Just some thoughts struck me last night when I was thinking about the general cynicism of our society and how some of my favorite characters are treated in both their respective canons and fandoms.
While we all tend to cheer for heroes fighting villains, especially if a villain is a Complete Monster with no Pet the Dog moments (otherwise, they often become Draco in Leather Pants in fandom)— I think most of the world/our culture prefer slightly darkened heroes or anti-heroes to the paragons and the idealists and that there are some cultural reasons why.
Take, for example, a couple of my very favorite characters. Vash the Stampede from Tri Gun and Pit from Kid Icarus . With the world the way it is, I actually feel surprised and a little weird that I am drawn to such idealistic characters. I\'ve actually paid a price for it, too, in regards to fandom... I\'ve cosplayed Vash at anime conventions and had people come right up to me to tell me how stupid they thought Vash was and how much they disagreed with his philosophy. No joke. I get people in my face just for cosplaying a character / showing my like for a character.
Anyway, I\'m using Vash as an example because he is a well-defined anime and manga character with a complex personality and I\'m using Pit as an example because he has a doppleganger who isn\'t evil, but it more of a anti-hero to his classic hero and this has a ready comparison.
With Vash\'s white-light heroism, I\'ve actually been given straight up reasons(see \"annoying people one meets at anime conventions\" above) why some people dislike him and why his foil / anti-hero buddy, Wolfwood, is \"better\" (and more popular). Vash has very simple ideals, that much like the ideals of any given religious figure in our world, are, despite their simplicity, lofty and difficult to live up to. Vash believes in kindness and most of all Love and Peace! He believes, most of all, in not-killing, and yet is thrown into situations in his canon constantly where \"it would be easier to just kill the bad guy to save the innocent people / to defend himself.\" Oh, but Vash believes in redemption - that anyone can turn around and live a better life if they are allowed to live.
People seem to hate that. The general cynicism I see in our world, particularly on the Internet, has people who clearly would rather just write off certain people as \"just bad people\" or even \"outliving any usefulness they ever had\"and just having done with them. Even \"enlightened humanist types\" sometimes talk about how they think it would be justified just to bomb certain countries into oblivion to save \"superior\" civilization. Even Vash\'s saying of \"Oh, I disapprove of suicide more than anything\" (readers of the Trigun manga know exactly why) ... I\'ve found that you say that on certain news forums and you will get screeching of \"It\'s my life to do with what I want!\" as if I were trying to take away someones \"right\" to suicide or hints that one is messing with natural selection. I tell you, this world makes it hard for me to cry out for help when I feel I need help and am in-between but wanting to hang on. People make you feel like a whiner if you want to keep hanging on, have the hope that people and the world are not worthless.
Anyway, I think Vash, in particular, scares people because he really, really believes in something. (That human life is scared). Even such a simple, universal thing to believe in scares people when someone believes in it very ardently. They\'d rather see the badass \"gettin\' the job done\" than someone acting better than they/you/I most people think we would in a given situation.
That brings us to our other character-example. Pit. I\'ve never cosplayed him nor seen people who cosplayed him at conventions harrassed, and people in Kid Icarus fandom generally like him - I mean, the games (particularly the delightful Uprising) are all about him and he is a very humorous character, with lots of cloud-cuccolander tendencies (would be wiki-worded, but I\'m not sure if I\'m spelling it correctly). However, it seems to me that a lot of the fandom has a preference for his shadow-archetype, Dark Pit. Unlike other shadow-archetype characters, Dark Pit actually has a personality, and interestingly, it\'s not a pure-villain type. He is, in the words of Nintendo that I read somewhere, someone who has \"that bad-boy attitude that Pit can never achieve.\" - So, even Nintendo acklowedges the \"dark = cool\" thing. I think this boils down to ideals.
