7/2/20 - Favourite Character Praise Friday WITH A TWIST: Ross Geller

Hello everyone! As today is the tenth instalment of Favourite Character Praise Friday since the conclusion of my hiatus, today is the next of many LEAST Favourite Character Praise Fridays. For those that are unfamiliar with me and my content, every ten weeks / five instalments of Favourite Character Praise Friday, I will diverge from my standard practice, where I pick apart my favourite characters and the ones I adore more than anything, so I can challenge myself and explore why the characters I loathe are also brilliant. You can always learn a lot from the characters you hate because they tend to be hated for a reason, and just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean that they’re not somebody else’s favourite character too. Despite finding it much harder to see the good in characters I hate, it is a lot of fun to pick a character apart.

So, who am I picking apart today?

A rather controversial character to dislike – Ross Geller from Friends, The TV Show!

Warning, the following will contains spoilers from all ten seasons of Friends!

Now, a disclaimer before I begin. Friends is a show that has been a part of my life since I was quite young. I remember watching it when I was like nine because it was on TV. I always really enjoyed watching it, and it was something I could just unwind and relax, watching, and let all of time just slip past me.

When I was fifteen, I was gifted with all ten seasons on DVD and I remember, when we moved house, the following week, we spent every waking moment of the day, watching friends on the TV. We burned through ten seasons in three weeks and were left, unsure of what to do with our lives in hindsight.

I have been watching it on-off, sometimes because it is the only thing on the TV that I’ll happily have on in the background. When compared to most other daytime TV shows, knowing there’s always the welcome comfort of Friends on hand was reassuring.

Even now, it occasionally goes on in the background, to provide a soundtrack to my day. It’s a familiar comfort when you live with anxiety, knowing that there’ll be a welcome distraction available if you just change the channel.

I’ll be the first to admit that, with all of this in mind, I probably do sound like slightly more than a casual fan. But I am the first to say that my interest in it has slowly fizzled out, just because I know what’s going to happen in every other episode, thanks to my childhood and early-teen years being fixated with these people and their amazing lives, and seeing how it all unfolds relatively easily for each of the characters.

So, before I start laying into Ross, in particular, I would like to acknowledge something. Because I have had similar discussions at university and it always seems to be brought up as a counter-argument:

Something that is really important is that character development is done subtly. This means that a casual viewer, that is watching the show our of order would still be able to recognise the character from its core traits. With Friends, considering how long the series has run, it would be impossible to completely stagnate the way the characters behave and interact, otherwise there is no way that the show would have been as successful and have run for so long, still being loved for twenty five years after its initial debut.

Character development in Friends was done through looking at parts of the characters and their relationships that would make sense to be stretched out. For example, the Ross and Rachel back and forth which took place consistently throughout the seasons, as well as how Monica and Chandler ended up in a relationship. The way that Chandler felt about Monica was discussed at as early as season three, where he began to make declarations that he would be her boyfriend if nobody else would. However, there were hints that they were quite close friends from the start of the show considering the way they interacted. Most of their banter toward the start consisted of jabs and jibes about their former relationships, particularly when they were single. There is always a small glimpser that there was a bit of romantic tension between them, and thus, at the end of season four, when Chandler and Monica sleep together, and any subsequent episode, you can see that their dynamic hasn’t changed too much, even though they are now in a romantic relationship. They still make comments about people they find attractive, even in the other’s company.

In short, sitcoms can’t have dramatic character development for the reason that they don’t want to detract the casual viewer from coming back to the show when they can, because the characters are so different.

This does, influence my perception of Ross’ character. It’s easy enough to criticise the way he is due to his lack of a capacity to change his behaviour, but if he was able to change that drastically, then it could impair the viewership. Changes with Ross, or any of the characters, were usually short-lived and took place within the space of one episode. Like when Ross made a New Year’s Resolution to do a new thing every day, and ended up changing up his image by buying a pair of leather pants. The same way that Chandler and Ross make a fifty-dollar-bet that he can’t go a without insulting his friends.

But, let’s get to the analysis.

