Character Development is Kinda Overrated
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 вер 2020
- Hey there! It's been a while, hasn't it?
In this video, I seek to explore the subject of character development in narratives and whether it's absolutely necessary that characters change over the course of their story.
Consider this video something of a pilot episode for a new series of polemics. I hope this video finds you well, and I hope that you enjoy it!
Twitter: / fringy123
Twitch: / dubioussanity - Комедії
You didn't change over the course of this video...BAD.
And that's just silly :p
The painter of objective criticism has spoken!!!
Longman bad
For nough reason.
Nooooouuuugh
fringy not posting for almost a year then casually comes back like its just another day in the office.
Gandalf. The most dynamic character in history. Evolving from a shy, disrespectful Hobbit to an all powerful and righteous god.
Wait, that's not how it happens..
what? but gandalf isnt a hobbit.
Now I want that fanfic in LOTR.
@@DaggerPrince that's the joke I think
I think Jay would agree with you... WAIT. No. He hasn't seen it.
Basically all characters in Cowboy Bebop are static. They all have had their history and growth through it prior to the story, and the show focus on how those grown characters bounce on one another or is challenged.
It's one of the most beloved anime out there for many good reasons, one being, surprise surprise, the fun characters.
Character development is merely one of many tools for a writer to use in a given story. A character can be dynamic or static just like real life.
Thanks.. personally I hate character development now and then because it’s makes me feel guilty about myself and hateful I got Asperger so changing myself is very difficult and I don’t know always how to do that .. in a long time my favorite movie was The Big Lebowski because of that .. and I get it if you have a flawed it’s good too work on it but my good it’s takes effort and hard work and there is no guarantee that it’s works in the long run exempt if lucky too learn some skills or experience .. in my personal experience things should just work not saying it’s shouldn’t be challenging but it’s shouldn’t feel like you hit your head at the wall and hurt yourself because you don’t feel like it’s do what you want it to do..
character development ruins characters for me. some of the best characters stay the way they are. now character development is just characters changing their entire personality. most of the time character development is just character regression and badass decay.
@@greatapebroly don't you just love it when the writer takes away every interesting and unique aspect of your favorite character and everything that made you love them just to give them the same ones as every other uninteresting unnoticeable side character and everyone starts pretending the character is way more interesting now that the character development sticker was slapped on them?
Such astonishing writing skills
Makes me wanna play Russian roulette with a full cylinder
Yes, he be back
@Dog House *9 months
I can promise that he isn't.
I think when you said "good characters must be dynamic" even before you started to repute this opinion, my first thought was "Batman". Bruce Wayne is not gonna change in most Batman stories, he has a set of defined values and won't re-evaluate them... but his stories are still often great and entertaining.
Superman is a pretty good character that doesn't need to be changed all that much: He was raised right by good people with strong morals and uses his powers for the good of mankind.
Superman VS The Elite is a great film also to show that the internal debate on whether what hes doing is right or not (Basically why he doesn't kill) without forcing him to go through character development was amazing.
The Kingdom Come comic and All-Star are pretty good, too.
@@grandarkfang_1482 Oh yeah, totally!
Have you seen Literature Devil's recent video about this? ("Is Superman Still Relevant Today?") He covers a lot of the same things you're talking about here. I think you'll enjoy it.
@@CrazyChiv Oooooo I'll go watch that!
Even people raised right still have room to grow. I like Superman, but he's still not really human. Peter Parker is way more human of having amazing guardians, but still had a bit of a chip on his shoulder and needed to grow up.
It's been so long.
longman bad
Hey, stop fat-shaming the universe! He may have gained some volume, but he's no heavier than he was before. A healthy universe is curved.
But the universe is flat though.
Which is good too, no body shaming here ^^
@@nathanjora7627 Close call, I almost had to be outraged that you were flat-shaming the universe.
Blessed Froggold
Blessed Wolf will be so happy to see Fringy upload a video..... and yes he says the word we are all waiting for at 1:32
NOUGHHH
It's spelled, "Niooh."
I agree. In some stories it's perfectly fine if a character doesn't really change. It depends on what kind of story you're telling and in some cases a character changing can feel misplaced or even contradictory. There are also cases, like you said, where it's not necessary because the focus of the story isn't the characters changing but instead the world around them changing.
Rorschach from Watchmen is another good example of having a static character being a good character, Rorschach being static serves to the story and makes him a character who refuses to change and compromise.
