#(they railroaded him into a captain role with little story logic behind it)

[fictionadventurer]

I used to think that I loved characters over plot, and that's still true. But I can't love characters to the exclusion of plot, not without a lot of disappointment. Give me a great character, and I will love them to bits and adopt them as my special favorites. But if they aren't in a plot that makes sense, then I haven't been given a story. I have an action figure. I can think up characters that I like on my own. I want to see these characters doing things that are meaningful and make sense based on their personality and history.

I don't love a plot to the exclusion of characters. A well-constructed puzzle happening to faceless characters is going to feel empty. But I want the characters to do things that are believable, rather than stumbling randomly through senseless happenings, or being railroaded along a track of desired plot points. A plot doesn't even have to make total logical sense--I'm not going to sit there condemning a story because it doesn't line up with that one episode from five seasons ago, or because science doesn't work that way. But a plot does need to make character sense. The plot isn't something that happens to the characters. It's something that should flow from the characters, so even when they do something stupid or overlook something obvious, we still believe that they would behave this way, and then everything that happens in consequence feels meaningful. It feels earned. It feels like a satisfying and believable story. And it feels like the writers have done their job.