[ SECRET POST #3207 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3207 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #458.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Some people over-identify with characters and become convinced that their interpretation is the true one, and the original has become out of character. That can be tiring to encounter.

I've not come across the OP's issue with criticism of any complex storyline at all as not good storytelling.

Why do I have the feeling this is a Doctor Who issue?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know. That baby is a major plot point from the new season of Supernatural.

[(Anonymous)]

The OP used a Supernatural mark on the baby (the new season has that) so they're probably an SPN fan.)

Oooooh, how I hate how people complain about "OOC characters" in canon. Uh, it's canon now.

Plus, do they never do something slightly quirky or unlike what they usually do daily? "Rob had TEA. It's out of character!!!"

[ketita]

I think that there are rare occasions where a work will have a character "become" ooc, in that they diverge dramatically from what had been set up before, or spontaneously lose a characteristic for no discernible reason (which for me at least, will often lead me to lose interest in the work).
But this sort of thing is very rare.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not always even a rare thing, but yeah.

On the other hand, it's a tad asinine when canon characterization contrsdicts popular but baseless fanon, and then countless fans complain about the canon characterization being supposedly OOC...

[ketita]

I think it's 'rare' in the sense that overall, I consider the author to know their characters best. It's rare that I step away from a book with the feeling that there was an actual disconnect between who the character was and who the author was forcing them to be.

But yes, canon contradicting some random fanon, I have no sympathy for that. People make up such baseless fanon, and they seem to have huge difficulty reading the actual text.

I ran into something like that where an interpretation of mine of a certain event went wildly different from basically everybody else's, and I got dogpiled for it, but I do think that there are times when people aren't looking so much at the text but more at what they want to see.

[(Anonymous)]

No, that's fair enough. It's usually someone complaining about "fanon" being violated, though.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's more of an issue in TV and comics, where the writers may be replaced. And yet, I think I may actually hear more complaints about novelists changing characters in ways the readers don't like....

[ketita]

To me it's an issue of standards. If I'm watching a TV show and a character suddenly does a 180, I can make excuses for it - different writers, network insanity, who knows. And then I decide if I'm willing to swing with it or not, but my starting expectation is for a certain level of inconsistency.
But with books, it's one author, and one vision, and if things start going out of whack, it bothers me much more. It's not always even about not liking what's happening to the characters, as it is me believing that they could do it.

An example for me would be in the first book of Robin Hobb's new Assassin trilogy. Throughout much of the book I felt like she was fighting with Fitz, trying to make him act one way, when the character was trying to do something different. He seesawed between being mature and weirdly obtuse, and there were questions I felt he really should have asked that he just... didn't. There was something stiff about the writing and the author's interaction with the story/characters that just felt off to me, and it made me wonder if the author wasn't trying too hard to force her characters into a plot which was unnatural to them and their development.

[(Anonymous)]

I always get this with the 4th book in the Joust series by Mercedes Lackey. Things like they spend the first three books making a big deal on how you can't use bows and arrows from dragonback, then the fourth book opens with the main characters using bows and arrows from dragonback. And then the main conflict is that... even though for three books the main character is described as utterly selfless and the other characters point it out and tease him for it, somehow everyone has forgotten this and is convinced he's doing something selfish 'like always' and it's a bit "Bwuh?"

[(Anonymous)]

yeah i think a character can get occ when the author is trying to make the plot work so they have the character do something that's out of line with what they'd normal do or believe in.

and then there are somethings with a lot of writers working on it where not everyone's on the same page.

i don't think it's that rare.

[ketita]

I was more thinking about a book or something which is supposed to have a single, more articulate artistic vision. I don't hold serial TV and such to the same standards, since I know there are a lot of writers.