Static Characters · 9:50pm Aug 8th, 2015
Across forum threads, story comments, and Skype chats, one of the more common topics I’ve seen debated is characterization. Did it make sense for Twilight to do that? Why can’t these two characters fall in love? How do I make this reaction believable? There are a few tried and true methods when writing a character, any character: give them a flaw, make them relatable to the reader somehow, things like that.
Another topic that comes up it that of the dynamic character versus the static character. If you’re unfamiliar with these terms, they refer to a character’s development through a story. A dynamic character is one that changes throughout the work, and a static character is one that remains the same at the end of it.
The dynamic characters are often seen as superior, because... well, they’re dynamic. They’re dynamite. They change, and they often force the story to change with them. They’re Harry Potter, who starts off as a neglected youngster but turns into a juggernaut of magic that still has the courage to sacrifice his own life. They’re Luke Skywalker, who transforms from a wide-eyed farmboy off on a quest to save a princess from the evil Empire into a somber man ready to shoulder his destiny.
Wowee whillickers! I'm a Space Samurai now!
I am a Jedi, like my father before me.
The difference there is like night and day. If Luke Skywalker didn’t change as a character through seeing his mentor die, fighting with the Rebellion for three years after that, learning the truth of his parentage after getting his hand cut off, we would have had a very odd finale to the Star Wars space opera.
But are dynamic characters inherently better than static ones? Does seeing a character change through a work automatically trump anything a static character could offer?
Nah
How static is Batman? Whether you’re reading a comic book, watching a cartoon, seeing a movie, or playing a video game, you can be sure of three things. First, you’re going to see a billionaire orphan who is better at everything than anyone else. Second, he will use fear to his advantage. Third, he’ll never kill anyone.
Case in point, the Arkham series of games that have come out over the last six years. Twenty minutes into the first, the Joker gives Batman a free shot to kill him and end the game right there. Batman refuses. In the second, Batman cracks a joke about how he would have saved a villain’s life if that same villain hadn’t destroyed the means to do so.
Even the third game of the series, a prequel set five years before the first, was touted by the developers as having a rawer and more brutal Batman, and he still refuses to see the Joker kill himself. What’s more, an old Justice League cartoon episode sees Batman sent to the future where he has a chance to work with an older him.
Through time, space, and whatever universe the next creative team puts him in, Batman’s core never changes, and how many generations of people have enjoyed watching him terrorize criminals? In fact, if Batman ever crossed that line between making someone fear for their life and actually taking that life, I imagine there would be an outcry. After all, Batman isn’t the only hero in the DC stable with a no killing rule...
I think I've seen more evidence to support the existence of Bigfoot than I've seen of anyone outside Zack Snyder's head thinking this was a good idea.
Another character that has lasted the better part of a century through comics, TV, movies, et cetera, the only changes that have really been made to Superman are how many powers he has and just how strong they are (spoiler: they’re always as broken as Zod’s neck).
Thing is, when the only change made to your character is exactly how overpowered he is, he’s still pretty damn overpowered. I’ve read pages of comments on internet forums about how boring Superman is. Nothing is a challenge to him. He’s always the same. “Oh, how I pity the writers. It must be so boring writing a story with a main character that can do anything. Truth, Justice, and the American Way wins again. Yawn.”
And yet when Man of Steel came out and had so much more to it than a neck snap--Superman fighting Zod in the middle of a city rather than taking him away from innocent civilians, letting Pa Kent die rather than saving him--it seemed like people railed against the very thing they complained about. Rather than being the clean-cut All American who always did what was right, Superman struggled to find his place in the world.
Superman became a dynamic character, and people didn’t like it.
Huh. It’s almost as if they had grown attached to and cared about a static character.
Perhaps I’m cheating with these examples. After all, Batman and Superman have been around since before anyone reading this thing was even born. They’re practically pop culture institutions. Is there something more recent I can draw from? Some other compelling piece of storytelling with a prominent static character?
Show of hands, did anyone expect me not to come up with something?
Meet Vyse, the Blue Rogue, air pirate extraordinaire.
Skies of Arcadia is a fantastic adventure, featuring a steampunk themed world that borrows heavily from the Age of Exploration. From the empire with Spanish sounding names for its citizens, to a far eastern archipelago with Oriental decor and jungles populated with a tribal people reminiscent of the southern Americas, the game has a vibrant setting to explore, and explore it you do.
Vyse is a young man with a thirst for adventure who wants to set out and sail the skies. Even when he and his father’s crew of pirates rescue a girl from the empire, he packs up the next day to go on a treasure hunt with his best friend. After the empire razes his home to the ground and captures his father and the girl, he sets out to rescue them. And when the girl reveals herself to be from a lost civilization on a quest to save the world, well, he jumps all over that.
The quest for Vyse is to see it through to the end. Who has time for character development when there’s a world to sail around (literally,) an inescapable fortress to escape from (twice,) gigantic monsters of myth and legend to kill (six,) and all that treasure to loot (so much treasure)?
He answers every challenge, every betrayal along the way, every obstacle of the natural world, and every dungeon to explore with his friends behind him, two swords in his hands, and an attitude of “Bring it on.”
And cannons. Big, giant, f***-off cannons.
Vyse goes nowhere as a character, but just by being Vyse he does almost everything there is to do in his world, and it worked. Fans have been hoping to see a sequel to this game for years. Hell, it turned me into a shipper, spotting all the little moments Vyse shared with Fina. So people got into this game. We enjoyed 50 hours worth of content in spite of the fact our hero through it all was as unchanging as a brick wall.
More characters came to mind while I was writing this, like Ike from the Fire Emblem game series and Goku from Dragon Ball Z, but I see one common thread running through all these examples, one way to explain how all of them captivate an audience.
The world around them provides the challenge they face. While Harry Potter was set against Voldemort, Batman takes on Gotham itself and all its corruption. Where Luke Skywalker confronted his father and the one who enslaved him, Superman faces the reality of living as a god among men. Along with Vyse, the three of them endure every member of their rogues gallery with the will to see the task done and await the next challenge.
In fact, I believe that provides a second definition of the term.
What is a static character? A challenge. Every main character is an integral part of a story, but a static main character is a cornerstone. You set them down and build around them. Throw everything you’ve got at them. Test your world-building and imagination and give them every challenge you can think of.
In worlds of magic and monsters, the unwavering hero that just hits stuff really hard can be just as fun and interesting as any character out there.
Best pony?
With dynamic characters, the story ends when their development is done.
With static characters, the story ends when the writers or audience give up on it.
And indeed, if you actually really look at Superman and Batman, they're generally at their most interesting when there's development around them, even if they themselves are fairly static characters. Even in stories centering around static characters, there still are (generally speaking) dynamic ones.
And while people didn't like Man of Steel, they did like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, which featured a dynamic rather than a static Batman.
There may be another explanation, though.
Static characters work better as self-inserts. If you have a dynamic character who changes over the course of the story, then the reader or player needs to change with them. If the protagonist is a static character, though, it is much easier for the audience to get into the mindset of the character - which is always the same - and play along with being them.