Tsunderes are weird to write and I respect the authors who can do it well

TotallyHuman

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I recently tried to write a tsundere kind of character and it... ended up disastrous. It was an insensitive, violent, psychologically abusive child in terms of emotional intelligence, I really didn't get how anybody could feel any sort of sympathy or favour towards this character, so I scrapped the chapters with them.
Anybody who writes tsunderes, how was your experience doing it?
 

Jemini

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There are really just 2 steps to writing Tsunderes well.

Step 1. Read/watch Ranma 1/2, because Akane Tendo is literally the OG original Tsundere who started the whole trope, and also one of the best examples.

Step 2. Understand that Akane is just done like that for the comedy, and then try to dig a little deeper as to the motivations for being a "tsundere" type in a more serious setting. What part of IRL romance is this trope representative of? Because, in order for it to be as big a thing as it is, it HAS to be hitting on something that is real and strikes a chord with people.

The answer to step 2 is that the tsudere trope represents a girl who is 1. young, 2. expected to be in a relationship with a guy her same age. 3. because girls mature faster than boys, she is disappointed with how immature said guy is. 4. because she's supposed to be in a relationship with this looser, she gets mad and wants to whip him into shape and force him to start acting in a more mature and capable manner.

That in mind, going back to the Akane Tendo example, her crush on Dr. Tofu is actually a pretty important point in the tsundere character as well. Dr. Tofu represents the kind of guy (minus the comedic short-falls he has) that the tsundere wishes she could be with, and also the kind of guy she's trying to mold her love interest into.

(Also, you are really not alone in failing to do tsundere right. A lot of people just do a surface take on the behaviors in the trope and fail to consider the motivations. That failure to consider the motivations and only playing out the behaviors is the thing that makes it all go so wrong.)

EDIT: Gotta add, the #1 most common disasterous error people make while writing Tsundere characters is they miss the part where the guy who's supposed to be the Tsundere's love interest is supposed to be immature and incompitent. Tsunderes simply CANNOT exist in a setting where the guy is smart, capable, and mature. Said guys instantly transform Tsunderes into flirty school girls honestly crushing on them, instantly eliminating all Tsundere-like aspects of them. Any girl who manages to keep those Tsundere behaviors with a smart, capable, and mature man is just a psychopath. The behavior of the male side is every single bit as important as the female side in order to make the Tsundere mechanic work.
 
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Moonpearl

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I've written a few characters who could, if you simplify them, be called "tsunderes".

There are different motivations for the behaviour and it can result in different levels of tsundere.

Typically there has to be a reason that the tsundere doesn't really want to love the target of their affection.
Some that I've written include:
  • Fear of the vulnerability and loss of control that comes with falling in love
  • Someone whose reputation and way of living is incompatible with the behaviours of love (like nobles who are supposed to be controlled and aloof, who might not know a safe way to express love without endangering that)
  • People trying to reject the other person on principal, because there's a very good reason that you would never want to fall in love with that person but their heart said "fuck you"
Results range from "someone who's a bit too embarrassed to say things straight for whom their lover has to read between the lines for" to "an abuser".
 

Moonpearl

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EDIT: Gotta add, the #1 most common disasterous error people make while writing Tsundere characters is they miss the part where the guy who's supposed to be the Tsundere's love interest is supposed to be immature and incompitent. Tsunderes simply CANNOT exist in a setting where the guy is smart, capable, and mature. Said guys instantly transform Tsunderes into flirty school girls honestly crushing on them, instantly eliminating all Tsundere-like aspects of them. Any girl who manages to keep those Tsundere behaviors with a smart, capable, and mature man is just a psychopath. The behavior of the male side is every single bit as important as the female side in order to make the Tsundere mechanic work.

I kind of disagree with this point... Maybe this would be true for the OG tsundere, but it's not universal.

For example, people who are tsunderes because of trust issues aren't going to simply stop fearing love just because the other person isn't as bad as they think they're going to be.

And even otherwise mature and capable people can fail to understand other people's perspectives or cause problems inadvertently, which could result in them being disliked by the person who loves them.
 

