From a certain point of view...

[selenak]

flo_nelja recently commented to me, apropos my rant re: A/B with A having been in previous relationship with C written as "I never loved C and never loved anyone before B" stories, but really applicable in general: I have a weakness for fics in which the characters are, on certain points, wrong, and we realize it, but they don't.

Which got me thinking about point of view stories in general, and how one gets across the difference between "this is what the character believes to be true" and "this is what the author thinks to be true". (Without, that is, bringing in another character's pov, which is an obvious corrective.) Now, I love character exploration in fanfic, and if anything I have a tendency to overdo it with the inner monologue. I love getting the challenge of getting into characters' headspaces and present reality from their pov. Very occasionally, I then get feedback based on the assumption that I share said pov, i.e. rather than "thanks for making me understand X", "oh yeah! X is so right!", which, if I entirely disagree with X, can feel... odd, and I can never decide whether that means I failed or succeeded as a writer.

So, how does one go about showing convincingly why X does and feels the things she/he does, but simultanously signals this is a distorted pov? (Preferably not in a sledgehammer fashion, i.e. sans muwahahahas.) It's easiest when you write about a character whom canon already presents as insane or at the very least seriously unbalanced, or as being set on goals one can reasonably assume the majority of the readership will recognize as wrong. For example: I've written a Lucy Saxon pov (Doctor Who), an Uther pov (Merlin) and a Daniel Holtz pov (Angel), without these, hopefully, coming across as endorsing genocides, abusive relationships and/or brainwashing your biological or adopted offspring. (Mind you: Holtz is far more self-aware of what he's doing than Uther is.) My attempt of getting across that Lucy is participating in the genocide and enslavement of humanity while unable to cope with it (leading to displacement and victim blaming), or with the fact she's kidding herself about the nature of her relationship with the Master, while remaining entirely in her own pov, is probably summed up best in this passage:


That was one reason why she never went down on the surface, though she could have asked. The one time she had done, early on, she had encountered the same smells, and the air was clean, so clean in her castle in the sky. She insisted on it. It was always clean.

The staff still managed to smell. "Can't we get better people?" Lucy asked, and Harry patted her cheek and told her she was adorable. He didn't seem to understand that it was deliberate sabotage, especially by the Jones family. They did it because they knew it reminded Lucy of Utopia. Somehow, they knew, even though she never spoke of it. They probably imagined it would make her feel guilty, which was ridiculous. She had made her choice. She was the most envied woman on the planet. Why would she have regrets?

Nonetheless, she didn't like the way the Jones girl and her mother smelled, and because Harry wouldn't get her replacements, she got them good, new uniforms, and insisted they showered each morning before coming into her presence. She even gave them soaps and deodorants, which were hardly manufactured on Earth anymore, only for her, because Harry wanted her to feel pretty, of course. One would have thought Francine and Tish were grateful, but no. Somehow, they still managed to smell of steel and burning flesh and the sweet, foul scent of decay.

It never stopped. It never, ever stopped.

Not exactly the most subtle way to get across Lucy is seriously twisted, I admit, but, I hope, effective. It's trickier when your pov character is simply mistaken or oblivious about some things while right about others. Or presented by canon as being in the right which you, as the author, happen to disagree with. Back when I was part of a DS9 drabble community, there was the challenge of writing in the pov of a character one dislikes. Now, there aren't many of these in DS9 for me. But I have Prophet issues. Do I ever. Said Prophet issues were already expressed in an earlier drabble by another character, but this time, this was not an option. So. There was this non-linear superbeing who did something I thought incredibly revolting in canon, all the more so because it was not acknowledged as such but presented as a good thing. At the same time, I didn't want to go the "is secretly evil" route. What I ended up going for was playing up the non-linearity of said being's perceptions (it has already happened, so it is only logical for the Prophet to do it), the alien-ness and the way the Prophet finds itself affected by its victim. Whether Cold Heaven reads as endorsing, rejecting or simply explaining the Prophet(s) to the readers probably depends a lot more on the reader than the Lucy, Uther or Holtz pieces.

