no, you should not analyze characters based on what they say about themselves.

[pocochina]

This was going to be my Grand Unified Theory of Character Motivations, but I think it bleeds a bit into an even bigger picture of how I generally analyze and evaluate fictional characters, which ended up making clear to me why I spend so much time groaning in frustration when something or other gets panned as being "OOC

Comments

[pocochina]

[re: the Lie]I would agree with all of that, I think, and yeah, I liked that he honed in on the stupid reason not to like Angel too. But even that I would kind of defend? Because I think that holding the stupid grudge was something that allowed him to (a) stay focused on the real danger to the group and (b) not get overwhelmed by how outmatched he was about the big stuff? Like, being jealous and irritable let him keep his eye on the ball but boil the whole thing down to a size that was psychologically manageable. That is okay! That is good! That is the self-protective, evolutionarily-advantageous REASON we as people do all of those things in our brains, functioning in exactly the way it should.

I also really want to lay stress on part (B), "Failure to account for irrationality." This is so bizarre to me, the extent to which fandom shows a complete lack of awareness of the irrationality of human emotional reaction and human behavior when analyzing characters. I don't get it.

Yeah. People really seem to be under the impression that being smarter than the character in question makes them look smarter than THE RITURRZZZZZ. Even when that character is KLAUS, ffs.

[pocochina]

I understand being frustrated with the discrepancy because you (the general you) felt it was ineptly conveyed at points--TBH I felt like that in the early seasons quite a bit--but I thought it was really comfortably obvious by S4, heh.

Yeah, that's fair. I think the show in the early seasons was a lot more...deconstructive of your usual vampire tropes, than actually constructive about itself? And so it was turning a lot of that cynicism outward. But by S4 that cynical eye is getting turned on its own characters and it's amazing.