#thus insulating the author and the work from any sort of meaningful criticism or analysis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

t1sunfortunate · 10 months ago

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I truly do think one of the largest pitfalls among the "media consumption is my passion" crowd is the tendency to treat characters as human beings with agency rather than narrative tools manipulated by the author

#as soon as you start assigning agency to characters any criticism of the series comes under strawman fallacy arguments #about how humans make irrational choices not always understood by others etc etc etc #thus insulating the author and the work from any sort of meaningful criticism or analysis #i think current popular advice on character writing overemphasizes relatability and likability at the expense of narrative relevance #it certainly isn't hurtful to do exercises where you think about their coffee order or favourite animal or preferred toilet paper brand #but none of that matters in the end if you have no idea what purpose a character is supposed to serve in a literary sense

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