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    • CommentAuthorSen
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2011 edited
     

    Some really good tv shows have recently spiked my interest in this concept.

    I want to see just on how many levels this idea can be made to work.

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      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2011
     

    Hm. In terms of antagonists, there’s Spike and Vicious from Cowboy Bebop.

    They’re dramatically and artistically portrayed as being polar opposites (Spike is a grungy, black-haired mess, Vicious is blond, well-groomed, etc.) and they’re fighting over a love interest they both have in common. What’s interesting about that one, though, is that the viewer is encouraged to think of them as opposites, but they’re really not that different – both are willing to use violence to get what they want, and the final confrontation between the two isn’t really even about their confrontation. :D

    That one has me really thinking now, but it’s not really related – I’ll come back when I have a better example.

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      CommentAuthorBeldam
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2011
     

    The first thing that came to my mind was Batman and Joker, who have an order verus choas motif going on, but like above, I realized that in most continuities they’re played off as being not so different. Batman and Superman would be good though, because their dark/light thing holds much firmer for the most part. That is, Batman generally will act in much more dubious ways than his primary colour clad comrade, but I think he’s generally portrayed as being less ‘human’ if you will than Superman, which I guess is irony for you. Tomo and Yomi from Azumanga Daioh are good examples—one’s a loudmouth genki-girl and the other is a collected and strung-out achiever type. As a result, they tend to bash heads a lot, but they’re still good friends.

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      CommentAuthorsansafro187
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2011 edited
     

    i love this sort of thing to the point that my story is more or less built around just such a relationship

    the first example that leaps to mind from already existing fiction is mugen and jin from samurai champloo

    huh theres a lot of anime examples here now that i read the other posts and that kinda makes sense

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2011 edited
     

    There are no poles, with personalities. People change to suit their company and environment. Also, human psychology is far more limited that we think. I wouldn’t ever agree with a theory that says “there are only x many personality types and they are…”, because that’s just bull, but humans don’t really come in very many different flavours.

    Besides which, I’m a firm advocate of the theory that there is no such thing as “polar opposite”. Even literal magnetic poles meet at the middle.

    the viewer is encouraged to think of them as opposites, but they’re really not that different – both are willing to use violence to get what they want, and the final confrontation between the two isn’t really even about their confrontation.

    This is what I mean. Superficialities like grooming and attire aside, motivations, desires, and reactions to external stimuli are going to be fairly similar for most people. Dig deep enough and we’re all just crying monkeys looking for food, safety, and sex. (That’s going to a bit of an extreme, but most of our behaviours stem from those three things.)

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2011 edited
     

    It’s perfectly fine if you avoid it in your own writing and I’m aware that many stories out there are focused on the reality of human nature and aren’t interested at all in creating these complex characters that one might never find in real life. I’m okay with that and I’m not arguing it. However, not all stories deal with this and it’s not fair for you to treat the idea as if it’s completely ridiculous just because you don’t use it.

    I’m not treating the idea as ridiculous, I’m trying to say that — however characterisation is developed and maintained — there is no “opposite” of anything. He’s a strong athletic type, she’s a bookish academic. They’re not “opposite”, they’re just different. And that’s not even getting into my original point, which was far more philosophical and relates back to taoist ideas, but which I now think is not appropriate for this topic.

    You do make a fair point in saying that motivations and desires are going to be fairly similar to most people. That’s absolutely true. One can have many things in common with more than a few people. Although, again it seems as if you are referring to real life and I’m not interested in that. Yes, stories have to be realistic to a point, but the characters in your stories are limited as it is (which gives you the freedom to play around with completely different personalities) and even then your reader’s attention is only going to be focused on only a few of them, two of those most likely being the main character and the antagonist, I’m sure, if you make the situation seem interesting enough.

    The problem is, if your characters aren’t sympathetic, realistic and relatable, the reader is (more likely than not) not going to be interested in them. Worst case, you get characters like Bella, where personality traits (like “clumsiness”) are tacked on without any reference whatsoever to how it affects other parts of her characterisation, how that in turn affects her treatment of others around her, how her behaviour changes in different social settings, or anything like that. My main point here is that gimmicks aside, what makes a reader enjoy a story is characters they can relate to. Realistic, fully-developed characters with nuanced personalities who could well be living individuals, and not just baseless clumps of unrelated personality virtues and flaws. It may have been the case 50 years ago for characters to be overblown melodramatic stereotypes, and there is certainly still a place for melodrama, but in the greatest portion of today’s market, the sympathetic, psychologically realistic characters are what discerning readers will look for.

    But I digress, that’s not the topic of discussion. What I was trying to say is that people are usually not so different as movies and melodramatic, stereotypical soap operas/sitcoms advertise. The only time you will find two people who are truly “opposite” is when each person truly and deeply despises every aspect of the other. If it’s just a matter of “oh, he’s a serious businessman and he’s the quirky foreign cousin”, it’s not “opposites” (certainly not in the metaphorical “polar” sense), it’s merely differences in upbringing and culture.

    And there again, as I have mentioned, people change to suit their environments. That self-confident quarterback? I’ll bet he behaves a lot more like the bookish nerd when he’s talking to the principal than he does with his mates. That wallflower might have a mean left hook, but saves it for her women’s boxing classes. And that’s admittedly a rather extreme example, but do you get my point? People behave differently according to social situations, so saying one person is the “polar opposite” of another is going to be incorrect at least some of the time.

    As to Inkblot’s example, I don’t disagree with him: I was agreeing with his point that even when some characters are portrayed as fundamentally different, there’s still a whole lot of similarities between them. I don’t watch Cowboy Bebop, but I can tell from Inkblot’s short description that (1) they are both concerned with appearance, (2) they are both concerned with fitting into a particular social scene, (2a) they both care about how their peers see them, (3) they both have the same ‘taste’ in women, (4) they are both willing to use violence to achieve their goals… if I watched the show, I’m sure even more similarities would become evident. As I said, grooming and gimmicks aside, people are very rarely so different from each other as to be “polar opposites”.

