#gary is admittedly quite callous and even mean to efnisien
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Gary got me. Pia, he got me, I cried like a baby over that scene. This was the moment so much of his shitty behavior in the past made sense to me. Now I just want him to get cuddles and a happy ending. How do you do this???
Idk anon it's just one of my favourite things to do!!!
I love that turnaround moment so much. I love reframing a character's actions without forgiving them, so that people can go back and reread (if they want) and feel the weight of those actions with the added knowledge of what was behind them and feel out for themselves what it all means to them. I love the moment someone is like 'oh no he needs a hug' after like 'can we smack him tho' dslakfjsa
There's something about adding layers to a character, where it's like...the first layers are mostly just one flavour with hints of something else. That flavour might make you think the character is 'good' or 'bad.' In the case of Gavril in The Golden Age that Never Was, a lot of people initially liked the 'sweet' flavour he came across with, and over time I 'spoiled' it, adding more layers. (I like also making a character that previously seemed amazing, really awful sdalfkjas).
But I love just...adding the layers, and one day you get a layer and you're like 'holy shit I thought this was X but it's actually Y, and X is just on the surface, or only a small part of it.' I feel like sometimes that's how we get to know people. We see the layers they want us to see, but there's other layers there.
Ngl I live for these moments. I never know exactly when they're going to happen, either. Like a lot of people have already had their 'moment' where they've come around to Gary, and for others it might wait until nearly the end of the story. Some people are ready to embrace and love an asshat, and others hold back, with much more grudging approval, and others never come around (some folks will just always hate the Raven Prince no matter what, for example, and I'm sure the same will happen for Gary).
It makes writing serials so exciting and dynamic to me. And it makes it so much fun, in the sense that like, I feel like I get to share something about a character like a secret, and people see that secret and it's like 'OH I get why that thing was hidden but ALSO it changes a lot and recontextualises this person.' You get to know them not as they wish to be perceived - which is how they come across initially - but as *who they actually are* - which is different for everyone.
Idk I just love ittttt
#asks and answers#pia on characterisation#pia on writing#i basically like putting them in everything and i feel like it's probably one of the most common#character tropes i write outside of trauma in a background#is like... a bait and switch on a character#either one you see coming from a distance#(like we all know gary's the love interest he has to become understandable and likeable at some point)#or one that you don't see coming at all#i also really like humanising qualities that people often think 'that's a bad person' if they have the quality#gary is admittedly quite callous and even mean to efnisien#but he stops being this way as much#people are complicated#unless they're abusive all the time chances are people are just trying to do their best#while also being shitty sometimes sdlkfjsad like most people
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