The Return of The King.
I'm doin just fine; thanks for askin. As far as my size is concerned, I'm at the point in my life where I've come to accept that I'm just gonna get bigger and bigger until the light inside me slowly fades. Time makes fools of us all, I suppose. Great video, btw.
You make compelling points so I am inclined to agree with your stance. Well done.
This is the most non Internet thing I have ever heard
Welcome back, Kotter.
Character development is overrated only when those characters and their potential are wasted and no longer contribute to the story, like a bunch of stupid characters from Steven Universe. A lot of them were one-episode characters despite the creators saying, "no characters only have one-episode" which turned out to be a big fat lie.
Considering the show is a steaming pile as is that's not a surprise.
Lol. I just wrote a comment using them gems as an example too.
Interesting topic, good to have you back! My two cents would be that character development should happen only if it makes sense in the context of the story. Some characters may be young or inexperienced and more ripe to change. Some characters might've already had their developement prior to the beginning and their worldview is rigid. Honestly, there's propably no single thing that every story must do to be good. Best a writer can do is weave the story moment by moment, steering the characters towards interesting situations, but ultimately allowing those characters to act and think in a manner that makes the most sense for them. I've found that development comes naturally if it ought to come, almost by accident. At least that's the way I write.
Good Point. There are lot of good stories with static characters. Goblin Slayer is one. The protag, doesn't change in his convictions.
yes he does he grows more human like arnold in t2
@@fredriklandin So he stop to killing all Goblins? Lame. (Joke)
1:32 HE DID THE THING
Nough
Looong have I waited...
Holy cow this was a surprise! Loved this video Fringy! Can't wait to see more from you.
OMG THE FROG UPLOADED
I was just watching your old reviews yesterday. Glad to see you're back.
As for characters, Cartman is one of my favourites and I don't believe he changed much over the many seasons he's been around. I find a lot of the time the small changes, or even the characters learning from their original faults suddenly made them boring because it's like the writers didn't know what to do with them anymore.
Right now I can only think of Steven Universe with the original gems where they felt more toony and emotional at the beginning. They constantly aired their old grievances and reacted in different ways to all the new shit that came their way. However, when I got up to season 4 episode something, they suddenly felt like background characters as they became more grounded, and I didn't look forward to seeing them anymore.
i had waited for years for a video from fringy
Yay! You're back! I love your videos!
Oh my god, Fringy posted a video!!!
This is something that i've come to learn in recent years. It's fascinating because i thought the opposite for so long despite seeing so many films with static main characters. A friend just showed me the movie Snatch, which is almost exclusively filled with static characters and it's a fantastic film.
Welcome back Fringy!!
ps. NOUGH!
Nice video Fringy, always a pleasure to see new content from you. And I think that's a valid point to put out there; it's just so spoon-fed that a character has to change or have an arc of development, that questioning whether that's true or not is something not a lot of people (in the bigger picture of storytelling) seem to discuss or question.
And nough, I'm not gonna make a joke about you saying-...SHIT!
Another example Id use is Back to the Future (1985), specifically Marty McFly.
@ECKohns Sure, but thats in sequels in the original Marty doesn't really change all that much he's more the catalyst for change in other people.
I Hadn't watched your chanel before, but this is good! Keep 'er goin'!
I've never seen "character development" as synonymous with "character change".
I've always seen it as the story's development of this character. Like how a picture slowly forms and develops over the course of putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The picture is technically unchanging and static, but you just haven't seen all that it has to offer and all that there is. And that's often what I believe can make static characters compelling. Just watching them "unfold" and how they react in the heat of the moment. What informed their decisions was never something they changed to and was always inherent to their character. You just didn't know it was there until it was developed enough for it to be on screen.
See, this is why people should have Avatar the Last Airbender in their lives. You can always refer to it for pretty much anything when it comes to storytelling.
In this case, one word: Toph.
Or Iroh. Can't forget about Iroh.
tbf even toph becomes kinder and more mature. Iroh is probably the best example of a static character.
Hoollllyyy crap... Where the f have you been matey... Glad to have you back.
My fellow Australians.
Listen again to our legend
Of the Frogald!
Fringy uploading a new video? Maybe 2020 hasn't gone to complete hell after all.
Welcome back mate also what happen to your buzzfeed video I miss that
Wough, Fringy uploaded? I enjoyed this video, it really made me laugh. Come on EFAP again soon! We miss you.
