Meme! & Is It Yuletide Yet?
Dec. 4th, 2012 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amataraSo, I actually really shouldn't be posting right now, because OW RIGHT WRIST TENDINITIS OW and I need to get back to work tomorrow and hopefully still be able to type on a keyboard, but oh, well - it's been too long, flist! How have you all been? Here, have a meme:
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.
Did I mention my main Yuletide fic is off being beta'ed this very moment, and I've written two treats as well, tendinitis be damned? I'm actually feeling pretty accomplished right now. :)
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.
Did I mention my main Yuletide fic is off being beta'ed this very moment, and I've written two treats as well, tendinitis be damned? I'm actually feeling pretty accomplished right now. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-04 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-04 10:27 pm (UTC)(1) Even if Albert does state, in his own words, he is "not a cruel man", a lot of the time he is. I'm not referring to his dislike of "fools with badges" and authority figures in general; that, at least, might be his past experience talking. But he's also deliberately harsh on people like Andy, who might not be the brightest of the bunch, but whose soul is pure and who is incapable of violence. Albert may be a good man at heart, but he can also be nasty and petty and blatantly unfair for no good reason at all. Cooper's patience with him isn't endless, either, for that very reason. Writing Albert, especially the "mellowed-down" second-season or post-canon version of him, it's important to remember that. For me, a big part of writing him comes down to not just finding the right balance between those two aspects of his personality, but in pinning down his motivations so they adequately explain both of those aspects, to show the reader they're sides of the same coin and not just random bits and pieces.
(2) Beneath all the posturing and gratuitous sarcasm, he's not really that much stronger or more confident (except when it comes to pure intelligence and skill) than the people he tends to ridicule. A lot of it is about coping, I think. There's no doubt he's seen some nasty stuff over the course of his career, and as much as he's probably come to enjoy playing the sarcastic bastard over time, at its core it's still a façade, a tool to distance himself from the cases and the people he comes into contact with. That said, he's not a woobie. He's a professional, and he does what he does because his job comes first. His first priority is tracking down criminals and bringing them to justice, and if the only way he can be the absolute best at what he does means he has to act like a bastard throughout, then that's what he'll do. It's that simple.
(3) He's fiercely loyal to the (few) people he does trust, and once you've gained his respect, you'll never lose it. He has an almost blind faith in Cooper, for one. You may notice that never in the series does Albert actually try to have the last word with Cooper; all the conflicts between them end with Albert giving in, however reluctantly. (This in turn makes me think there's something unspoken between them, and that Albert's feelings for Cooper may go beyond the bounds of friendship, but that's a personal opinion. :) ) In other words, Albert doesn't always need to have the upper hand. He has his field of expertise on which he considers himself the ultimate authority, and he values intelligence very highly, but he has no trouble deferring to a different authority for those parts of a case that are outside of his ball park - the ones that involve supernatural elements, for one. He's a sceptic, but he's also realistic enough to know that he can't possibly know everything about everything.
(4) Of all the characters in the series, he's the one most rooted in reality. The spiritual world is a closed book to him - which doesn't mean he honestly thinks it's all crap (even though he claims he does, the evidence suggests otherwise), just that he feels obligated to question everything he sees that has no basis in science. He's also the one who is constantly observing everything that is "off" about his surroundings, so as a character, he works best as the voice of reason. The Twin Peaks residents aren't a very neurotypical bunch, to say the least, and it's Albert who has the guts and the presence of mind to keep saying "What the hell is this place? Who are all those weird people? Why is everything such a damn mess?" In that way, he also echoes what we the viewers (or readers) might be thinking, which in turn helps us accept the intrinsic weirdness of the Twin Peaks universe better.