Pit follows the Goddess Palutena. He has Undying Loyalty to her - which is probably why I go against the grain of most of the rest of the fandom in being a Pit-booster rather than a core \"Pittoo\" fan (though I like them both, loads). Undying Loyalty with bond-creatures and people they are bonded to is a theme I\'ve been using heavily in my original work long before I ever met dear Pitty-Pat. But, therein lies the problem. Even here on TV Tropes, Pit is listed as having a Black and White Morality in a Black and Gray world. He follows the orders of his goddess precisely because her will aligns with his personal sense of right (he says so in a significant chapter of Uprising) and I think, on some level, it scares people that he has such ardent ideals.
I even get a twitch over it because of \"following a goddess\" thing. I have things that I \"still\" believe in, but I am an adult American living in a post-9/11 world. On a subconscious level (for some on a conscious level) believing \'\'\'very strongly\'\'\' in an ideal connected to piety or to \"the sacred\" conjures up the idea of \"but this is what leads to people flying planes into buildings.\"
Pit can\'t fly, though, not on his own.
I think this is why, on some level, a lot of people prefer Dark Pit because... well, even a \"selfish jerk\" (unlike a lot of characters, Dark Pit doesn\'t pretend to have any greater good mentality, he is blatantly into life for his own freedom and himself) is preferable to us to someone who holds anything sacred. the selfish guy does the right thing when called upon but doesn\'t hold up to anything doesn\'t threaten or challenge us, because we identify with it more.
It\'s why most of us prefer Han Solo to Luke Skywalker. We\'d rather not be the \"naive\" kid who is susceptable to being \"taken\" by someone one or some thing in his eagerness to change the world or to live to higher things - we\'d rather be the scrappy morally dubious smuggler who is street-wise and survives, and maybe gets a chance to change the world on his terms.
When someone really, truly believes in a thing and works toward that idealism... we perhaps think of it as \"gluge\" just so we can feel superior in knowing we don\'t have such a strong bent toward anything. And when someone really shows a strong idealism, even in a story, even if it is as something as simple and beautiful as \"Protecting humanity\" or \"Life is scared, I do not kill\" - it can scare people.
Just some thoughts struck me last night when I was thinking about the general cynicism of our society and how some of my favorite characters are treated in both their respective canons and fandoms.
While we all tend to cheer for heroes fighting villains, especially if a villain is a Complete Monster with no Pet the Dog moments (otherwise, they often become Draco in Leather Pants in fandom)— I think most of the world/our culture prefer slightly darkened heroes or anti-heroes to the paragons and the idealists and that there are some cultural reasons why.
Take, for example, a couple of my very favorite characters. Vash the Stampede from Tri Gun and Pit from Kid Icarus . With the world the way it is, I actually feel surprised and a little weird that I am drawn to such idealistic characters. I\'ve actually paid a price for it, too, in regards to fandom... I\'ve cosplayed Vash at anime conventions and had people come right up to me to tell me how stupid they thought Vash was and how much they disagreed with his philosophy. No joke. I get people in my face just for cosplaying a character / showing my like for a character.
Anyway, I\'m using Vash as an example because he is a well-defined anime and manga character with a complex personality and I\'m using Pit as an example because he has a doppleganger who isn\'t evil, but it more of a anti-hero to his classic hero and this has a ready comparison.
With Vash\'s white-light heroism, I\'ve actually been given straight up reasons(see \"annoying people one meets at anime conventions\" above) why some people dislike him and why his foil / anti-hero buddy, Wolfwood, is \"better\" (and more popular). Vash has very simple ideals, that much like the ideals of any given religious figure in our world, are, despite their simplicity, lofty and difficult to live up to. Vash believes in kindness and most of all Love and Peace! He believes, most of all, in not-killing, and yet is thrown into situations in his canon constantly where \"it would be easier to just kill the bad guy to save the innocent people / to defend himself.\" Oh, but Vash believes in redemption - that anyone can turn around and live a better life if they are allowed to live.
