morghus' place

Since characters, character development, and the lack of, is one of the most important parts of any story, in my opinion, I’ll try musing on the topic a bit

To put it simply, one of the best character developments I’ve encountered so far is Kira Yamato from the Gundam SEED series, and is probably one of the most believable depictions I’ve come across. While his feats are undeniably outragoues in a realistic sense, his progression from an average joe with extremely modest aspirations to the de facto hero of the war(s) is believable. From the moment that he blunders into the cockpit of a gundam and manages to handle it after seeing Ramius inexpertly handle it, he goes through the combat-adrenaline, aftershocks, sense of duty, urge to survive, stress, anger. The whole package.

The point of it is that Kira’s a civilian supercoordinator genetically engineered to the “next awesome stage of awesome” (kind of like I am) placed in the crucible of war with little to no time to reflect on his own situation, hence little to no time to get all morose and depressed. Which is the point of Flay Allster, the absolute opposite of Kira in the series in that there’s nothing special about her, she has no particular purpose on the ship, and she is shown as merely hovering around worrying unlike everyone else. With no sense of purpose, her old world crumbled down around her, getting no attention unless she shouts for it, she spirals further and further down into depression.

While combat-depression does hover over Kira at points in the story, it’s continually being pushed back by the admiration and support of the crew that relies so much on him. He’s the best thing since sliced bread for fucks’ sake, and their lives utterly depend on his continued wellbeing and awesomeness, so that further catapults him into not only coping mentally, but continually improving up to the point where most of his confusion is replaced by a self-conscious person that knows where he’s going and what to do. Of course amply helped by a growing relationship with Lacus Clyne, and that she was there when he finally broke down.

All in all there’s not really a single moment where we don’t believe the character. We might have moments where we dislike the character for being weak or whiny, but weakness is a part of any personality, which only increases the believability.

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