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gah! everytime I try to write fiction I end up with ocs instead of main characters, what the heck
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Sep 22, 2018 02:11
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Expect My Mom posted:gah! everytime I try to write fiction I end up with ocs instead of main characters, what the heck 1) dont be a girl or write girls into your show grats suddenly your show is filled with respectable, complex characters
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Sep 22, 2018 02:14
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Maybe Justin_Brett meant "author self-insert" instead of whatever he said? But those can still be good, like the Metapod-thing that lives on top of Hidamari Apartments
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Sep 22, 2018 02:27
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Endorph posted:dont worry, there's one easy fix
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Sep 22, 2018 02:27
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StandardVC10 posted:Maybe Justin_Brett meant "author self-insert" instead of whatever he said? But those can still be good, like the Metapod-thing that lives on top of Hidamari Apartments I'm trying to figure out how that would work. Julietta is an extremely talented pilot but is regularly overshadowed and defeated by Mika, whose power comes from completely destroying himself in order to achieve his goals. Is there an anime director whose shows got bigger ratings than Okada's but he overworked himself into poor health to do it?
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Sep 22, 2018 02:33
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StandardVC10 posted:Maybe Justin_Brett meant "author self-insert" instead of whatever he said? But those can still be good, like the Metapod-thing that lives on top of Hidamari Apartments
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Sep 22, 2018 02:47
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Honestly I kinda like author-inserts when they're side characters. I don't want to see the author's power fantasy, but if the author's a reasonably interesting person I'll happily accept their commentary on a different story.
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Sep 22, 2018 02:55
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I for one want to read and see stories about cool and interesting people, and not myself.
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Sep 22, 2018 02:55
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It's mostly the fact she shows up in the second season and ends up with Gaellio, and is one of only a couple characters he interacts with much in that season, so people think Okada grew to really like him and wrote someone in for that purpose, and maybe even brought him back for the second season. I can at least buy the second, and without him around she'd feel a lot more like a grunt character. I actually am kind of curious what you do with the story now after the second season despite not liking it.
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Sep 22, 2018 03:01
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I feel like authors deciding on different paths and arcs for characters isn't really a conspiratorial secret.
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Sep 22, 2018 03:15
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Justin_Brett posted:It's mostly the fact she shows up in the second season and ends up with Gaellio, and is one of only a couple characters he interacts with much in that season, so people think Okada grew to really like him and wrote someone in for that purpose, and maybe even brought him back for the second season. Julietta serves a few purposes in the story. She's the first actually really good pilot Gjallarhorn has. This helps support the theme of Tekkadan getting in over it's head. Gjallarhorn didn't need good pilots when it was just shooting striking workers. Now they need good pilots, and they have them. Rustal is part of that too, Gjallarhorn showing that there's a reason they've been dominant for two centuries. Even if there's tons of incompetent aristocrats just waiting to get smashed by a giant hammer, there is still a core of ruthless efficiency that Tekkadan has woken up Secondly, she's lowborn. this helps setup the the political changes at the end. Rustal isn't a moron, he recognizes and promotes talent even if it comes from a lowborn pilot, and he's willing to sacrifice some of Gjallarhorns control if it means maintaining it's overall power. Something most of the incompetent aristocrats wouldn't be willing to do. thirdly, her relationship with Gaelio humanizes him and lets him live on after he gets his revenge. it also casts Gaelio in a more moral light than McGillis. Gaelio genuinely cares about another human being, McGillis doesn't. Justin_Brett posted:I actually am kind of curious what you do with the story now after the second season despite not liking it. The obvious option is a prequel about the Calamity War, the Mobile Armors, and the Gundam Pilots who became the Seven Star families. Or they could do a Macross 7 style thing, a new story with new characters and new antagonists.
