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No. 73140
>>73138
But listen. That doesn't mean it's not shit. You also misunderstood what I said, because I never said his behaviour was "completely random," only inexplicable in a bad way.
Characters with no internal logic and no moral code can be very interesting characters... when they're heavily featured in the story, where we get to see them interact with other characters and we get a lot of insight as to what's going on in their head at that point in time. So we can understand them a bit, even if that realisation comes in the form of "this person is just a black hole on the inside"--which is a really great reaction to get, especially if the audience up until that point had trusted the character; they feel betrayed and horrified by it. You can only get this if the character remains consistent in their behaviour the entire time, but a hint entirely changes the audience's perception of them and their past actions. This hint is usually something subtle, when it's done right.
Here's where Gamzee fucked up: his actions post-game do not at all match what he was like in Act 5.1. He is a minor character we received no insight on other than that he seemed to care for his friends and was religious prior to his murder spree, and none after other than that he is CRRRRAAAAZYYYY. Going back to read his few Act 5.1 appearances, where his character is established, they still read like a genuinely nice (if kind of spacey) dude. There's still nothing to them that seem sinister after the revelation that he was not nice at all. He just does not read like the same character. There's a reason why there's a camp of Gamzee fans out there who just flat-out refuse to believe he is truly evil--they are holding onto extremely contradictory information they obtained in Act 5.1. They wouldn't exist if there hadn't been such a huge fucking flaw in how his character arc (if you can even call it that) was laid out.
Hussie does this thing a lot, where characters don't show up for a while and when they do they are different than before with little explanation and serves it up as character development. Dude, it's not development if the reader never witnesses any of it happening. Gamzee is the most egregious example of it but we've been seeing it very frequently for a while. I suspect he is trying to take shortcuts because he now has too many characters and plotlines to deal with to focus on character growth. I also suspect that he had the idea for Gamzee to go berserk and reveal his true nature all along, but he beefed it spectacularly since this kind of arc requires you to carefully lay traps and that did not happen.
Another related issue is that he has more or less completed his arc, with the murder spree being the real climax of the thing, but he's stayed on in the cast anyway. (Vriska also kind of has this problem, where she has done her thing and died, ending her story and serving as a catalyst to further Terezi's, but she's still in the story for some reason as a static character who repeats her old grievances to Meenah.) I'd be more forgiving if he went berserk and then was shot down, which would make his entire character sort of pointless, but he wouldn't be an ongoing problem at least.
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