Character Perception Confusion

     People who are doing my 5 Male Characters Tag are having difficulty understanding what character perception is and I probably should have explained it more (or people have just never seen Top Gun).

People think that character perception is how the actors portray the character, but it's nothing to do with the actor/character relationship. It's a completely character/viewer relationship. 

Here's an explanation that I gave to someone I tagged

     Character perception is how the audience views the character from the beginning of the story to the end. Basically a 'first impressions are not always the correct impressions.' It's when a character is portrayed in a certain way and you think that's who they really are. Then as the story progresses you begin to see why they are that way and the first impressions view changes and you suddenly accept them as they have always been. It's not character development though, because the character never changes and they're the same person that they were in the beginning.

     Snape from "Harry Potter" is a classic example of character perception. Throughout the series we think he's a villain and then when the story shifts in his favor, we see that he was a good man all along, but that is not who he was perceived to be in the beginning. He was made to look like the villain at Harry's first impression and as the story progressed, Snape himself never changed, but the story's perception of him did.

     J.K. Rowling is the master of character perception as well as Jane Austen (Mr. Darcy as a classic example) and Suzanne Collins with Finnick Odair.

     Hopefully this might clear some confusion.