Thread by @EveKeneinan

The word “character” is ambiguous. It can mean both

1 a fictional person

2 the way that fictional person is, i.e. his or her character

Every character 𝘩𝘢𝘴 a character. When an established character is written acting in ways he wouldn’t, this is OUT OF CHARACTER.

A character being out of character is USALLY the result of poor writing.

Occasionally, good writing will have a character acting out of character for a reason, which is part of the story, and will be REVEALED at the right moment.

Fictional characters are often symbiotic with their SETTING. To take obvious examples, Batman “fits” in Gotham City in a way that Superman wouldn’t, no more than Batman would “fit” in Metropolis.

Fictional characters are, in a way, infinitely malleable. You can change them in any arbitrary way you like—but if you change them too much or change the wrong thing, you BREAK them.

I think the best analogy here is to music. You can change things about a piece of music: you can play a cover of a song or get an orchestra to do a Jimi Hendrix number … but if you play it off key or change substantial parts of it, you no longer have a “variation.”

Consider:

White Rabbit + 3 covers






(I think Collide’s is the best cover.)

And here’s a White Rabbit that simply isn’t the same song:

A cover song is HARD to pull off because it has to be THE SAME SONG, and yet, DIFFERENT ENOUGH to be distinct from the ORIGINAL and ALSO roughly the same quality (or better) than the original.

For example, All Along the Watchtower.

I can’t say that any of these three is better or worse.

Although Bob Dylan is supposed to have said “When I wrote All Along the Watchtower I didn’t know I was writing it for Jimi Hendrix.” 😁