From a certain point of view...
flo_nelja recently commented to me, apropos my rant re: A/B with A having been in previous relationship with C written as "I never loved C and never loved anyone before B" stories, but really applicable in general: I have a weakness for fics in which the characters are, on certain points, wrong, and we realize it, but they don't.
Which got me thinking about point of view stories in general, and how one gets across the difference between "this is what the character believes to be true" and "this is what the author thinks to be true". (Without, that is, bringing in another character's pov, which is an obvious corrective.) Now, I love character exploration in fanfic, and if anything I have a tendency to overdo it with the inner monologue. I love getting the challenge of getting into characters' headspaces and present reality from their pov. Very occasionally, I then get feedback based on the assumption that I share said pov, i.e. rather than "thanks for making me understand X", "oh yeah! X is so right!", which, if I entirely disagree with X, can feel... odd, and I can never decide whether that means I failed or succeeded as a writer.
So, how does one go about showing convincingly why X does and feels the things she/he does, but simultanously signals this is a distorted pov? (Preferably not in a sledgehammer fashion, i.e. sans muwahahahas.) It's easiest when you write about a character whom canon already presents as insane or at the very least seriously unbalanced, or as being set on goals one can reasonably assume the majority of the readership will recognize as wrong. For example: I've written a Lucy Saxon pov (Doctor Who), an Uther pov (Merlin) and a Daniel Holtz pov (Angel), without these, hopefully, coming across as endorsing genocides, abusive relationships and/or brainwashing your biological or adopted offspring. (Mind you: Holtz is far more self-aware of what he's doing than Uther is.) My attempt of getting across that Lucy is participating in the genocide and enslavement of humanity while unable to cope with it (leading to displacement and victim blaming), or with the fact she's kidding herself about the nature of her relationship with the Master, while remaining entirely in her own pov, is probably summed up best in this passage:
That was one reason why she never went down on the surface, though she could have asked. The one time she had done, early on, she had encountered the same smells, and the air was clean, so clean in her castle in the sky. She insisted on it. It was always clean.
The staff still managed to smell. "Can't we get better people?" Lucy asked, and Harry patted her cheek and told her she was adorable. He didn't seem to understand that it was deliberate sabotage, especially by the Jones family. They did it because they knew it reminded Lucy of Utopia. Somehow, they knew, even though she never spoke of it. They probably imagined it would make her feel guilty, which was ridiculous. She had made her choice. She was the most envied woman on the planet. Why would she have regrets?
Nonetheless, she didn't like the way the Jones girl and her mother smelled, and because Harry wouldn't get her replacements, she got them good, new uniforms, and insisted they showered each morning before coming into her presence. She even gave them soaps and deodorants, which were hardly manufactured on Earth anymore, only for her, because Harry wanted her to feel pretty, of course. One would have thought Francine and Tish were grateful, but no. Somehow, they still managed to smell of steel and burning flesh and the sweet, foul scent of decay.
It never stopped. It never, ever stopped.
Not exactly the most subtle way to get across Lucy is seriously twisted, I admit, but, I hope, effective. It's trickier when your pov character is simply mistaken or oblivious about some things while right about others. Or presented by canon as being in the right which you, as the author, happen to disagree with. Back when I was part of a DS9 drabble community, there was the challenge of writing in the pov of a character one dislikes. Now, there aren't many of these in DS9 for me. But I have Prophet issues. Do I ever. Said Prophet issues were already expressed in an earlier drabble by another character, but this time, this was not an option. So. There was this non-linear superbeing who did something I thought incredibly revolting in canon, all the more so because it was not acknowledged as such but presented as a good thing. At the same time, I didn't want to go the "is secretly evil" route. What I ended up going for was playing up the non-linearity of said being's perceptions (it has already happened, so it is only logical for the Prophet to do it), the alien-ness and the way the Prophet finds itself affected by its victim. Whether Cold Heaven reads as endorsing, rejecting or simply explaining the Prophet(s) to the readers probably depends a lot more on the reader than the Lucy, Uther or Holtz pieces.
