

Yes, Lucien manipulated MC’s feelings in order to advance his own goals.  But the professor never anticipated that he would fall victim to his own feelings for her.  And that was the moment when his world was no longer black and white, cut and dried.  He let his emotions get in the way of his mission, and was sorely punished for it.  But perhaps his greatest punishment came when he had to watch his own confession of betrayal crush MC’s heart (let us not forget that look of sorrow that flashed in his eyes during Chapter 13’s showdown).

Yes, Lucien hurt us.  But in doing so, he also hurt himself.

If you’re still reading at this point, 1) thank you for sticking around as I prance atop my soapbox, and 2) if you’re still not convinced, consider this: would Elex really make you fall in love with a main character only to make you hate him to pieces?  Who in their right minds would blow tons of cold, hard cash on those gorgeous Lucien karmas, such as…

…if he didn’t have a way of ultimately redeeming himself in the end, however far away that is?  I am a firm believer that Lucien/Ares will have a redemption arc, and that it will be absolutely fantastic when it happens. 💕

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Thanks for reading!  Check out more of my work here! 📚

[thatyanderecritic]

Hi! So I saw a post of you talking about how blank MCs/inserts in yandere written stories typical have no personality because of the nature of being inserts. What would you suggest could be done if someone wanted to write a second-person POV story that is from a semi reader insert perspective. To give the narrating character an actual personality?

To write an MC: Writing Tips with Kai

Hey there anon. Kai here to answer your question. 

If you want the simple answer, it’s pretty obvious: Just give them a personality, duh. It ain’t rocket science. Even if the MC is meant to be a self-insert or relatable to reader, just give them a personality and not make them blank with generic personality traits. Even if the character is so wildly different from how a person may act, most people do a thing called “roleplay”. In that story, they aren’t the “[Y/N]” from IRL but the “[Y/N]”, the baddass assassin (or something like that). 

Now that’s the simple answer. For those who want a more in depth answer, read below the cut.

As stated before, the best way to write a an MC with a second person POV is to actually give them a personality. The only way you could actually pull off a blank MC is if you’re writing for a game. But games fall under a different set of rules. For now, we’re strictly talking about stories/books/ect. (basically a medium that doesn’t allow for the reader to directly influence). 

Authors shouldn’t be try to achieve in making an MC that everyone can self insert in. It is an impossible endeavor and with blank MCs, you’re going to end up appealing to the lowest denominator. And when you think about it, it sounds like you’re a wishy-washy person if you try to make everyone happy by making such an MC (note: I’m not implying that authors who do blank MCs are wishy-washy, I’m just stating that it could come across in such a manner). You’re simply better off appealing to no one and concentrate on telling a good story. And to make a good story, you need to have solid characters. A blank MC isn’t a solid character. 

Personally, I don’t think an author should worry too much of the audience being able to relate or “be” the MC. It’s really not that big of a deal. A majority of people are capable of doing a thing called “roleplaying”. You know, inserting themselves as the character and pretending to be that character. It’s easier to pretend to be a defined person than an empty puppet. In fact, authors should be more concern in making a good roleplaying experience and not “is this MC vague enough?” You may think having a blank MC helps the roleplaying experience, but it isn’t. Here are the reason why:

Blank MCs are typically stupid and make dumb decisions. If I was the reader, I would be wondering, “Is the author insinuating that I’m a stupid person?” There’s also the fact that people would get upset and go, “I would never do such a thing” hence making a disconnect. 

Blank MCs are overly passive and inactive. Due to the fact that authors want to have the MC be everyone, the author can’t predict what everyone would do in a certain scenario. In the end, the “safest” option would be to do nothing. But then that leads to upset readers since practically everyone would at least do something instead of nothing. 

Blank MCs usually only have two traits: nice and clumsy. That’s it. Those are the only two traits. Obviously this is a bland person and really, not everyone is that clumsy… or that naively nice. Some people can be given the illusion that they are this MC with just these factors, but with the combination of just the two, there can be a disconnect and people go, “What’s wrong with this person?”

As you can see, the main issue with blank MCs are the fact that there’s a disconnect. People aren’t puppets. If you simply give a person a body but give them permission to move it, then are you not making that person an unmoving puppet? You’re basically telling people they’re just a wall or a piece of furniture… not a person… especially a person that they know quite intimately: themselves. Having an MC with an actual personality that people can establish, people will have a better attitude. You might be surprised but people can relate to other who aren’t “themselves”. As long as a person can understand the other, then they can put themselves in the other person’s shoes. Instead of pushing “This MC is literally you” try pushing “This MC is you’re role, Mx. Actor”. Even if the character is so completely different from the reader, readers would just be happy if they can just insert their own name. To summarize the audience’s reaction would be this meme:

But if you’re really insistent for a blank MC, the only place that it could work would be video games or interactive fiction (visual novels, chose your own adventure, ect.). The reason why this option works so well with blank MCs is that the reader actually have a say in what the MC does… basically, the reader is filling in the blanks as they move in the story. At this point, the blank MC is given life. But the probably most of the time with this particular case is that author’s miss the point. 

