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whoa hey a meme!
Pick a character I've written and I'll list the top ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing them that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.*
*I don't think it follows that if other people don't have those concepts in mind they're inaccurately depicting them. For what it's worth.
*I don't think it follows that if other people don't have those concepts in mind they're inaccurately depicting them. For what it's worth.
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2. She doesn't read that way in the movies.
3. Mostly though they avoid it by not explaining where her character is coming from at all.
4. Which means there's a fair amount of creativity involved trying to figure her out.
5. But that doesn't make it any easier for me, because I don't identify with her. I'm interested in what makes her tick.
6. I like to read her as strong and in control of her choices, partly to subvert #1. But also because I don't see how Tony would go for someone who wasn't.
7. I also like to see her feelings for Tony as a choice. She's not in control of all of it--sexual attraction, or how he makes her feel sometimes, but I like to think she decides whether she'll allow herself to be in love with him, and could walk away before she made that decision, and didn't.
8. This is partly because I love Tony Stark as a character, but can't see hooking up with him or why you would want to. Actually, I can see why you would want to; I just can't see why all the reasonable objections wouldn't prevent you. But in this particular instance, I'm not interested in a character who can't help themselves, who lets emotion get the better of her, who does things against her own judgment. That can be interesting, but in this particular stereotypical secretary/powerful man set-up, I've seen enough of it and I'm interested in something else. I'm interested in why someone who confidently and in line with her own judgment, choose to be with Tony Stark.
9. I feel like it's partly because she has her own issues--which, while not as damaging as Tony's, are just as extensive.
10. I interpret her as someone who would simply not be interested in a lower stress job with less responsibilities or less impact on the world. Basically, being one of the most important figures in one of the most important corporations in the entire world is the only job that could make her happy.
11. Other things leave her fairly cold.
12. She fears that this makes her weird and different.
13. Which she is able to hide under a veneer of perfect amiability. She often doesn't talk about the things that make her truly passionate, and is able to converse with feeling, humor, and understanding on any number of subjects. She's very sensitive to other people's lives, concerns, and feelings, and is always considerate of them in every action she takes.
14. And all of this is perfectly sincere. She is a compassionate person and cares about things other people care about.
15. But they don't stir her deep down the way her job, career success, and power do.
16. Tony Stark stirs her deep down.
17. I like characters who act tough and are pretty repressed. Obviously, that is the bit of the way I'm writing Pepper, but I have to remind myself over and over that she is very emotive in the movies and that emotion is not faked. She feels real terror in scary situations and expresses it. Quite vocally.
18.
19. Oh yeah, so in case all of the above doesn't make it apparent, Pepper Potts is a control freak.
20. She's had a number of lovers and was in love with at least two of them.
21. She doesn't really love Tony more or less than those other two.
22. But she has to admit that he excites her more.
23. The number one thing I kept in mind while writing the Pepper that I've written so far is the fact that she stuck with Tony when he was developing weapons and acted like a playboy. When he decides to renounce these behaviors, she announces she can't handle it and that she's going to walk away--and the reason is because he's putting himself in danger. This has some interesting implications for her morality. Sure, she could be just upset and frustrated because she loves him and doesn't want him to get hurt. But I like to read it as she is more concerned about him than she is about the bigger picture. She has less of a concern for abstract morality and also the fate/future of the world than she does for concrete personal feelings.
When I think about this I often think about the difference between Spike and Angel. Angel focuses on this abstract concept of righteousness. Spike focuses on his relationship with Buffy--a woman who is herself righteous. I don't think one focus is more right or more valuable than the other. However, I really identify with Angel, because I understand abstract righteousness. I really don't identify with Spike, because it just feels wrong to me to put my feelings above what I think is right; or to put one person I love above a hundred people I don't know. Even the way I'm wording this is skewed, because I'm making it sound like the way that I view the world is better. But it's not; it's just a different way of interacting with the world. That abstract value can be just as damaging in its own way, partly because it doesn't put value on individual peoples.
Anyway, what I mean is that I try to view Pepper as someone coming from a completely different moral stance than a generic "I try to do the right thing."
24) I feel like Pepper really, really likes to win.
25) And that makes her do and try things she might not otherwise try.
26) And that when it comes to Tony, she really, really wants to win.
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Anyway, thank you so much for all this rich characterization food-for-thought.
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Yeah. I find this frustrating. Because I still want to BE THE BEST, but more and more I find I son't actually want to. How do I manage to want and unwant the same thing? Or want different things. Idk.
am suddenly thinking of myself as a combination of Pepper Potts and Bruce Banner
Well, what I love about fictional characters is that they are just manifestations of one person's mind. Well, in the case of Pepper and Bruce, obviously different people invented them and worked on them--but in the end they all just illuminate different aspects of ourselves. Real people do this too, but it's harder to see because real people are more complex (and I think that in some ways we are less comfortable ripping apart real people for this kind of analysis).
Anyways, I find that even when I write characters with whom I do not identify, such as Tony and Pepper . . . I end up identifying a lot in spite of myself.
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To write is to call up little bits of yourself to act as the characters you write - how could you not identify in spite of yourself, even just a bit?