(5) Albert is written as a gay character by most Twin Peaks writers, including me, but he doesn't strike me as a pure closet case. Discreet, definitely, and not the kind of guy who goes around being open about his emotional state in general, but also the kind of guy who doesn't care one whit what strangers think about him. Of course it's the 80s, and being both gay, a medical professional and a federal employee is a precarious combination at best, but in my view he probably passed the phase of coming-out angst years and years ago. I'd have little trouble seeing him in a steady and healthy relationship. I don't think Albert necessarily has a very positive self-image, but when it comes to both intelligence and sexuality, I see someone who's comfortable enough with the cards he was dealt. Probably more comfortable than Dale Cooper is with the cards he was dealt (who is really hopeless when it comes to romantic relationships), but that's a different story. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-04 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-09 11:12 am (UTC)(1) He is capable of feelings like love, devotion, and affection, but I wouldn't consider Lily a good example of that - not for the adult Snape we see in the novels, anyway. Everything he feels for Lily now is clouded by guilt, so who can say whether it really is love, or something that used to be love but has long turned into something else? But he does love Draco, I think, or at least cares deeply for Draco. He genuinely wishes to save him even after Draco refuses his help, and when he's healing Draco after the Sectumsempra incident, it's very clear how deep his concern for Draco really goes. So he is capable of love, but not, I would say, romantic love; he's scarred too deeply for that in my eyes.
(2) The relationship between Snape and Dumbledore is not pure, or clean, or nice, or happy. I don't doubt Dumbledore cares about Snape, but that doesn't stop him from ruthlessly manipulating him. Snape is entirely dependent on Dumbledore, his life is tied to him even more than it is to Voldemort; Dumbledore knows this, and takes advantage of it. I'm not saying Dumbledore is enjoying the hold he has over Snape - I think it's painful for him as well. But this is not a touching father-son relationship, even if there is sometimes genuine tenderness in it (as in Snape tending to Dumbledore's wounds).
(3) Snape is no woobie. He's a BAMF and he's fiercely intelligent and the very best at what he does, ane he knows it. The last thing he would want from anyone is pity, so when writing him as vulnerable in any kind of situation, exercise EXTREME caution. This is not a man who will take kindly to being woobified, oh no.
(4) He's an asshole to his students, period. Any teacher acting like that in real life should be fired. Yes, you could say students learn a valuable lesson from him about life not being fair, but that's not really the point of being a teacher, is it? Knowing he was abused as a child helps understand why he bullies others later, but it doesn't excuse it - especially not if those he's bullying are children who can't defend themselves (Neville! oh, dear!). No amount of bad experiences excuse that kind of behavior.
(5) There was a point before it all went to hell where he could have turned back from the darkness. He was heavily influenced by his Slytherin friends, yes, and he had had a crappy childhood, but it's hardly fair to say he had no choice in any of it. For one thing, he had Lily, who tried to show him another way. He made the wrong choice, period. And now he's paying for it. There are extenuating circumstances for what he did, yes, but he's still culpable, not purely a victim. (This also ties in with the "woobie" bit, I think.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-07 12:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-20 01:10 pm (UTC)(1) He's damaged. And I'm not just referring to his history with Caroline. As much as he tries to suppress it, I have a feeling he's had a very screwed-up childhood and adolescence (well, he was basically a psychic kid, so that has to have left a mark) and a difficult personal life in general. So one of the reasons he's thrown himself into his work for the Bureau like that is that it gives him the sense of belonging and pride that his personal life has never been able to give him.
(2) He's tough. To himself, most of all; the standards he holds himself to are unbelievably high, and he keeps working hard every day to continue to meet those standards. But he can also be tough to others, and it's not always clear why he feels someone deserves to be handled roughly. He's capable of treating people with a great deal of respect, but he definitely doesn't extend that courtesy to everybody; especially at the start of the series, he's frequently very harsh to people for no obvious reason. So yes, he has a good heart, but he's also capable of tuning down his personal feelings completely if the case requires it, and he can be as cruel and petty as anyone.
(3) He has a damsel-in-distress complex. Caroline, Audrey, Annie, they all fit a similar pattern. He needs to feel needed by others, and he has issues with admitting that he himself needs others too, and never is that more clear than in his romantic involvements.
(4) He may be a genius at reading other people's thoughts and motivations, but he sucks pretty badly at reading his own.
(5) He's a great lover of life in all its facets, but I'm not sure if it all comes naturally to him. I've always believed that his excessive enthusiasm over everything ranging from food to wildlife to Twin Peaks in itself is also his coping strategy when it comes to dealing with the kind of ugly stuff someone in that line of work has to deal with. And rather than it just being his 'default mode', it's something he has to work at continuously. But that's very much a personal feeling; your mileage may vary, obviously!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-21 11:21 pm (UTC)He really, really does! That's something I hadn't considered until now but he's really awful at considering his own thoughts.