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Kol Korran
2015-04-26, 04:13 AM
(I have been thinking for some time whether to make this post or not. It's a bit close to home for me. I may have gone a bit emotional here and there... So be it.)

I remember when I was a kid, my favorite hero was Spiderman- I liked his speed, webs, senses and so on. But most of all, I liked it that he was basically a geek/ nerd (Pardon me if I don't use the terms correctly), but still did something bigger than just everyone else. He was a HERO! He faced things, did things, dared things and made an impact. He changed thee world, and he was "good" (This isn't an alignment thread, NOT the point).

But as much as Spiderman inspired me, the story also despaired me. For compared to him- who was I? I was just an average kid, no special powers, no great strength, smarts, no special ANYTHING. So I wasn't going to be a hero most likely...

But time and time again, I came to like heroes, or protagonists of stories, simply for the fact that their actions mattered, that they did good, had an effect, changed the world. I wanted to be them. But where ever I went, the protagonist were always exceptional, a cut above the rest- they were super fast/ smart/ strong, they had special powers, they had a special heritage, special destiny, special something.

And so I started to play roleplay games. And yet, in these too, the protagonist/ PCs were always exceptional- they had better stats, better classes/ training/ skills/ equipment/ starting. Again- to be a hero I had to "more" than the regular guys. But also, in the end, when the campaign was done... Sure it was fun, but did it make any difference?

This permeates our culture- there are the heroes and major villains, and then... there are the rest of us. Many time "the rest of us", are even made to look especially frail, especially incompetent, especially weak, powerless, insignificant. Oh yes, here and there you see a "normal" who does make some sort of a difference (usually covering up for a small hero's mistake) but these are exactly that- exceptions.

And I think my point is, after many years of gaming, but recent experience in actually making a change, is that while the "hero genre" (A very broad term, but will suffice for the purposes of this post I hope), while it sends the obvious messages of struggle, courage and hope, it also sends a darker, much more subtle, and to my mind- quite wrong and devastating message to the youth of our society. The message is "You are not exceptional, you are not special, and therefore you are insignificant. You matter not, and you will not make a real contribution, a real change, you are the scenery, the backdrop- so don't bother."

This is enhanced by a two features that permeates most "hero genre" stories: First, becoming exceptional is something that cannot be gained by hard work. You cannot really work to gain the exceptional qualities. These are always out of normal folks reach. Being exceptional is a breed apart (By the various means of how you get it). In the cases of many super powers or the like, gaining these is usually from birth or comes out quite sudden. You rarely "train" for it. Oh, you may train to get better at your exceptional trait (As in X-Men), but gaining the initial trait is not a matter of training.

The second point is that Heroes usually had little fault, and rarely made mistakes (At least not major ones), but that is changing in the last decade and a half or so.

The lesson of "You're not exceptional, you never will be, you are just normal and so you and your doings don't matter. Don't try to change the world." Is wrong in my experience, plain wrong. The above "lessons" was sort of ingrained in my mind, and so I sought to live "A normal life". I sought not to struggle more, try to achieve more, fight more, for that was pointless- I was not "hero material". But in recent years, after a lot more turmoil (If you really wish check my sig, but it's not necessary) I decided to DO strive for more, do good, in small ways. I learned to be a doctor, and worked and done quite a bit of good by doing that. I volunteered with criminal youth, and I volunteered with refugee populations. I did a WHOLE bunch of mistakes, I am still learning as I go, I have no special qualifications, skills that are only at their beginning, and no special smarts.

And yet I do good. WE (Me and a lot of other people who try, strive, fight, despair and rise hopefully) do quite some good. Not enough, but some. There are people better at this than me and the organization I work at- some are much better, and make much bigger changes, and they do good.

There are a whooooolllle lot of people out there, without any special smarts, no extraordinary skills, regular folks who have no special power, who do good.

We are not exceptional, not in the regular sense of the word or of the "hero genre". In what way are we exceptional? Just one thing.

A choice. Simply a choice. To go out and try to make a difference, to fight, to strive, to fail, time and time again, but to learn a bit each time, and to do good, simply because we choose to. Normal is enough, normal and a choice, a commitment, it really doesn't need any more.

Being a hero isn't about being exceptional, it is about choosing to fight for something you feel should be made right, with the powers and capabilities you have. That is enough...

(Up till here was my main point, the rest are musing of the social context.)

I do not know if "the exceptional hero" concept, which quite invalidates everyone who isn't a hero was intentional or not. Heroic stories have been on for long enough, but in my own personal view and experience, they have been growing more widely in recent times. There has been a wide proliferation of hero stories, with the lesseons given above. Though amongst them are at times the stories of the "normal" hero- a person with no exceptional traits. (Most notable are Terry Pratchet's stories, which have mixtures of the two in my opinion).

The globalization of the world, and the growth of entities such as mega corporations, organizations spanning several countries and such all present to us the reality of the intangible yet ever present and powerful super entity, against which we are taught that we are often... "powerless": How can we hope to affect countries, corporations and such? And yet... In this age more than any other age in history, the possibilities and capabilities of the individual and organized groups are having more and more of an affect. (Certainly more than if you go 100, 500, 1,000 years back in history). So the power to change the world is more and more within the mass population's grasp (In my opinion).

But we are taught, fed, numbed to believe we are powerless. I'd like t present a quote that comes Paradoxically (Or not so much) from a game of the "Hero Genre"- Shadowrun returns. By Glory, at the end of a game:
"That's what they want. That's what they need.
The corps. The dragons. The politicians.
Everyone.
They want us to think we can't make a difference.
They put effort- a lot of effort- into making us feel small. insignificant.
We had the power in our hands, and we made a choice.
And for that the world is different.
For good, or for ill."

Don't believe that you are powerless, small, insignificant, don't matter. You can change the world in your own way, be it smaller or larger. It requires a choice, a commitment, and an effort, but within your capabilities and limits.

No need to just roleplay doing good, making an impact, changing the world, being a hero. You can be one for real!

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-26, 05:02 AM
To be fair, a lot of folks who change the world don't change it for the better (even the ones with good intentions!), and sometimes even the good changes only stay good for a time (while the "hero" lives, for instance), or their change is good for some people and bad for some people.

Changing the world is hard, risky, and can easily make things worse instead of better. But if it's in you, you can try.

NichG
2015-04-26, 05:10 AM
See, I'd read it a completely different way. Especially if we're talking about games and not just media.

In an RPG, regardless of who you are outside the game, you're placed in a position where you're trusted to carry out the responsibilities of the protagonist. In real life, if I took someone who was not sufficiently skilled for a task and put them in that role, it would have real consequences - they might learn something, but at the cost of putting other people at risk in some form or other. So in a game, it allows people to learn the skills necessary to make difficult decisions by play-acting out those scenarios in a context where there's no real cost of failure.

It's a form of protagonist-training.

Not everyone who plays an RPG is going to learn that kind of skill-set from it, certainly. But it provides an opportunity for those who have the inclination to try out ideas and get a feeling for responsibility in tense situations and things like that.

Yora
2015-04-26, 05:38 AM
Seems more like a superhero comic issue than something about roleplaying games to me.

The Evil DM
2015-04-26, 05:44 AM
I might be the first to respond if I can type this fast enough. I am trying to preserve quotes below but shorten them a lot.


And so I started to play roleplay games. And yet, in these too, the protagonist/ PCs were always exceptional- they had better stats, better classes/ training/ skills/ equipment/ starting. [...] Oh yes, here and there you see a "normal" who does make some sort of a difference (usually covering up for a small hero's mistake) but these are exactly that- exceptions.

I agree but it is recent modern culture. This culture that targets the young. Big blockbuster movies targeting the 16 - 25 year old male audience. Most comic book stories. These really are things of youth. If you dig farther back into literature and fables there is still a hero element, Odyssus is a hero and his men bumble around him, but many more tales such as Theseus vs the Minotaur focus on the commoner in an uncommon situation. There is a degree of loss of the classics to our youth.


And I think my point is, after many years of gaming, but recent experience in actually making a change, is that while the "hero genre" (A very broad term, but will suffice for the purposes of this post I hope), while it sends the obvious messages of struggle, courage and hope, it also sends a darker, much more subtle, and to my mind- quite wrong and devastating message to the youth of our society. The message is "You are not exceptional, you are not special, and therefore you are insignificant. You matter not, and you will not make a real contribution, a real change, you are the scenery, the backdrop- so don't bother."

I agree to a point. I think the message is not so much that you are not exceptional. I think the message is you only become exceptional through mass media acceptance, and what you do with that media acceptance doesn't matter. Become famous simply for the face you put on youtube is all that matters. You can be a jackass on youtube and become relevant. At which point you can mobilize your army of jackass followers to some effect or cause.


And This is enhanced by a two features that permeates most "hero genre" stories: First, becoming exceptional is something that cannot be gained by hard work. You cannot really work to gain the exceptional qualities. These are always out of normal folks reach. Being exceptional is a breed apart (By the various means of how you get it). In the cases of many super powers or the like, gaining these is usually from birth or comes out quite sudden. You rarely "train" for it. Oh, you may train to get better at your exceptional trait (As in X-Men), but gaining the initial trait is not a matter of training.

The second point is that Heroes usually had little fault, and rarely made mistakes (At least not major ones), but that is changing in the last decade and a half or so.

From a gaming perspective this to me is a stage that young gamers go through. Young gamers are more likely to have power fantasies which are fueled by the mass media culture. They want to play out the big, the exciting the massively powerful. As gamers mature this begins to fall away and it becomes much less prevalent.


The lesson of "You're not exceptional, you never will be, you are just normal and so you and your doings don't matter. Don't try to change the world." Is wrong in my experience, plain wrong. The above "lessons" was sort of ingrained in my mind, and so I sought to live "A normal life". I sought not to struggle more, try to achieve more, fight more, for that was pointless- I was not "hero material". But in recent years, after a lot more turmoil (If you really wish check my sig, but it's not necessary) I decided to DO strive for more, do good, in small ways. I learned to be a doctor, and worked and done quite a bit of good by doing that. I volunteered with criminal youth, and I volunteered with refugee populations. I did a WHOLE bunch of mistakes, I am still learning as I go, I have no special qualifications, skills that are only at their beginning, and no special smarts.

Back to real life -

I agree this lesson is wrong. I think there might be some difference in our experience as I am from America and older so I don't see this lesson being made so explicitly. Individuals can and do make a change but that change is much smaller than if made as a group. I could give examples but it would cross into banned content territory.


And yet I do good. WE (Me and a lot of other people who try, strive, fight, despair and rise hopefully) do quite some good. Not enough, but some. There are people better at this than me and the organization I work at- some are much better, and make much bigger changes, and they do good.

There are a whooooolllle lot of people out there, without any special smarts, no extraordinary skills, regular folks who have no special power, who do good.

We are not exceptional, not in the regular sense of the word or of the "hero genre". In what way are we exceptional? Just one thing.

A choice. Simply a choice. To go out and try to make a difference, to fight, to strive, to fail, time and time again, but to learn a bit each time, and to do good, simply because we choose to. Normal is enough, normal and a choice, a commitment, it really doesn't need any more.

Being a hero isn't about being exceptional, it is about choosing to fight for something you feel should be made right, with the powers and capabilities you have. That is enough...

IMO, This is something that parents and mentors need to teach children. The most important thing an adult can do is instill this into child. I see gaming as a way skilled gamers can help teach these sort of lessons to children.

Another thing.

Q. Why do we study history? A. So we can learn to not repeat the mistakes of the past?

So Q. Why do tyrants erase and revise history?

From the gamer perspective I have the following tale.

I have a 17 year old son who has played in my game since he was 7. When he was young his favorite character was Crush, a powerful brute that could smash cleave and kill. This character was his power fantasy. 10 years on his characters are more refined and thought out. He has played with adults his entire life.

About a month ago he met some friends in high school with a game and joined them. He came home to me stating, every character starts with 3 18's and 3 16's (3.5 D&D) asking my why they do that and my reply was his friends want to play out fantasy hero tales and they are at the same gaming stage he was when he was 7.

What my son is accustomed to is story telling rooted in classics. We played a storyline for 18 months that ended in one player betraying his and murdering a friend, a second player. Everyone was aware of the forces pulling on the two players, everyone thought the betrayer would resist, but in the end the betrayer made a painful and conscious choice of betrayal.

the conditions for betrayal were set at character creation 18 months before. It took 18 months of play for that storyline to come to conclusion and each step was a chess game between the various actors in the roles. In the end the one player killed a second and fractured the group.

The game was 3.5 D&D started at first level played to 10th when the betrayal happened. They never became heroes. Each of them used a rogue class for level 1 to represent skills learned on the streets as urchins. Other classes picked up as they learned and survived. Everyone loved it and the end was fitting. But I have a group of mostly adults in their 40's that have all the young gamer stuff behind them.

Keep doing good, keep looking and teach those younger than you.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-26, 08:02 AM
I never took the lesson of heroic tales to be "you'll never be like this". I always saw them as "THIS is how you're supposed to be!" Strive, excel, rise to face your challenges, be a positive force of change in the world.

If Spiderman had only ever fought street thugs after he got his powers, maybe I could see his story as depressing. if he won the genetic mutation lottery, got better than everyone else, and then lorded it over them. Lame.

But superheroes take on superhuman opponents, they stop world-destroying catastrophes. Spiderman isn't out beating up high school bullies and local drug dealers every week, he's stopping aliens, minor deities, robots, gigantic creatures, and supervillains. They provide real challenges for him and he often faces temporary defeats and injuries.

Likewise, heroes in RPG's usually face appropriate challenges to their power level. A 10th-level D&D party doesn't spend their time battling 0-level kobolds and giant spiders, they're facing down dragons, demons, and giants. The lesson is that, as your abilities increase and improve, so should the challenges you take on.

Laughingmanlol
2015-04-26, 09:45 AM
You might be interested in this article (http://www.salon.com/2013/11/30/superheroes_are_a_bunch_of_fascists/), which seems to echo your sentiments

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-26, 03:45 PM
I used to be a big fan of superhero stories as a kid too, but they didn't really have the described effect on me. The only fictional story that did was Harry Potter - because I happened to be eleven when I read the first book. (And then my letter never game. Boo hoo.)

I occasionally have bouts of wanting to be the center of attention, becoming a famous musician or some such. But then, the feeling fades because I remember I barely have time to be good at stuff I'm already doing, where I am at the center of attention, and realize my problems and feelings on inadequacy have little to do with not being special enough. If anything, it's the opposite. There's been a few awkward moments in my life where I've been doing something I consider normal, and then someone has just flat said to my face "people like you don't exist", sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.

But life philosophy is also a part of it. There's a saying "if you want your life to have a meaning, plant a tree". I've planted several. If I ever find myself wondering what impact I've had on the world, I can just take a hike ten kilometers to the north and see how they've grown.

Yora
2015-04-26, 03:56 PM
Superheroes never did it for me, precisely because they are so far removed from real people that their stories aren't applicaple to actual life to any degree. They are special fictional people who deal with their special fictional problems through special fictional means. I just don't find anything in them that would make me think about questions or challenges of the real world.

LudicSavant
2015-04-26, 06:14 PM
To be fair, a lot of folks who change the world don't change it for the better (even the ones with good intentions!), and sometimes even the good changes only stay good for a time (while the "hero" lives, for instance), or their change is good for some people and bad for some people.

Changing the world is hard, risky, and can easily make things worse instead of better. But if it's in you, you can try.

That sounds like an empty argument for complacency and apathy.

The simple fact of the matter is that every time something good was made in the world, it's because someone went out and made that happen, often at serious risk to themselves.

Examples of things people take for granted that people had to take serious personal risks and do a ton of hard work for:
- Basic water purification. (The guy who first disinfected our tap water, for instance, actually ended up in court for dosing the water supply, since he couldn't get the culture at the time to acknowledge that water purification was a good idea)
- Not having lead in everything. And the knowledge that lead poisoning is even a thing (the gas companies lead an active coverup and tried to crucify the scientist who led the charge on this one, and he spent much of the rest of his life fighting for the lead ban that we take for granted today)
- Basic work safety standards. 9-5 workdays. Child labor laws. Fire escape routes. Minimum wage. Weekends. Vacation time. The ability to sue your boss for all kinds of things. Not being able to pay people in "company scrip." (These ones are absolutely paved with a staggeringly massive amount of blood and tears, but many people take them for granted today and are unaware of the history behind these things, as if this was always the western way. It wasn't.)
- The institutionalized application of the scientific method.
- The global criminalization of slavery.

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-26, 06:35 PM
Did-did you miss the last sentence? :confused:

Go be a hero. Do it. Absolute victory. Just be aware that you may not succeed, your success may have unintended or even opposite effects, even if you succeed in a way that works out the way you wanted it might still be good for some people and bad for some people, and even if none of that's the case you might be demonized for your efforts or fade into obscurity in a fashion unworthy of your achievement.

But seriously, go be a hero. Heaven knows the world needs them.

LudicSavant
2015-04-26, 06:38 PM
Did-did you miss the last sentence? :confused:

No, I did not.


you might be demonized for your efforts or fade into obscurity in a fashion unworthy of your achievement.

Well, yeah. That's the case for... well, most of the people responsible for the list I just posted.

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-26, 06:52 PM
No, I did not.So how am I "making an empty argument for complacency and apathy" when I'm telling people to go out and change the world?

LudicSavant
2015-04-26, 06:57 PM
So how am I "making an empty argument for complacency and apathy" when I'm telling people to go out and change the world?

