What makes a character? My personal answer · 2:46am Nov 11th, 2013
I was having a conversation today that got me thinking a lot about what makes a character. The conversation started as a question about whether humanized ponies are the same characters as pony-ponies.
Personally, this has never been a question for me: They are as much (or as little) as any other AU. I don’t understand why anyone would feel like Rainbow Dash as a human is less “Rainbow Dash” than Rainbow Dash who was raised as a cloistered Canterlot noble. But that’s because to me, a character is 99% personality, and 1% appearance, history, and place in the world.
So, this essay is basically my argument for that. It contains some other information as well, which might be read as tips on writing in character, moving characters to AUs (including humanized,) and/or creating characters for original fiction. There are also some examples/defenses of humanized scattered throughout, because that’s where my mind was when writing it.
What makes a character:
Personality
This is what I think makes a character. And the google dictionary agrees with me!
personality
Noun
1: the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.
So, what does this really mean? Well, it sounds like a collection of traits. But really, it's the way that collection of traits is expressed in regards to one character. In writing, that's heavily influenced by our limitations-- there are only three(ish) ways we can tell people about a characters traits at all, and then we're limited further by the situations we can show it in, because people generally only want to read things that have to do with the actual story that's going on.
In writing, there are three(ish?) ways of showing personality.
1) Informed attributes. This is usually a bad thing by itself, because first of all, you’re usually telling people something that might not be true for them: “Pinkie Pie was funny.” Well, what if I don’t think Pinkie is that funny? No one agrees on what’s funny, so she has to be funny to a certain group of people. And if you want the audience in that group of people, it’s not enough to just tell them that she was funny. That leads to the second problem with informed attributes, that you then have to show them. If you want people to think that Pinkie is funny, you have to show her doing or saying something funny, so that readers will actually believe that she’s funny. And if you were going to do that, why bother telling us that she was funny?
So, if you’re establishing characters personalities with informed attributes, you’re probably not starting in a good place.
2) Narration and word choice. This is a totally valid way to establish a personality. This is how your character does the things they do.
Fluttershy glided gently towards the cloud, while Rainbow Dash soared through the air over it.
It’s also how they say the things they say:
“This day’s turnin’ out real nice.”
“Yeah, it’s totally cool.”
“I simply must agree. I’m enjoying this lovely weather.”
This is pretty essential to a character. In original fiction, you design this with your character. How they speak and what they do is more important than all the facts you can list about them, and if there’s no difference between how characters talk and act, people will feel like your spaceship captain and your high-class chef are the same character in a different costume.
In fanfic, it’s even more essential, because we’re trying to mimic characters that already exist. And what’s more, we’re trying to capture characters whose actions we’re used to seeing, and whose voices we’re used to hearing, on a page of text. The only way to make people hear Ashleigh Ball’s Rainbow Dash voice is to make the words on the page as close to something Rainbow Dash would be saying as possible.
3) Plot. This is the most essential. Whereas narration and word choice are how a character does what they do, plot is what they’re doing. What they want, the problems they see (and don’t see) standing in their way, and how they choose to resolve them.
For the same basic problem of “get the magic thing away from the dragon at the top of the mountain,” for Fluttershy the problem might be the dragon, Applejack might see the problem as being how to get to the top of the mountain, Twilight might see it as not having enough information on the mountain, the dragon, or the item in question, and Dash might not see a problem and cause problems by flying in blind. Then their solutions to those problems would all be different as well.
So even if your character’s voice and description are totally in character, straight from the show, if their problems, reactions, and solutions don’t come from an understanding of their personality, they’re going to feel OOC.
Now, the most important part is combining those things, the information you're giving the audience, in a way that makes sense and is consistent throughout the story. This is one of the things that makes personality easier to define for characters than real people -- while people might be loud in some situations and quiet in others depending on their mood that day, you almost never see that in characters (unless that itself is a clearly displayed defining trait, or there's a story given reason.) People can do things differently than usual "just because," but characters don't. A character is defined by their personality, so they have to have one and people have to be able to tell what it is.
So, that, right there, is what a character is to me. It’s what I mean when I say a character in a story is “in character” or “out of character.” It’s what I’m talking about when I say I like or don’t like a character. And it’s what I mean when I say that Helena Bonham Carter plays the same character in almost every movie she’s in. Oh, there are other things that go into a character, but now I’m going to talk about why these aren’t as important as the personality.
History and place in the setting:
Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed when he was a kid. He’s a wealthy playboy. He decides to dress as a bat and fight crime. Those are all facts about the character of Batman (as we usually know him), but do they make a character Batman?
Yes and no. They are things that build to or result from Bruce Wayne/Batman’s personality. But my argument is that they aren’t necessary for a character to be Batman. We could see Batman in a scene, with no one mentioning these things, and if he acts like Batman, he’s still Batman. The writer could have decided that he’s actually possessed by the spirit from The Crow, but we don’t know that. As far as we know, he’s Batman.
BUT here’s where it’s important-- there needs to be a logical reason for Batman to act like Batman. As an audience, we’ve accepted that this canon progression of events and stimuli formed a character we know as Batman. So if you did want to change those, you have to replace them with a different but still logical series of events that will lead to Batman’s personality, or show us something that changed his personality so that his reactions and choices didn’t lead there.
Rainbow Dash did a Sonic Rainboom as a filly. She’s a weather pony who dreams of being a Wonderbolt. She’s the bearer of the Element of Loyalty. And, once again, you can write a fic where none of these things ever come into play. You can even write a fic where none of those things are true. But, if you do that, you can’t ignore how those things are part of Rainbow Dash’s personality, you have to make her new history something that leads to and makes sense with her personality.
And, of course, the reverse is true. I can write a story about a pony named Rainbow Dash who did a sonic rainboom, wants to be a Wonderbolt, and represents Loyalty, and it can be a totally different character. When we do this, that’s what OOC means. Somehow this pony with the same name, look, and history is a doppelganger who acts nothing like Rainbow Dash. And most of us hate those stories, because we came here to read about Rainbow Dash.
Appearance:
Okay, I don’t care what anyone says, The Vampire Lestat is the best vampire novel written. Ignore Louis’ whining in Interview With the Vampire, and ignore everything after Queen of the Damned, and ignore Anne Rice being batshit crazy; The Vampire Lestat is an awesome book.