The biggest control freaks of out of all creators would be authors since most options are usually limited or would punish the player if they don’t act how the author wanted them to act. What’s the point in giving options if you’re just going to tell the reader that they think wrong? For example: a reader would get his negative points if they refuse to do something superficial with a love interest; like going out drinking or if they like muffins or not. Why do they get punished if they don’t like muffins??? Doesn’t make any sense. 

The same go for options. Most of the time… the option sucks. It’s either be the “UwU” soft type, the unnecessarily bitchy one (for some reason), or the quite one who’s only dialogue options are “…”. But I guess that how people view others: either the Virgin Mary, Lilith, or a blow up doll. Fuck me, ay?

Just give more reasonable options and don’t punish players/readers over the smallest superficial details. Let a person like a brownie, god damn it. 

Now that we establish the fact of: “Yes, authors should give an MC a personality even if they’re a self insert”, here’s some tips if you want to have a unique personality for your MC-

Don’t let the MC make stupid choices. Kinda obvious but, using the MC’s stupidity as a plot device is over done. I mentioned this before: There’s other sort of conflicts BESIDES the MC’s stupidity. Like MC vs. nature or MC vs. fate. Sometimes, even if you did your best, life doesn’t always work out perfectly. 

Don’t make the MC an overly emotional mess that cries over the smallest thing. Similar to the stupid choices point, it’s an over done trope. 

Let the MC be sensible and have common sense. If a door is locked, then it obviously needs a key. You don’t need the MC to go through a mental gymnastics to figure this simple shit.

Let your MC be morally grey. People aren’t black and white. Why do authors always try to make the MC an angel? There’s a thing in between you guys.

Let your MC be evil. While I personally would like more morally grey MCs, evil MCs are probably the next rarest type of MC. It’s good to have variety. 

Try to let your MC be more of a T (Thinking) from the MBTI personality types instead of F (Feeling). Personality types that have a T in it are one of the more rarer types of protagonist in stories. They’re normally either the villains or side characters. Rarely the protagonist. It’s a bit more common to expect a T male MC while T female MCs are downright mythical. Probably because it’s womanly to be an F… oops. 

Don’t make your MC be overly naive. Like seriously, why are all these MCs act like they lived under a rock for the past five years. “What is this… strange heartbeat when I’m next to my love interest? Must be a heart attack.” Biiiiitch. Not everyone is so emotionally stunted. And before anyone think that the T type of personality are like this… no, they aren’t. Just because they use their brain doesn’t mean they don’t understand how they feel. If anything, they’ll take these feeling and formulate a plan on how to successfully woo their partner… anyways, point is: Don’t make your MC an emotional virgin.

In yandere stories in particular, let your MC be the yandere’s equal… if possible, their superior. Actually, just give a unique character dynamic instead of “UwU, the yandere is overbearing and stronger than me.”

Anyways, I hope this was helpful to you anon!

Here’s a bonus picture of all the T type personalities that you could use for unique MCs:

(Bonus: I’m an INTJ while Julie is an INTP, in case anyone was wondering)

[maleyanderecafe]

Nuture Vs Nature Yanderes

This analysis was suggested by @stillnotjulie! If you guys have any other requests for analysis, please tell me and I’ll be happy to give an analysis. Anyways, this topic is a bit interesting since it goes into a moral debate that’s going on right now, so let’s see how it goes! 

The debate between Nature and Nurture is basically this: are a person’s characteristics determined by Nature, meaning that you’re born with your traits and preferences, or are they determined by Nurture, meaning the conditions, people and area you’re raised in? Both sides have their respective points and proof that people have gathered. For instance, in the case of Nature, there have been documents of twins that have been raised apart that have similar characteristics, such as eating in similar ways or having the same dominant hand. In the case of Nurture, there are documentations of people who live in the same area having similar behaviors and preferences. Really, I think that both are a determining factor on how a person behaves, but the question really is how much each of them affect people. Perhaps one is more affected by how they were nurtured, while another person is more affected by their own preferences. It’s most likely something that differs from person to person. I’ll be writing each of these in reference to the yandere’s families, since this kind of argument is generally tied with family and environment. 

