Talk:Book 8: Legacy/@comment-98.202.38.165-20190903013110

I posted this one the Dex page but since people don’t go on the character pages very much I thought I’d repost it here too.

So I think I may have an idea of what happened to Dex’s character and why he is pushed to the side a lot. I was discussing Harry Potter with some people online and I came across a post about Ron Weasley and why his character diminished over time. I think the same thing may have happened with Dex for similar reasons. Here’s what the post said.

Ron is what I call “an anchoring character,” it’s a character used to welcome the Main Character (and the readers) into a world they’re unfamiliar with, sticks around to humanize the new world, and serves to give a bit of an introduction on various topics as they come up. From a storytelling standpoint, it makes sense for an author to use such a character — and it’s no coincidence Harry meets him just as he’s trying to literally pass through the barrier so he can go to school.

The problem with anchoring characters though is they come with a built-in shelf life in terms of their storytelling function. The role they serve will naturally be reduced in size and scope as the Main Character (and the readers) become comfortable with, and at home in, the new world the character anchors them to. This means his usefulness to the main character (and overall role in the story) will steadily degrade and turn stale unless the author takes care to develop the character in ways that benefit the MC, and the group as a whole, on their own merits.

Thoughts?