It was already published when the movie for Interview With the Vampire was being made, so people knew a lot about Lestat, who’s an important character in the book and movie versions of Interview. And people, especially Anne Rice, were unhappy that Lestat, a tall, aristocratic frenchman, was being played by… Tom Cruise. Who, incase you don’t know, is not tall or aristocratic, nor particularly french-looking. It was an awful casting choice…
...Or the best casting choice ever. So good that Anne Rice had to publicly apologize after the movie came out, talking about how amazing Tom Cruise was. Because no matter how little he looked like Lestat, Tom Cruise nailed the personality. He was Lestat; sarcastic, playful, immoral, self-confidant, and dangerous. From his first scene to his last, Tom Cruise was perfect.
Years later, when Tom Cruise and Anne Rice were both in training for the crazy olympics, someone decided to make a sequel. They cast Stuart Townsend in the role, who looks much more like Lestat. It was easily the worst adaptation I’ve ever seen in my life. Or, half seen, I didn’t even make it through the movie. Looking like Lestat wasn’t the same as being Lestat.
“But bookplayer,” the voices in my head are saying, “that’s just a minor physical difference. A few inches of height, and the wrong color hair and cheekbones? Camera shots, lighting, and makeup/hair dye can fix those. It’s not like they made Lestat a different species.”
That is true, so let’s look at a second adaptation. Did you know that, according to most versions of the folktales, Robin of Locksley was not an anthropomorphic fox? For real, yo. And yet, Disney had no problem convincing most of us that, for the plot of the movie, this was Robin Hood:
And why not? He was called Robin Hood and did the things that Robin Hood should do, swashed buckles and stole from the rich to give to the poor, sounded British-y… to us, those things are Robin Hood. Human is not a requirement, apparently.
So, if a character is cocky, loyal to her friends, a dedicated athlete, a tomboy, and talks like Rainbow Dash, how is she less Rainbow Dash because she’s human than that is Robin Hood because he’s a fox?
Now, once again we come to some exceptions, and once again they lead back to personality. You can make changes to a character’s appearance that make them a different character… but those are almost always cases where those changes speak to a difference in the character’s personality.We can easily accept Robin Hood as a fox because, well, Robin Hood is kind of foxy. It might not work as well to make him a lion. Some people may remember my rage at Equestria Girls was largely centered around mini-skirts for Applejack and Rainbow Dash. That’s because those spoke to the character’s personalities, far more than a change in form did.
So, that’s why I feel the way I do. You can have totally different thoughts, that’s fine. I actually wonder if my opinions on this have a lot to do with a few personal factors.
As primarily a writer, when I write characters it’s difficult to make a distinct appearance for them. Generally, you only get a few lines to describe a character, and the audience has to fill in the rest in their heads. So it would be weird for me to think that appearance had much to do with character. On top of that, it’s also bad form in storytelling to dump a whole backstory, so generally backstory is only mentioned when it ties into motivation (plot) or behavior (how a character talks and acts.) For most characters anything that doesn’t directly explain that is cut. So for me, building a character and writing them is an exercise in imagination and decision making, and it revolves almost totally around the needs of the plot and the personality of the character.
Compare that to someone in the audience. If they really love a character, they might want to know all sorts of trivia and facts that weren’t important to the story. To them, everything shown about the character is just how the character is, and not only is there clearly more to know (even if the writer never actually made up more to know,) the character that is there was just… presented to them. They didn’t make choices, from their point of view it’s no different from meeting a new person. The character is a more physical entity.
The other thing I wonder about affecting this is the kinds of stories I write. My stories are largely character and emotion focused stories. Romance as a genre pretty much requires a focus on character, since plots tend to get a little familiar. The difference there is how the characters react differently to the same things. So, to an adventure writer things like different skill sets might be much more important to how a character reacts to a plot, for me it’s usually almost totally personality.
But, whatever the reason, this is where I’m coming from.
If this were any more true, I'd eat my metaphorical hat.
And I know this is going to sound sad, but when I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Theives, I almost cried knowing that the Disney version wasn't the real one. Let that speak for how closely they matched Robin Hood's personality from the original book.
-SoI
That was great, except for
That's not Blade. That's not Dracula. There's not even a cool vampire hunter that kicks Dracula's ass in it.
That said, I hope you're using this blogpost as justification for a kick-ass humanized fic you're gonna do. And so I can link this blog people whenever they say humanized isn't pony related.
Though since I write concise, my answer to your blogpost on what makes a character would just be another question: What makes a person?
Two points/ questions/ comments:
What if a character has no personality? (e.g. Luke Skywalker)
Actually, better question: what about the concept of character-as-device? Sometimes a person exists in the story world, not to be a character in the story, but to be a face/something that the actual story characters interact with. The mooks Batman has to be up in order to get to the Joker to stop the insane plan. Are they characters? Do they have personalities? (I would say "voices," but that's neither here nor there) Or are they just props, walking punching bags to be dismissed by the reader and writer alike?
Second point: How does this relate to rule 63? Does changing the character's gender* necessarily change their personality, or is it just a background trait?**
* as opposed to just changing the sex of the character.
** the answer is no.
1498714 Errol Flynn. Everyone else is just pretending to be Errol Flynn.
Although Carey Ewels and Brian Bedford are the only British actors to play the part...
An excellent, thoughtful post. Thanks for writing this up!
1498720
Sorry, but Dracula involved exactly zero vampire rock bands.
Seriously, though, Dracula was important, and is a classic story, but The Vampire Lestat is the perfect blend of vampires as sexy and seductive and vampires as dangerous and evil. It's a look into the entire idea of vampires and why they both horrify and capture our imaginations.
Also, people are waaay harder to define than characters. Characters are just pieces of a person, put together in a way that makes sense. So I have no idea what makes a person, but I know what makes a character.
1498725
In terms of characters like Luke, their lack of personality becomes their personality. That is, if you were writing a fic about Luke, based on the movies, you would know Luke was OOC if you gave him a personality. Unless, of course, you invented reasons for that personality to develop. That's one of those things that might seem to give you freedom as a writer, but actually ties you down even more, because now you have to make sure the character doesn't become too much of anything.
And I would say that background characters aren't really characters. You can turn them into characters (as fandom frequently does) but since there's no way to prove they're acting out of character, they're really just props until someone hangs a personality on them somehow.
That being said, often there are tiny bits of personality hung on them, it's clearly a sliding scale. Often Batman thugs are depicted as being not-too-bright, for example, and if that's the case the thug is technically a character, but what we'd call a two dimensional character. (Which is not a bad thing, but that's a different essay.)
