>The challenge of balancing detail (see: anything by George R. R.
>Martin and descriptions therein of meal time.) Though I always thought
>thrillers did it as a way to throw out an entire school of red
>herrings, if every character is superbly detailed you can't easily
>pick out the ones that will be surprisingly important later.

That could be, now that you say it, although having struggled (not always successfully) against the impulse to overdetail side characters in much the same way myself, I've always leaned toward assuming it was that. But hey, that could be projection!

(Another thing I have a hard time with is overdetailing scenery, which is a consequence of the fact that my imagination is much, much more visual than the only medium I have any real ability to work in. This is something of a "whom gods destroy"-level curse at times. I "see" animation, but can only produce text. :)

>Not the first members of the cast to do so, and probably not the last.
>There's comfort in that consistency, even if it does make things a bit
>crowded now and then.

Yeah, I find that kind of thing is sort of a signpost suggesting whether a particular project is going to work. Like, when I was playing around with the pick-up sticks that developed into Act I of TTW, I had a decent idea that Gryphon and Remilia would work (as a pair of interacting characters, not necessarily a couple—that came later) when they started getting some good banter going without me really having to do anything. The whole joke with Wolfgang taking Remi's chair, for instance, and "the soup is fantastic." :)

>It's an interesting thing, I'm curious about her story, but Meiling
>doesn't inspire the same intensity there as a lot of the other cast,
>because she's so open. There's less 'why are you this way/what did
>this to you?' and you just figure it will flow out in general
>conversation easily because she has nothing to hide. Feels almost
>unfair to her, now that I type it out.

Eh, I get what you mean. Some characters are just like that. Meiling is like the Dude, except not a stoner. Meiling abides. :)

(That said, she may have little to nothing to hide, but that doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't have anything she prefers not to talk about.)

>DC did give us the story that named the general trope, the practice of
>'fridging' a character.

Oh yeah, that's right. It had slipped my mind where the phrase came from. Man, I tell you what—I liked the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, and I always thought he got a raw deal from the backlash against him just because he came out of a lousy storyline, but that particular detail was egregious with a capital egious. It deserved to become a Term of Art.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.