Question Problematic character (arcs)

I have been doing a lot of thinking about Team Kimba and why it is so hard to write stories for them
The characters have inherent problems with their powersets or their motivations, or sometimes both?


Hank, Lancer
The putative leader of team Kimba. When they deign to listen to his advise. At least he is the strategist of the team and the occasional voice of reason and restraint.
He was, apparently, initially added to the team just to have a FtM changeling in the universe but didn't get much writing or story. And as a result not much in the way of character, or character development. He was just used to throw in the occasional stereoptypical insenstive male comment.
His actual character story, when it finally got written, really gives him a compelling backstory, a character conflict, an adversity to overcome and meaningful relations to both Lily and to the rest of Team Kimba. But it is almost all action and very little motivation.
Powerwise he is the basic superman, and suffers the same problem that writing for superman has. He is really strong, and as close to invulnerable as one can come given the powerlevels presented in the Whateley universe. At least he is given a clear limit on his powers but there is not much that can threaten him (which is why authors writing him had to go to some extremes to make him appear vulnerable and actually at risk in conflicts).
Emotionally though, Hank does not have much conflict going against him that provides a basis for ongoing storytelling. (his arc centered on a threat forced upon him by an emotionally distraught Fey and did a wonderful job at using that to play on and flesh out his character, allowing hi m to grew). Any new arc centered around Hank would similarly need an external threat that he has no inherent immunity against.



Toni, Chaka
The tactical genius of team Kimba. Where Hank is somehwat concerned with the strategy, Toni is the one who will come up with a plan or tactic at the drop of a hat.
Like hank however she is nearly untouchable unless the author goes out of his or her way to force a situation that Ki magic can not handle casually easily. At least her first big performance against the ninjas had her unbalance her Ki enough to shut herself down. As a weakness that kind of got glossed over later but keeping it would have made her more vulnerable, a glass cannon who had to restrain herself to surgical strikes because she was running the battle on borrowed time. But of course the choice to do so, or not, are her author's. The choice to make her near instantaneously capable of adapting to new physical abilities or weapons however, does take away any challenge that might create a more interesting narrative. It provides spectable in droves, but spectacle is not a good replacement for conflict or challenge to motivate a reader.
Emotionally, again like Hank, there is no conflict. Toni has no emotional or mental problems. She does not really have a goal or motivation either. Which makes it really hard to create an interesting conflict for her. Her few pov stories have an external enemy just to create a conflict, but she is never really threatened by what happens around her. This makes her a lighthearted almost comedic character and if you read her pov stories that is pretty much her internal voice.
But there is nothing for Toni to aspire to, nothing to become, nothing really to overcome. A challenge has to be external and there is no real internal motivation beyond self-preservation for Toni to meet that challenge. This works fine for stories but presents problems for an arc.


Nikki, Fey
The magical powerhouse of team Kimba. Also the magical powerhouse of the entire planet earth. On top of that she has access to the knowledge and ability of a magical powerhouse to trump magical powerhouses in an age of magical powerhouses.
The level of power is not necessarily a problem because from the start she is given a lack of control and lack of knowledge to counterbalance that raw power. From the start there are clear limits on what she can do and her pov stories don't often stray beyond those limits.
Emotionally her character is a bit muddled. The whole MtF aspect of her character gets dropped pretty soon and for a while she basically has no motivations, nor does she have any wants or needs that are at conflict within her. Taking away Aunghaidhal removed to of the biggest blocks in the character at the same time. She lost her near infinite power (forcing her to actually learn magic by herself from that point on) and it creates a gaping psycholgical wound from which all kinds of emotional conflicts can arise.
There still is not much inherent motivation in the character of Fey. She does not have a clear thing she wants or needs to accomplish and that can then be used to create a central conflict for a story.
There is the werewolf and the Bastard storyline, but that was more Aunghaidhal than Nikki, even if she embraced it as her cause as well. However, what I think should have been her central emotional conflict is the difference between being human and being Sidhe as the driving force for both her character arc and her pov story conflicts. But then I am not her writer and I quite possibly have completely misunderstood her character or its arc or what her author intended for her.