The main thing about Nature based yanderes is that they are basically born with the traits of a yandere. Generally, this means that these characters are just born with the sense of obsessive or possessive behaviors or have an inclination to develop these behaviors. These kinds of yanderes I feel are usually the kinds that are in horror style stories, since usually these behaviors are either very sudden or something that they have felt for their entire lives. It’s also less sympathetic as there’s not necessarily a reason to why they feel this way: they could be extremely rich with a nice family or they could be poor with no family at all, and just be born with the traits of a yandere. However, that’s not to say that they can’t develop their feelings more with the environment around them. The difference is that a Nature based yandere would seek out things that would enforce this kind of lovesick behavior while Nurture based yanderes would gradually develop them by the influence around them. For instance, a yandere wants to love the girl next door and learns how to behave like a prince from fairytales that he reads. In this case, he is drawn to fairytales because he believes that it’s a way to get the girl next door to fall in love with him. 

A way to write a nature based yandere is to have them be very different from their family counterparts, essentially making them the black sheep of the family. For instance, a very occultist obsessed, introverted yandere in a very cheery and outgoing family. Or a very cold and calculating family with a cheerful deredere style yandere. Basically, making it seem like the two aren’t related would make the nature part of the yandere fairly clear. The family, of course, might have different reactions to their yandere actions. One of them is shaking off the behavior as harmless or possibly just a phase. Usually the family is oblivious to the yandere’s true intentions or just doesn’t see any of it as a threat. The family might be very aware of the actions, but doesn’t see it as harmful or don’t find it necessarily bad or evil in their eyes. Another reaction is fear towards the yandere child, possibly trying to ignore them or trying not to get in the way of their actions. They might also attempt to change the subject whenever something that triggers the yandere comes up to avoid any conflict. Or, perhaps they just don’t have any interest in their yandere child’s love life. It could be that they live far away because they have a job or it could be that the parents don’t interfere with their yandere child’s life. It is also possible that the family itself are all very similar in personality, but the yandere has a different way of getting the person to love them. For instance, a kuudere like family, where most of the children tend to slowly get close to their loved ones and tend to act more distant, while the yandere might be more active in trying to be close to their loved ones. 

The nature based yandere doesn’t necessarily have to be developed by birth, it can be something that naturally comes to them based on their current personality. Yanderes can develop lovesick feelings later in life, though usually because of their own set-in personalities. For instance, a yandere who wants to be the best in everything, studies, sports, socializing and then falls in love with someone. They then focus everything they have to woo the person they love, they try to be the best in studies, sports whatever to impress them and try to get as much information on them so that they can be the best lover that they could be, with stalking, pictures, etc. Basically, their current nature becomes twisted into a yandere like obsession, and would be influenced by what their personality was before. A cold person would probably be a very cold murderer if they fell into lovesickness. A more cheery person would attempt to maintain their social status so that they could get closer to their love interest and would know about anyone who would try to get close to them. Basically, they enhance the new love that they have by using their already established talents and behaviors. It could also just simply be a “snapping” moment, when a character finally becomes a yandere. For instance, a very paranoid boy that eventually snaps when he sees his love kissing someone else. The nature affects the way the character behaves and leads up to the snapping point. 

Nurture yanderes on the other hand, are more heavily inspired by their environment. In a lot of cases, this kind of environment can be from how their parents raised them. If the family members themselves are yanderes, either from being a nature style yandere, or a nurtured yandere, like a generational one, both of these can influence how a nurture yandere can be created. I’ve already talked about both of these in other posts, so I won’t go over them again, but I will note that these are ways that a nurture yandere would eventually grow into an actual yandere. 

However, it can be noted that it is also possible that a yandere can be nurtured by someone who isn’t a yandere. This can be either intentional or not intentional, so let’s start off with someone who is intentionally trying to turn a character into a yandere. Assuming that the person is some sort of parental figure, there might be a reason to why they would want to have their child become a yandere. Perhaps they have vengeance on a person and decide to use their own child to mess up their lives. It could also be a twisted view that they try to enforce on their child, or perhaps an experiment or maybe they just wanted to see if it was possible to create a yandere. This could probably end up with its own post, but basically there are ways to nurture a person into a yandere. It could be through pushing certain ideals into their minds, “mind breaking” in either physical trauma or emotional trauma, or it could be experimentation. If it were another person that caused this, such as the love interest, then it might be a bit different. It would most likely be similar to the story  Been Reincarnated as this Game’s Villainess, I’ll Train the Main Capture Target , with a lot of cause to manipulation and swearing loyalty and things like that. Another way would probably be driving the would be yandere into the breaking point so that he would “snap” though that ends up being more of a tragedy than an actual doting yandere, and is a lot more temporary. Regardless, that’s one way that a nurtured yandere could be born, or I guess created would be a better word. 