Sinpathy

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A good example of this is the blonde haired girl from Grisaia. She can't keep up the trope well in front of a level-headed protagonist, and breaks character because of it.
 

ForestDweller

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A good example of this is the blonde haired girl from Grisaia. She can't keep up the trope well in front of a level-headed protagonist, and breaks character because of it.

That reminds me. If you're going to make a tsundere, then please don't make her a twin-tailed blonde girl.
 

AliceShiki

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I've written a few characters who could, if you simplify them, be called "tsunderes".

There are different motivations for the behaviour and it can result in different levels of tsundere.

Typically there has to be a reason that the tsundere doesn't really want to love the target of their affection.
Some that I've written include:
  • Fear of the vulnerability and loss of control that comes with falling in love
  • Someone whose reputation and way of living is incompatible with the behaviours of love (like nobles who are supposed to be controlled and aloof, who might not know a safe way to express love without endangering that)
  • People trying to reject the other person on principal, because there's a very good reason that you would never want to fall in love with that person but their heart said "fuck you"
Results range from "someone who's a bit too embarrassed to say things straight for whom their lover has to read between the lines for" to "an abuser".
I think Pearl-chan hit the nail on the head~

The main thing with the Tsundere is that she shouldn't be comfortable with her own love towards the other character... If she was, then she'd just accept her feelings and stop needing the Tsun part.

Also, I think it's important to not exaggerate the trope too much. Like... The tsundere hitting her love interest for any whatever reason is horrible and would totally ruin any relationship. You can show her tsun behavior without resorting to physical aggression.
 

Ddraig

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Yeah I agree, Well written Tsunderes are my favourite and are a treat to read but the badly written ones are like realllly bad.

A really good example, Misaka Mikoto from toaru series.
 
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tsundere girl: it's not like I love you or anything, baka!

dat loli: that's not my name.

tsundere girl: eh...

dat loli: i hope you will find your baka someday.

tsundere girl: *cries*

i think that's how i imagine the conversation between a tsundere and my character. despite being a loli she's over 25 years old.

she'd probably revel in sadistic pleasure on teasing the girl until she finally went super embarrassed and did really shameful things.

and since the loli had no shame, she might pretend that tsundere was lewding her, if she tried to hit her.

the thing about tsunderes that really fascinates me, is that they're one of the most fun to bully, especially if your character had no shame and could take a hit like a fucking tank.

on the other hand, i stay the fuck away from yanderes. my character probably went on a killing spree of them, if she couldn't get lovey-dovey with other girls in their watch.
 

ChronicleCrawler

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I recently tried to write a tsundere kind of character and it... ended up disastrous. It was an insensitive, violent, psychologically abusive child in terms of emotional intelligence, I really didn't get how anybody could feel any sort of sympathy or favour towards this character, so I scrapped the chapters with them.
Anybody who writes tsunderes, how was your experience doing it?
Hmnp. I'm not going to talk to you anymore. :blob_upset: :blob_upset:
 

Mejiro

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there's a fairly major distinction between 'classic' tsundere's and those in actual romances, and more recent/comedy-drama ones. The former tend to be more of a slow warming-up from 'spiky dislike' to 'affection' with occasional reversions. The latter can be almost bi-polar, wildly swinging between 'love' and 'hate' both with violent overtones (Naru Narusegewa from Love Hina was an early example of this). The core concept is the pretty standard 'melting love interest' that falls in love over the course of the story, but it tends to be rather spiker. Bakamonogatari is a good example, where Senjogahara, even after falling in love, is still _very_ spiky about it, just in a tender way.
 

Gale

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Echoing what others have said, it's important to keep in mind that tsundere behaviour should be a collection of symptoms, and not itself a cause. You can't just go in thinking "I'm going to write a tsundere, that means they're rude and bitchy all the time, end of story". That way lies disaster. Instead, you should try to think realistically about how they would have gotten to this point as a person, and how that behaviour will change as they grow over the course of the story.

For example, I'm writing a character who started out as typically tsundere right now. I focused on the fact that she was, at her core, a deeply cynical and insecure person: she was harsh and demanding of others because she was even harsher and more demanding of herself, and she was short and irritable with the person she loved because she saw her own feelings as valueless and unrequited. Being in love brought her misery, and she couldn't stop being in love. Her actions reflected that defining state of unhappiness.

