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Flipside Discussion / Maytag's characterisation over Book 1
« on: April 25, 2010, 08:38:39 am »
Long time reader, used to be on the old forum under another name. Hello!
Well. I've ended up writing an essay about Maytag's characterisation, but I suppose I need to preface it with a question: Brion, have you deliberately been writing Maytag as if her two personalities are merging - or, more accurately, as if her normal identity is being swallowed up by her jester identity? Because normal May and jester May have been almost indistinguishable for a good few chapters now, and in losing that duality she's being stripped of the only thing that makes her readable.
Alone, jester May is a hypercompetent one-dimensional figure with, in my opinion, few character traits that would garner the sympathy of the reader. That she is also a shy, submissive young woman is what tempers her character and makes it stronger.
'Flipside' is the name of the comic. Maytag's split personality is the unique selling point, and there is so much more you could be doing with this concept. If you haven't meant to make the two Maytags more similar, you need to appreciate that making normal Maytag more like jester Maytag is making her a weaker character overall - this scene is the worst offender but there are others I could specify. There is a brilliant scene in Book Zero where May has to run away from an injured Moss and don the jester suit before she can even talk to him. What about the other way around? What situations are there that normal May could deal with but jester May can't?
There's nothing wrong with wanting them both to be strong characters but simply making them the same defeats the point. They need to complement each other, and you may need to reconsider how strengths and weaknesses are divided between the two of them. At the moment, her jester personality is so unassailable that it's hard not to wonder why she ever takes the costume off.
Jester May is fun to be around and you'd definitely want her on your side in a fight, but on the other hand she's (according solely to her Notebook entry) lazy, crass, selfish and reckless. Why not play up those weaknesses more? Why not put her in situations where her overkill approach to conflict resolution gets people hurt on her side, or where she loses friends because she's too impatient and refuses to put other people first? She's written as if you're afraid of having her show any major flaws and suffer the consequences.
As just one suggestion, you could easily rearrange their characters in such a way that jester May becomes the go-to girl for physical conflict and normal May becomes a source of strength for emotional or interpersonal conflict. The intelligence that's realised as smooth-talking and strategising in jester May could be realised as wisdom and empathy in her other personality. If jester May's expertise at dealing with people is revealed as being more superficial, based on cold reading and experience rather than real understanding, immediately she has a weakness that makes her less invincible. She could be cheated, hurt and betrayed by people who can act better than she can read them. And then, naturally, normal May has an enormous character strength that she was lacking before.
So that's almost my two cents. If you have been intentionally writing Maytag's two personalities as merging, then there are some potentially interesting character arcs that might spring from that, but what makes me suspect that this wasn't intentional is that none of the characters have noticed. Normal May went from being completely horrified by Voulger stripping her naked (and obviously grateful when Bern covered her up afterwards) to being cheerful accepting of Glyph using his magic X-ray glasses on her in Chapter 20. She even went on to lecture Bern about modesty during the bathtub scene in Bed & Breakfast. I know the contexts are different, but for her sense of modesty to do a complete 180 over an in-universe timeline of - maybe a few weeks? Why has this happened, and more to the point, why hasn't Bern noticed? Heck, why hasn't Crest noticed?
Honestly, at the moment it seems like you've created a potentially fascinating character, gotten bored or frustrated with the limitations her split personality places on you, and decided to simply ignore them just so the plot can progress. I would really like to be proven wrong but in the meantime, I think you need to pay attention to how she's being written. She's getting more 'generic badass' by the day and it's a huge turn-off.
Well. I've ended up writing an essay about Maytag's characterisation, but I suppose I need to preface it with a question: Brion, have you deliberately been writing Maytag as if her two personalities are merging - or, more accurately, as if her normal identity is being swallowed up by her jester identity? Because normal May and jester May have been almost indistinguishable for a good few chapters now, and in losing that duality she's being stripped of the only thing that makes her readable.
Alone, jester May is a hypercompetent one-dimensional figure with, in my opinion, few character traits that would garner the sympathy of the reader. That she is also a shy, submissive young woman is what tempers her character and makes it stronger.
'Flipside' is the name of the comic. Maytag's split personality is the unique selling point, and there is so much more you could be doing with this concept. If you haven't meant to make the two Maytags more similar, you need to appreciate that making normal Maytag more like jester Maytag is making her a weaker character overall - this scene is the worst offender but there are others I could specify. There is a brilliant scene in Book Zero where May has to run away from an injured Moss and don the jester suit before she can even talk to him. What about the other way around? What situations are there that normal May could deal with but jester May can't?
There's nothing wrong with wanting them both to be strong characters but simply making them the same defeats the point. They need to complement each other, and you may need to reconsider how strengths and weaknesses are divided between the two of them. At the moment, her jester personality is so unassailable that it's hard not to wonder why she ever takes the costume off.
Jester May is fun to be around and you'd definitely want her on your side in a fight, but on the other hand she's (according solely to her Notebook entry) lazy, crass, selfish and reckless. Why not play up those weaknesses more? Why not put her in situations where her overkill approach to conflict resolution gets people hurt on her side, or where she loses friends because she's too impatient and refuses to put other people first? She's written as if you're afraid of having her show any major flaws and suffer the consequences.
As just one suggestion, you could easily rearrange their characters in such a way that jester May becomes the go-to girl for physical conflict and normal May becomes a source of strength for emotional or interpersonal conflict. The intelligence that's realised as smooth-talking and strategising in jester May could be realised as wisdom and empathy in her other personality. If jester May's expertise at dealing with people is revealed as being more superficial, based on cold reading and experience rather than real understanding, immediately she has a weakness that makes her less invincible. She could be cheated, hurt and betrayed by people who can act better than she can read them. And then, naturally, normal May has an enormous character strength that she was lacking before.
So that's almost my two cents. If you have been intentionally writing Maytag's two personalities as merging, then there are some potentially interesting character arcs that might spring from that, but what makes me suspect that this wasn't intentional is that none of the characters have noticed. Normal May went from being completely horrified by Voulger stripping her naked (and obviously grateful when Bern covered her up afterwards) to being cheerful accepting of Glyph using his magic X-ray glasses on her in Chapter 20. She even went on to lecture Bern about modesty during the bathtub scene in Bed & Breakfast. I know the contexts are different, but for her sense of modesty to do a complete 180 over an in-universe timeline of - maybe a few weeks? Why has this happened, and more to the point, why hasn't Bern noticed? Heck, why hasn't Crest noticed?
Honestly, at the moment it seems like you've created a potentially fascinating character, gotten bored or frustrated with the limitations her split personality places on you, and decided to simply ignore them just so the plot can progress. I would really like to be proven wrong but in the meantime, I think you need to pay attention to how she's being written. She's getting more 'generic badass' by the day and it's a huge turn-off.