Character developments you weren't keen on.

[manic_depressive13]

Snape's development in Harry Potter was terrible. I liked it better when he was just a bitter asshole, but then they made it so his ultimate motivation was his "love" for Lily, which apparently he couldn't get over after ten years even though she ditched him to bang a guy who had spent most of his time bullying and humiliating Snape, despite them supposedly being friends. He went from being a vaguely interesting anti-hero to just being completely pathetic.

 

[AntiChri5]

I'd have to say Anders in Dragon Age 2. I got the DAO bundle pack which came with the what was it... Warden's Keep DLC? Eh the one where you have a castle and some cool side characters. Either way it was the first time I was introduced to Anders as a snarky, kind of world weary mage who just wants to get out from under the Templars and live however he damn well pleases. He was nice, if a bit prickly about some topics, and he liked kittens. All in all a pretty chill guy.

Aaaand then he goes nuts and decides the best way to show the templars that they shouldn't keep all the mages locked up, it to blow everyone to kingdom come. I don't hate DA2, but that was probably one of its biggest low points for me.

Andres in Awakening and Anders in Act 3 of DA2 are about ten years and a demonic melding away from each other.

Really, the whole point of his character arc in DA2 was that he was gradually losing himself, becoming less and less him with each day.

 

[Angie7F]

Penny in Big Bang Theory.
Well, most of the characters in Big Bang Theory, but Penny is the most irratating as of now.
She was sweet, dumb and innocent in season 1. Now she is just a dumb fat b@@@h

 

[FFP2]

Sophie from Leverage. She went from a woman of many mysteries to a skank by season 5.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Shinobu is the -Monogatari series is revealed in Kizu and Nisemonogatari to be a the haughty playful vampiress that anime has made into a common archtype.

I don't really mind that much, but I'm disappointed that she turned into that cliche.

Furthermore the protagonist's loyalty to Shinobu and his admiration for Hanekawa makes his love for girlfriend seem a bit lightweight by comparison.

 

[Esotera]

Basically everyone in Game of Thrones. It's a really good series but they seem to have so many characters that opportunities for development are spread much too thin to fit into one season.

Spoiler

And then they go and kill off major characters like Ed Stark which annoyed me to no end...

 

[Garyn Dakari]

Thor, from the movie Thor. In one scene about halfway through the movie, he finds out he can't get his powers back until he "Proves himself", or something, and in the very next scene, he proves himself and gets his powers back. That felt extremely rushed to me...The move would have been a lot better with at least ten minutes or so of more movie between those scenes. Other than that the movie was alright though.

And semi-related, I find Tony Stark's character development to be a bit annoying through the series...In the first movie he had this nice character arc, discovers humility, finds a purpose, ect. Then in Iron Man 2 he's pretty much back to the very start of all that, same in Avengers. From the IM3 trailer it looks like he's more like he was in the second half of IM1, though I probably shouldn't be making assumptions. Still a fun character, but his development feels off to me.

Hopefully that was all legible, I'm tired at the moment @_@

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Thor, from the movie Thor. In one scene about halfway through the movie, he finds out he can't get his powers back until he "Proves himself", or something, and in the very next scene, he proves himself and gets his powers back. That felt extremely rushed to me...The move would have been a lot better with at least ten minutes or so of more movie between those scenes. Other than that the movie was alright though.

And semi-related, I find Tony Stark's character development to be a bit annoying through the series...In the first movie he had this nice character arc, discovers humility, finds a purpose, ect. Then in Iron Man 2 he's pretty much back to the very start of all that, same in Avengers. From the IM3 trailer it looks like he's more like he was in the second half of IM1, though I probably shouldn't be making assumptions. Still a fun character, but his development feels off to me.

Hopefully that was all legible, I'm tired at the moment @_@

I agree with all your points.

The Iron Man films really do have a problem. It's fun to watch Tony be an arrogant asshole attimes, but that's become his only character trait over the past films. And his character development is not consistent at all as you say.

 

[Basement Cat]

I've been a fan of writer David Weber's Honor Harrington series since it first started. It's Horatio Hornblower meets Star Wars--space opera at its finest.


I met David Weber at a local book store in 2004 at a book signing. David writes a damn good yarn, but he's given into the same urge so many writers do by falling so much in love with his main character that he ended up "giving" her everything.


