When have you Rooted For the Empire?

I think grey toned characters just trying to fend for themselves are easier to write and make likeable than strictly black or even strictly white characters that are directly fighting for one side of morality. There's more dimension to a character that has self interest besides doing what is best or worst for the world just because.

To add onto my previous example with The Dreamstone this was how they sort of got around it by the end of the series. The villain's mooks, the Urpneys were grey impersonal characters just doing their job, which, merged with their sympathetic and not-highly-provocative schemes, didn't merge well at all with the heroes, who they gave very basic standard righteous 'stop the evil bad guys' personalities for the large part that also made them a lot more bland and boring than them.

The key point the main two heroes started to get some streak of character was when they made them the rest of the team's errand runners, suddenly having their own side agendas and trying to get it done without the Urpneys ruining it, at which point suddenly the writers started to find them more shades of charm and personality and made the rivalry more two sided, like they'd pinpointed at least some sign of life to them. Basically the heroes became more likeable when they stopped so restrictively making their role and character like stock heroes.

I mean how many heroes do we generally tire of because they are more generically aligned than the villain?

edited 15th Oct '17 4:55:41 PM by Psi001

Well, it's fairly common to have proactive villains and reactive heroes, which tends to result in boring heroes with no personal aspirations.

I'm generally more wary of another phenomena - when poorly written designated heroes begin abusing their status as the inevitable moral victors in the story, and so start acting like total jerks with nobody calling them out. This is most egregious in modern police procedurals, where the investigators will often vent on the Subculture of the Week, spewing whatever their writers feel like saying on what's wrong with kids today. And because more often than not, a member of said subculture will be the killer of the story, said spewage will be regarded as vindicated by inference. Can't argue with cops, apparently.

There are times where I think writers are convinced it's more a vital element for the hero to win and look maybe superficially (self) righteous about it, than to, you know, actually be heroic. Hence so many cutesy heroes that always get away with acting like little bastards.

I think at the end of the day, a lot of writers don't have a passion for heroes, they're the goody goodies who always do the right thing and always wins at the end as a result. The villains can be more than just evil in their goals, they can be simply self serving or vengeful or childish and there's more flexibility to how far they can take it because they more often than not lose and get their comeuppance, very frequently in a rather pitiful way. A character that is a victim to their own vices is more fleshed out than one that is just good and always gets what they want, especially since one tends to be far more character-driven than the other.

Not to say there aren't cases the other way round occurs, with fleshed out heroes but villains that are generic obstacles or nasty for nasty sake (eg. most My Little Pony villains that aren't redeemed). But in most of those cases the villain isn't as much of a key piece, more the occasional prop with more focus on the protagonist's personal problems.

It becomes more obvious when a badly written hero is a detriment because very rarely can a villain be written without them (there are some cases but rare ones) and because since they're the characters that always win, their presence can start to become insufferable after a while if they aren't likeable.

edited 17th Oct '17 1:45:15 PM by Psi001

Exactly. Goes double for video games, where you're effectively stuck as such a hero. Particularly in cases with considerable Gameplay and Story Segregation and rampant cutscene incompetence. For example, Far Cry 2 wouldn't be nearly so infamous if not for the main character being railroaded into suicide after joining up with the literal Nietzsche wannabe arms-dealer he was sent to kill in the first place. (That and the guard posts that keep respawning even after you've cleared them up. Fix those and tweak the ending, and you've got a better S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) And never mind garbage like Spec Ops: The Line, that forces you to commit atrocities and then berates you for it. The only winning move is not to play.

So yeah, what games made you wish you were playing for the other team, or otherwise that the player character acted in a different manner than presented? For my part, another example would be GTA: San Andreas, where the protagonist eventually becomes a filthy-rich casino co-owner who makes Tony Montana look like a two-bit burglar... yet is berated for it by his useless brother who he also worked to release from prison as well. Great motivation for players to finish the game, isn't it?

edited 18th Oct '17 4:00:33 AM by indiana404

Dear god, this thread is still on.

spec ops atack the shooter genre and now it handle choice by binary choice that handle you as hero or a monster while you gladly clean áreas by shooting over and over, even the comentar said it: freedom in game extend into now much the devopler can let you.

