#i'm so picky about characterization that a lot of times there needs to be certain things before i ship Smth

[mistystarshine]

Whenever a female character is widely hated, put the blame on misogyny. However, a good chunk of fans of specific works (with certain exceptions) are teen girls and women. Is it a case of internalized misogyny, then?

Somewhat, yes, but it's also a matter of attraction.

A great deal of fandom is shipping, and people tend to be more drawn to ships that they are attracted to. No, it's not the be-all end-all, yes, you can love characters and ships that you don't find attractive and dislike ones that you do, but it adds a MASSIVE boost. You are more likely to consider ships when you find one or more of the characters attractive. You are less likely if you do not.

I'll use myself as an example.

I don't give a shit about m/m pairings unless they have strong canonical chemistry that appeals to me (or it's a REALLY well written fic) because I'm a lesbian. It is harder to make them appeal to me because I don't get the attraction boost. I will read Adamsapple fics (with a note that I am picky about characterization) because I find the dynamic compelling. I don't mind Huskerdust, but have never once sought it out. Alastor is the major ship-launcher in this fandom, but I have not and will not read any fics that dedicate a significant amount of time toward Alastor shipping (or read Alastor-centric fics in general) because I can't comprehend how people find him hot and I find what we saw of him in canon deeply boring, so there is absolutely no appeal. M/F is honestly largely the same. Constrastingly, although I obviously gravitate toward things I already ship, I will give almost any f/f ship a shot if the fic seems well written. (With another note that I am picky about characterization.) Why? Because there is additional appeal there to make me willing to give the author the time to convince me.

(This is without even getting into smut, and I don't think I need to explain the importance of attraction there. All of the M/M or M/F smut that I've written was as a gift to a friend or because the narrative demanded it. And guess what? The f/f I've written (on a burner account that ya'll will never see) was way better.)

The majority of fandom is women. The majority of women are attracted to men. So guess what? Attractive male characters and m/m pairings get most of the attention. And guess what else? Female characters often get in the way of m/m ships, which provokes hate. Especially around younger fans who might not be experienced enough with narratives to be able to get a female love interest out of the way without demonizing them.

If you want me to say that female characters just aren't as well-written as men, it's not going to happen. There are PLENTY of male characters who are flat as cardboard yet get tons of adoring fans and fandom doing the work to flesh them out to hell and back. Just look at Hux in the Star Wars fandom. There are plenty of extremely well-written female characters who are ignored in favor of the most prominent bland hot man. And yeah, it's because they're hot. And maybe it's a bit of misogyny too, but... from what I've seen, a lot of attention comes from attraction, and when it comes to female characters, much of the hate comes from ship wars that people don't want to admit are ship wars. Plain and simple.

[castlebyersafterdark]

I really like that you can acknowledge you don't deviate from certain characterisation, while reading fic or otherwise, I feel less alone there! mike and will are written so specifically that it throws me off when people don't seem to understand that. I know I have other fandoms I do whatever with the ship but I can't do it with bylr. I would hear "subvert expectations" a lot and I could only think well will already does that by being who he is. I'm not going to change him back to be a regular dude with dude behavior. mike's the everyman of the story we already have one and hes great!

Yeah! I think it's ok to admit this. I think it's different for me in a two-fold reason (threefold maybe?): being a writer for this pairing, being interested in deeply analyzing the characters, and having them resonate in very specific ways. Some fandoms, for better or worse, characters I've liked I've been able to really broadly enjoy in many different interpretations. I came from being primarily in the mcu fandom. Loved it, hated it, very complicated feelings haha but to be honest: I just wasn't as picky about characterizations and AUs like I am with Stranger Things, especially Byler and I don't fully know why? I guess the theory and analyzing wasn't as strong for me there. I could read soooo much and accept the characters per individual fic. Maybe because those movies were vague enough at times that authors could really go any direction. Maybe because I also was an equal opportunity multishipper and certain core things needed to change to make different pairings work, which deeply affected characterization of those characters so my mind was kinda lenient?

Will and Mike? I just so firmly see them fully for who they are in the show, with imagination filling in sensible gaps. I get them. And I just prefer to deeper than surface level engage with stuff that gets them the same way that I do. I'll admit that. There's less I can happily deviate from with these two. So maybe certain things I'm a bit too staunch about. Nothing wrong with it if that's not what someone cares about, but it's not enough to just put our guys in different situations and call it a day for me. And oooh I genuinely hate the phrase subvert expectations. For many reasons.

[chamerionwrites]

Personally speaking, the reason I'm picky about first person has less to do with characterization per se than it does with narrative distance. A lot of people handle it as if it's a very close POV, when in fact it's usually one of the more distant and constructed ones.

What I mean by this is that we typically only take the first person pronoun when we're talking about ourselves, to other people. Imo close third or a certain kind of second person (in which the narrator and the "you" of the narration are the same - in other words, a snapshot of a character talking to themselves) are much better representations of what most people's inner monologues are like. The strength of those POVs is that the author can give the audience direct access to a character's inner life, without the character knowing that they're being observed. Other forms of third person accomplish basically the same thing, just with varying degrees of distance and subjectivity. It's fly-on-the-wall narration: the voice of a storyteller who exists outside the story, regardless of whether their perspective is from just over the protagonist's shoulder or from 10000 feet up.

First person is the voice of a storyteller who exists INSIDE the story. Crucially, this means that not only do character and narrator merge; it means that the audience splits. You, the reader, may not be the intended audience that the narrator is addressing, but they are very consciously addressing someone. The conceit of the Sherlock Holmes stories is that Watson isn't just the narrator - he's the author, and he's publishing them. The Sympathizer is framed as a written confession. Sometimes the audience is never directly specified, but - implicitly if not explicitly - any story told in first person exists in-story as a constructed narrative, by someone with a personal stake in how it's received.

