#21 Character Families & The Witcher 3

In general - a lot of [..] is actually about Geralt - in spite of being an itinerate monster slayer and dealing with a lot of nastiness and sleeping around with sorceresses and making questionable moral decisions - is about Geralt trying to figure out how to re-establish himself within a nuclear family.

Today we'll have a post on families, parents and why they're important for character and quest design. I'll demonstrate this on my current quest design project. (Star Wars I-VI spoilers incoming)

Family Matters

Why do so many stories have family conflicts at their heart? This one of the questions I'll try to answer here - but I'm no professional psychologist or sociologist, so rather expect some intuitive thoughts.

Star Wars is famous for its father-son conflict. Source

To make a start, let's look at the first paragraph of the wiki-page on families.

"In human society, family is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship)."

Already at this point I feel the need to intervene. To me this doesn't put enough emphasis on the "other relationships", which might include other people not necessarily romantically attached or an animal. More generally I would point out, that you may declare any other being part of your family, if you regard the other as an important part of your life. In turn you may also see someone biologically related to you as not part of your family.

This begs for a differentiation between biological and social family. While many peoples social familiy will be near congruent with their biological family, there are surely a lot of examples where they differ to great degrees. But let's continue with the wiki-paragraph:

"The purpose of families is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideally, families would offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and participate in the community. In most societies, it is within families that children acquire socialization for life outside the family, and acts as the primary source of attachment, nurturing, and socialization for humans. Additionally, as the basic unit for meeting the basic needs of its members, it provides a sense of boundaries for performing tasks in a safe environment, ideally builds a person into a functional adult, transmits culture, and ensures continuity of humankind with precedents of knowledge."

Reading this it becomes clear why family is important. Family provides the invidual with a big range of spaces, tools, guidances, .. to grow into "a functional adult".

Providing these things works - in my opinion (not taken from wiki) - via several basic, archetypic roles which family members may take up. Examples for such archetypes are "mother", "father", "brother", "sister", "grandfather", "grandmother", "uncle", "aunt" (C.G. Jung sends his regards). I want to emphasize at this point, that in the social family literally everybody might take up such a role and that I furthermore think that it is the social family, which is important.

Anakin was a brother to Obi-Wan, even though they weren't biological brothers. Source (modified)

A very important element of the family as a social entity are its responsibilities, commitments and deliveries. When a human child is born into a family, it needs family members to assume some the above mentioned roles, in particular "mother", "father" and "sibling" (so I believe). It is the families responsibility to provide members who commit to doing this and deliver what is needed. However there also needs to be a balance: There is such a thing as overparenting and parents abandoning themselves.

Besides Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, whom I quoted in the posts beginning on Geralt and family, Dave Filoni also provides a great example for how vital nuclear families are and how grave conflicts in them can be:

"he [Obi-Wan] is a brother to Anakin, but he's not a father figure. That's a failing to Anakin, he doesn't have the family that he needs [..] so he's left completely vulnerable"

Further Reading / Inspiration

• NoClip - Designing the Quests of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Link with Timestamp

  Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, Lead English Writer at CD Projekt RED talking about family and The Witcher

• The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities – Kathleen Wallace | Aeon Essays  Link

  If humans are a constantly actualizing network, then the family does a great deal to lay the foundations and core traits of that network. And if it doesn't - then the whole network becomes fragile.
  

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 10: The Father

Already in previous posts I explained or hinted to the underlying conflicts happening in my Witcher quest. Today I'll show a characterization of Aisker, Alene's father, who is probably the central figure to understanding what is so wrong in the village and why we encounter Alene in the way we do.

Aisker Wudmager. For higher resoution, see this pdf.

Aisker unconsciously hides his main fears and problems under the cover of "protecting Alene" and "advancing the village economy". And while he succeds in his political role, he isn't able to control his child, which divides father and daughter. He thinks he will be happy when he reaches his goals, but even though he mostly reached his goals political-wise, his happiness is far too low in proportion to the successes he seemingly had - and this makes him quite insecure.

Many of the things written down here won't be revealed in the quest, but they are important to inform how the different characters behave in specific situations.

By the way, a small trick that I often use for character names is taking a meaning/theme fitting to the character, finding a word and then translating it into some other language. In this case "Aisker" can be traced to something with fishing (I don't remember exactly what) and "Wudmager" to woodwork. A good extra trait for Aisker might be that he likes his first name, but not his family name.

Ideas for Feedback

• Do you think I adequatly described families?
• Where could the character of Aisker need more depth?

Conclusion

This was a very interesting post to write. It revealed to me some knowledge I hadn't had yet and it also allowed me to grasp the whole thematic in a cohesive way.

While my quest design journey is coming near its half-year anniversary, I'm beginning to think more and more about what I achieved here so far. Post #26 will be an interesting one, for sure - but I try to not be too hasty with my thoughts.

Until then, have a good time!