*nods along as I read this* Pretty solid, pretty solid. OP definitely lends himself to multiple reads, because that heavy performative edge is such a key feature of the Optimus Archetype -- you can go shallow or go deep with it, and often the arc is seeing how deep you can go with it while operating within the constraints of that archetype.
That being said, something about this... doesn't quite sit right with me. Maybe it's just the format but the way you pair up certain traits and behaviours... doesn't feel like it's quite that simple? Like, say, I can see ball-of-anxiety Optimus being just as capable of being a bit of an arrogant prat because he obfuscates his motivations, or professes one set of motivations while holding onto another, more risk-averse one, and Flawlessly Confident Godly Prat Optimus probably spends a lot of time massaging the anxieties of the people around him who aren't as confident, being more confident in assuming risk.
When you're reverse engineering an existing character, applying constraints to your interpretation of them is useful... at first. But I get the feeling that you might sell your own understanding of Optimus a bit short if you think your interpretations "contradict each other", because characters with more than two dimensions by necessity end up with some behaviours that go crosswise to their motivations and principles. If you kind of... take the various aspects of Optimus you describe, I don't get a sense that you're actually looking at different "takes" on the same character, but rather a potentially more full-bodied individual character portrait.
Then again, you only mention G1 Optimus in the post, and I'm just having the worst time trying to delineate for myself when you're talking about his motivations, his self-reflections and his actions, so maybe what I'm perceiving as hedging is actually some combination of trying to delineate G1 OP from the Optimus Archetype combined with me just being bad at reading.
Either way, I enjoyed this :D I'd be interested in hearing you unpack how you write other characters, what you think the key interpretational branches of their character are, and how it informs your character voice for them.
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Date: 2019-03-13 04:37 pm (UTC)That being said, something about this... doesn't quite sit right with me. Maybe it's just the format but the way you pair up certain traits and behaviours... doesn't feel like it's quite that simple? Like, say, I can see ball-of-anxiety Optimus being just as capable of being a bit of an arrogant prat because he obfuscates his motivations, or professes one set of motivations while holding onto another, more risk-averse one, and Flawlessly Confident Godly Prat Optimus probably spends a lot of time massaging the anxieties of the people around him who aren't as confident, being more confident in assuming risk.
When you're reverse engineering an existing character, applying constraints to your interpretation of them is useful... at first. But I get the feeling that you might sell your own understanding of Optimus a bit short if you think your interpretations "contradict each other", because characters with more than two dimensions by necessity end up with some behaviours that go crosswise to their motivations and principles. If you kind of... take the various aspects of Optimus you describe, I don't get a sense that you're actually looking at different "takes" on the same character, but rather a potentially more full-bodied individual character portrait.
Then again, you only mention G1 Optimus in the post, and I'm just having the worst time trying to delineate for myself when you're talking about his motivations, his self-reflections and his actions, so maybe what I'm perceiving as hedging is actually some combination of trying to delineate G1 OP from the Optimus Archetype combined with me just being bad at reading.
Either way, I enjoyed this :D I'd be interested in hearing you unpack how you write other characters, what you think the key interpretational branches of their character are, and how it informs your character voice for them.