People seem to hate that. The general cynicism I see in our world, particularly on the Internet, has people who clearly would rather just write off certain people as \"just bad people\" or even \"outliving any usefulness they ever had\"and just having done with them. Even \"enlightened humanist types\" sometimes talk about how they think it would be justified just to bomb certain countries into oblivion to save \"superior\" civilization. Even Vash\'s saying of \"Oh, I disapprove of suicide more than anything\" (readers of the Trigun manga know exactly why) ... I\'ve found that you say that on certain news forums and you will get screeching of \"It\'s my life to do with what I want!\" as if I were trying to take away someones \"right\" to suicide or hints that one is messing with natural selection. I tell you, this world makes it hard for me to cry out for help when I feel I need help and am in-between but wanting to hang on. People make you feel like a whiner if you want to keep hanging on, have the hope that people and the world are not worthless.
Anyway, I think Vash, in particular, scares people because he really, really believes in something. (That human life is scared). Even such a simple, universal thing to believe in scares people when someone believes in it very ardently. They\'d rather see the badass \"gettin\' the job done\" than someone acting better than they/you/I most people think we would in a given situation.
That brings us to our other character-example. Pit. I\'ve never cosplayed him nor seen people who cosplayed him at conventions harrassed, and people in Kid Icarus fandom generally like him - I mean, the games (particularly the delightful Uprising) are all about him and he is a very humorous character, with lots of cloud-cuccolander tendencies (would be wiki-worded, but I\'m not sure if I\'m spelling it correctly). However, it seems to me that a lot of the fandom has a preference for his shadow-archetype, Dark Pit. Unlike other shadow-archetype characters, Dark Pit actually has a personality, and interestingly, it\'s not a pure-villain type. He is, in the words of Nintendo that I read somewhere, someone who has \"that bad-boy attitude that Pit can never achieve.\" - So, even Nintendo acklowedges the \"dark = cool\" thing. I think this boils down to ideals.
Pit follows the Goddess Palutena. He has Undying Loyalty to her - which is probably why I go against the grain of most of the rest of the fandom in being a Pit-booster rather than a core \"Pittoo\" fan (though I like them both, loads). Undying Loyalty with bond-creatures and people they are bonded to is a theme I\'ve been using heavily in my original work long before I ever met dear Pitty-Pat. But, therein lies the problem. Even here on TV Tropes, Pit is listed as having a Black and White Morality in a Black and Gray world. He follows the orders of his goddess precisely because her will aligns with his personal sense of right (he says so in a significant chapter of Uprising) and I think, on some level, it scares people that he has such ardent ideals.
I even get a twitch over it because of \"following a goddess\" thing. I have things that I \"still\" believe in, but I am an adult American living in a post-9/11 world. On a subconscious level (for some on a conscious level) believing \'\'\'very strongly\'\'\' in an ideal connected to piety or to \"the sacred\" conjures up the idea of \"but this is what leads to people flying planes into buildings.\"
Pit can\'t fly, though, not on his own.
I think this is why, on some level, a lot of people prefer Dark Pit because... well, even a \"selfish jerk\" (unlike a lot of characters, Dark Pit doesn\'t pretend to have any greater good mentality, he is blatantly into life for his own freedom and himself) is preferable to us to someone who holds anything sacred. the selfish guy does the right thing when called upon but doesn\'t hold up to anything doesn\'t threaten or challenge us, because we identify with it more.
It\'s why most of us prefer Han Solo to Luke Skywalker. We\'d rather not be the \"naive\" kid who is susceptable to being \"taken\" by someone one or some thing in his eagerness to change the world or to live to higher things - we\'d rather be the scrappy morally dubious smuggler who is street-wise and survives, and maybe gets a chance to change the world on his terms.
When someone really, truly believes in a thing and works toward that idealism... we perhaps think of it as \"gluge\" just so we can feel superior in knowing we don\'t have such a strong bent toward anything. And when someone really shows a strong idealism, even in a story, even if it is as something as simple and beautiful as \"Protecting humanity\" or \"Life is scared, I do not kill\" - it can scare people.
Optimism is scary. Hope Is Scary
(I\'m still going to follow Vash like a secondary religion, though. I don\'t care if people think I\'m dumb because I\'m kind).
In which I attempt to be a writer.