Complexity of character

both fictional and "irl"

I recently watched a remarkable youtube retrospective on the career and life of Hayo Miyazaki, the driving creative force behind Studio Ghibli.

This beautifully produced and researched “video essay” encouraged me to reflect on the influence that Miyazaki has had on me personally and creatively. There is, of course, the pure and simple joy of watching films like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Kiki’s delivery service”. More than that though, I was drawn to characters such as Princess Mononoke. characters that were complex and sometimes confusing. Many of Miyazaki’s characters were shown on screen to be somewhat unpredictable, but genuine. This forced me to reflect on my personal struggle with, and desire to create, characters who display, disparate motivations that often seem contradictory. I have always wanted my characters to have that depth. I want my villains to have some redeeming qualities or motivations and my heroes to have some flaws.

This is, seemingly a driving force behind Miyazaki’s work, but also a direct reaction to the simplified and archetypal characters in western animation.

Other examples of work that displayed more complex characters, in my opinion, would be works of fictions such as Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Neil Gaiman actually participated in the translation of Princess Mononoke. Interesting.

Related but tangential brain here - This also loosely connects, in my brain at least, with math instruction in my part of the world. Bear with me here, it will all make sense eventually.

Many years ago, when I was learning basic math, all of our text books and math problems were designed to resolve into very clean and satisfying whole numbers. The problem with this is that when those students attempted to use their math skills to solve real world math problems, the solutions would rarely be that neat. This would lead students to believe that they had gotten something wrong, and then they would lose confidence in their abilities and come to the conclusion that they just couldn’t do math.

The real world, and the people who inhabit it, do not resolve into clean and finite “whole number” solutions. Humans are messy and complex. People can be both kind, giving and caring in some situations while also being ignorant and selfish in others. The world is full of Rational numbers, deal with it!

Love him or hate him, in the interview with George Stroumboulopoulos on Canadian television, George R.R. Martin said “…the battle between good and evil is fought within the individual human heart…all of us have the capacity for good, all of us have the capacity for evil, the same people have the capacity for doing it on different days…”.

Also when asked about writing “women” Stroumboulopoulos said “you write women really well, you write them really different, where does that come from?”. Martin’s reply was delivered humorously, but also with verity “I’ve always considered women to be people…” and after describing some of his research methods and drawing on communication with fans continued to say that “the main thing is empathy” because there is “a certain basis of common humanity”.

I think, the superhero comics that my older brother collected in the 80’s and 90’s attempted to capture this complexity in a number of ways. Anti-heroes were, in a sense, exploring that age old question of whether the “ends justify the means”. They also began to portray heroes as being both noble and imperfect. Unfortunately, those comics continued down a path of becoming increasingly more complex and, at the same time, more adult in content. Leaving young readers with only the simplistic, “Disney-fied” stories that led them to believe that good and evil are absolutes and there is no real middle ground or overlap. That’s just unrealistic and I think contributes to many young adults struggling with “black and white” thinking and the related anxieties and depressive symptoms that come with it.

The sentiments of the authors I referenced truly resonate with me. I have always enjoyed complex characters, whose motivations were not always clear, but felt honest and real. I try to emulate that spirit in the characters that I create. Of course, my work is directed to a younger audience. Younger readers may have some difficulty understanding characters whose behavior fluctuates and whose motivations may be multifaceted. It is a challenge to write material for a young audience that does not pander, but also does not overly complicate the story and I enjoy exercising my creativity to meet that challenge. Please be clear, I am not positioning myself in the same realm as the previously mentioned authors, but I do aspire to reach that level of skill and to create that passionate engagement in my audience. Only time will tell if I even come close, but I’m just getting started.

There are big things to come with my webcomic, Tate Earthlander. The first chapter (available in 4 parts on Globalcomix) is really just introducing the setting and the characters. I already have several more chapters outlined and have roughed out artwork for 2 of them. There certainly is room for improvement, as always, but I hope that I have managed to create something compelling for young readers (8 to 12 year old’s) and something that will encourage them to explore the complexity of the human condition, at an age appropriate level of course.

Thanks for joining me with my random, rambling thoughts, leave a comment about the interesting and complex characters that inspired you as a young person or as an adult.

And, as always, I’ll see you next time.

blackManic