Though another way would be through unintentionally creating a yandere. This generally means that the yandere develop mortals based on what other people around him have shown. For instance, a mother who loses her husband and has to take care of her child. While she tries to keep it together for her child, she has a very melancholy atmosphere around the child and when talking about her husband. Thus the child slowly believes that if he ever falls in love, then he has to protect her to make sure nothing bad happens to his loved one because he doesn’t want to end up being sad like his mother. He might even reason that without someone to love, people will just be sad most of their life and that if they do lose them then they will be in that state forever. Thus, the child when he eventually falls in love, tries to lock his lover so that he can never be hurt.  It doesn’t have to be morals either, it could be learned behavior through actions. For instance, the father is a paparazzi photographer and constantly goes out to take pictures of celebrities as a job. The son might associate taking pictures and following someone around as an action of “love” or “admiration” and might try that for someone that they like by climbing up trees and taking pictures even in situations where they probably shouldn’t have. The other way of doing so is with the “breaking point” that I mentioned a lot. If essentially you “train” the yandere to act a certain way, this could also occur. If the lover is prone to life-threatening accidents, then it would be understandable that the yandere would be more paranoid and would account for possible disasters that might happen. 

Anyways, that’s my opinions on the matter. Thanks for the suggestion @stillnotjulie!

[terriblepersonextraordinaire]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia’s Character Analysis of Faye

Unable to get Alm out of her mind, Faye returned to her old life in Ram Village. Eventually, she met and married a suitor who claimed he did not mind her pining for the king, though her habit of vanishing without notice for days at a time continued to worry her new family.When IntSoft decided to remake the black sheep of the series, Fire Emblem Gaiden, they decided to add in another character to the roster and to Alm’s villager friends. An original female character known as Faye in the West.

After her debut, she was met with comparisons to series’ previous Camilla and Tharja due to her odd lines and dubbed a Catria archetype--a young woman who falls in love with the main lord of the game and has her feelings unrequited. 

However, I feel as though there’s more to Faye than most of the fanbase says there is. Accusing her of being a shallow, yandere girl meant to be pander to the audience and the writer’s kinks is a large disservice to some of the most self-aware writing in Fire Emblem. There’s more to her, and while it all does tie back to Alm, there’s more to it than a simple crush played for laughs and endearment.

A disclaimer for his post is that I have only played the English version of Fates and lack access and the knowledge of the Japanese script. However, judging from the quality of the localization, it’s safe to assume that, for the most part, Faye’s character remains intact as the game traveled from east to west.

First, I want to talk about the collective fanbase’s perception of Faye as a continuation of Tharja and Camilla’s legacy as a clingy, obsessive girl meant to act as fanservice and her role as a Catria. To put it as bluntly as possible, Faye is 100% a Catria archetype. A young woman/girl in an unrequited romance with the protagonist/main lord of the game. However, as a successor of Tharja and Camilla, Faye could not be any different.

Tharja is a yandere and that makes her hot and attractive to people. Her obsession with Robin, her quirks regarding hexes, and her creepy demeanor are what made her such a standout and popular character in Awakening’s cast. However, Tharja’s unhealthy love and adoration towards Robin is never truly a flaw in her character. In two of her supports in particular, Tharja expresses her love for Robin and how it eclipses the love she has for her two potential partners, yet neither them nor the writing seem to call her out or present this as an awful thing to say. Henry’s alright with it, and all Libra can do is make a small joke about it. In her support with Robin, she curses the man in order to get her way with him, and it’s all played for laughs and humor.

For Camilla, it’s arguably worse, because her obsession doesn’t simply end with Corrin, but with potential love interests and her subordinate, such as Selena. A Youtuber already made a character analysis regarding Camilla’s twisted love, so I’ll link it here. 

To summarize, Camilla’s obsessive behavior is a core aspect of her character to the point that it slithers into nearly each and every single one of her supports, even the ones that don’t mention Corrin in any capacity. However, the writing and narrative don’t really give her any consequences for this controlling behavior. In fact, it makes light of it several times. Even when Corrin attempt to establish his/her independence, Camilla brushes it off and gets her way in the end anyway. Only when her family is torn apart by Hoshido in the non-canon Birthright ending does she wind up unhappy--but she’s not challenged nor held back by these explicitly unhealthy habits.

This is where Faye differs from the two, both in terms of her presentation and her execution. For starters, we need to take a look at Faye’s supports. While speaking with Alm, Faye says the typical, “Now, shall I head back out there and slay more of your enemies for you?” much like Camilla does with Corrin. Later, she says, “You touched my hand! I was up all night thinking about it.” Again, this is behavior that wouldn’t be too out of character for Tharja to say. So far, just your typical funny haha yandere character.

However, the support drops this line from Alm, “I’m worried about the toll this war is taking on her.”

It’s a this point that the player is given a hint that this type of behavior isn’t normal for anyone, and that the narrative is acknowledging it. The support ends quite sadly, with Alm rejecting Faye’s dream of the two of them returning to Ram village to live out their lives together--and in the process tells her that he doesn’t love her.

