#Ensemble Casts

[ineffectualdemon]

I think every ensemble should have that one character who is very angry at everything and is kept on a metaphorical (or literal) leash and every so often, for enrichment purposes, the rest of the ensemble let them make someone cry by either literally or metaphorically eviscerating them

They also have to be kind to people who need kindness. Like they are always looking for a fight but they want someone that can either defend themselves or someone who deserves it. They aren't going to hurt someone for no reason

But an ensemble just doesn't feel right if you don't have the angry one who seems half a second away from stabbing someone

Star Trek's genius was to make that character the healer. Because Bones will stab you but he chooses to do that with medicine while detailing how stupid you are to need his medicine

[mdhwrites]

Jumbled Thoughts: The Ensemble Problem

Leader, Lancer, Heart, Brains, Big Guy.

The most traditional form of the 5 man band of adventurers and the core of any ensemble cast. It is one of the oldest archtypes out there but bizarrely it comes with also one of the greatest problems in writing and one that's weirdly more about math than anything else.

After all, the amount of time required to make each character feel like an active part of a story isn't additive with each character in your primary cast. It's exponential.

But let's actually back up for a second and define terms. After all, I'm here to talk about Ensembles, right? What are those? Well, it actually can have a lot of meanings from gesturing to the entire supporting cast, simply those in the background, etc. like that. I'm specifically focusing on the ensemble cast though where you are talking about a wide primary cast made up commonly of a main character and then primary side characters. Regardless of their labeling, all of these are genuinely important characters.

In which lies the problem. See, for a character to feel important is a rough problem. A comic relief character can show up as much or more often than your primary love interest but they won't feel important just because of that. Usually, to feel important they need to some extent feel like they're alive and a part of things and one of the core ways to do this is to have them responding and interacting with other characters rather than just standing in the back, blankly staring into the void as they wonder what they're doing with their life. They have an entire tragic backstory but they haven't said a word in three episodes because the writers haven't remembered they might have something to do here or, worse yet, that they may trivialize the problem. They are simply trapped, lost in purgatory.

And purgatory is not what an important character should be trapped in. But as you get more characters in the group, they quite literally consume time and effort in order to have react to things. In just a five man band, every time the smart one gives out a plan, do you really need all four to give affirmation? When the silly one of the group does something dumb, how many characters do you have react to that before it gets tedious? How many people need to panic about the heart being kidnapped? Because with each character you add to that number, you risk having them say something that should incite banter which can already drag out something that feels superfluous to the audience out even longer. So how do you fix this time problem?

There are two main ways most media goes about solving this. The first is just straight up being willing to recognize who isn't important in the story. Who are your side characters even within the ensemble. For most five man bands, this is the smart guy and the big guy. Each one might get like one episode a piece each season but they aren't getting the multi-part arc that really ties deeply into the plot of the show like the Lancer, Heart and Leader and that's a MAYBE on the heart since she's commonly just the love interest.

This version is actually a lot more frustrating the more invested you are in something and the more the show tries to build up these characters early on as being important. The Owl House does this with Willow and Gus, one of whom literally doesn't get episodes focused on her, not properly bare minimum, while the other gets one MAYBE every half season. The problem is that they were introduced first as the main character Luz's best friends and possibly her first friends in a while and post S1 of that show they mostly just vanish, let alone when it comes to Luz or the plot. The show just shuffles them off to the side and a LOT of people got pissed about it in that fandom because, well... Why wouldn't you? They seemed like a big deal and were just discarded for the most part.

However, from a strictly objective writing standpoint, it is better to recognize when you have vestigial characters and cut them away. That way you have more time to spend on your primary cast and let them help when it's needed. Done gracefully even, this can be great as a character feels like they bow out of the limelight more naturally because they as a character would do that.

The one that is often FAR worse from a strict writing perspective is smashing characters in your ensemble into what are effectively groups that simplify interactions. That way you're not dealing with a wide cast, you actually only have a narrow amount of groups of people. It often requires boiling down to their most basic traits so as to have simplified interactions that can start following a formula with how the groups interact. The more groupings, the more complex the storytelling admittedly and groups for the characters is not essentially bad. It's when you use it not for exploring group dynamics but specifically to treat it like you have less characters to write because it homogeneity.

Persona 5 actually has a lot of its main content writing fall apart because of this. The game is smart in that it doesn't want to balloon the time cutscenes take even as you eventually double your main cast from what you have at the beginning but how they do it is kind of awful. It's split between effectively the main characters, who aren't the ones your controlling because you play a voice protagonist in that, the dudes, and the ladies with their being some overlap.

You can probably see the problem with making these groups. It's made worse by the fact that the guys are categorically the comic relief and so there are entire scenes dedicated to shitting on one of the dudes for the same trait over and over again. You have objectifying the girls so the guys can be pervs like teenagers are. You have two characters who do 90% of the plot talking for the majority of the game, and eventually are finally joined by the one dude not treated as a joke, and the rest of them just kind of sit there. Worse yet is that a sexual harassment victim is one of the girls but NOT a main character so for the majority of the game, she is just a sex object effectively and it's REAL uncomfortable.

