On bad characterization

[dvandom]

Time to pontificate, this time on the topic of bad characterization in fanfics.

While far from exhaustive, I think bad characterization in fanfic (and in bad profic written by people with a fanfic mentality) can be split into three major categories.

1. None. The writer simply doesn't write well enough to have characterization in the first place. Every character is like every other character, and one-dimensionality would be giving them too much credit.

2. Lockstep. The writer is well-versed in the character's history, and doesn't deviate from it. At all. There is no growth, no new insight about what makes the character tick, just a repetition of the canon.

3. Iconoclasty. The writer is convinced they know the core of what makes the character tick...and that everyone else who has written the character has missed the point. The opposite of type 2, the iconoclast sets out to ignore or even contradict all previous characterization. Now, sometimes a fresh take is good, and ignoring bad previous writing is desirable, but we're talking about the dark side of that here. Someone who's idea of the true nature of the character is wholly and foully wrong, but is bound and determined to express it anyway.

One thing about the changes in comics over the years is that where once you were likely to get Type 2 bad writers being offered jobs (maintain that Marvel Style!), nowadays it seems that the editorial staffs at the big companies are horribly embarrassed by their own heritage and actually seek out Type 3 iconoclasts in an attempt to bury the shameful past. Trying to make comics "grow up" means stuff like Civil War and Identity Crisis is not only proposed, it's greenlit and pushed to the hilt.

Obviously, good writing requires a balance. You have to respect what has gone before, but be willing to change things so that the characters can grow, or at least show new depths.

Comments

[gary-williams.livejournal.com]

Sadly, many canon stories fit the "none" category, in which randomly-selected lines of dialog could be attributed to just about anyone.

This could actually be the basis for a fun game: transcribe some dialog from an agreed-upon series, and have people guess the characters that were conversing. But technobabble and thick accents would have to be avoided.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

It's been commented before that comics are cyclic, in that there is a story bible that describes any given character's 'standing state' to which they will return, at the end of any story arc or when the writer changes.

Every few years, someone will come up with a new and interesting way to present a character or team, and it will run for up to three years, then the writer will move on or be fired, and the character will tend to revert to what they were, with only cosmetic changes allowed.

This is more true the more iconic a character is.

There are two ways to change the character in a deeper fashion: Iconoclastic story arc(and frequently bad writer), or return to the basics.

Frank Miller's Daredevil was iconoclastic because it retconned all over the well-understood radioactive turtletoxic waste, and turned Matt Murdock, Boxer/Gymnast/blind-with-superSenses into Matt McNinja, with serious de-emphasis of the unique nature of his senses. It also broke with the art style (and frequently with human anatomy; Miller more than once drew DD with two left feet).

The good Iconoclastic stories will spawn changes throughout the industry. For instance, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a clear satire on the Miller Daredevil.

The bad ones will sometimes kill a comic dead. Wonder Woman (despite some being written by Sam Delaney!) was depowered and turned into a sort of Emma Peel character with a blind oriental guy as her mentor ... hey, didn't that also happen to Daredevil? Anyway. The comic was losing circulation like crazy. Gloria Steinem actually intervened and they recovered with a Return to Basics.

However, Fantastic Four, in July of 1981, has what wiki naively called a 'critical success' with John Byrne's 'Back to Basics' where the hamfisted authorial hackings and plagiarisms of Mr. Byrne destroyed a decade of increasing story quality and (incidentally) slow but steady growth in circulation. Fortunately, after stealing the movie "Terror of Tiny Town" down to the dialogue, Byrne ran out of people to rip off and focussed more of his attention on Alpha BFlight, and leaving only the drastic dropoff of circulation that happened about halfway through Byrne's regime. He was, you see, masquerading as bad authorial type 2, but was really type 1.

Marvel did a wonderful thing when they created the Ultimate Marvel line. A different continuity meant they could re-interpret things to bring stories more up to date, and especially with Spider-Man, it worked well. Ultimates (aka Avengers) was, however, much worse, as it reinterpreted every 'hero' in its list as being something much less than heroic, and presented a Bush-grade Captain America. In other words, type 3 bad writing.

There's a fourth kind of bad character writing you didn't mention.

4. Cheap Tricks. This common form of bad characterization takes the character through a contrived and stupid story. Typically, this is a crossover, like Secret Wars, but may be something like the "Apocalypse" stories, or the Imaginary Stories of DC in the 1960s, or the entire Who Cares?What If? comics series.

The writer is generally able to write competently, and the characters may grow, but it's absolutely irrelevant because the crossover will either be ignored, or be quietly retconned, or fade into obscurity.

For instance, the mid-1990s "Death of Captain America" which seems to have been conveniently forgotten or ignored by the press surrounding the recent 'death'.

[richardx1.livejournal.com]

This is why so many Manga artists write titles with the intent and expectation of ending them at some point. Because eventually, you run out of stuff to say with/about the character.

I've said it once, I'll say it again: Civil War should have been the last storyline ever written about the original Marvel Universe, and they should have put all those resources into Ultimate at that point.