For her support with Silque, things start out rocky. When Silque approaches her, excited to find another girl in the army, Faye rejects any offer of friendship with, “I’d rather spend time with Alm than stand around gossiping,” and later, “talking about Alm isn’t fun unless Alm himself is there,” in their B rank. In other words, Faye isn’t interested in socializing if Alm or her friends aren’t involved. Yet, at the end of the support, Faye approaches Silque this time. “After you stopped approaching me...I realized I missed your company. I guess I needed a friend after all.”

Faye isn’t someone that wants to be alone, nor is she someone that’s bad at communicating with other people. However, her obsession with Alm keeps her from being social or from expressing herself in a healthy manner. She pushes Silque away, preferring her more stable relationship with Alm. It’s not only with Silque, but with her own family. In the game, Faye has three base conversations, and the last one is particularly interesting.

Faye: It’s so cold in the Rigelian Empire— nothing at all like Zofia. When we first left Ram, I never dreamed we would come so far. I hope Ma and Pa and Nana are doing all right without me… I send them letters, you know? Just the other day, I got one back. They said I talk too much about you. They want to know what’s happening with me, not you. But they don’t understand that I AM writing about myself! Or at least I’m writing about what matters to me…

In Fire Emblem Fates, Camilla is portrayed a motherly figure and is rather involved in her family’s lives. She is also able to form a wide variety of supports with the various different soldiers in. In Awakening, Tharja is established as a loner from the beginning, so her reluctance to make friends--even though she does--is independent of her love for Robin. In Echoes, Faye’s obsession directly interferes with her various relationships. Whether it’s establishing new ones such as with Silque or alienating her family with her ramblings about Alm, it’s shown as a negative aspect in her life.

It’s not an accidental part on the writers, either. The game mechanics themselves make this clear that her love of Alm has a negative impact on her. In the game, character gain bonuses for supporting with each other and standing close in battle. Faye is no exception. In fact, her supports with Alm give her quite a hefty bonus, with a +20 in Hit and +15 in crit. However, there’s something that makes Faye stand out in the game in terms of bonuses, and even in the entire series.

Faye gets a -15 Avoid bonus. 

She is the only character this happens to. Every other character in the game, and to my knowledge the entire series, never gets a negative support bonus. Her relationship with Alm, while still granting her benefits, negatively impacts her and her chances of survival.

It’s at this point that the writer’s intents become clear: they know that Faye’s love in unhealthy, and that speaks volumes about the self-awareness that went into crafting this character. It’s as though Faye was written in response to characters like Camilla and Tharja. Although love is a wonderful feeling that is present in quite a few of the relationships amongst the casts of FE games, here they portray what an obsessive love can do to a person, and how it can negatively impact her. 

While Tharja and Camilla’s obsessions were quirks that added to light-hearted scenes, it’s a legitimate flaw for Faye. It’s something that she needs to work on because it gets in the way of her relationships and her performance in battle. It threatens her life with the -15 Avoid bonuses, making her more prone to be hit by enemies in the battlefield.

The final piece of evidence I have is her ending.

Unable to get Alm out of her mind, Faye returned to her old life in Ram Village. Eventually, she met and married a suitor who claimed he did not mind her pining for the king, though her habit of vanishing without notice for days at a time continued to worry her new family.

Even after the war, Faye could not get over Alm, and that creates such a sad and tragic ending for her. It’s not a quirk, it’s a legitimate problem she has and cannot work around it. It interferes with her everyday life and makes it hard to form other relationships.

Faye is not a quirky yandere character. Her obsession is portrayed in an unhealthy manner and as a concern both by Alm and by the narrative. While at first it might’ve been amusing, the joke stops being funny once the player gets deeper in. By the end of the game, it’s heartrending how this girl attaches herself to this man she cannot have.

It’s quite sad as well how most of the fanbase doesn’t acknowledge how the poor girl really suffers because of how little screentime she gets as a minor character. However, it’s clear just how much time and effort the writers put into Faye to make her stand out. She’s not just another Tharja and Camilla, she’s a girl with a problem that she cannot overcome. It’s a legitimate flaw for her, and haunts her even into adulthood.

Love is a wonderful thing, and that’s something that’s expressed in Faye as well. She goes out into war out of love for Alm. Because of this, she transforms from a mere village girl to a soldier that successfully rebels against a god. This is illustrated by her monstrous bonuses in her support with Alm. It pushes her forward, and she is able to reach her true potential. However, her love also damns her. Faye is trapped in this obsession and really has no way to overcome it.  For the rest of her life, she’ll watch the new king reign on while she mourns her broken heart.

Faye is a tragic character and flawed character, and that’s what makes her such a complex unit despite having so little time. The self-awareness the writers had while making her went a long way to making a seemingly pointless addition and flat character into such a tragic yet subtle story about unrequited love and what obsession can do to a person.