So how do you get around these problems? Well, the first is to understand the scope of your story. How long is it going to be? That length effectively determines how many characters you CAN have in your primary cast. If you're doing five one hour specials, it's probably best just to keep it to a pair of main characters and a primary antagonist with side characters coming in and out to help facilitate the plot. If you're a passion project that's updating with a chapter every week for upwards of a decade? Go fucking crazy because you have all the time in the god damn world to make these characters feel fleshed out and important, though your pacing will probably suffer for it. Hello One Piece (I can't say too much here because I don't have a deep familiarity with it.)

The second is to recognize how important every character is from the get go and treating them with that level of importance. To make sure you sunset a character properly instead of just shipping them off to a peace conference ala Power Rangers. That way you don't give incorrect expectations for your audience and you can trim the cast as is required. If you recognize early on that someone needs to be around for a few episodes to introduce some elements and familiarize your MC with things they need for their longer journey but would be detrimental to have around for the grander arc, you need to prepare a reason they won't continue to be a part of the story.

This is part of the reason why a LOOOOOOT mentors straight up die. And arguably it's why Marcy is effectively killed in Amphibia because while she couldn't literally die, her continued existence is important to tone and other character's motivations, she herself has no purpose in the plot anymore besides being a background motivator. That isn't to say it was a great choice but it did allow the story to continue to focus on the characters and elements that were more important to the overall story without having her just sitting in the background questioning her existence. Or sleeping like Persona 5 literally has one character do for upwards of twenty days due to gameplay mechanics. Not a coma... Sleeping.

You are never going to please everyone with an ensemble though. By the nature of an ensemble's wide appeal, there's a reason they're used so much, some people are always going to be upset to see their favorites sidelined or simplified simply for the sake of narrative tidiness. Accepting this early on will help free you on just making sure each characters gets the run they should for the sake of your story. After all, even for a character first writer like me, you have to eventually get your story done. You can't spend eternity on every character without something else suffering... Commonly pacing admittedly.

So just try and be mindful and when you're making your ensemble, make sure to ask just how many characters you need for it because you don't want to make this problem any harder for yourself than it has to be.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: A drawing of all the Hargreeves plus Lila riding in Diego's van from season 4, wearing the outfits they usually wear in the promo posters. Diego is driving and using a fist to mime singing into a mic. Five is reading a newspaper in the passenger seat. In the row behind them, Klaus is dangling his arms out the window, Lila is throwing snacks at Five's head, and Allison is sharing headphones with Viktor who is sitting behind her. Ben is in the same row as Viktor and is staring straight ahead looking shaken. Luther is taking a nap in the trunk. End ID.]

Family Road Trip!!

[naturecalls111]

Sanji’s thoughts when he snorkels normal seas 🤿🌊

And when he does find the All Blue:

[spielzeugkaiser]

... I saw a certain movie yesterday 🙊

[bellamysgriffin]

FAVORITE TELEVISION EPISODES:  Lady Parts (Lucifer)

To newly defined relationships. Cheers.

[cinemagal]

Trivia for Inception (2010) dir. Christopher Nolan

[mommytimmy]

[caeboa]

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Happy 30th anniversary to the Detective Conan manga! This series is near and dear to my heart, and while I've done plenty of art for it before, the anniversary spurned me on to a cast mosaic finally this week! First for the year even, that was not the plan hahaha. It was a lot of fun though, so many of these characters are really important to me ever since I stumbled on Case Closed on Friday nights back in elementary school then sought out the manga as a teen. I've fallen off and picked it back up over and over, and am finally making the endeavour to catch up, and even if I'm not there yet I wanted to do a big piece to encompass it. Shoutout to @unlicensedlobotomist for helping me include a few characters I haven't met yet without digging through spoilers! Will definitely be printing this one for the next convention and adding it to my catalogue in the future!

[sprout-fics]

I have an entire fic with Knight 141 escorting Princess Reader to her loath-fully betrothed, only for her to become the victim of an assassination attempt that results in her having to fake her own death- which leads to a chaotic series of events that results in Reader having to amass an army to take back her crown and kill her fiance.

It's so good in my head. You guys should see it. It's good I promise.

[that-vibe-i-cant-explain]

Obsessed with stories about a group of kids who stumble across a dark secret in their small hometown, get drawn into a fight to save said hometown, and forge friendships strong enough to see them through whatever evil they have to face.

[noughticalcrossings]

Borealis

In 1845, two Royal Navy ships and two Aerial Corps dragon crews left England in an attempt to finally discover a navigable passage through the Arctic. In 1847, Captain James Fitzjames struggles to shield his dragon from the fallout of a failing Expedition. In 1849, at a meeting of the Admirals of the Air, Captain James Fitzjames of Her Majesty's Dragon Aurora recounts the events of the disastrous Franklin Expedition to determine if he will be court-martialed for the loss of HMD Ulysses with all hands aboard. The truth lies lost on the ice, somewhere in the middle.

A Temeraire Universe Fusion for my first Terror Big Bang written by the incomparable @revolutionarygold who has been a delight to work with

Go read it here and then return for the last image, as it is a spoiler and a tad distressing if you don’t like looking at corpses

[userarmand]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE • "I Want You More Than Anything in the World" Assad Zaman as Armand

[douyinvids]

《Run》

by 屑老板 @ a3021729287

[morningsaidthemoon]

An adventure or two…

[owlafterhours]

[[ B is closest to the traditional worm on a string, but A and C have their merits as well. ]]

--

I was working on something else (also, ice worm related,) n' talking to a friend when this wormed it's way into my head;

And then it sparked The Question of Where Would The Eyes Go?