Let’s start with why I dislike Ross. There are reasons why he’s in this segment instead of its partner.

I feel like Ross was one of those characters that could have been fantastic. You can see from the way he is quick to jump into new relationships that he struggles to validate himself, and, in a sense, does need someone there to reassure him that he’s on the right track, or doing the right thing. This is demonstrated from the get go in the immediate response to his marital breakdown with Carol. He expresses in Season One, that he felt that everything was okay, and that finding out that she didn’t agree and she couldn’t stay married to him was devastating. He couldn’t necessarily fault her in the sense of not wanting to try and make things work, which probably made things worse for him; after all she was cheating on him, and was in love with “the other woman”, Susan. After that point, he is struggles to pick himself back up. This is understandable, but for the sake of plot progression he quickly ends up fixating on the romantic feelings he once had for Rachel, who suddenly came back into his life. He let those emotions take over and when he eventually ended up with Rachel, he seemed a lot more stable in himself. Had the “we were on a break” thing not happened, I reckon that they would have stayed together for much longer. After all, Ross and Rachel’s relationship was incredibly strong at the start – with their arguments being real and easy to access as a consumer. However, TV drama and tension requires exaggerated reactions every once in a while, and thus the Ross and Rachel saga begins, from Season Three up until the Series Finale in Season Ten, they are constantly in a back and forth, trying to best each other, whilst not coping with their issues. The trait that is basically to his detriment is that desperation for validation that lead him to cheat on Rachel with the girl from the Copy Shop.

Another reason I dislike him is due to his character being presented as a serial monogamist, instead of his issues being handled properly. His divorce lawyer even makes quips about Ross being so quick to marry. It is shown in several instances that he has issues with commitment. He enjoys being married, he enjoyed the comfort and security of that relationship and has since ended up trapped in a cycle of it always being too soon, in one way, shape or form. When he married Emily, he hadn’t sorted out his issues with Rachel and ended up saying the wrong name at the altar. He ruins the opportunity to go onward and enjoy a happy life with her, because of this mistake and it is repeated several times for dramatic and comedic effects. Ross was still hung up on his breakup with Rachel when he got in a relationship with Emily and in his whirlwind romance, didn’t think of the consequences until Rachel was right there at his wedding, all of a sudden. Then, the second time he got married in the show, it was under even more dramatic circumstances. He and Rachel, his on-off romantic interest for several seasons got drunk in Las Vegas and ended up getting married. Ross is shown in many relationships between these marriages, never really taking time to enjoy life as a bachelor. Instead, he fixates on this blissful life he once had, that he once enjoyed and constantly strives to achieve it again. His fatal flaw is being so quick to commit to relationships and immediately wanting to spend his life with people, instead of giving himself the opportunity to adjust to the breakdown of one relationship. This wouldn’t be a problem, so to say, if his character wasn’t as fixated on commitment as he is. In short, instead of the sitcom focusing on the deeper problems, that could have still been poked fun at, Ross is just made out to be obsessed with marriage.

The last reason that makes me dislike Ross as a character is the way that he refuses to acknowledge his own hypocrisy. During Season Eight, when, after a one-night-stand, Rachel falls pregnant with Ross’ child. During her pregnancy, Ross resents Rachel for still having a romantic life, going to the lengths of hiding messages he took for her. Even though they didn’t discuss re-establishing their romantic relationship. However, during that period, Ross feels perfectly comfortable to start dating Mona for an extended period, during which, he neglects her own boundaries and constantly leaves her waiting for him when he won’t show up. Yet she is never shown to do the same thing back. Worst of all, in that period, he allowed Rachel to move in with him without telling her. Dishonesty, is a common trait of Ross’ character, where he will lie in order to deflect the severity of the situation he has found himself in. The fact that he never actively takes responsibility for the things he does is a negative character trait which is hard to find endearing as a viewer.

Of course, Ross, like all of the other characters, has reasons to be liked: he is diligent in the pursuit of his career, passionate enough about palaeontology to end up as a tenured professor at NYU, a distinguished position, despite his shortcoming in his role, like dating a student and not failing students because they claimed to be in love with him, he clearly did a good job and was very knowledgeable.

