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codenamesazanka · 4 months

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I need help writing the league of villains for a fan fiction. Like can you give me tips on to write their dialogue and stuff like that

Thanks for the ask! Here are some things that I think would be helpful, but please be aware that it's my approach to writing the League the way I interpret them. I'm sure there's people who finds my fic wildly inaccurate in terms of characterization. Sometimes I go back months later and disagree with my own stuff, given new information or outlook. You'll have different interpretations than me, and that's okay. And thus,

Tip #1: First of all, it’s fanfic, it’s fun, and it’s yours. You can do whatever the heck you want! It does not matter at all what you do with the characters, their dialogue, their personalities, their relationships, etc. I’ve read plenty of AU fanfics where I could not recognize Shigaraki Tomura/Shimura Tenko, despite the character having the name, but I still liked the story okay. Really, it’s all up to you and what you want.

That said, to actually answer your question:

Tip #2: Re-read the manga. Read the scanlations - multiple versions from different scanlation groups. Read the official. No version will be perfect, some are better than others (Viz Official has its issues, but it is done by a professional translator and I tend towards it; Fallen Angels (Chapters 1-150s) was the first to scanlate and iirc they even included translation commentary at the end of their chapters; I found mangastream to be more accurate than Jaimini (Chapters 150-250s)), but having a variety of translations will give you insight into the intention of a dialogue, and different ways of achieving it. Read the original Japanese, if you can.

Tip #2.5: Best way to figure a character, I find, is to describe the panels they’re in as if you’re writing a very plain, objective, impartial image description. Now you have an overview of their outward behavior, their actions, their dialogue. Using that, you have the basis for developing their motivations and personality. It’s the difference between ‘Shigaraki used gamer lingo a few times here, so he is a gamer... therefore he’s obsessed with games and that’s all he does’ and ‘In the first 100 chapters of the story, despite speaking sometimes like a gamer, Shigaraki is actually seen reading newspapers rather than holding a game console’.

Put another way, don’t assume generalized descriptions or traits for a character and write them based on that. You risk writing a trope or archetype or situation rather than the actual character.

When a loved one dies suddenly, people will be in shock, before sobbing and weeping uncontrollably. That’s generally true, but the character may manifest grief in a different way. Someone close to Toga is killed - what does she do? You can write her breaking down crying, that’s perfectly reasonable. But if you look at the manga, when Twice is killed, she doesn’t cry right away. She gets angry; she lashes out. She’s deeply hurt by his murder, of course! But the tears she sheds for his passing are few in the immediate aftermath - her grief mostly takes the form of slicing Heroes’ throats.

Tip #3: Read everything else, for inspiration, for background knowledge, for tone, for your own gain outside of fandom.

Just the other day, I read Real, the wheelchair basketball manga by Inoue Takehiko. Its three main characters are marginalized by proper society - two because they’re disabled, one because he’s a high school dropout - and there were moments where I was reminded of the League’s situation. In the first chapter, the high school dropout makes a final visit to school where his teachers didn’t think much of him, and his classmates looked down on him. As he leaves, he thinks to himself that everything he does ends in failure and he’s an idiot, all the while he takes a dump at the school gates as a parting gift.

While I can’t see anyone from the League doing that exactly shot for shot, the spirit of it - being seen as a fuck up, being unwanted, being defiant in face of that, even in a inadvisable way - is similar.

Tip #3.5: Another book I’ve read years ago is Codes of the Underworld: How Criminal Communicate. It was very informative, and I think back to it sometimes when I write for the League.

Criminals face severe constraints on communication imposed by the action of the law, and, unlike the rest of us, cannot easily develop institutions aimed at circumventing them. This central feature of criminal lives makes communication and above all reliable communication exceptionally hard to sustain. For instance, the same secrecy that protects criminals from the law hinders their opportunities to advertise their goods and qualities… In the underworld, moreover, punishments for mistakes and irrational behavior are harsher than they are elsewhere. In the world of regular business, failures of communication can lead to a loss of business, but in the underworld they can result in years behind bars, or worse.