TL;DR ur waifu a shit #Fayeisbae

[kaibutsushidousha]

What is the type of characters that you hate? (Feel free to show examples)

Now that’s a really interesting ask. I never expect I would ever get to talk in lenght about the concept of character hate and that’s a really fun subject to tackle. The read more here is because the answer is very, very long, not because it has explicit V3 spoilers. It does have chapter 1 spoilers, but only at the last paragraph and with a warning beforehand.

There’s not really any “type” of characters I inherently hate. It’s difficult to create something completely original when almost everything have already been done, so all characters tend to fit into archetypes, but any mildly competent writer will make their character grow beyond their archetype. Of course, I’m not saying it’s not impossible to create unique characters. Iruma, for example, is a character I can’t think of any character similar to her. It also doubles as an example of how this sort of uniqueness doesn’t make your character automatically good.

Anyways, as you want examples, my approach to this question is to name 4 archetypes I dislike, give examples of good characters who overcame their unlikable archetype and tell how them did. But before that I’ll have to say that bad archetypes never make me truly hate a character. When I see a character on an archetype I don’t like, I just don’t care about the character initially. I can’t bring myself to hate it because I believe in the character’s potential to become much more than what they were introduced at. And if they don’t by the end of the story, I have no reason to start caring about them now of all times. After I’m done with this for bad archetype examples, I tell you what you need to really make me hate a character.

Example 1) I don’t like rude/brute characters, specially when they are not villains. This is very broad and nearly omnipresent, so it’s hard to think of specific examples, so let’s go with the basic DanganRonpa. The brutest characters in the franchise are Oowada, Kuzuryuu, Owari, Sakakura and Momota. I’m not counting Iruma here because is a completely different brand of rude. I also don’t think I need to talk about Sakakura because almost every reacted to him the same way I did, so we’re left with the other 4. 

Out of all of them, I feel like Owari is the only one who didn’t manage to grow over her archetype. In fact, I feel like her further character construction only made her worse, for reasons I talked about just yesterday. Oowada and Kuzuryuu however, managed to become one of my favorite characters of their respective games. Momota didn’t go that far, but he is pretty good too.

Oowada is definitely brute and angry and it shows, but he is ultimately a character defined by his inner weakness and put directly into constract against the small and frail Fujisaki’s courage and the breaking point of his story comes from internally admiting defeat against Fujisaki. The tropes I don’t like were put into good use and resulted into a brilliant and emotionally strong story that would be impossible without it. 

Kuzuryuu earned mostly by being a character defined by his kindness and how that contrasts with the position he is supposed to fill, but I’ll go in more detail about him when I talk about Peko.

Momota is the least good out of the three, mostly because he doesn’t stray too far from the hero archetype, although he is well used in the good parts of it (mainly being inspirational) and gets a lot of character value out of his interactions with Ouma.

Example 2) Blindly obedient characters. Usually soldiers and maids. This terrible archetype is an easy excuse to make a character’s motivations less personal and they very often tend to feel emotionless. DanganRonpa has easy and convenient examples of characters who didn’t grow beyond the archetype in, you guessed it by the second sentence in the example, Mukuro and Toujou. For the good examples of this, I’ll go with Hisui from Tsukihime and, as I mentioned before, Peko.

Hisui is a character very frequently described by Shiki’s narration as emotionless and machine-like at first, but we as her character is further constructed, we learn that that’s not how she naturally acts and she has very emotinally impactful reasons to act like that. Not to mention she is a central part of Kohaku’s (my favorite character ever) motivations, so I’m naturally inclined to like her by proxy as well.

Peko is most likely the most interesting example in this entire list because the great writing rised a character to my overall top 10 favs at the time(currently still on the 11-20 line) by making good use of archetypical tropes I usually hate. Sure, she was initially present as a type of character I like a lot with only a last minute reveal that she was the archetype I don’t like, but her situation as part of this archetype only made her character extremely better. Peko avoids the pitfalls of the emotionless servant and takes a very unique and unusual twist on the archetype by being the blindly obedient servant of someone who really doesn’t want a blindly obedient servant. As she takes no orders from Kuzuryuu, she has to act based on what she thinks Kuzuryuu wants and she can be wrong about it, as her chapter is a huge evidence of. Her being forced to interpret Kuzuryuu is even more excellent due to what makes Kuzuryuu himself great on his own.  Kuzuryuu is defined as someone who is too kind to be a yakuza boss but still has to fill that role while maintaining the image and reputation that clashes with his essence and that conflict is passed down to Peko as well, because she is very aware of that and has to choose between acting based on the wants of who Kuzuryuu truly is or who Kuzuryuu is trying to be. Every single part of Peko’s writing is genius.

