Obnoxious Characters

Obnoxious characters are not always fun to read about, but they are the most necessary. While it would be nice to have every single character in a story be relatable and charming, it’s not true to the real world. These obnoxious characters can be anybody from a screaming street preacher to a psychopathic child molester. The world certainly has no shortage of people who fit these archetypes. When we’re their victims, we don’t see any need to relate to them on a personal level. When bank robbers are holding victims hostage, the victims’ first thought isn’t going to be, “I wish they were more charming” or “They must be hurting on the inside.” Their first thoughts are probably going to be something like, “Please get us out of here!” or “Will someone shoot these assholes in the head?!” But then you have something called Stockholm Syndrome, where a captive learns to depend on his kidnapper in a relationship akin to romance or family. Even then, when the victim is free, they’re going to be doing summersaults and back flips when they finally return to their original families. It’s a harsh reality that we have to live with sociopaths, but it still is reality. Of course, there’s also the argument that when someone reads a book or goes to a movie, they’re engaging in escapism. People like to go to The Hobbit in order to visit a world of dragons and fantasy, something they wouldn’t otherwise get in their current reality. But even then, there will still be characters that you root for and characters you’re rooting against. In the case of The Hobbit, you cheer for Bilbo Baggins and against that one-armed orc warrior whose name escapes me. But what if you have a story where everybody is capable of being a villain? Then who do you root for? It wouldn’t be completely out of line to wish that a meteor would come crashing down from the heavens and shatter the bones of everybody in the story. It’ll never happen, but sometimes the bad guys get away with whatever they’re doing. In the Saw series, the Jigsaw Killer gets away with murder every single time. And yet, it still counts as escapism because there’s an element of fantasy in these gory movies. In the end, it comes down to which side of the fantasy-reality spectrum you’re on. If you don’t care who wins in the end, then you’re siding with reality. If you always want the good guys to win, then you’re a little closer toward fantasy. But no matter which side you find yourself on, obnoxious characters will always exist whether you want them to or not. Lord knows I’ve had to put up with Ari from NCIS for a long, long time. And the heel version of Michael Cole from the WWE? He got jammed down our throats every night one of those shows was on the air. If you expect justice in every single story you immerse yourself in, you’re going to be sorely disappointed sometimes.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“And the world spreads its legs for another fucking star! ‘Cause I am the all-American antichrist! I was made in America and America hates me for what I am! I am your shit! You should be ashamed of what you have eaten!”

-Intro to “Rock n’ Roll Nigger” by Marilyn Manson-

Fantasy and Reality

I’m a peace-loving liberal who loves action movies and violent literature. Like the Scottish Koreans in the Starburst commercials, I’m a walking contradiction and I don’t make a wee bit of sense. How exactly is this possible? It’s because I know how to do something that I wish everybody would learn to do: distinguish fantasy from reality. In the fantasy world, violence is dazzling and fun to watch, as evidenced in movies like First Blood and TV shows like the WWE. Even the UFC has a level of fantasy in it, probably because it’s heavily regulated. In the real world, violence is a disgusting thing to watch. There’s a huge difference between watching First Blood and watching a war documentary on MSNBC. That’s why I wish everybody could distinguish fantasy from reality, because people play videogames like Halo and Gears of War and automatically assume that they too can become ass-kicking soldiers who go undefeated throughout their military careers. Bzzt! Wrong! If you join the military and somehow make it back to civilian life with your body intact, no matter what the outcome of the war you’re fighting, you will never be the same again. You might return home missing a few limbs. You might wake up in the middle of the night and not know where you are. You might burst into tears when you hear someone popping balloons because it sounds like gunfire. In the world of mixed-martial arts, the same thing is true. Just because you went undefeated in a game of Tekken Tag Tournament or Super Street Fighter II, doesn’t mean you’re going to excel in the UFC. The fighters who work for that company? They’re super athletes who spend anywhere from eight to twelve hours a day training in the gym and even then they get injured from time to time. If you have the body of a god and that god happens to be Buddha, stay away from the cage (unless of course your name is Roy Nelson, in which case, you’ll do just fine). Do you know why they call it a fantasy? Because it exists in the mind and nowhere else except for in artistic expression. If The Hobbit was a documentary instead of an action-adventure movie, we would be seriously fucked as human beings. Or elves. Or dwarves. Or even fire-breathing dragons and walking rock people. Just to be on the safe side, whenever I self-publish one of my books, I put a disclaimer at the beginning that reminds my readers never to copy anything they read. They will die a miserable, slow death if they do. I don’t just do it to get a laugh out of people. I do it for their own good. That and I don’t want to get sued. Are you paying attention, Stephanie Meyer? Maybe you should tell your own audience to stop biting each other’s necks. I’ve bitten people when I got into fights at school. It’s not fun. So please, Twilight fans, stop biting each other’s necks! Got that? Good! I don’t think there’s anything more that needs to be said, except…

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Pro-wrestling is real. People are fake.”

-Mr. Anderson-