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Sep 22, 2018 03:16
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oc just means Original Character yall. OCs appear in almost every story ever
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Sep 22, 2018 03:17
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the word you're looking for is Mary Sue
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Sep 22, 2018 03:17
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Endorph posted:I feel like authors deciding on different paths and arcs for characters isn't really a conspiratorial secret. Yeah. Okada's been up front in interviews that Gaelio was initially just going to be "McGillis's friend who gets betrayed", but then Matsukaze Masaya brought so much to the table she was like "Wait, wait. Gaelio's got some stuff going on under the surface there. You know, I was just going to off this grunt, but Gaelio could use someone besides McGillis to bounce off of..." And suddenly Gaelio was basically the lead to his own anime going on in the background while Tekkadan went all Yakuza movie in the foreground. (Also, in a bit of a tangent, I can't give much credit to the belief that only female characters get the mary sue self insert accusation, considering that I've seen people describe Naze as a clear writer insert when they didn't know who wrote IBO. Sexism's a factor, sure, but it's not the only one.)
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Sep 22, 2018 03:58
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 A typical American girl's bedroom
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Sep 22, 2018 05:44
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That was a sweet show, glad of these dorks is... is the turtle the grandpa?
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Sep 22, 2018 05:49
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Haruka is gunna show up to nationals just covered in scrunchies
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Sep 22, 2018 05:53
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I want the egg shaped mib chair, where do I get one
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Sep 22, 2018 06:03
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Update: it's actually called the MIB chair and its a very expensive chair. Second update: Ovalia Egg if you want to be very specific about the original model.
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Sep 22, 2018 06:04
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chiasaur11 posted:(Also, in a bit of a tangent, I can't give much credit to the belief that only female characters get the mary sue self insert accusation, considering that I've seen people describe Naze as a clear writer insert when they didn't know who wrote IBO. Sexism's a factor, sure, but it's not the only one.)
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Sep 22, 2018 07:11
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I remember when Doki Doki Precure aired people called Mana a Mary Sue cause she seemed way to competant and I was like come on
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Sep 22, 2018 07:26
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utena? such a mary sue
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Sep 22, 2018 07:58
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Sometime in the middle of Harukana Receive they settled on this aesthetic decision to have all impacts between a volleyball and a body part explode like a sand grenade, regardless of context. I'm still  at how all the last few episodes looked during the games: like a fireworks show, but with sand.Otherwise yea, good show.
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Sep 22, 2018 08:28
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Endorph posted:Iunno, when the origin of the term is some dumb star trek magazine getting mad that teenage girls were writing fanfiction, it kind of carries that baggage at its core evne if people try to work it to extend to guys. That baggage came long after its coining. The original story was written by a woman (Paula Smith), and the magazine was editted by her and another woman. And as a small letterzine, its audience was mostly their female peers in the fan scene. Though it did eventually get loaded with sexist baggage, given how the popular knowledge of the term's history was warped from "women creators self-criticizing in a female space" to "male trekkies got mad that girls were participating in star trek fan culture".
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Sep 22, 2018 15:53
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Endorph posted:Iunno, when the origin of the term is some dumb star trek magazine getting mad that teenage girls were writing fanfiction, it kind of carries that baggage at its core evne if people try to work it to extend to guys. Not exactly. The concept was created by a female Star Trek fanfiction writer named Paula Smith (in the parody fanfic "A Trekkie's Tale") to make fun of a particular story type prevalent in Star Trek fanfiction at the time, where a young female OC joins the Enterprise, is the best at everything, makes the canon characters act out of character, and then dies tragically. It's definitely true that the concept is often gendered, and this was particularly so early on. And as Paula Smith herself has noted, Mary Sues are a phase many beginning writers go through, and writing one doesn't mean you can't become a good writer. Perhaps the defining moment where people realized that male characters and even non-fanfiction characters can be Mary Sues was the character of Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, who at his worst was essentially the heroine of "A Trekkie's Tale" minus the tragic death. quote:And a lot of the time, even stuff about guys carries that air, because people tend to save it for male character who at least kind of engage with female characters while still being heroic and able to save the day. Like, people never call any number of seinen protagonists mary sues, even if they almost literally never face a serious threat and the manga is entirely about how cool and badass they are. I'm not saying 'Kirito is a woke character, actually, but there's definitely this air of certain kinds of power fantasies being okay, mostly the ones that don't have lovely stuff like 'and also he makes girls feel better about themselves,' even if that's at least trying to be a more positive kind of power fantasy. I do think it's worth distinguishing between a character like Kirito and a character like Tatsuya Shiba. The former is essentially the product of the common writer phase Paula Smith mentioned, while the latter is the product of a seriously warped system of values. Incidentally, when trying to get Tatsuya's name right, I stumbled on this: Google search for Tatsuya Shiba posted:Related search https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1043303654470512641
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Sep 22, 2018 15:54
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Moddington posted:That baggage came long after its coining. The original story was written by a woman (Paula Smith), and the magazine was editted by her and another woman. And as a small letterzine, its audience was mostly their female peers in the fan scene. Though it did eventually get loaded with sexist baggage, given how the popular knowledge of the term's history was warped from "women creators self-criticizing in a female space" to "male trekkies got mad that girls were participating in star trek fan culture".