Your actual words were "But if it's in you, you can try."

Edit for further clarification: Telling people that they can try to change the world is not even close to the same thing as explicitly telling people to go out and change the world, and I'm not sure why you're acting like it is.

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-26, 07:06 PM
Your actual words were "But if it's in you, you can try."Try to do what? :smallwink:

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-26, 07:31 PM
But superheroes take on superhuman opponents, they stop world-destroying catastrophes. Spiderman isn't out beating up high school bullies and local drug dealers every week, he's stopping aliens, minor deities, robots, gigantic creatures, and supervillains. They provide real challenges for him and he often faces temporary defeats and injuries.

Likewise, heroes in RPG's usually face appropriate challenges to their power level. A 10th-level D&D party doesn't spend their time battling 0-level kobolds and giant spiders, they're facing down dragons, demons, and giants. The lesson is that, as your abilities increase and improve, so should the challenges you take on.

To be frank, I find the invention of ever-escalating threats to challenge the heroes to be a cheat, and this trickles to how I hold my games too.

Sure, there's always a bigger fish. But you're dealing with the little fish more. There really ought to be a point where a hero can't look up anymore and has to look down and think what to do about the little things. Spider-man, specfically, has actually had this throughout the years, because part of his original schtick was to be down-to-earth and relatable. Other heroes, not so much.

The reason being, the hero always being the underdog allows for justifying abilities and attitudes which are completely crazy. The recent Avengers film both discusses and illustrates this. The overall teaching of the film is "we need a bigger gun, because the other guy has one!" The paranoid thinking which caused all the problems in the film is eventually vindicated by conceits of the genre. In RPGs, I want my players to eventually start thinking of something else than tackling the next biggest monster.

The Evil DM
2015-04-26, 07:54 PM
To be frank, I find the invention of ever-escalating threats to challenge the heroes to be a cheat, and this trickles to how I hold my games too.

Sure, there's always a bigger fish. But you're dealing with the little fish more. There really ought to be a point where a hero can't look up anymore and has to look down and think what to do about the little things. Spider-man, specfically, has actually had this throughout the years, because part of his original schtick was to be down-to-earth and relatable. Other heroes, not so much.

I agree, In the campaign universe I run as the characters level the emerge into tiers of social influence in the campaign cultures. By the time the players are hitting 12th-13th level they are leaders in the culture. Priests (clerics) have acolytes they must attend to, Wizards have apprentices, warriors are dealing with soldiers and war. The "Heroes" of the campaign world are looked up to become leaders and the players have the ability to impact cultures - I have a variety of homebrew culture game models where the game turns take place over game months and years.

The core campaign area has been built entirely by players. They have organized people, religions and social institutions. They have designed the villages, towns and system for the local realm.

There is not an infinite number of ever increasing threats and many characters reach a state of "business" where players will semi-retire them to research or administrative functions within the culture and start a new storyline with level one acolytes again. Then a campaign event requires attention of the big guns and they come out of retirement to deal with the threat.

It only works because the game world I have built is a sandbox of cultures that interact. the more experienced the character more influence the character has on the interaction of the cultures.

LudicSavant
2015-04-26, 08:08 PM
To be frank, I find the invention of ever-escalating threats to challenge the heroes to be a cheat, and this trickles to how I hold my games too.

Sure, there's always a bigger fish. But you're dealing with the little fish more. There really ought to be a point where a hero can't look up anymore and has to look down and think what to do about the little things. Spider-man, specfically, has actually had this throughout the years, because part of his original schtick was to be down-to-earth and relatable. Other heroes, not so much.

The reason being, the hero always being the underdog allows for justifying abilities and attitudes which are completely crazy. The recent Avengers film both discusses and illustrates this. The overall teaching of the film is "we need a bigger gun, because the other guy has one!" The paranoid thinking which caused all the problems in the film is eventually vindicated by conceits of the genre. In RPGs, I want my players to eventually start thinking of something else than tackling the next biggest monster.

I like the idea of differences in kind, rather than simply differences in scale, of challenges emerging as players advance. I'd love to hear some more ideas to that effect.

The Evil DM
2015-04-26, 08:27 PM
I like the idea of differences in kind, rather than simply differences in scale, of challenges emerging as players advance. I'd love to hear some more ideas to that effect.

Some of what happens in my campaign can be summed up with an example.

On the annual time scale a drought appears on the campaign events. The event will impact play levels of the campaign in different way.

Assume - for simplicity two cultural regions, a human feudal agrarian culture with a nearby goblin tribal culture based on hunting, gathering and raiding.

As the drought impacts the campaign world, the both populations will experience food and water shortages, but the agrarian population has some reserves of food. Food and water shortage for the goblin tribes trigger behaviors that shift gathering population to raiding population realizing that the humans have food stores. Some goblin tribes might migrate to better pastures, or follow herds of game. The world begins to shift.

The lower level characters in the campaign world might be faced with individual challenges related to increased border incursions of the goblins. Defending a particular village or bountiful well. In terms of scale, the form of challenge is much more tactical and dealing with individual goblins.

At the mid levels, the characters might have operational control of several units. A warrior might have a fiefdom with the requirement to patrol his piece of the frontier. At this scale the form of challenges deals with maneuver, and disposition of forces. Logistical challenges feeding the people can also occur.

At the high levels the characters would have strategic level challenges. How do these characters make contact with goblin leaders and negotiate peace or cooperation? How do they deal with the fiefdoms and internal politics of the agrarian culture? The lower level issues above are delegated to lower level subordinates.

In my world even a party of 8 20th level characters is not going to be able to wipe out a goblin culture. The goblins will have leaders and heroes of their own and even though the 20th level characters can do a lot of damage to the goblin culture, 8 individuals will eventually be overrun given enough numbers and persistence.

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-26, 08:32 PM
Telling people that they can try to change the world is not even close to the same thing as explicitly telling people to go out and change the world, and I'm not sure why you're acting like it is."You have my permission" is a form of endorsement, is it not?

Maglubiyet
2015-04-26, 10:12 PM
In RPGs, I want my players to eventually start thinking of something else than tackling the next biggest monster.

There's always a bigger monster...allegorically.

Lord Raziere
2015-04-26, 11:06 PM
......the original post is.....

....the stupidest thing I ever heard.

not because you shouldn't go out and be awesome or whatever, you should totally do that. I agree with you there.

but the notion that some this media sends the message that we can't be heroes underneath or whatever is stupid. I just can't agree with it.

do you know who the most popular superhero of DC is? Its Batman. y'know. the guy everyone keeps going on about he is this normal human but "he is awesome because he is the goddamn Batman!!!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!1!" the guy I have to keep hearing about over and over again about how with prep-time he can beat anything and can do a whole bunch of cool stuff? how everyone keeps saying that because of him, Normal Humanity is the REAL superpower? I may hate him, but I know, all those people? they are freaking inspired by him, they cannot stop being passionate about what he represents to people and how he is a shining example of humans doing it better than all the aliens and robots and everything in the freaking universe! I call bull on this notion! BULL. People are so inspired by Batman that Kevin Conroy once yelled his famous Batman line from B:TAS after 9/11 and people cheered and applauded him! While he volunteering for a kitchen for rescue personnel! Said rescue personnel said they watch B:TAS growing up!

and outside of freaking Batman? we have an entire trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MugglesDoItBetter) dedicated to how normal humans do things better.two in fact! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanityIsSuperior) , three if you don't consider "Special" and "Superior" to be the same thing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreSpecial), we have so many things devoted to saying that normal humans are awesome, that y'know Warhammer 40,000? that stupidly grimdark setting where all of humanity lives under the most regime imaginable and is in eternal war with aliens and demons of horrifically cosmic power? guess what its fanbase is focused on idolizing: The Imperial Guard. the completely normal humans who die in droves to fight Orks and Chaos and Tyranids and so on and so forth. so much so, that the guys at 1d4chan proudly yell "humanity **** yeah!" without a hint of remorse or irony.

and there are more, yes but my point is: we are so focused in our media on saying that humanity is somehow super-important and great, that most nerds I have talked to online actually believe it. we are in no danger of believing that that we are disempowered- we seem to be all too happy to stroke our collective egos into believing we are the greatest thing in the universe.

I'm more worried that because of this attitude, that we might screw up first contact with aliens or with the robots we might someday make and cause a war. thats how much I doubt the notion that superheroes somehow make people feel disempowered. mostly because, it wouldn't be any different from older cultures all believing that they were the greatest thing in the universe and deciding to conquer other people because of it. from ancient times, to nationalism, and now to humanity in general, people always want to believe that they the greatest thing ever and that they have an effect, and will fight tooth and nail to prove that they do.

and this is coming from a guy, who dislikes any tropes concerning "humanity is special" and loves superpowers and magic. I may not support it myself- but a lot of people clearly disagree with you.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 08:41 AM
There's always a bigger monster...allegorically.

You either missed the point or are using the word "allegorically" badly.

Segev
2015-04-28, 09:11 AM
There are plenty of tales where the hero is the hero by dint of hard work. If you want a good fantasy series that covers this very well, look at Codex Alera.

But Batman, for all that he's practically deified as spectacularly strong willed, did all of it through hard work. (And, let's be honest, if you count "strong will" as a "superpower," you're basically excusing never doing anything because you aren't "blessed" with a "strong enough will.")


You have talents and skills. Drive is almost never an inherent human quality; it must be inculcated and nurtured and pushed. If you don't have somebody who will help push you to be driven, you have a hard road ahead, but rather than bemoan your normalcy, find what you're good at, find something you WANT To do, and go out and force yourself to try to figure out how to do it.

OttoVonBigby
2015-04-28, 09:51 AM
the "hero genre" (A very broad term, but will suffice for the purposes of this post I hope), while it sends the obvious messages of struggle, courage and hope, it also sends a darker, much more subtle, and to my mind- quite wrong and devastating message to the youth of our society. The message is "You are not exceptional, you are not special, and therefore you are insignificant. You matter not, and you will not make a real contribution, a real change, you are the scenery, the backdrop- so don't bother."
I've seen worrisome examples of this, true (especially w/superhero narratives), but I think there are so many counterexamples that this amounts to maybe a bit of hand-wringing.

What I'm wondering about now, though, is whether this means a long-term superhero-themed RPG campaign is doomed to a fascist finale ;) ... I've never run or played in a superhero RPG and I've always wondered what it's like, thematically as well as plot-wise.

goto124
2015-04-28, 10:01 AM
Even when there are protaganists, there are also many other people helping in other ways, just that we don't see them because the story doesn't mention them or glosses them over.

Why? Conservation of Detail. We have to concentrate on the main characters, or get drowned and confused in superflous detail.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-28, 12:48 PM
You either missed the point or are using the word "allegorically" badly.

Challenges increase in difficulty and complexity, requiring ever more refined life skills and higher risks.

Working up the nerve to ask a girl to the prom, applying to college, and facing bullies can be challenging when you're 17.

Asking that girl to marry you, interviewing for your first "real" job, handling an overbearing boss are a step up.

Dealing with your child's chronic illness, breaking away and starting your own business, organizing a neighborhood committee to challenge an unjust law are a couple notches higher.

The "allegory", how this is translates narratively, is "monsters" of increasing CR.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 01:59 PM
Then you missed the point. Let me quote and underline it for you:



Sure, there's always a bigger fish. But you're dealing with the little fish more.

Once you can bench press a house or two and have saved the world from the Evil Overlord, asking that girl out, getting a job or watching a loved one suffer from illness are comparatively small. What's important is that they're also different and a hero can expect to face them more commonly than Evil Overlods.

Or to give a more concrete example: I can run around 2700 meters in 12 minutes. As far as I'm concerned, this is not good. For a person of my bodyweight and profession, it's barely above the minimum level required, a 2.5 on a 1-to-5 scale. You don't get to the olympics with this constitution, in fact you don't even make the cut for regionals.

Yet, it's more than around 70% of people alive can run in that time. In a test of speed and fitness, the average person isn't a challenge to me. The only reason those 30% above me matter at all is because I choose to compete with them, not because it's actually necessary or because some narrative demands it. It won't make nor break my life if I'll never run better than this. I could, at any moment, set aside the question "can I run better?" and instead ask "what now?"

And that's a question a lot of fictional heroes are not even allowed to ask, because a Diabolus Ex Machina forces them back to asking the first question.

Segev
2015-04-28, 02:16 PM
I might include "finding a girl" to be a difficult challenge. :P

More to the point, though, being able to bench press a house and save the world from the eldrich horror doesn't necessarily translate to being able to work up the nerve to ask that girl out. Many a superpowered protagonist has still struggled with whether that girl next door actually might maybe want to go out to a movie with him.


And, to the being who can stop meteors hurtling towards the earth with a casual backhand, watching his best friend, girlfriend, or kid sibling die of a slow disease while powerless to do anything but spend what little time remains with them can give them a feeling of impotence to which they're utterly unaccustomed.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-28, 04:16 PM
Then you missed the point. Let me quote and underline it for you:.

No, I understand perfectly well. I'm saying the escalating scale of challenges represents a narrative style that focuses on the relevant challenges in someone's life.

The background fluff (sick parents, paying bills, car troubles, etc) is a given. The story is only concerned with the latest, difficult life challenge. This is what heroic fiction is depicting.

Other stories focus on the nitty gritty details of someone's life. A person might be a demon slayer but the narrative also delves into the interpersonal relationships and minor inconveniences they experience day to day. This is the "slice of life" story type.

Both are valid RP styles.

Lord Raziere
2015-04-28, 04:28 PM
Yet, it's more than around 70% of people alive can run in that time. In a test of speed and fitness, the average person isn't a challenge to me. The only reason those 30% above me matter at all is because I choose to compete with them, not because it's actually necessary or because some narrative demands it. It won't make nor break my life if I'll never run better than this. I could, at any moment, set aside the question "can I run better?" and instead ask "what now?"

And that's a question a lot of fictional heroes are not even allowed to ask, because a Diabolus Ex Machina forces them back to asking the first question.

Agreed:

"Hello I'm Ash Ketchum! Watch me go through this region, catch pokemon to build a strong team, grow into a better trainer...only to lose at the tournament at the end and get kicked back to starting all over again! This will continue on for all eternity! I will never have to ask "what now?" when I get to being a Pokemon Master, because....I'll never become one. I'm just here to endlessly make money for Nintendo. Ahaha, ahaha, hahahahahaha-"
He then breaks down crying.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 04:29 PM
@ Maglubiyet: Being focused on a single genre or type of play works for one-shots. Campaigns ought to vary between them, otherwise they get repetitive. And if your typical play session is at least 4 hours long, you can fit in both during single instance of play, even if it's a one-shot.

Also, you're still missing the point. Bigger challenges aren't automatically relevant. But by pretending they are, you prevent the lesser ones from being. This gets especially egregious when you're inventing fictional threats far out-of-scale of any mundane ones.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-28, 05:30 PM
I might include "finding a girl" to be a difficult challenge. :P

More to the point, though, being able to bench press a house and save the world from the eldrich horror doesn't necessarily translate to being able to work up the nerve to ask that girl out. Many a superpowered protagonist has still struggled with whether that girl next door actually might maybe want to go out to a movie with him.


And, to the being who can stop meteors hurtling towards the earth with a casual backhand, watching his best friend, girlfriend, or kid sibling die of a slow disease while powerless to do anything but spend what little time remains with them can give them a feeling of impotence to which they're utterly unaccustomed.

In the heroic narrative, defeating the monsters equates to asking the girl out, watching a friend die, etc.

Each "monster" merely represents an inner struggle. In that sense, they are always getting more difficult or they are recurring villains that never seem to die. The unkillable critters represent character flaws that, despite our best efforts, we just can't seem to kick (addictions, phobias, etc)

veti
2015-04-28, 10:05 PM
......the original post is.....

....the stupidest thing I ever heard.

not because you shouldn't go out and be awesome or whatever, you should totally do that. I agree with you there.

but the notion that some this media sends the message that we can't be heroes underneath or whatever is stupid. I just can't agree with it.

do you know who the most popular superhero of DC is? Its Batman. y'know. the guy everyone keeps going on about he is this normal human but "he is awesome because he is the goddamn Batman!!!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!1!"

Batman is a good example. He's not a superhero because he was in an accident, or because he was born with special powers, or because he has access to secret unobtanium...

... oh wait a minute. Yes. Yes, he is. He was born with insane amounts of money. That's a superpower, it's something most of us can never aspire to, and therefore we're absolved for not being Batman. And he was in an "accident" that turned him from a harmless rich kid into the dark blah. His "unobtanium" is every detail of his background - the unlimited free time and complete unaccountability, the Batcave, the supernatural levels of technology and training that we can't access.

The older version of this trope was, explicitly, about your ancestry. Heracles was the son of a god. Achilles, Perseus, Theseus, Jason - name a Greek hero that you've heard of, and it's a good bet that one or both of his parents was either a god, or a king (who could probably be traced back to a god within about three generations). Through medieval times, the stories simply shut their eyes to the very existence of people who weren't "born special". King Arthur, Roland, Richard the Lionheart, El Cid...

There are a few exceptions. Robin Hood was originally a commoner, although there was a determined effort in the Renaissance to co-opt him into the nobility, and nowadays his characterisation as a "dispossessed nobleman" is very familiar to us. (Although the original, commoner Robin never really "achieved" anything much, beyond notoriety for its own sake - his political agenda is a much later invention.) Beowulf began life as a common(ish) warrior - but fully half of his story happens after he's elevated to full-fledged king-hood, making his a story about a great king rather than an inspiring commoner. He's a more Germanic, rugged incarnation, which embraces the idea of meritocracy (he becomes king because he's great, not vice versa), but is then immediately co-opted as justification for the social status quo (the aristocracy are who they are because they're great, not because life is unfair - and if you're not showered with glory and living a life of palatial comfort and ease, that's because you're a worthless cretin who'll never amount to anything).

