The Difficult One
"Thank you! But yes, it's necessary to rather tiptoe 'round the edges of Ponder's feelings more often than not."
And that rung a very large bell with me, and I was off on a total tangent.This is a Special Extended Version of my reply to her.
I realised why it is that I like Ponder so much as a character in the RPG. Argh!! It took me three weeks to recognise my own Recurrent Character Archetype, whom I call "The Difficult One". That's a pet theory of mine: many writers have a certain archetypal character that turns up in many of their books in different guises, but always shows the same characteristic pattern of appearance, behaviour and basic psychological make-up.
I went on about that a bit in that post I did when my LJ was new and I put up links to all my fics that are scattered all over the place. Now, I'd like to expand on that a bit.
Terry Pratchett has the Blithely Naive Young Hero (not in more recent books, though), who accounts for so many ex-monarchs hanging out in Ankh-Morpork. He killed the Blithely Naive Young Hero, basically, when he reported Mort dead in "Soul Music". Since then, he hasn't really reappeared. Since then, Carrot, for example, has become much less important than in "Guards! Guards!" or "Men At Arms".
Storm Constantine has the Unpredictable Sage or Elusive Father Figure, a very strange character she seems extremely attached to. He's the one who steers it all from behind the scenes, who isn't there for most parts of the book, appears suddenly, astonishes you utterly, and then vanishes again, just as unpredictably as he has come. Metatron is like that. Resenence Jeopardy is very much like that. And Thiede, of course. Thiede is the originator of everything Wraeththu, (thus, a total father figure in the typically skewed way that archetype has), and he pops up all over the place and frobs a few details just to drop back into the distance and observe the outcome. He can be very tangible (propping up his feet on the breakfast table in Forever, or dropping in for dinner on Seel and those unsuspecting hara in Saltrock, in Wraiths - I so totally loved that bit!), and then again, he is pure myth and you almost wonder if he was ever real at all.
Well, I know and cherish my own Recurrent Character Archetype (what else can I do, as he will appear in my writing regardless?). He's The Difficult One. He will be rather touchy and bristle at you at odd moments, there is an element of fatal flaw in his own conception of himself that will never let him rest easily, and he is very difficult to love, as he'll go all prickly at the most unexpected moments and might actually believe he really shouldn't be loved at all because of that fatal flaw of his. Furthermore, he exhibits some small oddities or frailties that are actually rather endearing. The hard part in writing him is keeping up the tension when I, as the one writing, so long to put the poor fellow at his ease - but he never will be, as that slight unease is a central part of being him. He may be reliable, clever, a good friend, extremely innovative at times, and will surprise the other characters and even me writing about him very much at many junctures, but it will always be necessary to tread around him with extreme caution as he might become radically unpredictable at things you never suspected might set him off.
I, when writing him, positively melt with sympathy for his plight. One part of why I am so stuck with my poor novel is that I know what dreadful things I will have to do to Dmitri who embodies that archetype among my characters there, and there will be absolutely no redemption for him, and he will have a terrible life and die comparatively young - simply because it happened, as it's a historical novel I'm trying to write, and I did lots of research on everybody there. I didn't make Dmitri difficult, he came over all difficult and all contradictive, bristly and enigmatic from the sources. He deals you blows when you research him. I started out writing him as the cold-blooded villain of the piece, but changed my opinion of him radically when I started to research him more thoroughly. Nowadays, I just have to look at a picture of him to melt with sympathy.-
As I looked at things from this angle, I realised that our RPG's Ponder Stibbons (much more than the canon Ponder, who misses one vital ingredient) conforms to the basic description of The Difficult One on several points. I instinctively like him so much because he comes over all Suvuk or Dmitri to me, arghh!! How could I not have seen that before? Ji actually had to show me with her remark!
Could it be that I not only like to write that type of character, I like to read him, and accordingly, instinctively like fictional characters that conform to large parts of the pattern? Huh! Where did The Difficult One come from? I certainly never met him in real life. Or did I?
Scanning quickly through the fictional characters I like best, I realise that, for example, both Remus Lupin and Sirius Black have many elements of that as well, albeit distributed evenly among them. Osidian has a touch of The Difficult One, only he doesn't beat himself up for his failure, he drives himself away from it, with desastrous consequences. Panthera, too, who is my favourite har besides Thiede. -
I wonder whether I'm out on a limb here where nobody can follow me at all, to the point that my sanity might sound questionable, or whether many people who both read and write much know their Recurrent Character Archetypes and are in touch with them, occasionally recognising them when they pop up again in their own writing, in that of others, in movies - or even in an RPG?
