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Feb. 24th, 2019 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingoneStill trying to work out how I'm going to interact with Dreamwidth when it comes to sharing interesting things I saw around, but here's another post that's giving me thinky thoughts: 3-Point Characterization. The idea is that when you have a character you write a lot or read a lot or have strong opinions about the characterization of, it can be good to have an idea what are the three main points their characterization has to include -- things that if they're missed or contradicted, they read as OOC to you. Not all three have to be explicitly included in every story, of course, but it made me ponder.
So of course the place that I start at is Wes, because it's me. And maybe I'll wind up refining this some, that's why I'm writing this post after all, but basically I think where I start is that the three points that define him for me are pretty much straight-up the prankster, the sharpshooter, and the XO.
1. The prankster. Wes is somebody who uses humor to deal with trauma, his own or other people's. He plays pranks to cheer himself and his friends up. He's not mean-spirited; he's not irresponsible; he just doesn't give a crap about looking dignified or grown-up or important. In canon, that's because he's faced (and caused) too many deaths too young and it kind of broke him, to where he decided the only useful purpose for his life was to have more fun than the person who finally winds up killing him. In AUs where he hasn't been a soldier since his teens, he can be less fatalistic and more just naturally bouncy, but he still has a good sense of boundaries. I'm probably going to wind up whittling this down, like I said.
2. The sharpshooter. This is... more or less a shorthand Leia and I have been using to refer to this side of Wes -- his darker side, the pragmatic killer, the person who does what has to be done. The quote that sums him up is from Solo Command: "He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people." This darker side doesn't come out as much in the fluffier domestic AUs I write, but there's a... a distilled version of it, I guess, that I'm having trouble wording. Because the thing is -- there's a common type of antihero character whose appeal to his target demographic is that he's not bothered with all those pesky morals, and that's not Wes, but the thing is that he's also not the tortured hero who hates what he has to do. There's a scene in Starfighters of Adumar where Wes is getting ready to beat the crap out of a douchenozzle who nearly murdered one of his friends, and he tells Wedge "You'd do this out of duty. Me, I'm going to enjoy it." He's not a nice person, and even though I have trouble wording exactly how, that streak of matter-of-fact bastardry is an important part of his character in my head. He almost reminds me of Sam Vimes that way. I don't know that I'd put him up against the Following Dark, but... *pulls hair* I don't think this is really being coherent, is it.
3. The XO. One of the things that shows up a lot in older fanon versions of Wes is that he's just an irresponsible party animal, and one of the things I really like about him in canon is that he's actually very smart, very organized, and extremely good at datawork. (At one point he makes a crack about "the thrilling adventures of Wes Janson, Ace Statistician", which I'm thinking about making into a t-shirt at some point, because when I sort out weird billing issues at work and I'm crunching numbers for twenty minutes on end, that's where my brain goes. ^_^) He's just also the sort of person who bounces on his bed and pranks people with plushie Ewoks, and also the kind of person who will kick your ass seven ways to Sunday if you hurt one of his friends. In other words, he's exactly me, although I'm still sort of wrestling with the sharpshooter thing, for both him and me. (There's a scene I'm stuck in the middle of writing right now where he's in the process of shifting from someone who kind of wishes he could have a normal life to someone who will happily admit he's going to enjoy hurting someone who deserves it, and like, those are both him but I'm kind of struggling with... letting him become that second person. And there's definitely parts of me and my personality that are entangled in that.)
Uh. That wasn't what you'd call... succinct. :P I was hoping to get things really boiled down, but I don't think I did.
Um. I wonder. *tries to chew on hair but it isn't long enough* Honestly, trying to get these down to their essentials, I'm almost thinking... the sharpshooter splits into two halves. There's the XO, who watches everybody else's backs and takes care of things that need doing and ties up the loose ends, and there's the guy whose main focus is having fun, including when that means kicking somebody's ass. Which means... that doesn't get things any more succinct, because I have to expand out everything I say, but it's a different way of looking at it. I wonder if it'll help me with this scene I'm stuck on. God knows I've written a hell of a lot of other meta trying to work it out.
