TOPIC OF THE WEEK – Who’s the most realistic character in a story?

@kathleenramm Well, another way of coming around to the point, is who is the most unrealistic fictional character you have watched/read about? 

I can’t really think of a character who is realistic. Plus, most films and books have characters who do react realistically to their situations. Usually, this is because of some thing that pushes them to react. Though, unrealistically, I’d have to say that I don’t exactly know for sure.

I guess it might have to be pointed as to WHAT sort of realistic you mean when referring to the word. Do you mean realistic in relation to the actual Earth and circumstances therein? Because that would rule out most fantasy characters. They react with the things upon their own world, not earth. For example, the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings isn’t realistic on earth, thus the characters cannot act realistically on Earth the way they act realistically in Middle-earth.

Though you could mean realistically in relation to a character’s circumstances. This would make more sense, though I could say that Sauron wasn’t realistic in his attempt to overtake Middle-earth. That isn’t sensible at all. The same goes for Thanos. He isn’t realistic at all with his idea of killing half the people on every planet. That’s pure insanity; not realistic at all.

It also isn’t very realistic that the Lonely Mountain should be permeated with gold. Why that mountain and not another? There is a reason behind this; gold doesn’t grow after all (though the concept is intriguing and very degrading to the value of gold if it did grow abundantly). How did the gold get there? It can’t have just BEEN there; then again, these stories have their plots and their elements, such as the gold in Erebor which acts on characters in large ways. If it wasn’t there, the Battle of Five armies wouldn’t have taken place.

Of course, Spider-man isn’t realistic at all. But his fictional circumstances made him quite realistic in his story.

The point being, most characters CAN be realistic and also UNrealistic. It depends on the kind of realistic sense. Because, going off here, any main character or other character in a book, SHOULD be realistic. Otherwise, they are not rational and can’t explain what they do. They do things for a realistic purpose. To stop some bad thing from killing people. To predict the eruption of a volcano so that a city doesn’t burn and blow to the ground. To prevent the surreptitious and deceptive takeover of an empire. To destroy a ring in the only place able to destroy it in order to prevent a very powerful character from taking over a place.

@leon-fleming

The dwarves dug the gold out of the mountain. It was full of ore.

@morwen Yea, Morwen, I know they dug it out; but it was, after all, a fantasy world. So many things can and can’t happen. It’s not a tweaked version of Earth, after all.