And that rung a very large bell with me, and I was off on a total tangent.This is a Special Extended Version of my reply to her.
I realised why it is that I like Ponder so much as a character in the RPG. Argh!! It took me three weeks to recognise my own Recurrent Character Archetype, whom I call "The Difficult One". That's a pet theory of mine: many writers have a certain archetypal character that turns up in many of their books in different guises, but always shows the same characteristic pattern of appearance, behaviour and basic psychological make-up.
I went on about that a bit in that post I did when my LJ was new and I put up links to all my fics that are scattered all over the place. Now, I'd like to expand on that a bit.
Terry Pratchett has the Blithely Naive Young Hero (not in more recent books, though), who accounts for so many ex-monarchs hanging out in Ankh-Morpork. He killed the Blithely Naive Young Hero, basically, when he reported Mort dead in "Soul Music". Since then, he hasn't really reappeared. Since then, Carrot, for example, has become much less important than in "Guards! Guards!" or "Men At Arms".
Storm Constantine has the Unpredictable Sage or Elusive Father Figure, a very strange character she seems extremely attached to. He's the one who steers it all from behind the scenes, who isn't there for most parts of the book, appears suddenly, astonishes you utterly, and then vanishes again, just as unpredictably as he has come. Metatron is like that. Resenence Jeopardy is very much like that. And Thiede, of course. Thiede is the originator of everything Wraeththu, (thus, a total father figure in the typically skewed way that archetype has), and he pops up all over the place and frobs a few details just to drop back into the distance and observe the outcome. He can be very tangible (propping up his feet on the breakfast table in Forever, or dropping in for dinner on Seel and those unsuspecting hara in Saltrock, in Wraiths - I so totally loved that bit!), and then again, he is pure myth and you almost wonder if he was ever real at all.
Well, I know and cherish my own Recurrent Character Archetype (what else can I do, as he will appear in my writing regardless?). He's The Difficult One. He will be rather touchy and bristle at you at odd moments, there is an element of fatal flaw in his own conception of himself that will never let him rest easily, and he is very difficult to love, as he'll go all prickly at the most unexpected moments and might actually believe he really shouldn't be loved at all because of that fatal flaw of his. Furthermore, he exhibits some small oddities or frailties that are actually rather endearing. The hard part in writing him is keeping up the tension when I, as the one writing, so long to put the poor fellow at his ease - but he never will be, as that slight unease is a central part of being him. He may be reliable, clever, a good friend, extremely innovative at times, and will surprise the other characters and even me writing about him very much at many junctures, but it will always be necessary to tread around him with extreme caution as he might become radically unpredictable at things you never suspected might set him off.
I, when writing him, positively melt with sympathy for his plight. One part of why I am so stuck with my poor novel is that I know what dreadful things I will have to do to Dmitri who embodies that archetype among my characters there, and there will be absolutely no redemption for him, and he will have a terrible life and die comparatively young - simply because it happened, as it's a historical novel I'm trying to write, and I did lots of research on everybody there. I didn't make Dmitri difficult, he came over all difficult and all contradictive, bristly and enigmatic from the sources. He deals you blows when you research him. I started out writing him as the cold-blooded villain of the piece, but changed my opinion of him radically when I started to research him more thoroughly. Nowadays, I just have to look at a picture of him to melt with sympathy.-
As I looked at things from this angle, I realised that our RPG's Ponder Stibbons (much more than the canon Ponder, who misses one vital ingredient) conforms to the basic description of The Difficult One on several points. I instinctively like him so much because he comes over all Suvuk or Dmitri to me, arghh!! How could I not have seen that before? Ji actually had to show me with her remark!
Could it be that I not only like to write that type of character, I like to read him, and accordingly, instinctively like fictional characters that conform to large parts of the pattern? Huh! Where did The Difficult One come from? I certainly never met him in real life. Or did I?
Scanning quickly through the fictional characters I like best, I realise that, for example, both Remus Lupin and Sirius Black have many elements of that as well, albeit distributed evenly among them. Osidian has a touch of The Difficult One, only he doesn't beat himself up for his failure, he drives himself away from it, with desastrous consequences. Panthera, too, who is my favourite har besides Thiede. -
I wonder whether I'm out on a limb here where nobody can follow me at all, to the point that my sanity might sound questionable, or whether many people who both read and write much know their Recurrent Character Archetypes and are in touch with them, occasionally recognising them when they pop up again in their own writing, in that of others, in movies - or even in an RPG?