Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-26159109-20151208210504/@comment-25926288-20151223163530

Farerb wrote: Eskaver wrote: Farerb wrote: I agree. A story is more cohesive when there aren't so much minor characters that don't have any purpose other than to distract from the main plot. That is just bad storytelling. I will even add to this topic with an example of a temporary medial character done right: Aurora. She was medial for a few episodes in season 2 and she had a character arc and growth and now she appears sporadically throughout the seasons following without ever detracting form the story in any way. That is what they should do, but they tend to start medial and then drop them off the face of the Earth.

Can you believe we never had an Aurora centric episode ever? I mean there's a difference between her and Arthur and Merida. The other two get so much backstory and info and screentime, but they are tangent or dropped off the main plot and sort of stand around lost half the time. Aurora never did that. Likewise, Dorothy is best being the Aurora of season 5b and onwards. That is unless she's actually just a minor character (like Gwen and Lancelot who get an episode when they play so little in the story), of which she deserves no major focus.

The problem is too many minor characters taking time that isn't theirs to hold and too many medial characters getting an imbalance of screentime and story. Adding more characters to that doesn't make it better, even if you enjoy new characters. It's like continually adding more sugar to the cake just because you like sugar...it will just make it worse. It's not just Aurora. Most supporting characters in season 1-3A were added to enrich the story or the main characters. For example, episode 211 was Belle and Mulan's backstory, but it wasn't about Mulan, it was about Belle  (back when she was more than just a babysitting doormat who sleeps all the time) compared to 506 the "Belle's centric" which was all about Merida. And Rumple.

I was just giving an example of a medial character. There were none in 3a (I guess Pan and Neal), but everyone else was minor, like Tink and Ariel.