Sometimes characters in stories end up in situations contrary to their character and I find three of the reasons why interesting. Sometimes the writer just puts them in there without a good excuse, and this is unsatisfying to me. "X would never do Y! What? Ugh." Other times, the writer is a genius and the person's involvement in the situation seems to have been naturally forced upon them from the start, though it may give them no pleasure. These are my favourites, when you can see, understand, and accept the causality which leads to the apparent incongruency. Then there are the completely contrived moments by the writer, which you can see are purely for the purpose of a specific plot, and where the contrivance even acknowledges the incongruency. Perhaps the character vocally protests the situation, but the contrivance compels them to participate in the situation anyway. I think it's the explicit acknowledgement that this doesn't blend with the character that makes this situation tolerable as opposed to characters misbehaving without context, diluting the credibility of their character.
I'm sometimes amused and sometimes annoyed by the third. In an anime I've started watching, a fairly serious samurai suffers it when his companions force him to surrender his swords into a pot of potential prizes so they can participate in a food eating contest. (They're quite hungry.)
Here are some potentially spoiling quotes:
Jin: I'm sorry, but I can't simply hand over the embodiment of a warrior's soul to--
*Mugen swipes Jin's swords and puts them into the pot*
Jin: Hey!
Jin: I am ashamed... Please... Win back my swords...
Jin: My swords...
Jin: Those swords are my life.
Food commentator Father Ingen: To hell with vegetarianism!
No comments:
Post a Comment