The modern "superhero", shorn of its explicit connections to social status, is more palatable to our modern sensibilities, but the basic idea - that heroism is something rare and special that you, personally, don't have to aspire to - is exactly the same.

My personal belief is this:

There was a period - approximately, the 19th century - when "heroism" briefly became an Everyman thing. Characters such as Allan Quatermain, Abraham Van Helsing, Richard Hannay, and the heroes of the Old West don't have any "superpowers" - merely a reasonable amount of skill and courage, and the luck, if you can call it that, to be in the right place and time to do something notable. But that didn't last long. Sherlock Holmes was the thin end of what turned out to be a very large wedge to be driven between "heroes" and "us", and within a generation we were seeing the rise of pulp heroes such as The Shadow, Tarzan and Doc Savage, whose backstories included outlandish, scientifically inexplicable elements that no reader would ever be able to emulate.

There's an escapist function to heroic fantasy, part of whose point is to absolve its readers from trying to emulate it. Heroes who are too much like us - can make us increasingly discontented with our own lives. So authors introduce these elements on purpose, to put a "safe distance" between their protagonists and their audience.

And this is precisely why so many highbrow people dismiss the entire genre of heroic fiction as inherently infantile and not worthy of serious study.

Lord Raziere
2015-04-28, 11:24 PM
There's an escapist function to heroic fantasy, part of whose point is to absolve its readers from trying to emulate it. Heroes who are too much like us - can make us increasingly discontented with our own lives. So authors introduce these elements on purpose, to put a "safe distance" between their protagonists and their audience.

And this is precisely why so many highbrow people dismiss the entire genre of heroic fiction as inherently infantile and not worthy of serious study.

I don't get it. How is a "safe distance" a bad thing? why would I feel discontented that someone like me achieved something? they're like me. and how am I escaping? I'm still here, and they're confronting a problem, thats not an escape, there is still a problem. the only escape from a problem is either to solve the problem or to pretend as if no problems exist at all. only one option of those is a viable one. so I don't really get what your saying?

veti
2015-04-28, 11:42 PM
I don't get it. How is a "safe distance" a bad thing? why would I feel discontented that someone like me achieved something? they're like me. and how am I escaping? I'm still here, and they're confronting a problem, thats not an escape, there is still a problem. the only escape from a problem is either to solve the problem or to pretend as if no problems exist at all. only one option of those is a viable one. so I don't really get what your saying?

If you read about characters like you achieving something, doesn't it make you ponder what you've achieved yourself lately? And if the answer is "not much, certainly not compared with what this fictional hero just pulled off", that's where the discontent comes in.

"Confronting a problem and solving it" at the level of regular people just like us - that's the antithesis of heroic fiction, that's 'realist' fiction where the protagonist is an office worker whose major worry is that he's about to lose his job, or a housewife who's tempted to have an affair, or... something. And if you want to read that kind of fiction, there's tons of it out there. Some of it is even good. But "heroic" it ain't. And that's the point.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-28, 11:43 PM
You got it somewhat backwards, Raziere. By your typical fiction writer, "safe distance" isn't considered a bad thing; it's considered a bad thing by critics of heroic fiction who think the heroes being unrelatable leads to a bad teaching (basically, what this thread is about).

Now, as far as escapism goes... arguments from or for escapism make no sense to a person who writes or reads fiction for other reasons. One of the most common "other reasons" throughout human history has been the teaching of morals and virtues. Another has been exploring or examining contemporary issues either via allegory or analogue.

But as for why the lack of safe distance could be bad and lead to being discontended: think of one moral or other principle you'd want to stick to no matter what. Now imagine a story with a character just like you, facing problems just like the problems you face. And they find a solution to that problem, which is something you could do... except, it's something that'd require you to abandon that moral or principle.

Dealing with Space Whale Aesops which are not even remotely applicable to real life is much easier to a lot of people, because they don't require that - they don't require the peruser to question their own character. It's not about pretending there's no problem, it's about not thinking of it at all.

Lord Raziere
2015-04-28, 11:51 PM
If you read about characters like you achieving something, doesn't it make you ponder what you've achieved yourself lately? And if the answer is "not much, certainly not compared with what this fictional hero just pulled off", that's where the discontent comes in.

"Confronting a problem and solving it" at the level of regular people just like us - that's the antithesis of heroic fiction, that's 'realist' fiction where the protagonist is an office worker whose major worry is that he's about to lose his job, or a housewife who's tempted to have an affair, or... something. And if you want to read that kind of fiction, there's tons of it out there. Some of it is even good. But "heroic" it ain't. And that's the point.

No....not really. why would I compare myself to them?

No, that sounds pretty boring, I don't get where you think I'm "escaping" though.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-29, 08:15 AM
@ Maglubiyet: Being focused on a single genre or type of play works for one-shots. Campaigns ought to vary between them, otherwise they get repetitive. And if your typical play session is at least 4 hours long, you can fit in both during single instance of play, even if it's a one-shot.

Also, you're still missing the point. Bigger challenges aren't automatically relevant. But by pretending they are, you prevent the lesser ones from being. This gets especially egregious when you're inventing fictional threats far out-of-scale of any mundane ones.

I wholly agree with you. It's just that RPG's are inspired by heroic fiction, in which the bigger challenges are the only relevant ones.

The Beowulf poem is about the hero's clash with Grendl and his mom. Then the narrative jumps 50 years of him being king, straight to his final confrontation with the dragon. They don't bother mentioning anything about his reign -- forming alliances by arranging marriages, political bickering over land rights, selecting a color scheme for his mead hall -- all irrelevant.

The Labours of Hercules specifically only address his...Labours. There's no vignette inserted about him trying to find a last-minute gift for his mother-in-law or the time he botched a meal by adding too much vinegar. These tales describe major life events, either of an individual or of a nation, in the form of allegory.

EDIT: I don't mean to say you have to run a game like heroic fiction. All I'm saying is that historically the bigger monsters were representative of more challenging life situations. It gets old after a while playing RPG's like that. (Usually that's all computer "RPG's" can offer though -- no true roleplaying, just an ever-escalating scale of monster thrashing.)

Jay R
2015-04-29, 08:58 AM
The OP's description of comic books superheroes just doesn't match the comics I read from the sixties to the present.

Batman was an ordinary child who decided not to let personal tragedy destroy him. He was shown studying hard, training hard. He made a point of learning chemistry, physics, criminology, law, by spending long hours studying. We exercised hard every single day.

Hawkeye and Green Arrow had to practice every day to get good, and their origins (when eventually shown), shown that they weren't very good when they started.

Yes, Superman had powers, but he always complimented firemen and policemen for being ordinary people who risked their lives to save others. And Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane both starred in their own books.

And heroes made mistakes often. Spider-Man's origin was about the great mistake he made, and his career as a hero was trying to make up for that mistake.

Hawkeye made a mistake that turned him into a criminal for awhile. Iron Man became an alcoholic. Green Lantern was a screwed up selfish pilot. Speedy got hooked on drugs. Over and over again, heroes have been portrayed, not as people who didn't make mistakes, but as people who cam back from them determined to overcome them.

When two Marvel heroes met, you could almost count on one of them making a mistake, and starting a fight over a misinterpretation.

All cowboy heroes talked about the need to train with your gun, with your horse, with your rope, with all your skills.

It is simply not true that comics portray ordinary people as incapable of becoming extraordinary without super powers.

Segev
2015-04-29, 10:50 AM
In the heroic narrative, defeating the monsters equates to asking the girl out, watching a friend die, etc.

Each "monster" merely represents an inner struggle. In that sense, they are always getting more difficult or they are recurring villains that never seem to die. The unkillable critters represent character flaws that, despite our best efforts, we just can't seem to kick (addictions, phobias, etc)

While that is true in some literary sense, the very act of externalizing the difficulties changes the nature of the problem. "I am literally putting my life on the line, but I have a clearly defined success/failure condition and an unambiguous moral and ethical right to fight for what I want," is different from, "I am putting my pride and sense of self-worth on the line in a situation with somewhat ambiguous victory conditions. I cannot guarantee that doing something 'hard enough' (e.g. punching/fighting) will win success, and don't know how I will be measured until I either succeed or fail. And even success only leads to more opportunities to keep trying. Even my right to do this is of questionable moral and ethical merit."

The latter describes the kind of personal decisions that are oft externalized specifically to simplify the struggle.

In addition, it is quite possible for "slaying the monster" and "asking the girl out" to be in the very same hero's life. They have very different win conditions and modes of achieving them. Against the monster, exerting your full force regardless of its opposition is right and correct and ultimately the key to victory. Facing the prospect of getting the girl to like you, however, several of those things would be acts only a villain would attempt, and likely would fail anyway (barring mind-control). Few girls like being pursued against their will and forced into relationships according to the whims of somebody who just has the strength and power to do it, after all. (The same goes for inverting the sexes, but stereotypes have certain expected gender roles in these scenarios.)

In fact, some of the better character-driven shounen/superpowered stories involve beings who are fully capable of thwarting immense threats through sheer physical power, and contrasting that with their merely mortal, everyman capabilities in everyday life problems (and, occasionally, not-so-everyday but still very real-life tragedies).

Lord Raziere
2015-04-29, 11:50 AM
It is simply not true that comics portray ordinary people as incapable of becoming extraordinary without super powers.

And even then- we are all born with different skills and abilities. some people are simply more talented at some things than others. do we blame the more talented people for making other people feel discontented? No. Feeling discontent and jealousy for someone else's success is a personal failing. and no matter what we do, people there will always be a measure of inequality in society, with some people having more power than others. I do not for example feel discontent that a person who owns a corporation can achieve things far beyond what I myself is capable of- the scale difference is too great for it not to be a logical almost obvious fact. Superheroes at least teach us that even if there is power inequality, those who have such power over others should use it responsibly- a lesson that some people in this world, still haven't learned yet.

I have high-functioning autism- I was born through no fault of my own, a different wiring of my brain. there are others far more capable at social interaction. However, that has not stopped me from learning how better myself, to learn how to create advertisements, testimonials, stories, poems that people consider beautiful. Others are born through no fault of their own, in far less fortunate environments than mine, and become strong from it- is that a product of something they had no control over- or their own ability? Would they even have such ability if born into a different environment? all this is merely background for the abilities that somebody possesses, and so what does it matter? It matters if they use the power they have to do good, and to do good well.

LudicSavant
2015-04-29, 02:07 PM
While we're complaining about hero tropes, you know what always kinda bugged me? The relative dearth of chessmaster heroes. The smart guy is almost always the bad guy, or reduced to a mere caricature of an intellectual if it's a good guy ("well, I can make technological gadgets that I won't share with anyone else!"). The bullheaded punchy guy is the good guy. It's always such a genuine treat when you get to have a scheming protagonist like in, say, Log Horizon.

Another trope that bugs me is the tendency for the reactive one to be the hero, while the proactive one is cast as the villain. The guy who has a vision to change the world is the bad guy, while the guy who just wants to punch anyone who threatens the status quo into submission is the good guy. Bleh.

TheCountAlucard
2015-04-29, 04:25 PM
The relative dearth of chessmaster heroes.Using people, "playing" them like they were chess pieces, is seldom considered a "good guy" trait. I don't know about everyone else, but I personally might feel particularly betrayed if I found I was being used, even if it was by someone "on my side" and claiming to be my "friend."


The smart guy is almost always the bad guy, or reduced to a mere caricature of an intellectual if it's a good guy…Smart guy and Chessmaster are two different things. Additionally, pretty much every intellectual character in fiction, good or evil, is a caricature of an intellectual because most writers aren't on the intellectual level to write a character who is genuinely a genius. That's why we get B.S. tropes like flashes of insight when hearing random words, not showing any effort learning, et cetera., and then you get the kind of stuff where a "genius" automatically speaks more than a dozen languages, has a reading speed high enough to finish Atlas Shrugged twice during her lunch break, and has multiple PhD's in her mid-20's (Criminal Minds, I've got my eye on you).


Another trope that bugs me is the tendency for the reactive one to be the hero, while the proactive one is cast as the villain.Society as a whole considers the status quo tolerable, or else society wouldn't work. Thus people who want to shake things up are generally presented as bad, or at least not totally good. Is this good? Not really. Is this bad? Not really. Is it all that strange or surprising? Not really.

veti
2015-04-29, 04:29 PM
Batman was an ordinary child who decided not to let personal tragedy destroy him. He was shown studying hard, training hard. He made a point of learning chemistry, physics, criminology, law, by spending long hours studying. We exercised hard every single day.

Hawkeye and Green Arrow had to practice every day to get good, and their origins (when eventually shown), shown that they weren't very good when they started.

Batman, as mentioned previously, has infinite money (which he never has to work for), plus access to training and technology that's, to all intents and purposes, magic. Green Arrow and Iron Man are essentially the same. Hawkeye lacks the money, but he does have the most important single thing that money buys: complete lack of accountability for how he spent his time, particularly during those key developmental years of backstory.

And yes, the superheroes make mistakes, and they face personal crises and stuff. Sometimes these are superficially similar to the mistakes and crises that you or I might face; and yet, speaking for myself, the options available to them never seem to even remotely match those available to me.


When two Marvel heroes met, you could almost count on one of them making a mistake, and starting a fight over a misinterpretation.

And then a common enemy will appear. Then they'll either combine forces to beat them, or one will just stomp off in a huff and the other will get pwned because of it. Either way, it clarifies things and paves the way for the inevitable reconciliation that will come when the writer finally tires of this hackneyed plotline.


All cowboy heroes talked about the need to train with your gun, with your horse, with your rope, with all your skills.

Frontier or cowboy heroes during the 19th century were an outlier, in that they were based on actual people. Although the fictionalised versions of Buffalo Bill or Kit Carson cared zilch for biographical accuracy, they did at least - mostly - respect the laws of physics. Frontier or cowboy heroes depicted now are exploiting temporal fantasy: instead of Magic, they use Time (and its slutty cousin Nostalgia) to distance the hero from the audience. Meaning that the challenges they face, and the resources and options available to them, are always going to be safely removed from anything the audience might relate to.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-29, 04:40 PM
While we're complaining about hero tropes, you know what always kinda bugged me? The relative dearth of chessmaster heroes. The smart guy is almost always the bad guy, or reduced to a mere caricature of an intellectual if it's a good guy ("well, I can make technological gadgets that I won't share with anyone else!"). The bullheaded punchy guy is the good guy. It's always such a genuine treat when you get to have a scheming protagonist like in, say, Log Horizon.

Another trope that bugs me is the tendency for the reactive one to be the hero, while the proactive one is cast as the villain. The guy who has a vision to change the world is the bad guy, while the guy who just wants to punch anyone who threatens the status quo into submission is the good guy. Bleh.

These tropes themselves are actually just a ploy to occupy the punchy guys and make them feel like the heroes while the genius chessmasters work in the shadows, making a better world...

Have you read any Vernor Vinge? His heroes might be more in line with what you like.

Lord Raziere
2015-04-29, 04:49 PM
Yet...

those who manipulate others are probably the ones who are needed to bring about the most change. true change for good cannot come from force of arms alone. and while I would love to be completely honest about everything, society is full of masks we put on, especially when we need to champion a cause. our media spins every issue their own way, there is no real unbiased source of information, they all have their own agenda. social manipulation is a thing that permeates our every existence- a Kantian belief in telling the full truth, is a naive one.

society often doesn't have an accurate vision of itself, much less other societies or cultures. they might get some things true yes, but often exaggerated and distorted. and half of the truth is more dangerous than any lie. and half the truth is that the status quo is tolerable for them.

oh but I know what you will say next:
people will never accept these heroes because it assumes that the "common" people are easily manipulable fools or something, and thus shun what makes for a bad image of people. to which I say: society loves to toot its own horn excessively. all cultures are susceptible to cultural egomania, thinking that they are better than the alternatives around them. sometimes, when manipulation won't work, you have to point out the harsh truths to people. and really there is only so far you can go with this while still remaining in society- you can nudge them in the direction of certain decisions, but you can't force them to make those decisions. only force of arms can do that, and even then, only as a deterrent that will eventually fail as people respond with force back and then set up a new society where we begin all over again with manipulation.

what would you rather have? one who is really good at nudging, or one will force people at sword-point? I am with Ludic Savant on these three things...we really need more of such heroes.

Haruki-kun
2015-04-29, 05:06 PM
The Winged Mod: Guys, just as a reminder, try to veer away from real world politics. Thanks.

veti
2015-04-29, 05:35 PM
I think I agree with Michael Moorcock (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html) on this subject: what we really need is to abandon the concept of "heroes" entirely. "Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves."

Either everyone is a hero, or no-one is. No-one, at least no-one who's reached adulthood, has ever got through life without making difficult choices and doing unpleasant things. But conversely, no-one gets everything right either. Heroism as a full-time characteristic of rare and special people is - at best - an outmoded concept, one that infantilises its audience and enables their own passivity.

RPGs? Are inherently escapist, there's nothing wrong with that - as a hobby. (If it takes up all your spare time, or eats into time that you should be doing other things, then it can rapidly become harmful. But that's true of any hobby, I think.) Even so, my liking for RPGs is, approximately, inversely related to how "Special" they make their PCs.