Meanwhile, you seen to Forget CJ actually confront his brother about his obsesión with the hood and that a life exist somewhere, Sweet narrow view of the gangs is a chararter flaw, as is dístrust for his own brother.

Well, the thread was sleepy for about a month. Nothing more ironic than waking it up just to say it's still going.

Yeah, I'll give you CJ's brother as someone who's ultimately a minor annoyance, particularly as the game's ending still gives you the traditional free-form open world to continue playing with. With Far Cry 2 and Spec Ops, on the other hand, the "heroism" to root against is the game story itself.

Speaking of which, one of my favorite examples of Spec Ops-style designated evil is the Culling of Stratholme from Warcraft III (remember when Warcraft was known as a strategy game franchise). You have villagers turning into zombies in mere seconds before the heroes' eyes, an alien vampire demon whose army already outnumbers the heroes' and gets larger with every said zombie, virtually no recourse but to give the townsfolk mercy... but for some reason, that's bad. Not that any alternative is proposed, or that the heroic contrarians even try to stop the act itself. No, it's just something they balk at and then bail from in pretentious indignation. Frostmourne's influence nothing, Arthas might've switched teams just to get out of working with that sort of self-righteous hypocrisy.

edited 22nd Nov '17 3:11:27 AM by indiana404

I rooted for the Brotherhood of Nod when I first saw them while playing Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Don't get me wrong, I understood that GDI were definitely heroic and well-meaning, but... I think they came across as too close to "USA-dominated UN military" to me at the time, which was also a time when I really hated America for its unwavering bias in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict ^note of course, it was also a time when the Saudi Propaganda Machine still had me under its subtle thrall on the topic, making gloss over all the naunces and complexities involved; I still root for Palestine, but I know better than to assume the Palestinian factions don't have their own skeletons in the closet. And while the official line is that Nod's claim to be fighting for the downtrodden masses against the exploitation of the developed world and promising a better future through Tiberium is a sham, we only have GDI's word for that, and they aren't exactly an unbiased source; for all we know, it's GDI that are either lying or ignorant.

And hey, Nod was the one that had the most exotic tech. And Oxanna being easy on the eyes was a good plus, too.

But most importantly... KANE! LIVES!

edited 22nd Nov '17 8:52:45 PM by MarqFJA

To be fair, the culling of strathome was pretty much a way to kick arthas morality down, it was a kick the dog situation, whatever there was another solution is a moot point.

After all, we dont go jaling every muslims because we dont have a super fool proof way to stop islamist(donald trump idiocy nonstanding) right?

I wouldn't say the situation is comparable - Stratholme was already contaminated, people were turning into zombies left and right. The problem wasn't that some or even most of them might have been infected, but that if gameplay was any indication, all of them actually were. The equivalent would be if there was some sort of real life hate plague that would turn people into religious extremists... and coming from a country with five centuries of Ottoman slavery in its history and a pretty bloody war to finally end it, I can't say a peaceful solution would work if that were ever to happen.

For zombies in general, I normally root for the guy saying to just shoot the infected person whenever that obligatory dilemma comes up. I mean, you know what always happens otherwise - they die anyway, usually infecting others in turn. I really liked how Z Nation turned "giving mercy" into an accepted cultural practice in a world were everyone goes slackjaw after they die.

I personally chose to interpret that mission as something that turned him evil, rather than showed that he was evil from the start. It's a very heavy handed and flawed way to show that someone's evil by presenting what's essentially a Sadistic Choice and claiming one choice is clearly more moral than the other, but on the other hand, a character being forced into that position can very well take a huge hit to his SAN and because of that shift further into the moral pit.

I rooted for Kuvira in season 4 of Legend of Korra. She seemed to be the only one who cared enough about the Earth Kingdom to do something to stabilize it.

Hmm, I think the closest I've come to this was D Igimon Tamers after learning about the whole D-Reaper thing.

