When have you Rooted For the Empire?

I usually root for villains if the heroes win through dumb luck most or all of the time, or a huge amount of plot armor. Worst case scenario, the heroes don't put effort into fighting or making stupid plans but somehow still win.

Same, basically if there's no intuition or personality added to how the heroes win in nearly every story, while how the villains plot but still lose is far more methodical and developed.

I might make an exception for comical stories where the hero's fluke victories are because of their character (eg. Inspector Gadget or Mr Magoo), but in most cases such setups are seemingly to avoid such development or to make the villains look like the unlucky underdog.

This was the format of the Road Runner cartoons for example (it was an unwritten rule that the Road Runner was Immune to Slapstick and couldn't win directly besides saying "Beep beep!") but at least in that case that was the whole point, you were supposed to be invested in Wile E Coyote more. Many stories practically do the same thing and expect you to think the good guy is compelling and putting up a good fight (The Dreamstone and the Pokemon anime are action cartoons, and yet the heroes rarely had to do anything arduous or unique to stop the bad guys, whenever the threat level came to that they got a Deus ex Machina to bail them out). It's hard to sympathise with a character, even the good guy, if they never really stood a chance of losing, no matter how useless or unremarkable they were.

I found a statement on Bugs Bunny by John Kricfalusi that was sort of relevant to this:

"[Early] Bugs actually did things in the cartoons. He didn't win by default. He went out of his way to cause trouble - and did it in a very likeable way. The [later] Bugs is completely unlikable. He doesn't do anything to win. He just wins because the rules say so. It's like he was born an aristocrat who deserves to win because he's the star character."

While I'm not sure if Bugs in particular counts (I think he was still crafty in many later cartoons, if in an understated way, even if the creators were at odds with his personality) the process described in that quote does sum up the issues with a Plot Armored hero perfectly.

edited 23rd Feb '18 11:48:08 AM by Psi001

At least Bugs admits it. And he's always been something of a self-aware designated hero, the old-school Marx brothers-style trickster rarely found nowadays. Notably, they introduced Yosemite Sam precisely as a way to give him an overtly aggressive opponent, as opposed to Elmer Fudd's overall likable bumbler.

Otherwise yeah, things like eleventh hour superpowers, improbable lucky strokes or previously unmentioned exploits tend to work only on first viewing - if you're invested in the heroes, you're happy to see them win, even if it's not actually through their own effort. Bonus points for having villains be so reprehensible that you're just as glad to see them go. Eventually, though, it gets tiresome and unsatisfying. It's like, say, you're watching a video game competition, and sure, one of the players is an overall asshole to everybody, so at the final stage... the opponent whips out the cheats and wins by a landslide. And nobody calls it out. Even if you don't like the loser, it's still a dirty victory. And now imagine the same, only instead of a generic asshole, the loser is more of an arrogant kung-fu guy who simply knows the rules and legitimate tactics better than anyone else. Betcha dollars for drachmas he'd get a massive following.

One thing that generally annoys me even more than the double standards associated with designated heroes, are the kind of standards - mostly found around ideal heroes - that are technically single, but so arbitrary and requiring external resources, as to be even worse in effect. For example, the Federation in Star Trek - that is, before it got soundly deconstructed later on - started out as an ideal society where all problems were already solved... somehow. There was no mention of how it actually worked, not even a vague impression of its economy and civil framework. It was effectively a post-scarcity society with no hint as to how it got that way.

Consequently, whenever the feds got on a high horse regarding civilizations with nowhere near as many conveniences in the resource department, it was the equivalent of disparaging people for not eating cake. As I mentioned on the last page, Avatar also exhibits the same type of pretentious circular reasoning, with humanity being denigrated for not having evolved in a perfectly balanced ecosystem with biologically built in USB 3.0 plugs. Same goes for every invented heroic country in comics. Atlantis, Themyscira, Wakanda - whenever those are used by writers getting on a soapbox about what's wrong with humanity, I find myself rooting for the nearest bloodthirsty general reaching for the nuke'em button. It's like how you can't argue with Elves, but worse, since Elves are generally just stuffy and pretentious, but not meant to actually serve as a standard for humanity itself.

