Weekly Update - 117 (Patreon)

Comic This Week:  Honestly I don't know.  This week has been full of distractions and time-wasters, I didn't even realize it was Monday and I'm pretty far behind.  I'd hate to miss a week, though.  Not right now when I don't have a halfway decent excuse I can rely on.  I'm gearing up to sacrifice sleep if I need to in order to get it done.

Drawing: Riley Page 4

Playing: WoW and Animal Crossing (though these things are likely on hold until Page 4 is done)

Ramble:

I've talked a lot in these rambles about what evil means and what villains are.  In the context of fiction and the imagination, always, I never want anyone to think that I'm an IRL Dark Lord sympathizer.  But for most of my life growing up I found the villain characters in stories to often be more interesting than the "goodie-two-shoes" heroes, which sort of lead me to develop a pro-villain and anti-hero (sometimes actually) bias in storytelling.  Today, though, I wanna talk about what it means to be good.  Again, in fiction and as it pertains to the imagination only.  After all, I don't want anyone to think I'm an IRL Chosen One sympathizer.

I remember two main archetypes of "hero" in stories I read growing up. There was the one that was fighting for good, for the sake of doing good, because it was the right thing to do, in the name of righteousness, for truth, justice and the rest.  The hero who always knew what was good and would never compromise and would only ever do good. This was my least favorite kind of hero.  It seemed so unrealistic.  Concepts of "justice" and "truth" and "righteousness" are so vague and ill-defined, or at best defined only from one perspective.
For someone to always claim to know what good is, beyond a shadow of a doubt?  There was only ever Right and Wrong, and never any room for grey areas.  Would Superman throw Robin Hood in prison?  I honestly think he would.  But the world is far too complicated for things to be that simple.

The other archetype was the rebel, the brooding anti-hero, who did good because it aligned with their own goals.  They do good when it is convenient, otherwise they sulk off into the darkness to brood by themselves.  They hate everything and everyone and they don't care if the bad guy robs a bank, but he sure as hell better not do it while the brooding anti-hero is there trying to make a withdrawal or there'll be HELL TO PAY.  This version of the hero that frequently appeared in my childhood cartoons seemed a lot more realistic, more believable.  Though it was still ridiculous.  These characters often lurked just offscreen so the writers could bring them in to save the day when the traditional heroes all lay battered and broken, then having a shallow (and all-to-frequent) moment of "redemption" before delivering a clever one-liner and returning to their offscreen lurk position.

In many cases, I felt like these stories were, either intentionally or not, trying to encourage people to be good. To deliver us heroes we could look up to and strive to be like.  Now, I wasn't around in the 50s and our culture has evolved pretty rapidly since then, so I actually don't know if kids were going around wishing they could be like Superman, but from a modern perspective, how could any of us be like Superman?  Superman is a literal alien whose superpowers make him nigh-invincible.  No one can be like Superman.

I would be remiss to not at least acknowledge that modern stories do this much better, giving us some more relatable heroes that are flawed and interesting despite still wanting to do the most good they can do with the information they have at their disposal.  Forgive me for using Arcane as an example again, but it's simply the best example of storytelling I have on the mind at the moment.  It's a lot easier to relate to a hero like Vi, someone who has simple goals in a complex world and just wants to do right by herself, her friends and her family.  It's a lot easier to be a hero like Caitlyn, who is trying to do the things she feels are right despite existing in a system that is very plainly corrupt.  These characters are flawed, imperfect, and they might falter in their pursuit of their goals, but it's hard to argue that either of them is "evil" from any perspective.  (Well, the exceptions, perhaps, are from Silco's perspective or from the perspective of the guy who Vi mugs for his jacket, but neither of those characters could be considered innocent, either)

The fact is, being good is not hard.  A character doesn't have to hunt down criminals and stop violent bank robberies and save the world every Tuesday to be good.  A character can be good by simply being not awful to other people in their life.  It takes, in fact, the minimum amount of effort to simply not hurt or insult others.  It takes a little more effort to pursue what's right, and knowing what's right is not always easy, but it's hard to go wrong with at least trying.  I think of this stuff often when I think of Kiva.  Kiva is the protagonist of our story here, and I cannot tell you that he is objectively "good."  He works for an oppressive criminal gang that's shaking down people in its territory for their profits, and he cracks heads for them and gets paid for it.  But he doesn't go out of his way to be awful to people, and he pursues what he feels is the most "right" for him and the people he cares about.  He would say that's all anyone can do.

Yeah alright, that's all.  I'm not gonna spend too many hours proofreading this, so sorry if it is confusing or poorly thought out or full of errors.  I have drawing to do.  As always, happy to be corrected or told I'm wrong on any point!