Thoughts of writing characters staying in-character as much as possible?

Warden-Yarn15

Warden-Yarn15

Really Really Experienced
Primarily a question for writers of fan fiction, what do you think of writing characters staying in character in your stories?

I personally always try to do this whenever I'm writing fan fiction (which is 90% of what I do), but there is a challenge in doing so. For one, one must know a lot of information on the person they're writing about, and sometimes reading a wiki isn't enough compared to playing the game, seeing the movie, or reading the book that they belong to.

Another thing is for when readers don't give a shite if the character stays in character at all. I've seen stories be applauded while writing the character as far from the sources as possible, and straying from what could they possibly do or usually react.

Granted this shouldn't always be the case as well, with characters finding themselves in scenarios not possible/realistic in their world (an example of this would probably be Helen Parr going to a gloryhole booth), then their reactions could adapt to these new surrondings.
 
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Hvast said:
For me, the majority of fan fiction is unreadable because female characters are either sluts or submissive regardless of their character in the source material.
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Yep, and that's why I'm unsatisfied with much of the "fanfic" stories around here. They're all simply cumdumps with the same face.

But they're raking the most views, so obviously there's a business for simply doing this instead of 'walking in their shoes,' as they say.
 
I suspect many writers think they want to write fanfic, but are actually more interested in creating their own characters and settings. There's a few reasons they might create fanfic anyway:
  • Lack of self-awareness. They just don't realise how far they're deviating from the source material. I've known people (usually young) who would have never even considered writing an original work, instead layering on 'AU's and 'OOC's and ! tags until they've unrecognisably warped someone else's ideas into their own. Take away the fanfic label and you'd never see the connection. This mindset might be partially due to other online communities where it's nearly taboo to write completely original ideas.
  • Audience. They want to write something similar to X franchise, but they know X has a thriving fanfic community here. As such, they choose to capitalise on it, hoping nobody realises that their knowledge of the source material is basically nonexistent. As above, it might also be that fanfic simply gets more attention on wherever they're publishing.
  • Appearance. If you forsake a character's personality, what are you left with? Some writers might use this as a crude shorthand for describing their own characters, especially when they personally have a strong physical attraction to the source character. There's actually several stories on CHYOA about, specifically, androids designed to look like certain characters without their personalities.
There is a certain craft in trying to emulate characterisations, or, if you're so inclined, even the author's writing style. In that regard, the actual writing process might actually be more difficult in fanfic than in original works, though the burden of character and world building is gone.
 
I don't know if I'm the best one to talk about this, since I feel my characterization often feels very loose and can turn on the dime according to the needs of the plot...but when you have comic book characters with a broad continuity like Lois Lane, Spiderman, Superman, Susan Storm, Captain America, etc. you're looking at characters that already have had hundreds of people writing for them - so their characterization is already going to be pretty inconsistent. In that case, you aren't going to be able to make everyone happy, because the character will have changed broadly over the years...but there's a few traits that tend to remain fairly consistent, and those are usually what people are looking to see. If you can maintain your internal consistency for, say, a storyline, that's usually pretty sufficient.

Superman isn't going to randomly kill people unless you're doing an Injustice-based storyline; Batman doesn't use guns. Strong-willed characters don't just give up or collapse under pressure. Female characters generally aren't complete bimbos or bone-addict sluts out the gate. Intelligent characters can make stupid decisions, but they should still generally be portrayed as intelligent and resourceful as they would be under normal circumstances.

That being said, the circumstances of an erotic fanfiction story are rarely normal...and that gives the opportunity for writers to explore new aspects of the character. Sometimes this leads to very extreme changes in how the characters looks, feels, and acts (brainwashing and transformation stories especially), and that can be okay. Change by itself isn't usually bad - most comic books tend to make the characters go through lots of changes, in lots of different ways! - it's how the change comes about and how the character handles it which affects verisimilitude. If Superman suddenly becomes Superwoman, that's a substantial change - but how does it come about and how does he handle the situation? That can be interesting ground. Big changes should have correspondingly big adjustments to make; if the new Superwoman goes straight from being sexually attracted to women to sucking Batman's dick, that's a pretty shocking development, and getting it to work convincingly might take some effort.

When you're dealing with a character from a novel, animated series, TV show, movie, etc. that has far fewer fingerprints on it, things are little different: the character is generally more consistent, which makes any veering from how they would normally act more obvious and less convincing. In that case, you do really need to get to know your character, review the source material, and build up an idea of how the character functions - what would they do, and what would they not do? What are their resources, skills, little quirks and mannerisms? What do they like and not like? What motivates them?