That's why first person is the POV of the unreliable narrator. Even without direct intent to deceive, most people aren't willing to spill their guts to strangers! So the more openly and honestly a first person story is told, the more explicit in-story justification I need as a reader about who the intended audience is and why the narrator feels comfortable revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings before I can suspend my disbelief. The more clear-sighted and self-aware the narration is, the more limited the author is as to the kind of particularly insightful and self-aware character who can believably tell that story. And even if the character/narrator is the most honest and unselfconscious and self-aware person on the planet (which frankly runs a risk of being boring), even if they're telling the story to their best friend or their diary - first person still implies a certain level of distance and reflection and artifice between the events of the story and the telling of it. Personally I find it all but unreadable in the present tense (and fanfic loves present tense), because a constructed narrative necessarily implies time to process and construct.

All of which is to say that bad characterization is clunky in any point of view, and imho the pressure to absolutely nail the character voice in every line isn't any more intense with first person than with close third. But I do think that the mere existence of a first-person narrative is in itself characterization, and there are a lot of situations and characters for which it doesn't work well - or at least, that require a lot of extra effort from an author in order to make it work well. If the primary character is a paranoid spy living deep undercover, then truthful and open first-person narration is bad characterization in and of itself unless there's a damn good reason otherwise written into the text.

TL;DR good first person POV has a certain amount of story-within-a-story built in. As the author, you're not just crafting a story for your audience; you're crafting a story as told by a character for another separate audience, and trying to make it work on both of those levels at once. That multi-layeredness, when handled well, is one of first person's storytelling strengths! But I do think it can be tricky to handle or just plain easy to overlook. And I do think that when amateurish (no shade, just. A lot of fanfic writers are doing it as a casual hobby, by definition) writers overlook that, they often end up using a POV tool that really lends itself best to distance and slippery subjectivity in order to tell very direct, low-subtext, here-is-what-happened kinds of stories.

Which, yeah, does tend to land as especially flat and clunky and unconvincing.

The reason 1st Person POV is so derided in fanfic is because of characterization. In 3rd Person POV, you just have to convince us that the character would say or do that thing, and if not we’re sometimes willing to overlook it for the sake of the plot. In 1st Person, every single line of the story needs to feel In-Character, and OOC moments become grating faster because by sheer statistics they feel like they happen more often.

You basically have to find an author who perfectly vibes with your interpretation of that character and who’s a good enough writer that it doesn’t feel clunky. Original fiction doesn’t have this problem nearly so much, because there’s no pre-built expectations. “Ah, so this is what this character thinks when confronted with this thing? Good to know.” As opposed to fanfic, where the reader will often find themselves going, “No, that’s not what they’d think if they saw that. No, that’s not how they’d feel if someone said that. No, this narration is incorrect.” 

After being burned like that a certain number of times, lots of readers end up with a Pavlovian response. They see 1st Person POV, they see that first “I,” and they’re immediately annoyed because 1st Person POV stories have so often annoyed them in the past. They start avoiding them out of principle.

(This is not dissimilar to the problem with 2nd Person POV in any format, outside of maybe Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The author directly tells you, the reader, how you think/feel/react, and you, the reader, go, “WTF, no I don’t!” Which then jerks you out of the immersion & makes the story less enjoyable.)

None of which is to say don’t use those formats if you enjoy them. Just… I saw some people expressing frustration over the general distaste fandom culture seems to have for 1st Person POV, and while I don’t want to get involved in that argument, I did want to explain. For general information, I guess.

[baereaved]

yo i rlly am gonna be forever bitter that my most popular fic is about a ship i don’t even like, i mean... pal.

[sabugabr]

Interestingly, Amazon's Rings of Power issues can actually be summarized into its costumes

OR: Why Númenor cannot really look like Rome

Hello again, I YET LIVE! 💃

Soo, I haven't been able to write in ages cause since my graduation I've been in full monday to saturday 9AM-7PM proletarian mode, and I am a brazilian living in Brazil during one of the biggest attacks on democracy that we as a nation have experienced since the end of the military dictatorship 37 years ago aka Bolsonaro which is as nice as a kick in the nose, BUT FOR THIS SPECIFIC CASE, I, like palpatine, HAVE RETURNED.

but I'll make this one quick tho I swear (kkkkkkk)

I'm gonna talk about fictional characters' clothes.

And before I start, a brief disclaimer, I HAVE NOT FULLY WATCHED RINGS OF POWER YET. In fact, I've only watched the first three episodes. First because I didn't have the time, and second because honestly if they wanted to keep my attention longer they should've tried harder to make me care about any character other than my little boy Arondir, which they didn't so here we are.

But seriously, I'd like to make something very clear, I have absolutely no rights to tell you if Rings of Power is good or not, because I haven't watched it in its entirety, simple as that. That's not my point here, so if you liked this show, if you were moved by it, if it brought you back to a happy and safe place in Middle Earth, I'm glad, because that's great. We are living in very difficult times worldwide, and I will be the last person to condemn someone for consuming media that makes them happy and comforted. My issues here with it lies in a much simpler department, and that's what I'll be going on about.

✨ CHEAP COSTUMING ✨

And seriously, as I've said before, haven't watched the show, so I'm not even going to get into the merits of addressing good costuming in the narrative field, or the character development field, or anything like that – and you can easily find A LOT of videos and articles by much more qualified people than me covering these topics in detail. I'd just like to point out the problems with these costumes in the most basic way possible: they're the laziest thing I've ever seen since the end of the Night King in that 8th season.

And honestly that's embarrassing.

So look, I wouldn't be so picky if this were literally any other fantasy production.

While I fully understand and agree that any work must be able to stand on its own, and be amenable to analysis and criticism as a unit short of "necessary" contextualization, I also believe that in certain cases this separation is not, and should not be, possible – and in this scenario, this is the case of the construction of an universe. When you transfer this to the media field, it translates into the construction of the imagery of a universe, and for me, in my opinion, in these situations you cannot analyze each work of a same universe separately.

They need to dialogue with each other, and in the case of imagery, they need to have visual connections.

And one of the most powerful ways to convey to an audience that yes, this work takes place in this particular universe, is through costuming and characterization.

It is as if someone asked you to go to the market to buy lemons, and then showed you what a lemon is, so that when you arrive at the market, you can identify the lemons, and differentiate them from, for example, an orange, or a lime, or a tangerine. Right?

