Game of Thrones and the new Battlestar Galactica appear to me to have characters that are either shallow and/or conflicted by evil versus evil. Yet they are very popular and as far as I can tell, character driven. I was wondering what it means. One thought I had was that many people are interested in relationship conflicts and that the characters don’t need to be deep, they just need to reflect, between the main character cast, the personalities of the audience (as messed up as the audience might be).
I think the characterisation in BSG is actually surprisingly deep. Not that good characterisation always has to mean very complex characters: well-drawn simple characters can be very effective. But I think the personalities of the main characters in BSG are much more realistic and plausible than most of other things I’ve seen.
Can’t think of many evil vs. evil characters either. Many of the main characters are struggling with their place on the principle vs. pragmatism spectrum. In terms of ‘evil’ characters, there’s one I can think of who’s pretty much straightforward Freudian evil (totally evil, but somewhat justified psychologically) and one who just seems to not have ever obtained any ethics or indeed empathy at all, while only ever doing one noticeably evil thing that I can remember (as being without empathy doesn’t instantly make you mad axeman).
GoT, I dunno. Some of them are deeper than others. For a lot they just have widely divergent senses of good: they might just care about a single person, or about family, or about a grudge… But I have nothing against boldly drawn characters of that type, they can be very enjoyable to read.
Interesting point at the end about the personalities of the audience: if the ‘shallow’ or ‘evil vs. evil’ characters are capturing real, damaged personalities and plausible relationship conflicts, (and the BSG relationships are definitely plausible to me) then surely they’re doing something right?
Theres a difference between deep, well written and compelling characters. GoT and BSG gained praise for having well written/compelling characters, and particularly for making them realistic. A real person or a well written character may have a single overriding obsession that means they are not deep or complex, but are very compelling to watch. Conversely someone can be deep but dull (trivial example: composed of a hundred sub agents obsessed with different accounting standards).
I don’t think it is an indicator that the audience is messed up. I haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica but regarding Game of Thrones, if the boards are any indicator of the audience, then most people seem to root for the more morally acceptable (good) guys, and are disappointed that they keep getting screwed over. The show is also known for unexpected character deaths, so it could just be an indicator of the audience wanting to be surprised or in a state of suspense.
I may be biased as a big GoT fan.. but I think Martin does a fantastic job. The depth that many of his characters possess is very very impressive. He certainly seems to follow the many parts formula when it comes to characters like Stannis and Theon.
Many of the characters seem straightforward, but you could almost imagine each House as being an individual, and the members of each House as the “parts”, each with competing (but somewhat aligned) morals, goals, methods, etc.
Game of Thrones and the new Battlestar Galactica appear to me to have characters that are either shallow and/or conflicted by evil versus evil. Yet they are very popular and as far as I can tell, character driven. I was wondering what it means. One thought I had was that many people are interested in relationship conflicts and that the characters don’t need to be deep, they just need to reflect, between the main character cast, the personalities of the audience (as messed up as the audience might be).
I think the characterisation in BSG is actually surprisingly deep. Not that good characterisation always has to mean very complex characters: well-drawn simple characters can be very effective. But I think the personalities of the main characters in BSG are much more realistic and plausible than most of other things I’ve seen.
Can’t think of many evil vs. evil characters either. Many of the main characters are struggling with their place on the principle vs. pragmatism spectrum. In terms of ‘evil’ characters, there’s one I can think of who’s pretty much straightforward Freudian evil (totally evil, but somewhat justified psychologically) and one who just seems to not have ever obtained any ethics or indeed empathy at all, while only ever doing one noticeably evil thing that I can remember (as being without empathy doesn’t instantly make you mad axeman).
GoT, I dunno. Some of them are deeper than others. For a lot they just have widely divergent senses of good: they might just care about a single person, or about family, or about a grudge… But I have nothing against boldly drawn characters of that type, they can be very enjoyable to read.
Interesting point at the end about the personalities of the audience: if the ‘shallow’ or ‘evil vs. evil’ characters are capturing real, damaged personalities and plausible relationship conflicts, (and the BSG relationships are definitely plausible to me) then surely they’re doing something right?
Theres a difference between deep, well written and compelling characters. GoT and BSG gained praise for having well written/compelling characters, and particularly for making them realistic. A real person or a well written character may have a single overriding obsession that means they are not deep or complex, but are very compelling to watch. Conversely someone can be deep but dull (trivial example: composed of a hundred sub agents obsessed with different accounting standards).
I don’t think it is an indicator that the audience is messed up. I haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica but regarding Game of Thrones, if the boards are any indicator of the audience, then most people seem to root for the more morally acceptable (good) guys, and are disappointed that they keep getting screwed over. The show is also known for unexpected character deaths, so it could just be an indicator of the audience wanting to be surprised or in a state of suspense.
I may be biased as a big GoT fan.. but I think Martin does a fantastic job. The depth that many of his characters possess is very very impressive. He certainly seems to follow the many parts formula when it comes to characters like Stannis and Theon.
Many of the characters seem straightforward, but you could almost imagine each House as being an individual, and the members of each House as the “parts”, each with competing (but somewhat aligned) morals, goals, methods, etc.
That got me curious whether you consider Commander Adama more evil than good.