What about any subversions or inversions of this trope? I really don't like Mike from Shortpacked or Kokichi from Danganronpa V3. They seem to "get away" with being trolls simply because thye more or less are right about everyone around them,.

That's just not noteworthy enough. People hate the Jerkass, surprise surprise! I do get what you mean and I agree though.

Fair Enough.

This sort of explains why we like the evil overlord list.

what do you mean?

I reckon that the Evil Overlord per the list is the epitome of pragmatic villainy, which tends to garner support, particularly if the respective heroes are belligerent jerks or incompetent holier-than-thou busybodies.

For my part, I often find myself rooting for polite villains over rude heroes. Sure, it's likely intended as a dramatic illustration of morality starkly contrasting manners, with the heroes often being too appalled at the villain to maintain their composure. Most of the time though, it just comes off as an excuse for them to vent at such an acceptable target, while occasionally being barely any better themselves.

It's actually an interesting litmus test - it's a fairly common wish for one's visibly polite and wholesome professional or romantic rivals or even political opponents to be revealed as somehow despicable, which in turn is supposed to justify acts of jealousy or abject aggression. In real life, however, this is the attitude of hate groups and paranoid fundamentalists, which is why I'm not too impressed by seeing it so often in fiction.

edited 4th Jan '18 1:39:29 PM by indiana404

Self righteousness is a very odious and insufferable aspect to give a character if made too outspoken. I think this is why the worst case of Designated Heroes and Tautological Templars tend to be characters audiences most like seeing get a punch in the face besides the straight up jerkasses or monsters. They're a character so self absorbed and yet won't shut up about how everything they do is for the good and everyone else is an ignorant selfish jerk or a villain. They're not mannerly or just bluntly nasty, they're just "I am the world".

It can get bad for some Designated Heroes because at times it almost feels like the writers are semi-aware they don't quite hold up as good guys so have them and the narrative spout on and on how they stand for the right of way and the guys against them are are soooo evil in a rather contextless manner, which most of the time just makes them more irritating.

edited 7th Jan '18 5:17:56 PM by Psi001

Dune. No question about it. I read the novels, which are wooden as hell and reduce galaxy politics to something that looks like running half a dozen small cities. I never saw a point to the rebellion other than that House Harkonnen was evil and this particular emperor was bad, but the empire worked. Replacing it with fanatic sand warriors from one planet wasn't going to be a change for the better. (And I hated the idea of formerly disorganized communities in the desert on ONE planet being able to defeat the entire galaxy.)

Give it a generation and they'd have the same feudal factions and differences as the millennias-old empire, but without the empire's long history of reducing issues to palace intrigue instead of fighting wars.

I don't want to get into too much of a tangent on the Dune universe, but I should point out a few things that your casual reading may have missed.

• The Imperial throne had become corrupt and decadent to the point where it was already losing its grip on power. The current Emperor ascended by poisoning his father and was letting the feared Sardukar legions grow weak through lack of discipline. (Specifically, he was trying to buy their loyalty by giving them luxuries, undermining the basic point of their training.)
• Shaddam IV wasn't passive in the Atreides-Harkonnen feud. In fact, he wanted Leto destroyed because Leto was getting too popular in the Landsraad and could have become a serious threat to his throne. The attack on the Atreides is a political hit job.
• Paul's initial motivation is to avenge his father's death and restore his family, something he needs a power base for. The Fremen are the ideal army for the job, and are specifically set up by the plot as a foil to the Sardukar due to the intense discipline and hardening needed to survive in the desert of Arrakis.
• Paul's ascent as a Messiah is largely the fault of the Bene Gesserit, who had been scheming for thousands of years to produce a person capable of predicting the future, got what they wanted a generation too early, and then lost control of him.
• It is a particularly emphasized plot point that Paul becoming the Kwisatz Haderach and leading the Fremen jihad across the galaxy is not a good thing, but is rather a necessary and inevitable cycle that he falls into and is unable to escape from, no matter how hard he tries. By the end of Children of Dune, it is clear that the Fremen are indeed falling into decadence exactly as the Sardukar did before them.
• Paul's son, Leto II, is the one who fully embraces the prophetic vision as a means to prevent humanity from destroying itself due to terminal dependence on the spice. The alternative to this would have been the extinction of the species. Leto II's empire is not presented as a good thing, either.