I don’t follow it exactly, because the League is in a children’s fantasy story, and maybe this was obvious but now that it was written out to me, I know how to give the Villains an “edge” to them that a non-Villain might not have, because as Villains, they do often logically would to be secretive and brutal and cautious. Dabi walking around in broad daylight meant their hideout was discovered and All Might literally took down the wall to the bar; a breakdown in negotiations with Overhaul meant Magne dying and Compress getting his arm blown off.

Tip #4: Related, let the League be assholes, because sometimes they are. Let them be mean and cruel and problematic. Sometimes they’ll be jerks to each other. Nearly all of them grew up in bad circumstances where they probably were not taught important lessons and details about respect and boundaries and being nice. They are definitely not going to be aware of the intricacies of fandom's (oft-American and oft-terminally-online) consensus about problematic behavior. And that’s fine.

I remember once receiving an ask about why Shigaraki would pull Twice’s mask off in Chapter 224. Wasn’t that terrible of Shigaraki? Yeah, it was. It was also the quickest, most efficient way to get Twice to quit his arguing with the rest of the League, so Shigaraki can announce that they are going to rescue Giran (what Twice was arguing for). After that, he puts the mask back on for Twice. If you ask me, I’d say Shigaraki thinks this evens out - he does something mean that he knows will freak out Twice for a moment, but it’s because he’s arguing for Twice’s side, and he’s putting on the mask back at the end.

You and I would likely never do something like that because we know taking away someone’s important assistive aid, even for a moment, hurts them and we don’t want to cause them pain for even a second if we could help it/there’s not ‘evening it out’/it demonstrates a power unbalance that perpetuates ableism/there are other ways to stop someone and grab attention/we know not to touch someone even the slightest without permission/etc. But does the character you’re writing know all this? Does he care? Does he think it’s worth following these rules? Does he have time for it, does he have incentives for it, does he have the lucidity, does he think he’s an exception because of this and that, etc, etc.

A lot of things, most people often just don’t know until they’re taught to be specifically aware. As an example: When I was younger, I knew broadly that taking things without permission was bad; but what if I took these pair of scissors from my friend’s desk and used it and put it back before the owner knew? The owner is my friend. They once told me it was okay to take it, so it counts even today, right? It was just a pair of scissors, a common household item. My friend did not care; still does not care. But knowing what I do now about things like violations of boundaries, explicit consent, the continuation of these concepts for the most trivial and mundane things even in the deepest of friendship or familial ties - I feel the need to ask to use something. That’s me and what I’ve learned through the years, though. It’s probably not going to be [fictional character].

And sometimes the League are just bad people. Shigaraki tried to kill Toga and Dabi at their first meeting. Mr. Compress is seemingly a-okay with kidnapping and murder despite his ancestor being more of a Robin Hood type. Spinner likely knowingly doomed his family to even worse ostracism and harassment from his fantasy-racist hometown when he ran off to join a group of well-televised terrorists.

That’s also fine. They’re not real. They’re fictional Villains, and you’re temporarily using them as hand-puppets to tell a story.

Tip #5. For dialogue, it helps knowing what each character’s voice/speaking style sounds like. Some basics:

Shigaraki:

“Shigaraki speaks with the normal masculine contracted speech, but with a sinister tone. Surprisingly not very cussy. He likes aggravating other people though.”

Caleb Cook notes that Shigaraki talks like an overgrown kid. (In comparison to ReDestro, who “uses more SAT words, since he’s had a formal education.”)

He can be a sarcastic smartass.

Kurogiri:

“Kurogiri is Extremely Polite”

He only refers to Shigaraki as ‘Shigaraki Tomura’. Always the full name, always just that.

