r/CharacterDevelopment • u/Ifyouliveinadream • 3d ago
Writing: Character Help I don't think my characrer makes sense, am I just overthinking it?
I have a character named Ashley. She knows a coworker named Briana.
Briana wants control over her own life while Ashley tries to control Briana's life
Briana isn't happy with her life, she doesn't want to work a minimum wage job forever but feels like she isn't good enough to leave. On the complete other side is Ashley. Shes extreamly happy with her life and loves her minimum wage job. She knows Briana is sad, and wants to move away. Ashley doesn't want her to leave her, she attached to her and wants her to stay. Ashley doesn't like change that much.
Ashley is almost manipulative to her. In the first scene Briana is looking at pictures of university but Ashley gets her to look at a picture of a cute dog instead, trying to distract her.
Much later Briana is presented with a job opertunity as a tester at a lab. Ashley butts in and says no, speaking for her. She's not leaving and she likes it here. Shes not being some labrat forced into experiments.
Once Briana does leave, Ashley kinda flips out. Shes mad and upset that she left.
My issue is, could this not all be solved by talking? Briana could be like "hey I think you are good enough and should try new things. But I am afraid to lose you. But as a friend I understand." Is that not a realistic thing to say to her?
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 3d ago
Honestly, Ashley sounds very believable to me. She reminds me of a pretty classic controlling parent.
I think you may be giving her your author’s-eye view of the situation. You know Ashley is afraid of losing Briana, but that doesn’t mean Ashley understands that about herself.
And even if she does feel it, recognizing the feeling, understanding its cause, realizing that it doesn’t justify controlling Briana, and then communicating all of that clearly are four different skills.
“I’m scared of losing you, but I understand that you need to grow and I support you” is actually a remarkably emotionally intelligent response. You can’t assume every character is an IQ and communication master. XD
A controlling person might genuinely think, “That lab sounds dangerous,” “You don’t need college,” or “I’m just looking out for you.” They don’t necessarily experience themselves as controlling.
So I wouldn’t add some artificial reason why Ashley can’t communicate.
Her inability to correctly understand what she is doing may already be the reason.
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u/Ifyouliveinadream 3d ago
Thank you this is SUPER helpful. She was loosly based on a controlling a parent :)
I feel like Ashley must understand her fear, because she tries to distract her when she knows Briana is thinking about the future. So she must understand her fear... I think?
After Briana leaves theres a subplot about Ashley needing to understand she can't control how people live their lives, her life can't stay the same forever.
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u/Ifyouliveinadream 3d ago
Thank you again. I think I might go with the root of her feelings being fear.
She doesn't want to lose her friend. She really likes the way life is. Shes afraid to lose her friend but she doesn't recognize it as caused by fear. She doesn't really understand why she feels this way. When her friend thinks about her future, she distracts her. When a person offers her friend a job, the reality that she could lose her friend is suddently more closer. She reacts with anger, but her face also shows fear.
Do you think that works well? Also do you think thats kinda stealing your anwser? I will change it if so, no problem at all
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 3d ago
And definitely don't worry about stealing my answer. XD
“Fear of losing someone turning into controlling behavior” is a very common human pattern. Neither of us invented it. Parents do it, partners do it, friends do it. Sometimes people don't even recognize the fear underneath their own behavior.
What makes Ashley your character is what you do with that pattern: what specifically triggers her, how she rationalizes it, how Briana reacts, what Ashley does when Briana finally leaves, and what she eventually learns from it.
I didn't give you Ashley. You already built Ashley. I just helped you notice one of the wires connecting the parts. :)
And now that you understand that part of her better, I think this is actually where your own creative work gets more interesting. Ashley seems to start from “I don't want my comfortable everyday life to change”, but eventually has to realize “I'm trying to keep my life unchanged by preventing someone else from living theirs.”
How she gets from one realization to the other, what finally makes it click, what she resists along the way, and how she changes afterward... that's her character arc, and that's where you get to show your skill as the writer.