LudicSavant
2015-04-29, 05:43 PM
Using people, "playing" them like they were chess pieces, is seldom considered a "good guy" trait. I don't know about everyone else, but I personally might feel particularly betrayed if I found I was being used, even if it was by someone "on my side" and claiming to be my "friend."

I wonder, would you feel particularly betrayed to learn that the purpose of any tactician is, well, to maneuver their soldiers like chess pieces?

Would you feel particularly betrayed to learn that the core purpose of any economy is to manipulate you into cooperating?

Would you feel particularly betrayed to learn that the core purpose of an education system is to cultivate you as a human resource to be applied towards a useful purpose?

Would you feel particularly betrayed to learn that the purpose of employment is to use people?

Would you feel particularly betrayed to learn that a game designer's job is to psychologically manipulate you into having fun?

kyoryu
2015-04-29, 06:23 PM
There's also the difference between heroic and superheroic.

The superhero succeeds because he's just that awesome. He's better than everyone else. Their story is about how awesome they are.

The hero isn't necessarily any "better". They succeed because of perseverance, and the willingness to pay the cost for success. Their story is about what they're willing to sacrifice.

NichG
2015-04-29, 07:38 PM
I think I agree with Michael Moorcock (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html) on this subject: what we really need is to abandon the concept of "heroes" entirely. "Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves."

I think this is a bit much. While our fiction certainly does influence us, it isn't the root cause of all of our behavior. People don't follow charismatic but ultimately incompetent leaders because of Zorro - Zorro is compelling in part because there's a bit of human nature which makes us follow those who are confident, and the literature is simply making use of that human tendency in the same way that a salesman, CEO, or demagogue would - whether to bring it to the surface, evoke it, explore it, etc. It isn't created by the literature, it's created by an underlying characteristic of human behavior which the literature taps into.

But I guess thats more of a meta-criticism about literature critique - not everything you talk about has to be responsible for all the problems faced by modern and past society in order to have some insight or discovery to it. We don't need to look at some particular theme in hero stories after reading them for 20 years and then say 'aha, now I understand why Hitler happened!' in order to actually discover something about the media.

But, apart from the meta-criticism, I guess my question would be: if you believe what Moorcock is saying there, what could you do in order to make the most useful positive thing? What concept could you have in a book that would actually drive people to improve? If heroes encourage people to wait for daddy to come by and solve everything, that doesn't mean that 'lack of heroes' will automatically encourage them to do it themselves - if I give other kinds of literature the same credit for influencing people that Moorcock is giving heroic romanticism, then a 'hero-less' work could just as well encourage pessimism ('the problems just can't be solved'), glorification of character flaws ('look at how awesome it is that humans do stupid things for emotional reasons'), mediocrity ('its enough that I defeated the grand challenge of finding a prom date, I don't need to improve myself'), etc. So, what do you replace it with that actually has a designed, positive effect?

Yora
2015-04-30, 03:23 AM
RPGs? Are inherently escapist, there's nothing wrong with that - as a hobby.
What does escapist even mean? It seems like such a meaningless term.

Prime32
2015-04-30, 07:13 AM
While we're complaining about hero tropes, you know what always kinda bugged me? The relative dearth of chessmaster heroes. The smart guy is almost always the bad guy, or reduced to a mere caricature of an intellectual if it's a good guy ("well, I can make technological gadgets that I won't share with anyone else!"). The bullheaded punchy guy is the good guy. It's always such a genuine treat when you get to have a scheming protagonist like in, say, Log Horizon.

Another trope that bugs me is the tendency for the reactive one to be the hero, while the proactive one is cast as the villain. The guy who has a vision to change the world is the bad guy, while the guy who just wants to punch anyone who threatens the status quo into submission is the good guy. Bleh.Negima had an interesting take on this. Negi is an intellectual type who seeks out idiot heroes to "learn the strength found in idiocy" and gain the best of both worlds. He ends up defeating the villain by recruiting him to help with his own, more complex plan to save the world, on the condition that he'll assist the villain's original plan if they fail.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-30, 07:24 AM
RPGs? Are inherently escapist, there's nothing wrong with that - as a hobby.

What does escapist even mean? It seems like such a meaningless term.

Escapism basically means setting aside some time to not think of your life - that is, to escape it.

And like I said earlier in this thread, arguments for or from escapism make no sense to people who are playing for other reasons. RPGs can be and are used to teach skills and morals. Around these parts, we half-jokingly refer to military conscription as "the biggest LARP", because no matter how serious business it is, it's also fundamentally about a bunch of guys playing war in the woods.

Hence, I absolutely disagree with the notion that RPGs are inherently escapist.

Segev
2015-04-30, 09:14 AM
The Chessmaster does not necessarily nefariously manipulate people without their knowledge nor consent. The Chessmaster may manipulate his ENEMIES, but if you don't approve of that, you don't even like Batman (who manipulates them using their own foibles into nearly thwarting themselves). The Chessmaster is a strategist. He does have plans within plans, and backup plans for each contingency. He may or may not be engaged in one or more Xanatos Gambits (which are arguably the ideal to which any Chessmaster strives, but which are not essential to playing as one).

A Chessmaster's allies may very well know his goal. They probably share it. They may not understand his plans, but they don't share the Flying Brick's strength and invulnerability, either. They trust both to be able to fill their roles. The heroic Chessmaster may not need to lie to his companions. He might have to ask them to trust him and play their part in his plan, but he certainly isn't betraying that trust. He just needs them to behave in a way that they won't if they know everything, or he knows he hasn't got time to explain everything, or they may not be able to grasp it (at least not in the time available). It could be that he needs the ENEMY to believe something, and his friends are bad liars or may accidentally broadcast the truth if he tells them.

The point is, when playing a game of strategy - which is the Chessmaster's forte - information control is key. That doesn't mean you're betraying and maliciously using your allies. It just means that you have to earn and deserve their trust. A heroic Chessmaster is, in some ways, a greater exemplar of morality and ethics than the "dumb hero." His talents and methods are very easily used for evil, and in ways that would elude even the social disfavor that might normally attend the Unstoppable Superman's rise to power. Yet they choose to avoid evil and do good, even when they could get away with it.

Jay R
2015-04-30, 05:33 PM
Batman, as mentioned previously, has infinite money (which he never has to work for), plus access to training and technology that's, to all intents and purposes, magic. Green Arrow and Iron Man are essentially the same. Hawkeye lacks the money, but he does have the most important single thing that money buys: complete lack of accountability for how he spent his time, particularly during those key developmental years of backstory.

So? It isn't his money that define him. What he shows us is the need to study and train in anything you really care about.

I'd need billions to develop crime-fighting tools, but I needed studying and part-time jobs to get a few math degrees. I might need to hire expensive trainers to get good enough to defeat super-powerful hoods, but he showed me the importance of training to win the occasional fencing tourney.

I can't fight off super-villains. But I've gotten training in first aid, CPR, swimming, lifesaving, and other safety skills, some of which I've found occasion to use.


And yes, the superheroes make mistakes, and they face personal crises and stuff. Sometimes these are superficially similar to the mistakes and crises that you or I might face; and yet, speaking for myself, the options available to them never seem to even remotely match those available to me.

Simply nonsense. The option Spider-Man has when he gets beaten by Dr. Octopus is to try again, and keep at it. And it was the weak Aunt May who taught him that. The option for me when I get fired is to keep at it, and try again.

The option for Superman is to move a mountain that's in the way. The option for me is to help somebody carry heavy groceries.

The option for Iron Man is to try to develop a new fancy piece of equipment to solve a problem. The option for me is to try to find a useful algorithm to solve a problem. I now have seven patents.

The option for the Thing is to put up with people who think he's gruesome. The option for me in school was to put up with the taunts of people who played baseball better than I could.


And then a common enemy will appear. Then they'll either combine forces to beat them, or one will just stomp off in a huff and the other will get pwned because of it. Either way, it clarifies things and paves the way for the inevitable reconciliation that will come when the writer finally tires of this hackneyed plotline.

Usually. And despite what you said above, the option of reconciling with estranged friends or family is an option that very closely matches those available to us.


Frontier or cowboy heroes during the 19th century were an outlier, in that they were based on actual people. Although the fictionalised versions of Buffalo Bill or Kit Carson cared zilch for biographical accuracy, they did at least - mostly - respect the laws of physics. Frontier or cowboy heroes depicted now are exploiting temporal fantasy: instead of Magic, they use Time (and its slutty cousin Nostalgia) to distance the hero from the audience. Meaning that the challenges they face, and the resources and options available to them, are always going to be safely removed from anything the audience might relate to.

Simply untrue, in either the comics I've read, or the movies I've seen.

The Rawhide Kid had stories about standing up to bullies, about speaking up when it would be easier to stay quiet, about being the one person who's nice to the outcast - all straightforward real world problems. Of course, I've faced fists and scorn, not guns, but the issue is the same.

No, we don't have super powers. But every day, we can decide to do things for others, with whatever skills or abilities we have.

veti
2015-05-01, 12:17 AM
But, apart from the meta-criticism, I guess my question would be: if you believe what Moorcock is saying there, what could you do in order to make the most useful positive thing? What concept could you have in a book that would actually drive people to improve?

Well, first of all I'd challenge the base assumption that a book "should" be written with an eye to "driving people to improve". Granted that many books are written that way, I don't buy the currently popular theory that those books are somehow inherently superior to those that aren't. By any measure I'd want to employ - including, I suspect, the aggregate net positive effect on the character of its readers - Right ho, Jeeves! (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10554/10554-h/10554-h.htm) is a far, far better book than The Fountainhead (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/), largely because it doesn't overtly attempt to make the reader stand up straight, tuck in his shirt and lead a better life thereafter.

One problem is that "improvement" is subjective. It's one of those irregular verbs: "I tell an improving story, you preach, he peddles hateful propaganda to indoctrinate the impressionable masses." Another is that the moral currents move a lot faster than anyone seems to credit nowadays. It can take less than ten years for "progressive morality" to be transformed into "mainstream bourgeois ideals" - then another ten years will take it into "social conditioning" and thence into "repressive conventionalism". In his day, Charles Dickens was a tireless campaigner for basic rights and recognition for the poor and disadvantaged: but what some modern readers see in his writing is authoritarian paternalism, racism, and more isms that prove simply that time has moved on.

However, setting that aside for a moment - I certainly think it's possible to deliver morally improving lessons without resorting to heroics. To reference one of my favourite modern authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, whose morals seem quite apt to this discussion:

The Remains of the Day - the story of an English butler's life, as told in flashback. A study in servility and self-restraint, anything less heroic it would be hard to imagine. Moral: you are responsible for your own decisions: it is easy to hide behind "convention" or "necessity" to let others make them for you, but in the end that's your decision too, and you'll be the one to regret it.
An Artist of the Floating World - a Japanese artist looks back on his career and his role in the leadup to World War Two (including, incidentally, his personal contributions to heroic myth). Moral: what seems clear and obvious today, may become embarrassingly unfashionable tomorrow; it is dangerous, both professionally and morally, to tie yourself too closely to your convictions, no matter how pureminded and conventional those may be, and those who come after you will not forgive your mistakes.
The Unconsoled - a distinguished pianist, suffering from a nervous breakdown, arrives in an unnamed city to give a concert. Moral: context changes everything, the message you are sending may be received as diametrically opposite from the message you thought you were sending; beware of those who would manipulate you and co-opt your voice into theirs.


Or there's the above-referenced P G Wodehouse, who, through the bumbling figure of Bertie Wooster, conveys the virtues of social conformity, clear communication, and refusing to be diverted from one's purpose. Or Barbara Trapido, whose painfully down to earth protagonists show that it's possible to be romantic and optimistic, without being stupid about it. Or Graham Greene, who through the remorselessly vile figure of Pinkie in Brighton Rock, delivers the hard-headed Aesop that not every evildoer can be redeemed or even stopped, sometimes the best you can do is try to protect the innocent from them.

---

I'd call all of those "useful, positive things". Your mileage may vary, of course, but that goes back to my first point about the subjectivity of improvement.

NichG
2015-05-01, 11:16 AM
Well, first of all I'd challenge the base assumption that a book "should" be written with an eye to "driving people to improve". Granted that many books are written that way, I don't buy the currently popular theory that those books are somehow inherently superior to those that aren't. By any measure I'd want to employ - including, I suspect, the aggregate net positive effect on the character of its readers - Right ho, Jeeves! (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10554/10554-h/10554-h.htm) is a far, far better book than The Fountainhead (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/), largely because it doesn't overtly attempt to make the reader stand up straight, tuck in his shirt and lead a better life thereafter.

One problem is that "improvement" is subjective. It's one of those irregular verbs: "I tell an improving story, you preach, he peddles hateful propaganda to indoctrinate the impressionable masses." Another is that the moral currents move a lot faster than anyone seems to credit nowadays. It can take less than ten years for "progressive morality" to be transformed into "mainstream bourgeois ideals" - then another ten years will take it into "social conditioning" and thence into "repressive conventionalism". In his day, Charles Dickens was a tireless campaigner for basic rights and recognition for the poor and disadvantaged: but what some modern readers see in his writing is authoritarian paternalism, racism, and more isms that prove simply that time has moved on.

However, setting that aside for a moment - I certainly think it's possible to deliver morally improving lessons without resorting to heroics. To reference one of my favourite modern authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, whose morals seem quite apt to this discussion:

The Remains of the Day - the story of an English butler's life, as told in flashback. A study in servility and self-restraint, anything less heroic it would be hard to imagine. Moral: you are responsible for your own decisions: it is easy to hide behind "convention" or "necessity" to let others make them for you, but in the end that's your decision too, and you'll be the one to regret it.
An Artist of the Floating World - a Japanese artist looks back on his career and his role in the leadup to World War Two (including, incidentally, his personal contributions to heroic myth). Moral: what seems clear and obvious today, may become embarrassingly unfashionable tomorrow; it is dangerous, both professionally and morally, to tie yourself too closely to your convictions, no matter how pureminded and conventional those may be, and those who come after you will not forgive your mistakes.
The Unconsoled - a distinguished pianist, suffering from a nervous breakdown, arrives in an unnamed city to give a concert. Moral: context changes everything, the message you are sending may be received as diametrically opposite from the message you thought you were sending; beware of those who would manipulate you and co-opt your voice into theirs.


Or there's the above-referenced P G Wodehouse, who, through the bumbling figure of Bertie Wooster, conveys the virtues of social conformity, clear communication, and refusing to be diverted from one's purpose. Or Barbara Trapido, whose painfully down to earth protagonists show that it's possible to be romantic and optimistic, without being stupid about it. Or Graham Greene, who through the remorselessly vile figure of Pinkie in Brighton Rock, delivers the hard-headed Aesop that not every evildoer can be redeemed or even stopped, sometimes the best you can do is try to protect the innocent from them.

---

I'd call all of those "useful, positive things". Your mileage may vary, of course, but that goes back to my first point about the subjectivity of improvement.

I got the feeling that the Moorcock criticism ran a bit deeper than 'what should an author do?' (which is, after all, highly dependent on what the author wants to achieve), and is more trying to say 'a particular type of story objectively induces a certain philosophy in those who consume it (along with the implied 'I don't like the philosophy and you shouldn't either' via Godwin).

So I don't know that subjectivity of valuation is applicable at least if one wants to consider Moorcock's criticism seriously, because that subjectivity is somewhat logically inconsistent with Moorcock's position in the following way: Moorcock's criticism basically boils down to 'a certain type of story has a systematic negative effect on people' - that's a claim that there's something clear and non-subjective which can be evaluated. The issue is that if a positive effect is always subjective but a negative effect is permitted to be objective, you end up in a situation where any particular type of story can only ever be argued to either systematically have 'no effect' or 'a negative effect' - e.g. anything one chooses to analyze will usually end up being bad, because there is no way within the logical framework created for it to be good.

I guess it's a matter of taste what part of the chain of logic one wants to revise in order to repair the issue. You could factor out the subjectivity claim, for example: perhaps there are objective effects which can be successfully extracted from an analysis of different types of stories, but ultimately the decision as to whether they are positive or negative is subjective. The issue then is that you have to be extremely careful when trying to make argumentation using parallels, because the existence of parallels doesn't provide definite information about causation - e.g. even if you buy that there are parallels between social phenomena surrounding charismatic dictators and hero stories, that is insufficient to argue that hero stories will induce a tendency to blindly follow charismatic dictators.

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-02, 12:26 PM
I don't buy the idea that heroic stories can be systematically classified as supporting fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. My reason is exceedingly simple: many heroes explicitly combat against and challenge fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. They could as well be seen as anarchistic.

veti
2015-05-03, 04:05 PM
I got the feeling that the Moorcock criticism ran a bit deeper than 'what should an author do?' (which is, after all, highly dependent on what the author wants to achieve), and is more trying to say 'a particular type of story objectively induces a certain philosophy in those who consume it (along with the implied 'I don't like the philosophy and you shouldn't either' via Godwin).

Completely agreed. I don't agree with all of Moorcock's analysis, and I'm not defending the whole thing. Moorcock has his own ideological prism and context, and his own agenda, none of which I share. But at the same time, I do consider that essay insightful and thought-provoking, and it inspires me, personally, to rethink some of the basic assumptions we're discussing here.

But one thing I do agree with is the sentiment that "heroes betray us". In the same way, if I tried to follow Moorcock's case in full, he too would betray me, and I'd find myself defending things I don't believe in.


