Personality versus Character

On Itsthinking’s thread The Cadance Paradox, I came to a realisation: Those of us whom like Cadance like her more for her personality than her actual character.
 
First, some basic definitions:
 
Personality is who a character is, in terms of how they act and behave towards others. Kindness, friendliness, understanding, or aloofness are some of the words we can use to describe a character’s personality.
 
Character on the other hand, is what a character does. What they do, what they want, and how they react is how we define their character. In a narrative sense, the best way to build and define a character is to present them with a challenge or a conflict to overcome, so that they can learn and grow as a character.
 
A static character is a character whom doesn’t change to any major degree with the evolving narrative. A dynamic character is the opposite, in that they evolve and change with the narrative. The mane six are dynamic characters, in that they have changed with the narrative to varying degrees.
 
Although others have asked me to define personalities as well, I have decided not to, as I feel it is outside the bounds of the core points that I’m trying to make. In summary, yes personalities can be static and dynamic too, since they are tied in character as much as character is tied into personality.
 
Where am I going with this? As much as I like Cadance, I have to admit that she’s a static character, in that she’s the same character that we met in A Canterlot Wedding. I think that she has a good personality, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that she’s a static character.
 
I hear that there is a book that explains her origins, but all that does is give her character more depth. What do I mean by this? Depth comes from character development, which can happen during, before, or after when the narrative is set. I consider a character to be static if they don’t majorly change when the narrative is set. Yes, Cadance got some further development, thus more depth, but that happened before the narrative, thus I still consider her static.
 
The thing is, now that I think about it, Celestia is exactly the same in that regard. She too is a pretty static character, even though she is endowed with a good personality like Cadance, and even with that character history episode that a lot of us want, she’ll still be a static character, though one with a bit more depth than before.
 
I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to be a static character with a lot of depth, but people have to realise that a setting can get stale if the characters don’t grow in some way.
 
What do we all think?

If I could say one thing about about Cadance is that she’s naive and stubborn. That probably comes with her lack of maturity compared to other rulers.
 
It’s hard to treat princesses as anything other than plot devices because then you’d be taking away time from the main cast.

And that’s why I want a Celestia episode.
 
That and cause she’s best princess.

@Itsthinking
 
@Princess♠Molestia
 
You know what would be good in those regards? An episode where the princesses have to solve a dilemma afflicting Equestria, with none of them agreeing on how to solve it (at first). This would give us insight into their characters as each tries to come up with a solution, and would hopefully allow them to grow as characters.

I don’t think you can be a flat character without depth.
 
By definition a flat character lacks depth.

@Ebalosus
 
…so you explain the difference between personality and character, but you don’t explain the difference between depth and the-term-opposite-of-flat-that-you-didn’t-give, or explain if a personality can grow or have depth? Seriously, at least tie up all the loose ends.

@archestereo
 
Could you please explain what you mean? I’m happy to tie up loose ends, as long as I understand what I’ve missed.
 
I have a rough idea of what you’re saying, though I will point out that what I wrote was more to encourage discussion on the topic, than be a thesis in its own right.

@Ebalosus
 
…well, for example, alot of people would assume that a deep character would be the opposite of a flat character. It would help if you clarified what the opposites of “flat” and “deep” are, and gave examples of each. It would also help if you distinguished the equivalents for personality, if there are any. I’m not even entirely sure if you didn’t mean to say “depth of personality” rather than “depth of character” when you distinguished the depth from backstory from the growth of character.

Yea I’m still not getting this. But it think you just didn’t define your terms OP.
 
Liking a personality is fine.

@archestereo
 
@Whatevs
 
Fair enough. Once I finish work, I’ll re-work the original post to include further definitions that hopefully help other understand what I’m getting at.

I guess you got it right, but Cadence is kinda flat because she got like 3 episodes of screentime, half of the mane 6 cast took 2 seasons to develop their characters.

@Takuto_Devastated  
I disagree. The pilot set up their characters and their distinctiveness.

@Whatevs  
When i first started watching the show and i watched Griffon the Brush off, I thought Pinkie, despite being cheerful, had a sarcastic and malicious side, and planned a revenge on Gilda to make Rainbow Dash bust her and see the jerk that she was, just about 1 season later i realized that Pinkie character had nothing to do with that and that she just made a party for Gilda with the intention to cheer her up, seeing how grumpy she was acting, and that every consequence was just coincidence.
 
See how it makes a difference?

@Takuto_Devastated  
I fail to see how that rebuffs my point that the pilot gave the Mane 6 more character than Cadence

okay, what exactly are you all getting at?
 
the show isn’t about Candace, it’s about twilight and her friends…
 
she’s an old friend of twilight, who watched her as a sitter probably arranged by Celestia because twilight is suspected of being a magical polymath and potential alicorn, and since Celestia is more than 1000 years old, probably has the foresight to see it’s best to have talented future leaders become better acquainted early on.
 
that is all part of the “role” she fulfills as a character.
 
Character in the most base of meanings, typically is general consensus of what one is assumed to stand for given knowledge of past actions, and serves as barometer to determine future actions…hence the term “out of character”.
 
The only thing you really know that speaks for her character is that she loves twilight like a sister, and her brother as a husband and she has some kind of magical dominion over “love” which is shown to be reasonably powerful.
 
Personality is more a measure of how they think, feel and behave, especially when faced with some sort of dilemma.
 
-We haven’t really seen much of her personality to make a judgement call, she seems much the same as twilight’s brother in that they’re pretty dedicated towards the services they provide,
 
We haven’t witnessed any obvious flaws like  
AJ’s stubbornness and one-track mind,  
Rarity’s weakness towards temptation and Vanity,  
Pinkie’s poor judgement and dedication to being non-sequitur,  
RD’s shameless self promotion and lack of patience,  
Twilight’s obsessiveness and anxiety  
Fluttershy’s neurotic aversion to conflict.
 
Flaws are what make characters good. I hate perfect things as much as I hate “perfect” people. I honestly wouldn’t watch the show If it wasn’t for how I can see pieces of myself and others in the show’s characters.
 
But in all honesty it’s all pretty much two sides of the same coin.

Cadance’s flaw, to me, seems to be naivety. Possibly stubbornness to the point of collapse as well.

@WassonG
 
Fair enough, though my point was to try and see if the reason for liking Cadance (or other characters like her) was more to do with their personality, rather than established characterisation.
 
I never intended this to become a means to gripe about Cadance, rather using her as an example of what I was trying to get across.