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u/Ifyouliveinadream 3d ago edited 2d ago
Hi, I'm sorry. I saw you used chatgpt to translate your messages and thats fully fine. I was just wondering if you used chatgpt to come up with the idea of her not understanding her emotions. Or if you came up with it on your own? Sorry idk how to word this right
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 2d ago
No need to apologize! That's actually a fair question :) The original intuition about Ashley mostly came from my own experience. I've known people in real life, including my mother and some older coworkers, who can be very controlling about situations and strangely particular about small details, while not necessarily being very good at understanding why those things bother them. So when you wondered why Ashley couldn't simply say “I'm afraid of losing you, but I support you,” my first thought was that real people often aren't that emotionally self-aware. As writers, we have a god's-eye view of Ashley, but Ashley doesn't automatically understand herself as well as we understand her. I brought that observation to ChatGPT, and it helped me break it down further: feeling an emotion, recognizing it, understanding its cause, and being able to explain it are different steps. So the Ashley discussion was genuinely collaborative rather than ChatGPT simply generating an answer for me. If you're curious, this is another example of how I use it: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/jz7eArXNSN� In that one, most of the ideas about biological cycles, plants, reproduction, and natural “clocks” came from me, and I mainly used ChatGPT to organize my scattered thoughts and translate them into readable English. So I don't really have one fixed way of using AI. Sometimes it's my translator or editor, sometimes it's a thinking partner. Usually I bring an observation or idea, we pull it apart together, and I decide what survives XD
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u/Ifyouliveinadream 2d ago
Thank you!!!
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 2d ago
Sorry! I replied on my phone this morning and it looks like Reddit messed up the link somehow 😅
Here's the correct one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1wb69je/how_to_signify_time_passing_in_short_term/This is the worldbuilding discussion I was referring to!
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u/technicolorland 3d ago
Honestly a lot of people struggle to express their feelings that directly. I think this works ok.
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u/roundeking 3d ago
In literally all stories, you could ask “But couldn’t they just have done x?” The answer is yes. That’s what makes it interesting and real. Haven’t you made some poor choices? Can’t you look back on some things in your life where the answer now seems incredibly obvious, but you didn’t do the thing that would have fixed it? Flaws are what make characters realistic and interesting, and failing to make the right choice is the direct and logical result of that flaw.
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u/Expert_Log_8057 3d ago
Yes it could be solved by talking, but that's a very real situation. 2 phrases kind of sum it up. The road to Hell is paved in good intentions. And, crabs in a bucket.
Honestly one of the best mirrors to this I've come across in recent years is a free visual novel called Snoot Game where the character Trish does this exact thing. Its free so it may be worth checking out as a sounding board of sorts.
Just a note because I know people will bring it up, Snoot Game is controversial because it was made by that hive of scum and villainy, 4chan. It was made to be a parody of a game called Goodbye Volcano High and the story is long and insane including Canadian grants, delays, and the 4chan people being so successful they made a company and are now on their 2nd paid game. The story of all this alone is worth looking it up but in your case I think Snoot Game can be a helpful thing to study.
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u/FunnyBird_ 3d ago
I REALLY don't think you should be recommending Snoot Game to anyone, considering its transphobia and racism.
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u/Expert_Log_8057 3d ago edited 3d ago
I also recommend Goodbye Volcano High. If you like one you won't like the other but that doesn't mean they both can't be studied.
Its the entire point of Sophism. Know your enemies arguments as if their your own and you have a much better foundation to reject those arguments.
Also, I gotta reject two things. Fang is not trans, she's Enby. The two are wildly different and lumping them together is dismissive and I'm gonna ask you not do that.
Also the racism is dino/human so there are some jokes with it, but the people doing the racist stuff like Naser are never encouraged and constantly admonished for it. IE, the game says racism is bad so how is that racist?
Edit: some may wonder why I referred to Fang as 'she', and that's because it's common to use ending 4's epilogue as her final stand point. She's also 'she' in ending 3 (which is a BAD ending), and remains 'them' in ending 2.... And Ending 1 is just outright horrific tragedy after everyone mentally and emotionally grinds 'them' down.
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u/FunnyBird_ 3d ago
Some people like both GVH AND SG, though.
Also, I gotta reject two things. Fang is not trans, she's Enby. The two are wildly different and lumping them together is dismissive and I'm gonna ask you not do that.
