Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "characterization"

One of the biggest challenges I consistently face in writing is solid and consistent characterization, especially when it comes to their intelligence. It's hard to portray the less smart characters, because not only do I have trouble deciding what they might figure out and what they might not, but I also always instinctively want to show them do smart stuff because it reflects on me as an author. If my characters do smart stuff, then it just shows that I can write smart stuff. If my characters are dumbasses, then I look like one too.

I think I've gotten better at it as time passes, though. One way is to make the truth of things glaringly obvious to the reader, even if it can take a while for the characters to figure it out. They tend to be under a lot of pressure, after all, often unaware of all the facts, and are therefore susceptible to taking their time - sometimes with fatal consequences. Besides, I tend to feel good about myself whenever I'm reading stuff and figure these things out well before the characters, so maybe my own readers will feel the same.

The real problem is snark. Pithy lines, scathing insults, and sarcasm - the sort to make the reader laugh, and/or have them think the character is really clever, and by extension, the author is. They're a lot harder to be left unsaid in a way that still makes them obvious, easily break the mood of a tense scene, and all too often there's no one around to be smart: the characters are all too preoccupied, scared, dim, or just not giving a damn about funny lines. And yet whenever I miss an opportunity for such, I feel like I also miss an opportunity to affirm my own intelligence. I want to show everyone how witty I can be.

In fact, I sometimes have this nagging suspicion that this sort of a thing is, at least subconsciously, a big motivator in a lot of smartasses of literary fiction: a vehicle for the author to show off their mental muscle a little. I wonder how many others have given it any conscious thought - and then what they would think of it, whether it's true at all, or whether I'm overthinking again. Certainly a bit of smart commentary can enrich a good story, so it's not all bad.

The Straggler's Mask was somewhat lacking of such wit, on account of Peal being too timid and Ivar too dim to give any good lines, though they had a few minor characters picking up the slack. The Vagrant's Wings might do better: it has more smartasses, and the main character especially has trouble knowing when to shut up.

You've got your heroes who start out weak, and overcome their challenges by getting stronger, and just keep the cycle going until the story ends with them being the strongest around and having beaten everyone up. You've got your underdogs, who start out weak and never get stronger, and prevail by being quick and clever instead, and/or by relying on stronger friends. And you've got your supermen who are the strongest around, yet are constantly challenged by even stronger foes and higher stakes, or else the story is a power fantasy where we get to feel the thrill or hilarity as they beat things up with ease...

...or they're someone like Saitama.



He's the fastest thing around, nothing can harm him, and he famously beats all his challenges with a single, usually half-assed, punch. He's ridiculously OP - nothing can stand up to him. And yet in every other aspect of his being... he kind of sucks. He's just a regular guy. He has trouble managing his finances, isn't very good at video games, and struggles with the sheer boredom and ennui that his superpowers have brought him. It's a great juxtaposition, demonstarting that just because you possess godlike power doesn't mean your life - even mundane existence - isn't without its problems, and your godlike power might even make things worse.

Sadly, One-Punch Man is quite prone to forget its greatest strength, the superhero parody premise, and all too often devolves back into your usual stock shonen fights where enormous power and inhuman abilities duke it out. It's not bad shonen stuff, by any means, but it's kind of a missed opportunity. I'd like to see more of Saitama just trying to manage his mundane life. There was the short bit with video games once, but still.



The same story also features King, who possesses the fearsome reputation of an unbeatable hero... and only the reputation. In truth he's just a perfectly regular person, barring his phenomenal skill at video games. Basically the exact opposite of Saitama, and just as compelling to me: he gets around by staring his foes down until they submit, or coming up with some bullshit to convince them out of it, but there's a good deal of tension there in that as soon as this doesn't work, he's mush.

You see how I might like this kind of heroes the best of them all? Heroes that are basically unbeatable in one thing (doesn't have to be strength, or even related to fights at all), and beat any challenge without trouble so long as it's within their comfort zone, yet have just as much, even more, trouble as a normal person in other aspects of their lives. They can tap into a lot of experience and knowledge, but they also have great weaknesses that they all too often need to get around. It's the best of both worlds - underdogs, and the occasional power fantasy!