Still, while I tried to understand my least favourite DS9 character(s) here, I wasn't exactly filled with Prophet love while writing that vignette. How about writing a beloved character, with the goal of getting readers to emphathize, and still disagreeing with the beloved character's views and actions, at least partly? In-denial characters are their own kind of challenge, and fun, especially if you write a story in which they remain in denial instead of having an epiphany.
Summertime Blues was a case in point for me. It's an Angel story about Connor between seasons 3 and 4. Here you have a (fairly unpopular in fandom at large, but for me a personal favourite) pov character who has just done something horrendous to the show's lead character and is lying about that to the characters he's with, and since this isn't an AU, readers also know how it will turn out, and what can't happen. He's also unfamiliar not only with most of the backstory of the characters he's with (as opposed to the readers) but some crucial facts about his own history. And, being raised by a vengeance-obsessed 18th century Yorkshire man, really not the type to speak about or figure out his feelings. So the way I tried to get across Connor's mixed feelings about his biological father (while denying he feels anything but hate), grief for the adopted father whose death he can't talk about because that would reveal to Fred and Gunn too much, and Fred and Gunn getting to him emotionally without his acknowledging as much to himself, and without ever breaking pov, was mostly through gestures that address what he can't verbalize or double negatives, as in:
Sitting on his bed, holding the letter his father wrote, he smells Angelus's traces there as well, and wonders whether this is the last trick of the demon: intermingling his scent with his father's, so Connor can't wish either away.
Where I find the attempt to present a character pov on events which is not necessarily true from an objective pov trickiest of all, in the sense of reader reception, though, is either with an open canon, characters who are morally ambiguous and one's own conclusions a work in progress as well... or when any type of either romantic shipping or redemptionist agenda is involved. A long time ago I wrote a DS9 story named Five things which never happened between Kira and Dukat, and the feedback I've had over the years came from people who loathed Dukat, from people who loathed Kira, from people who loved both but didn't ship them, and from people who loved them and shipped them, and some of them got completely opposite impressions of what these five things were about. Not to mention that I found myself seen as an ally by all of them. In this particular case, getting such different reactions was satisfying from an authorial pov, not least because while I found the Kira-Dukat (or Kira/Dukat) relationship fascinating, and like both characters, I don't love either and went for maximum complexity, not a pro or anti shipping stance. However, more recently, as part of my newly discovered Merlin fannishness, I wrote Into the Woods and was not just bewildered but honestly shocked when one of the (positive) reviews, the one at AO3, interpreted its purpose being that "Arthur gets to have a chance to say, wait a minute, what about me?" re: Merlin/Freya, which in fact is not only the exact opposite of what I was going for in the story but also one of my tried and true anti-kinks in fanfiction (i.e. stories with a "bad canon, letting that WOMAN come between our boys!" sub- or main text). Cue authorial "did I fail as a writer?" soul searching. Still remaining with my newest fandom, in the last months I also wrote a Gaius pov. As opposed to Uther, Gaius, while canonically presented as flawed, is mostly a positive father figure to the main character as far as the show's narrative is concerned; fandom, on the other hand, with some justification, has taken great umbrage to his decision re: keeping crucial information from one of the supporting characters. My own feelings on Gaius and his decisions vary. What I was trying to get across with the Gaius pov was why he made said decisions; I agree with some, but not all of his reasons; for example, I think he's completely right about the strong similarity he sees between Uther and Morgana, but also that the conclusion he draws - not to trust Morgana with the truth - is the one easiest to himself, not, as he tells himself, the one that is best for Morgana as well. So did I get across that I think Gaius is right in some regards and in others massively self-justifiying and deluded? Who knows. Probably not in this case, I suspect, because the Morgana issue is just one aspect, and it's a rather short vignette anyway; also, the emphasis is more on "why does Gaius what he does" and less on "and this is where Gaius is wrong".
