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Oct. 26th, 2017 01:59 pm This is gonna be part of a larger post at some point, but one thing I find extremely interesting is the intersection of how a character is designed, what their actual personality is, and then how the fandom portrays them.
Okay so, for an example; Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. Kuja is tall. He is described as tall by Garnet, he stands at least a head above her, and his official height is listed as about 7'2". The other facet of his design is that he's pretty- he wears a codpiece, skirt...thing, thigh highs and bares most of his stomach. He's both pretty and tall, physically. If you throw in his garbage-fire of a personality, he's tall, pretty, sarcastic, dramatic, and poetic- without going into huge character analysis, the guy's got a sharp tongue.
In fandom, not so much. He tends to get hit with the big stick of stereotypes, which tend to make him appearance obsessed, prone to shrieking fits, and defenceless. And, he's far from the only character to get it, but I'm always surprised when I go back to FFIX and get to be delighted by the awful trash-baby that he actually IS; stubborn, selfish, horrifically determined, quick-thinking and terrified of his own death. It's part of a wider fandom thing, where initial impressions of a character will almost always overcome what they're actually like in canon.
I feel that a part of it is just how we, as people, like to fill in the blanks and put people in boxes. And a lot of those boxes tend to be informed by biases eg. the portrayal of Ganondorf as sexually aggressive and stupid, Majora as poorly spoken and loud; that sort of thing. It's a bigger thing I'd like to write about at some point, but, man, writing this at the moment just made me want to go and play FFIX.
Anyway, I still really like bad guys, bad guys are so much fun, especially when they can be both interesting characters and awful garbage fire shitbabies.
Okay so, for an example; Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. Kuja is tall. He is described as tall by Garnet, he stands at least a head above her, and his official height is listed as about 7'2". The other facet of his design is that he's pretty- he wears a codpiece, skirt...thing, thigh highs and bares most of his stomach. He's both pretty and tall, physically. If you throw in his garbage-fire of a personality, he's tall, pretty, sarcastic, dramatic, and poetic- without going into huge character analysis, the guy's got a sharp tongue.
In fandom, not so much. He tends to get hit with the big stick of stereotypes, which tend to make him appearance obsessed, prone to shrieking fits, and defenceless. And, he's far from the only character to get it, but I'm always surprised when I go back to FFIX and get to be delighted by the awful trash-baby that he actually IS; stubborn, selfish, horrifically determined, quick-thinking and terrified of his own death. It's part of a wider fandom thing, where initial impressions of a character will almost always overcome what they're actually like in canon.
I feel that a part of it is just how we, as people, like to fill in the blanks and put people in boxes. And a lot of those boxes tend to be informed by biases eg. the portrayal of Ganondorf as sexually aggressive and stupid, Majora as poorly spoken and loud; that sort of thing. It's a bigger thing I'd like to write about at some point, but, man, writing this at the moment just made me want to go and play FFIX.
Anyway, I still really like bad guys, bad guys are so much fun, especially when they can be both interesting characters and awful garbage fire shitbabies.
