Wednesday, February 10, 2021

When They All Agree He's a Moron

There's this relatively early Family Guy episode - hang on, don't leave already, I'm just setting the stage - where Peter concludes he's a genius and takes a test to prove it. He finds instead that he is, Forrest Gump, basically. The hidden menu item for this is apparently, no one holds him responsible for anything he does. If he runs into the street causing a car to swerve and it's driver to be badly injured, well, he just doesn't know any better. I think this wildly overstates people's forgiving nature.

I've seen other characters in stories where it seems like all the other characters have come to a similar conclusion about them. Where there's just no point in being frustrated when they do inexplicable things. Michelangelo with the Ninja Turtles is one, but my go-to is probably Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Even when he was summoning a demon that made people sing and dance until they spontaneously combusted, ultimately killing a half-dozen people, at a point (Season 6) when he couldn't claim ignorance of the dangers inherit to fucking around with magic, no one ever called him on it. He never faced any consequences for his actions. It was as though Buffy, Willow and the rest all just sort of threw up their hands and said, "It's Xander, what do you expect?"

This can, as you might have guessed, annoy the hell out of me. Whether I'm just not a fan of that particular blessed character, or I'm a fan of another character who isn't getting the benefit of this generosity, it grates on the nerves. Especially when there's no reason for it given. I'm left to assume it's either lazy writing (the writers didn't want to deal with Xander being responsible for six deaths in their fun musical episode, so just sweep that under the rug), or they expect me to tacitly agree this is OK.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide if it's worse when the story does it, or when the fans of the character do it. Tony Stark is probably a good example of a character with fans just dying to excuse his every fuck-up, but my go-to for that phenomenon has to be Vegeta fans. When Vegeta not only decides to let Cell so they can become more powerful and give him a better fight, but then actively helps Cell by attacking other people who tried to kill it. 

His legion of defenders will insist it's everyone else's fault Cell achieved his perfect form, but not Vegeta's. Krillin should have killed Android 18, who hadn't killed anyone yet and was a victim of Dr. Gero, so Cell couldn't absorb her. Or she should have self-destructed. Goku shouldn't have agreed to let Vegeta train in the Time Chamber first (even though Vegeta insisted and there wasn't time for them to waste arguing about that). Trunks should have just killed Cell himself (except when he tried, Vegeta prevented it). 

And the reason they should have done all these things is because they should have known Vegeta is a fucking idiot who would mess everything up by actively helping the bad guy, to the extent of attacking his own son.

They don't frame it that way, of course. It's that the other characters should have known his "pride" or "Saiyan love of battle" would push him to do it. It comes down to the same thing. According to them, Vegeta is too stupid to be held responsible for his actions.

I'm really not sure which is more annoying. It happening in-story is harder to deal with, because that's the actual text, such as it is. Even if I come up with an alternative take, it's still a reaction to the original, which affirms its existence. The fans are ultimately irrelevant, but they can be all over the place, or extremely obnoxious about pushing their opinions into my face. I can avoid a particular episode or issue of a show or comic I don't like, and maybe that lets me avoid its impact, but avoiding obnoxious fans can be kind of tricky if I actually want to interact with, you know, other fans of that thing.

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