From what I heard, WB had trouble getting a balance with Bugs. Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones' approach to moderating Bugs Screwy Squirrel demeanour was to give him more relentlessly nasty opponents and make Bugs himself more calm and idealised, but Robert Mckimson complained this went overboard and made Bugs a boring character, more a Hero Antagonist to foes such as Sam and Daffy, who despite being overly spiteful and relentless were still pitiful and more relatable. Laser-Guided Karma only goes so far. I guess that's why the late forties-early fifties Bugs cartoons are often the most popular since they tended to be the transitional point, where Bugs' overly suave side had cooled him but not completely taken over and his bad guys weren't just one dimensional Asshole Victims but still more fitting opponents than Elmer.

For your other point, as said before, a hero's righteous streak can easily cross over into Tautological Templar territory, especially if the villain has a justifiable situation that the writers don't notice they've created and thus the heroes constantly refuse to acknowledge because of their 'I'm the good guy and you're the bad guy' outlook. This was another thing wrong with The Dreamstone for most of it's run (seriously I think that cartoon is a "How To" guide on bad writing cliches for good guys). It got to a point I almost think the writers were aware of the potholes but just tried increasingly to cover it up by making the heroes as superficially righteous and cutesy as possible, only submitting to actually trying to write them semi-effortfully near the tail end of the show's run.

This itself can be another problem, a lot of writers don't take much interest in the heroes as much as the villains and kinda assume they'll work at face value and not have to be given a great amount of substance. Most of the times a badly written hero is fixed it's only because the work has lasted long enough to receive and answer to audience complaints, while many times a villain is improved as a character it's because a writer takes proactive interest in developing them. The Bugs example is one of few cases the creators' were very sensitive to how their hero in particular was conveyed, even if they couldn't agree on it.

edited 23rd Feb '18 2:26:12 PM by Psi001

Something I don't understand is the villain/empire curb stomping the good guys left and right , but when the main character comes into the plot, all of his troops suddenly downgrade into undisciplined 5 years-old who have no idea how to use a gun. In star wars the Stormtroopers are regarded as highly trained soldiers, but in the movies they are morons who can't aim. Basically, plot armor turned up to 11.

edited 25th Feb '18 1:09:44 AM by Tang5555

To punctuate that, the Stormtroopers also handily murdered the Jedi Council in the third film in a matter of hours.

This is another problem, the villains are often Strong as They Need to Be, only putting up a fight when it's needed for tension or if the writers can be bothered to write an equally complex counter by the heroes. I see many times in a work even the most harmless of villains can do something competent, but far less instances where the heroes prove they can handle the upgraded challenge. They need Plot Armor or the villains to randomly dumb back down again.

edited 24th Feb '18 7:59:04 AM by Psi001

That is kind of annoying, the Stormtroopers are supposed to trained soldiers and yet they fall like flies. I can understand why they did that but it doesn't make any less obnoxious.

I'd say it's fairly typical of poor writing to try and inflate the heroes' image by having them plow through ostensibly challenging opponents; a reverse Worf effect, if you will. However, it often looks cheap, and it sucks up drama like a supercharged Hoover - Avatar: The Last Airbender dropped all tension in any fight immediately after revealing the title character can turn into a raging ball of destruction at writers' discretion, as early as the second episode. Consequently, it was hardly surprising when this advantage was ostensibly restricted by similarly magical limitations, only to be returned by a contrived lucky strike. And then came the magical dilemma-resolving ability where the issue of whether to kill the supernaturally powerful villain was dropped by a vaguely implied just-introduced depowering ability. All in all, bad ideas tend to come in bunches, apparently.

There's something else that intrigues me in the trope namer, and generally in tales where small bands of rebels face off against tyrannical regimes, yet with barely any popular support to their effort. The ending of ROTJ had scenes of galaxy-wide celebrations literally glued-on to the rebel party, after the preceding films failed to show anyone giving a damn about them. Now, this is often milked for drama, presenting heroes as selfless martyrs fighting for great justice, alone against the world... but in real life, that's just not how things work. Popular revolutions are popular for a reason, often finding support even in the upper echelons of power and the military; it's not always a rosy image, but the point stands that a revolution is still a numbers game, with the majority usually being the right side... or at least the side less wrong.

