Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-07-06 04:04 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-07-06 04:04 pm
[ SECRET POST #2742 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2742 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 094 secrets from Secret Submission Post #392.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Good writer or bad writer?
Where we're diverging here is at the point where we deem our construction 'Bob.' For me, Bob is just a title. The character itself is always changing and malleable. The character who is currently there, who is currently named Bob, is only 'Bob' because I as the creator deem him 'Bob.' If I choose to not deem him Bob any more, he's no longer Bob.
Like, you seem to make a character, deem this particular set of traits and characteristics 'Bob,' then if any of those change, he's no longer 'Bob' any more. You take a round fruit that's red, tastes sweet, and has a crunchy texture and decide that is a 'Zorgon,' and if any of those traits change, it's no longer a Zorgon. It's wrong to you, because you've self-imposed rules about what a Zorgon is and are unwilling to change those rules.
Whereas I take a character, give him the 'Bob' title for now, and if that character doesn't work, I can change him, and then the 'Bob' title just stands for something else. The character's still Bob. It's just that what Bob IS, has changed. I take a round fruit that's red, tastes sweet, and has a crunchy texture and decide that is a 'Zorgon,' and if somehow the fruit needs to taste sour instead of sweet, I make the fruit sour, and now 'Zorgons' have always been sour all along because I said so. The fruit's still a Zorgon, it's just the meaning of Zorgon has been retroactively edited.
So, I could take 'Bob,' give him an entirely different backstory, and have him still be Bob, because he was only 'Bob' in the first place because I said so. Obviously I can't do this with fic, as I'm not TPTB in that situation, but with original writing, I can! Like I said, I have certain characters that come with set traits, but they're only set because I WANT them to be set, because I SAID they're set, them going against them only feels wrong because I've chosen what I feel to be 'right'... they're playing by the rules I set for them, but as the rule-creator, if I wanted to change those at any time, I could.
It doesn't even have to be lego pieces. It's NOT artificially shoving stuff in whenever and wherever or characters changing all of a sudden. That never really works. It's altering backstories and experiences so that NEW traits, or the traits you want, flow just as organically from them as the old ones did - after all the old ones had to stem from something in exactly the same way. That's how the whole notion of AUs work - do you write many of them in fic or original writing? Change the setting, change the circumstances, characters react to things and develop organically in mostly similar but also significantly different ways from 'canon' because of the changed circumstances... and it's exactly the same idea, as how a character can still be a character even in AU.
You realize that by your definitions of character, AUs should not be possible?