All of which goes to say: I, too, have a weakness for fics in which the characters are, on certain points, wrong, and we realize it, but they don't; I'm just not sure I can always pull them off, or even that such a thing is always possible.
Which got me thinking about point of view stories in general, and how one gets across the difference between "this is what the character believes to be true" and "this is what the author thinks to be true". (Without, that is, bringing in another character's pov, which is an obvious corrective.) Now, I love character exploration in fanfic, and if anything I have a tendency to overdo it with the inner monologue. I love getting the challenge of getting into characters' headspaces and present reality from their pov. Very occasionally, I then get feedback based on the assumption that I share said pov, i.e. rather than "thanks for making me understand X", "oh yeah! X is so right!", which, if I entirely disagree with X, can feel... odd, and I can never decide whether that means I failed or succeeded as a writer.
So, how does one go about showing convincingly why X does and feels the things she/he does, but simultanously signals this is a distorted pov? (Preferably not in a sledgehammer fashion, i.e. sans muwahahahas.) It's easiest when you write about a character whom canon already presents as insane or at the very least seriously unbalanced, or as being set on goals one can reasonably assume the majority of the readership will recognize as wrong. For example: I've written a Lucy Saxon pov (Doctor Who), an Uther pov (Merlin) and a Daniel Holtz pov (Angel), without these, hopefully, coming across as endorsing genocides, abusive relationships and/or brainwashing your biological or adopted offspring. (Mind you: Holtz is far more self-aware of what he's doing than Uther is.) My attempt of getting across that Lucy is participating in the genocide and enslavement of humanity while unable to cope with it (leading to displacement and victim blaming), or with the fact she's kidding herself about the nature of her relationship with the Master, while remaining entirely in her own pov, is probably summed up best in this passage:
That was one reason why she never went down on the surface, though she could have asked. The one time she had done, early on, she had encountered the same smells, and the air was clean, so clean in her castle in the sky. She insisted on it. It was always clean.
The staff still managed to smell. "Can't we get better people?" Lucy asked, and Harry patted her cheek and told her she was adorable. He didn't seem to understand that it was deliberate sabotage, especially by the Jones family. They did it because they knew it reminded Lucy of Utopia. Somehow, they knew, even though she never spoke of it. They probably imagined it would make her feel guilty, which was ridiculous. She had made her choice. She was the most envied woman on the planet. Why would she have regrets?
Nonetheless, she didn't like the way the Jones girl and her mother smelled, and because Harry wouldn't get her replacements, she got them good, new uniforms, and insisted they showered each morning before coming into her presence. She even gave them soaps and deodorants, which were hardly manufactured on Earth anymore, only for her, because Harry wanted her to feel pretty, of course. One would have thought Francine and Tish were grateful, but no. Somehow, they still managed to smell of steel and burning flesh and the sweet, foul scent of decay.
It never stopped. It never, ever stopped.
Not exactly the most subtle way to get across Lucy is seriously twisted, I admit, but, I hope, effective. It's trickier when your pov character is simply mistaken or oblivious about some things while right about others. Or presented by canon as being in the right which you, as the author, happen to disagree with. Back when I was part of a DS9 drabble community, there was the challenge of writing in the pov of a character one dislikes. Now, there aren't many of these in DS9 for me. But I have Prophet issues. Do I ever. Said Prophet issues were already expressed in an earlier drabble by another character, but this time, this was not an option. So. There was this non-linear superbeing who did something I thought incredibly revolting in canon, all the more so because it was not acknowledged as such but presented as a good thing. At the same time, I didn't want to go the "is secretly evil" route. What I ended up going for was playing up the non-linearity of said being's perceptions (it has already happened, so it is only logical for the Prophet to do it), the alien-ness and the way the Prophet finds itself affected by its victim. Whether Cold Heaven reads as endorsing, rejecting or simply explaining the Prophet(s) to the readers probably depends a lot more on the reader than the Lucy, Uther or Holtz pieces.