Rings of Power did not understand that.

Pray tell me, can you differentiate the lemons from the limes here?

Really, can you?

If you didn't already know these series, would you really be able to point out for sure which is which? Or, more importantly, which universe are they a part of? And, even more importantly, if you didn't already know, could you point out to me which of these are Lord of the Rings?

I couldn't.

And actually, there's inherently no problem for you to have a fantasy series with generic fantasy costumes (I, myself, particularly prefer it when the costumes aren't generic, but there are a number of shows or movies where the costumes might not be the most distinguishable thing in the world, but work really well in that context and are overall great costumes. That's absolutely fine). But in this specific series, it is very much a problem.

Because Lord of the Rings is not generic.

Even if they were creating the first ever visual adaptation of Tolkien works, I would already have rave reviews. But worse than that, they're putting themselves in a universe with imagery that not only already exists but is METICULARLY well established by the Peter Jackson films.

And what's interesting to me isn't even the fact that they're different from the costumes in the Peter Jackson movies. Depending on how it was done, I could at least respect the decision to create a completely fresh identity (provided it could dialogue with the previously established one, and with the worldbuilding created by Tolkien in the source material). What I find interesting is that in pretty much every costume, I can see where they got their inspiration from. And they are all the laziest possible.

Take Númenor for example. It's as if they looked at a summary of what Númenor is in Tolkien's writings and thought "a colonizing nation and mighty empire that existed before a society that years in the future would be represented as medieval inspired = Roman Empire". And/or Macedonian/Byzantine, for I can see a mixture of elements of those in many of the costumes and settings.

Even in the setting of the scenes: Compare the throne room of Númenor with that of Gondor, the latter with rounded columns and elliptical arches and a direction that always showed the room diagonally – from the corners, or behind the throne, to create an effect of disharmony, emptiness and decay (in almost every scene, the columns seem to be a little slanting). In contrast, the hall of Númenor is presented in the most squared and geometric way possible: the columns are straight, the scene is perfectly framed in the center, perfectly mirrored, and all the lines are either parallel or perpendicular, indicating straightness, balance and patterning – very Hellenic.

The association seems to be very obvious at first glance. The Hellenic empires are by far the best-known and most perpetuated example of empire in the mediatic imaginary of our Western culture, so it's a very easy way to convey to us, the audience, that these guys are your standart big "advanced" and colonizing civilization that see themselves as "closer to the gods" or something. And ok, fine.

I don't think the concept of being aesthetically inspired by the Romans would be anywhere near bad, were that any case other than Tolkien's universe.

For example, within the imagery created by Tolkien I would much rather see a Celtic inspiration for Númenor than a Roman/Macedonian one (since we're talking about great cultures that preceded Christian kingdoms in Europe), simply because this Roman aesthetic, while efficient in giving us the most basic impression possible about these people as lazily quickly and efficiently as possible, inevitably ends up pulling us by the throat out of the immersion of Middle Earth. It simply breaks it.

Like, really tho, would you bait an eye on this an call it Middle Earth??

And ok, fine, I know the Celts aren't the first association we make with "great nation" (and actually they were colonized and genocidated by the Romans so there's that lovely layer) BUT THE THING IS THAT MIDDLE-EARTH IS NOT THE REAL WORLD. And yes, I know that Gondor can easily be associated, yes, with Rome and the Byzantine Empire, and that Númenor is very much Atlantis. But one thing is contextual and narrative inspiration, another is aesthetic inspiration. And it's aesthetics I'm talking about here. If the two always went hand in hand, then in House of the Dragon we would have to see the Targaryens walking around 24/7 in full roman attire.

That's what I mean when I call the costuming lazy. Because it's much easier for you to make a visual association than to actually build one through writing and narrative construction. And that's why I say that for me this is a reflection of the whole series. They seem more focused on making checklists in a basic formula than showing us, you know, Tolkien.

"Oh but Númenor is clearly based on Atlantis, you said so yourself", technically, yes (and Tolkien wrote of Númenor as Atlantis in several of his letters), but primarily, Númenor is simply a big island that was swallowed by the sea, and this mythology is by no means unique to the Greeks. In adaptation, Númenor could be based for example on the Cornish "Lyonesse", or on the Breton "Ys", or even the Gaelic "Hy Breasail". Atlantis is just the most well-known version of this myth (to put it simply), and therefore the one that would be most quickly recognized, and therefore the easiest to pull off.

In fact, if one were to delve deeper into the meaning of the fall of Númenor (and there one can even extend to the greater meaning of all these mythologies entering 100% in the field of the collective unconscious and Ginzburg-ish tracks), to which the Tolkien refers to as the second fall of man, with "its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition" [x]. The Numenoreans desired immortality, and for their pride they were banished, forbidden from entering the Undying Lands of Aman – which, essentially, comes very close to the idea of the Fall embodied by Christianity.

Satan's Fall From Heaven, illustration by Gustav Dore for John Milton's Paradise Lost

As Tolkien himself said in his 1951 letter to Milton Waldman:

"I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) Anyway all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes." [...] "This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality." Letter to Milton Waldman, 1951, p. 2 – you can read it here

And directly about Númenor, (if you wanna go full nerdy here), he stated that

"The Downfall of Númenor, the Second Fall of Man (or Man rehabilitated but still mortal), brings on the catastrophic end, not only of the Second Age, but of the Old World, the primeval world of legend." [...] "Their reward is their undoing – or the means of their temptation. Their long life aids their achievements in an and wisdom, but breeds a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time for their enjoyment. Foreseeing this in pan, the gods laid a Ban on the Númenóreans from the beginning: they must never sail to Eressëa, nor westward out of sight of their own land. In all other directions they could go as they would. They must not set foot on 'immortal' lands, and so become enamoured of an immortality (within the world), which was against their law, the special doom or gift of Ilúvatar (God), and which their nature could not in fact endure." "There are three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel – and a rift appears between the King's men and rebels, and the small minority of persecuted Faithful." Letter to Milton Waldman, 1951, p. 7 - 8

So like, I think there was a lot of room to go around here. There was absolutely no need to deviate from the already existing aesthetic (from the movies) in order to evoke a counterpart in the real world – to me, this just impoverish interpretations, discussions and overall the whole work. A great example of this is the Numenorean symbol.

