Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3661-3665 (22nd to 26th January 2018)
JoeCovenant:
--- Quote from: TinPenguin on 26 Jan 2018, 04:03 ---Over the course of three-and-a-half-thousand strips, Marten has said a number of harsh, hurtful, and thoughtless things. He is the primary antagonist.
--- End quote ---
Thoughtless... yes.
Hurtful... Maybe? But I doubt intentionally?
Harsh...? Really?
Pintsize is far more of an antagonist than Marten has ever been... YYMV of course.
ChipNoir:
--- Quote from: Tova on 26 Jan 2018, 01:08 ---Does every conflict require a villain?
--- End quote ---
In a literary sense? Yes and no. Villain doesn't automatically translate to evil. It's entirely a case of the character that stands in the way of your protagonist. Your protagonist and your villain both want something, and only one or the other can get what they want without in some way preventing the other from doing so.
It really does just come down to who your protagonist is. If you're protagonist is of some sort of moral stance you agree with, that tends to mean you think of the their villain/antagonist as evil.
But the reality is a villain, or the less baggage term 'antagonist' in a story conflict can literally be someone who just wants the same sandwich as your protagonist. The only distinction is whose perspective you're writing the story from.
That's kinda what makes it easy for people to take sides in these stories: With a few exceptions, Jeph has a neutral author's voice. Yeah he puts in smarmy commentary post-hoc, but he inserts no narrative boxes. There's only a few internal narrative moments. He just lets these characters go in their natural element, and leaves us to decide how to interpret them.
We really do get to decide who the protagonist an antagonists are a lot of the times, and we might be a bit hardwired to do so.
OldGoat:
Points for Evie.
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: gopher on 26 Jan 2018, 01:01 ---
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 25 Jan 2018, 20:56 ---It's interesting, and frustrating, to me how quick some members of this forum are to search for a villain in every storyline.
--- End quote ---
Maybe. However good drama tends to require a degree of conflict. A 24/7 hugfest would not engage people.
--- End quote ---
On the other hand the weekly comic strips over the past few months always seem to devolve into 'I hate the latest person/existing character and let me explain why in extreme detail, then argue endlessly about it.' I mean yeah, everyone has characters they like and don't like. But nearly every day I look in these threads it seems like people are trying to turn everyone into a villain and it's draining and depressing? Remember when Hannelore gave her mother a little shove and people were literally saying she should be arrested for it? Frankly I've been coming to the forums a lot less lately because it just seems filled with negativity and I have enough of that in my life from other sources.
Cornelius:
I'll have to agree with that. Not everything must be criminalised, and punished to the full extent of the law.
--- Quote from: ChipNoir on 26 Jan 2018, 05:57 ---
In a literary sense? Yes and no.
...
We really do get to decide who the protagonist an antagonists are a lot of the times, and we might be a bit hardwired to do so.
--- End quote ---
I much prefer to talk about protagonist and antagonist. It's not just baggage; villain has always been pejorative, from its medieval beginnings onwards. Arguably that's denotation. So, a villain is evil, nowadays, no matter how you put it.
That's what I meant with our auctorial fallacy as well; you need to be very careful: the story you hear is not necessarily the story your author is telling. It's easy to interpret things, and then make the leap that the author says such and such. Mind the gap between text and interpretation.
Oh, this is 300, I guess. Pneumatic ratchet pants?
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