Flanderization/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Flanderization in Literature include:

  • In Discworld, the characterisation of Rincewind shifted from sensible fear of the unknown to full-fledged cowardice, and finally to having an entire philosophy based on the principle of running away from things. However, this is arguably Character Development since it's suggested Rincewind, who is somewhat Genre Savvy, really is correct about an inordinate number of things wanting to cause him trouble and harm.
    • A significant amount of time passes for him over the course of those books, and it's strongly implied that for almost all that time, things are running around trying to kill him. That would be enough to make a devoted coward out of many people.
    • Plus he's been to Unseen University where, despite his being ragingly incompetent at both the theory and practice of magic, he may well have learned a little—just enough—about the narrative nature of life on the Discworld. That's enough to fuel an entirely justified paranoia.
  • While she was originally just an aversion of the Model Minority stereotype, Claudia Kishi from the Babysitter's Club, despite being in eighth grade for about ten years, eventually gets to the point where she can't even spell her freinds friends' names (or her own!) Despite being able to spell them perfectly well in seventh grade, mind. Most of the other girls' quirks (Kristy's bossiness, Dawn's environmentalist soapboxing, Mallory's geekiness, and Jessi's anxiety about her race and dancing skills) suffered this to some degree, as well.
  • This is how self-will destroys the damned in The Great Divorce. If one embraces a sin and never lets it go, it overwrites the rest of one's character, and sometimes the rest of one's self.
  • Hannibal Lecter, who first appeared in Red Dragon, was originally just a very intelligent and cultured man, whose expertise in his chosen field of psychiatry made him a particularly dangerous (and somewhat ironic) insane killer. By the (book) sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, he is quite clearly one of the greatest if not the greatest psychiatrist in the world, and by the threequel Hannibal, he's revealed to be a world-class genius in pretty much any field he sets his mind to, from Renaissance art to particle physics.
  • Zoey Redbird in The House of Night series went from a somewhat more advanced vampyre who happened to have a boyfriend in the first book to The Chosen One with an Unwanted Harem by the third book.
  • In the Star Wars Extended Universe, apparently all Corellians find statistical analysis abhorrent, due to the method in which Han Solo told C3PO to shut up in The Empire Strikes Back ("Never tell me the odds!").
    • Nearly everything mentioned in the Star Wars movies as a side-note is turned by the Expanded Universe into the main characteristic of whatever subject. Another example: "You look strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark." The Clone Wars had its gundarks modeled with ridiculously huge ears. The explanation for one of the designers was "We know about the Gundarks that they have huge ears, so they have to be visible".
  • A similar, if less deliberate, thing happened in another one of K.A. Applegate's series, Everworld. In the first book, Search for Senna, the titular character was a quiet, withdrawn, and somewhat strange Emotionless Girl who had a mostly positive romantic relationship with David, and demonstrated genuine concern for others on occasions. As the books went on, her negative traits were repeatedly emphasized and expanded, though this was initially saved from being Flanderization by her character also becoming more complex and interesting. In the last two books, her goal of overthrowing the powers of Everworld and crowning herself took over her characterization, and just about all of her other personality traits were thrown out in favor of it. She became an outright sadist, a tyrannical and megalomaniac Evil Overlord who no longer cared at all for how much death or pain she caused if it got her greater power.
  • Jacob Black from Twilight. Over the course of the saga, his initially fairly healthy and respectful affection towards Bella was Flanderized into obsession, probably done to sway "Team Jacob" shippers to be more sympathetic to Edward.
  • In the Star Trek Novel Verse, some accuse the Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul trilogy of flanderizing the relationship between President Zife and Koll Azernal, with Zife being an ineffective president relying on scheming Azernal to run the government for him. It is certainly more obvious in this trilogy than in Star Trek: A Time to.... The Brains and Brawn partnership of Rehaek and Torath from Star Trek: Titan is arguably flanderized by this trilogy, too.
  • In Warrior Cats, Hollyleaf starts as the smart one of the group who tries to respect the Warrior Code. By the end, she is completely consumed by the Warrior Code, freaking out if someone even mentions breaking it. This culminates with her finding out her mom severely broke the code and going on a murderous rampage.
    • Far earlier, in the first series, Fireheart's sister Princess is a kittypet who is curious about Clan life but wouldn't want to live that way, and who makes one or two comments on how Fireheart doesn't look like he's getting enough to eat. By the end of that series, she's become a hysterical worrywart terrified of the forest.
  • In Neal Shusterman's The Skinjacker Trilogy, Shusterman unveils a world between life and death, where your appearance is based entirely on your memory of yourself. This leads to such effects as remembering only the chocolate smudge on your face and turning entirely into chocolate, or remembering your acute sense of smell and gaining nostrils that extend to your feet. The Lawful Evil villain even encourages this trope as her thousands of followers reenact their "perfect day" every single day (when they're not fighting our protagonist). This example takes the trope in more of a literal sense, as you may have guessed, rather than the degeneration of a character's demeanor.
  • All of the Flock from Maximum Ride suffer this. In the first book at least they were a bit more realistic and believable. Now however, Nudge has gone from an extremely talkative young girl to a materialistic celebrity-obsessed tween, Angel is a manipulative Karma Houdini, Total is now even more of a cartoonish sidekick figure than he was originally and Iggy seems to be getting dumber and more childish in each book. Where in the first three he was treated by Max and Fang as one of the older kids, now he appears to have a mental age of twelve and spends most of his time with Gazzy, who admittedly has a similar outlook and personality, but is way younger than him. Fang too used to be a bit more of an interesting character (in the first book Nudge worries about whether he'd ever decide to leave the Flock) but now he's lost all the interesting sides to his personality. As for Max, she's recently started to use Totally Radical slang and seems to be occassionaly chanelling the spirit of Bella Swan, in the author's clumsy attempt to cash in on the teen romance success of late.
  • Don Quixote: In the first part of the novel, Sancho Panza gives a Hurricane of Aphorisms only once. In the second part, he gives it continuously, and so do his wife and his daughter.

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