In terms of R63, we're getting into changing a characters place in the world, and history and backstory. They can be the same character if you can set things up so that they became the same character. They're going to face different conflicts, but the important part is if they react to those conflicts in the same way the original version of the character would.
The problem with R63 is that authors rarely pay attention to the ways a character would have to have grown up differently to get to the character they're writing, and the ways that would change what conflicts they face.
Also, Cary Ewels made the best human Robin Hood. Even in a parody.
I think the strength of a character comes from a simple exercise.
Describe a character WITHOUT mentioning their appearance or their job. If they are a strong character, it should be easy.
Wait, there was Disney version of Robin Hood? How have I not seen this?
But doesn't history and place in the world go a long way towards making up a personality? Sure, the personality shown to us is how they are, but isn't why are they that way an important question to ask? Especially when you're the one creating the character? I recently had a very long discussion with someone about whether or not a certain character was simply an intrinsically awful person, or if he was an intrinsically good person in an awful situation. If that character hadn't had the history that he did, or lived in the world that he did, there wouldn't have been any discussion to be had.
1498812
History does play a big part in terms of why a character is the way they are, but no specific history is intrinsic to that the way that personality is. When you're creating a character there's a lot of room to play around and tweak things to get the personality, that is the character, that you need for your plot. When I was writing my novel, I can't tell you how many times I retconned things to make everything about the characters add up right.
Or take Rainbow Dash for example. We know next to nothing about her history. You could fill it in any way you want, and as long as you can make us believe that it leads to the personality we know, it's the same character. In an AU, you can even take a way the few things we know about her. Yes, doing a sonic rainboom as a filly is important to who she is, but if you can introduce a different kind of childhood that would explain the same things, you can write Rainbow Dash as a sky pirate.
1498765
Here's where I respectfully disagree.
Gender isn't just a trait, an aspect of one's background. Gender is probably the second* most fundamental lens through which we view the world. It's not enough to say it would change what conflicts they face.
It would change how they face those conflicts as well. Just as a woman is not a man with breasts, a woman does not deal with the world in the same way a man does.
This is not an Amero-centric or Euro-centric observation. No human culture in the history of the world lacks this distinction. Also, biology would normally** play a role.
So Rainbow Blitz would not act, think, or talk like Rainbow Dash, regardless of any other changes that may or may not have occurred. I think that, for Rainbow Blitz to be believable as a man (by gender) than there would, by definition, be differences too close to the core of his being for him to be the same person, or character, as Rainbow Dash. These differences are not competitiveness, loyalty, arrogance, desire to be a Wonderbolt, or really expressed in any of Rainbow's actions. But the underlying calculation of value, of fear, of what it means to be accepted, would be different.
For Rainbow Dash, the strive for excellence is a deviation from the obvious. Not quite iconoclastic, but it does mark her as special just to want to be a Wonderbolt more than she wants anything else.
For Rainbow Blitz, to not want to be (whatever) more than anything else would confuse people, and be itself a deviation from the expectations upon him.
The best example I can come up with though, isn't Rainbow, it's Rarity/Elusive. For Elusive, there would be a constant need to justify his choices. Not because fashion, because there have always been men in the business, and not because fashion is 'girly,' because that's mostly an American concept.
Elusive, much more than Rarity, would have a constant need to justify opening a business. He would need to show success, in bits, at every turn. He would need to win at business. Rarity doesn't have that pressure. For Rarity, the pressure would actually be reversed if she were in a different business: in more competitive fields (sales, finance, law) there' a lot of pressure on women to get out, because it's not suitable to maintaining a life outside the business (which men don't need) and because people in those fields think women can't compete.
Rarity only needs to run a business successful enough to support her lifestyle (at whatever level she chooses) If Rarity can make enough to pay her bills and then decides to close the store for the day, that's fine. As a woman, she met her obligation to the economy, and must now meet her (many) obligations to society. (because she must also be a friend and sister and pony-about-town). Elusive could get away with being a hermit, but he could not get away with being a "good enough" shopkeeper.
To evolutionary psychologists, this 'provider' concept, as a masculine thing, has been around since we shared an ancestor with chimpanzees. It's not just a bit of background.
*the most fundamental is language, although there are a lot of universals there, so it's actually less important from a writer's perspective.
** gender is a social construct, rooted in the biological fact of sex. But sex means, essentially, what reproductive organs you have. Secondary traits are tendencies, not constants. And all the mental aspects are rooted more in gender, not sex.
1498877
While I totally agree, I also try to keep in mind the idea that, basically, this is the universe where it happened.
Gender affects people and can be expressed in a million different ways. So, in the same way that we accept that, for whatever reason, Bruce Wayne's logical reaction to his parent's deaths is to dress up like a bat, we can provide a pass on a few qualities of gender distinction, though that absolutely should be acknowledged (just as Batman stories routinely have to acknowledge that this is not actually a logical progression and is kind of insane.)
So, say Elusive has a much more "female" mindset than other stallions. What does this mean? Will that, in itself, affect the story? Does Elusive himself realize it? In a story that chooses to address these things, Rarity can be Rarity-as-a-stallion. The author just has to recognize what that means, and that it isn't going to cause the same issues as Rarity-with-an-extra-bodypart.
Heck yes, foxy Robin Hood! Still the only film adaptation of the story that I've ever watched (except for that one with Russel Crowe, but I don't think that counts - it wasn't very Robin-Hoody at all. I get it was a prequel, but c'mon, no stealing at all? Weak).
Other than that...
I agree.
Yes, I wasted comment space on your blog just to say that. And you can't stop me! Muhahahaha!
Kay, I'm done.
1498714 Disney, Prince of Thieves, Men in Tights. All my favorites. :D
Also the King Raven trilogy by Steven Lawhead...
I just like Robin Hood!
1498742 Feh. British actors. British actors are 100% unnecessary for the part. That accent didn't come to exist until after the American Revolution.
When a character is changed into an AU of itself I always find it easier to accept when things are added instead of taken away.
As for your argument that history and place aren't as important I will have to disagree a bit but not directly relating to the character bits. When you transplant a character into a different iteration and completely change the history and place they are in, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the original if you aren't informed of who they are. While they may share personality traits, they might not be the original in a recognizable way.
I recently read a story and I found it less jarring when the "ponies" used nick names that had nothing to do with their former names compared to their pony designations.