Over time, I tried to develop her away from that mindset - she's still pessimistic, but as she's come to have a little hope about herself, her barbs have become less defensive and spiteful, and more playful, even flirty at times. She's changed over time, to the point where she's still recognisably the same character, but a lot of her more stereotypically tsundere traits have mellowed out considerably.

I think that's a key part of a tsundere's appeal - they should absolutely be a bit difficult to love, at first, but you have to make them compelling enough that the reader wants to see what's under all those thorns. You have to show that they are capable of growing and changing as a person, even if that means eventually letting go of their tsuntsun side. Even for characters who stay tsundere for good, you have to careful to ensure that their needles are tipped with sugar, and not venom; their sharpness should itself become an expression of love, and not just a thing their partner endures while they wait for their softer side to roll around.

I dearly love a tsundere done well, but a tsundere done poorly can be a tiresome and incoherent mess. And I think that's a very easy place to end up unless you have a firm idea of what is lovable about the character, and how you want to show it. Going in without a plan, or at least, a strong sense of what drives them to act the way they do, is very risky, in my opinion.
 

Jemini

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there's a fairly major distinction between 'classic' tsundere's and those in actual romances, and more recent/comedy-drama ones. The former tend to be more of a slow warming-up from 'spiky dislike' to 'affection' with occasional reversions. The latter can be almost bi-polar, wildly swinging between 'love' and 'hate' both with violent overtones (Naru Narusegewa from Love Hina was an early example of this). The core concept is the pretty standard 'melting love interest' that falls in love over the course of the story, but it tends to be rather spiker. Bakamonogatari is a good example, where Senjogahara, even after falling in love, is still _very_ spiky about it, just in a tender way.

Thus the comment in my post about the modern Tsundere being nothing more than violent psychopaths. Also, who actually liked Love Hina? I thought it was awefull, and most people who talk about it just say the whole punch to the moon for innocent errors or missunderstandings is something they are absolutely repulsed by. The fact that this trope is all but dead now also indicates love comedies that implemented it were very low rated, and the industry took note.

This type of "modern Tsundere" was created based on a missunderstanding of what made Akane Tendo lovable and caused the Tsundere trope to take off in the first place. It's a pale immitation that fails to take into account the psychological motivations that trigger that kind of behavior, and ultimately serves to alienate the audience and make these fake tsunderes thoroughly unlikable to the point of repelling people from the entire series just for having them in the story. (Again, see point about the slow death of the trope as the industry takes note of the low ratings of stories that contain them.)
 

Mejiro

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Love Hina was big at the time - it pretty much put Ken Akamatsu on the map, and was the gateway 'harem' for that era. The last third was a bit of a tangled mess, because Akamatsu seemed to have run out of plot, and there's the (sort of good? Technically, I guess?) weirdness where it's revealed that Naru and Keitaro are both actually deeply into the whole slap-slap-kiss-kiss thing, and that when he's punched into the sky, that's actually literally happening, not a comedic interpretation. But Lum (from Urusei Yatsura) was similar, in that she zapped the hell out of Ataru a lot, in a way that would be somewhat abusive if not in a comedic work (their relationship was actually pretty messed up with all kinds of screwed-up jealousy and other issues, but, well, slapstick comedy - Ranma was a bit better on that front, although would have been a lot shorter if they'd ever just talked it over rather than been dumb teens at each other!)
 

Ace_Arriande

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Tsunderes simply CANNOT exist in a setting where the guy is smart, capable, and mature. Said guys instantly transform Tsunderes into flirty school girls honestly crushing on them, instantly eliminating all Tsundere-like aspects of them. Any girl who manages to keep those Tsundere behaviors with a smart, capable, and mature man is just a psychopath. The behavior of the male side is every single bit as important as the female side in order to make the Tsundere mechanic work.

