TwiLyghtSansSparkles

Just go ahead and make Jade and Nathan NPCs if you need to.

No storming kidding. Both are pretty good right now, can't complain. I've been working from home since the whole COVID thing started, which has actually been pretty nice. Bruce is also a big fan. How about you? How are things?

Well hi there! I'm sill around, sort of. I don't post much, but I pop in every now and then.

No, but it does mean that the characters aren't doing what they're doing out of the goodness of their hearts. It means they have their own reasons, and they're more liable to double-cross our protagonist when it's expedient for them. No offense, but that's….kind of just a word salad. The Harry Potter series was written over the course of ten years, and Rowling didn't spend a couple hundred or thousand words each book explaining how the magic worked all over again. Readers of that series had no trouble keeping up. I've written that way too, as have many authors of long-running fanfics. That's when you go back and read chapters you've already written, even if they make you cringe, to make sure you stay consistent. "I like the characters and so that's good characterization" doesn't hold water. I like Simple Plan, but that doesn't mean their music is particularly complex or challenging (it isn't). It just means I like the way it sounds. And again, look at Harry Potter. Even the most minor characters have intriguing backstories and are fleshed out enough to become the subjects of at least a handful of fanfics. Luna Lovegood didn't even show up until the fifth book, she had a couple of scenes, and became an instant sensation. A large cast is no barrier to character development. No, and I don't think I should have to. What's in the story is the story. Everything else is extra until the author adds it to the story proper. If I had to read the entirety of Pottermore to properly understand and appreciate the Potter books, or if I had to read every single interview with Gerard Way to make sense of Umbrella Academy, I would consider that a failure of communication on the part of the creators. If the author wants something to be part of the story, they need to make it part of the story. They can't expect the audience to do homework in addition to regular reading.

But before too long, they're going on lovely buddy-buddy shopping sprees and having a grand old time as gal pals. Regent is, objectively speaking, a monster, but Taylor gives him a pass because he's on her side—and one of his most monstrous acts is portrayed as a super cool act of justice because it's against someone who was mean to Taylor. I'm really having a hard time understanding what you're getting at here. Maybe so, but exploring one somewhat outlandish quandary well does not, in my mind, make up for the dozens more quandaries that were essentially settled with "Taylor was right and so the ends justify the means," to say nothing of those that were glossed over or dismissed altogether. Eh….the fact he explains it multiple times throughout the serial, and tweaks it each time, sort of made the classification system lose its luster for me. Besides, I'm more of a characters sort of reader. The classification system can be nonexistent and every single parahuman can have the power to blow up the universe for all I care, so long as the characters are well-developed and, if not likable, then at least interesting to read about. Taylor, the Undersiders, and most other characters in that serial were not story people I was eager to spend a lot of time with.

I honestly don't think it is. The perspective a story is told from does not mean the author and audience should be encouraged to get on board with everything the character does. And they are encouraged to do this, for the bulk of the story; when Taylor does something morally questionable, the justifications she gives for her actions are often shown to be right. Only characters we are supposed to dislike, for one reason or another, question what she is doing. This is not the narrative of a character whose justifications are entirely in her head; this is the narrative of a character whose justifications we are meant to support. Furthermore, interludes might call her methods into question (when they are, again, from people we're not supposed to like) but they drive home the fact that they work. When an interlude is from a friend of hers, Taylor is shilled almost to the point of parody. If the justification for Taylor's actions is meant to be entirely in her head, these interludes would have been a prime opportunity to show us a different, far less rosy perspective on what she's doing. Instead, they're used to tell us that, yes, everything Taylor is doing is right and good and while her methods might be questionable, her good intentions justify the means.

She doesn't trust Coil from the outset and Tattletale is her friend. Armsmaster is a cremhole whose very, very reasonable anger toward her is portrayed as self-centered and wrong for a hero to have. Many of those people are shown to have ulterior motives that stand between the greater good and everything else, Piggot is a cremhole who we're not supposed to develop more than a very grudging respect for, the Wards and other heroes are demonstrated again and again to be useless. Taylor is the only one whose methods are deemed necessary by the author and whose goals are always worth following. And why are you listing Dragon if she doesn't count? Edit: I think what I’d point out regarding the examples you gave is that those characters are only shown in a more flattering light after their goals and/or methods begin to align with Taylor’s, or they begin helping her in some way.