In the books, the main symbols of Númenor (if I'm not mistaken) are the tree of Númenor, the eagle and especially the five-pointed star.

The island (or continent) on which Númenor was located was in the shape of a five-pointed star, and they were a nation that relied largely on astrocartographies for their navigations.

So you would assume that we would see these symbols on the series, right? Five-pointed stars and trees and stuff like that, right?

Wrong

They gave us this:

The golden Sun

Nowhere in Tolkien's writings (to my knowledge) does he compare Númenor with the sun. I know that technically the sun is a star, but these are completely different archetypal symbols. Tolkien's greatest association with the sun is in relation to Anar, and the Two Trees (and perhaps one could even make an association about how in Middle-Earth the sunlight is "inferior" to the original light of the Two Trees as a metaphor for like the Numenoreans try to persue immortality and emulate the elves, but honestly it's a very long stretch).

(being fair, they did try to play with some celtic sun symbols there, but it ended up just looking out of place)

The main association with the golden sun in our western culture (excluding indigenous cultures, Mesoamerica and South America, we have our own relationships with the figure of the sun that does not enter here at all) is with the Panhellenic symbol of the Macedonian Sun, or Vergina Sun.

You can see the resemblance very clearly, especially in that golden banner in the first image

And there is, again, no problem with you drinking from real world inspired sources to build a fantasy world (every fantasy world is an analogy to the real world and etc etc). But if you're going to make direct visual associations with real-world elements, those associations must be very well thought out and very well planned. Otherwise, as happened (in my opinion) with the golden sun of Númenor, you end up breaking the immersion of a visual universe that, if it drink from some source, is not the one you used.

Famously, the great inspirations for Tolkien's work were Germanic, Celtic, Finnish, Slavic, Greek and Norse language, folklore and mythology, especially the Icelandic sagas and ultimately the basic christian structures. [little sources 1, 2 and 3 if you wanna know more, or you can go to the first page of Tolkien's letter to hear it from the man himself]. You even have this whole diagrams going on about it:

This is the foundation of the universe, this is the fountain you will want to drink from. And that's the source that Ngila Dickson drank from to make the costumes for the Lord of the Rings movies.

Compare for example Elendil's costumes from the The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), and then from Rings of Power (2022).

Can you see where I'm coming from?

Ngila Dickson's take on Elendil not only fits perfectly into the setting of this world being presented to us, but it also manages to create a unique and recognizable aesthetic for the character (and therefore, for his people).

When, in the third film, we see Aragorn'scoronation, it is not difficult to recognize if not the armor, but at least Elendil's royal crown.

Dickson plays not only with historical inspirations but mainly with associations within the visual universe of the films: in the crown alone, you can see inspirations taken from the architecture of Gondor itself: the crown aesthetically resembles the city. She's not referencing the real world, she's referencing Middle Earth.

In Rings of Power, Elendil only looks Byzantine.

And that's just lazy.

Also, for some reason I didn't get, the elves also wear roman elements? Like, what's the point of that? Are the Numenoreans then trying to copy the elves in some way, or…? Idk???

What's with the laurels? Did I miss something or...????:???^::??

And honestly I could go on and on and on on the elves ALONE, but a lot of people already covered that and this is already getting long enought so for my point here I'd only like to point out one detail that dialogues with my lazyness critique here, and it regards Galadriel.

Now, once again, I COULD GO ON AN ON ABOUT HER PORTRAYL (and I'll sure be doing a post addressing female archetypes so I won't extend myself here) but not my point here, I'd only like to talk about this particular dress:

The blue dress

To be quite blunt, the thing with this dress is that it is literally a copy of Éowyn's maiden dress.

Literally.

It's so ridiculously blatant.

The impression it gives me is that they, once again, instead of even trying to show through writing or narrative construction a certain element, they simply copied and pasted the most obvious thing possible. They wanted to say "look at how Galadriel is a strong warrior woman" so they just made her look like the other "woman with a sword" in the franchise.

It was a big "she's the new Éowyn pls like her" move.

Instead of giving her... you know... her own construction? Some individuality? Any at all?

And that, in addition to being extremely lazy YET AGAIN, is a big shot in the foot (Brazilian saying, don't know if it makes sense in english sorry), because it only makes us compare the two directly. And even if you liked Rings of Power, I think we can all collectively agree that the Galadriel we were introduced to is definitely no Éowym.

So why did they do it??? because they're lazy that's it that's the point

It's the same with the thought of putting on a Wooden Elf with armor that looks like WOOD, or taking the concept of "people connected with nature" and translating that into purely shoving, idk, a bird's nest on people's heads and making them dirty with earth. Very connected with nature and stuff. It's just LAZYYYYY

Yes, it's very cute, but.... Costuming-wise, it's just dumb?? You know?

And what screams the most is also the difference in quality between the costumes. The difference in the cut of the dresses, in the quality of the fabrics, in everything. IT SCREAMS. I won't get into that because, again, lot of people already covered that BUT REALLY, I'M SORRY, BUT THIS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE MEDIA PRODUCTION OF IDK, EVER???? THIS FIRST SEASON ALONE COST NEAR THE BUDGET FOR THE WHOLE 3 LOTR MOVIES AND AND

THE PRINTED FABRICS I CAN'T EVEN-

Like, we had this:

And they thought we'd settle for THIS?????

I could forgive this so easily if this was the standart fantasy production. I really could. But this is the most expensive production in history, produced by a billionaire mega corporation that exploits millions of people and literally kills our planet daily, about one of the most well-established universes in the fantastic imagination of our western culture. The least they could do was give us something with a minimum of effort.

I can't talk about their effort on other story elements because I haven't watched the entire series. But, I'm sorry, from the level of care and attention I've seen in these costumes… They literally just did the MINIMUM, and that honestly doesn't really get me excited for the rest of the production.