It's really silly and incredibly biased to say that they can't exist in a setting where the guy is capable and all that without being a psychopath. Just because he might be the exact right kind of guy for her doesn't mean that she will be comfortable with her own feelings. Maybe she's had negative relationships in the past and is worried that things are too good to be true, so she puts up a tsun act to try and create distance in an attempt to protect herself (yet likely hurting herself more than protecting herself). Maybe she's in an important position, such as a noble or the heir of some important business or something, and everybody expects her to get married and settle down, yet she wants to stay independent and is afraid that she's just giving in to everybody's wishes if she goes down without a fight. Or maybe she's just really fucking awkward and has never had romantic feelings before and doesn't know how to handle them. Or maybe she was raised in a negative environment and she's just treating her love interest how her parents treated each other. All of these are at least somewhat realistic things where, as soon you give them an anime art style, pass as "tsundere" in the modern context of the word. Or, if having actual motivation (read: being a good character in general) is all that it takes to make somebody a classic tsundere, then they would pass as a tsundere in the original context, too. And just because a girl has flaws that make her uncomfortable in a relationship doesn't mean that she's a psychopath. It means that she's a real character who has flaws. Obviously, the tsunderes who are hyper-violent do have some major problems (and are closer to yandere than tsundere most of the time), but I almost never even see those anymore outside of gag anime and I watch a fucking ton of anime.

Now, while I will agree that the tsundere should eventually get rid of these tsun-ish traits (or else she's stuck never being truly happy with herself and her relationship), it's a pretty massive stretch to say that it instantly happens or to imply that it should instantly happen. The way you phrased it just makes me think of a reverse "bad boy" trope where Mr. Lucky comes along and somehow instantly transforms the tsundere at first sight into being "good" for him. That basically just removes agency from her and implies that she's not her own person with her own personality and reasons for her behavior - that the only reason she's tsundere is because she hasn't met the right guy yet. The rest of your post was good, in regards to a very specific type of tsundere with a very specific motivation for being a tsundere rather than speaking of tsunderes in general, but I have major problems with this paragraph.

Personally, when it came to writing my favorite tsundere character, she was defensive and jaded because of being raised by an overprotective father which led her into entering relationships with people who she really shouldn't have gotten into relationships with to rebel against her dad. Naturally, these relationships were bad experiences that only led to her being distrusting and disliking of men even more. Even when she finally did find a guy (and a girl which made her more comfortable/secure) that she liked, she still struggled with her feelings, tried to put distance between her and him (but was not a tsundere toward the girl), and then eventually caved in and admitted that she didn't like how she was before promising to try her best to be more positive and less verbally abusive (and at this point, she already improved to the point where she was basically a normal adult but was still self-conscious and overly critical of herself). Now, she's not a tsundere at all, but she'll still give a bit of stereotypical tsundere fanservice because she's comfortable doing it in an ironic sort of way and because her partner likes it.

And just for two cases of excellent series where the main character is considered handsome, competent, intelligent, and capable: Trinity Seven (albeit the main tsundere is typically played in such a way for laughs) and, far more importantly, Chivalry of a Failed Knight. While I can't speak too much in regards to Trinity Seven since the tsundere there didn't progress that much, Chivalry's tsundere and the MC had fantastic relationship progress, character growth, maturity, and a gradual and believable conversion from tsundere -> deredere. She was definitely tsundere and the change definitely wasn't instant just because the MC is a good character for once rather than some hyper-dense harem protag.

tl;dr: it's silly to say that a tsundere can't be a tsundere if the guy is a good character instead of a bumbling idiot. Guys can't just magically make all of a girl's insecurities / problematic tendencies disappear just by being Mr. Perfect. This is like saying "bad boys" are only bad boys because they haven't found a caring, kind, intelligent, mature, and attractive girl yet. That's alright for pure wish-fulfillment where you aren't looking for very complex characters and are instead just trying to satisfy a fantasy, but I would hope that no character instantly changes who they are because of some guy/girl in anything else.

And now to answer the OP:

Anybody who writes tsunderes, how was your experience doing it?

