Demon Hunting and Tenth Dimensional Physics: Top Ten Trope Thursdays: O.O.C. is Serious Business

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Top Ten Trope Thursdays: O.O.C. is Serious Business

*Note: I'm going to remain completely in character, but this is still serious business: spoilers are in here. You've been warned*

Well it's time to go at this again: tropes. Who does them well, who does them the best, and…well, I would say "who does them that I don't know," but I don't know them…so we won't be seeing those.

This is one that I'm fond of, but I honestly can't think of a time I've gotten it into any of my own work, which is just saddening. So for now, I'll just have to enjoy it in other work. What is it? OOC is SeriousBusiness (OOC meaning "Out of Character.").

We've all seen it: the normally affable, light-hearted character suddenly narrows her eyes and speaks in a brooding, deep tone about the awful looming shadow behind them. Turns out that it's Horgoth of the Eternal Nightmares and shit just got real.

One of my favorites that just didn't quite make the list was Luna Lovegood, our quiet and distant girl who sort of lives in her own world, shouts across the way at Harry because, damn it, he needs to hear what she can say…and he does.

But as I said, that one didn't make the list. But here's the ten OOC moments that did make my list.

10: Gordon Ramsay
I'll get it out of the way right now: he's on the bottom of the list because he's a REAL FUCKING PERSON. This isn't a plotted character moment designed for impact. It's just his personality.

But with that out of the way, Gordon Ramsay's public persona, especially in our modern online culture, is almost centric on this shift. He got popular for being "that angry British chef" in the states. The guy we saw on Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. And, yeah, I love that angry British chef. I may or may not have attempted to write a character similar to him in high school.

No you can't read it. It went nowhere. Stop asking. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Stop.

But then in comes Master Chef Junior, and we saw Gordon Ramsay get serious about these kids. With adults who supposedly know what they're doing, he doesn't have time. They've already learned – it's his job to whip their shit into shape.

With kids, he takes it a lot more seriously. He calms down, because he's a professional chef and it's his responsibility to teach them. He wants to get them from being remarkably talented kids to being actual, proper chefs. It's a damn duty to him, so of course he's not going to scream and call them all fuckers and idiot sandwiches and donkeys. Gordon Ramsay made his name swearing and shouting and getting (rightfully) upset at professional chefs. So when you see him stop that? You know it's time to perk your ears up.

9: Bleach
Ah, Bleach. You had such promise and power and potential and other words that start with P, probably. I'm not actually a huge fan of…well, anything after they actually capture Aizen. But in regards to this trope, Bleach does an amazing job in both parts of the series.

See, there are inherent powers and evolution of said powers in Bleach, but the main thing I'm focusing on here is the zanpakuto. Short description: soul reapers have zanpakuto, which have two power levels to them. Shikai is a powerup, and bankai is almost like a nuke. Very powerful, very hard to master.

Bleach shows how serious the situation is through the zanpakuto a lot. Because there are restrictions put on soul reapers to what they can and can't do, and what they should and shouldn't do, you see a lot of times where they won't pull out their bankai until things are really, really serious. It goes for heroes and villains, too.

So, just to run through some of the better examples really quickly: in the Thousand Year Blood War, Yamamoto and Kyouraku both unleash bankai for the first time. Two of the strongest, most devastating bankai in the series. Kyouraku's actually kills him when he uses it, so you know it's for real serious. Soi Fon hates her bankai, because a massive "fuck you" missile launcher is surprisingly not stealthy, which she hates. The first time Isshin is ever revealed as a soul reaper and not a bumbling father is when the first Arrancar shows up. And a lot of the soul reapers, and later the espada, show you that the battle is actually getting difficult when they bother to release their zanpakuto/resurrecion.

So yeah. Bleach uses this trope a lot. But I saved one out, because to me it's special and a little more plot/character potent than the other myriad examples. Who is it? Well…

8: Yumichika Ayasegawa (Bleach)
Oh, Yumichika. Introduced pretty early in the series, and also one of the very first shikai we ever see with Fuji Kujaku. It turns his sword into a four-bladed kopis. And that's about it. Honestly, kind of lackluster compared to a lot of other shikai in the series.

Except not, because this trope. So, for background, Yumichika is in Squad 11. The martial squad of the Soul Society. There's an unspoken rule that all members of that squad should have "melee type" zanpakuto.

Cut to way fucking later down the line. Yumichika is trapped in a dome with his enemy…and shit gets real. What should be a fairly desperate situation makes Yumichika smile like a bastard. Come to find out, that four-bladed kopis is not the power of his zanpakuto. He was suppressing it. His real zanpakuto, Ruri'iro Kujaku, is kido based. Magic based. And now that no one is around to see him use it, he unleashes it and kicks ass.

But even that's not the full extent of this trope for Yumichika. Near the end of the series, when it got kind of shitty overall, people were really dying and struggling. And Yumichika releases Ruri'iro Kujaku in front of everyone. Things are as bad as they possibly could have been, and he's there to show you that.