Really good observation about Tom Cruise.
1498877 For Rainbow Dash, the strive for excellence is a deviation from the obvious. ... For Rainbow Blitz, to not want to be (whatever) more than anything else would confuse people, and be itself a deviation from the expectations upon him. ... Elusive, much more than Rarity, ... would need to win at business.
That's genius. Actually, the pattern you're talking about of just taking a character and swapping their gender probably explains why I keep calling RBD "him" when I write. Canon Rainbow Dash is just a Rule 63'd Rainbow Blitz rather than a real female. Maybe such a character would be possible in Equestria, but here on Earth, a woman who began with such a male-stereotype personality would end up different, because people would treat her differently. I think.
After read this, there is only a thing that I can say:
25.media.tumblr.com/c26b20d3523d58572c00a59fabfc6650/tumblr_mtzmeqC16Z1qcga5ro1_500.gif
I admit to skipping some part of your blog because you write so much it's scary.
But, isn't the reason why humanized characters are different because they grew up in a totally different world? Sure, you can find substitutes for things that created the original Rainbow Dash, but she will still have quite some differences. No flying towards enemies or in front of friends to get up in their faces because running is a lot slower and looks a bit ridiculous.
Things like that
1499099 Bad Horse called something I wrote genius!? Squee!
1498830
I'm not sure if being variable make character history or place in the world less important. If a character didn't change any when placed in a completely new environment and situation or as they experienced new conflicts, that would be a pretty boring character, right?
In those stories that create a background for Rainbow Dash, or whoever else, that background is important to the story and it is important to her character. Just because it differs from another story's background for her character, doesn't make it any less important in that particular story or to her character in that particular story. If they weren't important, they wouldn't have been mentioned.
I guess to some extent it depends on the character. Some characters' histories and place are more central to their personalities than others. With the exception of maybe Twilight, most of the characters in this show are dependent of their history, if only because we don't know their history. But, for example, the character I mentioned earlier, whose response to every situation was at least in some way affected by the earlier death of his daughter. His past experiences defined much of his character and how he acted, and it's likely he would have acted very differently had his experiences been different. To say history and place only account for something as small as two percent of how his character was defined seems erroneous.
1499617
Um, yes... and in some versions of Robin Hood he's limited to being able to shoot one arrow at a time, but the Disney version can shoot five. Because cartoon. A live action Robin Hood will be different from the Disney version in more ways than "not a fox" but it's still Robin Hood.
1500241
I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking very well last night. Let me try this again.
To take the character you described, affected by the death of his daughter. You could rewrite the character so that his daughter didn't die, but something else happened that drove him to the same in-story personality (and therefore motives and plot.) It's very important to the character that something happened to give him this personality, but the details of what happened aren't actually important. The same isn't true of personality. You could write the character with his daughter having died and give him totally different personality traits, make him a self-pitying alcoholic instead of whatever he actually is (which is probably not that) and that would be a different character.
So, since history can be changed as long as it logically leads to the same personality, I find it hard to say that history is important to it being the same character. It's important to the character as it's being written in that story, but if someone else were to use that character, history is a thing that could totally change with the character remaining the same (as long as the new history also made sense of the character's personality-- which is the real core of the character.)
1498877
I disagree ... I think
As far as I can tell, the gist of your argument is this: The average man is different from the average woman (for cultural or biological reasons), so to translate a character from one to the other isn't legit.
But the average man and woman are just abstractions. On average a woman does not deal with the world in the same way a man does, sure. But some women do not deal with the world in the same way other women do. And some men deal with the world the same way as some women. Or, in other words, a certain set of character traits might be more likely to appear in one gender than the other -- but they can still appear in both.
So Rainbow Dash might be more of a deviation from the norm than a Rainbow Blitz who shares all her traits, and the reverse is true for Fluttershy and her male counterpart (Flutterguy? I dunno, man).
So when translating from our a canon character to a genderflipped character, we have a choice of what to preserve: Character traits or social context. I don't think there's an absolute correct answer here, but personally I would go for preserving character traits wherever possible. I would prefer an Elusive who is happy with a successful-enough business and is odder than Rarity to an Elusive who is fights more for success and is just as odd as Rarity.
There's another thing, which I think you're also arguing for: Elusive might have faced different Social pressures to Rarity when growing up, and so ended up with different character traits.
This amounts to a similar choice: When translating a character, do we keep character traits or personal history? And again, I'd go for maintaining traits. (Although one could also argue that social pressures about gender norms aren't as strong in Equestria aren't as strong as ours, so you can get away with keeping both).
1500350 It's true that the averages are differential, but it's not the point.
My point, and it's difficult to articulate, is that there are differences that do not overlap. But they're not phenotypical; I can't point to a string of word that Rainbow Dash would say and Rainbow Blitz would not say. (or vice versa) I can, however, state that there are paths of reasoning that would be important to Rainbow dash that would never occur to rainbow Blitz. (and vice versa) Just because of gender.
So while they might have the same goals and the same background and the same character sheet, the inner layers of their thinking would be different*, with no other changes aside from gender. That inner layer of difference, though, would change the character's voice. They way they talk, the way they think.
Or to put it far too plainly: Rainbow Biltz sounds nothing like Ashleigh Ball.
Now you might still disagree with me, and say that I'm just stating that they have different backgrounds (although for characters, as opposed to real people, backgrounds are very important), and you wouldn't be far wrong.
* my theories on the importance of gender in cognition come from standing theories in Gender Studies, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. These sciences are based on humans, however, and so for a sci-fi approach we could imagine a world where gender doesn't matter. And fill it with ponies, because ponies are awesome.
Also: reiterating the difference between gender (social) and sex (biology). There are more than a few genders, but almost everyone fits into one of two, and they matter very deeply to the human experience.
1500290
I find that incredibly unlikely. I suppose it would be possible, but the motives would inevitably have to be changed.
It's difficult to use a character we're not bot familiar with as an example, though. So, take Scarlet from Gone With the Wind instead (though she's not nearly as good an example). If she didn't grow up on Tara, if she never had Tara, something that I'm sure most would agree was very important to her character, if she never felt obligated to defend or fight to keep that home, her motivations throughout most of the novel would have been very different. Her personality would probably largely still be the same, but how the story played out and how she responded to various situations and events would have been different. Her actions would have been different, and those must be more important in defining a character than just her baseline personality.
