Polarizing Character

How do you make a polartizing character who gets different reactions from fans?

"Analay, an original fan character from a 2006 non canon comic. Do not steal!"

Taking a controversial view/action is one (certainly not surefire) way, but aside from that I don't think there is a certain way.

Still Sheepin'

Simple.

Make a character.

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One trick is to have a character who does evil things for good reasons (e.g. Miko Miyazaki.)

edited 21st Jul '11 3:05:24 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

^ Or at least, evil things for sympathetic reasons (Redcloak, somewhat, and arguably Vriska Serket).

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A surefire way is to pick a demographic—any demographic—and dedicate your character to either being a fan favorite or Scrappy of that demographic. Hell, if you know two specifically polar fanbases, you can make him/her a favorite of one and a Scrappy of the other.

For example, over on Literotica, one of the most polarizing genres is Cuckold. There are some people who love it as a Guilty Pleasure fantasy, and others who despise the hell out of it and actually dedicate themselves to leaving negative commentary/ratings on every cuckold story they find. This the perfect example of a niche that if you dedicate the entire character to (let's say the protagonist is an unfaithful wife who cheats with a very handsome, wealthy black man*

who has a Biggus Dickus) and always make it seem like this was the right thing to do. (Some of the "better" cuckold stories I've read involve the husband being forced to watch, getting his ass kicked by the bull, and then forced to raise the bull's children while his wife moves into her love's house.) For some people, this fantasy is hot even if they'd never do it themselves—for others, this is the worst type of trash that assures that literature is forever polluted with idiocy.

Off topic but...Bwuh?! Cuckolding is controversial? More so than most rapey tropes? O.o

edited 21st Jul '11 5:49:34 PM by MrAHR

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Man, you wouldn't believe the venom those kinds of stories attract. Not just on Literotica; hell, the trope page even talks about how polarizing it is.

That is...kinda weird. Heheh. I mean, out of all the literotica story devices, THAT ONE is the controversial one?

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Yup. There's a huge anti-incest crowd (I know this because most of my stories involve that as subject matter), but the pro-incest crowd is like a 5:1 majority, so it rarely goes anywhere.

Rape/nonconsensual isn't as controversial. It is if the rape is depicted as brutal/realistic, but not if Rape Is Love / Its Not Rape If You Enjoyed It is played straight. (I'll get to why in a second.)

And finally, cuckquean (the Distaff Counterpart to Cuckold) is nowhere NEAR as controversial as cuckold. Stories involving a man who cheats on his wife are far, far more popular than the inverse. Cuckold stories (particularly unwilling cuckolds) are usually rated somewhere around 2.5 or lower. Cuckquean stories are often 4.00 or even high enough to be a "greatest hit". (The "greatest hits" threshold is 4.5.)

I think the reason reluctance/cuckquean stories are more accepted is because of a huge Double Standard that still proves that most people are racist/sexist. Now, everyone is going to say "but porn is fantasy—you can't claim what people think/feel because their wildest fantasies!" Yes I can. In fact, this is exactly the place where you can make that kind of assessment. These are not stories meant to provoke thought (usually) or to meet some sort of commercial quota. These are meant to tickle the baser sides of their nature, and those baser sides have to exist in the first place in order to do that.

The acceptance of reluctance/cuckquean stories is usually because the people who read these stories are men. I've noticed that women or actual Real Life cuckolds tend to be the ones leaving positive comments on cuckold stories. And as I said, one way to piss off cuckold-haters worse than ever is to make the "bull" (the man she's sleeping with) black or any other unpopular minority. It amazes me how easy it is to predict how people will react to these types of stories, and how often many of them will turn right around and give five stars to a story in which a guy cheats on his wife with 4 different girls.

Hmm . . . The Literotica page claims that the reason stories about cheating get vote-bombed is that they keep getting put in the "Loving Wives" section.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

That's a red herring argument. Anyone who's been on Literotica long enough knows that "Loving Wives" is a catch-all category for anything involving a married couple, from role-play to swinging to cuckoldery to just loving married sex. The problem is that some stories have so many elements that if you made different categories for all possible subdivisions, the site would be impossible to navigate.

Also, the people who I see negatively commenting or rating do so intentionally, and across multiple stories. Most of them are Anonymous, but there are a few registered members who go well out of their way to give these stories a hard time. That has nothing to do with what the story is labeled as.

Returning to the subject of Base Breakers, picking traits from polar ends of the Sliding Scale of Character Appreciation seems like a good bet.

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If your story involves themes applicable to real life and your character takes a strong stance on one of these issues then people will naturally find him/her divisive. The issue will have to have strong arguments on both sides so they can't be painted as wrong or right automatically.

Alternatively, the character can appeal to different audiences in different ways. Men might find a humorous misogynist to be more entertaining than a woman, who might take offense.

Above all the character will have to be well written so readers have a strong reaction.

^^ The Load as Ms. Fanservice? The Noble Demon as a Smug Snake?

edited 21st Jul '11 9:32:32 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

The Load as Ms. Fanservice: good GOD, that is a mighty fine way of making a character polarizing.

Also: ANY form of Ship Tease with equally-viable suitors. The Fandom will come with every excuse they can think of to hate one of those characters and love the other. The more the writer treats the opposing character as a worthy pick, the stronger the bile they'll spew.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:37:20 PM by KingZeal

The generalization of this would be that if you make both sides of a conflict sympathetic, people will pick a side to support. So you could also do this with a war or two people who want the same job or award or anything.

The opposite of the evil character with good reasons is someone who does good things for either the wrong reasons or in an unappealing way, thus polarizing the base around the "end justifies the means" question.