7: Sam and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
So in early Supernatural, the big thing was demons. More specifically Yellow Eyes. In this universe, demons have to possess humans to be on Earth. Otherwise they're just black smoke.

Sam and Dean, being hunters, took care of demons. They exorcized them and sent them back to Hell. They hated killing people. And yeah, sometimes humans died during their travels. It was miserable for them.

Until the end of season 2. They have the Colt, which can kill anything. And Yellow-Eyes, who killed their mother and is generally not very nice. He's in a human host, and without any real hesitation they murder the fuck out of him. And his human host. And while, going forward, they seem less careful about killing humans, up until this point they had serious reservations about killing people in the process of their hunting.

6: Yoda (Attack of the Clones)
Yoda, Yoda, Yoda. Confusing you are. Okay, not really.

This is one of the scenes people were looking forward to forever. See, for four movies, Yoda has been this little wise old green dude. He's strong with the force and shit, but we never even see his lightsaber.

Until we do. When Count Dooku is royally wiping the floor with Anakin and Obi Wan, Yoda comes in. He catches and redirects force lightning. And he acrobats the shit out of Count Dooku. He actually beats back Count Dooku, one of the most accomplished lightsaber fighters in the Star Wars universe.

Don't piss off Yoda. It takes a while, but you won't like him when he's angry.

5: Molly Weasley (Harry Potter)
You know exactly what scene I'm talking about. Deathly Hallows. Battle of Hogwarts. Bellatrix Lestrange curses Ginny, and that's it. "Not my daughter, you bitch!"

It's glorious, but important for Molly. We needed to see this. She's been built as a loving mother, sometimes overbearing, for seven books. But she's also a member of the Order of the Phoenix and…that's weird, right?

Turns out no, it's not. It takes something in line with her character (Protecting her family) to get there, but she does it. It has to get serious for Molly personally, but then she takes on one of the most accomplished, fervent Death Eaters in the series, and god damn it if she doesn't win.

4: Alexander Dane (Galaxy Quest)
RIP Alan Rickman. A major loss to the acting community and one we still sorely miss. One of my favorites was him as a high-class actor relegated to a sci-fi show he hates being attached to. It's never more obvious than when he says or even hears his catchphrase.

"By Grabthar's Hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!"

It's a running joke all the way through the movie (BTW, if you haven't seen Galaxy Quest, go watch it. For real.), and Alexander is just so exasperated by the whole thing.

Now, there's also Quellek, the ship's science officer who idolized Dane's character (The aliens think that the actors from Galaxy Quest were actually on a space mission. They think the characters are real.). Toward the end of the movie, Quellek is mortally wounded, and he says how much of an honor it was to work with him.

And Dane gives him the line. Sincere as he's been the whole movie. And I'm not crying, you're crying.

3: Richard Castle (Castle)
Castle is great popcorn television. It's a super-formulaic detective show, and Castle, a writer, is generally lovable and charming and roguish. I mean, it's Nathan Fillion. That's what he plays best, arguably.

But there's a two part episode where his daughter, Alexis, is kidnapped. And Castle doesn't take it well, weirdly enough. At one point, they get someone who knows what's going on. He's standing in the way of Castle getting to Alexis.

And Castel very calmly asks for some time alone with the guy. He makes all kinds of hideous threats on what he's going to do to this guy. But then it cuts away to outside, and you just hear the guy screaming.

And Castle, our lovable, kindly writer, comes out with the information he wanted.

2: Saitama (One Punch Man)
OOC is Serious Business is a huge part of Saitama's character. He's the One Punch Man. He kills everything with One Punch. It's the whole schtick of the series. So he rarely needs to try at anything.

But now and then, we see him get…drawn better. More in a "traditional anime" style, as Americans understand it. That only happens when he actually feels things and has to try in a fight. It's quintessential, 101 OOC is Serious Business, in the starkest and most obvious terms.

But I don't think it's handled quite the best of all the things I've seen/read/watched. That goes to a very special, beloved character.

1: Hawkeye (M*A*S*H)
Fucking Hawkeye. I love him. I love this whole show, but I love Hawkeye. He's maudlin and irreverent and just a general cacophony of a human being. But he's almost always a lighthearted war surgeon. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, it's as weird as it sounds. Also…why haven't you fucking seen it?

But what makes Hawkeye marvelous in that particular way is when he's not funny and irreverent. He gets dark. Hawkeye, more than every other character combined, is our reminder to the vagaries of war. We see him break, and it's a reminder that not only are they in war, but war is…well, not hell. "War is war and Hell is Hell."

There are lots of great lines and scenes that show it. I really like the one where he and Margaret are trapped in a cave together. But the biggest one for me is when they bring in Sidney Freeman. Hawkeye is literally, psychologically broken. And to the viewer, that's scary. Hawkeye can't pull himself together. He has to get a psychologist. It's…it's powerful. It's not anything to shy away from for this show.

Hawkeye, because of how integral he is in the success of the show, and how well the trope is handled in regards to his character, is my top OOC is Serious Business example.

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