Still, while I tried to understand my least favourite DS9 character(s) here, I wasn't exactly filled with Prophet love while writing that vignette. How about writing a beloved character, with the goal of getting readers to emphathize, and still disagreeing with the beloved character's views and actions, at least partly? In-denial characters are their own kind of challenge, and fun, especially if you write a story in which they remain in denial instead of having an epiphany.

Summertime Blues was a case in point for me. It's an Angel story about Connor between seasons 3 and 4. Here you have a (fairly unpopular in fandom at large, but for me a personal favourite) pov character who has just done something horrendous to the show's lead character and is lying about that to the characters he's with, and since this isn't an AU, readers also know how it will turn out, and what can't happen. He's also unfamiliar not only with most of the backstory of the characters he's with (as opposed to the readers) but some crucial facts about his own history. And, being raised by a vengeance-obsessed 18th century Yorkshire man, really not the type to speak about or figure out his feelings. So the way I tried to get across Connor's mixed feelings about his biological father (while denying he feels anything but hate), grief for the adopted father whose death he can't talk about because that would reveal to Fred and Gunn too much, and Fred and Gunn getting to him emotionally without his acknowledging as much to himself, and without ever breaking pov, was mostly through gestures that address what he can't verbalize or double negatives, as in:

Sitting on his bed, holding the letter his father wrote, he smells Angelus's traces there as well, and wonders whether this is the last trick of the demon: intermingling his scent with his father's, so Connor can't wish either away.

Where I find the attempt to present a character pov on events which is not necessarily true from an objective pov trickiest of all, in the sense of reader reception, though, is either with an open canon, characters who are morally ambiguous and one's own conclusions a work in progress as well... or when any type of either romantic shipping or redemptionist agenda is involved. A long time ago I wrote a DS9 story named Five things which never happened between Kira and Dukat, and the feedback I've had over the years came from people who loathed Dukat, from people who loathed Kira, from people who loved both but didn't ship them, and from people who loved them and shipped them, and some of them got completely opposite impressions of what these five things were about. Not to mention that I found myself seen as an ally by all of them. In this particular case, getting such different reactions was satisfying from an authorial pov, not least because while I found the Kira-Dukat (or Kira/Dukat) relationship fascinating, and like both characters, I don't love either and went for maximum complexity, not a pro or anti shipping stance. However, more recently, as part of my newly discovered Merlin fannishness, I wrote Into the Woods and was not just bewildered but honestly shocked when one of the (positive) reviews, the one at AO3, interpreted its purpose being that "Arthur gets to have a chance to say, wait a minute, what about me?" re: Merlin/Freya, which in fact is not only the exact opposite of what I was going for in the story but also one of my tried and true anti-kinks in fanfiction (i.e. stories with a "bad canon, letting that WOMAN come between our boys!" sub- or main text). Cue authorial "did I fail as a writer?" soul searching. Still remaining with my newest fandom, in the last months I also wrote a Gaius pov. As opposed to Uther, Gaius, while canonically presented as flawed, is mostly a positive father figure to the main character as far as the show's narrative is concerned; fandom, on the other hand, with some justification, has taken great umbrage to his decision re: keeping crucial information from one of the supporting characters. My own feelings on Gaius and his decisions vary. What I was trying to get across with the Gaius pov was why he made said decisions; I agree with some, but not all of his reasons; for example, I think he's completely right about the strong similarity he sees between Uther and Morgana, but also that the conclusion he draws - not to trust Morgana with the truth - is the one easiest to himself, not, as he tells himself, the one that is best for Morgana as well. So did I get across that I think Gaius is right in some regards and in others massively self-justifiying and deluded? Who knows. Probably not in this case, I suspect, because the Morgana issue is just one aspect, and it's a rather short vignette anyway; also, the emphasis is more on "why does Gaius what he does" and less on "and this is where Gaius is wrong".