To contrast, the concept of being a lionized martyr fighting for a noble cause against not just authorities, but society in general, is most often found in real-life terrorist groups. The Star Wars rebels are occasionally exaggerated as such, though my own impression is closer to them being honest yet myopic, with no endgame past blowing things up, and as of both continuities, no governing faculty otherwise. A more obvious example would be the heroes in The Matrix, who literally believe that anyone not on their side is a potential enemy. Sure, the narrative technically justifies that, but not so much the dispassionate disregard for human life they demonstrate otherwise. In conclusion, I'd say that eventually, if not outright inevitably, heroes fighting the world aren't, and writers might want to find better bases for building drama.

It's also the problem that, if you keep having your protagonist not just win, but humiliate the villain on a regular basis, it's harder to buy into why they haven't easily got rid of them. Comical stories at least regularly lampshade the hero is either dumbly oblivious to their upper hand or just toying with the villain, but serious ones try to badly add superficial tension.

Sonic Satam did the same thing, not that Robotnik or Snively were remotely rootable (though Snively was ineffectually sympathetic) but there were supposed to be many bands of Freedom Fighters that they only considered calling near the show's end, and even between the main "ragtag" bunch, Sonic and Dulcy regularly curb stomped many of Robotnik's forces, and in some cases Robotnik himself. It relied so much on suspension of disbelief it was hard to be that gripped by the heroes' situation, especially in cases they had to do something idiotic or arrogant just to keep Robotnik on top (eg. the ridiculously dumb way Sonic botched the time travel scheme, or the one time Robotnik successfully robotised a team mate was because they wasted so much time with banter and ignoring rescuing them for a wild goose chase, and even then brushed it off quick, hell the whole reason Robotnik took over in the first place was due to being complacent with key artillery, rather than feeling pity for their losses, I just thought "What stupid douchebags!").

edited 1st Mar '18 10:38:59 AM by Psi001

That sort of development is one of my personal red flags. It shows the villain is not meant as a challenge for the hero to overcome, but more of a straw loser for them to shine against. The result is not just underwhelming, but tends to be counter-productive in darker tales where the villain is still spared after killing a bunch of people, all because the hero is too "moral" to do anything of consequence about it. So, as with my previous statement, having a hero be a saint against utter monsters eventually stops looking all that saintly.

For that matter, a number of actions in fiction are often designated evil and disparaged with abandon, even though they usually lead to less casualties in the long run. My favorite example is the raising of shields and preparing for battle in Star Trek: The Next Generation, with Worf often being the only one sane enough to propose it while the ship is being shot at. This being the franchise to have its own term for pointless loss of life, you can see how one of the most popular captains was the one guy to shoot first, debate later.

I can see why they want the hero to prefer pacifistic tactics, since shoot first ask questions later can cause other issues with their moral approach (especially if the Villain Has a Point and they straw man ignore it). This is where the "tried to play nice" formula works, using it maybe once or twice, but accepting afterwards it doesn't work and no punches being pulled afterwards.

Generally the best approach for a hero to me is pacifistic but not stupid, a character that isn't too gung ho but knows when they have to take action against a threat. Pragmatism is often a necessary device.

The Archie Sonic continuity (which continues off of Satam) exacerbates this, because in spite of the heroes "winning" on multiple occasions, they never really take precautions to make sure it doesn't happen again and are too busy patting themselves on the back when another threat appears or bounces back. Almost anytime another force calls them out on this, they are treated as Ungrateful Bastards for how much the Freedom Fighters have done for them and usually get very contemptuous treatment from them, despite Sonic and Sally repeatedly proving they never learn from their mistakes (Sonic causing problems by being reckless and cocky in the more lighthearted continuities is somewhat charming, in this one where other people have actually suffered in a non-negated way because he was complacent, him suffering Aesop Amnesia over his ego and sneering at anyone who criticises his track record just makes him look like an uncaring douche).

edited 2nd Mar '18 2:11:26 AM by Psi001

I think this more of a side effect of the mandates or even Archie themselves for adhering ot the Status Quo is God. Also, this isn't limited to Archie Sonic as I see superhero comics do a similar thing as well.

It does show the problem when having a villain that has a cool personality, but is still an enormous threat however, since if the heroes are so suicidally complacent, you almost root for them getting ripped to shreds and kicked off their smug asses.