I don't buy the idea that heroic stories can be systematically classified as supporting fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. My reason is exceedingly simple: many heroes explicitly combat against and challenge fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. They could as well be seen as anarchistic.

Fighting against/challenging people who support or rely on such systems, is not the same as challenging the system itself. The struggle to depose a tyrant might make a good story, but how much detail does it go into about what happens next? Because as recent history shows all too clearly, "deposing the tyrant", challenging though it may be, is still a lot easier than "replacing the tyrant with a less objectionable system of government".

Alcibiades
2015-05-03, 04:34 PM
To be frank, I find the invention of ever-escalating threats to challenge the heroes to be a cheat, and this trickles to how I hold my games too.

Sure, there's always a bigger fish. But you're dealing with the little fish more. There really ought to be a point where a hero can't look up anymore and has to look down and think what to do about the little things.

To me, thzt seems very difficult to achieve in an RPG. Not only from a galming perspective (D&D is mostly designed for challenges against appropriately challenging opposition) but also conceptually: it's often a lot simpler to oppose some cosmic evil than to solve these little problems, usually. I can get a high enough level and bash Asmodeus' head in, but in order to lower crime rates, you'd have to tackle problems far more complex.

And perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective, but it sounds like you'd quickly lose your players' interest with it...

veti
2015-05-03, 05:39 PM
To me, thzt seems very difficult to achieve in an RPG. Not only from a galming perspective (D&D is mostly designed for challenges against appropriately challenging opposition) but also conceptually: it's often a lot simpler to oppose some cosmic evil than to solve these little problems, usually. I can get a high enough level and bash Asmodeus' head in, but in order to lower crime rates, you'd have to tackle problems far more complex.

Yes, it is very difficult to achieve in an RPG. And yes, keeping the game fun at that point would be an even bigger challenge. Which is precisely why most campaigns don't bother. I think this is why early editions included the assumption that PCs would "retire" from active adventuring when they reached about level 9-11, and go into politics (in some form) instead - which would be too boring to roleplay, as well as not lending itself to a "party" style play, ergo the PC becomes an NPC. But later editions have edited out that career path, and assume that adventurers will continue adventuring indefinitely - thereby creating the assumption of constant inflation in the foes they face. (In the 1e Monster Manual, Asmodeus had 199 HP, could be damaged by any weapon of +3 or better, and there was no such thing as "divine ranks". How long would he have lasted against a 20th level 3e character?)

(The same thing happens in superhero fiction. Superheroes need villains who can test them - therefore, supervillains are always eerily calibrated to the strength of the hero they oppose. It's entirely possible that if the superhero simply retired, the villain would too. Come to think of it, this happens explicitly in The Dark Knight Returns - in the years since Batman retired, the Joker has sat quietly in Arkham Asylum - it's Batman's return that prompts him to break out.)

The issue is that this purely-practical issue leads to a story that focuses on one phase (stopping the Evil) and then just ignores the difficulties that follow from that. It creates heroes that are superhuman in every sense, and yet powerless to effect real, meaningful change in the world. It fosters the illusion that "heroes" are what really matters to the world, when in fact they are peripheral at best.

NichG
2015-05-03, 09:35 PM
Completely agreed. I don't agree with all of Moorcock's analysis, and I'm not defending the whole thing. Moorcock has his own ideological prism and context, and his own agenda, none of which I share. But at the same time, I do consider that essay insightful and thought-provoking, and it inspires me, personally, to rethink some of the basic assumptions we're discussing here.

But one thing I do agree with is the sentiment that "heroes betray us". In the same way, if I tried to follow Moorcock's case in full, he too would betray me, and I'd find myself defending things I don't believe in.

Fighting against/challenging people who support or rely on such systems, is not the same as challenging the system itself. The struggle to depose a tyrant might make a good story, but how much detail does it go into about what happens next? Because as recent history shows all too clearly, "deposing the tyrant", challenging though it may be, is still a lot easier than "replacing the tyrant with a less objectionable system of government".

Now that you mention it, I do think that there's something with the last bit there, though maybe its fixable.

One conceit that hero stories seem to have is that the world is 'wrong' in an obvious way such that everyone can easily identify how it could be better, but believes they cannot influence. Then, the hero demonstrates the aesop 'actually, they could have influenced it if they were brave/self-sacrificing/particular heroic quality the author likes' by enacting that change that everyone believes would obviously be for the best. (For superhero stories its less clear that this interpretation works because of the non-emulable aspect, but you often have superhero stories where it's the human characteristics of the superhero that end up being instrumental in resolving the final conflict rather than the powers).

Anyhow, the thing there that's misleading is the simplicity of the obstacle - that the barrier to change is a lack of influence or power, rather than a lack of a good idea of what to change to. But the real-world problems which persist are the ones where we look at the world and see that it isn't good, but at the same time it isn't easy to identify how it could be better. These are the things that, even given ultimate dictatorial authority over all nations of the Earth, still require a new idea/discovery/insight in order to improve.

But I think maybe that kind of story can be told as well, it's just more difficult because in order to do so you need to have a conflict which isn't simple to summarize or understand. That means that the story risks ending up more like an academic paper or textbook than a story. One method I've seen to get around this is by showing the same conflict from the point of view of multiple characters - both the would-be 'heroes' and 'villains' of the conflict, as it were - and then doing so in a way that the actions of both sides are fully rational, justified, and approachable by the audience. Essentially to make the point that the tension isn't something with one clear solution that everyone knows, but that the conflict itself is in trying to find a solution that everyone can live with when there may in fact not be one.

In a tabletop game, in principle this is much easier to achieve - just create real, difficult problems and throw them at the players. I've done that from time to time and it is possible, but you have to watch out for player burnout (you're working against the expectation built into most gaming that its the players' responsibility to put things right, and that you still have things left to do until you achieve perfect success or TPK).

Jacob.Tyr
2015-05-03, 11:14 PM
While we're complaining about hero tropes, you know what always kinda bugged me? The relative dearth of chessmaster heroes.
Gandalf, Dumbledore. Both of them basically **** with their allies to get them to do what needs to be done. Hell, the last Harry Potter book is basically the unfolding of over a decade of planning by Dumbledore.


The smart guy is almost always the bad guy, or reduced to a mere caricature of an intellectual if it's a good guy ("well, I can make technological gadgets that I won't share with anyone else!").

Batman, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is probably the best "smart guy" in fiction, as he's basically a walking ad campaign for deductive reasoning. To a greater point in the thread, he intentionally takes on harder and harder challenges because he is bored by little stuff, and when he gets bored he spends most of his time high.


The bullheaded punchy guy is the good guy. It's always such a genuine treat when you get to have a scheming protagonist like in, say, Log Horizon.

Another trope that bugs me is the tendency for the reactive one to be the hero, while the proactive one is cast as the villain. The guy who has a vision to change the world is the bad guy, while the guy who just wants to punch anyone who threatens the status quo into submission is the good guy. Bleh.

What about any story where the heroes are trying to overthrow some great evil? Fighting against a corrupt power, waging guerrilla warfare, carrying a ring to a volcano? Heck, Star Wars is a great counter example to both of these points. Jedi are basically scheming space-monks that are master diplomats, and the first trilogy is a group of underdogs leading a rebellion against a massive empire.


Sure, there are plenty of stories about someone "special" doing great things. I, personally, hate those stories and always have. Superman is the absolute worst for this, as every challenge he faces has to be obscene to make sense. If you only ever read Superman and X-Men comics, you'll get a very odd and skewed view of modern literature. There is plenty of heroic fiction about normal people rising to the occasion and saving the day. Plenty of heroic fiction doesn't even have mutants and supers and magic. Codex Alera is a high-fantasy series with a main character that is an anomaly in his complete lack of special powers who gets by on wits (the setting is so high fantasy that he can't even turn off a lamp because even that requires magic).

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-03, 11:38 PM
Sherlock is probably the best "smart guy" in fiction, as he's basically a walking ad campaign for deductive reasoning.Though, amusingly, most instances of his "deductive reasoning" in non-Doyle work manages to hilariously misunderstand what "deductive reasoning" is - Sherlock will say he deduced something, and then explain how he used every kind of reasoning but deductive reasoning to reach his conclusion. :smallamused:

Yora
2015-05-04, 03:26 AM
Deduction isn't particularly spectacular or creative: "Given the facts we have, only one explanation makes sense".

The only "genius" part is to be aware which facts are relevant to the problem, even though they might appear to be unconnected at first glance.

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-04, 05:46 AM
Yeah, really it's his perception and skill at drawing out the relevance from what appears to be trivial details that makes him extraordinary, not deduction. :smalltongue:

BayardSPSR
2015-05-04, 06:07 AM
I don't buy the idea that heroic stories can be systematically classified as supporting fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. My reason is exceedingly simple: many heroes explicitly combat against and challenge fascism, dictatorship or the status quo. They could as well be seen as anarchistic.

I think the connection is more that dictatorships and fascists in particular often associate themselves with heroic stories and archetypes. I don't know what anarchists are doing, but there is definitely a carefully-manicured connection between fascism and heroic narratives.

I'd also like to note that explicitly combating a thing you refer to as "fascism" doesn't make you not a fascist. Any similarity to real places, persons, or events is entirely imagined by the reader.

Segev
2015-05-04, 08:19 AM
Though, amusingly, most instances of his "deductive reasoning" in non-Doyle work manages to hilariously misunderstand what "deductive reasoning" is - Sherlock will say he deduced something, and then explain how he used every kind of reasoning but deductive reasoning to reach his conclusion. :smallamused:

Can you give an example of this? I confess to not following much Sherlock Holmes. And while I consider myself decent at reasoning, I have only a rudimentary understanding of the specific definitions that distinguish the various kinds. (Deductive is "given X, Y, and Z, A must be so," while inductive is, "For A to be true, X, Y, Z, W, and V are possible explanations. Since X is also true, and it takes X, Y, and Z to make A true, Y and Z are probably true." If I even understand those correctly.)

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-04, 09:12 AM
Fighting against/challenging people who support or rely on such systems, is not the same as challenging the system itself.

I'd also like to note that explicitly combating a thing you refer to as "fascism" doesn't make you not a fascist. Any similarity to real places, persons, or events is entirely imagined by the reader.

Neither of you apparently know what "explicitly" means.

Captain America fought against the Nazis and the Fascists and rejects their values. This is not "imagined by the reader", this is literal description of what's happened in his stories. "Challenging the system" is literally what he does.

For other examples, open up, say, the TV Tropes page on Political Strawmans and start browsing through the explicitly Leftist (such as Dove used to be) and Anarchistic (V) superheroes.


The struggle to depose a tyrant might make a good story, but how much detail does it go into about what happens next? Because as recent history shows all too clearly, "deposing the tyrant", challenging though it may be, is still a lot easier than "replacing the tyrant with a less objectionable system of government".

"What happens next?" is an important question, but it is immaterial to my point. The failure of superhero comics to adress certain political questions does not change the fact that they have adressed other such questions, and the answers make several superheroes explicitly anti-fascist or anarchistic.


I think the connection is more that dictatorships and fascists in particular often associate themselves with heroic stories and archetypes. I don't know what anarchists are doing, but there is definitely a carefully-manicured connection between fascism and heroic narratives.

I can definitely buy Fascism as using heroic stories and archetypes as bolstering itself. I can not see any such connection between heroes who explicitly run counter to fascism.

Also, I'm fairly sure you're using word "manicured" wrongly.

goto124
2015-05-04, 09:22 AM
But I think maybe that kind of story can be told as well, it's just more difficult because in order to do so you need to have a conflict which isn't simple to summarize or understand. That means that the story risks ending up more like an academic paper or textbook than a story. One method I've seen to get around this is by showing the same conflict from the point of view of multiple characters - both the would-be 'heroes' and 'villains' of the conflict, as it were - and then doing so in a way that the actions of both sides are fully rational, justified, and approachable by the audience. Essentially to make the point that the tension isn't something with one clear solution that everyone knows, but that the conflict itself is in trying to find a solution that everyone can live with when there may in fact not be one.

There are already plenty of those stories that exist, don't they?

Maglubiyet
2015-05-04, 10:00 AM
Were Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins fascists?

If so, I think I may have completely misinterpreted those storylines!

NichG
2015-05-04, 10:41 AM
There are already plenty of those stories that exist, don't they?

In terms of tabletop gaming I'm not sure how to interpret this comment.

Anyhow, depending who you ask, there are people who argue 'there is no such thing as a new story', so it all depends where you draw the line.

Segev
2015-05-04, 11:33 AM
To be fair, Smaug wasn't a fascist, either. He was almost a force of nature: slumbering most of the time as long as certain rules were observed, dangerous and something to weather when he awoke regardless of what rules might be followed. He could be similarly modeled as a volcanic reaction lurking in the mountain's dormant slopes.

Much of the Hobbit is more Man vs. Nature than Man vs. Man. There's a bit of Man vs. Himself, but that's more Lord of the Rings.

BayardSPSR
2015-05-04, 01:09 PM
Neither of you apparently know what "explicitly" means.

Captain America fought against the Nazis and the Fascists and rejects their values. This is not "imagined by the reader", this is literal description of what's happened in his stories. "Challenging the system" is literally what he does.

For other examples, open up, say, the TV Tropes page on Political Strawmans and start browsing through the explicitly Leftist (such as Dove used to be) and Anarchistic (V) superheroes.

...

I can definitely buy Fascism as using heroic stories and archetypes as bolstering itself. I can not see any such connection between heroes who explicitly run counter to fascism.

Also, I'm fairly sure you're using word "manicured" wrongly.

I'm not saying Captain America's a fascist, or that all heroes are linked to fascistm. I'm saying it's possible for an ultranationalist, militaristic regime of an authoritarian state (with the requisite corporatist characteristics) that injects itself into every sphere of its citizens' lives and promotes itself as the rebirth of the nation, returning to an earlier time of greatness from a humiliating recent past, viewing itself as inherently morally superior to its enemies, may have regimes with similar characteristics for enemies, or may apply the label of fascism to its enemies. True, you won't have a state that calls itself fascist fighting a state it calls fascist, but that's because there's only ever been one state that called itself fascist (borrowing ideas from foreigners not being a particularly nationalistic thing to think of yourself as doing).

So, to paraphrase my (online) dictionary's definitions of explicit, you can indeed have someone or some people who are specifically and transparently fascist who are fighting someone or some people who are also specifically and transparently fascist, or (more often) who are fully and clearly identified by others as fascist, leaving nothing implied.

I'd also like to point out that fascist groups like to think of themselves as challenging a system (usually an international system) that is not to the favor of their people, nation, and/or state.

I say fascism is linked to heroic narratives (not heroes) because fascism tries to cultivate the idea that whichever particular nation-state is not only unique, but heroic (typically heroically standing against [Most-Hated Enemy Group, often Communists] while [Less-Hated Enemy Group, often almost everyone else] stand by and do nothing like pathetic not-heroic people. Fascists also promote the idea that Their Group is composed entirely of heroes: heroic soldiers, heroic workers, heroic mothers, heroic babies, all of whom are more-heroic than anyone else (except perhaps the ancient heroes of this culture) and are constantly working for the good of the state/nation/people, with the implication that anyone who isn't heroically striving as demanded is a traitorous enemy of the state/nation/people and as bad as the other designated enemies. Arguably, the entire point of fascism is that We are superior heroes fighting tirelessly against the overwhelming might of Them, who are irredeemable villains with no place on this planet.

Allow me to point out that I am still not referring to modern examples of this, and that any similarities with them are still entirely imaginary.

I use "manicure" in the sense of "to care for meticulously," which is also dictionary-backed. Perhaps "cultivate" would have been more appropriate, but it's valid.

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-05, 08:35 AM
BayardSPSR, you keep missing my point. You've just stated that it's possible for both sides in a story to be fascistic. This counts as exactly nothing next to the examples where there's a non-fascistic character combating fascists.

Meanwhile:



I say fascism is linked to heroic narratives (not heroes) because fascism tries to cultivate the idea that whichever particular nation-state is not only unique, but heroic (typically heroically standing against [Most-Hated Enemy Group, often Communists] while [Less-Hated Enemy Group, often almost everyone else] stand by and do nothing like pathetic not-heroic people. Fascists also promote the idea that Their Group is composed entirely of heroes: heroic soldiers, heroic workers, heroic mothers, heroic babies, all of whom are more-heroic than anyone else (except perhaps the ancient heroes of this culture) and are constantly working for the good of the state/nation/people, with the implication that anyone who isn't heroically striving as demanded is a traitorous enemy of the state/nation/people and as bad as the other designated enemies. Arguably, the entire point of fascism is that We are superior heroes fighting tirelessly against the overwhelming might of Them, who are irredeemable villains with no place on this planet.

Fascism is not in-group/out-group distinction. It is far more specific than that. Without endorsing the specific traits actual, real-life fascist considered heroic, a narrative can't be seen as being linked to fascism.

If you don't understand what I mean, switch around the words "fascism" and "communism" in the above paragraph, and it'll make just as much sense. In fact, you can replace fascism with almost any dialectic philosophy. The way you're using the word "fascist" renders it almost without meaning.

veti
2015-05-05, 03:23 PM
BayardSPSR, you keep missing my point. You've just stated that it's possible for both sides in a story to be fascistic. This counts as exactly nothing next to the examples where there's a non-fascistic character combating fascists.

No, you keep missing the point. Just because someone opposes fascists, that doesn't stop them from being (a) a hero (role model, exemplar, whatever you want to call it) to other fascists, and (b) in some cases, fascist themselves. You keep using "heroes oppose fascists, therefore there's nothing fascistic about the heroes" as if it were a conclusive argument, when it simply isn't.

