{"id":5928,"date":"2017-07-09T19:17:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T18:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=5928"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:27:33","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:27:33","slug":"on-the-importance-of-character-arcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=5928","title":{"rendered":"On the importance of character arcs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"5929\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?attachment_id=5929\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"477,405\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Matthew-Crawley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley-300x254.jpg\" alt=\"Matthew-Crawley\" width=\"300\" height=\"254\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5929\" srcset=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley-300x254.jpg 300w, https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley-353x300.jpg 353w, https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Matthew-Crawley.jpg 477w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>If another character &#8211; Falcon, or the Winter Soldier &#8211; takes up the shield of Captain America, he will not be Captain America. I want to know the story of Steve Rogers.<\/p>\n<p>If another character &#8211; like Jane Foster &#8211; picks up Mjolnir to become &#8216;Thor&#8217;, that will not be the story of the Odinson.<\/p>\n<p>Most human stories have no wider significance. There are no wider lessons to be learnt. They are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Those are not the stories that I wish to invest my scarce and precious time absorbing. &#8216;Life is hard, random accidents happen at all times, beware&#8217;. Thank you for telling me something that I did not know.<\/p>\n<p>Think of Brienne in Game of Thrones. If she doesn&#8217;t end up with some sort of decent narrative closure with Jamie then that will be a very long story without much meaning (there is some meaning already, I&#8217;ll grant that). Whereas if Jamie, for his crimes, is exiled and has to spend the rest of his life confined to the island of Tarth&#8230; well, that&#8217;s a story worth telling.<\/p>\n<p>All this is triggered by my disgust at the show runners of Downton Abbey. A clear dereliction of duty. The soul of the story has gone &#8211; why continue? A mere accumulation of events, and what is the <em>significance <\/em>in that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If another character &#8211; Falcon, or the Winter Soldier &#8211; takes up the shield of Captain America, he will not be Captain America. I want to know the story of Steve Rogers. If another character &#8211; like Jane Foster &#8211; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=5928\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-1xC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5931,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928\/revisions\/5931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}