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Edited by Spawn:
2/1/2018 1:25:13 PM
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Destiny's Flanderization
Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. I'm interested in talking to people about this.
[spoiler]This post was inspired by another user's, [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/242558909?sort=0&page=0]here[/url], where they kind of hint at what I'm saying, but their post is a bit of a ramble and doesn't really touch on what I want to touch on.[/spoiler]
Destiny is an amazing universe with the potential to explore dark, mature themes while still remaining hopeful and lighthearted at its core. But the way that characters are currently headed now has me worried for the future. So, let me start with flanderization. What is it?
Flanderization is the reduction of a character into a caricature of their original elements by pushing nuance out of their characterization and replacing it with a single, overblown element. The term is mostly in reference to Ned Flanders, a fairly well known character from the Fox animated series the Simpsons. What can you say about Ned? Well, he's a devout Christian... and... he... has a moustache? Early on in the series, Ned wasn't exactly a masterwork of a character but he wasn't just 'the Crazy Christian' personified. He was more, but he's been reduced by the inflation of a single aspect of his character.
Why do I bring this up? I sense a similar thing happening to Destiny.
Let's start with Cayde-6, the game's mascot and a personal favorite of mine. He's quick witted, quick on the trigger, and most importantly, he's very headstrong. After Ghaul attacks the City he rushes off to confront whoever is behind the attack and he gets trapped in a timeloop on Nessus. Sounds like an interesting chance to introduce a flawed, but still enjoyable character, right? Nope. Cayde's comedy is immediately flanderized after you get him out of the time loop. His brash, independent nature clashes with his actions during the final raid on the City, and he's mostly reduced to a comic relief alongside... a chicken.
This is not a good message for the state of Destiny's characters. Despite Cayde's story having the infinite capacity for an interesting, layered individual with problems and solutions just like a human, he's the funnee robot guy with le epic chicken ecksdee!!! I'm sorry you had to read that, but the point still stands. Squandering talent like Nathan Fillion on a character like Cayde in his current state is an insult to Nathan and the entire community. I know he's there to serve the character development of Zavala, which I could go on about for hours (and not really in a good way,) but that doesn't mean he has to be replaced to useless meme fodder!
For this reason, I think that whoever is writing characters needs to seriously re-evaluate what the community wants from this story. We don't want another stupid, goofy robot who only makes jokes. Let Cayde be an actual character, along with everybody else. Stop the lazy flanderization. Not just for Cayde, but for Vance (the weird, adult fangirl!) and Asher Mir (the grumpy grandpa!) and any other character who is being squished into a single trait. Quit being lazy!
EDIT: Sorry for the wall of text.
For some reason I can't edit the poll, so:
*...characters are being flanderized
[spoiler]Moderator edit: This thread has been moved to #Feedback forum so that other Destiny players can weigh in. [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/139533839/0/0] See Cozmo's thread here[/url] for more information about the #Feedback tag and its uses.
Feel free to private message the moderator who moved your post, link to topic for further clarification about why this topic was moved.[/spoiler]
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1 ReplyStupid sexy flanders
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1 ReplyI flanderized a Care Bear with a Moncheechee.
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7 RepliesI totally agree. The character treatment in D2 is abysmal. The writers are heading in a direction that I really, really dislike. The story is aimed at a younger demographic, all allusions to suspense and making the player actually anxious about the story outcome (it's only the destruction of our galaxy) was lost. Osiris played a bit part in his own dlc. I'm just waiting for pokeballs to appear in our inventory . . . Pre nerfed and kid friendly obviously.
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10 RepliesEdited by kellygreen45: 1/30/2018 3:32:43 PMCayde is a particular personality type. Someone who is a risk-taker. Extremely creative...and has little respect for authority or convention. He's like a race car that has been set up to be "loose". In certain situations is extremely fast and extremely effective. In other situations its a good way to kill yourself and people in the stands. In The Taken King...we were shown only the "high reward" aspect of Cayde's character. He comes up with the outside-the-box idea that gets us past Oryx's defenses, onto the Dreadnaught, and ultimately helps us win the war. In Destiny 2s campaign...where' shown BOTH the high-risk and high reward aspects of it. He (once again) comes up with a vital, creative idea to win....but runs off by himself to get what he needs...and gets himself trapped. Without the help of Failsafe...and our Guardian...he likely would have been trapped there for centuries...if not forever. But we also see the high-reward. He uses a chicken as a means to quietly insert back into the City without alerting Cabal guards...and his teleporter got us back onto the Cabal flagship to take on Ghaul. Some people want heroes that are like cardboard cut-outs. They are like Superman or Captain America. More like an idea or ideal...than a real person. But some of us find those portrayals boring because we realize that no real person is actually like that. Every REAL person has quirks and flaws that HUMANIZE them. Those often tend to be the heroes that people actually most strongly identify with. Batman's dark personality and walking the line between justice and revenge. Detective and vigilante. Spider-man and Deadpool's irreverent humor. Classic X-men's Cyclops' hypocritical yes-man/golden-boy image. Wolverine's tendency to rage, struggle to keep his instinct to kill in check...while dealing with his love for someone else's woman. One of the things that Destiny 2 did right that Destiny 1 didn't...is that it HUMANIZED the Vanguard. You see Zavala's stubborn rigidity, and lack of creativity. But also his awareness of it, and that he needs Cayde's creativity to make up for what he lacks. (That's how good leaders operate in the real world...they surround themselves with talented people...and then listen to them.) You see Ikora's fearlessness and ferociousness crumble when she's forced to confront (again) the fear of death. She has to find her courage again. She has to rediscover what she stand for...what she cares for....what she is willing to sacrifice for. You see in Hawethorne an natural leader who is being frustrated by hierarchy of the City. She a warrior that is not being allowed to fight...and all that frustrated aggression and determination comes out sideways in disruptive behavior. Until that hierarchy collapses, and she's finally given room to step into a leadership role...and to fight. Part of enjoying a story, is to give it room for the characters to evolve the way THEY want to...and that the writers want them to. And not hold them slave to your expectations and wishes. Because---unless you're a writer yourself----they'll often be taken in directions that are more interesting that what you could have imagined for them.
