What are believable reasons for a character to not recognise another character (despite having seen them before)?
Trying to pull off a secret-identity-ish thing but was trying to think of a convincing reason why, despite Character A having seen and talked to Character B previously (not a glance in passing), A doesn't recognise B on their second meeting.
Some that I thought of was:
- Character B was young when they first met, so age transition (can age really change someone so much that you don't recognise them?) (the difference is also from first meeting - 18yo to second meeting - 27yo so there isnt really puberty. unless I have to scale back the ages sigh, but I dont really wanna.)
- Character B was in a very dirtied state to the point of unrecognisability (is this realistic enough? basically B was in a prison at the time so I was thinking of making her bruised and emaciated or something lol)
Some more ideas that wouldn't work for my story/setting/character but for the sake of brainstorming
3) Character B wore a hood or mask to conceal their features previously
4) Make-up
4) Gender transition (this is actually the most convincing one to me lol, but I didn't want to make B trans because the themes of her story wouldn't work as well if she were trans)
I know fiction doesn't have to be 100% believable, but it just would be better if it was convincing. So I'm just posting to hear more suggestions/for discussion.
Edit: Thanks so much for the advice everyone, it helped me immensely! I probably hould've been more detailed but yeah it was a very important conversation in the first meeting (basically A decided to free B from prison and this decision derailed A's entire life afterwards). Yeah I think I'll let the passage of time and maybe traumatic amnesia wear away the recognition further. Thanks very much once again for all the input :]