When Curly and Curly Collide
Dec. 11th, 2006 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerI've been mulling over this entry (ETA: now flocked, darn) for a few days. I especially haven't been able to get these quotes out of my head:
and
See, I understand the point, and I agree that differences between characters provide exciting contrast and a recipe for conflict. But I'm not sure I agree that characters with such differences have inherently more possibility for conflict than similar characters.
I mean, how often have you heard this? "They're always butting heads - they're just too much alike." You probably know people like this. You know, the mother and daughter who are both fiery, stubborn, articulate (especially when they're arguing), convinced the other is trying to keep them down, etc. Or the professors who have nearly identical specialties, have been working in the same department for the same number of years, are equally respected, and hate each other and won't stop arguing about how the other is arrogant, intellectually inferior, and wrong, wrong, wrong about whatever point in their field.
I thought of the new Battlestar Galactica. Surely one of the obvious paths for Starbuck and Kat since they met was to get on each other's nerves and finally have a showdown. And surely this wasn't because they were so very different. No, the trouble with Starbuck and Kat is that they are so similar, isn't it? Stubborn, hotshot pilots who mouth off to their superiors (sometimes because they're grumpy, sometimes because the superiors are wrong and need correcting), occasionally have meltdowns, tell each other to shape up rather than try to talk things through, etc. I think Hotheaded Pilot A + Hotheaded Pilot B = Conflict! is at least as obvious and basic as Hotheaded Pilot + Rule-Loving Authority Figure = Conflict.
Or how about Han and Leia in Star Wars? Sure, they have some differences, but they clash before they get around to those. They start bickering about dominance: Leia gives orders, Han doesn't want to take orders, Leia certainly isn't going to take orders either... It's the clash of the alphas. They're both stubborn and prone to snap judgments about people. Neither is particularly keen on ignoring the challenge to their dominance, or on just sitting down and trying to understand each other and learn to get along in a frank discussion. So BAM! Instant conflict.
Or suppose you look at some hotheaded Chosen Ones with Dead Parent Angst, Speshul Powers, a Prophecy of Chosen-ness, anger management problems, and issues with authority. Do you think Anakin Skywalker and Harry Potter would be BFF? I don't. I think it's at least as likely that they'd start arguing straight off than that they'd get along, perhaps more so. Harry'd see Anakin in a pissy "I'm-entitled-to-Masterhood!" mood and decide that he's just like Draco, really, and that would be that. It would take a long story to get the guys to like each other, not to develop the conflict.
I don't think it's just stubborn, hotheaded characters whose similarity provides instant conflict, either. What about Saruman and Count Dooku? They're both wizard-scholars of a sort, and both sit back and make intricate plots rather than rushing into things. And not only do they both have similar relationships with the Dark Arts, the Dark Lord, and the hero's Mentor Wizard, but they are both Christopher Lee and so even have similar mannerisms and inflections in their voices. How much more similar can you get? Yet I don't think they'd be BFF either, and it wouldn't take a long story to establish that. Really, how likely is it that they'd decide to, say, split whatever domain they ended up in together, or agree on every decision and occasionally make concessions to preserve a harmonious rule? Maybe temporarily. While they were cooking up plots to depose each other.
Now a story about two such villains squaring off might be tricker than one with two very different characters squaring off - for one, they'd have a lot harder time plotting against each other, because they'd be able to anticipate each other so well. So this scenario does seem to have less good story conflict, or at least less good short story conflict, than throwing two hotheaded characters together does. Maybe that's more what the OP had in mind.
Or maybe it's more that while throwing, say, Starbuck and Han in a room would easily lead to conflict, it might not be as interesting somehow as conflict between two more different characters. But I'm not sure about that, either. Sometimes the most wrenching conflicts are between friends, or people who should be friends - or within one person - and they aren't necessarily hard to set up. Say the crossover starts when Han and Starbuck are each going through rough times. Readers presumably already know what those rough times are, so you don't have to establish them much. They meet, they're in bad moods, they take all the anger they've been directing at themselves or their friends and lash out at each other instead. Things escalate. The fighting has a bad effect on their friends, and the other pilots, and everyone gets so caught up in the interpersonal problems that they're totally unprepared for the simultaneous Imperial and Cylon attacks. And in the happy ending version, they figure out how to cooperate instead, realize they're just taking their anger out on each other and should have been friends all along, go kill the frakkin' toasters together, and Adama makes a speech about unity (and accepting yourself flaws and all, if he's feeling especially philosophical) being the key to victory or some such, the end. It sounds just as fun as a Warrior vs. Scholar story to me, and someone more concise than I could probably do it in a relatively short story.
Or how about this? Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds compete to snag a lucrative smuggling gig. To get it, they have to race on the Kessel Run...
In the end, I don't think my thoughts are that different from the OP's, though. I do agree that the different-characters conflict is both easy and incredibly attractive to the reader, and that sometimes establishing conflict between similar characters is harder and takes longer. I just think that it's also true that sometimes similar characters have tons of inherent conflict which is just as easy to set up, and that that can be just as interesting and make a good story.
Or maybe it's just that I really like throwing similar characters with similar roles together to see how they'll react for some reason. Who wouldn't want to see Book and Obi-Wan having tea and fighting baddies with Gandalf and Dumbledore? They could be 008 agents - awesome old guys fighting evil and being snarky with each other! M can come too. She's tired of working behind a desk and letting Bond have all the gadgets. Actually, she'd better lead the team, because I think some of them would have trouble adjusting to being an equal team member rather than the Revered Mentor...
