That character bashing discussion

[rogin]

This has almost nothing to do with the original discussion, just something I wanted to jot down in connection with character construction.

Those  debates on which character is "better" are very common in fandom and I regret every time I got pulled into one. Mainly because I couldn't care less who's the "better" character. I love my characters bad! I love them flawed! I love to see them fail morally in interesting ways.

I'm currently fascinated with Breaking Bad and I couldn't be more in love with it's irresponsible, drugcooking, sometimes outright delusional main characters. Why is that? Because they are remarkably well constructed, their actions are downright horrible sometimes but they are understandable. Their motives, complex and muddled as they may be are human, they make sense, they draw from emotions and state of minds I'm familiar with, same goes for show Buffy most of the time.
Not a fan of her teflon epiphanies but otherwise she used to make sense. S6 Buffy, dark as she was, totally made sense to me. Show Spike was downright evil at times but I loved how brilliantly his motivation and psychological make up was designed.

So that's the first point I need:

1) Motivation, understandable background for the character's actions

The comics fail here completely. They give me nothing. Buffy (and Angel) seems to be part mind controlled, part brain damaged but I have no handle on her motivation whatsoever.

There is however something else I need for a character to work:

2) Evolution and Consequences

I need the characters to be affected by their own actions. By which I decidedly don't mean that some dire fate has to befall them for their wrongdoings. By no means. Sorry to bring up BB again, but at the moment it is my standard for good writing. Here the characters do a lot of terrible things and think they can get away with them. And law wise they really can. But of course they never can't escape what their actions leave within themselves. In order to live on as a murderer a character has to harden. Giving up on one moral standard leads to clinging to another so that somehow one can still think of oneself as good. Relationships between some characters deepening estranges others. Stuff like that is what I mean by consequences.

In this case show Buffy already had several problems because she had the same developments over and over and forgot about them, there are however some that stuck. She did grow up a little.
Other characters worked better that way, Spike being the prime example. His learning curve, properly motivated every step of the way and always resulting in new developments in the character is one of the things I love most about the show.

In the comics I get nothing of the sort. The characters seem to immune to learning and consequences. At best they show a little self pity. And really I can't even wish for consequences to actions that were pretty much random insanity and mind control in the first place.

So in the end I think  for me train where I could even morally analyse comic Buffy's (and other's) actions in the comics is long gone. The writing is so bad she doesn't even register as a character to me any more, just walking talking failure of the writers.
 

Comments

[beer_good_foamy]

Well put. I still haven't watched Breaking Bad, but I love The Sopranos and The Shield (etc etc etc) enough to know exactly what you mean. I've been trying to put my finger on why I demand a moral responsibility of Whedon's characters that I don't of, say, Tony Soprano, and what you write above is definitely part of it. Everyone holds Tony Soprano responsible for things he does (and even when he denies having done them, you know he knows he's done them); but Whedon's characters have a) such strong protagonists' privilege and are b) so explicitly set up to deal with metaphorical monsters for various moral questions that only they can hold themselves responsible - if someone else does it, it just comes across as petty and selfish. (See Buffy magnanimously forgiving Willow for turning Angel into a frog for 1.4 seconds; she just doesn't understand, the poor dear.) At its best, this is an excellent tool; it's why Faith has to choose to go to prison rather than get arrested and hauled off kicking and screaming, it's why TV!Angel has to realise what it is he's fighting for rather than doing it because someone tells him to, etc.

Yet Season 8 kicks off with Buffy explicitly rejecting that - "not being bad is what separates us from the bad guys". I thought, naively perhaps, that that would be a running theme, the underlying question of the season. But as far as I can tell, everything about the last few issues just underlines it: Buffy was 100% correct when she said that. The good guys are the good guys whatever they do, as long as they feel bad after they do something to others (poor Angel, having to live with killing or ruining the lives of thousands of innocents, why does this always happen to him?) etc. It's reducing other people's suffering to being something for you to learn from, and that bothers me tremendously. Yes, the show did that too, but never on this scale.

At best they show a little self pity. And really I can't even wish for consequences to actions that were pretty much random insanity and mind control in the first place.

Exactly. I've been trying to put my finger on why what I've heard of #40 annoys me, and I think it's this: I don't want Buffy to angelically forgive people for being pissed off with her; I want her to deal with the reasons people are rightly (as far as I can tell from the odd plot) pissed off with her. Because if she doesn't, she's not just "flawed"; she's a Harmony-like sociopath. And at least in The Sopranos, that got acknowledged. In Season 8/9, that would mean having to give the characters agency, explain what exactly they did (let's have a #40 focusing on all the people Angel's and to a slightly lesser extent Buffy's actions hurt, how about that?) explain why they did something, make them responsible for what they do. And we've been told time and time again we're not going to get that; in the comics, shit just happens so that other shit can happen.

...That got long for someone who's not commenting on the comics. Sorry. :)

[rogin]

Ah don't worry, I love your comments and there's always enough room on DW.

Well put. I still haven't watched Breaking Bad, but I love The Sopranos and The Shield (etc etc etc) enough to know exactly what you mean.

I really hope you get to watch it at some point, I'd love to read about all the little things that you'd see and I undoubtedly overlooked (especially where the score is concerned)

And yes, I agree, Whedon's heroes tend to confront their own darkness given form and on the show that works just fine most of the time, but in the comics the characters got dehumanized to serve a (not very good) story.They just function as puppets.

explain what exactly they did (let's have a #40 focusing on all the people Angel's and to a slightly lesser extent Buffy's actions hurt, how about that?) explain why they did something, make them responsible for what they do. And we've been told time and time again we're not going to get that; in the comics, shit just happens so that other shit can happen.


It's incredibly frustrating, especially with those crude attempts to paint over the plotholes. "See, Spike supports her, so you should too", damaging another character who always stood for calling bullshit on the show in the process.

[beer_good_foamy]

especially with those crude attempts to paint over the plotholes

See, this is why I'm still convinced that all the plotting for this was done late one drunken night in some bar in LA and written down on a sodden cocktail napkin. It's supposed to be a story about difficult choices, and yet nobody ever even seems to consider any alternatives but the absolutely worst ones possible, and every single attempt to patch the plot holes comes across as "Oh... we didn't even think of that. Quick, dismiss it somehow or the entire plot will come down."

[rogin]

I agree, it looks like Joss had some basic interesting idea and then never fleshed it out. Others didn't do it either so the plot never left cocktail napkin status and by the time it culminated Joss had lost interested anyway.