Characterization Marches On/Literature

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Examples of Characterization Marches On in Literature include:

Discworld

• In his first few appearances, (The Colour Of Magic, Sourcery) The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork was portrayed as an obese Bond Villain parody. However, by Guards! Guards!, he magically transforms into the thin, enigmatic, supremely manipulative Magnificent Bastard that we know today. (And no, it's not a different Patrician. Word of God states that it's the same guy, just written by an author who hadn't figured out what he wanted to do with the character yet.) The British Sky 1 television adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic rectifies this by casting Jeremy Irons as the Patrician as seen in the later books, complete with the tiny little dog mentioned in some of those novels.
  • Perhaps his time as a bug-eating lizard in Sourcery permanently cured him of his fondness for those fattening candied sea invertebrates?
  • Moreover, in Night Watch, we get to see the Patrician as a young man (Time Travel was involved), and he's just as enigmatic and manipulative as ever. So, not only did his characterization march on, but it was also been Ret Conned into always having been that way.
    • Although it is briefly mentioned in that book that every Patrician of Ankh-Morpork ends up becoming overweight. Vetinari just decided to become skinny afterwards.
    • Night Watch also takes place after Thief of Time, where time was shattered and history had to be restitched. This, and the fact that it goes on fairly regularly according to the History Monks, canonically explains every inconsistency in the series.

• Additionally, The Colour Of Magic portrays DEATH as actively causing deaths (not to mention speaking in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe), whereas later novels establish him as merely collecting the souls of the already dead.
  • Indeed, the very second book considerably softened his originally malevolent image.
  • This was because much of The Colour Of Magic was a more direct parody of the Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser series, where DEATH was an actively malevolent antagonist of the heroes.
  • Some sources claim that DEATH had only just come into his role at this point, and thus hadn't set upon his path quite. Also, Pterry is rather vocal about "alternate pasts".
  • It was made quite clear in Hogfather that anthropomorphic personifications who become too interested in humans start to resemble them. DEATH may have changed by becoming more involved in his study of humans.

• Rincewind was clearly a shadier character originally; his defining feature in The Colour Of Magic being more greed than cowardice (though he is clearly a coward). He even tries to outright fleece Twoflower and is stopped not because he felt guilty but because the Patrician forced him to look after the tourist.
  • This can be explained by the fact that Rincewind had a dangerous spell in his head which could potentially destroy the Disc. Once it left his head in The Light Fantastic, his personality may have changed back to what it was before the spell got in there.

• Ysabell is introduced as almost literally Ax Crazy in The Light Fantastic, making a serious attempt to kill both Twoflower and Rincewind. By her appearance in Mort she is much more a normal teenage girl, albeit one with several quirks from her upbringing.
  • She was a few years older then, so perhaps she just grew up.
  • Not possible; her aging was suspended as long as she was living in Death's house. But she might have matured a bit when she started reading in the hall of biographies, and got some vicarious experience of what normal life is like.

• The Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites is a much more humble figure than the one she would eventually become, to the point some readers thought that the author not referencing the unique main character of the story might have to do with an inability to make the original Granny realistically jibe with the current one.
  • She also gave the impression of having been around the block a few times in her youth.
  • Eskarina Smith came up in the book I Shall Wear Midnight, so she hasn't been dropped completely from the Discworld series.

Star Wars Expanded Universe

• In The Thrawn Trilogy, Grand Admiral Thrawn is a Magnificent Bastard who is slightly less cruel to his suboordinates than more famous Imperials, who plays mind games with his opponents, gets a slightly frightening amount of data from art, does not tell anyone his plans, and is pragmatic. That characterization holds true throughout. But just about every subsequent appearance of the man plays up his magnificence while minimizing any evil-ness. He was Affably Evil; he claimed to be helping his secret death commandos while poisoning their planet, he associated with Joruus C'baoth and promised to give him Leia and the twins, he lied and was going to torture Talon Karrde, and he was certainly not infallible. Very, very good, yes, but he could be taken off guard, he could lose, he could misread things or miss them altogether.
  • The Hand of Thrawn duology does not actually feature Thrawn himself, but his old Commander Contrarian Pellaeon regards his memory with a combination of admiration and awe, and believes that the various times that Thrawn ignored his protests and carried on with counter-intuitive plans were a form of teaching. But his reputation certainly could have fluffed up after he died.
  • And of course in Outbound Flight a younger and slightly more benevolent, almost Martial Pacifist Thrawn meets Jorus C'baoth - the original - and gets Force-Choked. He learns how to properly pronounce "Corellian" and that there is a word for striking first. In Survivors Quest he's been dead for thirteen years, and Luke and Mara both think of him with a kind of nervous awe. Mara, speculating that he's Back from the Dead for real, says that she didn't inquire too closely, since if he's back, he's not their enemy now. ...She would not have said that thirteen years ago. Partly this can be explained as Thrawn getting more jaded and pragmatic over the years, more willing to look past the means to the end.

