#not just larp

Think anti-heroes and villians are somehow more complex? Think again.

Let me start this rant with a personal anecdote. I have a character in a modern day supernatural system. He is a sweet, gentle, kind young man with a strong moral compass and huge aversion to violence. He rarely loses his temper and his speech is peppered with apologies. At the end of an emotional event, I mentioned how tired I was due to him being a draining character to play. Casually, off hand, someone scoffed and asked why. “All you have to do is be nice all the time.” 

Reader, I almost killed him.

I do not blame this individual for expressing this opinion. I’ve heard it a hundred times in a hundred different ways. “Superman is so much duller than Batman.” “I wish Harry wasn’t such a goody two-shoes.” “I just find heroes boring.” “Finn had no flaws so I didn’t care about him.” (It’s worth noting that usually women are spared this sort of reasoning, only because they’re either expected to be good and vilified if they’re not, or classed as a Mary Sue which is a whole other rant). Apart from what I believe is a fundamental characterisation of much of these characters, I think it also betrays a slightly toxic geek belief. 

Antiheroes often express their flaws in ways that impact others negatively, or glamorises them due to what we judge as ‘cool’.  They’ll push others away, they’ll lose their tempers spectacularly, they’ll engage in self-destructive behaviour. Villains take this further, working against the common interest and going outside societal norms. These characters can be interesting! These can be cool ways to express character! However!

There’s a trend of dismissing characters with a good moral compass who don’t regularly have these traits as dull. As though being an asshole is the only way to be interesting. As though having schemes, plots or secret facets of misanthropy automatically makes a character complex. I often wonder if this is just due to a lack of understanding what can make a character tick.

Let’s examine Peter Parker for a minute, a character I’ve often seen dismissed in favour of his villains. On the surface, he seems happy-go-lucky, earnest, good and chipper. And he is all of these things. But to class him as ONLY these things due to his generally positive behaviour would be doing him a disservice. He struggles with anxiety, balancing his superhero and home life, and questioning his role in the world as well as shouldering a lot of responsibility and grief. I often find the true hero’s struggle fascinating. For villains, it can be easy to fall into evil due to personal pain. I find the struggle to continue to be good, and do good DESPITE personal pain just as complex and worthy of investment.