Post by Beelzebibble on Oct 11, 2010 13:10:54 GMT -5
AKA not theme music.
The RP Dictionary's entry on stereotypical author characters got me thinking: what literary themes are out there that specific RPers have a tendency to visit? Not necessarily elements of character design, but broader themes that tend to emerge in your writing when those characters actually get out and play.
For myself, I think probably my biggest theme, which I didn't even consciously notice until pretty recently, is that of Powers discovering that they can use their abilities to "cheat at life", and running with that. They're not necessarily villainous (indeed, they almost never subscribe to any proper evil ideology), but they consistently fail to resist the temptation to exploit their powers for financial or other personal gain. Channery epitomizes this -- her power has completely legitimized, in her mind, the theft of anything she can get her hands on, and yet far from being malevolent, it barely even registers with her that doing these things makes her a bad person: such is the extent to which having that power has redefined her morality. Charles Tanner was the ur-example among my characters; Terrian's taken a giant leap in that direction since you-know-when; Masha & Misha will be playing with the theme at full force; and that other one we know and love uses it too, if more subtly.
In fact, the only present or planned Powers of mine who don't address this theme are Rho/Hig, to whom the idea would be nonsense, and Esther, whose ability is too unreliable to systematically abuse, though it's quite possible she'll still manage to struggle with the temptation one way or another. (I don't count Renard as a Power. The pipe thing is more a dab of the surreal than a legitimate supernatural talent.)
What about you guys?
(Reminder: This is about themes you perceive in your own writing specifically, or someone else's if you've noticed, not about themes in RP as a whole. I include this reminder to deter Lee from the overall dissection of universal threads in ORP he was about to embark upon.)
The RP Dictionary's entry on stereotypical author characters got me thinking: what literary themes are out there that specific RPers have a tendency to visit? Not necessarily elements of character design, but broader themes that tend to emerge in your writing when those characters actually get out and play.
For myself, I think probably my biggest theme, which I didn't even consciously notice until pretty recently, is that of Powers discovering that they can use their abilities to "cheat at life", and running with that. They're not necessarily villainous (indeed, they almost never subscribe to any proper evil ideology), but they consistently fail to resist the temptation to exploit their powers for financial or other personal gain. Channery epitomizes this -- her power has completely legitimized, in her mind, the theft of anything she can get her hands on, and yet far from being malevolent, it barely even registers with her that doing these things makes her a bad person: such is the extent to which having that power has redefined her morality. Charles Tanner was the ur-example among my characters; Terrian's taken a giant leap in that direction since you-know-when; Masha & Misha will be playing with the theme at full force; and that other one we know and love uses it too, if more subtly.
In fact, the only present or planned Powers of mine who don't address this theme are Rho/Hig, to whom the idea would be nonsense, and Esther, whose ability is too unreliable to systematically abuse, though it's quite possible she'll still manage to struggle with the temptation one way or another. (I don't count Renard as a Power. The pipe thing is more a dab of the surreal than a legitimate supernatural talent.)
What about you guys?
(Reminder: This is about themes you perceive in your own writing specifically, or someone else's if you've noticed, not about themes in RP as a whole. I include this reminder to deter Lee from the overall dissection of universal threads in ORP he was about to embark upon.)