• The early Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Splinter of the Minds Eye was written before The Empire Strikes Back. In it, Luke has a lightness and a sometimes silly nature which he lacks in later works. That can be chalked up to Character Development; he hasn't been through as much. However, this Luke is also a born liar with a Con Man's skill at weaving intricate, convincing explanations at the drop of a hat, and can even force himself to cry on command.

Others

• Erek from Animorphs is a robotic Actual Pacifist. Near the end of the series, the Animorphs have to blackmail him (by threatening to kill people if he doesn't help them) to get him to follow their plans. Which is fine, until you go back to his earlier appearances when he's very much intent on fighting the Yeerks and sees his nonviolence programming to be something of a hindrance (even after he decides that he doesn't want to experience the horror of actually taking part in fighting again). In #26 he deliberately withholds from the Animorphs information that would portray the Howlers in a more sympathetic light, which seems very out of character compared with his pacifist rants in the final book.
  • Keep in mind that the Howlers destroyed his creators, they are a special case. Erek is a bit of a hypocrite.
  • Part of the reason for Erek's change is that his pacifism was briefly disabled, allowing him to do a lot of things he came to very strongly regret.
  • What information does he withhold? If you mean the fact that they have the minds of children, I don't think he necessarily knew either--he downloaded some memories, but those just seemed to be recordings of the actual events.

• In PG Wodehouse's "Extricating Young Gussie", the short story that introduced the world to Jeeves and Wooster, Jeeves is a bit player with only one line. At one point, Bertie finds himself in trouble and acknowledges that he doesn't know who to go to for help. He doesn't consult Jeeves--something that would become unthinkable by the very next story, fittingly titled "Leave It to Jeeves".

• In the first Miss Marple book (Murder at the Vicarage) by Agatha Christie, Miss Marple was characterized as a nosy, bossy, rather unpleasant woman that the narrator of the story didn't like. Realizing that this character wouldn't stay very popular if she was kept like this in later books (and perhaps not wanting to have repeat the experience of disliking a protagonist, as she did with Hercule Poirot) Christie significantly toned down the character in later books.

• Supreme Commander Anatole Leonard of the Southern Cross segment of Robotech was depicted as a stubborn commander in the animated series. At worst, he was a poor strategist, preferring a "throw everything we've got at them" approach, rather than studying the enemy and vying for peace, like Rolf Emerson. However, the Jack McKinney novels turned Leonard into a obsessive, meglomaniac, religious fanatic with some weird BDSM fetishes. The Southern Cross did have fascist leanings, but facsist doesn't always mean evil. It's just another type of government. However, McKinney wrote the definitely evil General Edwards as having connections with Leonard. In the original Japanese Southern Cross (and to an extent, Robotech), Leonard was simply depicted as a dedicated, no-nonsense military man who had a difficult job in defending the planet and keeping a group of beauracrats and politicians satisfied. Additionally, the McKinney novels turned those beauracrats and politicians (including the Prime Minister) into Leonard's puppets.

• When Dr. Watson first meets Sherlock Holmes he is amazed at his ignorance about everything that doesn't pertain to crime. Holmes doesn't even know that the earth revolves around the sun. But as the series progresses this narrow characterization seems a bit unlikely. For example, in A Study In Scarlet, Watson lists Holmes' knowledge of philosophy as "nil," but Holmes frequently quotes philosophers in later works. In the same book, Watson muses that Holmes' temperance in all areas of his life precludes the possibility of drug use, but in later stories Holmes' frequent cocaine use became one of his defining characteristics.

• Happens a couple of times in The Wheel of Time especially when a character is introduced as being a typical member of a group before being portrayed as atypical of that group in later books. The most obvious is Darlin Sisnera who in his first appearance is portrayed as a borderline sadist who wants to flay Mat and Juilin for attacking the Stone of Tear, when he reappears he is noble, cares deeply for Tear and her people, and regrets forming the rebellion against Rand.