Like, because they said this character is Galadriel, should we immediately love her just because they said she's Galadriel? To me it fells like they took a LOT of things for granted, and unfortunately it shows.

AND JUST A SMALL ADDENDUM THAT I THINK I SHOULD MAKE

I know that in the big picture, the dwarf costumes are the least worst of this series, and I agree.

ALTHOUGH, YET, HOWEVER

I really think it's extremely complicated for you to represent dwarves as, again, "dirty" and "stubby" people who live in "rustic" caves and are "rustic" and "quarrelsome" and "drunkish". I… I just think it's bad.

Especially with the accent they effectively chose to use for pretty much ALL the dwarves, and seeing them interacting with posh Enrold with his perfect posh British accent… It's just bad.

And I loved Durin's personality and character, but in terms of costumes...

This:

Will never be this:

My personal feelings regarding The Hobbit movies aside, THIS is what a dwarf prince looks like for me. Simply as that. Just look at the condition of the fur in both costumes. C'mon.

Anyway, thank you once again for reading!!! This is just my opinion, as always, feel free to desagree with my at any point! ✨

[thyandrawrites]

Hello, there! Hope you're doing well.

I wanna know your opinion regarding the characteristics and personality of quirkless AU! Touya Todoroki in fanfics. I mean, I've read quite a number of MHA quirkless AU fanfics and each and every one of them showcases Touya as the failure, the black sheep of the family, the college dropout, the careless, and callous one among of the Todoroki siblings. I get that it's probably the headcanon of the writers and I respect their thoughts but isn't it a bit too much? The way the writers are portraying Touya in the AU fanfics... isn't it wrong? Cause in the canon MHA universe, Touya/Dabi is a very careful and cautious person, someone who really works hard so he could reach the highest rank, extremely smart (smarter than the rest of his siblings), definitely wouldn't have become the black sheep of the family if Endeavor wasn't an abusive asshole. To me, I think, Touya is someone who always wants to become the best in everything like Endeavor, wants to be the No.1 in everything, someone who never backs away from any challenge and difficulties threw at him. If things went right, Touya would've become the golden child among the Todoroki siblings in the canon universe.

I like the writings of the other writers don't get me wrong, but every time the way they portray Touya in the AU verse is getting really tiring to me.

What do you think about it?

Hey there! I'm doing fine. Hope that you are too

Before I get into my answer, I want to clarify something. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to write fanfic, particularly when it comes to characterization. Of course there are aspects of it that can be closer or more far off to canon, but fanfic is just... fan fic. It's the work of a random fan, not a divergence from canon written by the author of the series. Please keep that in mind when discussing it online. It's okay to have preferences! I'm super picky with how I like my Dabi characterization, for example, after all the hours I spent into writing meta about him. But ff is a work of love, and it's not written to cater to the public's tastes, to align with the main story perfectly. It's the version of canon that the author wanted to personalize and expand on, and it's meant to be read as their interpretation, and thus respected as such. The best thing to do when you find a squick is to click out of that work! Nice and easy

Ok, I just had to take that out of the way bc I'm a fanfic writer myself and I know I would feel horrible about my writing if I ever came across a take that brushed off my stories like that Now on to the actual reply

I think the popularity of that fanon concept can be traced back to two things:

1. In a quirkless AU, authors need something to translate Enji's dismissal of Touya into. Since they don't have quirk meta as a viable option, they'd need other options. When people think of common reasons why their parents would be disappointed in their kids, the things you listed would probably be the first ones to come to mind. Being a college dropout or a black-sheep in a traditionalist families are all easy ways to translate the Todofam conflict into a different universe.

of course, AUs are such that you can alter elements of a character's backstory and play with the results. So you could write an AU where Endvr is less abusive, or one where the neglect didn't turn Touya into the emotionally unstable person he is in the manga. But again, fanfic is something extremely personal. A lot of people don't write it just to see two characters kissing, but to explore themes that are dear to them as well. Sometimes authors just prefer to explore the negative sides of a character, and yes, sometimes even amplify them and exaggerate them to tell a certain kind of story. If you go in with the expectation that characterization or worldbuilding will be a monolith shared by all fans, I'm afraid you'll always be disappointed. People write what they know best or what they want to read.

That said, here comes point two

2. Keep in mind that not all fans are caught up on the manga. I know a lot of writers who are anime-onlys, even more who read spoilers occasionally, and several who are caught up but skipped entire arcs cause they weren't their cup of tea.

The revelation that Touya actually enjoyed the training and saw it as his opportunity to show off to his father is fairly new. You might think that since it happened a year ago, people are caught up on it, but that isn't necessarily the case.

Adding to that, even those writers who are caught up on the manga might not want to stick close to canon for personal reasons. Sometimes people will just stick to their old headcanons even after the manga proved them incorrect, and that's valid.

anyway, I realize that this very long-winded defense of fanfic is not what you meant to discuss with me. Did you mean to ask me if I think that Dabi is callous, inherently set up for failure no matter what? mmh. My answer is "it depends". Dabi is not normally cruel for no reason, but he can be surprisingly callous when you touch certain buttons. Same with the "failure" argument. He could make it big, he does have his assets, but that depends entirely on what circumstances you write him in.

At the end of the day, I think it's all a matter of interpretation. What story are you interested in writing, one where you explore his hurt for the abuse he faced, or one where he gets to have the life his canon self missed? Where do you think he draws the line between apathy and excessive violence? I have a fairly solid idea of what his sore spots are, but people will disagree and that's fine. For example, a lot of people seem to think he doesn't give a shit about the League, but I don't. Some think he has no respect for Shigaraki, and I don't. Some people write him as a selfish lover, and I don't. I could of course write meta that defends my points, but I'm not Horikoshi, so my opinion is just that, an opinion :')

Sorry about the not-answer! I just don't like to publicly brush off fanwork that is not meant for me, is all

[shihalyfie]

hi! this is out of curiosity, since when do you start to watch adv series in its original jap. ver.? do you find any difficulty in trying to adapt, get used to it? like the voices, names of the characters, music, the way the story is presented. i first watch the series in my own language and the english ver (not the us ver., more like asian english ver.) before i encounter the original jap. ver. during my teenage years and get used to it over time until now. i'm okay with dub ver, but i always prefer, love to watch the jap. ver. more than other dubs.

