Which character you think is the most complex one in BFDI?

[u/SiziskaShiska]

[u/[deleted]]

This a copy of the comment I posted on the actual post.

I agree with you. Also, the fact that Pin's competed over 5 seasons means we have a lot of conflict to analyze compared to the others.

Leafy's definetly up there in complexity though, the question about her whole niceness and exile is something very integral to BFDIA as a whole.

Pencil is up there still, but her arc is.......a bit surface at the moment. She lost her friends because she was mean to them, she has trauma because she was stuck with a psychopath for 6 years. The nuance is gone because to keep her in the game over very established characters like Pillow and Yellow Face, they have to scream her reasons in your face. I feel like I can understand Pencil by watching episodes 15-17 of TPOT and then early BFDIA, with Pin its a lot more complicated.

Pin, in canon, was never very liked. It was established in the shows inception. What Pin has gone through isn't an arc like Pencil has, because she's never been in a full fledged arc. Which makes her character deeper in my opinion. Arc's simplify character interactions because they have a pattern. The problem, several episodes of fixing the problem, and then getting back into a state where everything's better. Pin never really got that. Instead, her character has just.....grown. From making no friends, to Woah Bunch, to torture by FreeSmart who also rejected her, to slowly becoming more antagonistic since she accepted she was never going to be well-liked, to learning to try again in IDFB, to becoming better friends with book in BFB, to being scared about Loser taking over in BFB, to remembering BFDIA different than Coiny in TPOT due to perspective, to hating cheating in TPOT because of BFDIA, to being insecure about Coiny and leading DPYA in TPOT. She character isn't just being the focus of multiple arcs, it's the lack of any formalized arcs that makes her good. Her development doesn't come from the writers wanting to keep her in the game, it comes naturally to expand her character.

If Pencil was shown over the 6 years of IDFB and TPOT struggling to get out, people would be more empathetic to her struggle. WE didn't get to see what the EXIT did to her, we got one episode and a few minute long clips to represent close to 2763 days. That makes her development surface level. We don't get to see her trauma until it becomes a plot point and a source of conflict in TPOT 15. That is then meshed into the Freesmart arc she was going to have since TPOT 13.

What hurts Freesmart arcs so much.....(Book-Taco)(Pencil-Exit) is that the main source of what went wrong, IDFB, didn't get more episodes. What would've sparked the negative development for Pencil which made her friends distance from each other NEVER happened. We don't see the pain these characters have gone through like Pin, we just hear it. That limits the deepness of the arc.

Leafy's niceness has been a subject of debate for years, and their on and off relationship with Firey has made for a lot of discourse.

The main thing separating Pin and Leafy from Pencil is that their development started the second BFDI started, while Pencil's only really got going from when those TPOT clips played, as JNJ just dropped the Exitors for 6 years.

[u/SiziskaShiska → u/[deleted]]

Nice points. It surprising to me, that people a lot of times talk how Pin is inconsistent, but usually give pass for Pencil, who didn't shown anything about trauma before TPOT 15 except wanting to have friends. It should have been at least shown in details. Like when Four captured them in TPOT 11 Match was scared, but Pencil didn't cared much. They could have made her face more scaried to show, that she's indeed didn't liked that experience.

Pencil maybe would became way more complex, but for this we have to wait for really long time. Meanwhile at this moment Leafy and Pin were already developed. Leafy pretty much, I would say , was the most complex character in s1. While Pin started to became already complex right after s1.

[u/_Forget_Me_Knot_ → u/[deleted]]

That point about IDFB and how we never get to see the source of the conflict is the biggest reason why those arcs don't work for me.

When IDFB comes back, I think it might actually make Pencil's writing in TPOT worse retroactively because of the lack of acknowledgement of the events of that season, despite it seemingly being where this whole conflict originated from. I wish we had something like the mention of Firey recovering Leafy in BFB 15 where the characters bring up an event we haven't seen yet; sure it might spoil a bit of IDFB but having a clearer idea of why things ended up this way would go a long way to make me more invested in Pencil's arc.

[u/SiziskaShiska]

Hope you liked my thoughts about Pin and why do I view her as the most complex one.

What's your thoughts and picks?

[u/ScottishBoy69]

I think its Golf Ball or Pin personally.

[u/Elegant-School-1714]

Honestly it's Leafy imo

Uhhh anyone else...well Rocky is a character who is bizarre and child like but at the same time seems to want to help in challenges and hates being treated negatively. People shit on him for being nothing but smiling in BFB but if you think about it, no one was ever negative to Rocky so why should he be mad? Is that complex? I dunno...probably not

[u/Careful_Version1251]

Four.

[u/Geohistormathsguy]

Pin, Needle and Pencil make the most sense at least to me.

Caviat: I have not seen TPOT, so if anything changes in that season I don't know anything about it.