1500591
But my point is that Tara doesn't have to be Tara. I could write a crossover between GWtW and Firefly where Tara is a spaceship, or an entire planet. It would fit perfectly in that setting, and Scarlett could easily be the same character, and the story could play out exactly as it did. The things Tara means to her are central to her character, and have to be preserved, but the details of setting are not.
1500518
Right, so what you're saying is: There are modes of thinking that are exclusive to each gender (and are thus socially determined); therefore it's not legit to translate characters across the gender divide without changing those modes of though appropriately.
Well, if the first claim is true, that's a fair point. My previous argument doesn't apply. But let me push against it in a different way:
This claim about different thought processes is not at all obvious. For example, it doesn't allow us to to say things like "Elusive would feel obliged to win at business", 'cause there are men out there who are happy to have a good-enough business and leave it at that. Most of the It must be about something subtler, and not at all easy to notice; traditional gender roles are about averages, so we've excluded them.
In this case, we could easily ignore these differences without harming verisimilitude for most readers, just as we ignore the physics and economics in FIM itself. More than that, in fact: With such subtle differences, it's hard to see how one could use them in characterisation at all.
(Incidentally, and in a totally non-combative way, do you have a link to some justification for these theories? I'm not particularly well versed in any of those fields, and I'm struggling to see how good evidence could be obtained without statistical methods.)
1500802 Fair enough I suppose. I just see it done badly so often it becomes a pet peeve of mine. Though it's usually more a symptom of people who can't write one or another gender well than a symptom of r63 done badly.
If that makes any sense. Not sure if it does.
As for links, that'd be hard right now as I no longer have access to Lexus-Nexus. It some pretty in-depth academic theory. It's been a while since I read current articles, so I can't even do you the courtesy of telling you who to look up. I'll try to remedy this if I can, but...
Thank you, this is very insightful. One of the things I'm always afraid of as I write is that I'll just end up making a bland, no-personality character (especially when relying on an OC for whatever reason); mostly I'm afraid to get them WRONG or at least to not decide on the right balance (or imbalance) of traits to give them and convey. The stories I seem to enjoy the most are the one where, all other things being equal, I simply don't question the actions and motivations of the character because they are so natural. That's clearly very important in a fanfic base like MLP:FiM.
Dammit!
1500734
But if there wasn't any Tara (of any kind), if there wasn't any Rhett or Ashley, if there wasn't any Northern army, if there wasn't any Atlanta, if there wasn't any Ellen? Not necessarily if all of those external elements were gone, but only one or two, or if they were replaced with something entirely different, she as a character would change.
Admittedly, Scarlet is harder to argue since she has such a strong personality, it would come through no matter what situation she was in. But how she responded to those situations would surely change.
1501258
Yes, she could be the same character. We see this all the time when we make statements like "<insert actor here> always plays the same character" or "<insert author here> always writes the same character." Obviously they are different people with a different backstory in different worlds, but we can tell that the actor or author is using the same personality for all of them.
1498877
Yes, every society has gender distinctions, but how are we to know that Equestria's gender distinctions/cultures match any particular society on earth, or could they be entirely different?
And besides that, in modern societies, there are always exceptions and people that don't fit the profile of their gender norms, down to their root motivations.
Now, in fanfiction, sometimes we interpret the characters as well as write them. One writer's version of Rainbow Dash might be a bit different than another writer's, even if they're both writing in the same universe. Having theoretical R63 versions of the characters is only going to cause more wiggle room.
So, in the end, I think your versions of Rainbow Blitz and Elusive are perfectly valid versions of the characters. However, I think another writer might come along and come up with a very different set of differences between Rainbow Dash and Rainbow Blitz, or Rarity and Elusive, and they would be just as valid.
P.S. -
Well, that's not fine by Rarity. It may be just fine for any normal pony, male or female, but we know Rarity has greater aspirations than that. Her business is SO much more to her than a way to pay the bills. She will continue to try and "shine across Equestria" with her fashion, and wants the beauty she can create to be of the very highest level. Now, you may still want to make a distinction and say that winning at fashion isn't quite the same as "winning at business," but I'd just like to point out that Rarity is just as dedicated and driven for success in her business as Elusive could ever be.
1501350 I guess my main point is: There is a difference between being Rarity and being Elusive, and that difference must be addressed. There are, of course, several ways to address it, but Rarity and Elusive are different characters because of the societal pressures and expectation put upon them by their genders.
But not fitting into the gender norms of the gender you appear to be expressing is creating a whole new set of societal pressures (usually violent ones at that point.) So if Elusive acted like a proper lady, he would be treated very differently by society than Rarity acting like a proper lady. And he could not react to those pressures like Rarity would.Because Rarity's reaction would only make sense as a female.
Unless your're writing a story where Elusive is transgendered male sex/ female gender, and calls himself Rarity, and acts like a lady and tells everyone that she's always wanted to be a lady since she was a little filly and they all think she's a mare but she actually has a secret between her legs...
Not standard r63 though.
It's not fine for Rarity, but not because of outside pressure. It not fine for Rarity because she wants to be famous. But she also wants to be a lady, and ladies do not spend all day and night running a shop. Ladies are a key part of the community, and they need to maintain their friendships and their families. This isn't a western idea.It's everywhere. Women maintain the village.
And it wouldn't be fine for Elusive, even if he didn't want to be famous or wealthy. There would still be pressure to push harder and grow his business. This is also not a western, or eastern, or northern idea. It's everywhere. Men provide for the family. This is external, but it's there, and it's present more or less, in every human society in the history of the world.
Not a statement I make lightly.
Now, we can try to imagine a society (a better society) where these kinds of social pressures do not exist. Where ponies are not judged by their gender any more than we judge people by hair color. That would be an interesting thought experiment. And interesting thought experiments like that have lead to some of the greatest works in the history of science fiction.
But if you want to write a world where gender doesn't matter, then you are writing, at least in a small way, speculative fiction.
Of course, as I said to 1500918, I could just be fixating on a particular aspect of character background. Even if I maintain it's more important than say, what one's father did for work, it could still be seen as important in the same way. So maybe it's just me.
1501286
And here I'm going back to saying that there are different kinds of characters. Some aren't dependent on external factors and act the same regardless of the situation they're in, like every single character Michael Cera has ever played. A lot of the characters in this show are also good examples.