Billie, Tenyo
Team Kimba's tactical nuke. Another character that has evolved to be too powerful to be effectively used in a story. She did not start out that way but towards the end of her published pov stories where the person of Billie got almost completely subsumed by the Destroyer. Except part of the time not and the later Billie does not seem to be aware sometimes, and all too keenly aware at others, how completely inhuman she is. This indecisions makes it difficult to write, or follow, stories about her.
Powerwise Billie at this point is pretty much immmortal. She can survive in deep space without need for a space suit or oxygen really. She walks on a neutron star (only a small step down from a black hole when it comes to gravity) and in environments with radiation so intense that ordinary materials would be ripped apart by it. That does not make those stories less enjoyable, but she operates on a powerscale that simply does not connect with the Whateleyverse anymore. She is godzilla in an ant hill. It is possible but the giant lizard effectively can not move without tearing the entire setting apart.
Billies arc has alluded often to her fear of becoming less and less human, but that emotional fear never really gets very far.
There are stories about billie possible (obviously) but they are not Team Kimba stories any longer. All that could be achieved in those is making her 'not move' (because her 'moving' would result in anti matter explosions and 200 mile craters and global extinction events). Which really makes for a pretty boring concept. Unless something is done to separate Tenyo and the Destroyer (almost) completely I am not sure how after that power creep (explosion really) Tenyo can remain in the same universe as even Team Kimba.


Ayla, Phase
Team Kimba's intelligence officer. Personality wise Ayla is a bit too mature, even with the in universe explanation of being groomed since age 6 to be responsible and adult and ready to take his place in the machinery that is Goodkind industries. The fact that Ayla rejects his mostly female body and wants to return to being male is a good source of conflict in most of the pov stories. It also gives the character a motivation to go out and be proactive (something that most of Team Kimba is missing).
Powerwise Phase measures up with the rest of the team but has believable and sensible limitations that provide for dramatic tension in the stories.
The real problem as I see it with Ayla is that having only one motivation, there is no way that he can get what he wants. Which rather sets up the character as fate's punching bag. Ayla would have benefitted from having a different want and need. By setting them so closely coupled it is hard to tell another story than Ayla failing to get what she wants.


Jade, Generator
The wild card, utilities and spy of team Kimba.
Powerwise Jade is the weakest of the core team, but she makes up for it with versatility, and the ability to do six things at the same time. The clear limits on the power mean that Generator can genuinely be threatened in most situations and must rely on her creativity and her extensive bag of tricks to get through. She can't just power through nor shrug off threats, making her combat scenes (when not written as over the top silly) tinged with a genuine feeling of danger.

Emotionally Jade is defined by her quest to become fully female. The narrative problem is that there is an undefined external block preventing her from achieving this effect. Worse yet is that both the existince and the nature of this block are largely unacknowleged in the stories. There is only the postulated 'reset' occuring after three days, an affect that Fey recognised as magical in nature. No attempts are made to investigate this external influence even if it is presumed to be inherent to Jade's mutation (which should have sent her to the powers testers, the magic department and that torturer/doctor in Berlin). There is no inherent problem with an external force prevent the achievement of a person's need in a story, but that only works if that block is acknowleged and becomes the focus of the story's quest. If Jade wants to become fully female then she needs to find and remove that externally imposed block.
I am sure that the original author intended to address this issue but somehow this central plot point got sidetracked.

Erianaiel wrote: I have been doing a lot of thinking about Team Kimba and why it is so hard to write stories for them. The characters have inherent problems with their powersets or their motivations, or sometimes both?

What would you consider acceptable (i.e., non-problematic) motivations for a group of 15-year-olds?

null0trooper wrote:

Erianaiel wrote: I have been doing a lot of thinking about Team Kimba and why it is so hard to write stories for them. The characters have inherent problems with their powersets or their motivations, or sometimes both?

What would you consider acceptable (i.e., non-problematic) motivations for a group of 15-year-olds?

Usually it would be some sort of rivalry, either in competition for some sort of prize, or in battle over an ideal. You’ll find that nearly all teenage aimed media uses one or the other.

I did not mean to insult to insult the authors or their writing of the Team Kimba Gen 1 characters even if I unintentionally managed to do that.
Sorry for that.
I certainly do not believe that any of the stories are bad.In fact I believe that they are excellently written and exciting.

My argument comes from my, admittedly limited, understanding of writing stories. And I am probably too much influenced by the principles of screen writing.

The theory is that a story is driven by personal conflict and that there has to be an obstacle for the hero(es) to overcome. In screen writing there is the additional requirement that both the goal and the obstacle that create this conflict must be visible (so it can be shown to an audience).

For extra credits there can also be a psychological conflict between what the character wants and needs that ties into the ability of the hero to overcome the visible obstacle to achieve that goal.

My impression is that the Team Kimba characters have evolved over the course of their POV stories to either lack a threat that can be an obstacle to their goals (at least not without turning things up to eleven), or they don't have a goal (unless it is forced upon them by an outside actor).

Neither prevents stories about these characters, obviously, but it does make it harder to integrate the seprate layers of a story. Which is why I called it problematic and not bad (because it is not bad at all. Just potentially limiting).

The shame about a lot of the Kimba authors having left is that there were so many facets of the characters that deserved more elaboration. Take Nikki, for example. It has been touched on slightly, but It can't be easy going from an average boy to arguably one of the sexiest girls in the world.