There are many things that I would love to discuss here about Ross, particularly with his issues. If I do end up making follow up posts, do expect to see them linked at the foot of this post!

Please, if you have opinions on Ross Geller, feel free to share them with me! Don’t forget you can check out my previous Character Praise by looking through the hashtags below.

And remember!

Per Aruda Ad Astra!

29/11/19 - Favourite Character Praise Friday WITH A TWIST - Light Turner

Hello everyone! As today is the fifth instalment of Favourite Character Praise Friday since the conclusion of my hiatus, today is the first of many LEAST Favourite Character Praise Fridays. For those that are unfamiliar with me and my content, every ten weeks / five instalments of Favourite Character Praise Friday, I will diverge from my standard practice, where I pick apart my favourite characters and the ones I adore more than anything, so I can challenge myself and explore why the characters I loathe are also brilliant. You can always learn a lot from the characters you hate because they tend to be hated for a reason, and just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean that they’re not somebody else’s favourite character too. Despite finding it much harder to see the good in characters I hate, it is a lot of fun to pick a character apart.

Without further ado, let’s get on with the praise! So, who is the first character I’m analysing for Least Favourite Character Praise Friday – post-hiatus?

Light Turner from the Netflix Live-Action Adaptation of Death Note.

So, I guess it is worth mentioning the reason I dislike him as a character first of all. I will admit that my reasons in this instance are superficial: I am a huge fan of the original source material, and have been since I was fifteen years old. Death Note has been one of those series’ that I can revisit numerous times and always find something new to take out of it – and is the show I have re-watched the most, with my having watched it seven times in the seven years I’ve been a fan of it. Whoops?

In essence, the reason I don’t like Light Turner is because of how different he is from Light Yagami, the main character from the original source material. This sounds childish, but when it was announced that characters from the original: ie, Light, L, Ryuk and Misa would be making an appearance in the Netflix live action I was looking forward to seeing how they would adapt Light’s status as one of the most popular guys in school to a western audience. In short, they didn’t, instead deciding to make his intelligence part of the issue; he’s too smart for his own good. Most of my negative opinions toward Light Turner derive from the fact I was disappointed with the adaptation of the source material, hoping to see it as part of the extended franchise, as opposed to a spin-off adaptation.

However, when conducting analysis, despite how hard it was, I did do my best to look at Light Turner as a character in a film which happens to be similar to the story of Death Note. Splitting the film from the source material made it easier to see why people who watched the film actually did like Light Turner, some of my friends being some of the fans.

Learning from the Netflix Adaptation of Light Turner wasn’t as hard as I was expecting, as taking away the overarching feelings I had about him made it easier to pick him apart without comparing to Light Yagami.

The first thing that I noticed about Light Turner, which does tend to come up in comparison to Light Yagami is his supposed lack of intelligence. This was something I knew would probably come up in my analysis of the film and his character as, at a glance, he seems nowhere near as clever as- his namesake. This is due to the prolonged nature of the Death Note manga and its subsequent anime. With the anime spanning 37 episodes, there is plenty of time to establish how smart and tactical of a person he is. Light Yagami is known for his analytical prowess and is renowned for immense academic potential, coming top of his class and grade at different points of the show with reference to academic performance. In the anime its stated in the college address that he acquired a perfect score in all his entrance exams. With the Netflix film only being an hour and half long, it was much harder to put that much emphasis on his intelligence into the story. Instead of being able to outshine his classmates like Light Yagami did, Light Turner comes into his own, by monopolising his intellect by making a business out of doing at least fifteen different student’s homework for them. This likely made him a significant income. Admittedly, this is the only instance where his academic intelligence is demonstrated, and it is easily overshadowed by the subsequent gore and drama that comes into play throughout the rest of the film. However, he is not completely inept when it comes to one of the other ways that Light Yagami shone when it came to cleverness. He, like his predecessor, is quite good at manipulating other people, even when he’s in a pinch. Light Yagami is best known for using his charm, good looks and cleverness to win over admirers, primarily Misa Amane and Takada Kyomi. Once he has them at his disposal, he does not hesitate to allow these women to act as his pawns, using them to do his bidding when he is unable. This is more prevalent by how he fakes a romantic relationship with Misa for six years in order to get her to act on his behalf as Kira without suspicion. But Light Turner also anticipates to actions of Mia Sutton, the live action adapted Misa. After finding out that she put his name in the Death Note with very little information as to how he would die, he knew exactly how he could outsmart her and stay alive. Knowing exactly what she had commanded of the death note, he orchestrates a police-chase, the collapse of a ferris wheel and the pair plunging to their supposed deaths. The fact that he knew as soon as he’d seen what she’d written, that he could get her to die, and had no issue does so, was a great demonstration of his cleverness. This level of manipulation is very interesting and would very fun to implement in future works of mine. I would love to give it a go someday.