It went great. Here's how to do it.
1. Make them at least partially realistic by giving them actual depth and reason to why they are the way that they are. This is much easier to do if you've ever known anybody in real life who was overly defensive because of past circumstances or inexperience.
2. Make them a well-rounded character who isn't tsundere 24/7. Show off their other sides, especially the ones that are easier to sympathize with.
3. Treat the tsun-ness as a character flaw to be overcome through development and effort on the tsundere's behalf. Another character, such as a love interest, can be the catalyst that sparks their desire to change, but the change still has to come from the tsundere themself. It is impossible for somebody to truly change as a person without wanting to change on their own. You can't change somebody else. You can help somebody change, yes, but that's only if they want to change in the first place, and they still have to do 95% of the work to truly change.
4. Don't make them physically nor mentally abusive. At all. Just don't unless you're planning on writing something that deals very heavily with the psychology of such relationships while treating it in a very serious manner rather than as an anime trope. At that point, you're less writing a tsundere and more writing a yandere. Verbal "abuse" can be fine (such as calling the love interest an idiot a lot, for example), but it shouldn't be too heavy, should still be treated as a problem, and shouldn't be normalized as some perfectly healthy and normal thing to be doing.

EDIT: Or, alternatively to the above steps, just make her a normal girl who likes to act like a tsundere while actually not being one, and their love interest is in on it. They're just a perfectly normal person who just so happens to enjoy roleplaying as a tsundere, effectively making them one for the story since it's what the audience sees the vast majority of the time, while their love interest is in on it and preferably enjoys the act. Then they can be as verbally abusive or physically rough as they want and all that because they have their partner's consent and enjoyment. Consent is a very powerful thing.
 

AliceShiki

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Thus the comment in my post about the modern Tsundere being nothing more than violent psychopaths. Also, who actually liked Love Hina? I thought it was awefull, and most people who talk about it just say the whole punch to the moon for innocent errors or missunderstandings is something they are absolutely repulsed by. The fact that this trope is all but dead now also indicates love comedies that implemented it were very low rated, and the industry took note.

This type of "modern Tsundere" was created based on a missunderstanding of what made Akane Tendo lovable and caused the Tsundere trope to take off in the first place. It's a pale immitation that fails to take into account the psychological motivations that trigger that kind of behavior, and ultimately serves to alienate the audience and make these fake tsunderes thoroughly unlikable to the point of repelling people from the entire series just for having them in the story. (Again, see point about the slow death of the trope as the industry takes note of the low ratings of stories that contain them.)
I enjoyed Love Hina! Had lots of fun reading through it! ^^)/

And AFAIK, it was a very successful series as well~
 

Jemini

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It's really silly and incredibly biased to say that they can't exist in a setting where the guy is capable and all that without being a psychopath. Just because he might be the exact right kind of guy for her doesn't mean that she will be comfortable with her own feelings. Maybe she's had negative relationships in the past and is worried that things are too good to be true, so she puts up a tsun act to try and create distance in an attempt to protect herself (yet likely hurting herself more than protecting herself). Maybe she's in an important position, such as a noble or the heir of some important business or something, and everybody expects her to get married and settle down, yet she wants to stay independent and is afraid that she's just giving in to everybody's wishes if she goes down without a fight. Or maybe she's just really fucking awkward and has never had romantic feelings before and doesn't know how to handle them. Or maybe she was raised in a negative environment and she's just treating her love interest how her parents treated each other.

For the most part, I was referring to the violent Tsundere when I said that, and violence actually IS an aspect of the Tsundere character. Fair point on that last one though. As for the rest, I don't think it exactly justifies the potential motivation behind being so violent toward someone who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, and the more innocent the guy is the more just uncomfortable that violence becomes.

About the only reason the Tsundere violence was somewhat acceptable in the works of Rumiko Takahara was because the guy(?) in question was asking for it 4 out of 5 times, and that 1 in 5 where he was innocent just made you say "well, that's the reason why you're supposed to act like a better person the rest of the time, you ruined your credibility!" Not only that, but another uncomfortable trope is having a total pervert for an MC. In Ranma 1/2, Ranma managed to deserve it while cutting it down on the pervert angle. (the very most perverted things Ranma ever did were in female form, and mostly involved exploiting men with his/her own body, but even that was restrained a great deal by his sense of shame. That, or it was literally him getting framed by Haposai, which fit into that 1 in 5 innocent cases.)
 
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