I would bring up that there's the second interpretation of character development, which is something along the lines of simply providing the information that informs the character's actions and motivations, as well as giving perspective on more facets of a character. I do think you absolutely need character development, but more because there's more to it than just change, and its almost impossible not to have character development to some extent.
Great work.
YES! The king is back! 😁
NOUGH WAY, HE'S BACK?! pog
There are stories that don’t have character development like Rogue One, Halo Reach,Halo Combat evolved,and many other stories. And the specific examples I gave are still good stories. As long as they personally and some character traits, I would say they are still good characters.
Finally, Fringy is bloody back!
The dollars trilogy is a solid example of a character that doesn't change, but we as the audience know more about him because of the story of the movies.
Welcome back
HE RETURNS!
Finally, Fringy’s annual video is here
"Life is a comedy" oh Fringy you Joker you
Fringy uploaded a video? 2020 just keeps getting crazier.
This is actually something that I've had festering in the back of my head for a while. Thanks for articulating it pretty eloquently.
Holy shit its fringy!
Noooаu way, you're posting a video. Exciting stuff.
A good example of a static character is quark from deep space 9, he goes through many adventures and hardships and never really “develops” in the usual sense, what develops is the audience’s understanding of him and what he believes.
He becomes more fair to his employees. He also learns to respect Nog's decision to be a soldier and Rom becoming an engineer. He and Otto also gain mutual respect to another.
In general he learns to be altruistic which includes helping that Klingon woman.
HES BACK BABY
Finally
Frog man is back!!!!!!!
Great to see a new video😁😁❤👍 but Efap needs you😜
Welcome back fringold.
I'm sure there are plenty of side static character examples which can be found in stories, but I guess when it comes to the main character then it's a different story and would be something intered to explore.
One of my favorite examples of this is David Thewlis's character in the movie Naked
Excellent, and I agree!
Just because a character doesn't develop that much doesn't mean they're bad. The best example of this is Toph Beifong from ATLA, barely receives that much development but still widely loved
Yes! You are still alive!
RETURN OF THE KING
See you next year. Great video tho.
This is like waking up inside of the coffin
So is that all were gonna get until like 2022? I'm ok with that I'm just asking out of curiosity.
I've come up with a number of different rewrites for certain superhero and Star Wars films. In the process, I've learned that--in both big and microscopic ways--characters are almost constantly changing. Then again, this is technically only because of the state of constant evolution of the world around them. Even if the main character is still occasionally shocked or surprised by what the universe throws at him, I don't feel it's necessary to have him changed significantly by the end of the story. Rather, I feel it's more important to show how what he says and does throughout the journey makes perfect sense for a man in his position. Of course, it also helps a great deal to just have a main character that's genuinely interesting and fun to follow to begin with.
Batman in his Animated Series comes to mind; he goes through a LOT of messed up stuff in that show and has his own unique reactions to all of it, emotional or otherwise. No matter what, though, he's always Batman and he never really changes. And I'm fine with that.
I say less character development is less overrated and more misunderstood.
People seem to have the misconception that character development is a main character learning a life lesson and growing as a person, but that simply isn't true.
Look at characters like Batman, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Superman, neither of those characters really change throughout the course of their story, but they are still well loved characters. Character development is really how well realised and ranged a character is in their personality, like a characters actions can tell you a lot about them as a person or how they contrast with a supporting character and especially the villain.
I think the main point is that writers need to stop thinking there's some end-all-be-all design philosophy to guarantee a good character/ story. So much discussion among potential writers these days is dominated by figuring out how to adhere to some made-up rule that's really more of a general guideline to be used alongside a dozen others. It's how we get writers who think shocking the audience is always good, even if its an entirely unpleasant, outright offensive, and utterly nonsensical shock (such as, "Luke is a cowardly hermit now!"). It's how we get writers who think flawed characters are always good, even if they remain completely unlikable and morally repugnant for the whole story (such as, well, almost the entire cast of TLOU2). I've spent a lot of time in fantasy writing circles, and everyone was singularly focused on avoiding similarities to tolkien and middle-earth, which I've slowly come to see as utterly baffling; LOTR revolutionized fantasy as a genre and some 80yrs later is still running laps around even the best of modern fiction... maybe it's not automatically a good idea to just ignore it outright? Surely a little inspiration from tolkien isn't the end of the world?