I'm (still) not saying Captain America is a fascist. But that doesn't stop fascists from wanting to use him, because they recognise the importance to their cause of the heroic myth. I'm thinking of 'Super-Patriot' in particular, but he's far from the only one.

Lord Raziere
2015-05-05, 03:40 PM
I agree with frozen feet.

if your going to say fascists are people that churns out propaganda about one group being heroes and another being irredeemable villains, then your ignoring the part where nations have done that all throughout history long before fascism was a thing. its not a function of one philosophy, its a thought process common throughout human history where people try to see their way as the best way to move forward and so in response to any other way they try to stamp it out because its not their way, and the best way to do that is to lie like a dog about how morally viable the other thing is and how morally viable your thing is, and you end up going "burn the heretic! the mutant! the xeno! For the Emperor!" only under words you like. its a thing that has been done since like the dawn of time, fascism doesn't have a monopoly on that sort of thing.

NichG
2015-05-05, 06:20 PM
No, you keep missing the point. Just because someone opposes fascists, that doesn't stop them from being (a) a hero (role model, exemplar, whatever you want to call it) to other fascists, and (b) in some cases, fascist themselves. You keep using "heroes oppose fascists, therefore there's nothing fascistic about the heroes" as if it were a conclusive argument, when it simply isn't.

I'm (still) not saying Captain America is a fascist. But that doesn't stop fascists from wanting to use him, because they recognise the importance to their cause of the heroic myth. I'm thinking of 'Super-Patriot' in particular, but he's far from the only one.

But 'facists want to use X' isn't actually indicative of anything. You can replace 'X' with 'music' or 'medical care' or 'economics' or 'shirts' and the observation holds just as well. But that doesn't mean that shirts are facistic, it just means that there's a common factor: facists are humans too.

veti
2015-05-05, 10:31 PM
But 'facists want to use X' isn't actually indicative of anything. You can replace 'X' with 'music' or 'medical care' or 'economics' or 'shirts' and the observation holds just as well. But that doesn't mean that shirts are facistic, it just means that there's a common factor: facists are humans too.

You're right, of course. The affinity between fascism and heroic myth seemed relevant when it was raised, but clearly it's an unhelpful distraction.

Let's get back to the cultural role of "heroes". In my opinion, heroic stories have two pernicious effects.

First is the "disempowerment" angle mentioned in the thread's OP. The more overtly unlike us heroes are, in terms of their abilities and resources, the less likely it is that we'll be inspired to achieve anything good by emulating them. If I decide I want to be like Batman, fighting crime and injustice, I will immediately run up against a whole battery of very real obstacles, such as "finding/identifying crime/injustice in progress" and "not having Batman's resources, including training, equipment and, most importantly, time, to fight it". There may, of course, be a few outliers who are sufficiently inspired to work around these obstacles to the point of making a positive contribution - but their number is negligible compared with the number who simply decide to settle for "fighting injustice" by posting outraged rants on the Internet. If Batman makes people set their sights on something that's effectively unattainable, he has prevented them from accomplishing real good (along the lines mentioned in the OP). I'd achieve more by adopting a hero like Frasier Crane, or Mike Flaherty from Spin City, or the original poster of this thread - any of whom would inspire me to achieve small victories where I can, rather than fantasising about setting the whole world to rights.

Second, and this is more Moorcock's (and my) objection, is the effect of investing special "heroic" virtues into certain people. As soon as you designate someone a "hero", you're giving them a measure of authority - for instance, the authority to decide what's right and wrong, or to speak for the interests of a constituency. But the process by which we recognise such heroes is subjective and error-prone, and the authority that we grant them is defined only very vaguely if at all. A person may or may not be aware of their own heroic stature; and if they are aware of it, they have no way of knowing its bounds (e.g. who, specifically, regards them as a hero, and just what that status does and doesn't entitle or require them to do).

Contrast that with "real world" authority relationships: with parents, employers, police officers, for instance. In each case, there's a relatively clear demarcation, well understood by both parties, around what is and isn't within the scope of authority. An employer has pretty broad scope to tell you how to spend your days at work, but she can't flag down your car while you're on vacation. A police officer is within their rights to stop you and ask you questions, but they can't order you to clean your room, or buy their brand of breakfast cereal, or phone a customer. A parent can issue pretty much any sort of instruction, but depending on the nature of the relationship, the respect accorded to such "orders" will vary widely, and both parties accept that.

To steer us away from real world examples, consider Bart Simpson, who idolises Krusty the Clown. To Bart, because Krusty makes him laugh, everything he says and does is invested with a level of authority even if it's not remotely funny; thus he has Krusty-endorsed toys, eats Krusty-brand food, and so on, despite these things being far outside Krusty's sphere of competence. Krusty betrays Bart on a daily basis.

Or to take a slightly less caricatured example, consider Buffy. A number of episodes of that show are concerned with demolishing the "hero/follower" relations that build up between characters at various times - Buffy and Giles, Willow and Giles, Xander and Buffy, Andrew and Warren - because of the inevitable mismatch between what the follower wants the hero to do, and what the hero is actually prepared to do.

In my own life, I've occasionally - rarely - seen situations that called for heroic action. And where that action has been provided, it's come from someone quite normal, who came from obscurity to do one good deed, then - generally within minutes - went back to obscurity. (Example (http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/68282948/man-pushed-onto-railway-track-at-melbourne-station).) The whole point of these people is that there is nothing special about them - I've done comparable things myself, and may well do it again if I get the opportunity, and I don't expect to be showered with glory for it either. I have never, ever, seen a situation that called for a "professional" or "full-time" hero, and I think anyone who regards themselves in that role should be treated with intense suspicion.

NichG
2015-05-06, 12:21 AM
Wouldn't someone who does what is necessary to attain a fairly high placement in the chain of well-defined authority relationships count as someone who is taking on a 'hero' mentality in your argument?

E.g. if I say 'I will study business and computer science so that I will be well-placed to found a start-up company, understand the ways of investors, crowdfunding, etc in order to secure payment for my employees, and generally take responsibility for keeping the company pointed in a productive direction.' aren't I taking on a hero role by doing so? Essentially, those are all things that need to be done, and often they benefit from being done by a person or small group of people who have a consistent vision compared to being done by committee (especially in creative endeavors). But at the same time, its not like someone who had authority picked that person out of the crowd and said 'now this is your job, go do it'. To some extend, the person had to decide to drive themselves to that point.

Its not 'setting the world to rights in one go', but it is a mindset of actively looking for ways that one can empower themselves. That doesn't have to be through a celebrity popularity contest - it can be as simple as deciding to expand one's education or to take initiative to organize people into a project or things of that nature.

veti
2015-05-06, 02:54 AM
Wouldn't someone who does what is necessary to attain a fairly high placement in the chain of well-defined authority relationships count as someone who is taking on a 'hero' mentality in your argument?

I don't think so, because that person is acquiring a well defined form of authority. If you start a company and employ people, then you have authority over your employees, and to a lesser extent your suppliers, and to an even lesser degree your customers - but that's all through well defined relationships, voluntarily and transparently entered into by all parties. Everyone knows exactly what form of power you have, by what virtue you acquired it, and what you can and can't do with it. There's very little ambiguity about what others expect from you, and what you can demand from them in return.

If, on the other hand, you then use that position to make yourself a TV celebrity, and use that status to start pronouncing on politics, endorsing products and sponsoring protegees - then you're entering into "heroic" territory.

NichG
2015-05-06, 03:17 AM
I don't think so, because that person is acquiring a well defined form of authority. If you start a company and employ people, then you have authority over your employees, and to a lesser extent your suppliers, and to an even lesser degree your customers - but that's all through well defined relationships, voluntarily and transparently entered into by all parties. Everyone knows exactly what form of power you have, by what virtue you acquired it, and what you can and can't do with it. There's very little ambiguity about what others expect from you, and what you can demand from them in return.

The common point though is the desire for increased influence, agency, power, what-have-you. It's the decision of 'I will be the one calling the shots' or 'I choose to be the one who is ultimately responsible'. Even in hero stories there exists that sort of well-defined relationship: often the hero is a king (someone with well-defined political office), knight (essentially a member of a nation or church's armed services with a well-defined set of responsibilities), or someone like that. In westerns, the lawman - an appointed government official - is a common hero figure.

The 'hero celebrity' is more of a superhero theme than a general theme across all heroic media. There are plenty of hero stories where, while there are accolades for whatever the hero does, it doesn't transform into them being a public phenomenon. Ironman and Frodo Baggins are two ends of that spectrum, and it's a pretty broad spectrum.

BayardSPSR
2015-05-06, 12:48 PM
BayardSPSR, you keep missing my point. You've just stated that it's possible for both sides in a story to be fascistic. This counts as exactly nothing next to the examples where there's a non-fascistic character combating fascists.

As others have noted, and as I myself have stated, I have never been attempting to demonstrate that all heroic characters are fascists or fascistic.


Fascism is not in-group/out-group distinction. It is far more specific than that. Without endorsing the specific traits actual, real-life fascist considered heroic, a narrative can't be seen as being linked to fascism.

If you don't understand what I mean, switch around the words "fascism" and "communism" in the above paragraph, and it'll make just as much sense. In fact, you can replace fascism with almost any dialectic philosophy. The way you're using the word "fascist" renders it almost without meaning.

At that particular point I may have been over-generalizing, but if you look at my post as a whole you can see that I go as far as possibly to describe in detail an exact definition of fascism. I realize this is heavily academically debated; I'm going for the one I've been taught in which. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you chose to quote the case in which I define "fascist" more roughly in order to illustrate a specific point, and then generalize it to What I'm Saying.

I will continue to say that fascists, specifically, as opposed to other (including other radical political philosophies) emphasize heroism, and furthermore that if they don't emphasize heroism they probably aren't fascists. The association with heroic narratives is, as I define fascism, inherent to fascism.

That does not mean that heroic narratives are always fascist. No one has said that. I and others have multiple times stated that this is not the case.

This also doesn't mean that a fascist will attempt to use all heroic narratives: if it's Those People's cultural hero, they certainly won't - though they may try to demonstrate that even that hero didn't belong to Those People, or that they would've been a fascist too if they were around today, or that Those People's hero isn't actually a hero at all.

Once again: if the group in question doesn't emphasize and lionize heroic figures from their culture to a degree distinguishable from other political groups in their same society, they probably aren't fascist.

EDIT: On the comparison with communism: no. For one thing, the claim to internationalism (in communism's case) is crucially important: communists want even the workers of their enemies (at minimum) to see the light, and believe that they can be heroic and inevitably will. Fascists either don't care about them (Italy, Spain), or want them dead and replaced with the master race (Germany); either way, the others in question can never be valuable as people, no matter what they do - at most, they can be made useful before they're killed. For another, fascism isn't dialectical.

EDIT2:
Also, this quote is useful for illustrative purposes:

Its a thing that has been done since like the dawn of time, fascism doesn't have a monopoly on that sort of thing.

Fascism doesn't have a monopoly on it, but a fascist group will always do it. This is what makes it one of the (many, specific) characteristics of fascism.

Segev
2015-05-06, 01:47 PM
Fascism doesn't have a monopoly on it, but a fascist group will always do it. This is what makes it one of the (many, specific) characteristics of fascism.

I believe Lord Raziere's point is more that ALMOST ALL governments do it, making it not such a characteristic trait of fascist governments so much as governments in general. Certainly, totalitarian ones will.

BayardSPSR
2015-05-06, 02:24 PM
I believe Lord Raziere's point is more that ALMOST ALL governments do it, making it not such a characteristic trait of fascist governments so much as governments in general. Certainly, totalitarian ones will.

I wouldn't say that all governments do it to the degree I described in my post. In this regard, as in many others, fascism is extreme - in fact, characteristically extreme. Likewise, while all governments could be expected to be nationalistic to a degree, that doesn't mean every government is an ultranationalist government.

EDIT: To be clear, it's also not the only characteristic of fascism; promoting heroic narratives to an extreme degree is not sufficient to identify a person or group as fascist, as I've been saying.

Segev
2015-05-06, 03:05 PM
I'm saying that I don't think there's a useful correlation. Political movements in general share that behavior to one degree or another, and fascism can be anti-nationalistic as easily as nationalistic; in fact, many start out that way on the grounds that they should be in charge because the nation has been going down the tubes and is nothing to be proud of under the current rulership.


In short, it is such a useless identifying characteristic that the only use linking the two seems to have is to villify the "heroic story" or the "ultra patriotism," rather than to actually in any way identify fascism.

veti
2015-05-06, 03:15 PM
The common point though is the desire for increased influence, agency, power, what-have-you. It's the decision of 'I will be the one calling the shots' or 'I choose to be the one who is ultimately responsible'. Even in hero stories there exists that sort of well-defined relationship: often the hero is a king (someone with well-defined political office), knight (essentially a member of a nation or church's armed services with a well-defined set of responsibilities), or someone like that. In westerns, the lawman - an appointed government official - is a common hero figure.

I have nothing against people doing their jobs, even when those jobs grant them great influence. Politicians, judges, businesspeople, officers... all fine with me. Even celebrities would be OK, if only they could stay within their own sphere of competence (but unfortunately, our modern media makes that almost impossible - it requires that you simply refuse to talk to the press a lot of the time, and that makes it hard to maintain celebrity status).

But "heroic" status is a more mystical and informal form of authority. A lawman who's just another lawman - is entitled to normal respect, and obedience within his sphere of authority, but no more. But once you start thinking of him as "a hero", he starts to get a free pass. You begin to invest extraordinary confidence in his personal judgment - you allow him to break the rules "when he needs to", because you trust him to "do the right thing" - and that's basically the road to tyranny, right there.

If you can refrain from seeing him as a hero, and see him as just another guy doing a job - maybe a difficult and dangerous job, but still just a job - that's how you strike the appropriate balance of respect, confidence and scrutiny.

BayardSPSR
2015-05-06, 03:28 PM
I'm saying that I don't think there's a useful correlation. Political movements in general share that behavior to one degree or another, and fascism can be anti-nationalistic as easily as nationalistic; in fact, many start out that way on the grounds that they should be in charge because the nation has been going down the tubes and is nothing to be proud of under the current rulership.


In short, it is such a useless identifying characteristic that the only use linking the two seems to have is to villify the "heroic story" or the "ultra patriotism," rather than to actually in any way identify fascism.

No, fascism can't be anti-nationalistic; nationalism is common to every definition of fascism I've ever seen. Nationalism and opposition to a particular government are totally different things.

The fact that it isn't sufficient to identify fascism doesn't mean that it doesn't describe fascism. For example, not all misogynists are fascists, but misogyny has been identified as a characteristics of fascist groups, as have corporatism, militarism, and anti-communism (to name a few examples). There's a bit more weight to this than "Hitler ate sugar."

And to be clear, I have never said (and do not believe) that heroic narratives are bad. The fact that fascism seeks to link itself to them is tragic.

Segev
2015-05-06, 03:31 PM
I will say this and no more, as it would tread too close to real world politics to get more explicit: I suppose that, if you count "the nation we will build on the ashes of the one(s) we're destroying," fascism is always nationalistic.

NichG
2015-05-06, 07:14 PM
I have nothing against people doing their jobs, even when those jobs grant them great influence. Politicians, judges, businesspeople, officers... all fine with me. Even celebrities would be OK, if only they could stay within their own sphere of competence (but unfortunately, our modern media makes that almost impossible - it requires that you simply refuse to talk to the press a lot of the time, and that makes it hard to maintain celebrity status).

But "heroic" status is a more mystical and informal form of authority. A lawman who's just another lawman - is entitled to normal respect, and obedience within his sphere of authority, but no more. But once you start thinking of him as "a hero", he starts to get a free pass. You begin to invest extraordinary confidence in his personal judgment - you allow him to break the rules "when he needs to", because you trust him to "do the right thing" - and that's basically the road to tyranny, right there.

If you can refrain from seeing him as a hero, and see him as just another guy doing a job - maybe a difficult and dangerous job, but still just a job - that's how you strike the appropriate balance of respect, confidence and scrutiny.

I think the key characteristic here is the heroic hyper-competency. The reason why heroes are invested with extraordinary confidence is that they perform well above and beyond. That investiture, in a business setting, would be the equivalent of being promoted up the chain because of high performance. In a military setting, its proving themselves in exceptional situations and earning commendations or promotions. And in actuality, if you think about what responsibilities you're leaving to the CEO of a corporation or the commander of a military unit, there's a ton of trust in their judgement involved there. The existence of specific rules codifying their positions doesn't change that you really are leaving them with an incredible amount of responsibility and direction. And if you work with such people closely and see them prove again and again that your trust is justified, you are pretty likely to trust them on other things that aren't covered by their degree or training.

Not to mention that if we're talking about someone like a politician, CEO, scientist, judge, etc, their job is to at some level, change and redefine the way the world works. You are in fact giving them permission to, if not break the rules, write the rules for the next generation.

Lord Raziere
2015-05-06, 08:37 PM
Fascism doesn't have a monopoly on it, but a fascist group will always do it. This is what makes it one of the (many, specific) characteristics of fascism.