The point here is that if there are differences between the characters--physical, mental, attitudinal, etc--the story possibilities have an inherent drama in them that similar characters just don't have. A scholar and a scholar together can geek out over their respective areas of research, but a scholar and a warrior has more built in conflict as the characters wrestle-out what is the right approach at any given time.
and
For relationships where the characters in canon fill more similar roles, well, the fanfic author has more work to do, if they are going to hook in readers who don't already see the relationship in the source. A dramatic hook has to be provided by the author, one that can open up the source and let the reader see the character conflict, watching the relationship build. Longer stories are usually more successful at this... because it takes time to build up the conflict and create risk in the reader's mind when canon gives nothing.
See, I understand the point, and I agree that differences between characters provide exciting contrast and a recipe for conflict. But I'm not sure I agree that characters with such differences have inherently more possibility for conflict than similar characters.
I mean, how often have you heard this? "They're always butting heads - they're just too much alike." You probably know people like this. You know, the mother and daughter who are both fiery, stubborn, articulate (especially when they're arguing), convinced the other is trying to keep them down, etc. Or the professors who have nearly identical specialties, have been working in the same department for the same number of years, are equally respected, and hate each other and won't stop arguing about how the other is arrogant, intellectually inferior, and wrong, wrong, wrong about whatever point in their field.
I thought of the new Battlestar Galactica. Surely one of the obvious paths for Starbuck and Kat since they met was to get on each other's nerves and finally have a showdown. And surely this wasn't because they were so very different. No, the trouble with Starbuck and Kat is that they are so similar, isn't it? Stubborn, hotshot pilots who mouth off to their superiors (sometimes because they're grumpy, sometimes because the superiors are wrong and need correcting), occasionally have meltdowns, tell each other to shape up rather than try to talk things through, etc. I think Hotheaded Pilot A + Hotheaded Pilot B = Conflict! is at least as obvious and basic as Hotheaded Pilot + Rule-Loving Authority Figure = Conflict.
Or how about Han and Leia in Star Wars? Sure, they have some differences, but they clash before they get around to those. They start bickering about dominance: Leia gives orders, Han doesn't want to take orders, Leia certainly isn't going to take orders either... It's the clash of the alphas. They're both stubborn and prone to snap judgments about people. Neither is particularly keen on ignoring the challenge to their dominance, or on just sitting down and trying to understand each other and learn to get along in a frank discussion. So BAM! Instant conflict.
Or suppose you look at some hotheaded Chosen Ones with Dead Parent Angst, Speshul Powers, a Prophecy of Chosen-ness, anger management problems, and issues with authority. Do you think Anakin Skywalker and Harry Potter would be BFF? I don't. I think it's at least as likely that they'd start arguing straight off than that they'd get along, perhaps more so. Harry'd see Anakin in a pissy "I'm-entitled-to-Masterhood!" mood and decide that he's just like Draco, really, and that would be that. It would take a long story to get the guys to like each other, not to develop the conflict.
I don't think it's just stubborn, hotheaded characters whose similarity provides instant conflict, either. What about Saruman and Count Dooku? They're both wizard-scholars of a sort, and both sit back and make intricate plots rather than rushing into things. And not only do they both have similar relationships with the Dark Arts, the Dark Lord, and the hero's Mentor Wizard, but they are both Christopher Lee and so even have similar mannerisms and inflections in their voices. How much more similar can you get? Yet I don't think they'd be BFF either, and it wouldn't take a long story to establish that. Really, how likely is it that they'd decide to, say, split whatever domain they ended up in together, or agree on every decision and occasionally make concessions to preserve a harmonious rule? Maybe temporarily. While they were cooking up plots to depose each other.
Now a story about two such villains squaring off might be tricker than one with two very different characters squaring off - for one, they'd have a lot harder time plotting against each other, because they'd be able to anticipate each other so well. So this scenario does seem to have less good story conflict, or at least less good short story conflict, than throwing two hotheaded characters together does. Maybe that's more what the OP had in mind.
Or maybe it's more that while throwing, say, Starbuck and Han in a room would easily lead to conflict, it might not be as interesting somehow as conflict between two more different characters. But I'm not sure about that, either. Sometimes the most wrenching conflicts are between friends, or people who should be friends - or within one person - and they aren't necessarily hard to set up. Say the crossover starts when Han and Starbuck are each going through rough times. Readers presumably already know what those rough times are, so you don't have to establish them much. They meet, they're in bad moods, they take all the anger they've been directing at themselves or their friends and lash out at each other instead. Things escalate. The fighting has a bad effect on their friends, and the other pilots, and everyone gets so caught up in the interpersonal problems that they're totally unprepared for the simultaneous Imperial and Cylon attacks. And in the happy ending version, they figure out how to cooperate instead, realize they're just taking their anger out on each other and should have been friends all along, go kill the frakkin' toasters together, and Adama makes a speech about unity (and accepting yourself flaws and all, if he's feeling especially philosophical) being the key to victory or some such, the end. It sounds just as fun as a Warrior vs. Scholar story to me, and someone more concise than I could probably do it in a relatively short story.
Or how about this? Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds compete to snag a lucrative smuggling gig. To get it, they have to race on the Kessel Run...
In the end, I don't think my thoughts are that different from the OP's, though. I do agree that the different-characters conflict is both easy and incredibly attractive to the reader, and that sometimes establishing conflict between similar characters is harder and takes longer. I just think that it's also true that sometimes similar characters have tons of inherent conflict which is just as easy to set up, and that that can be just as interesting and make a good story.
Or maybe it's just that I really like throwing similar characters with similar roles together to see how they'll react for some reason. Who wouldn't want to see Book and Obi-Wan having tea and fighting baddies with Gandalf and Dumbledore? They could be 008 agents - awesome old guys fighting evil and being snarky with each other! M can come too. She's tired of working behind a desk and letting Bond have all the gadgets. Actually, she'd better lead the team, because I think some of them would have trouble adjusting to being an equal team member rather than the Revered Mentor...