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Ikora in D1: mysterious, calm and collected, stated to have been very rebellious in her youth but became a legend after years of traveling alone in the solar system, implied to be very powerful and wise and very good with a shotgun. Could have been Destiny's Yoda if given the chance. Ikora in D2: stated to have been really good in the crucible, is very sassy to Cayde, did a cool thing once in the first mission and showed more than 1 emotion for 5 minutes on Io. Could be Destiny's Yoda, if Yoda was less cool.
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1 ReplyHyperbole
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4 RepliesWhat’s flanderised?
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6 RepliesYou do realize each person whose lack of depth bothers you is nothing but a vender, including Cayde 6. It’s like you’re forgetting that the story is about you not a bunch of npc venders.
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1 ReplyGreat diddley biddley! That sounds salty, but you seem sweet, I'm going to call you kettle corn! ------Ned Flanders https://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/that-sounds-salty-but-you-seem-sweet-im-going-to-call-you-kettle/ lol. Good post, enjoyed it!
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"I thought I was a voidwalker, until I beheld Ikora Rey." I think the VW text is something like that. This sealed the deal for me, because by choosing to identify as a voidwalker, you will still never be "the" voidwalker. An extension of what you are saying is the reality that the universe is not open to your character being important in any way. Everyone talks down to your character, even after saving the world however many times. Your character is a "flanderized" and enshrined pawn figure, and there is no contesting that.
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They totally Bungled Brother Vance as well. Went from a solemn and reverent character in D1 to a British bumbling bufoon in D2.
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Hell, they’re trying to turn the franchise into a knock-off Guardians of the Galaxy, without any of the nuance that pulls the movie together.
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4 RepliesIt's not the devs fault, they made the game how they like it, it's your's, you keep complaining about it, stop it, IT'S JUST A GAME. This video explains why I'm doing this. https://youtu.be/dGeEuyG_DIc
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1 ReplyEdited by PatsterUSAF: 1/30/2018 7:12:40 PMThought you were talking about Belgians. Or Hollanders. I forget now where Flanders is.
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7 RepliesFailsafe is another good example of bad writing for a potentially interesting character. They just made her obnoxiously multi-personality without any realism or storyline. They could have easily researched people who have been isolated for long times and the mental issues, they could have had her feel more at fault for losing the crew and that could have spawned the darker personality but they just use her a throw away joke.
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1 ReplyHi diddly ho travelerino
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Stupid Flanders.
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11 RepliesNathan Fillion in Destiny 2 has become what Ryan Reynolds is to Hollywood - same exact character type spread across numerous movie roles. Jim Carey was another one. Same schtick, and we're tired of it.
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1 ReplyAgreed. Lol I'll spare you the text wall contribution to your post.
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1 Reply"How do you diddly-do, Guardian?"
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I really do not like when characters react to war so light heartedly in fiction. Like Star Wars, for example. At the end of Rogue One, CGI Leia is there smiling like a freaking psychopath! Her pals just got slaughtered! I wish characters can respond to things realistically. Some characters may have exceptions, like Failsafe.
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Edited by Nstrate: 1/31/2018 2:48:16 AMFailsafe 1: diddly doodly doo hello neighbor Failsafe 2: you better pray to our lord and savior that is the floating orb of goodness or face its wrath like Gary has... [spoiler]OH NO MY SNAILS DEAD!!![/spoiler] [spoiler]more or less a shitpost[/spoiler]
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3 Replies<Asher does show more than just his grumpy side if you listen to him on Io... but overall that's just him.>
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Edited by Ghostfire239: 1/30/2018 7:44:34 PMI agree. I was hoping they’d go more in-depth with the main characters but nope. Cayde is “funny” guy, Zavala is serious guy, Ikora scared girl. It feels like we’ll never have a good Destiny story
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Edited by Pippo: 1/30/2018 10:23:33 PMThere's one very interesting item you can find in Cayde's stashes. It's a message he gave his son before being turned into an Exo, saying he will still be there for him but that his son will probably not recognize his dad because he's, well... a robot. But he had a choice. Being there for him in another form, or be gone forever. It's just a small item you turn in, but this is interesting. There's still some potential, even dramatic stuff like this one. Alas, lore has a lot of unused potential ways of storytelling, as has the core game in terms of gameplay/endgame/rewards/customization and more. Edit: I also agree on the characters. Failsafe is such a failure. The only occasion where I have to grin is when Ghost says to her "You're both depressing and unhelpful" in the Inverted Spire strike, after Failsafe talks about the 0,001% in regards to Cayde and Red Legion. I really liked Shiro-4 from Rise of Iron. Closest to him comes Devrim, but it's not the same. Shiro knows Cayde and is an Exo Hunter himself.
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3 RepliesNah, they just made everyone goofy and cartoony like Cayde because they saw that people liked him. Actually no, a lot of characters like Sloane, Ikora, and Devrim are the same blandness that we had in Destiny 1. The truth is, I don't think the writers at Bungie have a clue what their doing with the universe. Like Vance being a fangirl, that can't be a flanderization of his character because he never had a character. They must have just pulled that out of their butts one day. (These are the same people who couldn't figure out what the darkness was after 3 years of telling us about it, sooooo).
