Warning. Long rambly essay up ahead mentioning stardew valley and the undertale fandom and briefly topics like self harm and abuse. Be warned that this is here. And if you don’t want to see that just enjoy the meme. But before you go to be clear. This is not about how it’s bad to like characters who do bad shit. It’s about how people will like characters who do bad shit off them being fun or being nuanced but sometimes ignore nuance in characters who are mean because how dare they be mean.
Hot take here but media literacy means a lot of things and it also means the understanding that being mean isn’t worse than being a serial killer.
I must clarify here I am not saying you can’t like characters who have done terrible things you can I myself do and love them this is not a post shaming people for liking Bill Cipher he’s a great character and overall may characters who do horrible things have great writing either being pure evil or having deep lore as to why.
This is also not a post talking about characters written to be annoying without any nuance to them. You’re supposed to not like those guys and while it’s hard to tell sometimes if a character is written to be hated on or not there’s usually some ways to tell especially if the character has no reason to be rude and is just… unneededly cruel and bigoted… I will also say how this differs from pure evil is that pure evil is usually written to be entertaining an intentionally annoying character without any reasoning is written to be annoying not entertaining. A lack of motive can be fun or make someone annoying depending on execution and specific actions.
This is solely a post on the weird treatment of characters who are not nice and especially those who have a reason not to be. It feels odd that people are willing to let off or at least still like a character who does horrible things because of backstory but not a character who simply isn’t nice. And I am not saying a character who is mean and does heinous crimes though weirdly I feel those are also let off far more. I mean people who are just… generally kinda rude.
Like what I am referring to is a character who was raised in a situation where they were forced to adopt a rude persona to survive. A character who was horribly abused or lost someone close to them and now act rude because they don’t want to let anyone into their life. A character who is put in a position where being rude is the only way they can be heard. A character who is rude to someone who isn’t all that nice to them either say being rude to someone because they can’t take no for an answer. A character who just doesn’t trust people. A character who will be socially or even physically ripped apart if ever they let their gaurd down. A character who is rude because they are legitimately an emotional mess. A character who lets be Frank here… isn’t even that mean people just keep saying they are.
I will admit that sometimes a fandom will click and things will be great especially when it comes to redeemed villains who have anger issues or have been mean in the past but sometimes… sometimes they won’t. And I’m gonna talk about a few examples without going into much detail. And forgive me there are going to be weird and niche.
Let’s start with Hailey from stardew valley who I swear people talk about like she’s the spawn of Satan or will stress how she’s mean when you first meet her but has a good arc. And she does yeah have a good arc. But also maybe it’s just me being ignorant or I never got any of the actually bad lines of dialoge or I’m just clueless or whatever… and you can disagree here.. but Hailey isn’t that bad. Like when you meet her most of the lines I got were… maybe rude? And I know people also don’t like her for not liking the prismatic shard but she’s not the only one who doesn’t like an otherwise universally liked gift. Plus one of her loved gifts is honestly easy as hell you don’t even need to go to the effort of a prismatic shard literally give her a sunflower. It feels like the real reason people hate her is because they hear other people hating her. Because my experience with the character at the very least if I really am clueless or lucky is that she’s just mildly stuck up and materialistic.
Next up… very weird and niche one, Underfell Sans. Yeah that’s a weird one. You may be thinking “from the Edgelord AU?” Yes. I could actually go into this and write a whole essay about the fact that Underfell as an AU is actually unironically kinda fire it just has an aestetic that people don’t entirely take seriously and that the reason that aestetic isn’t taken seriously is because it’s heavily associated with counterculture movements (including being queer btw) and being overall against the dominant culture causes it to be made fun of often. But that’s a whole other essay and a whole other can of worms involving a fandom I am cautiously ok with talking about but would like to for now be distanced from. But to get back to the topic Underfell Sans is in a lot of AU projects. Almost all of them actually. And in many of them the character is commonly portrayed as “Edgy McMyChemicalRomance” while not even being usually that rude, not usually being the worst person in the room, and often with the AU’s lore intact. The lore of which I’m talking about being that in this AU the ideal of kill or be killed is a cultural value of the whole underground meaning people within this system must follow it to survive often having to be hostile because yeah it’s not the characters it’s the whole AU so it’s not like Flowey who’s a jerk for having that belief because Flowey got that on his own the Underfell characters were raised to believe it. Raised to be kinda mean and never show weakness. And to attack people who do show weakness. This lore is usually in tact in underfell portrayals but… ignored. Like the AU is still one with a broken system that forces people to be cruel or die yet no no any character from that world is just mean jerk who’s a total Edgelord and often gets bullied by the other characters for behaving how they were taught is correct. It’s like getting mad at someone for eating with their hands when they come from a culture that doesn’t use utensils and have never existed in a culture that did until now. I’d say in this specific situation where the fell character is being rude to people it is fair for the characters to be rude back but the fact that the fans themselves and the creators themselves ignore entirely the fact the character has a reason to be rude that actually could make for a more engaging story about the character learning to exist outside of a culture that actively is physically threatening to people who show weakness rather than the same copy pasted joke about “character edgy lol”. It feels like all people see is that the character is rude to the other characters and never question if there’s a reason WHY. And honestly it’s a little disappointing it would be refreshing to see a nuanced take on this AU and its characters (and let’s be real the Sans specifically because that’s who’s gonna be in the AU projects). Also more unrelated to the character being mean… but when a character from another AU is being rude to a character from Underfell before they’ve said anything based on vibes it makes them look like the jerk actually because they know nothing about the character more than how they dress at this point. Also final thought… yes this is an AU so there is no canon however this is the widely accepted canon of the AU.