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Sep 22, 2018 15:59
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Knorth posted:
I can't believe they forgot to include a cowboy hat and some guns.
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Sep 22, 2018 15:59
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furthermore a lot of, well written things, have characters that meet the broad definition of 'mary sue,' because the broad definition is just a female character that other characters care about, and who mostly succeeds, lol. 'become' a good writer? bitch you thought
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Sep 22, 2018 16:02
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Endorph posted:furthermore a lot of, well written things, have characters that meet the broad definition of 'mary sue,' because the broad definition is just a female character that other characters care about, and who mostly succeeds, lol. 'become' a good writer? bitch you thought That's a uselessly broad definition, because it doesn't contain the original criticism: that the mary sue warps the other characters and strips them of their characterizations.
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Sep 22, 2018 16:09
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legitimately: its not like bad character writing doesnt exist and its not like it doesnt sometimes manifest as over centralizing things around a single character, or other characters being sacrificed for one character's screentime/arc/whatever, but also, 'mary sue' is a useless buzzword because every story is different so theres no one size fits all criticism, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for one character to dominate screentime, nobody's going to call alucard from hellsing a mary sue when hes like the only character who solves anything, because the entire appeal and point of the series is just alucard doing cool action vampire poo poo to nazis. nobody's going to say dante from devil may cry is a mary sue because he exists solely to do funny one liners and strike poses before video game happens. stories have points and goals and those goals sometimes fit the broad definition of 'mary sue,' so just tossing it around is a fruitless endeavor and its better to actually discuss things as they are and why they might be trying to do what tehy do instead of trying to apply a one-size-fits-all criticism that means next to nothing and is rooted in a lot of insane baggage. and even when 'mary sue' is an accurate criticism its still based in a condescending, regressive, narrow-minded view of what fiction is and even what fanfiction is. like, if some girl writes a fic in which kirk tells her shes the best ever, who does that hurt. its a freaking fanfiction. the entire thing stems from the late 70s or w/e equivalent to a freaking livejournal flame war about sonic the hedgehog fanfiction, only somehow it still exists as a term that some people take seriously.
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Sep 22, 2018 16:14
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imagine if today someone coined a term for discussing if sonic/shadow or sonic/knuckles is the otp in sonic the hedgehog fanfiction and then in the year 2058 people were still using that term seriously in discussions of art
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Sep 22, 2018 16:20
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i plan on being active in the sonicshipper community until the day i die, which actuarially speaking is probably around 2058, so
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Sep 22, 2018 16:30
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Agronox posted:i plan on being active in the sonicshipper community until the day i die, which actuarially speaking is probably around 2058, so
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Sep 22, 2018 16:32
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For some reason the most surprising thing about the Harukana Receive finale to me was the beer-can chicken. I didn't know they did that in Okinawa.
