The boiling point

[Damage]

A fan favorite cliche in a lot of shows and stories is when a character they love and sometimes hate reaches that critical moment. The time where they snap, their boiling point. Some are awesome where the character lashes out and goes on their rampage some are uncomfortable where our hero attacks friends verbally and makes us wish they'd hit the rewind button. Some are just cruel and ugly. But what about the ones that are just straight up bad. Unjustified freak outs that seem out of character or unearned as a character has no reason to be as upset as they are. Well in an effort to avoid the latter I reach out to you community. Whether you yourself have an experience of a meltdown or if you think some freak outs are better than others. My personal favorite is the first one I ever saw in a show where Tai and Agumon lost their shit forcing Agumon to digivolve into the distorted skull-greymon. Was it the best? I dunno but it stuck with me because of it being the first time I saw a good guy totally lose their mind.

Please shower me with your opinions and not your rage.

[Okami]

Personally, I love it when a hero or good guy breaks, even for a bit. It makes them seem less than perfect and can honestly make them more interesting as a character and could lead to future conflict when they regret their actions.

My favorite case of this is in Elfen Lied in the infamous scene that makes a young girl go from lonely mutant to an enraged force of nature.

Black Rock Shooter also has a moment in which a girl loses her mind, while she herself becomes depressed and mentally unstable it's what's happening to her in a parallel universe that is cool to see. I mean, she gets an army of skeletons, that's awesome.

I make my OCs reach their own boiling points a lot as well, the saying "OCs are like geodes, you have to break them to see their true colors" rings true for me. Is it cruel. Maybe. Is it fun? YES.

[Damage]

Thanks. I liked Lucy's snap in EL. I'm just having a bit of a dilemma because I'm not sure how far is too far in a "snap". On one hand I want the anger to be understood and inevitably stopped but on the other hand, go too far and it makes a potentially likable character easy to hate. Some people felt in Re:Zero Subaki's snap was totally awful, I personally loved it as it was in line with his ego being attacked over the course of like 4 episodes along with his building insanity. I think everybody has one bad day where they can snap easier than others and making this true for fictional characters makes them a little easier to relate to.

[HughJ]

[Damage]

Safe to say Mr.Savage has met his boiling point many a good time and I do like to see his. Good pick.

[HughJ]

Yes, of course

But to seriously respond to the topic, I'd say that my favorite 'character snapping' moment was probably in the finale of Season 4 of AMC's The Walking Dead, when Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) bites out a man's jugular to kill him and reach his son. He then grabs a knife and approaches another one of the gang, who was about to rape his son, and brutally mutilates him.

The moment was very powerful because the man who was once a sheriff's deputy and family man had been reduced to an absolute savage. There were obvious parallels given the fact that in The Walking Dead universe, the cause of the collapse of society was a virus that causes corpses to rise as zombies and bite the living.

It was gory, yeah, but it was nothing less of what you would expect from a post-zombie-apocalypse 'boiling point' moment

Edited November 14, 2016 by HughJ

[Damage]

I think Rick had a ton of pretty good freak outs. I did like his, good to see people do appreciate when the good go bad. I think my OC may be fine after all.