*pulls hair* Anyway. Then I was going to try and think out loud about Hobbie too, but honestly I just don't think I'm very good at boiling people down to points that way. I already had the prankster/sharpshooter/XO thing, for chrissakes, and I still didn't really get any forrader in it. Lemme see if I can at least get my three points about Wes down to like a sentence each.
1. He's not nice. Nice is different than good, as the song says, and he's also not good. He may be kind; he'll go a long damn way to help one of his friends if they're having emotional issues. He's also not cruel without cause, and he's not mean-spirited. I don't think this is helping. I know in the middle of my head what he is, but I can only find words for it in terms of what he's not. Similarly, he's both orderly and chaotic at the same time. He sees the big picture of a battle better than Wedge (which makes him a slightly less effective fighter because he's paying attention to too many things at once), he's good at crunching numbers and collating records, he's a really good XO... he's also a perpetual nine-year-old who likes plushie Ewoks and bouncing on the bed. I think the best way I could say this in one sentence is that he doesn't fit on any kind of sorting spectrum or grid I can think of. He doesn't appear to have a definable alignment, and yet I know exactly who and what and how he is. *pulls hair*
(1a. Except Hufflepuff. You can make an extremely good case for Wes being a Hufflepuff. You just have to be in the sort of mentality where psychopomps - Death and its guides and anthropomorphic personifications - are also Hufflepuffs. But I've always liked psychopomps.)
Um. That didn't really go anywhere useful. Let's try again.
1. He doesn't appear to have a definable alignment, and yet somehow he strikes a very particular balance between nice and mean, kind and cruel, good and bad, chaotic and orderly. You wouldn't call him neutral, but he's not... lopsided, either.
2. Joy. Wes is about joy. Even when he's struggling to find any value in himself, that's his goal.
3. He's really smart. He's that person in school who always got straight A's without seeming to study at all, and yet you couldn't hate him because he was just that lovable.
*mutters* That's better, but I really want to find some way to put the alignment thing better than "I know what it's not".
I wanted to tackle Hobbie and a bunch of my other characters also, but it's bedtime and I still need a shower.
So of course the place that I start at is Wes, because it's me. And maybe I'll wind up refining this some, that's why I'm writing this post after all, but basically I think where I start is that the three points that define him for me are pretty much straight-up the prankster, the sharpshooter, and the XO.
1. The prankster. Wes is somebody who uses humor to deal with trauma, his own or other people's. He plays pranks to cheer himself and his friends up. He's not mean-spirited; he's not irresponsible; he just doesn't give a crap about looking dignified or grown-up or important. In canon, that's because he's faced (and caused) too many deaths too young and it kind of broke him, to where he decided the only useful purpose for his life was to have more fun than the person who finally winds up killing him. In AUs where he hasn't been a soldier since his teens, he can be less fatalistic and more just naturally bouncy, but he still has a good sense of boundaries. I'm probably going to wind up whittling this down, like I said.
2. The sharpshooter. This is... more or less a shorthand Leia and I have been using to refer to this side of Wes -- his darker side, the pragmatic killer, the person who does what has to be done. The quote that sums him up is from Solo Command: "He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people." This darker side doesn't come out as much in the fluffier domestic AUs I write, but there's a... a distilled version of it, I guess, that I'm having trouble wording. Because the thing is -- there's a common type of antihero character whose appeal to his target demographic is that he's not bothered with all those pesky morals, and that's not Wes, but the thing is that he's also not the tortured hero who hates what he has to do. There's a scene in Starfighters of Adumar where Wes is getting ready to beat the crap out of a douchenozzle who nearly murdered one of his friends, and he tells Wedge "You'd do this out of duty. Me, I'm going to enjoy it." He's not a nice person, and even though I have trouble wording exactly how, that streak of matter-of-fact bastardry is an important part of his character in my head. He almost reminds me of Sam Vimes that way. I don't know that I'd put him up against the Following Dark, but... *pulls hair* I don't think this is really being coherent, is it.