3) Yanderes. This one should be self-explanatory, but also come as surprise due to my love for many other obsessive characters. Yanderes are bad because their obsession is specifically with love and their definition of love is completely different from mine. Yanderes are usually associated with a possessive and jealous personality that wants to keep the target only for themselves regardless of how they feel about it. I see love in many definitions, but mainly as being happy with someone else’s happiness, so I think love-centric characters should be selflessly dedicated to make the “target” happy. I’m a huge sucker for characters in one-sided relationships who support their target in a two-sided with someone else and that’s the main reason I tend to say I prefer one-sided shipps (provided the target doesn’t hate the character in love).

Examples of yanderes I like include Sakura Matou from Fate/stay Night and Mikan Tsumiki. Both have superb backstories establishing them as emotionally dependant, their dependancy is not limited to their yandere traits and their properly treat as creepy, if not outright evil for this behaviour. Bonus points for Sakura for being a rare case were an eroge heroine is the main villain of her own route.

As much as I don’t want to compliment Idol Death Game TV, Rito Karasuma from it and Mukae Emukae from Medaka Box are also excellent example of likable yanderes for a different reason. They both are extremely obsessive but they lack the possessiveness that make yanderes suck. On the contrary, they agree with me on what love should be like and are insanely dedicated to their target’s happiness.

Rito takes part on the Dream of Dream not to win, but to make Ayaka win, because she strongly believes Ayaka is the best idol ever, so everyone else should also get to see how great she is and admire her as much as Rito does. Even after she discovers this actually a death game, she still focused only on making Ayaka win and is perfectly willing to give up her own life for it. Rito’s smile in her route’s secret ending when you make Ayaka win is easily one of the best moments in that shitty game. Rito’s character as whole is a great treasure found in a garbage pit.

As for Emukae, she gets a great character arc about her learning more about Zenkichi’s character during their times together and ultimately decided to support him in his relationship with Medaka. She is exactly the type of character I described here above.

As exemplified with those two, yandere and blindly obedient servant are two archetypes I really dislike, but they go extremely well together, almost completely compensating for each others flaws. The yandere being dedicated to target’s wants eliminates the unlikable possessivity elements and the obsessive yandere passion eliminates the emotionlessness factor and makes the servant character motivations extremely personal. Not to mention the extent of the yandere’s dedication leads to awesome feats like Rito’s “Ayaka-chan is too nervous to perform this show, I should burn the closest building to cancel it” moment and Emukae’s first confession to Zenkichi, which is easily Medaka Box’s most iconic page and my go-to example for when people ask me what Medaka Box is like.

4) Self-insert characters. I never felt like any narrative ever benefitted from immersion or generic “relatability” (relatibility to more unique personal experiences is a different matter though) and that feels like a really lazy excuse not to write your protagonist. There’s really no saving this one, but I really love characters who look like self-inserts at first but then are revealed not to be. The first examples that come to mind are Hajime Hinata, Souta Mizushino from Re:Creators, Shirou Emiya and Shiki Toono from Type-Moon and to some extent Kaede Akamatsu as well.

Proper self-inserts are never good, but they can be at least tolerable if they are being used to make a point. For example, Naegi is literally anyone to push the idea that literally anyone can defeat despair if they are at least a bit optimistic, or Ritsuka Fujimaru is a stand-in for humanity because Fate/Grand Order is a story about celebrating humanity throughout history and about humanity as species surpassing its challenges.

Now let’s move on to what makes me hate a character. As I said, if the character is part of an archetype I dislike and don’t go into a likable direction, I’ll just not care about them, so how do you make me hate a character? Easy, you first bring me to care about the character then take them in a completely unlikable and disappointing direction. Almost all of the characters I truly hate are characters I used to love at some point. If you have been following my blog for a long time, you saw it happen with Angie and Shinguuji. Giving a TLDR answer to the initial question, the type of I character I can hate is: the type of character I can like.

Now let’s move to the example part, let’s give 3 examples of really awful directions you can take your character.

1) Make your character have completely stupid, unreasonable and poorly justified actions and make them to central and relevant to the character to ignore. As for examples, we have the aforementioned Shinguuji and Angie, both who I already explained about.

2) Center your character around a mystery and give that mystery a really underwhelming answer and reveal it in a uncerimonious way that feels like it  never really mattered to begin with, then make it never centrally relevant to the character. 

An example of this character anti-climax is Phi from Zero Escape. She clearly knows a lot more than she should and seems very involved with the plot, but we can never know exactly why because of VLR’s terrible decision of making the ending a complete sequel hook. Next game, Phi is completely sidelined, the answer to her mystery is revealed (technically) without her presence, it more about Delta than about her even thought she had an entire game of pointless build-up about it, we never get a scene of her reacting to it nor her relation to Delta ever matters to ever matter to anything. 

3) Suddenly throw your character into an archetype I dislike. Obviously Peko is an exception to that and is the only one remember right now.

