guardians_song (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guardians_song) wrote2013-03-21 02:21 pm
guardians_song) wrote2013-03-21 02:21 pm
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*irritation* Why do people assume resolution of a character's emotional problems = END OF STORY?
Good gad. You know, things happen to people who have had happy endings. Sometimes even dramatic things. You don't have to be betrayed by everyone around you and live out of a cardboard box and be going to therapy forty times a week to be a main character in an interesting plotline. And then these beacons of literary brilliance wonder why fiction is saturated with wangst, unresolved issues that could be ended in an hour if the characters just got hit with a bucket of icewater, and pointless character drama. That's what you're preaching as the formula to literary success, dunces.
*grumble* You know, Cori Falls's fics collapsed when she went off into WRH happyland, but that's because she had no plot other than character drama. Laurell K. Hamilton derailed her books into nothing but character drama, which is why everything has been stun-locked in sexwangstsex for the last dozen books or so. And Draco Veritas was the absolute worst Draco Trilogy fic because Voldemort's grand plan was LITERALLY TO CAUSE HARRY/HERMIONE RELATIONSHIP DRAMA. NO, I WILL NEVER GET OVER THAT.
Look, there's nothing wrong with character drama. It works! It can be good! But talking as though it's the only plot driver possible is utterly ridiculous. Even freaking creature!Harry fics off of fanfiction.net know better than that. "Hi. You have now been turned into a vaguely French lump of hair and effeminate sex appeal. Go forth and wallow in the heaps of gold in Black Vault #255 for a while, then get down to business."
Sure, characters can struggle because they're overcoming their own weaknesses. They can also struggle because they're getting the kitchen sink thrown at them, and even the most untouchable, centered person would get overwhelmed because just surviving that mess in one piece would tax human cognitive processes to their limit. Or they can struggle because they're aiming to do something that should be impossible, and the sheer strain of dashing through loophole after loophole, knowing that everything will go straight to blazes the moment they can't find a way around the next obstacle, is enough to drive not just the character, but the writer, nuts.
"Character drama" does not have to mean Lord of the Therapy Logs!
*grumble* You know, Cori Falls's fics collapsed when she went off into WRH happyland, but that's because she had no plot other than character drama. Laurell K. Hamilton derailed her books into nothing but character drama, which is why everything has been stun-locked in sexwangstsex for the last dozen books or so. And Draco Veritas was the absolute worst Draco Trilogy fic because Voldemort's grand plan was LITERALLY TO CAUSE HARRY/HERMIONE RELATIONSHIP DRAMA. NO, I WILL NEVER GET OVER THAT.
Look, there's nothing wrong with character drama. It works! It can be good! But talking as though it's the only plot driver possible is utterly ridiculous. Even freaking creature!Harry fics off of fanfiction.net know better than that. "Hi. You have now been turned into a vaguely French lump of hair and effeminate sex appeal. Go forth and wallow in the heaps of gold in Black Vault #255 for a while, then get down to business."
Sure, characters can struggle because they're overcoming their own weaknesses. They can also struggle because they're getting the kitchen sink thrown at them, and even the most untouchable, centered person would get overwhelmed because just surviving that mess in one piece would tax human cognitive processes to their limit. Or they can struggle because they're aiming to do something that should be impossible, and the sheer strain of dashing through loophole after loophole, knowing that everything will go straight to blazes the moment they can't find a way around the next obstacle, is enough to drive not just the character, but the writer, nuts.
"Character drama" does not have to mean Lord of the Therapy Logs!
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One of my biggest pet peeves is when writers assume that wangst = interesting and that happy = boring and pointless. Or that even happyland needs pointless melodrama in the form of stupid misunderstandings or a character weeping over missing a movie or a derailed protagonist showing up to go DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRR and slobber all over everything.
no subject
"Or that even happyland needs pointless melodrama in the form of stupid misunderstandings or a character weeping over missing a movie or a derailed protagonist showing up to go DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRR and slobber all over everything."
To be fair, Cori is in a class of her own on the latter. :P But "stupid misunderstandings"... dear gad. Practically EVERY children's book series I remember had some Big Misunderstanding lousing things up at some point, and then adult book series replaced it with 'Will They Or Won't They? (THEY WILL, WHO IS ANYONE KIDDING)' romantic drama that practically WAS all one loooong, protracted, cancerous Big Misunderstanding. It must be some kind of kink for certain authors...
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no subject