Which actually makes it less of a threat, because it makes itself obvious and predictable by doing so. the groups that are obviously fascist, those are the ones you have to look out for because they can be sneaky. just because they do it more obviously doesn't mean that it isn't a threat elsewhere- in fact, the threat you don't pay attention to, is often the threat that becomes the most dangerous.

veti
2015-05-07, 12:05 AM
I think the key characteristic here is the heroic hyper-competency. The reason why heroes are invested with extraordinary confidence is that they perform well above and beyond. That investiture, in a business setting, would be the equivalent of being promoted up the chain because of high performance. In a military setting, its proving themselves in exceptional situations and earning commendations or promotions. And in actuality, if you think about what responsibilities you're leaving to the CEO of a corporation or the commander of a military unit, there's a ton of trust in their judgement involved there.

I agree that people in certain positions need to be invested with a high degree of trust. But I keep coming back to how their status is defined and understood. The CEO of a company, or the president of a country, has very specific powers and functions that they need to fulfil. And the key point is, both they and their constituents have a pretty clear, and very similar, understanding of just what those powers and functions do and don't entail. It's a well defined relationship.

When differences emerge between the leader's perception of their job and the followers' perception of it - that's when that "trust" starts to break down. Particularly if the follower feels they've been actively misled.

For instance, consider the CEO of an ailing company. From his perspective, he knows there's no realistic way to save the company as-is, and the only hope of salvaging some of its jobs is to negotiate a takeover by a more solid partner, accompanied by something like 80% layoffs. Obviously the negotiations will be secret, and the result will be announced as a done deal - that's how the game is played, we all know that and accept it, with varying degrees of goodwill.

If everyone is honest about their roles and expectations, then the CEO will be treated with suspicion from the start. Everyone will know that he's making decisions that will, sooner or later, cost most of them their jobs. He may be working a hundred hours a week, to do his very best to save those 20% of the jobs, yet he'll be seen and treated as a hatchet man. He needs to manage very, very delicately, to avoid triggering defensive lock-down reflexes in his employees that would prevent him from getting anything done.

But there's another way this can be managed: heroically. The CEO can be flown in with huge publicity, with a loyal and enthusiastic minion putting out gushing press releases about his prowess at turning around ailing companies. He can spend the first months personally interviewing every employee. That sort of hoopla would invest him with "heroic" status, and that would buy extra effort and sacrifice from his underlings. But the flip side is that when the announcement of the takeover comes down, they'll feel utterly betrayed. Because in that case, the heroic status has come with (from) the false expectation that's been built up.

I've personally seen examples of both styles, and I greatly prefer the honest version.

"But, veti", I hear you complain, "you're just equating 'heroism' with 'lying'. Of course lying leads to betrayal and ill-feeling. That doesn't invalidate the concept of heroism in itself. What if our confidence in the leader is justified? Or what if the extra effort we're inspired to put in does, in fact, make the difference between success and failure?"

Well, in the first case, the leader may be doing a heroic job without being a hero. A hero, by definition, is someone who is admired for their outstanding qualities. People who have those same qualities but eschew the "admiration" that comes with them - are not heroes, they're "just" hard-working people.

In the second case, you would have hit upon one of the rare instances in which a hero actually achieves something good. But my contention is that these cases, although they do occasionally happen, are much, much rarer than most people - including most people who like to cast themselves as heroes - think they are. Because of normal human narcissism, there's a strong temptation for someone (who has the opportunity) to cast themself as a hero, and so they have an incentive to over-estimate their own chances of using that status to bring about their desired aim.

When you see someone who wants to be a hero - that is to say, who wants to be admired - what does that tell you about them? For myself - I'd assume that either they have some real positive goal that might be served by that admiration, or they're a narcissistic jerk. And on balance, the latter is probably more likely.

Kol Korran
2015-05-07, 12:39 AM
Hey there folks. I intended to reply earlier, but life's responsibilities and demands prevented me from posting a decently respectful answer till now. I apologize for my delay to rejoin the conversation.

First of all, I am glad to see so many opinions, including those who do not agree with mine. The original post came from two personal experiences and impressions: First, my own struggle with "becoming better" and the way I think the hero genre have influenced me. Secondly, and more to the point- I have recently spoken with several groups of young people aged from 13-18, about volunteer work, helping their community and the like, and some of the responses that I got ("We're no heroes"/ "We can't really change the world"/ "We're not that exceptional" and similar feedback), and the discussions that followed, prompted me to this.

I'm glad to hear about people being inspired in a different way, a positive way. I thought that the hero genre has always strove to show positive values of bravery and moral, but my point was that it also instills a sense of inadequacy, of being weak, of being unexceptional. And this is a subtle message, that goes under the radar. (To the subconscious? I'm not that knowledgeable in psychology terms) That was the impression I got, and some of the young people I talked with got. They mentioned the latest avengers film and X-men films. (Haven't seen most). The feeling they got is that though the heroes were flawed, they were mostly unrelatable, and "out there", and that usually most "normals", were portrayed as incapable, small and insignificant.

I'm glad to see there are other other opinions, who see things quite differently. I am not well versed in the Batman comic, (I know just the basics of it), but it does sound like an inspiring character to many from your posts, which is good.

I do think that in some ways, it is prevalent in Roleplay games, at least in their initial design: D&D has PC vs. NPC classes, and the PCs are supposed to save the day- they got better attributes, better abilities, sometime even special rules like Action points and the like, and they feel... well... exceptional, a cut and above the regular commoner/ expert/ warrior/ adept or even other named NPCs. Sure, sometime the background includes them training hard to become what they are, but the game doesn't focus on that, it focuses on them being big-damned-heroes.

I have recently read A campaign log called Joe-wood, a commoner campaign, which was excellent and showed some differences in approach. It showed the difference between a hero campaign, to a regular guy who still faces quite a few challenges (of his scope), but mostly through regular means. I quite liked that, and felt it sends a better message.

As a note, I run a sort of a superhero campaign right now (A log on this forum) which is what my players wanted- We seek escapism right now in our life, but some people who game seek other meaning in the game than that, I just wonder what sort of message they are getting, perhaps not directly.

And to reply to some posts:



See, I'd read it a completely different way. Especially if we're talking about games and not just media.

In an RPG, regardless of who you are outside the game, you're placed in a position where you're trusted to carry out the responsibilities of the protagonist. In real life, if I took someone who was not sufficiently skilled for a task and put them in that role, it would have real consequences - they might learn something, but at the cost of putting other people at risk in some form or other. So in a game, it allows people to learn the skills necessary to make difficult decisions by play-acting out those scenarios in a context where there's no real cost of failure.

It's a form of protagonist-training.

Not everyone who plays an RPG is going to learn that kind of skill-set from it, certainly. But it provides an opportunity for those who have the inclination to try out ideas and get a feeling for responsibility in tense situations and things like that.

Hmmm... interesting, but I don't think you learn that well from gaming to RL. The situations are vastly different, the stakes are vastly different, the skills are (mostly, not all) different, but most of all- these are games, they are prepped for you to basically win. (Not noting specific games where the object is NOT to win), while RL doesn't give you that luxury.

In my training I found simulations of various instances in my profession (I am a medical intern currently) to be highly helpful to my performance, but most of all- I found that actually trying, and failing, under a sort of controlled environment and/ or supervision to circumvent the worst of my failures is what helped me most.

What I fear about the messages of the hero genre is that it teaches (in my experience, and the impressions I got from the youth I talked with) to not even try, because they arenot good enough to begin with. While my message was meant to be- you don't need to be exceptional at all, just try, strive, make mistakes, and learn on the way, in whatever you can.


I never took the lesson of heroic tales to be "you'll never be like this". I always saw them as "THIS is how you're supposed to be!" Strive, excel, rise to face your challenges, be a positive force of change in the world.

If Spiderman had only ever fought street thugs after he got his powers, maybe I could see his story as depressing. if he won the genetic mutation lottery, got better than everyone else, and then lorded it over them. Lame.

But superheroes take on superhuman opponents, they stop world-destroying catastrophes. Spiderman isn't out beating up high school bullies and local drug dealers every week, he's stopping aliens, minor deities, robots, gigantic creatures, and supervillains. They provide real challenges for him and he often faces temporary defeats and injuries.

Likewise, heroes in RPG's usually face appropriate challenges to their power level. A 10th-level D&D party doesn't spend their time battling 0-level kobolds and giant spiders, they're facing down dragons, demons, and giants. The lesson is that, as your abilities increase and improve, so should the challenges you take on.

The "you'll never be like this" message was not understood by me (And by some other people) because I think it flies under the radar. I understood I even absorbed this message only late in life, but the youth I spoke to seems more affected.

That said, it seems that the replies on the forum shows that this message may not be as proliferative as I thought. Is it proliferative enough? I don't know. But it's out there...

As to the "facing tougher and tougher challenges" arguments, I agree with you there. The point of my post wasn't about that, it was about the feeling of inadequacy to face moral and personal-values- dependent challenges at all. (Sorry, I haven't come up with a better term).


......the original post is.....

....the stupidest thing I ever heard.

not because you shouldn't go out and be awesome or whatever, you should totally do that. I agree with you there.

but the notion that some this media sends the message that we can't be heroes underneath or whatever is stupid. I just can't agree with it.

do you know who the most popular superhero of DC is? Its Batman. y'know. the guy everyone keeps going on about he is this normal human but "he is awesome because he is the goddamn Batman!!!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!1!" the guy I have to keep hearing about over and over again about how with prep-time he can beat anything and can do a whole bunch of cool stuff? how everyone keeps saying that because of him, Normal Humanity is the REAL superpower? I may hate him, but I know, all those people? they are freaking inspired by him, they cannot stop being passionate about what he represents to people and how he is a shining example of humans doing it better than all the aliens and robots and everything in the freaking universe! I call bull on this notion! BULL. People are so inspired by Batman that Kevin Conroy once yelled his famous Batman line from B:TAS after 9/11 and people cheered and applauded him! While he volunteering for a kitchen for rescue personnel! Said rescue personnel said they watch B:TAS growing up!

and outside of freaking Batman? we have an entire trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MugglesDoItBetter) dedicated to how normal humans do things better.two in fact! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanityIsSuperior) , three if you don't consider "Special" and "Superior" to be the same thing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreSpecial), we have so many things devoted to saying that normal humans are awesome, that y'know Warhammer 40,000? that stupidly grimdark setting where all of humanity lives under the most regime imaginable and is in eternal war with aliens and demons of horrifically cosmic power? guess what its fanbase is focused on idolizing: The Imperial Guard. the completely normal humans who die in droves to fight Orks and Chaos and Tyranids and so on and so forth. so much so, that the guys at 1d4chan proudly yell "humanity **** yeah!" without a hint of remorse or irony.

and there are more, yes but my point is: we are so focused in our media on saying that humanity is somehow super-important and great, that most nerds I have talked to online actually believe it. we are in no danger of believing that that we are disempowered- we seem to be all too happy to stroke our collective egos into believing we are the greatest thing in the universe.

I'm more worried that because of this attitude, that we might screw up first contact with aliens or with the robots we might someday make and cause a war. that's how much I doubt the notion that superheroes somehow make people feel disempowered. mostly because, it wouldn't be any different from older cultures all believing that they were the greatest thing in the universe and deciding to conquer other people because of it. from ancient times, to nationalism, and now to humanity in general, people always want to believe that they the greatest thing ever and that they have an effect, and will fight tooth and nail to prove that they do.

and this is coming from a guy, who dislikes any tropes concerning "humanity is special" and loves superpowers and magic. I may not support it myself- but a lot of people clearly disagree with you.


The OP's description of comic books superheroes just doesn't match the comics I read from the sixties to the present.

Batman was an ordinary child who decided not to let personal tragedy destroy him. He was shown studying hard, training hard. He made a point of learning chemistry, physics, criminology, law, by spending long hours studying. We exercised hard every single day.

Hawkeye and Green Arrow had to practice every day to get good, and their origins (when eventually shown), shown that they weren't very good when they started.

Yes, Superman had powers, but he always complimented firemen and policemen for being ordinary people who risked their lives to save others. And Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane both starred in their own books.

And heroes made mistakes often. Spider-Man's origin was about the great mistake he made, and his career as a hero was trying to make up for that mistake.

Hawkeye made a mistake that turned him into a criminal for awhile. Iron Man became an alcoholic. Green Lantern was a screwed up selfish pilot. Speedy got hooked on drugs. Over and over again, heroes have been portrayed, not as people who didn't make mistakes, but as people who cam back from them determined to overcome them.

When two Marvel heroes met, you could almost count on one of them making a mistake, and starting a fight over a misinterpretation.

All cowboy heroes talked about the need to train with your gun, with your horse, with your rope, with all your skills.

It is simply not true that comics portray ordinary people as incapable of becoming extraordinary without super powers.

Some of those examples I don't know of, I am not that familiar with comics. I do like the example of Batman, as you've shown, though veti has some interesting counters later on. An interesting point of debate. I know of Iron man only from the movies, which shows him as a super genius guy, which is somewhat inaccessible to most. He was shown to be born "with a gift", not to strive towards it.

I don't know of Hawkeye and The Green Arrow. If they have proven to be more positive examples, I'm glad of it.

Superman I have read about, and though he may complement "the normals" about their work, the story is about him, and the fact that only he can actually save the world, and why? Cause he is exceptional.

I am glad to hear there are quite more positive influences than I thought. But my own experiences, and the kids I talked with, and quite a few nerdy and friends I talked with showed that there is also quite a lot of a different school of thought, which I tried to show here. There is another message. It may not be the most common, but I think it's influence is real and prevalent.


I think I agree with Michael Moorcock (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html) on this subject: what we really need is to abandon the concept of "heroes" entirely. "Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves."

Either everyone is a hero, or no-one is. No-one, at least no-one who's reached adulthood, has ever got through life without making difficult choices and doing unpleasant things. But conversely, no-one gets everything right either. Heroism as a full-time characteristic of rare and special people is - at best - an outmoded concept, one that infantilises its audience and enables their own passivity.

RPGs? Are inherently escapist, there's nothing wrong with that - as a hobby. (If it takes up all your spare time, or eats into time that you should be doing other things, then it can rapidly become harmful. But that's true of any hobby, I think.) Even so, my liking for RPGs is, approximately, inversely related to how "Special" they make their PCs.


There's also the difference between heroic and superheroic.

The superhero succeeds because he's just that awesome. He's better than everyone else. Their story is about how awesome they are.

The hero isn't necessarily any "better". They succeed because of perseverance, and the willingness to pay the cost for success. Their story is about what they're willing to sacrifice.

I don't think there aren't heroes, or that they shouldn't be. I've seen quite a few people who I deem "heroes" in my own eyes. It's not about their powers or skills, it's about the courage to do a change despite difficulties, and despite a price, as Kyoryu says. Despite fear, resistance, actual consequences and so on. I don't think they need to be defiied, given free reign to do as they choose (From the Fascism debate, which I won't get into more than this), but they can prove as good examples, positive examples. The courage, the choice, the action to better life in some way. And to do so for more than just your self.


I think this is a bit much. While our fiction certainly does influence us, it isn't the root cause of all of our behavior. People don't follow charismatic but ultimately incompetent leaders because of Zorro - Zorro is compelling in part because there's a bit of human nature which makes us follow those who are confident, and the literature is simply making use of that human tendency in the same way that a salesman, CEO, or demagogue would - whether to bring it to the surface, evoke it, explore it, etc. It isn't created by the literature, it's created by an underlying characteristic of human behavior which the literature taps into.

But I guess thats more of a meta-criticism about literature critique - not everything you talk about has to be responsible for all the problems faced by modern and past society in order to have some insight or discovery to it. We don't need to look at some particular theme in hero stories after reading them for 20 years and then say 'aha, now I understand why Hitler happened!' in order to actually discover something about the media.

But, apart from the meta-criticism, I guess my question would be: if you believe what Moorcock is saying there, what could you do in order to make the most useful positive thing? What concept could you have in a book that would actually drive people to improve? If heroes encourage people to wait for daddy to come by and solve everything, that doesn't mean that 'lack of heroes' will automatically encourage them to do it themselves - if I give other kinds of literature the same credit for influencing people that Moorcock is giving heroic romanticism, then a 'hero-less' work could just as well encourage pessimism ('the problems just can't be solved'), glorification of character flaws ('look at how awesome it is that humans do stupid things for emotional reasons'), mediocrity ('its enough that I defeated the grand challenge of finding a prom date, I don't need to improve myself'), etc. So, what do you replace it with that actually has a designed, positive effect?

I don't think that doing good for your community/ your life, and the various attributes of social problems are all connected to the heroic genre, far from it. I think a lot more come from other forms of education, upbringing, social conceptions and more. That said, the hero genre is one of these, and it makes it's own modest contribution to what some may feel as a reasoning for inaction/ inadequacy/ insignificance, I think, though in a subtle manner, one that I think is unfelt directly by those who absorb it. Which is why I brought up the original post. The attitude I got from the youth I talked with, and the talks I had with them afterwards worried me. I hoped that in this thread I might raise some questions, some debate. I'm glad it did, and I 'm glad at the other voices that appeared. I still think it is somewhat of a concern though...

------------------------------------------------
Thank you all for the different opinions, ideas, views and thoughts, including those who think me utterly wrong. (I learn from all).
Kol.

Milo v3
2015-05-07, 12:50 AM
Secondly, and more to the point- I have recently spoken with several groups of young people aged from 13-18, about volunteer work, helping their community and the like, and some of the responses that I got ("We're no heroes"/ "We can't really change the world"/ "We're not that exceptional" and similar feedback), and the discussions that followed, prompted me to this.

Question, did they mention anything about comic book style heroes? Because in my experience as being part of that age group, that isn't prompted by protagonists being "special" but by a general "Everything" telling us how insignificant an individual is and how in the grand scheme of things you aren't special, you're just a person.