(Note: This was cleared up later with the asker and various parties, so mostly leaving this for posterity: while it's not universally well-known, "J*p" is a slur originating from WWII, so I ask that people please be careful about not using that even as an abbreviation.)

Regardless of language, I've always been interested in original versions of any dubbed media for as long as I've been consuming media (I won't say I'm necessarily a purist, I just happen to have a natural curiosity for what must have been the original source), so I'd been interested in the Japanese version of Digimon ever since I first got into it, and had been following it ever since it started getting translated. If you know anything about Digimon and subbing, it actually took some years for most early Digimon series to get decent quality subs in full, so I thank everyone involved for their hard work, especially since the prevailing attitude at the time was that "the (American) English dub didn't change anything substantial anyway" (ignoring the fact that there would still be good reason to have the Japanese version on hand even if that were the case...) and the demand for it was even more niche than it is now.

I didn't really have problems getting used to names. I did have to get used to the voices, because since I got in with the American English dub initially, I had a strong attachment to the voices I'd associated with them there (and I still do, even if I haven't fully watched the dub in years!), so there would be things like Yamato (Kazama Yuuto)'s voice being much deeper than I'd expected, or Agumon's voice being completely different in general, but I got used to it quickly because I felt like everyone fit their character perfectly in their own way. The music was a bit surprising, but I was never too incredibly attached to the original music anyway so it was mostly just discovering something new and fun. Other than that, I guess I was incredibly surprised by how different of an impression 02 gave me, especially Daisuke; having been eyeing 02 in Japanese since translation efforts first started, I knew there had been some changes (Hurricane Touchdown...) but the actual degree really surprised me, especially since, as I said, the prevailing attitude was that "it didn't change much". Part of the reason I write so extensively about how much the 02 dub changed is that I personally witnessed firsthand how much my perception of the series abruptly shifted after my first time watching it in Japanese, and how nearly impossible it became to hold analytical conversations about certain smaller details with people who mistakenly over-applied dub things to the Japanese version because "we're actually talking about two different things, aren't we..." never comes up thanks to how prevalent this myth is. Driving this home further, I don't have this issue at all with fans who had their own local dubs more closely adapted from the Japanese version, so the problem really isn't whether it was in Japanese or not, or whether it was a dub or not, as much as the fact "the script really did change that much".

Currently, I guess I would say I have a pretty complicated relationship with Digimon's American English dubs. Like I said, I don't necessarily think I'm a purist or anything, and even though I have an increased stake in watching things in Japanese since I can actually understand much more about the language than I used to, I myself still enjoy a good dub and also completely understand and appreciate the nature of what dubbing entailed in those days, the dub's role in getting Digimon to a wider audience, the reason people prefer dubs and how important this one is to people, and, heck, I still love the voice actors. At the same time, this "it didn't change anything significant" myth has been really damaging and frustrating to deal with, because you get pointless, unnecessary arguments about people trying to talk about two very different versions of the series and arguing because they don't realize the characters they're discussing weren't even written similarly (hi, Mimi and Daisuke). Even if people do acknowledge the changes, there's also a tendency to worship that dub, so even though I feel my complaints about it are pretty legitimate ones (my gripes mainly being that I'm uncomfortable with the characterization changes, I feel many of the changes caused a significant adverse impact on the story and characterization integrity especially in the case of 02, and I get a bit of a bad feeling about some of the cultural localization attempts in dialogue borderline crossing into racism), it's frustrating to constantly get shut down because everything should be excused as long as it was in someone's childhood, and it's also frustrating to see these dismissals applied to people who had their own aforementioned local dubs and are upset at how this impacted their own childhood, but are thrown under the bus because their own dub is treated disrespectfully as if it were "secondary" to the American English dub somehow being the enforced, mandated standard for any kind of localized Digimon outside Japan.

I completely understand that a lot of this is lashback developed from Japanese-version-only purist camps being obnoxious about dunking on dubs, but it's uncomfortable observing the results of the fallout when you're kind of here in the middle not wanting to dunk on it for the sake of dunking on it, but also having concerns that you feel everyone is dismissing you for. (Not helping is also the fact that obnoxious purists love to dunk on people for having a personal preference for dubs; there are a lot of reasons to prefer them even if you're aware of the changes, personal emotional attachment and accessibility reasons being among them, and my grievances have more to do with the "it didn't change anything" myth still being prevalent, the experiences of having any criticism I have of it being so easily dismissed, and the fact that a combination of both means that having strong loyalty to the Japanese version gets you pinned as being an unusual purist or being overly picky.)

Also, I think one thing that isn't often talked about is that there's a huge difference between the dubs of everything up to 02 and the dubs of everything between Tamers and Savers (Xros Wars we'll...leave aside for now, haha). In the case of the latter, the aggressive joke-adding is much less intrusive, the changes (including to characterization) are less significant, and you can even see this in that Diablomon Strikes Back's dub has much closer dialogue and characterization to the original than anything else from the 02 dub. So a lot of what I said above actually just applies to Adventure and 02 more than anything. For series after, I don't make it a habit to watch their dubs as often these days, but I'm still familiar with them and have my own pretty strong sense of nostalgia for the Tamers and Frontier ones in particular, and for anything after 02, I haven't had any particular experience with other fans regarding trying to discuss the series but finding we're talking about two different things, other than maybe one or two minor things that had to be cleared up every so often. So in that case I myself also agree more with the idea of mostly treating the dubbed and Japanese versions as the same thing, whereas with Adventure and 02 I honestly feel they need to be treated as separate and distinct things.