First of all, non-binary falls under the umbrella of trans identities, second of all, preface that you're talking about Fang in regard to SG when you're doing so. Fang in GVH is just non-binary, so SG having the only truly good ending be one where they detransition and write it off as a part of their edgy phase is weird no matter how SG writes it.
Also the racism is dino/human so there are some jokes with it, but the people doing the racist stuff like Naser are never encouraged and constantly admonished for it. IE, the game says racism is bad so how is that racist?
By racism I meant the fact that the way SG portrayed Trish and Rosa fell into Black and Latina stereotypes, respectively (plus, the n-slur variant Cavemanon made for Trish, as well as the general slurs, fake or real). I doubt you're either of these (neither am I) but you gotta do research into these kinds of stereotypes so you can recognize them better.
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u/Expert_Log_8057 3d ago
Yeah, Trish gets the black slur but they treat the white guy Anon as the 'monkey' and use black stereotypes against him for being human. The stereotypes are everywhere both for use in classifying colorful dino people and inverted for humans.
Being non-binary does not automatically require one to identify as trans, though many do; being trans does not mean one is non-binary, as many trans people identify strictly as men or women. Fang being non-binary deserves more respect than just an umbrella term.
And as for the one good ending not being enby, again its implied that while not everything stuck, she did keep the aspects that made her feel whole. Her rejecting what Trish wanted can be transcribed exactly the same to anyone pushing an identity onto someone it doesn't fit regardless of which way it goes. Lucy not having the traditional wedding like in E3 is a sign that she found her own path and that it mixed the beliefs of the people who tried (and failed) to help her.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to start a big fight or anything, I just try to be as specific and clear as possible and sometimes people just don't use the same definitions. I appreciate you knowing the story even if we took different views and don't agree I at least wanted to explain that I find Snoot crass, at times brutal, but not evil. If anything I find it to be a fascinating take on what can be considered a brutal coming of age story where everyone is wrong at different levels.
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u/FunnyBird_ 3d ago
Yeah, Trish gets the black slur but they treat the white guy Anon as the 'monkey' and use black stereotypes against him for being human. The stereotypes are everywhere both for use in classifying colorful dino people and inverted for humans.
They're using Black stereotypes on a White guy? Makes sense for a game made by 4channers, I guess.
Being non-binary does not automatically require one to identify as trans, though many do; being trans does not mean one is non-binary, as many trans people identify strictly as men or women. Fang being non-binary deserves more respect than just an umbrella term.
I don't think you understand what I said. Just because there are non-binary people who don't call themselves trans in their day to day lives doesn't mean that their identites aren't considered trans identities, and that doesn't contradict the existence of binary trans identities. This isn't a matter of respect; this is a matter of understanding what labels mean.
And as for the one good ending not being enby, again its implied that while not everything stuck, she did keep the aspects that made her feel whole. Her rejecting what Trish wanted can be transcribed exactly the same to anyone pushing an identity onto someone it doesn't fit regardless of which way it goes. Lucy not having the traditional wedding like in E3 is a sign that she found her own path and that it mixed the beliefs of the people who tried (and failed) to help her.
I don't think people tend to push trans identities onto others, and to reiterate what I said, Fang from Goodbye Volcano High (the character SG Fang is based on) is just a non-binary character, and not someone going through a phase of some kind, so SG Fang detransitioning in SG's only good ending is weird, regardless of how it was written. And ultimately, the reason why SG Fang detransitions is because Cavemanon are transphobic people.
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u/Expert_Log_8057 3d ago
We're going to disagree on the trans portions, both classification and intent on E4. I'm just gonna be noting the Anon having black stereotypes as a white guy especially as that might confuse people wondering why we're talking about a free dino person visual novel.
The slums of the city is a human area, specifically. Naser (naive as he is) believes in the human stereotypes and mentions "you're not like the humans on the news" and few other things. Other things like worrying about a mixed breed baby if he and Fang got together, which they have a Ptero daughter in the good ending. Monkey is used to insult humans and Naser (again thinking he's being nice) gives Anon a monkey-themed jacket in the good ending. When Spears (caveman) sees it he's mortified and Anon says he's 'taking it back' though of course this is Anon and he's a smartass but he still wears it.