Not to mention, it's a perfect reason to make friends: bring forth some more well-rounded heroes to support them, to play off of them, and to have great mutual character growth and friendship and romance. Perhaps these friends are also really good at something but suck at something else, giving an even greater contrast and more things to distinct them. If I didn't do that, I'd just have to rely on subtle stuff like personalities and goals and likes and dislikes... like an actual good author would. No thanks.

Let's count the guys.

There's Peal, of course. He's far beyond just your regular sneaky little rodent - he has a deep inborn insight to all matters of stealth, subterfuge, and subtlety. He can hind himself or others or things up to a vast starship, set up your internet on absolute incognito mode with like a dozen proxies, and find Waldo, all with about equal ease. And yet he tends to crumble in social situations, is easily browbeaten or charmed if you can see him and stare him down, is hard to be taken seriously what with how cute and cuddly he looks - and he's plain starved for affection and can't handle being alone, ensuring this weakness will always come up sooner or later.

His best friend, Ivar Stormling, is also his exact opposite in this regard. He's a people person - charismatic, handsome, with big presence and a loud voice, not to mention a great personality and desire for good things for everybody. He can rouse the entire kingdom to follow his lead in a pinch. Yet, he's terribly unsubtle and simple-minded, and tends to have trouble approaching challenges from any other direction than straight head-on. He's honest and honourable to a fault, less because he thinks this leaves the best impact in the world (though he does), and more because he just doesn't have the imagination to lie or cheat. And when put in a bind, he tends to default to violence: often it catches the foe off-guard and gets him the advantage, but just as often it leads to even bigger trouble.

But when the two of them join forces, they can complement their strength while eliminating each other's weaknesses. Together, there's almost nothing they cannot do.

Sadly, the next three aren't as lucky.

Mirari Aedelwine is also good with people, albeit more with individuals than with crowds. She knows how other people work, what they think, what they feel, and can with quite the ease figure out their motivations and background, just from a quick conversation. And it's just as easy for her to get under their skin, make them want to do what she wants them to do, or destroy them verbally. Good at sleight of hand and misdirection, as well. But when she doesn't have anyone to talk to or swindle, in the case of beasts or eldritch horrors or some environmental challenge... well, she's not incompetent, but she is in trouble just the same. Not quite as extreme a minmaxed example as some others here, but she definitely counts.

Keam Vitrio is the fastest man in the cosmos - no one in the two galaxies of the setting can come even close to a match. If he's ever involved in a race, all the bets concern themselves with the second place, because the first place's decided before anything even happens. And he's a smug, unrepentant douche about it. Terribly high opinion of himself. Most people can't handle his company very long. It's lonely at the top - and boring, far more so than even he himself realizes. He wins on the racetrack, but typically loses elsewhere at the same time.



Last, and the latest in my line of heroes, Toryōshi Otsugi is one of the finest duelists in the land: she learned the way of the blade from her father, a notorious sword-saint, who had no sons and therefore had to groom his daughter into the position - and she demonstrated great talent and aptitude to it, picking up his arts and then some, almost without trying too hard. And indeed she did not try too hard - because she simply did not give a shit. She never wanted to be a warrior. She's plain sick of all the wandering swordsmen coming around to challenge her, and doesn't see the point in dueling to see who's best. She would have liked to learn to do other things, but can't find enough time for it. And perhaps worst of all, she's desperately lonely: no man would care to court her, in this feudal and patriarchal world, because she's as far away from your traditional delicate wallflower as she can get.

You could almost see her as a deconstruction of your common, by-the-numbers, Strong Female Character: she can kick ass and take names, show the men what for, yet she was thrust onto that path against her will, by a man, and now everyone around her sees her as more a man than a woman. So she's hardly your independent feminist icon. Her arc involves finding agency, deciding for herself, and growing to be her own person. But... that's really a talk for its own blog post.