In the end I guess the take-home I have here is that I feel like my experience going from the dub to the Japanese version has been a lot less shocking or eventful than dealing with the perceptions and stigmas around them from other people...^^;;

[storm-driver]

I may not have gotten around to leave reviews yet, but I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely adore your fic! You managed to press some of my very picky KH buttons: great Roxas characterization, no romance and "unusual" character interactions (Roxas and Terra is something I didn't realise I needed). Also, one of my HCs was actually Roxas and Xion becoming Aqua's students sooner or later, so I'm living the life! I'm really looking forward to the next chapter :D

I really appreciate you telling me! And I’m happy you’re enjoying the fic! I honestly thought what I was writing was so out-of-touch with what people consider to be a “good fic” or even concept for one. I thought only my closest mutuals would even look at it. But I am pleasantly surprised to find others like it, too!

I’m gonna go into a bit of a tangent ‘cause you reminded me of something, so sorry if it’s a weird response.

As someone who’s been writing fanfiction in my off-time for literal years, over a third of my lifetime, I have managed to develop a really finicky taste when it comes to truly enjoying fiction. I can read the stories my friends send me and enjoy them and everything about them! But falling in love with stories is incredibly difficult. I don’t mean it in a prissy “I can write better than this” way. ‘Cause there is a NUMBER of fanfics I have on my aim-for-this list. I just can’t fall in love with writing the same way others can.

For me, the stories I read have to fall into a “this is something that may just well happen” sorta category. The character interactions and nuances should line up best they can with the characters doing them. I see a lot of catering fics out there that seem to mis-characterize the ones that I’ve come to truly adore. This isn’t to say those works are terrible, far from it! I just personally don’t enjoy them as much as others. I want to be able to feel the character behind their words, instead of the author’s want to get the character to say this one specific line or do this one specific action. 

It’s why I set up the story the way I did, with finding Aqua’s Keyblade. It didn’t start with her immediately asking Roxas to be her apprentice, because it felt too out of line for her to come up and say it to him. Even in passing or after some other sort of day they might’ve spent together. I wanted their interaction to line up in a way that would feel canon. Not actually be canon, of course, but feel believable. Addressing one of the plot points that KH3 unfortunately couldn’t, I felt it was necessary. 

I’ve done plenty of character study specifically for Roxas. And so when I write for him, I feel almost certain about the words I’m putting on the paper. I hardly second guess when I write a line of dialogue for him, be it a question, a statement, some sort of head nod or bodily movement. Ventus is second on that list, as I only second-guess a few of his lines and interactions. But point being, I took the time to go and analyze their characters best I could before I started writing. I wanted to make their words seem real, something you’d find in a rough draft of the script for a KH game. 

It matters a lot to me that the characters are themselves and not some personification of what the author wants them to be. For all that I’d love for Roxas to be a swearing, shoot-first-questions-later sorta badass, my study has proven he can be quite the opposite, rather a sympathetic and caring young person who just happens to have temper-issues at times. He’s very lovable and kind to his friends, even to new people he meets that he hasn’t become accustomed with. And when he’s mad, he has legitimate reason to be mad. He might lose himself a bit in that blind anger, but he finds himself again. He always does. 

I’m not sure if what I’m typing makes sense anymore, but if it is confusing, tl;dr

I want believable character interactions in the stories I write. Fanservice? Maybe a little. Plotservice? Yes, sign me up. 

[hiruma-musouka]

If you don't mind a random question. So you said once that you're picky about characterization regarding Madara and Tobirama (MadaTobi, specifically). What's your preferred characterization? What do you think about when you write them/when you're working out characterization in general, if anything? I really like the dynamic you have for them, and I'm curious if there's a process and what it involves, I suppose. Thank you for your time!

I welcome random questions! (I’m just really bad at answering them promptly) That being said, buckle in because you’ve hit on a topic I love and I’m feeling chatty so I basically wrote you an essay.

At this point in my life I’m picky about characterization in general to be honest. It’s not about Madara, Tobirama, or MadaTobi specifically, it’s everyone. I wasn’t always picky (as my reading history will attest) and even now I will sometimes read stuff with characterizations I’m not 100% fond of, but I’ve been reading fanfiction voraciously for well over a decade now. I like to pretend that I’ve developed some taste over that time period. And I tend to read in fads when I find something I like, so name a thing and, if I like it, I probably read several pages of AO3 fics on that pairing/trope/fandom etc.

Even if I sometimes go back and wonder how the fuck I sank a week into reading insert trope. Your tastes change as you age.

Basically what this means is, I have gotten to the point where I’ve really figured out which things are deal breakers for me instead of just reading on and on and wasting my time hoping I can make myself get used to it. I have time management issues and no time turner: I can’t afford to waste precious hours on stuff I’m halfheartedly enjoying.

And for me the ultimate deal breaker has to be the characters.

Plot is excellent, I LOVE good plots because they’re what helps makes a fic engaging and unique (bless astolat for example whose plots keep sucking me into fandoms I’ve never heard of)… but I have to care about the characters. They have to feel right to me.

Now, let me explain what I mean by “the characters have to be right” because I don’t want people to think I’m elitist purist who believes there is ONLY ONE WAY to do things. I wouldn’t love fanfiction if that was true. There are two things I mean by “right” in reference to characters.

ONE: (and this is essential) They have to be people. They do not have to be human. LOOK AT MY FICS! I keep writing non-human characters. I love well done fics about fae. When I say they have to be people, I mean that they have to be nuanced. They need to react like a genuine article of whatever the author is writing. People are complex! They can be straightforward, they can be assholes, they can be sweet, they can be ashamed, they can be kind-but-god-stop-BRINGING-IT-UP-YOU’RE EMBARRASSING-ME… people can be so many things under the sun and that’s what I want to read. I want people.

You know that thing they recommend in writing: “show, don’t tell”? This is sort of part of what I mean. You can’t just say a character is a coward or just explain things to me and have your characters lurch to the plot’s demands. If you’re writing a person, and not just a name on a word document, they’re going to feel different if you know what I mean. If you have ever hear of an author complain about their characters, they’re probably writing people. And this is because characters are stubborn little wretches sometimes! Because what they want to do is not always what the author wants them to do for the plot. One of the really damn hard things about writing is somehow juggling all those assholes into doing what you need them to do. Sometimes it involves reexamining why they’re doing it and just getting into their head a different way. Sometimes it involves switching POVs because their actions feel right but you have no idea why they hell they’re doing it (or at least you have no way to explain it to the readers yet). Sometimes - and this might make you cry - you have to scrap all your hard work and either redo the plot or admit that certain shit doesn’t work with certain characters without being ooc.

