Writer's Workshop: My Good Side

I was thinking about two characters the other day: Rainbow Dash, whom we all know and love, and Komi Shouko, from Komi-san Has a Communication Disorder. If you've never heard about the second story, the basic thrust of the concept is so: Komi-san is the most beautiful and beloved student in her classroom, dubbed "The Goddess" in one particularly memorably chapter. She's calm, composed, unflappable, totally aloof--or at least that's how she appears to everyone else. The truth is, she's secretly a massive ball of nerves, so anxious and frightened that she can't speak a word to anyone in most contexts. The series plays with the back-and-forth between these two sides of her: on the one side, the goddess admired by everyone; on the other, the girl so lonely, she can't even say hello to most people.

How does this tie into Rainbow Dash? Well, I was thinking about how Komi-san is basically perfect in most ways. Everyone loves her, she's incredibly attractive, and she can get just about whatever she wants if she tries. If you were to take those solely by themselves, Komi-san would be the Sue-iest Mary Sue that ever Sued. But the moment you throw in her communication disorder, suddenly everything is turned on its head. Ironically, the fact that she's so beloved by her classmates is a negative for her, because it means they hold her up on a pedestal, and she can't open up or be real with them. They'll often push her into things she doesn't want to do, and she does it anyway because she can't say no--both figuratively and literally. Because everyone sees her as calm and composed, they'll often give her just enough social rope to hang herself, so to speak.

Now let's look at Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash is arrogant, boisterous, self-obsessed, accident-prone, lazy, dismissive, and all-around full of herself. Imagine coming up with this character, or meeting this kind of person in real life. After interacting with this person for like five minutes, you'd want to gouge out your eyes with a pen. With just these characteristics alone, Rainbow Dash would be the most insufferable character in all of fiction. So what did the writers do? They gave her the Element of Loyalty. Rainbow Dash may be all of those things I just mentioned, but she never leaves a friend behind. She may be lazy or dismissive, but she always gets the job done in the clutch. She might complain that everypony else is slower than she is, but if they start to fall behind, she'll go help them catch up.

And that doesn't invalidate or contradict her character in any way! It complicates her, sure, makes her interactions with others more diverse, but they're not mutually exclusive. In a sense, her good side puts a limit to how obnoxious her bad side can be. In every interaction someone writes with her in it, they need to put at the bottom of the page in huge letters, "Is loyal to her friends," and if they ever screw that part up, they need to be hit on the head with a newspaper and start over.

In fact, this dynamic shows up with every character. Rarity is a narcissistic drama queen, but you know she will give her two front legs to help others. Pinkie is a bubbly pink nightmare, but you know she'll always try to make ponies smile. Fluttershy will cower at everypony and everything, but you know when the chips are down, she'll stand up and do the right thing. Rarity can never be too much of a drama queen, or Pinkie too much of a grating nuisance, or Fluttershy too much of a coward. Their good sides always shine through when things go too far in that direction.

There's a rule in role-playing games that doesn't get emphasized enough in some circles: your character must want to go on the adventure. They can be a coward, or a back-stabber, or a homebody, or what have you, but when the GM says, "Here's where the story begins," every player needs to say, "My character is on board." For one thing, it obviates a half-hour of game time of cajoling and wheedling the coward character into playing along, and for another, it puts a minimum to how annoying the character's flaw can be. Nobody wants to play with the character who spends every fight running and hiding, doing nothing useful every time.

So here's the takeaway. Characters should have both weaknesses and strengths, with interplay between the two to create interesting moments. Each should be about as important and memorable as the other, so that the character feels balanced. (So no, none of this, "Oh, he's a bastard, but he played with that puppy that one time, so he's totally a nice guy, totally!" crap.) Previously, I've talked about FAE High Concepts and Troubles. FAE stresses that a High Concept is not purely good, nor a Trouble purely evil; both can be used to help the character or hinder them, when appropriate. Your characters' strengths and flaws should be the same way. Komi-san's flaws help keep her strengths in check, and Rainbow Dash's strengths keep her flaws in check.

Comments

[Super Trampoline]

Good blog.