Meme time?

[sholio]

Here is an interesting meme seen about my flist:

Pick a character I've written and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

(Heh, I expect that I'll have to kinda backwards-engineer the answers, since in most cases I don't consciously think about it that way while I'm writing; I just "know" what the character would do in any given situation ...)

My original or fannish characters are welcome here. :)

Comments

[terajk]

Zuko!

[attackfish]

Katara

[veleda_k]

Elizabeth.

[thingswithwings]

Peter Burke!

[siria]

Teyla Emmagan!

[madripoor_rose]

Rodney McKay

[kate]

Hahaha, that's exactly what I thought when I saw that meme. "I have no idea, I just know what they'd say/do/think."

Can I ask for a whole team of folk? Because I am curious about John, Teyla, Rodney, and Ronon. But most of all, probably Ronon and Teyla - more because I don't generally write them too intricately (and I'd like to change that).

ETA: Or, maybe, since others have asked for Teyla and Rodney, I'll ask for Ronon.

[sholio]

This one's easy 'cause I just answered over on LJ, so I can just c&p!


1. Peter's whole self pivots around his moral compass. He is a person with a very strong, very clearly defined moral code: lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, obeying the law is the right thing to do, etc etc. He tries to push shades-of-gray moral situations into this absolute black and white framework that he believes in. But ...

2. ... he's actually really bad at sticking to it. *g* Because when his moral compass comes into conflict with his heart -- heart almost always wins. Peter is WAY more morally flexible than he wants to admit, and he will violate his own moral code because of love or sympathy or simply because "this feels right": he's too softhearted to hold onto a code of moral absolutes. And this honestly scares the hell out of him, because he's afraid of where he might eventually end up if he goes down that road. Peter is very aware of his own strength (he's powerful, he's protective, he's dangerous, plus he has the whole weight of the law behind him), and he's afraid that without this framework of law and morality to keep him in check, he'd end up being a force for bad in the world. Basically, Peter tries to be a good person according to law/morality and then his heart gets involved and he turns out to be a total failbot at it. Which ironically makes him a much better person than he would be if he were able to be 100% consistent.

3. He is utterly, absolutely in love with his wife. (And probably a lot more fond of his CI than is good for him.)

4. He's a protector by nature, and he gets very protective and sometimes quite possessive of people he cares about. He can come on pretty strong, in a well-meaning way, but still. People dealing with Peter have to be able to push back and establish/reenforce their own boundaries sometimes. You have to be able to tell him "no". And he does take "no" (fairly) gracefully, it's just ... sometimes someone else has to push him back, because he doesn't always recognize the need to do it himself.

5. He's softhearted, kind, and generous, but he does not recognize these as strengths about himself. (Though most of the people around him do.) The things that Peter would describe as his own strengths are probably not things that people who know him consider his greatest strengths. The things that actually make him a good person are things he's a little embarrassed about.

[sholio]

1. Zuko is a teenager. ... Well, er, assuming that he's actually being written WHILE he's a teenager, of course. But he's actually one of the more realistic, warts-and-all portrayals of a teen that I've seen on TV -- emo and prone to temper tantrums and idealistic and caring and volatile and determined to believe that HIS ANGST is the most angst that anyone has ever had. Of course, in Zuko's case there is some truth to this last part, given that his father is one of the most important men in the world and Zuko himself has some pretty legitimate reasons to angst about things. But the narrative doesn't take Zuko nearly as seriously as he takes himself (while still being sympathetic to him) and this is a balance that I want to try to keep.

2. He is really a total sweetheart. He is a messed-up ball of issues, but deep down underneath it all he's a very good person (in fact, a lot of his issues are because he's a good person).

3. He's a good fighter, but he's not a natural prodigy. He's worked very hard (and still works hard) to develop the skills that he has. (Actually, one of the things that I love most about Zuko is that he's not naturally "the best" at anything, as characters in YA often are. He just works his ass off to keep up with the prodigy characters around him.)

4. He's deeply tangled up in his family's issues and he's never going to be untangled.

Can't come up with a #5 off the top of my head ...