CHARATER GUILT.
Yes, that feeling you get when you absolutely love a character, find them funny, etc. but the character also just so happens to be totally psychotic, a murderer, or worse. You hate what they do, you hate what they stand for, you hate that they intended to kill the main character, you love that they tried to kill that annoying character, and you hate that they are the epitome of all evil, but for some reason it's a technical impossibility to stop loving them as a character. Some prime examples...
and most recently for me...
I know the common thing for villains is that you love to hate them, well that's the problem here, you love them, but you can't hate them! These type of characters just fit into some subliminal niche and stick there, you just cant get rid of them, which is probably one of the reasons we love them against our will.
Don't get me wrong, these characters are all horrible people. Hades tries to kill his brother over a bad job, Loki makes a deal with the harbinger of death to subvert all of humanity into his worshipers, Azula tries to kill several people, even her own friends, and take over the world. Gollum actually does manage to kill his friends, and I can't even begin to sum up what Joker has done, I'm pretty sure Batman couldn't either. Then there's Bill here, tried to destroy the mind of a main character, ripped out a child's soul to possess his body, tried to kill the kid's twin sister, and has some dark ulterior motive that has yet to be explained.
Sounds terrible right? You're probably saying, 'wow these guys are all horrible people/monsters/supernatural beings, how on earth could you say you love these guys? Do you have a screw lose or something?'
The answer to this question is yes, actually, how'd you know? But lets ignore that and get to the main point. Go ahead and watch these guys in action and if you don't find yourself becoming even slightly intrigued I congratulate you on your strength of moral character, or that weird need of yours to prove me wrong, what's up with that anyway? But if you suddenly find yourself laughing, even as the villain is doing something you know is wrong, well then welcome to the twilight zone, you've been expected.
You see with most villains in filmography there is usually some sort of redeeming feature, they spare the damsel in distress, they don't kill the hero, they are doing it out of love, something like that, and that is what keeps them firmly in our minds as strictly a villain, they have/had good qualities but are willingly ignoring them, making them a bad guy. Every once in a while a villain comes along who is just causing chaos for chaos sake, and of course you can manage to hate these guys too, however your mind keeps looking for something to hold against them, that will actually make them a villain. Character developers realize that without a significant backstory most villains are pretty lame, I mean compare Galactus to Darth Vader, and which one gets more press? Little orphan Annie-kin, that's who, you know the one who killed his lover. Once being good makes it so much easier to hold it against him, making him complete. So, in lieu of a solid reason for being a complete villain developers pull out their trump card, make the villain hilarious.
For some reason funny makes sense to us, that's how Disney can sell an otherwise bland side character, and psychotically funny makes even more sense. It's hard to hate a guy who can make you laugh, and there's always that part of us that wonders what it would be like to cross that line from person to monster.
Well these guys deliver that pleasure on a silver trey with a Joker bomb strapped to it.
Even if they just murdered a puppy they play it off so hilariously, so nonchalant that we can hold it against them cause we're holding our sides with laughter. Of course we kick our selves for it later, claim we'll never do it again, but just like laughter they're contagious, we just want more, more, MORE! Honestly we can't keep them out of our heads, our art, our fan-fictions, and we battle our conscience the entire time. Love, Hate, Love, Hate, Love, Hate. BLARG! It's torture! Hilarious torture. SEE? CHARACTER GUILT!! You hate to love them and would love to hate them as they slowly pull you into being... GASP! A FAN-GIRL/BOY!
Well that's it, I'm done with this post, hope you all have a good night, and until the next post...
I'll be watching!
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