    • CommentAuthorSen
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2011 edited
     

    people are very rarely so different from each other as to be “polar opposites”.

    Yes, it is rare for them to be so. As unrealistic as the idea is, I thoroughly enjoy reading about stuff like this.

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      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2011
     

    I don’t watch Cowboy Bebop, but I can tell from Inkblot’s short description that (1) they are both concerned with appearance, (2) they are both concerned with fitting into a particular social scene, (2a) they both care about how their peers see them, (3) they both have the same ‘taste’ in women, (4) they are both willing to use violence to achieve their goals… if I watched the show, I’m sure even more similarities would become evident. As I said, grooming and gimmicks aside, people are very rarely so different from each other as to be “polar opposites”.

    As a Bebop fanboy, I feel it necessary to clear this up. :P Spike is a jaded, world-weary bounty hunter who chose that career in order to escape his past. He is the exact opposite of 1, 2, and 2a. :D

    I’ll get back to that in a second.

    I really am finding this discussion quite interesting. I’m going to paraphrase my definition of literary fiction from another thread, where I called it as being about something, whether that be social justice, violence, morality, what have you. I think I draw this most heavily from Chesterton, who did much the same. So my writing is character-based. I try to make realistic, complex people whose motivations are their own and who develop and push the plot as they will.

    However, those people, in a certain sense, are the embodiments of ideas – there’s a fight going on at a different level, a fight between worldview, or between approach, or so forth. Taku, while I have noticed that you seem to be a fan of the more modern ‘shades of grey’ approach, I would ask you to note that, historically speaking, people have been drawn to the idea of opposites. Consider the yin-yang – it’s about the symmetry, the poetry inherent in the idea itself. Metaphysically speaking, peoples throughout history have also liked the idea of opposites when in terms of spirituality – God and the devil. White and black.

    So, if you were to have two people each trying to achieve the same goal, and one of them instinctively went to diplomacy and the other went to conquest, I would say that that counts as a polar opposite in terms of approach, and that makes for an interesting, cinematic, easily textured conflict. People respond on some level to that idea of opposites. And that simple, recognizable framework can be built on – if the diplomat is a devious trickster and the conqueror is a noble warrior living by a rigid honor code – you have an inversion of the expected result, more complex and more interesting.

    If I were to write that conflict into a novel, hopefully you can see how each of those people could be a morally grey painting, while on some level there is still conflict between a white principle and a black principle – and that can be obscured under as many layers as you want, but at some level it’s still there.

    Back to Cowboy Bebop. Spike is essentially a good person by the standards of modern secular humanism. His job requires that he use violence, and while there is no sign that he is a sadist he certainly does not shy from doing what his work needs. He is a heavily introverted loner, and he complains constantly about kids, pets, and pretty much everything else. But he puts up with this stuff, and there are hints that he feels the pain of others and worries about the consequences of his actions – he has a functioning conscience.

    Vicious is a psychopath. Nuff said. He ruthlessly murders someone in cold blood at one point, and shoots at unarmed people. Spike refrains from taking such actions, and the viewer gets the sense that he would consider such actions wrong.

    So here, Spike and Vicious both use violence readily, but where Spike uses it for his work Vicious is violent all the time for his own pleasure. In his character it’s hidden beneath a ton of misdirection and layers – he’s a dark, confused, bleak character. But somewhere far down at the bottom Spike is “good” and Vicious is not, and that forms the polar opposite relationship between the two. Superficially they are very different. Go one layer deeper and they are very similar, but go one layer farther, and you see that they are opposite.

    Hope that either answers some questions or raises more! :D

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2011
     

    I will concede the point re. Cowboy Bebop, as I haven’t seen it. If you are trying to write a primarily metaphorical story where you are not using characters so much as archetypes to make a particular philosophical/moral point, then using polarisation can be an effective tool, so long as you are aware that people aren’t actually like that, and in a character-focused piece that requires relatable, sympathetic figures with whom the readers can empathise, you’re probably not going to use the same technique, at least not to the same extreme.

    And that’s not even getting into my original point, which was far more philosophical and relates back to taoist ideas, but which I now think is not appropriate for this topic.

    Interesting that you should mention yin/yang to me. The most important lesson about yin-yang, which is often glossed over, misunderstood or ignored by western interpretations, is not the polarisation of opposites, but how nothing is truly one thing or the other. There are elements of yin in the yang, and yang in the yin. Furthermore, if you apply too much yang, you become yin, and vice versa. So the ‘shades of grey’ concept is very much a central focus of taoist philosophy, especially when it relates to personalities and people.

    And now I’m going to undermine my own point entirely (or am I…?) by mentioning one story in which polarised personalities are used with brilliant effect: Stephen King’s The Eyes of The Dragon uses the characters of Peter and Thomas almost as caricatures of metaphorical Virtue and Vice, and in that sense he’s used the technique really wonderfully, but at the same time he subverts it by giving Thomas some virtuous characteristics and giving Peter some vices. Secondly, he gives them pretty much the same goal, which is to make their father proud when they’re younger, and to simply survive or escape when they are older. Peter from the Needle, and Thomas from Flagg. So they are very similar characters in many ways, but they still have that oppositional foundation at the core of their characterisation.

    Thinking of it, that neither undermines nor supports my stance, because it falls under the category of moral allegory rather than character-study.

  1.  

    Cowboy Bebop, as I haven’t seen it.

    you ought to go do that

    it is worth your time