[ SECRET POST #5991 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5991 ⌋

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


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[You Will Hear the Voice of the Dead]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #856.
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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/KEYmmK5.png

[(Anonymous)]

I actually like badly written characters better sometimes! You can see that potential and then the good writers of fanfic can take it and run with it in a million different ways. It's one of my favorite fandom types.

[(Anonymous)]

In a similar vein, I usually prefer imperfect but interesting stories to well-made stories that don't do anything different to what's already out there.

[(Anonymous)]

And I wish more people would understand that "bad writing" is subjective and not everyone is going to agree with you that a character is badly written.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, sure there's wiggle room, but there are some things that just everyone can agree are bad writing. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it!

[(Anonymous)]

I mean yeah but tbh a lot of the time in fandom people are just unwilling to critically evaluate their faves

Which like, that's fine obviously, but let's not delude ourselves about what's going on here

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. There are plenty of characters that I enjoy but that I will readily admit aren't written well.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

i find "bad writing" is often an excuse to chop things out of the canon - "that was bad writing, it doesn't count"

which is oftentimes very, very worrying

[(Anonymous)]

OP, this confused me when you originally posted in the secret making thread and still confuses me: by 'bad', do you mean 'evil' or do you just mean a character that doesn't contribute to the story (or is negative in some other way) but is not badly written per se?

I'm not sure what distinction you're making here.

[(Anonymous)]

Unless you mean a character who started out okay, but then started being written differently due to showrunner/writer changeover (or spite-writing by original creator/writer because they don't like how popular the character has gotten).

Because otherwise, all bad characters are badly-written. They are characters, regardless of their backgrounds, it's up to their writers to make them interesting, by word or by deed. A character can be generic AF, but if they get engaging* lines or actions, people will find them appealing (*obligatory caveat that this is subjective).

Re: I'm not sure what distinction you're making here.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the distinction OP is drawing is between "character as conceptualized" and "character as written". Which makes sense to me tbh.

Re: I'm not sure what distinction you're making here.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here and yes, that's exactly what I meant. Some characters are just badly conceptualized, and no amount of good writing can fix a character that is basically an inconsistent mess from the ground up. On the other hand, you can have a great character concept that's ruined by writing that flattens them out and turns them into a one-trick pony, overemphasizes some of their traits to the exclusion of others, shoves them into the background to let another character hog the spotlight, etc.

The latter is way more frustrating to me because there's nothing wrong with the character in and of themselves, they just happened to end up at the hands of a writer who mangled them.

NA

[(Anonymous)]

I'm still not seeing a difference. I don't think a character that's good as conceptualized but written badly is different from a bad character. It may be wasted potential, as opposed to a character who doesn't have a good concept around them. But a wasted potential character is a badly written character is a bad character.

[meadowphoenix]

can you give an example?

[(Anonymous)]

To me personally, Willow from Buffy.

[meadowphoenix]

Is she a badly written example or a bad character example? ETA: to me she's neither badly written nor a bad character, so I really don't know which one you mean.

[(Anonymous)]

Reading your above comment, I think I agree that she is for a lot of the series but not all of it.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh definitely, to answer the above question I think she was a good character that suffered from bad writing as the later seasons occurred.

[azurelunatic]

For me, what's her name from Twilight. She's witty! Her inner voice is full of purple prose, which I happen to like. Unfortunately, the structure of the book looks kind of like an easily excited high schooler telling you all about her day in exhaustive detail, when you'd much prefer to just get the highlights. (I have been exactly this high schooler, so I can relate.)

[meadowphoenix]

I think that's often a problem with both first person and third person limited perspectives, and I'm not sure whether that's a flaw or a feature. I think it can be both.

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of fans confuse good/bad characters AND well/poorly written characters with "I like this therefore good/well written" and "I don't like this therefore bad/poorly written".

I also see a lot of fans who WANT to like characters saying things like the writers "got them wrong" when writers are following through a consistent line in a character that perhaps isn't fandom's favourite factor, but has always been written into the story or its subtext.

This secret actually sounds like it has that problem and it's therefore quite difficult to understand what it's getting at. But basically, you're doing the same thing as what you're complaining about, OP. 👍

(FTR, I do believe there's a way to qualitatively determine whether or not a character succeeds in a story or is a successful contribution to a story, which is adjacent to being a qualitative 'this is a good character for this story' determiner, but I've never had the time or effort to sit down and parcel it out.

Factually speaking, I don't think it matters at all. We can love bad characters, badly-written characters, evil characters, unsuccesful characters, and everything in between. No need to pit characters against each other. Just enjoy what you enjoy, who gives a fuck.)