User blog comment:ForeverAloneTV/TD Character Review-Rant - Noah/@comment-5221692-20151224071455

Despite being cynical and likeable in all previous seasons, Noah's never been outwardly HAPPY. The happiest he's been is smirking in the middle of throwing shade at people in TDI, TDA, and TDWT. Ridonculous was the first season to show Noah entering a state of long term satisfaction, as he seemed to just not care in all previous seasons.

Now I'd agree with you if Noah's personality was ACTUALLY dropped in TDRR... but it wasn't. He maintained his classic snark pretty much the entire way through, and even kept his wisecracking jokes that we adored in World Tour! I was afraid we wouldn't get any of those. But as far as the humor and sarcasm goes, that aspect of Noah's charm never left.

If anything, seeing this journey of Noah going from cynical and borderline emotionless to being snarky but outwardly friendly was an interesting and fun journey to watch. Emma helped. Owen helped.

Noah was never "dumbed down" because Owen made it abundantly clear to the audience that Noah's crush was very unlike him, and that's GREAT since nobody ever came forward and pointed out how OOC the entire cast of TDAS was. We were expected to just accept these oddly new characters that barely resembled to ones we used to know. In Hawaiian Honeyruin, we're told that Noah is acting DIFFERENTLY.

Everyone in this frickin fandom gets SO incredibly butthurt over characters acting differently, because you nuggets can't tell the difference between a character acting different, and a character undergoing derailment. "Development" isn't even a word in this fandom's dictionary anymore. What's the point of writing ANY work of fiction if none of the characters change at all?

Noah changed. The way I see it is that he's gained more new qualities as opposed to LOSING his old ones. He's still got it, but now he's got MORE.

TL;DR: Different isn't bad. Noah's still got his charm in TDRR, and this fandom can't tell the difference between development and derailment, because a character acting differently in order to undergo development is just "out of character" and unnacetpable.