You could have character B trying hard not to engage, just defend himself. Since the characters are friends, I suppose character A would stop hitting character B if he saw the latter not returning any punches. After that, both sides could explain themselves, with character A justifying his freak out and character B trying to console him without tough love tactics this time around.
edited 17th May '13 7:02:59 AM by Basterd
Character A and B aren't super close friends or anything (much more of a 'friendly coworker-type relationship' than anything else)
\ So I should basically just have Character B avoid throwing any punches back?
edited 17th May '13 8:58:16 AM by TheMuse
IMHO yeah, I think choosing not to throwdown would lower character B's Jerkass Meter. 'Cause, y' know, trying to knock some sense into A shows he cares. At least a little. Literally knocking some sense to the guy(A), obviously didn't work, but I think that if B cares enough, he won't fight back. You could have B trying to immobilize A, while not hitting him, just until A calms down a bit.
So there's a situation in my work that involves using a deconstruction of Get A Hold Of Yourself Man.
- Character A learns that one of his loved ones may be in mortal danger, understandably, he starts freaking out very badly. A few people fear he may end up hurting himself, and after reassuring him doesn't work, Character B slaps him to try to calm him down. Character B didn't know that Character A has PTSD, and it only makes it worse, causing them to go into a full-on fistfight.
I want to pull this off without making Character B seem like a Jerkass (the character already has some Jerkass with a Heart of Gold traits already) what would be some good things to include (besides having him apologize afterwards, obviously) to ensure he comes across as imply misguided, rather than malicious?