All of which goes to say: I, too, have a weakness for fics in which the characters are, on certain points, wrong, and we realize it, but they don't; I'm just not sure I can always pull them off, or even that such a thing is always possible.

Comments

[alisx]

Oh gods do I ever love this trope, lol.

I don't think I'm physically capable of writing a 100% reliable narrator, though for me it's usually more of an ironic situation than an ideological one; like, there's Something Going On that the POV character isn't aware of, and that lack of awareness completely colours his/her (otherwise entirely reasonable) view of the situation. Fanfic is super-good for it since it's easy to leverage off the canon. Which is kinda cheating, but... well. :P

Technically speaking, I like using little inconsistencies; stuff the reader won't necessarily pick up on, or thinks I've forgotten as an author, until the "a-hah!" moment later on... if there even is one of those. Or have characters basically lie to the audience; like, describe themselves or their motivations (in the narration) in one way, then have them physically act in some way that's completely contradictory. It's sort of like the "second character" debunking method, but makes the reader into the second character (and if she doesn't want to pick up the inconsistency, then she doesn't have to).

I think my love of this trope comes from the fact that there tends to be a Hero Character in my fandoms whose POV is the Right One by authorial fiat. And it's usually one I don't agree with, lol. So I think the main reason I like the unreliable narrator is that it basically subverts that idea, usually by [the] proxy [of my favourite antagonist]. :3

[selenak]

As long as your favourite antagonist doesn't become The Only One Who Is Right instead, I think that's a quite effective method. :)

like, describe themselves or their motivations (in the narration) in one way, then have them physically act in some way that's completely contradictory.

Also known as the Han Solo in A New Hope method. :) *nods* Contradiction between self-description and physical action is fun, though not always possible, I suppose: not every story has a suitable plot for that.

[executrix]

I think as a fic writer I was deeply stamped by "Blood Simple," where all of the characters have only partial access to the facts and they *never* figure it out.

One of the advantages of being a fanfic rather than origific writer is that there are so *many* canon details that will be recognized by fanreaders so that the unreliable narrator's interpretation will immediately be seen to be distorted.

[selenak]

Good point. There is a shared reader knowledge you can't assume in pro fic. However, there is also the question of fanon, especially since some fanfic readers will not have read/watched all the books/episodes in question, and will draw their characterisation from secondary sources, then object if something goes against it. Cases in point: Blaise Zabini spending years as a barely mentioned name that could be either gender in the HP novels, and then getting a gender, a skin colour and some background in The Half Blood Prince. Cue fannish indignation because that Blaise was not their Blaise, and a lot of fanfic existing with a lot of different Blaises. Or, to cite more important characters: there is this fannish consensus about Lucius Malfoy being cool as a cucumber when dealing with others, usually described with adjectives like "smoothly" or "icily". Helped, no doubt, by Jason Isaac's performance in the film versions, but I think Smooth Controlled Villain Lucius existed in fanfic before that. The thing is, this is the same man who canonically gets into a red-faced public shouting match with Arthur Weasley.

Going Out in a Blaise of Glory

[executrix]

Slash Goggles are only part of the stylish fannish Goggle Wardrobe--there are just some things, like Woobie Goggles, that affect what we see and we won't let a little thing like canon slow us down.

[michelel72]

Here via metafandom.

This is fun, challenging stuff. Unfortunately, there will always be readers who persist in thinking that anything that isn't dialogue is "narrative" that represents the writer's viewpoint. I don't think there's any way to get through to them without an author's note at the start: "This is deep POV; content may not reflect the author's" blah blah blah. Which is blunt and unsatisfying; it suggests the writer is too unskilled to convey that (to most audiences) in the writing. Even the most skilled writer will not get through to every reader, I think.