At first she was a simple common-born naval officer who'd worked her way up the ranks to be a star ship's captain.

That was then.

Now she's a Countess and a Duchess and a Grayson Steadholder--think ancient greek "Tyrant" in the title's original meaning and you'll get the idea...

She's a Fleet Admiral--in two star nation's navies. She's THE most highly decorated person in the entire Alliance...

She's the bestest/baddest/yadda-yadda'est...

She's also a genetically engineered super woman in a galaxy that turned away from eugenics which just coincidentally means that she's always superior to everyone else in one way or another.

In the most recent book it was revealed that--"Oh, by the way"--on her maternal side her relatives ARE LEGENDARY SCIENTIST/HEALERS AND PLANETARY OLIGARCHICAL POWER PLAYERS...ugh!

David Weber even married her off to his 'author's surrogate' in the series--and in the most lame and molly-gutsing manner possible.

NOTE: I cringe every time Weber tries to do romance. He's right up there with George Lucas...yeah, painful to even think of, isn't it.

I still read the series, but mostly because he's forced himself into a corner where he has to develop lots of other characters because he's made his main character so much a Living Goddess there's practically no room for character growth or plot tension.

He's turned the series' main character into his own personal Mary Sue.

*sigh*

 

[Vault101]

Snape's development in Harry Potter was terrible. I liked it better when he was just a bitter asshole, but then they made it so his ultimate motivation was his "love" for Lily, which apparently he couldn't get over after ten years even though she ditched him to bang a guy who had spent most of his time bullying and humiliating Snape, despite them supposedly being friends. He went from being a vaguely interesting anti-hero to just being completely pathetic.

I'm a bit rusty on my harry potter but mabye Snape knew overall that Voldemort wasn't exactly the best idea for the future leadership of wizard kind (you'd have to pretty much be the guys ***** for ever and hang with his loony fangirls/fanboys) and protecting lillys kid begrudgingly out of respect for her memory isn't that much of a stretch..

Penny in Big Bang Theory.
Well, most of the characters in Big Bang Theory, but Penny is the most irratating as of now.
She was sweet, dumb and innocent in season 1. Now she is just a dumb fat b@@@h

did she actually gain weight?

 

[The Wykydtron]

I have to go with Suzaku in Code Geass. He was a guy you could understand as the more restrained and reasonable counterpart to Lelouch's extremist "fuck you, This world is over" mentality

He then goes fucking mental in R2 where nothing he says or does makes any sense at all. It goes from the double protagonists that are mirror images of each other (think similar to Death Note) to Suzaku being this unlikable, unreasonable, suicidal, insane, pathetic excuse of a man.

He has no idea what to do compared to Lelouch. Lulu always comes up with a plan, even if it is a rushed non-thought out one. Suzaku just flops around fighting because he can do nothing else and he's in too deep.

Like, why is he still clinging to Britannia? At all? They've shown time and again that they give zero fucks about him or his goals and aren't looking to change. They're also just straight up dicks.

I would class him as someone I love to hate though, if he actually said something reasonable in R2 it would have totally ruined it for me :3

Oh and Apollo Justice. Phoenix Wright. Fuck. Thank god he's looking slick as ever in the AA5 trailer, I was worried there for a while Capcom... Now let's see if he goes an entire game without turning to Mia for assistance. It was kinda explicitly stated and implied that he's now a bad enough dude to save the clients on his own at the end of his character arc in T&T.

I adore the character arcs in the original trilogy. Edgeworth's kinda tapped out early, with it basically being unmoving after the second game and his extreme mentality towards winning lasted all of one and a half cases but still. Investigations is still awesome by the way.

Now i'm not even sure if I like Apollo in general, he's ok I guess... Klavier and the new Ema Skye on the other hand are both awesome. Lacklustre main character for two badass supporting characters. Fair enough.

 

[Silly Hats]

This can be in a book, game, film, show, whatever. Characters that when they changed, you found them less likable/entertaining.

For me, I'd have to say Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother. I still love the show to death, but Ted is a little irritating.

He's still Barney's foil (less so, I guess as they're really starting to want the same things) but I guess I preferred him when he was fulfilling that role by being down to earth and sardonic, whereas Barney was/is cheery, absurd and womanizing. I find him distinctly less entertaining as an ex-hipster/nerd, rather effeminate individual. It's also slightly jarring that his future narrator persona seems to have more in common with the original Ted than how he's become.

