Characterisation

[lady_windermere]

Was having a chat about characterisation last night to a couple of people, and realised that I don't always use my own idea's on characterisation when writing. In some areas I am quite willing to allow a lot of OOC when I am reading as well. Especially with Angelus and William.

I write Daddy!Kink, and Baby Boy because my friends enjoy it, and use what I consider to be the fandom characterisation for that kink. So even if my Angelus and William the Bloody do not really fit into that, I will quite happily write it anyway, using the general characterisation.

I wondered if anyone else felt the same?

[Poll #984998]

Comments

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Well, this is difficult to answer, as many of the official writers for the show saw the characters in different ways, and thus there were episodes in which Xander or Spike seemed to be OOC to me, so I imagine it's the same, if not worse, in fanfic. My feelings are that if you're writing about these specific BtVS/AtS characters you'd want them to be as recognizable as possible because isn't that why we read/write fanfic? Because we love the characters we saw on screen? It may be different if one is writing to a specific kink, but even when pairing characters for ficathons or whatever, I still like to come up with a believable reason that Y and Z are shagging like bunnies when apparently they had nothing in common/disliked each other in canon. That's probably why I don't write PWP - it usually takes me a lot of words and plot to get Y and Z together in a way that makes sense and feels like it could have happened, given these circmstances.

I don't think there's anything wrong with writing kink!fic, and a lot of people enjoy reading it, but to me it's better if the characters are recognizable. One of my personal turn-offs is the use of the word "childe" which seems to be frequently used in fanon but was never, ever, used in canon. That alone is enough to jar me right out of a fic. Also, renaming Buffy as "Elizabeth". Yes, sometimes "Buffy" is a nickname for "Elizabeth", but Joss made it perfectly clear that Buffy the Vampire Slayer's legal name is "Buffy". It's on her school transcripts and her tombstone and in Something Blue, she tells Spike "My mother gave me that name," so I really don't understand to urge to rename her "Elizabeth". I just don't get it. *sigh* But that's just my personal opinion.

[http://users.livejournal.com/woman_of_/]

Yes, I can see where people are coming from in wanting fic to stay true to character. These are the characters loved on the shows, and as such they are who we want to read about.

The trend to make Spike weak and a victim has been upsetting my just recently, hence the poll. I don't mind a little of it, but I just seem to be reading it constantly. Spike did have various times when he was disabled, such as the wheelchair, and the chip, but he always bouced back.

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. And even when Spike was disabled in the wheelchair, he wasn't weak - he didn't sit around crying and feeling sorry for himself all day. He continued to snark and call Angelus on his rudeness, and secretely praticed getting out of the chair to attempt to walk when the others weren't there. Yeah, Spike is no-one's victim. I'm totally sure (i. e. the mine vignette in FFL) that although Angelus may have tried to dominate him, he wasn't a victim.

And I did write one Human AU for a ficathon (Xander/Angel) because I'm too much of a canon whore to be able to comfortably hook-up those two due to Xander's feelings about vampires in general, and Angel in particular. So I had to give them a fresh start and make them both human, but I still tried to retain their characteristics and make them recognizably Xander and Angel.