An example where it didn’t benefit the character is Arcueid Brunestud from Tsukihime. Arc is really great in her own route. She is a fun airhead, smart and badass when needed, has a good character arc about her growing humanity and a great dynamic with Shiki. Then the next route we play is Ciel’s. There we see how Arcueid is like when she doesn’t have Shiki’s preference and, guess what, she turns out have been a possessive yandere all along. An overpowered possessive yandere who usurps the role of final boss of the route when it should be Shiki and Ciel’s histories as Roa. I’m glad we never get to see her in any of the next routes.

Another very interesting example is Akane Kurashiki from the Zero Escape escape series, because she incorporates multiples of the 3 examples above at the same, shows how not even my absolute favs are safe from dropping with further characterization and how recovery is always possible down the line.

After I finished 999, I loved Akane’s character to the point she rose to becoming my overall second favorite character. Then we got the unfortunate sequel that was Virtue’s Last Reward. There Akane is quite different. She is not a servant character but she has the exact same problems I have with them. Her very personal story from 999 is replaced with a very unpersonal “save the world” storyline and she acts completely emotionless, even to Junpei, to the point it feels like her fun personality from 999 was just an act to get Junpei to work the way he needed to. (Example 3)

At the end of the game, we get also get some final exposition from Junpei saying that all timelines still exists, his times with Quark will still remain some even if that idea of creating a “perfect timeline“ goes right. What does that mean for Akane’s character? It means she her “heroic“ efforts to fix her history are acutally just her cowardly running away to a different timeline while leaving another version of herself to suffer in the bad timeline instead. That makes her actions not only unpersonal but also unadmirable. (Example 1)

Next we get ZTD, who brings back Akane with her fun teasing personality from the first game and also showing the process of how she steeled herself to become her VLR self, not only confirming the parts I liked about her were a genuine part of her character but also justifying the parts I don’t like, completely solving the example 3 problem. The example 1 part is not solved but it’s acknowledged, questioned and actually has the characters feeling like dicks at some moments for randomly putting their other selves to death. That was enough for me to grow attached to Akane’s character again. She didn’t go back to second spot, but she’s now most likely around 20-30, which is pretty good all things considered.

Well, this is an ask about character hatred, so I think I should talk a bit about the final boss of the characters I hate, a character fits in all of the three examples above simultaneously and didn’t get the redemption Akane did: Kyouko Kirigiri. 

In chapter 6, we start things off with a really uncerimonious reveal that Kirigiri’s talent was actually the most obvious guess imaginable (Example 2). Ok, that’s actually not that bad and we get to hear more about this when she talks about Jin. Jin was, in her own words, talented as detective but that was not something he really wanted to do, so everyone in the family unfairly considered him a failure, including herself (starting to dip a bit into Example 1 territory but not quite, Kyouko has the right to be biased in this situation). Kyouko, however, say she is glad she was abandoned because she was proud of her detective carrer and makes a little speech about a detective’s duty of being impartial (Example 3 into the servant character archetype with her being blindly obedient to Kirigiri family, with an extra dose of unpersonal and emotionless because she is actively enforcing neutrality, along with a bit of Example 1 because the focus on impartiality contradicts the family’s biased attitude towards Jin). Last she says she didn’t hate him for abandoning her, she hated because the rest of her shitty family would constantly treat her with pity for being abandoned, which is something completely beyond his control (Example 1 amplified by the fact the neutrality speech a couple lines ago was Kyouko completely relinquishing her right to be biased). That’s all not even considering the very strong implications that Jin was kicked out of the family (which was apparently confirmed by DRK, but we’ll never know how canon that was). It was actually amazing how managed to hit all the points that mostly make me hate a character with only one single scene.

That’s all about the characters I hate, but now I want to talk about something extra regarding an interesting experience I had with character hate as a concept and how it works on different ways for everyone. That’s the part with V3 spoilers. 

This is actually about Kaede Akamatsu and how she is received by the fandom. I saw some person complaining about the chapter 1 twist and decided to discuss with them about. This turned into a very, very long discussion about Akamatsu’s character and the direction it took. Before that conversation I was a little bit disdainful of Akamatsu fans who hated the twist, but it felt like they didn’t like the character for who she else, but for what they were expecting her to be. While talking about for hours with a person I deemed a bad Akamatsu “fan”, I came to feel like if I wasn’t the huge of fan of mystery narrator murders I am, Akamatsu could very well fall into my hated character list. The person I was talking to described exactly what happens when I grow to hate a character and yet he was still claiming to love her character. That gave me a lot of thought about how people consume media in different ways and have different factors to define what they like or hate. That guy was most likely the reason why this answer turned to so long.

I guess what I’m trying to say with this last thing is that media consumption is always a personal experience and my way of evaluting characters might or might not apply to how you enjoy things, so you don’t have to think my method is right and all others is wrong. Whether you’re liking or hating characters, decide this in a way that works naturally for you and don’t criticize others for experiencing fiction in different ways.