But characters like Scarlet and the one I mentioned earlier seem very much like they've been affected by the situations they are in. The biggest evidence I have of this is that Scarlett changes throughout the novel, and she changes is response to her experiences. Her base personality stays about the same, but in response to external factors, primarily Rhett's influence and the Northern invasion, her outlook on life, her motivations, her goals, they all change. The Scarlett in the beginning stealing all the other girls beaus isn't the same Scarlett at the end who realizes she never loved Ashley to begin with.
If those experiences never happened, she wouldn't have changed, or at least she wouldn't have changed in the same way. Those experiences defined her character.
I guess you could argue that an entirely different set of experiences could have led to the same changes or that her personality remained more or less the same throughout. But that seems a little, I don't know, contrived.
1501449
It would be contrived, I totally agree. Contrived as hell. Honestly, most AUs are contrived in some way, I will totally admit that. It doesn't make them less fun to read about when they're done well, and an AU character can be the same character. That was all I was saying.
1501423
Of course, since Rarity's motivations for her business aren't from external pressure, I feel like it would be losing something in the character if Elusive's motives for his business were from social pressure. That, to me, would no longer be very much like Rarity (or an R63 version of Rarity, as the case may be).
But perhaps that's just me.
Come to think about it, though, perhaps this whole vein of thought when it comes to societal pressure is a moot point. We haven't seen that side of the characters in the first place. We haven't seen much of them reacting to "societal" pressure to be a certain way much in the show, with the one possible exception of "Suite and Elite," where Rarity was worried that High Society wouldn't like her friends.
But as I review it, none of our six main character's root motivations come from societal pressures on them, so it's hard to say that societal pressures from being the opposite gender would really change that at all.
(Except maybe Elusive, because of that whole "proper lady" thing. In my personal opinion, a good version of Elusive would need to adopt some code of conduct - probably not "proper lady," unless you want transgender issues to get involved - that for some reason, to him, seems like a proper and dignified code of conduct for him to abide by. In the end, the root motivation hasn't changed.)
Anyways, that's how I see it.
Well, Robin Hood in Robin Hood being a fox is... completely inconsequential. They're funny animals, the fact that they're anthropomorphic animals is completely meaningless in the greater context of the story, and really only gets exploited for a few visual gags with Sir Hiss. So yeah, he is a "different species", but really he's just a human being who is a bit fuzzy.
On the other hand, there are characters whose physical form heavily informs their character - ugly or particularly pretty people, it is important for. Some people are affected by being especially short or tall, or strong or weak, or similar.
For characters who aren't just humans in funny costumes, species does make a difference, as do some other attributes, such as age.
I think the biggest difference for the characters is their society, though - the magical land of Equestria is like the real world in some ways, but utterly different in others, and that would affect them far more than their actual bodies do - the fact that most of the characters lack hands isn't much of an issue most of the time, though it occaisionally is so. Flying is more integral to Rainbow Dash, as are some of Fluttershy's acrophobic bird tendencies, but I think that some of it is translatable. Twilight's magic is more weird, though, as there isn't any real-world analogue to that. But their society, where everyone has a mark on their butt that shows they are special in some way, and they have an immortal leader who rules over them and lifts the sun in the morning and the moon at night, and there is apparently quite a bit more peace and general niceness than the real world? I think that's a pretty big divergence, and is part of why humanizing them is weird - they live in a very idealized world, after all, and taking characters from a more idealistic setting into one that is less so is one of those weirder things.
I honestly don't see much reason to turn ponies into humans in writing, though.
1498877
I would tend to put it somewhere around fourth or fifth myself, and I think you're also extrapolating from human culture more than is actually justified.
The most important - by far - is species. There are very, very few nonhuman intelligences depicted in fiction, but if you look at real world things, species makes a very vast difference. Humans are defined by our intelligence, our ability to interact with the environment, our senses (we are very visually oriented, with auditory coming in second, but the other senses matter as well; some other species might focus more on one thing or another more than we do), and the like. These have vast influences on how we behave and percieve things and goes far beyond anything else - but it is mostly invisible to us because all real-world people are humans, and most people in stories are fundamentally humans in funny clothing. I suspect if we ever actually run into aliens, this will change rather rapidly (unless, of course, they are highly similar to us).
This is almost never really considered when we talk about ponies, because, well, they aren't actually all that non-human - only Discord and Celestia show any real signs of being inhuman. But it would, realistically speaking, have a pretty profound impact on them - for instance, it is far more difficult and tedious for non-unicorns to write, lifting and carrying things works differently, differences in perception of body language, different means of carrying things around, different abilities to interact with some technologies, greater physical resilience, the list goes on. How do unicorns perceive the eating habits of races which lack telekinetic abilities, do they view them as being child-like because they eat like foals do before they learn how to use their magic? How about pegasi, how do they view distances differently from unicorns and earth ponies, who have to walk? Do some earth ponies resent that they aren't as visibly special as unicorns and pegasi, or do they take pride in doing it the "hard way" and lack respect for those who take shortcuts, and view things that break from tradition as an attack on the earth pony way?
These are all pretty fundamental differences, and would actually have rather large impacts on their society and them as individuals. We don't really see them. Diet in particular could easily wig ponies out, especially if most ponies never eat meat and griffins frequently do - raising animals for slaughter is something most humans do without a second thought, but it can definitely creep some of them out. A society which is mostly vegetarian may have trouble with the concept of meat eating species, or even meat-eating individuals - even amongst humans, humans who eat some animals which are viewed as protected in an individual society can be seen as "wrong" and immoral.
The second most important is probably culture. Language is part of culture, but I don't think language is as important as culture - it is what you see as normal or strange which messes with people. Going to a country where people don't speak your language is weird, to be sure, but if you live in the US and go to somewhere like China, that is a FAR bigger difference than if you go to, say, Germany, which is mostly fairly recognizable. I think culture plays a far bigger role than language does in that aspect - what you see as normal or strange is informed by those around you.
The third and fourth are education and individual ability. Education links into culture, but it also separates you from it to some extent as well, as well as immersing you into the "culture of education" - not to mention, many of the tools education gives you makes you view the world quite differently. Likewise, lack of education itself separates you pretty significantly from some fairly large fractions of society. Individual ability is another link, and in Equestria, it makes a big difference - pegasi can fly and control the weather, a magically powerful unicorn can perform all sorts of tricks, earth ponies are especially strong and tough. Even beyond the racial separations, though, a very strong flier like Rainbow Dash has a fundamentally different view of work than Fluttershy does, while Twilight's ridiculous magical ability means she can do a lot of things that no one else -can- do, and relatively easily at that. People in the real world who succeed at school pretty easily and who are good at pretty much everything they try have a different attitude than the people who really struggle to succeed, and those have a different attitude and perception of the world than the people who more or less give up because "they're not good enough".