One part of Light Turner’s character, which him appear more justified was the murder of his mother and the fact that the person who killed her was acquitted. His emotional wellbeing was evidently compromised, as well as his mental capacity. Despite appearing fine, he was very clearly in distress, and once he understands what he has the power to do, he does not hesitate to be brutal in his murders. He has the man that killed his mother stab himself in the throat with steak knife. This murder, unlike the murder of Kenny, his first victim, is premeditated and done, not as a test, like the decapitation of his classmate, with intentional malice toward him. It is clear through this that he, unlike his predecessor, is not a murderer due to a god-complex, but is instead killing for the sake of power, something he felt he lost when he lost his mother. He is quick to be manipulated by Mia Sutton in this instance as he longs for companionship, something Yagami Light was not short of at any point. I feel that his circumstances make him a better character as the audience initially pities him for his circumstances.

Another interesting and likeable part of Light Turner’s character, is that he, despite being a mass murderer, had a much more complicated sense of emotional distress. When Sochiro Yagami is killed due to Light being Kira, he shows little inward upset, later even calling his late-father a fool for fighting for justice in the way he did. However, when James Turner, Light Turner’s father calls Kira out on TV, baiting him to strike him down, it is Light who refuses to allow Mia to kill him. Where Light Yagami was cold and strategic, he knew that his father’s death could incriminate him and thus attempted to avoid scenarios where he would have to kill him, but when the time came, he had no remorse for his actions leading his father to an early grave. However Light Turner breaks up with Mia for her immediately declaring she has to kill him. Her fear of the consequences of her actions leads to Light being significantly more emotional. He doesn’t want to lose his father and end up in the foster system at aged seventeen. His ability to feel this way is much easier to empathise with than the way Light Yagami felt about his family, who he all ended up regarding as disposable. I found that this makes him a much more empathetic character and I would very much love to try and write a character like that someday, as all of the murderers in my original works have been stone, cold, psychopaths.

Ultimately, I still very much prefer Light Yagami as a character but cannot fault the way that Light Turner acts considering his own circumstances, and despite my dislike of the film, his character is not inherently flawed, it is only if you go into it, as I did initially, with immense loyalty to the source material, that you will dislike him. He acts reasonably considering the scenario he is put into and thus is a good antagonistic character to be the focus of a film such as Netflix’s adaptation of Death Note.

Please, if you have opinions on Light Turner, feel free to share them with me! Don’t forget you can check out my previous Character Praise by looking through the hashtags below.

And remember!

Per Aruda Ad Astra!

18/5/18 - Favourite Character Praise Friday WITH A TWIST

Today, 9/3/18 is the tenth instalment the series of posts praising my all-time favourite characters for their quirks and flaws etc. called Favourite Character Praise Friday. I will be sharing these posts every two weeks to gush about fictional characters in a proactive environment. With this segment, I intend to demonstrate what makes characters great so you and I alike can use these facts to improve our characters!

HOWEVER, there is a twist! As suggested by my best friend, every fifth Favourite Character Praise Friday, I will be praising characters that I absolutely despise! This is to demonstrate how it takes great skill from a writer to create a character that the reader comes to hate and not sympathise with! I hope that I can create characters that readers hate just as much as I hope that I can create ones that readers adore!