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Sep 22, 2018 16:54
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gmq posted:I can't believe they forgot to include a cowboy hat and some guns. I'm a little surprised Claire's pet is a dog and not a bald eagle
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Sep 22, 2018 17:01
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It's the first time I've ever seen Carl's Jr., Texaco, Camel cigarettes, and a drive-in diner referenced in anime, so good job to them I guess!
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Sep 22, 2018 17:09
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I like the swedish composer Harukana uses, good beachside OST
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Sep 22, 2018 17:22
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Endorph posted:legitimately: its not like bad character writing doesnt exist and its not like it doesnt sometimes manifest as over centralizing things around a single character, or other characters being sacrificed for one character's screentime/arc/whatever, but also, 'mary sue' is a useless buzzword because every story is different so theres no one size fits all criticism, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for one character to dominate screentime, nobody's going to call alucard from hellsing a mary sue when hes like the only character who solves anything, because the entire appeal and point of the series is just alucard doing cool action vampire poo poo to nazis. It's not about dominating screentime, it's about what your audience expects. Most people reading fanfiction of a work do it because they like the characters as they were written in that work. If you introduce a character who suddenly becomes the most important and competent member of the cast, to the point that the original characters have to essentially become incompetent to justify it, then most fanfiction readers probably aren't going to like it. Most writing "rules" are about things that have a high chance of turning away potential readers unless you've really, really thought about how to make them work, so I don't think this one is intrinsically bad on that front. Of course if you're not writing for an audience, just for yourself, it doesn't hurt anyone, but at that point any criticism is equally invalid. Equally, if you're writing for a small audience which likes the story, that's fine, just don't take that to mean that its success would translate to a more general audience. The Internet kind of screws this up because people writing for a small audience still put their stuff in a place where everyone can read it, but that's more of an Internet thing than a fanfiction thing. I feel like "isekai" is kind of a modern equivalent of "Mary Sue". If someone asks if they'd like a series and I say, "Nah, it's just a standard isekai," I'm not saying that all works that bear a resemblance to isekai are made worse by the fact, I'm just saying that it falls into all the common traps of isekai without having any stand-out redeeming features. Also, in both cases their problems are exacerbated by just how common they are and how similar they often feel to each other. In 10 years it probably won't be as useful a term because people's frames of reference will change, but that doesn't mean there's no point in using it now (and if those traps turn out to still be common in the future, maybe it'll stick around).
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Sep 22, 2018 17:41
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this discussion reminds me of the early 20th century mystery writing scene. several different people made lists about things that are forbidden to include and tried to popularize them. https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/ronald-knox-10-commandments-of-detective-fiction is one example. were the writers of these lists dull sticks-in-the-mud who wanted to be in charge? probably, but they also cared deeply about that type of fiction and those rules were devised based on the ridiculous flood of garbage mysteries being written. just endless awful stories where the solutions involved untraceable poisons, identical twins, shallow racist caricatures of asian men, all without foreshadowing. maybe the star trek fan fiction scene of the 70's named and defined the mary sue because some of them were similarly sick of people 'ruining' their favored genre. you can see the same thing today, with webnovel readers being gaga over isekai trash but many writers, critics and editors are thoroughly sick of isekai in general.
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Sep 22, 2018 18:04
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i feel like engaging with this sort of shorthand in criticism is just short-sighted and quickly results in warping the original definitions of terms. with the supposed core criticism that "mary sue" addresses characters being forced against type to accommodate an author/reader insert, that is something that could be dissected more clearly by...actual words. instead it was boiled down into a term that has gone on to just mean "female character." someone can say that if "mary sue" hadn't been misused in the first place it may have had continued value but i find that these things are only truly convenient and useful within ingroups that understand them and are on the same page. as they spread they pretty often become useless and even harmful to actual criticism. e: and there's a division between say, mary sue and isekai. mary sue has, as far as i can tell, well served any point it has in discussion of media. kill it. isekai has use as a genre descriptor but is often tossed around with a host of assumed values baked into it, and that is the aspect of its use that is unhelpful for discussion. so obviously it should stay but people should be even the slightest bit more purposeful about how they use it.
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Sep 22, 2018 18:13
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