The cold, hard truth is that the proper application of all these writing "rules" is always going to depend on the specific story. Because that's really hard to do, most people seem to drift into one of two extremes: adopting one or more rules as a functional commandment governing the whole story, or convincing themselves that there are no rules and everything is "subjective". Both strategies are recipes for failure; rigidly applying these guidelines to stories/ characters that don't work well with them will likely result in a story that seems confused and unfocused, just as attempting to craft a story with no guiding principles at all will likely result in a confusing, self-indulgent mess, as the writer naturally defaults to whatever they personally like in the absence of any external guidance.
There's all kinds of reasons to have a character, and all kinds of things you can do with them. Having them develop over a the course of a story is a good place to start because that fits in with the monomyth formula that seems to work all throughout history all over the world, but that's hardly the limit. You can have characters that are interesting precisely because they don't change, but their environment/ circumstances do, and the drama comes from seeing how that character will react in a new situation. One of my favorite book series is the Flashman novels: these are historical novels where 90% of the fun is in taking the main character (an unchanging coward, cheat, racist, lustful deviant and one-time struggle snuggler) and seeing how on earth he'll handle a particular historically-significant event or location, such as being in custer's charge or drawn into one of otto von bismark's political schemes. This works because the writing is absolutely brilliant in regards to putting Flashman in situations interesting to him specifically and coming up with creative and hilarious ways for him to navigate them.
I think we can really cut right through the BS and just say, "there's no magic formula to make writing good stories anything but a pain in the ass, embrace the suck or GTFO".
So he isn't just an imaginary character mauler brings on when needed... the legends were true.
Frongold just dropping a video with 0 warning, bless
the Simpsons (and similar) are like the comedy de arte. More or less established personnae are rolled out on ever changing sinarios, to see how the characters react, the play is done and the cast resets.
If I’m not wrong, I think one of the good examples of statistic characters are from Berserk. In that anime, there is Griffith’s crew which he sacrificed for his desires with Guts, Caska, Judeau etc.
But I will especially be talking about Judeau. He’s a good side character that has a goal and a past which didn’t mean to change. In one episode, he has told that he used to be a thief or something and didn’t really had something to do with his life, until Griffith took him and slightly changed the plot. I just think that he just helped the main character (Guts) to socialize with his friends when he was first recruited and it’s something to not be criticized. Good characters (especially side characters) should just have a goal but it’s not necessary to change them.
(And I’m sorry for my bad english, it’s still hard for me to form sentences)
He lives!
I personally don't care for character development at all. But great to have you back.
Somehow - even with me half paying attention to this video - this all makes sense to me.
Wow, I was surprised to see you on this video.
Welcome Back Firingodius Froglodyde!
Does this video indicate more videos on your channel in the near future?
If nough then can your videos be at only 8 months apart for now?
Bubsy and even Sonic seem to be right up your alley nowadays lol
1:33 - "Nough"
You've been gone longer than maluers entire videos watch time
Some one from before the disaster struck have been revived?
Frogald Croak is back!
Comic Books are great examples of static characters in plots making good narratives. They have fun stories that revolve around a number of characters and might develop one of them. The war of jokes and Riddles is a great example, Joker has a gang of super villains and so does the riddler, Kiteman (hell yeah) is stuck between the two and he is developed as a terrible robber who had his kid killed in the conflict. A forgettable joke of a character is developed into a sympathetic villain that doesn't give up on robbery even though it probably isn't the best for him. Although this character develops the cover characters Batman, Joker, Riddler they don't change and if all of them did you'd have a modern Marvel comic where they all die and turn into black, trans, super geniuses, that loooove selfies.
I agree. Many characters need change but others do not. For example, Sandman. I've heard the audible version and it was very good. Sandman doesn't really change over time. He reacts and adapts to situations but he doesn't grow. He doesn't change. He just is.
Good video.
I'm sure it makes sense, I was lost in thought; and rewind.
Holyfuck! Fring Daddy G uploaded?!?!
Static characters can be good, yes. Even a static protagonist is fine. There are genres/types of stories that *rely on* the protagonist not changing (see: tragedies). And, as you gave examples for, episodic comedies.
As for video games, the player avatar/character usually doesn't have to change (e.g. Gordon Freeman, The Rookie in Halo 3: ODST, Faith from Mirror's Edge), just be a vessel for us to traverse the game world and engage with it. These characters usually have a backstory though, so there is something to go off of, and perhaps use as a foundation for imagining what that kind of character would be thinking and how they would act in the situation we're playing as them in.