So who is the subject of my second Hated Character Praise Friday?

Kazuto Kirigaya AKA Kirito from the Sword Art Online franchise.

I can admit that Kirito is not a character that seems to have been written with the intention of being disliked, unlike my previous Favourite Character Praise Friday WITH A TWIST segment on Daisy Buchannan from Gatsby. Instead, he appears to be a character likened to marmite within the fanbase, and so him being likeable, had not necessarily been intentional but I happen not to be a fan of him. 

And in saying so, why do I dislike Kirito as a character? 

His treatment of female characters when he is in a relationship with Asuna

During Sword Art Online, Kirito happens to befriend and become a potential romantic interest for the majority of female characters he happens across. Whilst in this game, Kirito happens to take a liking to Asuna Yuki. They end up getting married in-game and intend to pursue a romantic relationship in the outside world. However, despite his romantic feelings toward Asuna, he does not immediately discourage female characters from pursuing him as a romantic interest, explaining he is in fact, married to Asuna. This reflects badly upon him as a character as it demonstrates a general disregard of his wife and other women. 

Due to the constraints of the narrative, the viewer barely got to see Kirito train and gain power in Sword Art Online

In the first arc of the show, Kirito is overpowered. This fact is justified by the fact that he previously played this game during the Beta-Testing process. However, by episode four, he is on level seventy-eight. That is an immense level of progress that the viewer is unable to see. 

Now, as Kirito is, in essence, a marmite character, in the world of anime fans, I have decided to discuss why he is not complete trash! He does have redeemable qualities - quite a few too! So here are some of them:

The character of Kirito demonstrates that people with PTSD are brave for carrying on.

In Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale, the severity of Kirito's trauma is acknowledged when he realises that Asuna has forgotten the time in which she spent with him when they were trapped in Sword Art Online. But despite the anguish that he feels about his wife's situation, Kirito makes the decision to continue to work to keep the fellow SAO Survivors safe. He carries the burden of responsibilities that are unrealistic to force upon someone as young as him, takes them with grace and carries on with his life.

Kirito demonstrates that people can internalise behaviour from an online persona.

As someone who slowly seemed to become more like the figure that I attempted to present myself as when I was just starting off in the online writing world, I have to acknowledge that Kazuto and Kirito are two different sides of the same coin that slowly seem to merge together. After Sword Art Online, Kirito and the other survivors of the game had to catch up on two years of education, and so a school is erected to focus on teaching the people left behind after SAO launched. And so, Kazuto is surrounded by familiar faces and stimuli with the potential to provoke him to behave more as he had whilst in Aincrad. After all, having such an infamous legacy as The Hero of Aincrad, because Kirito was the one who released everyone from the game, he had a lot to live up to as Kazuto again. He, therefore, internalises more traits and behaviours of his online persona in order to keep up the impression that he is a heroic person.

Despite the facade, Kirito put on during his time in Sword Art Online, he was compassionate and did care for other people

On multiple occasions throughout Kirito's time in Sword Art Online, he made himself out to be a stony cold figure who would just move on with his life regardless of the people that happened to surround him. However, that was not actually the case, in several situations throughout the story, some of which the abridged series wholeheartedly mock, Kirito is seen to be going out of his ways to help others. Although he usually had motives on the side.
For example, when Kirito helped Lisbeth forge a new sword after he broke her best piece, he did it so he could receive that sword.
However, the most prevalent time Kirito is seen to help others is when he took on the Level Seventy Four Boss with the help of Klein and Asuna in order to save the lives of the people who went in before them. Those players had been marching for hours and were weary but were brought to the front lines and almost completely slaughtered by the boss. Instead of leaving them to die, Kirito intervened and saved a number of players' lives, even when he wasn't under any obligation to. 

