I haven’t really shared that many Clyde/Gregorio scenes. It’s tough to find Gregorio scenes in general too. Here’s a fun one from War of Nytefall: Lost.
I was watching the newest season of a television show months ago and something was gnawing at me. It was irking me through most of the episodes I was binging. Didn’t realize what the problem was until I got halfway through. The characters kept throwing away all of their growth. What do I mean by that?
Say you have two characters who are rivals at the beginning of a story. They battle in various arenas, drag others into their issues, and even come close to killing one another at least once. Eventually, they grow out of this mentality and learn to respect each other in time to face a shared enemy. Makes for a great story and now you have a new source of tension. There may be some verbal sniping at times, but certain events have made them become friends . . . Only they will randomly start fighting due to a contrived misunderstanding and then go back to being friends after they realize the mistake. Not only once, but it happens repeatedly.
Now, I admit that heated rivalries bring a great sense of drama, especially if both characters can be seen as ‘right’. The readers will take sides and neither will be wrong because there isn’t a clear hero or villain. This tension goes away when the characters become friends, but it can still be sparked a bit at times. It really shouldn’t go back to the old ways without a really good reason though. A lot of stories use ridiculous misunderstandings that could be solved by communication. Not only with the two characters, but with those watching who would realize what’s going on. It becomes frustrating to see this happen after previous adventures and sure signs of growth.
To be clear, this is different than the ‘dumb decisions’ made in stories by characters who lack knowledge, haven’t matured, or the readers just meet. This is about established characters who we have seen grow and leave their immature natures behind, but will randomly jump backwards for drama. It’s not only teenagers too. The show that triggered the post had most of the adults doing this as well. Multiple seasons of learning to communicate and grow seemed to get junked whenever the writers wanted to throw some drama into the mix.
Years ago, I would think this type of rollback would be a big criticism, but I don’t see many people complaining about it. My best guess is that the rise in people have shorter memories allows many authors to get away with this mistake. With shows and movies, a lot of time passes between seasons, so people won’t remember the growth unless they binge from the start every time new episodes come out. That’s not helpful either because binging doesn’t guarantee a person will absorb everything that happens. So, a momentary rollback of a silly misunderstanding can go unnoticed even if such a thing occurs every other episode. Guess the days of such inconsistency is gone and people are taking advantage of it.
Personally, this drives me nuts if it happens too often. I can accept an occasional rollback to immaturity if the situation is set up correctly. A character might not be fully mature or they might have a sudden distrust due to a mistake. It’s fairly easy to set up such an event, but you can’t have it happen routinely. What’s the point of these characters growing in the first place if the maturity never completely sticks? So, I start to lose interest in a character who wants to go backwards without reason.
What do you think about sudden rollbacks of character growth?
First, the pumpkin toadlet is not considered endangered. It’s a toad found in South America and is less than an inch long. They are a bright-yellow orange because they possess a neurotoxin. These toads skip the tadpole stage too and are born as very small toadlets. All very interesting information, but rather tame. So, why did I want to do a post about them?
Well, the pumpkin toadlet has underdeveloped ears, so it can’t hear it’s own calls. They have to communicate through motions of their throat sac and arms. It’s believed they have actually evolved to not really need the sounds and still do it because they haven’t gotten rid of the ability completely. Loud noises can lead to them being discovered by predators, so better to be silent.
Pretty cool, but still not the reason I picked them for a post. 😀
Nope . . . Here is why I chose them:
Yeah. They can jump, but are terrible at landing. At least they keep trying.
This past week didn’t start off really well, especially if you decipher the title. So, I can’t say I made much in the way of progress.
So, I made it through work on Monday and was home helping my son with homework. I leaned against the wall and my feet started to slide forward. Being in socks, I couldn’t stop myself, so I grabbed the chair in front of me. That slid forward and under the table, which pulled me down. I had my phone in one hand and the heavy chair in another, so I couldn’t protect my head. The chair landed on me too, so my back, shoulders, and neck were in rough shape for about 24 hours. Worse was that the blow to the back of my head was enough to give me a mild concussion. I had to take two days off of work and did my best to take it easy the other two.
Tuesday was the worst because all I could do was rest in bed after doing some necessary shopping. I had to rest up to get my son and spend time with him since I won’t see him again until Wednesday night. I couldn’t even watch TV or use my phone for long without getting a headache. Even the white of the paper that my book was printed on was hard to work with, so I’m still trying to finish chapter 1 of Darwin & the Beast Collector. By Wednesday, I was able to walk outside for an hour before feeling any fatigue, so I’m able to work now.
All of that being said, the real drain was me getting stressed out and there were a few things that emotionally knocked me down. One of them resolved on a high note and the other is now a potential issue that I can’t do anything about. So, this hasn’t been a great week and I can’t even talk about most of it.
There were two really good things on Thursday and Friday though. I got to go out with some of my students on Thursday, which I typically don’t get to do. This meant I had time to talk to one who I worked with a lot for two years, but now I don’t get to interact with as often. Missed talking about nerd culture, the future, and just random stuff even though my scrambled brain made it hard to keep up at times. For Friday, I worked with another student that I don’t get to work every day and it was a fun, nice way to end a really rough week. I definitely needed all of the positivity after the concussion and a personal disaster that I need to stop dwelling on.
With all of that, I’m stepping into Winter Break, which means sleeping in for the next 9 days. Then, it’s about 7.5 weeks with a day off. I’m going to try my best to get at least 5 chapters of Darwin & the Beast Collector done before my son is with me. It’s freezing and gross out all week, which means I can’t do much in the way of Pokemon Go. The only real event with a time table is today from 2-5 and I won’t be out there for the whole thing since I’m saving money. Sunday through Wednesday can simply be a single trip to the mall for 30-40 minutes of Pokemon then editing for the rest of the day. Even when my son is here, I might do some work since he wants to work on his drawing. Guess there is a benefit to having miserable weather, but at least it’s getting out of the way this week and not the one after.
Can’t think of anything else that I did . . . Well, there was the Super Bowl party, but I lost interest in the game fairly quickly. It’s amazing how some injuries pretty much put everything on pause. Then again, it was my brain and most of my goals involved some exertion and thinking. Didn’t even get to the April blog posts, which I should work on a bit next week. Can I get them all done? Probably not, but I’m going to slip them in when I need an editing break.
You know, I’m just going to dive right into the questions. I mean, I’ve made a post about fallen apprentices and another about hubris. Covers the topic pretty well for only having a week to do so.
If you were a teacher, how would you protect your apprentice from hubris?
What is a personality trait that can prevent a apprentice from falling?
How would you handle anyone who suffers from hubris, egotism, or narcissism?
Legends of Windemere 