That said, finding ways to signal an unreliable or even simply non-author-avatar narrator is worthwhile. One way you've noted is to include clearly non-standard thought processes. Another is to use repetition — if the character keeps coming back to certain themes, or apparently re-realizing certain concepts, the reader can pick up that those themes are important or that the character's mental process is somehow altered.

Another is to include clues that can have different meaning to the reader, even through the POV character's eyes — statements that seem straightforward until they're interpreted differently by the POV character; ever-so-slightly extraneous actions or glances that stand out to the reader by their apparently unnecessary inclusion.

Heavily worldbuilt contexts (science fiction, fantasy, historical) can help, because the character can then structure arguments around elements of that worldbuilding. You again show that with Lucy's comparisons to Utopia. If a character is ruminating on the qualities of good and bad slaves, or on the state of modern navigation as he steers his 18th-century pirate ship, or on the racy daring of the fetching young woman who dares speak directly to men and reveal glimpses of her ankle, we can hope that readers will catch on to the split between POV narration and author's viewpoint. That helps to build an unreliable narrator, though certainly the work doesn't stop there.

I'm tagging this post — I'd love to see what else is suggested!

[selenak]

Worldbuilt context certainly is one of my favourite devices in this regard. But I love what you suggest here:

Another is to use repetition — if the character keeps coming back to certain themes, or apparently re-realizing certain concepts, the reader can pick up that those themes are important or that the character's mental process is somehow altered.

Within reason and not overdoing it, I think that should be very effective.

[musicdiamond]

As someone who loves getting really deep into pretty screwed up characters' mindsets, this topic is very interesting to me. I tend to like my characters chock full of flaws, so it really varies by the flaw and the theme(s) of the piece I'm trying to write. Some flaws, I figure the reader will either pick up on and recognize for what it is and some readers won't--but it's not something I'm focusing on as a broader theme in the story so I don't consciously try to do anything to distinguish it as a character view distortion from an author view distortion.

Other flaws or distortions, I do want to highlight because they're part of the theme of my story. In which case I tend to do two things: 1, show how this failing leads to bad consequence for the character or 2, have some outside character have an present an opposing viewpoint. Unless the story calls for it, I'm not going to have said outside character engage in a lengthy and tedious debate with the protagonist about why she's wrong--more likely I will try to have the character act in ways that express this viewpoint and at most drop a few comments that further back up their behavior when the protagonist is around.

[selenak]

I tend to like my characters chock full of flaws, so it really varies by the flaw and the theme(s) of the piece I'm trying to write.

*nods* Same here. If, say, a character tends to be condescending, you can write her/him that way without being called on it if that is not the point of the story but hope it's obvious to the readers anyway.

Unless the story calls for it, I'm not going to have said outside character engage in a lengthy and tedious debate with the protagonist about why she's wrong--

It's almost impossible to write such a debate without coming across as heavy-handed anyway. Plus, as a reader, when I come across a story where only one of the characters has all the good arguments and gets into non-stop lecturing, I get annoyed. So I'm with you: actions demonstrating the alternate view point and a pointed comment or two at most work better.

[spiletta42]

For me, the hardest part of writing these types of fics is trusting both my abilities and the audience's intellect, and accepting that it's okay if some readers get it wrong. Actually, I should say that's the hardest part of posting these fics, because when I'm doing the actual writing, I'm usually feeling pretty confident, but then I tend to hold them back and fret a lot before sharing, because I fear the negative backlash if the first person to misinterpret something has the energy to recruit an angry mob. My paranoia in that area has, unfortunately, grown with experience.

That said, the writer has not failed if some readers do believe every word thought by the unreliable narrator -- it means you've mirrored that character well enough that real people who think like that character didn't realize you were faking it. It might be a little depressing to realize that some real people think like such a character, but it's a fact of life.

Also, with fanfiction, the writer is dealing with far more preconceived notions on the part of the reader than with original fiction. It's helpful to recognize and analyze one's own preconceived notions, but as a writer one just has to accept those of fellow fans, and laugh if necessary, because it's that or go mad.