Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

Characters who have "Personality transplants"...

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eschaton:
Over the course of the comic, I have noticed many characters have had their personalities slowly drift over time into different directions.

One of the most negative, IMHO, is Steve.  He was originally part of the main cast, and has since been demoted, which is fine.  But he has also warped over time from a regular dude who was smoother with the ladies than Martin into a walking bro cliche.  He once had a whole serious romantic arc to himself (Meena) which would appear inconceivable now (since he showed vulnerability and insecurity, and now he's all like "whatever brah").

I think Dora has changed over time as well.  She's always been insecure, but in the early comics she was much more flirtatious and jokey overall, and has become steadily more severe with time.  Part of this could be chalked to "growing up," but part of me wonders if she's cracking up a bit under the surface as well. 

Hanners is of course a classic example, although I think it's well-established (and admitted by Jeph) he didn't really know the character well initially, and modified her over time into a more innocent, juvenile character.

Regardless, can you guys think of other examples? 

 

dexeron:
It could just be character growth.  I look back at the person I was fifteen, ten, or even just five years ago, (especially if I go back and read old Livejournal/Twitter/Facebook posts) and sometimes I wonder who the hell that person was.  I think we all change over time, much more than we realize, but we're just too busy to notice.

Or, it could just be

WARNING: TV TROPES LINK.  CLICK AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization

BenRG:
I think that the negative implications of the OP here is undeserved and maybe a little misleading. In real life, with time, people change (mostly due to changes in their circumstances).

Steve has settled down with Cosette and neither have shown the slightest inclination of moving onto someone new. With stability comes maturity and Steve simply has laid off expressing the smooth, flirtatious part of his personality. Instead, he's focussing on being a good partner (maybe even lifelong partner) to the woman he's come to love. Additionally, his demotion to the tertiary level background supporting cast (making him about as significant as Jim) means that he will only be shown expressing the personality traits that is needed for the scene. Due to his relationship with Marten, it is being the calming influence when Marten is having one of his semi-periodic high-strung outbursts.

Dora has been through a lot. She's confronted some of her control issues but, most importantly, has confronted heartbreak (in the failure of her relationship with Marten) and has since been trying to build a solid, lasting relationship with Tai. Once again, bitter experience and maturity have led to changes in personality; she simply doesn't have it in her to be flirty anymore. She has a partner with whom she's happy and she doesn't want to jeopardise it. We still see flashes of her Doraten-era self, such as when she and Marten were boggling at the improbable music selection available in that bar's jukebox.

In some ways, her new, more 'grown-up' attitude was seen when she finally snapped and fired Faye. For years, she's tolerated Faye's quirks but, somehow, at this moment, it suddenly stopped being funny, idiosyncratic or even sympathy-worthy. It was just annoying, abusive, unwelcome and she wanted it out of her shop.

Hannelore is a very, very difficult example to judge. She actually radically changed personality shortly after being introduced. This was waved off as her changing her medication and this illustrates how difficult it is to judge what is 'in character' for her. Her mental issues are evidently strong enough that she can act out surprisingly strongly to minor events and, at other occasions, confront triggers head on and deal with them methodically (touching a toilet seat to win a bet with her mother comes to mind).

IMO, the current Hannelore is something of a product of her quest to have a 'normal' life. She is very aware of how abnormal her mindset is and how little experience of normality she has to date. An innocent, childlike demeanour is believable because she actually is approaching this new-found world with the mindset of a child who knows little and must be always questioning and always looking upon new things with wonder. Additionally, thanks to her friends, I suspect that many of her previously extreme behaviours (going without sleep for days to count things) have just naturally faded away. She has new outlets, such as in precisely counting and arranging the number of drum-beats in one of Amir's compositions.

Nonetheless (and, once again, this is seen in the bar scene the night before Marten and Claire hook up), she is still capable of the same wry observations.

If there is a meta-plot to Questionable Content, it is this: "We all grow up in the end. This is the story of how these people grew up; who they were, who they became, what changes they had to go through and what made them make them."

ASB84:
I agree that a lot of it comes down to character growth and development, but a few of the characters whose roles have been reduced do - on occasion - seem a little more one dimensional than they used to. I think that's just how it goes when a character is out of focus, though.

I'd probably throw Sven out there as someone whose personality has changed in between appearances. He went missing for a long time, and although there's an in-universe reason for his more recent portrayal that does make sense, something about it felt a little off. It kind of felt like his personality was changed just so that he could be more antagonistic and less sympathetic - filling a more villainous role, if you will - in contrast to his appearances from the pretend Date with Hanners through to giving Dora a place to say following the break-up with Marten, in which he seemed to grow a bit, and establish himself as being "not so bad, underneath it all".

It actually reminded me a little of what happened with Jim in Girls With Slingshots. With Jim and Sven, it felt like their characters were dumbed down/Flanderized in the name of making a point about entitlement and Internet Nice Guys. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as it's an attitude worth discussing (and for that matter, condemning), but in both cases it required a character to lose some depth and become a bit of a strawman, just to drive the point home.

StellaVator:

--- Quote from: ASB84 on 23 Feb 2015, 02:42 --- With Jim and Sven, it felt like their characters were dumbed down/Flanderized in the name of making a point about entitlement and Internet Nice Guys.
--- End quote ---

Hit the nail on the head right there. I was so taken aback when Sven told Faye he might be in love with her and acted so dopey and asked "are you going to?!" when she was being sarcastic about jumping into his arms and kissing him or something. (Too lazy to find the actual strip, but readers will know which one I mean.)

I mean come on, the defining trait of his character would prevent him from EVER acting so stupid in that situation.
I don't think "love makes you dumb" applies here either. Your reasoning can be obscured by emotion, but this was just such a drastic execution of that, if that's what he was trying to convey.

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