Gender is quite significant, but I think it is less so than the above things, and a lot of the difference from gender actually comes from culture. We also have very little evidence from the show OF a big gender disparity between men and women, which is one of the largest differences between Equestria and the real world - the only actual dichotomy we've really seen amongst large groups is that Celestia's guard appears to be mostly male. We have seen few male leaders... but in truth, we've only seen Mayor Mare, Princess Celestia (who is immortal and literally raises and lowers the moon), Princess Luna (who ALSO can manipulate orbital bodies), Princess Cadance (who got stuck in charge of an expedition by Celestia, but who is of far above average magical ability), Twilight Sparkle (who again was put in charge by Celestia, and who ALSO posssess enormous power), and Prince Shining Armor (who was captain of the Royal Guard, which is presumably a position which is selected by Celestia, and who ALSO possesses enormous power). Four to one isn't that odd, given such a small sample size, but it is obvious that there is no real bias AGAINST said leadership by females, and the group itself is mostly composed of unicorns and alicorns of immense magical power, plus Mayor Mare who is the mayor of a random town of earth ponies. We don't really have a whole lot to go on in terms of societal gender roles, but we haven't seen any real indication that they have the same sort of separation in terms of gender role in society. As such, while gender may well play a role in their society, it is hard to say how big of a role it actually does play.
In particular, you talk about competitiveness being a very male thing... but in Equestria, we've seen a bunch of competitive females and a few competitive males (the chefs), and the Wonderbolts Derby implied that male and female ponies race against each other, which would suggest there is much less dichotomy in their physical ability than is seen in humans. Men being stronger than women IRL has various implications for both professions involving physical labor (men are stronger and tougher than women on average, and the strongest and toughest men are considerably more so than the strongest and toughest women) as well as their general role in society, as without men being physically stronger than women, it is unlikely that historically men would have been nearly as dominant over them, and the fact that men were more able-bodied than women also made them the better warriors, which was a big deal when people were busy constantly stabbing each other with spears. If women were just as good at stabbing things as men, then there would have been a lot more female warriors historically because it would have been advantageous for a society to be able to recruit a bigger army which was equally physically able.
There are also various implications of men being the more "disposable" gender in human society which were influenced by these traits as well, as well as the fact that human males cannot breastfeed whereas human females can - in a species which did not breastfeed, nurturing the young would be more likely to be evenly divided between the sexes.
In their society, gender seems to be much less of an issue - there doesn't appear to be nearly as much sexual dimorphism in ponies as there is in humans. It is true that we've seen very few stocky mares, though - all the big mares seem to be less heavily built than the larger earth pony stallions, though conversely, I think all the larger females we've seen were all unicorns (or alicorns). Celestia is far larger than anyone in their society.
So while yes, gender plays a relatively large role IN HUMANS, a lot of that has to do with things higher up the hierarchy - our species causes us to have sexual dimorphism, which has informed our culture because men are stronger, tougher, and make better warriors while women are the only ones who can breastfeed (and incidentally, later on in pregnancy do have more trouble doing a lot of work - something else which may be less true of quadrapeds), and comes down into physical ability as well with men being more able-bodied than women and thus more resistant to hardship and more dangerous to attack or victimize. It may not be nearly as true of ponies as it is of human beings - Lightning Dust, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack aren't noted as being major outliers, and it seems that ponies of both genders at least race against each other, if not compete against each other generally.
Indeed, it is worth noting that in the 20th century, women gained a lot of power in society at the same time that physical ability became much less important and violence and crime (things which physical ability protects against) less common.
1502335 I just want to point out three things:
As someone who spent a lot of time studying both language and culture and the way the two interact: you've got this backwards. You think in the language you speak. What words you know, what idioms, has a huge influence on how you process what you perceive.
Best example: try to remember the time before you knew what a terrorist was. You thought about "people in other places" differently back then, and not just because you were 12 years younger. It's both a big deal, and completely tangential to what you're saying, so I'll leave it at that.
Not competitiveness in general, but what men compete over/ about, and how they compete, is different than women. Again, tangential to the main point, but still I don't want you to misread what I'm saying.
The third thing is: most of what you're writing is a very good analysis of MLP as speculative fiction: Imagine a world where gender doesn't matter.* I suppose I may have missed that point when attacking badly done r63, but I have a hard time accepting the idea that I should ignore gender when creating characters who are supposed to resemble human mentalities, especially when the author is specifically addressing the issue of gender. I would also point out that humanizing ponies would need to address this, unless we're also maintaining the original setting (at which point I wonder why we're humanizing in the first place.) Maybe I just have a pet peeve about arbitrarily changing the characters in a half-assed way for no reason? That could be a factor.
*but for some reason, in this hypothetical world, race does matter a lot in determining one's abilities.
1502499
As far as language goes, I think this is... well, quite wrong. Firstly, from personal experience, while most of the words in my head at any given time are in English (I rarely slip into French for no apparent reason, and very rarely a few other things which aren't really languages per se), I also think about a great many things which aren't words. Various sensory inputs are also very frequent, and indeed, when I'm imagining things, I tend to be concerned with sight, sound, and smells the most, but tactile sensations are also fairly frequent, and some things which are pure qualia - feelings and suchlike.
However, the larger issue lies in human invention. It is true that a pre-industrial culture is going to have a much harder time describing a gun to you than a culture which has guns. However, the idea that this has to do with language is rather sketchy, and we don't actually observe extreme differences in the real world; while having a specific name for a color category makes you (marginally) faster at distinguishing that color in one visual field, among other things, there's a problem. The problem is that the association is weak. It is present, but it is marginal, and it is not omnipresent. Indeed, in the real world, you find that language adapts to circumstances - a culture without guns and computers needs no words for them, and will have no words for them, but it won't take them long to come up with some. Heck, look at English; we coin new words constantly to better describe new technologies. It does not, however, prevent us from making them in the first place.
A simple way of disproving the Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis is this: If language were more important than culture, we would expect the people in French Africa to more closely resemble the thought processes of the French than of other Africans; this is quite the opposite of what we find in the real world. In the real world, France has more in common with Japan than much of French-speaking Africa, despite the Japanese speaking a totally different language, because different as their culture is, it is still more similar to that of France than, say, the Cote D'Ivorie.