3. The XO. One of the things that shows up a lot in older fanon versions of Wes is that he's just an irresponsible party animal, and one of the things I really like about him in canon is that he's actually very smart, very organized, and extremely good at datawork. (At one point he makes a crack about "the thrilling adventures of Wes Janson, Ace Statistician", which I'm thinking about making into a t-shirt at some point, because when I sort out weird billing issues at work and I'm crunching numbers for twenty minutes on end, that's where my brain goes. ^_^) He's just also the sort of person who bounces on his bed and pranks people with plushie Ewoks, and also the kind of person who will kick your ass seven ways to Sunday if you hurt one of his friends. In other words, he's exactly me, although I'm still sort of wrestling with the sharpshooter thing, for both him and me. (There's a scene I'm stuck in the middle of writing right now where he's in the process of shifting from someone who kind of wishes he could have a normal life to someone who will happily admit he's going to enjoy hurting someone who deserves it, and like, those are both him but I'm kind of struggling with... letting him become that second person. And there's definitely parts of me and my personality that are entangled in that.)
Uh. That wasn't what you'd call... succinct. :P I was hoping to get things really boiled down, but I don't think I did.
Um. I wonder. *tries to chew on hair but it isn't long enough* Honestly, trying to get these down to their essentials, I'm almost thinking... the sharpshooter splits into two halves. There's the XO, who watches everybody else's backs and takes care of things that need doing and ties up the loose ends, and there's the guy whose main focus is having fun, including when that means kicking somebody's ass. Which means... that doesn't get things any more succinct, because I have to expand out everything I say, but it's a different way of looking at it. I wonder if it'll help me with this scene I'm stuck on. God knows I've written a hell of a lot of other meta trying to work it out.
*pulls hair* Anyway. Then I was going to try and think out loud about Hobbie too, but honestly I just don't think I'm very good at boiling people down to points that way. I already had the prankster/sharpshooter/XO thing, for chrissakes, and I still didn't really get any forrader in it. Lemme see if I can at least get my three points about Wes down to like a sentence each.
1. He's not nice. Nice is different than good, as the song says, and he's also not good. He may be kind; he'll go a long damn way to help one of his friends if they're having emotional issues. He's also not cruel without cause, and he's not mean-spirited. I don't think this is helping. I know in the middle of my head what he is, but I can only find words for it in terms of what he's not. Similarly, he's both orderly and chaotic at the same time. He sees the big picture of a battle better than Wedge (which makes him a slightly less effective fighter because he's paying attention to too many things at once), he's good at crunching numbers and collating records, he's a really good XO... he's also a perpetual nine-year-old who likes plushie Ewoks and bouncing on the bed. I think the best way I could say this in one sentence is that he doesn't fit on any kind of sorting spectrum or grid I can think of. He doesn't appear to have a definable alignment, and yet I know exactly who and what and how he is. *pulls hair*
(1a. Except Hufflepuff. You can make an extremely good case for Wes being a Hufflepuff. You just have to be in the sort of mentality where psychopomps - Death and its guides and anthropomorphic personifications - are also Hufflepuffs. But I've always liked psychopomps.)
Um. That didn't really go anywhere useful. Let's try again.
1. He doesn't appear to have a definable alignment, and yet somehow he strikes a very particular balance between nice and mean, kind and cruel, good and bad, chaotic and orderly. You wouldn't call him neutral, but he's not... lopsided, either.
2. Joy. Wes is about joy. Even when he's struggling to find any value in himself, that's his goal.
3. He's really smart. He's that person in school who always got straight A's without seeming to study at all, and yet you couldn't hate him because he was just that lovable.
*mutters* That's better, but I really want to find some way to put the alignment thing better than "I know what it's not".
I wanted to tackle Hobbie and a bunch of my other characters also, but it's bedtime and I still need a shower.