All of the above is stuff that comes with time and effort and a bit of talent. Everyone has their own specialties when writing, but regardless of whether you get into a characters head or just write their actions from an omniscient pov, if you’re writing people, I can feel it.

(There are some rare story structures that don’t focus on people, but I’m already up on one soapbox, so we’ll set that detour aside.)

TWO: If you are writing from a canon rather than an original character, they need to feel like that canon character to me. For anyone who’s read fanfiction and had that one moment where you’re like “that’s them! that’s so them!” - this is what I mean.

Now, this is where we get onto the topic of preferred characterizations.

(I’ll use Madara and Toibrama as an example here since that’ll drag me back to your original question.)

I don’t think there’s only one way to characterize people in fanfics, but I like to think of canon as the “core” of a character. Metaphorically, canon is the bullseye on a dartboard of characterization. THAT is what people shoot for when writing. If you get too far away from that bullseye, things feel ooc and you tend to lose your reader. The character feels like someone else with a name slapped on.

BUT (and here’s the awesome thing about fanfiction) everyone has a different interpretation of exactly what that bullseye is and what qualities make up the different layers of the rings around it. For some people one quality is vital, but another can be done in different degrees and still feel in character. This is why (for example) myself, @blackkatmagic, @redhothollyberries, and @elenathehun can all write fics with Madara and Tobirama and they will all feel uniquely, subtly different and yet still in character to all of us. What we feel is in character for those people - what we think of as the bullseye and in inner rings of our characterization - overlaps a lot with enough minor variation around the dartboard for us to all be unique.

This is also why my Madara tends to feel slightly different sometimes in different AUs. When I write, I keep in mind that different backgrounds make slightly different people so the characterization changes slightly. That part is pretty organic for me. I feel it more than decide it and then work out how to explain the difference as I’m writing to make it clearer and more consistent.

So when I say I’m picky, I mean that my idea of traits is defined for them. I have thought about them enough to know what my dartboard looks like so if I read a fic with an interpretation that varies strongly enough from my bullseye, it stops feeling like them to me. Characters that I’m not as familiar with (either as a reader or writer) get a much wider dartboard because I haven’t really made a definitive opinion on them yet so there’s more leeway in how people write them before it throws me off.

This isn’t to say that my way is the best way and that others are wrong, but it does mean that it’s my interpretation of canon and what I feel resonates best as “in character”.

Of course, sometimes it’s fun to read something with a premise that has no evidence in canon - like “what if this person liked X” - but as long as the rest of the characterization holds up, that’s basically how fanfics work and it’s interesting.

So you can see a lot of my preferred characterization in how I write people. Of course, the more I write a person, the better I feel I know them or the more I think about them so sometimes I’ll realize “wait, this feels better” and then that will change my idea of their bullseye for future stuff. That also happens when I read really persuasively good fics, btw.

Now we have your question about my process as these characters specifically. My process for a new character tends to be the same for everyone. If I have read a lot of fics, I tend to draw from those characterizations and what they had in common to get a feel for the person. I will also CONSTANTLY reference the wiki’s personality section because that breaks people down into rough descriptions that I find useful. It also lets me review quickly what they did in the manga and sometimes why which helps figure out how they tick. (I still haven’t had time to read anything but specific sections of the manga, goddamnit…)

Figuring out how characters tick is HARD but very important because knowing how someone ticks is vital to writing AUs. An AU that doesn’t have a lot of similarity to canon makes it easier to be ooc because you’re drastically changing their backgrounds. Conversely, it also means that you can’t forget that changed backgrounds should mean changed characters somehow.

(Case in point: canon Kakashi is massively traumatized. Unless you have another terrible background, coffee shop au Kakashi should be different.)

I also love to discuss characterization with Kat, Elena, Squid, or Holly because active discussion makes it easier to verbalize and consciously realize why one thing feels correct and why (the why is always important) other actions or dialogue feels wrong. Elena is fantastic for me, for example, because we approach characters from different methods so she sometimes verbalizes reasons when I’m stuck or points out things that haven’t occurred to me yet.

If I have the time (and more importantly the chapter numbers), one fantastic thing is to reread sections of the source material with important moments with that character.

And here’s where I developed Madara. A large part of why I started with this character is because blackkat’s writing sucked me in. When I started to write him though, I had to decide how I wanted to write him which meant figuring out what were the “core” elements of Madara’s character. Given that Madara’s canon characterization is… unconventionally written, I basically started by deciding that if I wanted a protagonist then I had to draw from pre-psychotic break Madara. I can look at later Madara too because it’s still helpful for different elements of his character, but such a drastic change means there’s a literal canon option for good versus crazy Madara when you’re writing his characterization.

(I am experimenting with his darker characterization but that’s not as helpful in most of the stories I want to write at the moment.)

So I take the material, I look at the characters and I try to get a feel for what the person is like, how they interact, what underlines the choices they make. Knowing what people value, what they like/dislike, and how they express themselves helps to write not only what they would choose but how they would speak or react.

Madara’s characterization for me ends up being roughly this then >> values family, somewhat open, competitive, teasing, resolute, dreamer, exasperation, reacts/snaps when frazzled, annoyed when people don’t get to the point aka straightforward, skilled (!!!), disciplined, bit blunt, protective, willing to fight and enjoys challenges, and not hateful.

Later events in the manga add in things like ruthless when necessary, does not deal well with being the last man left standing among close family, I definitely think he had depression at one point, respects skill/power, patient if it’s for a purpose, and good at manipulation (if not necessarily inclined to it as a first option since young Madara was terribly to the point and open with Hashirama).

Given how long this is, I’ll stop here, but if there are other points you’d like to ask about or have me expand upon, please feel free to drop another ask! I know I got diverted while on this soapbox, so let me know if you still want Tobirama or anything.