Often when the player character *does* change its in cutscenes and the change doesn't carry over to gameplay, which creates a disconnect between what the story is showing is in the cutscenes and what the story is showing us in gameplay (e.g. Tomb Raider 2013). And then you have games where the player character changes and this disconnect is absent (e.g. Geralt in The Witcher 3).
A character can stand strong without change if they have an interesting/compelling backstory, motivations, goals, plan, and/or personality. A static character who is competent and consistent is probably better than a character with an arc who changes for no discernible reason. (Although the latter could have been a much stronger character up until that point, and had way more screentime.)
What makes them interesting? A cool set of powers? Their vocation as an impressive burglar? Their endearing relationship with their friend/partner/rival/kid? Their costume and resources? What they do for a living? What they do as a hobby? Their incredible skill and conviction? That they do shady things so they can afford to do good and great things/help the sick, poor, and dying? That they're mysterious in how they act through their personality vs. how they act in their behaviour? That they will endure an incredible amount of pain to help others and/or achieve their dream? Etc. There's a lot of ways to write a character without changing their worldview or traits. (Heck, some characters are so unchanging even their *mood* doesn't change.)
this video made me think of a clockwork orange. alex is forced to change, bringing about a unique form of character development in which he really has no say over. in the end, has he really changed? and was it better for him to have changed unwillingly or to have willingly stayed the same? i think the movie could argue your point in that sometimes a forced change (in writing) can be so unnatural and illogical that it breaks all sense of immersion for myself and many others. its a shame many writers steer characters into inconsistent actions for the sake of this sort of "character development". sorry to beat a dead horse, but luke in the last jedi feels as if he was taken captive and forced into the character he was in that movie, although this time there is no irony and it isnt some sort of philosophical question. its just used in a cheap attempt to capitalize on emotions of the uninvolved narrative-coasters in the audience. i feel that some writers think a character has to change and a lot of consumers just go with it, perpetuating this assumption.
I think there's plenty of good stories where the character being static very much plays into that. Usually it's done in the form of the antagonists constantly finding ways to destroy the protagonists values e.g. batman and joker. You could possibly argue this is a development of it's own as the character renews their ideals and builds them higher. By the same token you could definitely write a plotline where Batman does end up abandoning said values, which isn't inherently bad either as long as it's done right.
This all segways into my next point that I think development tends to be a symptom of a good story as opposed to an element and so the correlation emerges. If something good is happening in your story odds are it will have impact on the character in some fashion. How they respond is up to the writer. Whether it makes sense is then in the audience's hands.
A character arc where the character doesn't change is called a Flat Character Arc. I can't be assed to go and look up more, but the gist of it is that unlike characters that either develop into better people, such as young protags like Frodo, Naruto, and others - or regress into worse people, like Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super, or Loki from the first Thor, a Flat Character would be more like Gandalf. Or Goku, also from Dragon Ball. Both are characters that are immensely important to the plot in which they reside, but don't change or grow beyond the superficial. They don't have to, because they don't have any misconceptions or falsehoods about themselves or the world that hold them back. Instead of changing themselves, a Flat Character will usually change the world and people around them. Gandalf mentoring Bilbo and Frodo, and guiding the Fellowship; or Goku and the countless people he befriends and just sort of picks up in his wake, inspiring them to improve themselves in the same way he seeks to improve himself.
Lovecraft wrote many great stories where the characters changed very little and aren't very defined. Pickman's Model, for instance, has a grand total of two characters -- the first-person narrator/protagonist and Pickman, and the protagonist's change is "I didn't know all this shit, now I do and I'm afraid of Pickman and subways". The only way characters change in The Dunwich Horror is that several of them die, and even the guy who actually investigates what's going on already understands what's up because he's well-versed in the Necronomicon already so nothing he discovers is a surprise to him.
So yeah you can absolutely have great stories with very static characters, and depending on the story they don't even need to be terribly well-defined, just enough for the plot to work -- they can be simple static archetypes.
Omgod frongold made a viedo, the world is about to come to an end! Where is the infinite wandering cod soldier?!
Well well well Mr Fringy, did you just say you don't nough?
Static characters are great in drama stories. I haven't laughed so hard since I've seen Batwoman.