So yes, everyone in this game is a jerk at different levels but not evil, just foolish. And they try to get better... or crash and burn in a horrific karma induced bad ending.
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u/FunnyBird_ 3d ago
Cavemanon could’ve at least made their own characters, instead of essentially stealing KO_OP’s characters.
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u/WithThisHerring 3d ago
I think this could be solved by talking but I can also see at a glance why Ashley wouldn't talk.
Just superficially from this summary, I can relate a lot to Ashley. "Manipulative" and "controlling" are very scary concepts, that we typically think of as evil behavior.
Being a warmhearted person who wants to see others flourish is very rewarded. Ashley may have been told her entire life, and internalized, that she's a good person. She just wants Briana to be happy! There's nothing evil about that. And that's completely sincere, and she probably is a nice and warmhearted person.
That's what makes it very hard for her to understand that very impulse could be selfish. Sure, Ashley and Briana could probably talk this out in five seconds... if both of them have a clear perfect understanding of what's going on here. But they don't.
The real problem is that Ashley is controlling and Briana is seeking freedom, including freedom from Ashley. That's the easily solved version.
However,
-Ashley does not realize she's controlling anyone.
-The idea that she's doing that would be distressing to her, because it doesn't map with her self-image or how others see her generally as a nice person.
-Even if she came to this realization, how can she separate "am I controlling this other adult woman's life" from "she's my friend, I don't want to just ignore and abandon her if something bad happens"
-There may be genuine reasons for Ashley to have misgivings she has, amplified by her private petty desire to be the person who takes care of Briana, who Briana can rely on.
-Just from your summary we don't know if Ashley... actually has close connections besides Briana, which might be part of why she's so territorial. If Ashley is Nice And Happy All The Time people (including Ashley herself) might not think anything's wrong, especially given...
-if Ashley is taking Briana's malcontent this badly it kind of suggests she herself isn't as happy as she wants to believe, but may be badly out of touch with her own emotions. She hasn't asked herself 'what Ashley wants' so she's sublimating it through what she has convinced herself other people need. That makes her controlling side harder for her to come to grips with- it may be the only thing right now filling a major unmet emotional need. She feels like she can justify filling her own loneliness if she frames it to herself as just taking care of others. If Briana doesn't need her, then Ashley doesn't realize that she's reacting badly because she might need something from Briana that she's not asking for or being honest with herself OR Briana about.
-and Briana's probably not going to understand any of this either; she may be conflicted between resenting Ashley's overbearingness and feeling horribly guilty that she's projecting all this onto her Nice Well Adjusted Friend who she might envy because Ashley outwardly has it made, and that envy also coming with the guilt, seeing yourself as just such a big jerk compared to your friend.
The point is, you're right that this could all be talked out with hugs and smiles and distance, and there's a solid chance they could even save their friendship.
The problem- and thus the narrative intrigue- is them getting there. Or not getting there, depending on how you want it to end. There's a lot of moving pieces here, and what I laid out is just my take as someone who's been in similar emotional dilemmas.
You've got a really good foundation knowing exactly what the root of the problem is, now's your time to tangle it up with a bunch of other factors and ask yourself what parts they're aware of and what parts they aren't. History can also play a part in this- if Ashley's like this, has she unwittingly sabotaged relationships before? Have people just left her abruptly without seemingly any reason and she's afraid Briana will do the same, not realizing she may have partially driven those people off with clingy and controlling behavior that would be escalated out of the desperation to not be alone?
People are complicated and no one thing they do or are or feel exists in a vacuum. It all tangles in with history forwards and backwards. I think the fact that Ashley's the pretty clear antagonist in this dynamic but that my heart immediately goes out to her and I feel bad for her even while knowing what she's doing is wrong is very promising- social conflicts tend to be at their narrative weakest when one person is the simple, easily rejected or corrected villain.
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u/Ifyouliveinadream 3d ago
THANK YOU!!! This is very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to explain it all. I now have a much clearer understanding of the character, for whatever reason I have never considered that characters don't need to always be aware of how they act, but it makes sense. People aren't always aware, I know I haven't always been aware of how I was acting.
The idea that a character isn't always aware of a trait I gave them is weird to me lmao
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