NichG
2015-05-07, 03:56 AM
"But, veti", I hear you complain, "you're just equating 'heroism' with 'lying'. Of course lying leads to betrayal and ill-feeling. That doesn't invalidate the concept of heroism in itself. What if our confidence in the leader is justified? Or what if the extra effort we're inspired to put in does, in fact, make the difference between success and failure?"

Well, in the first case, the leader may be doing a heroic job without being a hero. A hero, by definition, is someone who is admired for their outstanding qualities. People who have those same qualities but eschew the "admiration" that comes with them - are not heroes, they're "just" hard-working people.

In the second case, you would have hit upon one of the rare instances in which a hero actually achieves something good. But my contention is that these cases, although they do occasionally happen, are much, much rarer than most people - including most people who like to cast themselves as heroes - think they are. Because of normal human narcissism, there's a strong temptation for someone (who has the opportunity) to cast themself as a hero, and so they have an incentive to over-estimate their own chances of using that status to bring about their desired aim.

When you see someone who wants to be a hero - that is to say, who wants to be admired - what does that tell you about them? For myself - I'd assume that either they have some real positive goal that might be served by that admiration, or they're a narcissistic jerk. And on balance, the latter is probably more likely.

See, when I think about heroes, especially in terms of fiction, I don't think about currently living individuals who are supposed to be followed by other people. I think of role models whose story is intended to inspire things in completely disconnected places and times. No matter how cool batman might be, I can't actually go and follow batman. I can follow whatever I think the ideals he's representing are, or I can try to become him, or any number of other things. But I can't say 'huh, there seems to be a lot of crime, better let batman take care of it' because he isn't actually real. Similarly, looking at heroic myth, its meaningless for me to go and put my trust into King Arthur or Odysseus or Hercules.

Instead, I would tend to see it as 'look at what can be accomplished', 'look at what is possible', 'imagine what could be'.

As such, even if 'someone who is admired' is a fundamental part of a hero, they're also intrinsically distant. The admiration doesn't lead to obedience, it leads to mimicry, which is a form of influence but it really is a different kind of influence than a CEO has over their company or a president has over their people. It's influence in the landscape of ideas rather than the landscape of actions.


Hmmm... interesting, but I don't think you learn that well from gaming to RL. The situations are vastly different, the stakes are vastly different, the skills are (mostly, not all) different, but most of all- these are games, they are prepped for you to basically win. (Not noting specific games where the object is NOT to win), while RL doesn't give you that luxury.

In my training I found simulations of various instances in my profession (I am a medical intern currently) to be highly helpful to my performance, but most of all- I found that actually trying, and failing, under a sort of controlled environment and/ or supervision to circumvent the worst of my failures is what helped me most.

What I fear about the messages of the hero genre is that it teaches (in my experience, and the impressions I got from the youth I talked with) to not even try, because they arenot good enough to begin with. While my message was meant to be- you don't need to be exceptional at all, just try, strive, make mistakes, and learn on the way, in whatever you can.

I guess all I can say is that my experience differs. From gaming I've learned to think in significantly more intuitive modes, to recognize manipulative behavior and understand social dynamics and how they are and can be exploited, and to better read emotions from a person's behavior, way of speaking, and responses to particular statements or questions. I've also learned a bit about myself in the process - how I respond to strong emotions and needing to balance them against making right choices in the presence of uncertainty, to risk, to needing to make decisions quickly, to responsibility, to failure, and to success.

And from the GM side of the table I've seen my players grow. I tend to run very cerebral games, and one player of mine in particular has strongly adapted to that style, becoming far more comfortable in analyzing large-scale situations, formulating theories, trusting those theories enough to expend resources to test them, etc. Certainly I can't take credit for all of that, but given that he's currently using my game to try out various ploys and schemes, it's become something he feels he can use to safely explore ideas that would be inappropriate to try in real life.

For me, the message 'you don't need to be exceptional' is also kind of dark. Mostly because I see that a lot of people have that potential up until the point where they convince themselves that they have an intrinsic inability - 'math is too hard' or 'individuals can't make a difference' or 'I'm too old to pick up technology' or even just 'I'm not smart enough'. I know that you meant exceptional to be 'born with the right stuff', but being exceptional is also about where you end up, and part of that means seeing what could be possible and (in the gaming context) being given training wheels so you can feel out what it takes before doing it for real.

Kane0
2015-05-07, 04:27 AM
Sounded like that took a bit for you to write Kol, kudos to you.

Anything else I say would probably dilute that, but out of curiosity have you ever read the commoner campaign (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/1097411) log? I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it.

Edit: I see you have indeed heard of it. Shame on me for not checking your subsequent post.



Hmmm... interesting, but I don't think you learn that well from gaming to RL. The situations are vastly different, the stakes are vastly different, the skills are (mostly, not all) different, but most of all- these are games, they are prepped for you to basically win. (Not noting specific games where the object is NOT to win), while RL doesn't give you that luxury.

While not exactly what you were talking about, what are your views on this? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFtlDhksGHA)

Kol Korran
2015-05-08, 03:03 AM
Question, did they mention anything about comic book style heroes? Because in my experience as being part of that age group, that isn't prompted by protagonists being "special" but by a general "Everything" telling us how insignificant an individual is and how in the grand scheme of things you aren't special, you're just a person.
While there is a general "teaching" of that lesson, as you can see in the original post, near the end, at the quote from Glory, I don't think that the hero genre is solely responsible for this attitude, but it IS part of it, at least from what I've seen. When I talkd to those youth is surely wasn't the sole contirbuter to the feeling of insignificance and the "why try" attitude. But there were mentions of various such protgonists, (Not all of whom I knew), which felt removed and "on class of their own", which sort of discouraged the youth. Part of the syndrome I guess, though not the whole of it... But a significant enough part, if you look at the works i nthe genre as works who are supposed to inspire. Less stories that tell of "normal" folks who mange to pull through hardships, and do good...


Sounded like that took a bit for you to write Kol, kudos to you.

Anything else I say would probably dilute that, but out of curiosity have you ever read the commoner campaign (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/1097411) log? I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it.

Edit: I see you have indeed heard of it. Shame on me for not checking your subsequent post.
It's quite good. I've put a link to it in my "campaign logs archives" link.


While not exactly what you were talking about, what are your views on this? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFtlDhksGHA)
I haven't really given this much thought. I'll need to think about it more, but there re quite a lot of other fields that do develop people much in similar ways. My best life lesson (And I speak personally here) is prepare as you need, but don't delay to do, especially if the risk is low, and in a supervised environment. Nothing beats up actually tackling stuff and learning to deal with it. Just don't do this with things WAY over your head, totally unsupervised t first, or with a great risk of harm (To self or others). Quite a LOT of activities don't fall into these categories. In this cases- Jump in and learn as you go.

It's an interesting idea though, I'll need to think about it more. Roleplay can develop you greatly, if you have the mind, awareness and willingness to do so. But then again, so are most doings. So I'm not quite so sure... Need to think about it.

Milo v3
2015-05-08, 05:23 AM
While there is a general "teaching" of that lesson, as you can see in the original post, near the end, at the quote from Glory, I don't think that the hero genre is solely responsible for this attitude, but it IS part of it, at least from what I've seen. When I talkd to those youth is surely wasn't the sole contirbuter to the feeling of insignificance and the "why try" attitude. But there were mentions of various such protgonists, (Not all of whom I knew), which felt removed and "on class of their own", which sort of discouraged the youth. Part of the syndrome I guess, though not the whole of it... But a significant enough part, if you look at the works i nthe genre as works who are supposed to inspire. Less stories that tell of "normal" folks who mange to pull through hardships, and do good...

Interesting. I wonder if my friends and I, are aberrant then.

Segev
2015-05-08, 09:33 AM
You're not. I sincerely doubt that "heroic tales" really contributed to the OP's group of youths' ennui. For one thing, they're youths. They often suffer ennui due to realizing they are not the most special and unique and powerful people in the world; they're becoming adults, and realizing they have to work and work HARD for a chance at being great.

For another, we have an unfortunate tendency to try to shield them from this knowledge for as long as possible, as a modern culture and educational system. This leads to them having to discover it later in life than they otherwise would, and feeling like it's something that might be an inadequacy about THEM, since they've been told it's not normal or natural for most of their lives.

Tell somebody he's special and unique and great, and when his results to match up to that and he recognizes this, he'll start to wonder what's wrong with him that he's not producing awesometastic results with minimal effort. "Why try?" if he can't succeed as well as he "should?"

Milo v3
2015-05-08, 09:40 AM
You're not. I sincerely doubt that "heroic tales" really contributed to the OP's group of youths' ennui. For one thing, they're youths. They often suffer ennui due to realizing they are not the most special and unique and powerful people in the world; they're becoming adults, and realizing they have to work and work HARD for a chance at being great.

For another, we have an unfortunate tendency to try to shield them from this knowledge for as long as possible, as a modern culture and educational system. This leads to them having to discover it later in life than they otherwise would, and feeling like it's something that might be an inadequacy about THEM, since they've been told it's not normal or natural for most of their lives.

Tell somebody he's special and unique and great, and when his results to match up to that and he recognizes this, he'll start to wonder what's wrong with him that he's not producing awesometastic results with minimal effort. "Why try?" if he can't succeed as well as he "should?"

Hmm... I don't know if I've ever been shielded from it. Even my first teacher was rather focused on ensuring she taught "You're Not Special" to each student in her class.

Segev
2015-05-08, 10:17 AM
Hmm... I don't know if I've ever been shielded from it. Even my first teacher was rather focused on ensuring she taught "You're Not Special" to each student in her class.

Unless the teacher was abusive about it, to the point of trying to instead instill the idea that "you suck," you're probably lucky.

The lessons that kids who thrive the best tend to learn young, in my observation, are that they are only as special as their efforts make them. They CAN succeed, but they aren't guaranteed to. Too much "self-esteem" boosting backfires when it's done for nothing but participation. Kids keep score even if adults refuse to, and they KNOW when they're being praised for something more than they actually achieved.

Sadly, the emphasis on "self esteem" and making sure kids don't have hurt feelings for being told they're wrong leads to a disconnect beween what they're told and what they observe. EVERY kid starts to think they're "brilliant but lazy" or, worse, that they're awesome so their failures are everybody else's fault. And if you can't succeed despite being as awesome as you're told you are, then either nobody can do it OR the deck is stacked against you so badly that even trying just isn't worth it.

Milo v3
2015-05-08, 10:37 AM
Unless the teacher was abusive about it, to the point of trying to instead instill the idea that "you suck," you're probably lucky.
I probably would've gotten the message of "you suck" if the method she used to high-light it wasn't put me and this other kid on detention every day for "cheating" (getting answers right).... Which then lead me into the "starts to think they're brilliant but lazy" thing you latter mention. Now I think I'm "Better in some areas than some other people are, but worse in other areas" or "Human" as some people call it.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-08, 01:55 PM
I think a few things need to be mentioned. First being, just because some people don't have superpowers does not mean that others cannot look upon them as examples. Batman has gobs of money, sure. But that doesn't mean that people cannot be inspired by them, even without the money. Heck, isn't there a guy who goes to hospitals dressed as Batman, just to cheer up kids? Kids (and adults) identify with these heroes regardless. And I kinda think separating the powers from the human message is a part of reading fantasy, sci-fi or comic books.

And we don't admire these characers for their powers, but the character underneath. No one likes Supes for his powers, but that after repeatedly getting attacked, ambushed and defending people, he still does it day after day, expecting nothing other then possibly some thanks. As someone much funnier put it, no one likes Lex Luthor, Green Goblin, or Dr. Doom, despite the fact that none of them have powers and two are self made men. Because they built themselves up to tear others down. Just as I wouldn't be thrilled if Frozen Feet came to my house to run laps around my overweight self while flipping the bird. He's probably worked for it, but it would still make him unlikable. It isn't always what you got, but what you do with it.

And Supes takes his overpowered butt out of bed everyday just to keep on fighting, suffering injuries and for what? So others don't have to.

Also, Sherlock Holmes is probably a terrible example, as he doesn't know how many days are in a year and probably needs Watson to remind him when to eat pretty frequently.

NichG
2015-05-08, 07:19 PM
To be fair, plenty of people like a good villain too.

I do think there's a difference between characters who are made by their powers, and characters for whom their powers just change the rules of the game. A character whose power is that they're very strong in the context of a story about directly pitting that strength against other, equally boosted strength is different than that same character in a story about them having to figure out a way to use that strength to deal with, say, a forest fire or a criminal mastermind. That's part of what makes heroes with weird or obscure powers so interesting - part of the draw is to see 'how exactly will they figure out how to make it work using only the ability to command sea animals?'

When two strong opponents go up against each-other directly, you have very little choice but to just wait for the author to tell you 'actually character A was stronger in the end'. But when the powers or whatnot are different from eachother, you can follow the logic for why one character managed to come out ahead. You can't learn to emulate 'the author likes me best' in real life, but you can learn to emulate general cleverness.

Talakeal
2015-05-08, 11:41 PM
I think a few things need to be mentioned. First being, just because some people don't have superpowers does not mean that others cannot look upon them as examples. Batman has gobs of money, sure. But that doesn't mean that people cannot be inspired by them, even without the money. Heck, isn't there a guy who goes to hospitals dressed as Batman, just to cheer up kids? Kids (and adults) identify with these heroes regardless. And I kinda think separating the powers from the human message is a part of reading fantasy, sci-fi or comic books.

And we don't admire these characers for their powers, but the character underneath. No one likes Supes for his powers, but that after repeatedly getting attacked, ambushed and defending people, he still does it day after day, expecting nothing other then possibly some thanks. As someone much funnier put it, no one likes Lex Luthor, Green Goblin, or Dr. Doom, despite the fact that none of them have powers and two are self made men. Because they built themselves up to tear others down. Just as I wouldn't be thrilled if Frozen Feet came to my house to run laps around my overweight self while flipping the bird. He's probably worked for it, but it would still make him unlikable. It isn't always what you got, but what you do with it.

And Supes takes his overpowered butt out of bed everyday just to keep on fighting, suffering injuries and for what? So others don't have to.

Also, Sherlock Holmes is probably a terrible example, as he doesn't know how many days are in a year and probably needs Watson to remind him when to eat pretty frequently.

I like Dr. Doom... (said in the voice of Hans Moleman)

OttoVonBigby
2015-05-11, 09:17 AM
Relevant to this thread: a Medium.com thinkpiece on why Age of Ultron is awful and the doom it portends (https://medium.com/@sady_doyle/age-of-robots-how-marvel-is-killing-the-popcorn-movie-1e21b231f73a).

I liked AoU, but it also felt kind of empty to me in a way that Avengers 1 didn't. While this article strikes me as alarmist, it maybe hints at why I felt that way.

Segev
2015-05-11, 11:18 AM
Honestly... while some of her complaints are valid, I disagree with the overall take-away and with a large portion of the gripes. She's right, first of all, that Cap didn't play a big role in the film. He was there (not as she contends) because he's on the Avengers team, and would have been misisng without him. The "payoff" for the "language!" line was a running gag; I honestly was more annoyed that it was treated as something he needed to "get over" than as something he could stick to his guns about. Standing firm in his 1940s-era faith in his two-liner compound sentence in the first movie was good.

If anything, Winter Soldier is more deserving of her criticism along most of the lines she gives than is Avengers: Age of Ultron. There really wasn't much character development for Cap in that, despite it focusing on him. Just angst and "man out of time." He didn't really resolve any of those issues, nor come to grips with them.


I think the Black Widow romance element (which, if you stop and think about that phrase, is kind-of worrying in its own right) has less to do with shortcuts for female characters and more to do with shortcuts for the minority-cast sex in the ensemble. Between teasing Widow/Hawkeye and Widow/Cap in two movies prior and the element brought up here, it would not really have felt particularly odd in comparison if they'd done my favorite mental game and inverted all the sexes. Black Widower as the badass-(comparatively-)normal member of the mostly-female superhero team would have made as much sense being teased with female!Hawkeye (best friend, saved him from a dark place in the past, etc. etc.) and a female!Captain America (girl out of time, old-time values to contrast his more-modern and twisted-by-modern-standards seductor training), and certainly would have worked with the payoff of restraining-bolt romantic lead for the woman who turns into a monster.

Heck, the whole "can't have kids" thing could actually be done more viscerally and in what might be considered a cheaper shot to Black Widower: to prevent these distractions, they made him a eunuch. You can't tell me guys wouldn't wince at that at least as powerfully as gals do at the sterilization thing.

The number of main characters is smaller than she indicates, as well, in no small part because Whedon chose for some to be side characters despite being main ensemble members. Captain America and Thor are present and play a role, but are NOT the main characters. They're plot-enablers and to some extent comic relief. Even Tony Stark is more plot enabler than main character.

The reason Tony doesn't have the epiphany she wishes he did is that he is not a main character, primarily, but there's also the fact that he wasn't inherently wrong; his judgment was just screwed up by another plot-enabler (which hit almost everybody else, too). The one bit of payoff I wish we had gotten, there, that we didn't was what Hulk saw.


Ultimately, the new Avengers movie is much better than she thinks it is, insofar as the kind of movie she's critiquing it as goes. Whedon's gift for humor and dialog shows through in the combat banter and the off-duty scenes, and he expresses the characters quite well throughout them. If there's a sign that the movie franchise could go the way that the reviewer fears, it's Winter Soldier, not Age of Ultron.