[ SECRET POST #2518 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2518 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 060 secrets from Secret Submission Post #360.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Because that would mean humanizing the villains in their own lives

[nyxelestia]

Okay, reading your other thread and this one, I think perhaps what you are trying to say is that you prefer complex villains because it makes them "human" (proverbially, depending on fandom), and you prefer that because the alternative is to think/realize that there are true monsters hiding amongst us.

Am I anywhere close?

Anyway, I'm not trying to say this explanation applies to everyone. I'm just trying to explain why it is some people would prefer a simple characterization of their villains.

Re: Because that would mean humanizing the villains in their own lives

[making_excuses]

Kinda, but not really. I know there is monsters living among us, I just don't think those monsters are only evil.

I don't really like villains at all, I don't go for the bad guy craze that is happening, I don't like it when everything bad they do get completely ignored because they are pretty or interesting, or even complex.

I just don't believe that anyone can have one character trait, I don't believe that bad people only do bad or that good people only do good. Nor do I think that someone good should be forgiven for doing something bad, just because they are good. Or alternatively the other way around I don't think that someone doing mainly bad things doing something good automatically removes all the bad things they did.

I do understand where you are coming from, and not everyone thinks the same about anything, and I would assume the majority is on "your" side of this discussion.

I am not doing a good job of describing this at all... Sorry about that, I just wanted to show an alternative way of thinking about the issue, not to say that you are wrong

Re: Because that would mean humanizing the villains in their own lives

[nyxelestia]

It's fine, clearing up other people's thought and communication processes is pretty much what I do for a living - it just takes a few tries, sometimes, to find a happy medium.

And in your case, it sounds less like a subconscious psychological drive behind character preferences, and more like a simple case of having difficulty suspending your disbelief. The way you describe the way you prefer to see characters sounds like you think of them as "the whole of the parts, but not necessarily the sum of their parts" - with 'sum' in this pithy analogy implying that a good deed subtracts from a bad deed and vice versa, which is not something you can agree with or abide by.

Am I getting warmer?

Re: Because that would mean humanizing the villains in their own lives

[making_excuses]

That sounds like an interesting tho at times frustrating job?

Yeah pretty much! You can't believe all the arguments I get into with people because I don't like some "good" characters, notably among them is Gwen from Torchwood and Izzie Stevens from Grey's Anatomy. Both of those I don't like because I am told they are good and I should forgive them for all the bad things they do, because they are just "soo nice"! Same with an issue I have with most crime shows (you can't just murder people because they are bad, because it is still murder you idiot!)

I see a character (or a person) for everything they do, I judge them based on what they do, and how they handle what they did not just how they act in any given moment. I can forgive characters for doing some pretty awful stuff as long as it is handled as doing something bad, not just "a good person did something bad let us forgive them because they are good", or the other way around.

An good example for me personally is Spike from Buffy he did a lot of bad stuff (even did a coupe of good things while still staying bad) and then he changed, he stopped doing bad stuff, got punished for the bad stuff he had done and for that I can forgive him so to speak.

damn you are good! Also this is pretty interesting to talk about, I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about why I believe what I believe

Re: Because that would mean humanizing the villains in their own lives

[nyxelestia]

Haha, it's tutoring, and yes, it's frustrating, but a lot of that is basically taking information provided by a book or teacher and turning it into something the student can digest via their own thought process. (i.e. if there's a list of historical events, one student might benefit from putting them on a timeline or in a flowchart, while another would need to make a rap or song out of them in order to remember them). And that's before the fact that I also serve as an unofficial relationship counselor for my social group, so I'm quite accustomed to "translating" for people who have trouble communicating or have a different way of communicating from their partner. :)

Anyway, back to the point...

People have different ways of "categorizing" or processing other people in their lives, and more often than not that extends to how they view characters - the catch being, of course, that what you know or experience of a character is vastly different from those of people you interact with in real life. So this process can get quite distorted, at times. Some people take others at face value, some only pass judgement based on data, some do both, some do neither.

Thank you! :D And, I also make people analyze their own beliefs a lot, though not for a living...yet. >:)