9/3/18 - Favourite Character Praise Friday WITH A TWIST

Today, 9/3/18 is the fifth instalment the series of posts praising my all-time favourite characters for their quirks and flaws etc. called Favourite Character Praise Friday. I will be sharing these posts every two weeks to gush about fictional characters in a proactive environment. With this segment, I intend to demonstrate what makes characters great so you and I alike can use these facts to improve our characters!

HOWEVER, there is a twist! As suggested by my best friend, every fifth Favourite Character Praise Friday, I will praising characters that I absolutely despise! This is to demonstrate how it takes great skill from a writer to create a character that the reader come to hate and not sympathise with! I hope that I can create characters that readers hate just as much as I hope that I can create ones that readers adore!

So who is the subject of my first Hated Character Praise Friday?

Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby! Portrayed by Carey Mulligan in the 2013 film adaptation!

Before we begin, I would like to establish that this is not a bash of Mulligan! She played this part amazingly! The subject of this post is why I dislike DAISY? 

Warning! There will be spoilers! 

She claims that the best thing to be is a fool - she is anything but

What tends to horrify me about people who read Gatsby is that they will declare it to be a beautiful love story between star-crossed lovers Gatsby and Daisy, kept apart by not only the bay but their lives being two worlds apart; old money and new money. Daisy is very clever and uses her smarts to her advantage, playing the role of the fool and taking advantage of the pity she receives along the way. For example, she indulges in the attention Gatsby handed her and claimed to love her old flame, yet when she caused him trouble, she refused to take responsibility for her actions. 

The juxtaposition between the person Daisy claims to be at the beginning of the book and the person she is revealed to be throughout is very clever, but it does give the audience a large reason to dislike her. 

She, unlike her cousin Nick, is depicted to be greatly materialistic

The first two lines of Fitzgerald's novel go as follows: 

'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'

The introduction was written by Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story. He and Daisy Buchanan are cousins and yet this advice is of stark contrast to how Daisy lives her life. Due to how close the pair are shown to be ((with Daisy and Nick being of similar ages, and close enough for Daisy to have lamented over Nick's absence from her wedding due to the war)), it would not be unfeasible to suggest that perhaps Nick's father bestowed the same advice onto Daisy. It gives the reader the chance to ponder, that if Nick's father had given Daisy the same advice, did she carelessly forget the advice as she grew older or had she consciously decided to ignore when she married into money.

Throughout the novel, Daisy is demonstrated to be awed by the material things that she is exposed to. For example, when she visits Gatsby's home for the first time, she says that she has "never seen such beautiful shirts before".

It was clever to contrast the protagonist with someone so close to him. A contrast this striking was bound to be a clever and conscious decision made by Fitzgerald. It works well as it establishes conflict between the protagonist and the other characters around them.

It can be argued that despite rarely being shown in the role of a mother, she stayed with Tom at the end of the book in order to give her daughter the best start in life

In The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is a mother of a young daughter, who she gives to a nanny to take care of. As her daughter is not demanding to be the forefront of her mother's attention, Daisy is free to have an affair with Jay Gatsby. She does this whilst married to Tom Buchanan, and despite the fact she is aware that Tom is also having an affair and has had several beforehand, she opts to stay with him at the end of the book. It can be argued that because Gatsby was murdered, Daisy's way to escape had also died. 

BUT there is still the chance that she understood that Gatsby's illegal activities meant that her future with him would have been uncertain and she would have resented him had she left her husband with her daughter and Gatsby had been arrested due to how he acquired his fortune through illegal and unjust means. Therefore there is room to assume that she did not stay with Tom because she cared not for Gatsby but instead it was because she wanted to give her daughter a good life. 

So what can we learn about characters from Daisy Buchanan? 

1. Writing clever characters need not mean that they are nerdy characters, they can be witty and sharp, knowing the world they live in well enough to manoeuvre within it without causing harm to themselves. 
2. Writing characters with similar roots and completely different lives are interesting to analyse
3. There is always a way to try and redeem an unlikable character

Thank you for reading my reasons that I DON'T LIKE Daisy! I hope I influenced the way you perceive your own characters!

Until next time!

And remember: 

Per Ardua Ad Astra! 

- Imogen. L. Smiley