Now, there are certainly plot holes, the biggest being that it's never clearly established how a single desert planet worth of Fremen conquer a galaxy worth of planets. ^note It's implied, although not ever stated outright, that Paul recruits armies from the disaffected all over the Imperium and the Fremen are merely the shock troops. But overall, you need to pay attention to the thematic elements to understand that the Imperium isn't intended to be seen as evil, just doomed to be swept over by the tide of pent-up human aggression. The evil side in Dune is the Harkonnens — or, more specifically, the debauched, hedonistic ethos that they represent. Later, the Honored Matres and the Tleilaxu come to represent different types of evil.

edited 6th Feb '18 10:02:15 AM by Fighteer

I know it's practically a cliche, but Avatar. It was just so damned Anvilicious, and I can't stand that Humans Are the Real Monsters stuff. Oh, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Most of the so-called heroes were basically an Animal Wrongs Group, and the Designated Villains didn't do much that I felt was evil, definitely not enough to deserve the protagonists screwing them over.

Speaking of Avatar, Cracked today has one of its once-in-a-blue-moon good articles, particularly concerning how fictional allegories for prejudice and racism tend to be counter-productive, often lending the obligatory chauvinist villains a lot more weight than they warrant in real life. In Avatar's case, nobody ever notes that humans didn't "kill their mother", but never had one in the first place, never mind related boons like perfect health, a self-balancing eco-system, and of course, the biological psychic links to every critter on land, sea and air. Sorry, we got the basic cable package and had to DIY everything else... got good at it too.

I actually wonder - is there a story where the racial metaphor is dismantled not by invariably beating up the villainous chauvinists for daring to suggest that explicitly supernatural differences might cause a few problems, but by revealing that the differences aren't that pronounced to begin with? Say, a Harry Potter-style setting where it's revealed that "muggles" can use magic just fine, and the division is actually enforced by a decrepit circle of aristocrats seeking to preserve their own power by claiming the ability is hereditary or random at most, so as to remain in control of the few practitioners. Ditto bending in the other Avatar. Or even the Force in Star Wars. For all the fluff about equality, representation and whatnot, how many such settings can you name that actually are egalitarian, in that at least the freakin' laws of physics work the same for everyone?

Could the initial X Men movie count? Since the villains there are technically not the prejudiced humans, but the extremist side of the mutant clan who want to take them out instead of reason with them. Sure there are claims from the human side that can't really be answered (after all there are dangerous mutants who abuse their powers), but Xavier's team try to negotiate without heaping on the Holier Than Thou attitude.

edited 10th Feb '18 1:39:51 AM by Psi001

The X-Men films have the intriguing trait that pretty much every plot revolved around a mutant whose unique abilities could potentially cause massive casualties - Rogue and Magneto in X1, Jason and Xavier in X2, Leech and Phoenix in X3, Shaw and Magneto in First Class^note though Shaw's plan itself had little to do with his own mutation, Magneto picked up the slack, Mystique in DOFP, and Apocalypse in, well, Apocalypse. In cases like the Phoenix, and apparently Xavier in his old age, the mutation is outright uncontrollable and dangerous to everyone, human and mutant alike. This is also why I'm not convinced by Magneto's endgame, even if his initial basis is understandable - even in an all-mutant world, there would still be those who can shatter mountains with but a glance, and those who can lick their elbows.

I generally prefer thinking about the mutant situation as a sort of Heroes-style biological singularity that will eventually affect all of humanity. As mentioned in the above articles, regarding them as little more than a metaphor for oppressed minorities - while giving them supernatural abilities and having the main hero cast be 90% cishet wasps living in a mansion - pretty much ruins both the opportunity for relatable social commentary, and a rather nice sci-fi concept in its own right.

edited 14th Feb '18 1:00:53 AM by indiana404