anonymous · 11mo
some characterizations and certain dynamics really are more popular because as you mentioned that's what we are shown and because older fics influence new fics and that's how new writers think the members "should" be written. for example even after ten years there are more fics where namjoon is always leading instead of being taken care of although the members have talked about how their roles get reversed in private but I don't know whether people don't know this fact or if they don't want to break the image they have about the members.
i think it's appealing to us to recreate dynamics that we've seen and read and enjoyed before, so there's definitely a human tendency to mimic the things that have inspired us, whether that comes from canon or other fics. there are also certain niches that develop within ships, especially as those ships get more popular, because like you said there's an influence of older fics on newer ones. sometimes it gets super intense and narrowly focused! of course, we're all capable of innovation too, but sometimes that requires seeing someone else portray dynamics in a slightly different way that resonates with you. the inspiration needs to be out there! so i try to write the members in ways that appeal to me and recommend fics that i think are interesting, and i hope other people find that inspiring too!
tbh i understand getting annoyed by certain portrayals, god knows there are a lot of things i find deeply annoying in fic, but i find that when i focus on that stuff publicly i just end up getting into arguments all the time lol, and that's not super fun for me. so i just try to give attention to the stuff that i like! i think the thing about writing fic inspired by real people is that every real person is unimaginably complex, and that complexity can't possibly be fully captured by any character in fiction. so instead you focus on the facets of that person that interest you or that serve the story, and that always involves leaving some part of them unexplored.
this is sort of a tangent, but it's something i used to worry about a lot in my own writing, like "oh am i making him too x, because isn't he also y?" but i found that like, for example, if every time i have jungkook act like a brat i then feel the need to then balance that out by having him act respectful later on in the fic so that i'm capturing both sides of that trait, it started to feel like i was undercutting all my own character choices. the character wouldn't take shape, because i was always worrying too much that i was hitting one extreme too hard and misrepresenting him. instead i kind of try to focus in on specific traits more now and really dig into them, and i tell myself i can always write other fics to focus on other facets of the character.