While the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is amusing, it isn't actually well borne-out by experimental evidence. It is doubtless true that language does have a small impact on your categorizations, and there are experimental results to prove this, but in reality it does not appear to be nearly so important - the effect is weak and limited. People will be slightly slower to distinguish between, say, colors, but they can still do so. The same is true of pretty much everything.
Language obviously has an impact on your culture, but culture, not language, is by far the more important factor there.
As far as R63 stuff goes... honestly, as far as I think of it, I think of the primary difference in-setting being "How would the characters be different if one of them were male? How would it recontextualize their interactions with the other characters? And of course, how would it affect shipping?" This is, I think, especially true if you assume all the characters are straight. Twilight, for instance, being Dusk Shine, wouldn't really change the opening all that much (save that it would be a male character leading a bunch of female ones), but how would it change their relationship from them on? When Twilight got two tickets, was that a hint from Celestia to get a date that Twilight completely ignored, and, if Twilight was instead Dusk Shine, would he have picked up on it, or would his friends have realized they were basically asking themselves out on a date with him? Competing over the ticket with Twilight wasn't a big deal, because they were going as friends, but competing over the ticket with Dusk Shine might have implications, whether or not Dusk Shine was aware of it. Likewise, if we assume someone else was R63ed instead, how would THAT impact them asking to go to the Gala with Twilight? Would she have interpreted it as being asked out? With Elusive, who seems likely would appear flaming gay, maybe not (even if Elusive was
), but if, say, Rainbow Dash or Applejack were male, how would that affect it?
The list goes on. How awkward would the sleepover episode have been if one of the characters there was male? Again, Elusive might not have seemed as awkward (until of course it came out that he was straight, if indeed he was); Applejack being male would have thrown Rarity for far more of a loop, and of course, if Dusk Shine were male, who knows how naive he is? Would he or they see any implications in him offering to let them stay for the night? Would he even understand that sleepover book was for girls? (I can just imagine him getting super excited over makeovers because he has no clue that isn't a typical male thing. And that itself could have implications, either them seeing him as especially naive, or mistaking naivite for HIM being gay - which could influence how they saw future interactions as well)
R63 Fluttershy (Butterscotch, I think people mostly call him?) would come off very differently to us than Fluttershy does, and I think would also come off differently to his friends.
R63 Rainbow Dash would seem pretty aggressive in some ways, and the potential for a Fluttercrush or UST between him and Applejack would go way up, not to mention, how would Twilight react to him showing off - would it come off as him trying to impress her?
R63 Applejack seems like they'd be mostly unchanged character-wise (and indeed, I think of all the gender swaps, it would have the least impact), but Rarity's interactions with him would take on a new dimension - the sleepover, obviously, would be weird (no way Rarity would share a bed with him), but how about at the Gala, when Applejack gives Rarity that free pie - would Rarity contrast his generousity and good nature with that of the "prince" she had been pursuing? How would Applejack's relationship with Applebloom change? How about his competition with Rainbow Dash - would they be seen as butting heads because they like each other? Well, like that doesn't happen already with them being assumed to be lesbians, but still.
R63 Rarity (Elusive) seems like they would be almost a completely different character. Rarity is a social climber and a large ham; turn her into a guy, though, and it seems like you'd end up changing a big part of the character.
R63 Pinkie Pie (what is this even called?) would seem a lot less cutesy appearing randomly in private places with girls rather than guys, and could create some creepy factor there. Also, the clinginess to Rainbow Dash and his other friends would potentially seem more possessive.
R63 Twilight (Dusk Shine) seems like they'd have the most potential for it due to how much ends up centering on Twilight, and how many episodes would feel pretty different - Dusk Shine stalking Pinkie Pie in Feeling Pinkie Keen, Dusk Shine with his tickets in Ticket Master, Dusk Shine hanging out with Princess Luna all night, and of course Prince Dusk Shine's impact on Rarity's whole prince obsession. Would Dusk Shine be more or less understanding of Fluttershy's shyness? Would Rainbow Dash showing off for him make him think she was hitting on him? Would Rarity potentially transfer some of her royal obsession in season 1 to him from Prince Blueblood, being a much more achievable target who is close to the Princess? How would he react to that? How would he react to Pinkie Pie showing up everywhere, all the time, even in weird, private locations? How would some of the girlier things he does while hanging out with them change - would he not want to do such things, or would he be naive and sheltered and go along with it, all the while the girls laughing behind his back and/or assuming he was gay and/or being weirded out by him being feminine? There's a lot of material there, especially in season 1, but also simply from the context of five young, attractive, heroic girls all hanging out around the same guy.
I think R63ing the characters has a lot of potential to mess with some episodes, and virtually none for others, and I think such recontextualization is more interesting than trying to figure out real divergence - in the real world, Elusive and Rarity would have pretty different life experiences, as would Fluttershy and Butterscotch, whereas Pinkie Pie isn't very "real world" to begin with, Dusk Shine's seclusion and AJ's ruralness seeming more like they would leave them very similar, while male Rainbow Dash, who even knows? In a world without strong gender roles, R63 would matter less save for shipping and the context of having people of opposite genders hanging out together, but the same recontextualization can occur if you assume they're all lesbians... though on the other hand, it is more directional with one character being the opposite gender, and much more focused.
R63ing some of the characters would be weirder than others as well - Elusive, for instance, would seem vastly different as a guy to the point where it is hard to say they would even really be the same character. Rarity as Lady Rarity can do the whole feminine wiles thing, but guys don't really have the equivalent - while they can manipulate people in this fashion, it is a very different thing, and comes off quite differently. Likewise, Rarity's overdramatics would either have to be changed vastly in the case of Elusive, or he would come off as flaming gay. On the other hand, some characters hardly change at all. But if the character hardly changes at all, what was the point of doing the R63 in the first place?
1502689 I don't want to get into the whole language and cognitive science debate with you because, well, I no longer have access to the articles, and so feel under-equipped. But suffice to say, if you have conscious thoughts that you do put into words, you're a Buddha. No one else can pull that off.
As for R63ing various characters, those story ideas are all good ones but they depend on my original premise to work: gender matters. You can't just assume Dusk Shine is the same character as Twilight Sparkle. He's not. He's a guy.