As said it's bad when the victims aren't just the heroes, but tons of civilians and outside parties that the writers don't expect us to care about. It's an exacerbation of the aforementioned Holier Than Thou attribute, in that the hero seems so out of touch with even the people they're supposed to be protecting, almost treating them like a commodity.

"Oh well I saved 88% of the town and all the people I knew. A VICTORY!"

Or worse: "Oh, I've spared the villain ten times in a row, and each time he's killed more people as consequence, but because I've personally adhered to my own self-imposed moral standards, I consider that a victory for great justice!"

One thing I find has a rather polarizing effect are the various otherwise neutral archetypes used for heroes and villains in fiction. For instance, it's common for high fantasy tales to glorify hereditary nobility while being dismissive and disparaging of ambitious upstarts of common ancestry... even the term "villain" originally meant farmhand, a low-class lout to be prevented from entering polite society at all cost. Yet, as the times have changed and such social mobility is hardly seen as inherently immoral, the villains still based around this archetype tend to get a lot more popular than otherwise intended.

Similarly, high-tech industrialism is all but invariably portrayed as villainous, while the good guys rely on copious amounts of appeal to tradition and nature... or rather the sugarcoated version of nature that everyone from a rural town or ranch would laugh at. Or for that matter, people of rural societies are often less than flatteringly portrayed as backward hicks, to serve as foils for the ostensibly wordly and progressive hero... or heroine. I imagine that's not an impression actual small town folk are keen on agreeing with.

All in all, I reckon a number of audience preferences are swayed more by the basic archetype of characters, rather than their function as heroes and villains. Particularly if the respective heroic and villainous traits clash with the overall portrayal, and there's a general disconnect between the writers and the audience... and with the cultural bubble a lot of fiction writers live in nowadays, that's only gonna happen more often.

edited 3rd Mar '18 5:47:25 AM by indiana404

Usually, the problem in the medieval ages, fantasy settings or sometimes in science fiction settings, is that the higher ups or rich people in the world are usually portrayed as money grabbing pieces of shit, when in reality it is usually the low life scum that are the greedy bastards. I would love to see fictional characters react to bill gates

Me too, but for a different reason - the standard nowadays is more in the vein of "inherited wealth - good; self-made wealth - bad". Goes double for the high-tech sector, of course. Perish the thought for the computer nerds to get the upper hand.

Meanwhile, if you're one of the downtrodden poor, that's perfectly fine... so long as you make no effort whatsoever to change your station yourself. After all, what would heroes be like with no helpless civilians for them to save? More reliable marks of evil are childhood abuse and mental instability - the things more often found in real life victims than perpetrators of violence.

Those are also among my red flags, being indicative not so much of bad writing, but a very particular kind of bad writing. Namely that, when inexperienced writers create main characters, these are little more than author avatars, sharing their creators' tastes, preferences and overall worldview. Conversely, when creating antagonists, these tend to be direct opposites in that regard. So here's the question to answer here - if you have someone opposing your views, why would they? Consider this a general writing exercise, by the way. And if the first answer you come up with is "because they're insane", or "they have issues", or "they're just evil", think of the people who describe their ideological opponents like this in real life, and whether you really want your heroes to be like them.

edited 3rd Mar '18 9:00:40 AM by indiana404

That actually makes certain things make some kind of sense. Also, I know Author avatars are a thing however making characters "characters" is a skill and needs to be practice. In a way author avatars are start but not when it should end.

Pretty much. There's also another intriguing aspect, namely that various otherwise neutral social groups are disparaged because their very existence and function presents a particular threat to the hero. Think about most urban fantasy protagonists, superheroes included, and now consider some of the most frequently denigrated civil institutions - the army, the government, and pretty much anyone in a labcoat. None of those are inherently malicious, localized incidents and crises notwithstanding. However, all of them present a direct threat to your average hero's status and operation in one way or another.

For instance, if your hero has supernatural powers, the army is a rival in terms of strength... and in a world of pinpoint-accurate missiles and portable nukes, you'd be hard-pressed to explain why any member of the trenchcoat brigade is a more suitable candidate to handle a particular threat. Similarly, scientists have the nasty habit of analyzing and duplicating various strange phenomena, meaning they could potentially copy the hero's abilities, making him obsolete. And of course, the government is a direct threat to the hero's authority, placing him in a civil framework that most escapist fiction is meant to, well, escape from.

