Meme time!

[selenak]

From florastuart:

Pick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

Comments

[ratcreature]

Magneto!

[selenak]

With the caveat that I've only written movieverse Magneto, once, and from someone else's pov:

1.) "Never again" is a guiding principle and personal raison d'etre, obviously. But the definition of "never again" changes for him through the years; younger Magneto wouldn't be yet capable of doing what old Magneto does at the end of X2.

2.) He's very good in personal one to one encounters when he needs to convince someone, and also in speeches, but in every day life that requires casual interaction and conversation with a group of people, he sucks. Those make him deeply uncomfortable.(Younger Magneto has a not so hidden "Charles was to do that!" moment when realising he just stuck himself with living with a couple of prickly strangers who would just as well argue about coffee as the fate of mutantdom; older Magneto has a strict hierarchy going where, with the important exception of Mystique, it's only minion-reporting-to-boss type of interaction.) According to Stryker's files, Pietro and Wanda exist in the movieverse, so let me add: this is also what makes Erik a lousy parent, in addition him being a horribly traumatized person, obviously.

3.) Charles Xavier isn't the only person in his life whom he loves/loved, but one of the very, very few. He didn't mean to. He'd definitely have picked anyone but Charles, if it had been a matter of choice. But it happened, and even in their worst days and actions, that emotion never stops.

4.) He prides himself on being more self aware and able to confront not just the darker side of humanity but his own than Charles is, and quite often that's true, but there is one big and painful paradox in his life that he deliberately shies away from and represses with all he can, and it is this: by choosing to define himself via his mutant identity and his mutant identity ONLY, he turned his back on his Jewish identity. (Let's face it, in terms of sheer percentage, most of of the world's Jewish population would be non-mutants.) (A braver soul than I would have to write a story in which Magneto has to choose between saving a fellow Palestinian mutant who in his non-mutant identity works for Hamas or saving a non-mutant Israeli, but I'd like to see someone try. I don't think Magneto could handle that. Those guys would probably both die.)

5.) During the X1-3 days, fandom assumed Erik's original language was Polish and added the occasional Polish endearment. XMFC made it film canon he's a Düsseldorfer, so now we have to put up with the occasional often wrongly used German pet name (I ranted about "Liebchen" in this very journal.*g*) I don't think Magneto switches languages during sex or when feeling particularly tender, I really don't. Not because he refuses to speak German post Auschwitz (he doesn't), but because first in his Nazi-hunting days and later in his vigilante and then his terrorist days, that kind of slip-up might have given him away when he was undercover. When he switches languages, it's always deliberate.

[ratcreature]

(A braver soul than I would have to write a story in which Magneto has to choose between saving a fellow Palestinian mutant who in his non-mutant identity works for Hamas or saving a non-mutant Israeli, but I'd like to see someone try. I don't think Magneto could handle that. Those guys would probably both die.)

Heh, yeah, it would tie him in knots, though I have to admit that my stumbling block with imagining this story isn't even the characterization question, but imagining a scenario where Magneto would be unable to save both, if he wanted to, or just stop the situation. I mean, Magneto is one of these ridiculously overpowered comic characters (though less so in the movies, especially in XMFC when he didn't control his powers fully yet). Since his powers control all electromagnetic fields on any scale, he has unlimited control over energy and matter with offensive and defensive capabilities, all that multiplied by "comic science" so he can transport people through wormholes or shrink planets and stuff.

[zahrawithaz]

He's very good in personal one to one encounters when he needs to convince someone, and also in speeches, but in every day life that requires casual interaction and conversation with a group of people, he sucks.

I love this point. It's a great Achilles' heel.

[aris_tgd]

G'Kar!

[selenak]

1.) Never forget first season G'Kar when writing fifth season G'Kar, and vice versa. For example: he's always been passionately religious. And he'll always be interested in sex. The capacity for anger didn't suddenly go away, either, he has to work on channelling it differently.

2.) If Morden had chosen G'Kar and taken him up on his wish, G'Kar would have gone through with the annihilation of every Centauri from the galaxy. The awareness of this comes into play when his relationship with Londo changes during the fourth season.