At the end of the day, fanfic is fantasy, and some aspects of erotic fantasy involve elements of degradation. Which is rarely to the taste of people that are actually fans of the characters involved, but which some people use as a release. If somebody writes about Donald Trump being trapped in the body of a Miss Universe pageant contestant as his past self grabs her by the pussy, that's a political hateboner being worked out, not a desire to see a beloved celebrity in a sexually positive fantasy scenario. A lot of the embarrassed nude female stories on the site tend to be some variation of wanting to see their proud, successful, talented women get degraded...and yeah, there's an audience for that.
 
Warden-Yarn15 said:
Granted this shouldn't always be the case as well, with characters finding themselves in scenarios not possible/realistic in their world (an example of this would probably be Helen Parr going to a gloryhole booth), then their reactions could adapt to these new surrondings.
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I wanted to highlight this because it's a good example. Helen Parr in the Pixar movies is never going to go to a gloryhole - but she's married, had three pregnancies, is conscious of her figure, she's a sexual metahuman being. So if you're going to present her as going to a gloryhole, the question then becomes how could she get there while retaining in character? That's an interesting creative challenge with a lot of solutions.

Getting her there requires some suspension of disbelief; the more abrupt and out-of-character it seems, the more difficult it becomes to sustain the disbelief...but it's not impossible. Just ten random thoughts on this:

- She crashed into a porno store during a battle, saw a gloryhole, and can't get the image out of her head
- A teenaged Incredible left their porn where Elastigirl could find it, and she's shocked at the images of the women doing things there - whose porn is it, and what is she going to do about it?
- A new secret contact insists on passing her missions and informations at a local gloryhole; Elastigirl doesn't know what's going on until it's too late
- Bob and Helen's marriage needs a little spicing up in the bedroom. He decides to help her fulfill a fantasy by building her a gloryhole so that they can pretend.
- Mr. Incredible has been going out alone at nights - again - and one night Elastigirl follows him to see what he's up to...and finds herself in an unexpected situation on the wrong side of a gloryhole!
- Syndrome is back for revenge - and he's kidnapped Mrs. Incredible and stuck her in a virtual gloryhole prison! How is she going to escape from this one?
- Elastigirl wants another baby, but it turns out that Mr. Incredible is sterile and they can't afford IVF; after a tough heart-to-heart, they decide maybe the best way is for an anonymous donation...so Helen gathers her courage and heads to the one play she can think of to get totally anonymous sex
- Helen and Bob's marriage has been on the rocks ever since he stepped out on her with Mirage; they agree that the best way to handle the situation is to agree to an open marriage...so that they can both get some relief. Which is how she ends up at the gloryhole.
- Money's tight since Bob lost his job, and it's up to Elastigirl to make it up somehow...and there is one place she knows she can make some quick cash, no questions asked.
- A perverted villain is holding Dash hostage in a giant hamsterwheel (of doom!) To save him, Elastigirl will have to do things she never thought she'd do...all while the unseen villain watches her. Hopefully, while she performs at the gloryhole, the rest of the family can free Dash.

Are these all good ideas? No! Some of them are terrible, and the longer and more involved they are, the more build-up they need to be convincing - but I hope it shows that you can have multiple ways for a character to get to a certain state, if that's the particular image you have in your head.
 
I don't know if this is completely on topic or not but, I'll give it a shot anyway.

A lot of the fanfictions here come from anime/comic/cartoon shows etc., which are drawn.
On the net, you can resonably find rule 34 material of it. Sometimes it's scarce, sometimes it is much more abundant, depending on the popularity and age of the I.P. in question.
A large part of this stuff capitalizes the looks and the art of the original creator of particular character (one pice, naruto, dragon ball..) but actually forego adhering to said character personality.
This actually works because there's the art backing it up, but when there's only a written text, you end up loosing whatever connection with the orginal, in my opinion.

To reach my point, I think that stuff, drawn erotica with just the looks of a character, actually confuses many people about what is and how properly write a fanfiction.
 
SeriousBrainDamage said:
I don't know if this is completely on topic or not but, I'll give it a shot anyway.

A lot of the fanfictions here come from anime/comic/cartoon shows etc., which are drawn.
On the net, you can resonably find rule 34 material of it. Sometimes it's scarce, sometimes it is much more abundant, depending on the popularity and age of the I.P. in question.
A large part of this stuff capitalizes the looks and the art of the original creator of particular character (one pice, naruto, dragon ball..) but actually forego adhering to said character personality.
This actually works because there's the art backing it up, but when there's only a written text, you end up loosing whatever connection with the orginal, in my opinion.

To reach my point, I think that stuff, drawn erotica with just the looks of a character, actually confuses many people about what is and how properly write a fanfiction.
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I think you're definitely on the money with this one.
 
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