Notably this problem is absent in stories where the hero is already among the go-to guys, officially recognized by civil authorities - examples include the Monster Hunter International series or some Batman interpretations, making the case that it is indeed a matter of how such institutions are likely to threaten the hero personally, rather than being inherently malicious in and of themselves.

Conversely, if you take a garden variety urban fantasy or superhero setting, and picture it from the point of view of a random soldier, scientist, half-decent civil official or even an ordinary citizen, a lot of the trappings of the genre, and consequently the very heroes it's built around, start looking rather unwholesome overall.

Another problem in fiction is regarding choosing the chosen one. Example, who would you choose as the one to defeat the big bad, a highly trained SAS special ops soldier who could kill the big bad in 5 seconds or the 16 year old going through puberty. Fun fact: Most writers especially in anime or cartoon choose the 16 year old.

My general problem with The Chosen One is that if often feels like a superficial way to make the protagonist seem more special and remarkable than they really are, or to excuse them being handed loads of special powers and weapons over their own abilities.

Not to mention there's amusingly multiple times where they end up not being the Chosen One and technically only winning by circumstance or someone else's help (not that this is likely to be called out in story).

edited 5th Mar '18 4:51:43 AM by Psi001

Exactly. And in order to shill that choice, suddenly the soldiers will all turn out to be either incompetent nincompoops getting killed in the first battle, or as mentioned before, evil mooks serving the massive conspiracy fighting against the sooper-speshul tween main character (totally original, donut steel).

For that matter, I reckon the main reason for the inconsistent appeal of young-adult fiction is whether one projects strictly onto the main character, or sees the events from literally any other point of view. Twilight is popular bashing material, but even something like the Harry Potter franchise would lose a lost of steam if pictured from the other side of the fence - the viewpoint of other wizarding students or even *gasp* muggles... also known as the paying audience.

And this is what tends to bug me about certain franchises - the ones featuring or even based around inherent, immutable inequalities, where concepts like the Force, the genetic magic in the Potterverse, or superpowers in comics, explicitly serve to separate people into haves and have-nots, and this is treated as all well and good... so long as the main characters are among the former. If you think Protagonist-Centered Morality is bad, how about a protagonist-centered setting?

edited 5th Mar '18 11:59:47 AM by indiana404

Back to the topic, when it comes to magic Vs technology I usually side with technology as the people who uses technology are depicted as pieces of shit while people who use magic are considered as the good guys, especially in fiction nowadays. Plus, a lot of fiction involves technology getting hardcore nerfed so that the heroes can win with magic(Asspull).

The problem is that technology is usually depicted as requiring effort and intricacy to work with, a talent, while magic is regularly just utilised as an undeveloped Deus ex Machina, thus we get loads of situations where a scientist villain works their ass off to make a Humongous Mecha and the magical hero just snaps their finger to neutralise it with their 'cosmos align to switch off the mecha-pendioso' spell.

It's also annoying because even some of the better written stories have a hard time justifying limiting the use of magic if they make it too powerful and flashy, which has the added bonus of making the user (very often the hero) look stupid for stalling until the climax of the story to use their Story-Breaker Power.

edited 8th Mar '18 9:10:03 AM by Psi001

There's also the aforementioned speshulness factor, wherein technology can be mass-produced, while "magic" is explicitly regarded as an arbitrary trait to distinguish the heroes from the common rabble, at most with a muggle best friend so as to leave a slightly less elitist and self-absorbed impression. Even when it comes to magic against magic, the villain is far more likely to be self-taught and determined in learning the craft, while the hero has "talent" pouring out the wazoo in lieu of any work ethic.

Of all the various types of power fantasies in fiction, I find this one to be among the most toxic, since it generally praises characters for things they did nothing to achieve by themselves. Respectively, when you have villains that are frequently more diligent, inventive, industrious, studious, and nearly invariably more charismatic than the heroes, these are all qualities one might well try and foster personally and relate to the villain on those grounds, regardless of how the story denigrates them by association with heinous acts.

Usually, the problem with magic is that it is never explained or explained in a way that dosen't make sense. It's hard to take the story seriously if the hero can break physics without explanation. Where as technology can be explained much more easier.

edited 10th Mar '18 7:58:56 AM by Tang5555