3.) A sense of humour. Never forget when writing G'Kar that he has one. He can also be non-deliberately pompous (when younger more than later on, when he's far more self aware), but mostly he knows when he's being sarcastic, speaking in irony, or making a plain old joke. Which means he should be witty now and then when he shows up for more than a cameo in a story.

4.) He didn't become an ambassador by accident, or because of his sexual preferences, and the journey with Lyta post s5 isn't just to help her heal and get out of being treated as an icon. He's genuinely curious about other people, both in the sense of "other races and places" and "other men and women".

5.) There is no way in which discovering you're sexually attracted to the race of your opressors in the middle of a a bloody occupation could have happened in a good way. I explored that a bit in my story about G'Kar and Mariel, and cremains used it, as far as I can recall, in a Londo/G'Kar first time story; it's something that I keep in mind for any G'Kar and Centauri romantic or sexual interaction, whether or not I make mention of it.

[gehayi]

Gwen from Merlin.

[selenak]

1.) She's very observant. Through all the seasons of the show, Gwen notices details and how they impact people, and draws conclusions from that; Sefa in the s5 premiere is a late example, her noticing that Arthur doesn't eat Hunith's food and following him into the woods where she points out to him this is an insult in s1 an early one. This means when you write in Gwen's pov, you can let her overlook things and be clueless, but there should be a good reason for it, otherwise it's ooc.

2.) She's grown up in Camelot, with its anti magic laws, she was extremely uncomfortable around child!Mordred in s1, then a lot of negative events happened for magical reasons in her life, and the sadly cut scene between her and Arthur from s4 where they discuss magic has her see it as one of the reasons why her father died. A lot of early season reveal!stories had Gwen immediately be on board with Merlin's magic and pro-magic in Camelot, but I never thought that was likely; I saw and see Gwen's attitude more depending on the case in question but uncomfortable with the idea of magic as such. Not in a "burn the witches, burn them now!" fanatic manner, you understand, but there is a basic distrust there.

3.) She doesn't love Arthur separately from his kingdom. Part of the reason why she started to love him was because the better part of him was the part that cared for his people and felt responsible for them, and her falling in love with him happened simultanous to learning to become a queen. This is one reason why AUs where they work in a coffee shop (if A/G AUs were written at all, that is) would not work for me, btw. They very much love the king and queen in each other (see also Arthur telling Agrivaine why Gwen makes a good queen); I see this as a positive, not a negative, and it's how I try to write it.

4.) Her early tendency to babble ended pretty much with the death of her father (is, however, important to keep in mind when writing very early or pre show Gwen), which is also when she stopped to unconditionally believe in happy endings. From s2 onwards I'd characterize Gwen's attitude to life as cautiously hopeful (with the awareness that things can go horribly wrong) and trying to make good things happen.

5.) I see her as a sensual person not just in the sexual sense; meaning she enjoys food, and fine clothes, listening to music, and looking at beautiful things (or people, for that matter). It's part of how she relates to the world.

[pseudo_tsuga]

I don't suppose John Lennon counts? :)

[selenak]

Ha, a challenge! Hm, let's see.

1.) Seeing love as a finite cake. I.e. if someone he truly loves loves other people, too, it means somehow less love for John. Which leads to not being content with less than symbiosis, and even then employing paranoia towards his beloved. Older John is aware of that and sometimes working on it (see: Jealous Guy, various other apology songs through the 70s), but alas it's consistent right till the end.

2.) He's a genuinenly witty guy. It's easy, and I'm not sure to have fought the temptation successfully, to write him non stop angry/lashing out, but that's actually not true, not even during the worst periods of his life. One of the reasons why people loved him and forgave him such a lot was that infallible wit, a great deal of charm, and that if in a good mood he could be very caring and endearing. It's tricky to replicate that in fiction.

3.) Which brings me to moodswings. Any fictional John Lennon should have them. That way, you can do both the darker and brighter sides of his personality.

4.) As with anyone whose excellence at their job is actually the reason why we became interested in him/her in the first place: don't forget John is a songwriter/musician. It should colour the way he perceives the world and interacts with people at least somewhat.

5.) The One Why All The Harry Potter Memes That Put Him In Slytherin Are Wrong And Forget Ambition As The Crucial SLyth Trait: quintessential laziness. Depending on which stage of his life one writes him, he needs Paul or Yoko to drive him by competition and encouragement both.