Still, while I tried to understand my least favourite DS9 character(s) here, I wasn't exactly filled with Prophet love while writing that vignette. How about writing a beloved character, with the goal of getting readers to emphathize, and still disagreeing with the beloved character's views and actions, at least partly? In-denial characters are their own kind of challenge, and fun, especially if you write a story in which they remain in denial instead of having an epiphany.
Summertime Blues was a case in point for me. It's an Angel story about Connor between seasons 3 and 4. Here you have a (fairly unpopular in fandom at large, but for me a personal favourite) pov character who has just done something horrendous to the show's lead character and is lying about that to the characters he's with, and since this isn't an AU, readers also know how it will turn out, and what can't happen. He's also unfamiliar not only with most of the backstory of the characters he's with (as opposed to the readers) but some crucial facts about his own history. And, being raised by a vengeance-obsessed 18th century Yorkshire man, really not the type to speak about or figure out his feelings. So the way I tried to get across Connor's mixed feelings about his biological father (while denying he feels anything but hate), grief for the adopted father whose death he can't talk about because that would reveal to Fred and Gunn too much, and Fred and Gunn getting to him emotionally without his acknowledging as much to himself, and without ever breaking pov, was mostly through gestures that address what he can't verbalize or double negatives, as in:
Sitting on his bed, holding the letter his father wrote, he smells Angelus's traces there as well, and wonders whether this is the last trick of the demon: intermingling his scent with his father's, so Connor can't wish either away.
Where I find the attempt to present a character pov on events which is not necessarily true from an objective pov trickiest of all, in the sense of reader reception, though, is either with an open canon, characters who are morally ambiguous and one's own conclusions a work in progress as well... or when any type of either romantic shipping or redemptionist agenda is involved. A long time ago I wrote a DS9 story named Five things which never happened between Kira and Dukat, and the feedback I've had over the years came from people who loathed Dukat, from people who loathed Kira, from people who loved both but didn't ship them, and from people who loved them and shipped them, and some of them got completely opposite impressions of what these five things were about. Not to mention that I found myself seen as an ally by all of them. In this particular case, getting such different reactions was satisfying from an authorial pov, not least because while I found the Kira-Dukat (or Kira/Dukat) relationship fascinating, and like both characters, I don't love either and went for maximum complexity, not a pro or anti shipping stance. However, more recently, as part of my newly discovered Merlin fannishness, I wrote Into the Woods and was not just bewildered but honestly shocked when one of the (positive) reviews, the one at AO3, interpreted its purpose being that "Arthur gets to have a chance to say, wait a minute, what about me?" re: Merlin/Freya, which in fact is not only the exact opposite of what I was going for in the story but also one of my tried and true anti-kinks in fanfiction (i.e. stories with a "bad canon, letting that WOMAN come between our boys!" sub- or main text). Cue authorial "did I fail as a writer?" soul searching. Still remaining with my newest fandom, in the last months I also wrote a Gaius pov. As opposed to Uther, Gaius, while canonically presented as flawed, is mostly a positive father figure to the main character as far as the show's narrative is concerned; fandom, on the other hand, with some justification, has taken great umbrage to his decision re: keeping crucial information from one of the supporting characters. My own feelings on Gaius and his decisions vary. What I was trying to get across with the Gaius pov was why he made said decisions; I agree with some, but not all of his reasons; for example, I think he's completely right about the strong similarity he sees between Uther and Morgana, but also that the conclusion he draws - not to trust Morgana with the truth - is the one easiest to himself, not, as he tells himself, the one that is best for Morgana as well. So did I get across that I think Gaius is right in some regards and in others massively self-justifiying and deluded? Who knows. Probably not in this case, I suspect, because the Morgana issue is just one aspect, and it's a rather short vignette anyway; also, the emphasis is more on "why does Gaius what he does" and less on "and this is where Gaius is wrong".
All of which goes to say: I, too, have a weakness for fics in which the characters are, on certain points, wrong, and we realize it, but they don't; I'm just not sure I can always pull them off, or even that such a thing is always possible.