He speaks very formally and respectfully; however, there is also a nastier side to him that comes out when he faces off Heroes: Saying to All Might, “I can't say I like the idea of having blood and guts inside my gate, but… if they're yours, I’ll happily oblige.” (Chapter 18); mocking Eraserhead and Mic when they're being sad over him, “Have you mistaken this place for a confessional of some kind?” (Chapter 254)

Dabi:

“Dabi is like Shoto but ruder, though not to Bakugo’s extent”

He calls people names: Toga most often, as 'crazy'; he called Spinner 'lizard' once; when he first met Shigaraki, he said 'gross'.

Note that all the examples above are people younger than him; as far as I know, Dabi refrains from name-calling his allies who are older than him: Compress, Twice, Skeptic.

He inexplicably politely calls Ujiko ‘Ujiko-san’.

Compress:

“Compress is kind of like Sero. He’s got that trickster tone to him. Gets rougher when things don’t go his way.”

Likes to call himself an ‘old man’ at age 32; talks like an older gentleman as well.

Twice:

Twice contradicts himself a lot. Generally, he says one thing, his alter then says the opposite of that immediately afterwards.

However, when things are urgent or serious, his alter’s speech fades. See Chapter 148, when he confronts Shigaraki about the Overhaul plan - he spills out his feelings with no contradiction. See Chapter 224, after they find out Giran’s been kidnapped - when arguing with the League about whether to say Giran, he’s completely coherent.

Twice argues back with the alter sometimes, rather than the alter simply blurting out the opposite of what he says.

After he gets over his clone trauma, the alter seemed to have…integrated into himself? He still speaks in contradictions, but less so, and it doesn’t seem to be a separate voice speaking out involuntarily

Spinner:

“Spinner also speaks the normal masculine contracted speech like Kirishima and Kaminari, but he talks like Tokoyami during the Forest Lodge arc because he’s a Stain chuuni.”

An average, normal guy, compared to the rest of the League: not very polite, but not particularly rude; no great wit or affect (after he stops being a Stain fanboy), but not unintelligible; game references infrequently.

Giran:

“Giran is also like speaks the normal masculine contracted speech similar to Shoto, but he’s a lot more mature.”

He calls Shigaraki “Shigaraki-san”, being polite towards him as a customer.

He calls Twice by his last name, ‘Bubaigawara’, likely because they seem to be friends beyond just business.

Toga:

Toga is a generally polite girl, talks like a teenager.

She can be bad at explaining herself! Seems to forget the people are lacking context for the things she says. “Hey, my best friend Jin just got killed by a Hero, which makes me sad, as well as worried that I'm going to be cut down like nothing as well, especially because I've been told how abnormal I am, even though I think I'm a normal person just like you, because I have emotions like love and fear, as any regular human does, and that lifetime of repression has hurt me.” -> Whatever she actually says to Uraraka in Chapter 289.

Only Toga uses first names with honorifics with the other League members. This is her being cute and desiring familiarity, but still polite.

　◦ Twice is ‘Jin-kun’

　◦ Shigaraki is ‘Tomura-kun’

　◦ Dabi is, at first ‘Dabi-kun’; after she finds out he’s Touya, he’s ‘Touya-kun’

　◦ Spinner is ‘Spinner-kun’

　◦ However, Mr. Compress is simply ‘Mister’

Conversely, only Mr. Compress and Twice call her ‘Toga-chan’. All the 20-somethings dudes call her just ‘Toga’.

*Note what the League calls each other. They all call each other using Villain names. If the male members of the League are using first names and honorifics for each other, they’ve either gotten extremely close and intimate and weirdly polite, or they’re being possessed by AFO.

Tip #5.5. Instead of fretting over writing good dialogue right away, just write whatever you need to get a scene over with. You can go back later to change the tone and speaking style of the sentence.

Here’s a line I had for Dabi at first:

“Whatever hospital he works at should be shut down for incompetency in background checks.”

Wayyy too formal. Here’s the line after I went back and fixed it:

“Whatever hospital he works at should be shut down for being shit at background checks.”

Still not my best shot, but better. Sometimes all you need is just to change a word.

Tip #6. Humor. The League is ridiculous and hilarious. Always try to have fun with their interactions and antics.