Kind of agree, though my favourite HIMYM episodes are the more Depressing ones. I think they should have refined the shows series to about 5 seasons (oh right, I know why)

 

[Traun]

For TV shows, Lyta from Babylon 5, in the fifth season. I was sympathetic towards the plight of the rogue telepaths up until the Byron story arc. By the end I felt myself more sympathetic towards Psycorps than the telepath underground. Bester and his thugs were horrible, horrible people, but the actions of Lyta and Byron's terrorist cult validated the reasons that psycorps was created in the first place. It's bad writing when Bester comes off looking better than the 'good guys'.

Um...that was the point of Byron and his people.

 

[Lionsfan]

I really really hated the turn JD took on Scrubs, pretty much that whole show pissed me off near the end, but he's the largest example.

He went from being a normal guy with some father-figure issues, and a little bit of a wimp, to a girly-girl "sensi" who can't handle more than one or two appletini's, and craving anything from Dr. Cox

Yeah, I know what you mean. That's basically what I'm pissed they did to Ted, as I mentioned in the OP.

Without delving too far into tropeland, it's called Flanderization, and it absolutely ruins characters on shows that last longer than like 4 seasons. They take the one thing that everybody knows about the character (or that they can market the best) and just over exaggerate it; if a show runs on for too long *cough cough*Scrubs*cough cough*HIMYM*cough cough*, then the characters are almost parodies of themselves by the end of it.

Winston Rowntree from Subnormality had a strip about it:

 

[The Funslinger]

I really really hated the turn JD took on Scrubs, pretty much that whole show pissed me off near the end, but he's the largest example.

He went from being a normal guy with some father-figure issues, and a little bit of a wimp, to a girly-girl "sensi" who can't handle more than one or two appletini's, and craving anything from Dr. Cox

Yeah, I know what you mean. That's basically what I'm pissed they did to Ted, as I mentioned in the OP.

Without delving too far into tropeland, it's called Flanderization, and it absolutely ruins characters on shows that last longer than like 4 seasons. They take the one thing that everybody knows about the character (or that they can market the best) and just over exaggerate it; if a show runs on for too long *cough cough*Scrubs*cough cough*HIMYM*cough cough*, then the characters are almost parodies of themselves by the end of it.

Winston Rowntree from Subnormality had a strip about it:

I'm sure the strip's very interesting.

But the image is broken. Sucks, because I wanted to read it

 

[Lionsfan]

I really really hated the turn JD took on Scrubs, pretty much that whole show pissed me off near the end, but he's the largest example.

He went from being a normal guy with some father-figure issues, and a little bit of a wimp, to a girly-girl "sensi" who can't handle more than one or two appletini's, and craving anything from Dr. Cox

Yeah, I know what you mean. That's basically what I'm pissed they did to Ted, as I mentioned in the OP.

Without delving too far into tropeland, it's called Flanderization, and it absolutely ruins characters on shows that last longer than like 4 seasons. They take the one thing that everybody knows about the character (or that they can market the best) and just over exaggerate it; if a show runs on for too long *cough cough*Scrubs*cough cough*HIMYM*cough cough*, then the characters are almost parodies of themselves by the end of it.

Winston Rowntree from Subnormality had a strip about it:


I'm sure the strip's very interesting.

But the image is broken. Sucks, because I wanted to read it

Damn, well here's the link for it [http://www.cracked.com/article_18741_the-evolution-fictional-characters-by-medium-5Bcomic5D.html], and it's not one of his too many words comics, just a little thing he did for Cracked, but it's still valid

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The only ones I can think of right now are Caska from Berserk and Harry Potter. After Caska had her... umm... big poon-tang with a bunch of demons she was practically reduced to minor sidekick and occasional comic relief from being the main female character of the story. It didn't make her less likable IMO, but at the moment she's practically just a tag-along or a plot device.

I simply can't bear Harry in Order of the Phoenix. The change from the ending of Goblet of Fire to the beginning of OOTP is simply too much. He's just a cliche teenage boy who yells at everything and throws a hissy fit if his porridge isn't warm enough. Good thing that his teen angst lasted only for one book, which I consider one of the weaker parts of the series anyway.

 

[Estelindis]

Quinn Fabray in Glee. It was as if the writers alternately kept forgetting 1) that she was there and 2) what they'd already done with her.