Also, I love Sam Vimes with every fiber of my being.
Me too. He's one of very few fictional characters I would genuinely call a hero, because he's not following some external ideal of how to be a 'good' person; he's just doing what he knows bone-deep is right, and doing it in the full knowledge that it's not going to change anything and any smart person would have long ago bailed and tried to find another route, but doing it this way is right, dammit.
As a lifelong cynical optimist, I deeply admire that. And I think that's why I'm most drawn to cynical, pragmatic, sarcastic characters above any other. It's not that I like a jaded worldview - in fact, just the opposite (I can't stand the nihilistic stuff either). But what I truly consider heroic is the ability to keep fighting for your cause when you're one hundred percent convinced that it's futile. I think the one true test of a moral code is whether you stick to it when nobody sees, nobody cares, and nobody benefits; that's the point when all other factors have been kicked away, and the only motivation left is, "I'm going to do this because it's right, and that's all there is to it."
And that's why I think all the idealistic good-guy heroes in the world will never be able to inspire me. It's all very well to float through challenges in a glorious haze of certainty that Good Will Triumph In The end, but until you hit that wall where there's nothing keeping you going but sheer bloody-minded determination, you haven't really proved anything.
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momijizukamori and
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Date: 2007-02-12 10:09 pm (UTC)Me too. He's one of very few fictional characters I would genuinely call a hero, because he's not following some external ideal of how to be a 'good' person; he's just doing what he knows bone-deep is right, and doing it in the full knowledge that it's not going to change anything and any smart person would have long ago bailed and tried to find another route, but doing it this way is right, dammit.
As a lifelong cynical optimist, I deeply admire that. And I think that's why I'm most drawn to cynical, pragmatic, sarcastic characters above any other. It's not that I like a jaded worldview - in fact, just the opposite (I can't stand the nihilistic stuff either). But what I truly consider heroic is the ability to keep fighting for your cause when you're one hundred percent convinced that it's futile. I think the one true test of a moral code is whether you stick to it when nobody sees, nobody cares, and nobody benefits; that's the point when all other factors have been kicked away, and the only motivation left is, "I'm going to do this because it's right, and that's all there is to it."
And that's why I think all the idealistic good-guy heroes in the world will never be able to inspire me. It's all very well to float through challenges in a glorious haze of certainty that Good Will Triumph In The end, but until you hit that wall where there's nothing keeping you going but sheer bloody-minded determination, you haven't really proved anything.