Ok there’s my two weird examples but lemme extend upon this and talk about fandom culture as a whole.
It feels like people don’t want characters ever to be wrong unless they’re always wrong. Like if a good guy is a jerk they can’t be the good guy right they must be evil and bad because being a jerk is bad and we all know people in both fiction and reality are either one or the other with no nuance. Something similarly I have noticed is that when a character is a victim of abuse, especially physical, they are portrayed extremely cutesy 100% of the time. It’s like they aren’t allowed to have a personality that isn’t innocent and sweet and childlike like god forbid we get an abuse victim who responds by lashing out towards others. I’m not saying they should be or should always be portrayed as jerks but it feels like a symptom of a greater problem.
That problem being that people wrongly equate likability and kindness (and in the case of the abuse victim… also equating being abused with being weak and childlike and soft ignoring fully that anyone can be abused and abuse victims are people which I guess I get it if it’s a comfort character thing but fandom culture overall needs to also realize equating being abused with being cute and kawaii is a little fucked up). I’ll be straight up here, both a jerk and a kind little sweetheart can be equally annoying in fact the latter can be more annoying because often the creator in question doesn’t think they are and treats them like the infallible hero that you’re evil for disliking. And they feel it would be wrong to give a character we are supposed to be rooting for flaws because if they have flaws especially being not very nice then they must be bad which isn’t true.
It also feels like an issue of people taking what they see at face value like they see everyone talking about how much of a jerk this character is and they just accept it without looking further or go into a confirmation bias state where one rude word is the whole character. It feels overall like people in fandoms don’t actually look at the characters and their lore and their motives so much as they look at how the character acts without further consideration or more often how the other people in the fandom talk about them. And I feel like the kind of group think fandoms sometimes have going on where if a character is disliked they are disliked by everyone or made a joke of by everyone or whatnot is toxic behaviour I feel like we need to start analyzing not just what a character is doing but WHY because it can change your opinion of them pretty heavily if there is a very specific and understandable reason why they are doing the thing they are doing or let’s be real… if there isn’t.
This essay isn’t “character is jerk is good” it’s think about their reasoning and if that changes anything because if taking their reasoning into account changes how you view them then there’s something there. Also in this realm you will realize some characters who are liked do horrible things for reasons that fall apart when you look at them critically (in this case I mean characters who are often justified by viewers) like ok you were bullied in school… how does that relate to nuking most of the country?
If you got anything from this poorly planned out rambly essay I should hope it will be a desire to look at these situations more critically in the future to figure out if the general public is right in your eyes or if maybe there’s a bit more to this. And if anything else… that edgy styles and music are hated on by the general public because they are associated with counterculture movements and that “cut yourself emo” jokes are weird because the whole joke is finding it amusing that someone is doing self harm purely because of their aesthetics not being your preference.
Anyone is welcome to bring up more examples of this but please do not derail the post to be about something else. It’s about media literacy in regards to characters who are mean. Also if you do Stardew please tell me if I’m way off base there or got really lucky and the character is actually a mean girl from hell. Also how is her name spelled..
The minute I see the phrase "they can be rude and bitchy at first but will open up if you take the chance to know them," I lose interest in roleplaying with that character. I just don't enjoy sitting through 30+ thread replies of a character trying to brush mine off or making snippy, sarcastic comments. I don't mean you have to play your character any different. I just don't like that type of interaction.
I understand having a rude or mean character, but if every rp is your character treating others like garbage with no give whatsoever, is it any wonder that people get tired of threading with you? RP needs to be give and take, no matter the character.
I hate it when people make individualized starters that are immediately antagonistic even though the characters haven't interacted before. I have an OC who is pretty timid and it's happened more than once that someone who clearly hasn't read my about page makes an introduction starter for her that is immediately rude and angry. I can understand not always being sickly sweet but I don't know how to respond to that because my character wouldn't know how to respond to that.
