This is a common phrase used to defend characters that are generally seen as, well, bad and seems to by and large be taken as fact: that any character, given the right writer and story, can be go from bad to good. So in that case, do you believe it? And who are some characters who you feel directly contradict that notion? Characters so bad as to be almost unsalvagable?
I'll go with quite possibly my least favorite cape character ever, Bling!. She is fucking awful right from the fact that her name has a stupid punctuation mark. But the entire character is just ill-conceived in general. She's a black girl who's the daughter of two rappers who turns into diamond. A little too on the nose.
But she'd merely be kind of lame if that was it. What makes her bad is everything else. Bling! is a lesbian which isn't a problem in and of itself but where it becomes a problem is that Bling! is also an incredibly entitled character who tends to act like a creepy stalker towards the female characters she gets crushes on. Most notably, this happened with her being a creep to Mercury and harassing her which led to Mercury decking her. Bling! cries to Jubilee about how Mercury is a mean old homophobe and then proceeds to sexually assault Jubilee by forcing a surprise kiss on her. How does this end? With Mercury "realizing" she's in the wrong and being the one who has to apologize and agreeing to date Bling!. Mind you, Mercury had been pretty exclusively straight up to this point with her relationship with Wither being a giant part of her character.
When not stalking, gaslighting sexually assaulting girls into dating her however (and being portrayed as stunning and brave and sassy and empowered for it), she spent her time in Generation X throwing a tantrum about how she should've been on a "real" X-Men team. So an ugly design, an even uglier personality and a generally poorly thought out conception. An all around wholly and irredeemably shitty character.
>When not stalking, gaslighting sexually assaulting girls into dating her however (and being portrayed as stunning and brave and sassy and empowered for it), she spent her time in Generation X throwing a tantrum about how she should've been on a "real" X-Men team. So an ugly design, an even uglier personality and a generally poorly thought out conception. An all around wholly and irredeemably shitty character. Don't forget how in Generation X she whined about how she needed to be on the X-Men because she's ugly so she feels entitled to be on the team
She doesn't take into account the fact that she rejected joining the New X-Men before, that her combat history is spotty at best, that she doesn't seem to have any real altruistic qualities or pattern of protecting other mutants or even a desire to fight
No she has to be on the X-Men because she'll never be accepted as a normal human and she has nowhere else to go, so fuck anyone else who is better suited to superheroics
And apparently she's suddenly an engineering whiz on the level of Forge
Jaxson Murphy
She's one of the mutants I wish died in the bus explosion. I'm just waiting for mutants who outright resent their powers, it's why I liked Mercury. Mercury literally couldn't fucking eat, she lost her sense of taste, need for sleep, lost touch and smell, and loads of other things that made her feel less than human.
I know of like two places that shipped Mercury and Bling. It was solely because Mercury was Metal and Bling was crystal.
Bentley Flores
I think that only stretches to a point, a good character has more potential for many more good stories.
Superman is a good example, he's kind of boring and the majority of Superman stories are not interesting, but s great writer can still do a great run like All-Star-Superman. But writers obviously can't make Superman as consistently interesting as someone like Spider-man and Batman.
I don't agree with it. Because at a certain point I think you have to or should accept you're writing a different character. Hey here's this character no one likes for the following reasons. Let's scrub all that and make something everyone likes. It's a ship of Theseus kind of thing. How much is OK to change before you have something altogether different but just with the same name.
Ayden Perez
I mean, to a certain point yes, good writing can more than easily make up for a dull or bad conceit. And with how rapidly comic books ignore their own stories and history, it's nowhere near as difficult to salvage someone from character assassination if the readers are willing to give it a chance.
That said, when you mention "characters so bad as to be almost unsalvagable", I assume you mean concepts that are absolutely repellent they are to any potential audience that working on them is a waste of time. Cause those do in fact exist, i.e. DC's first planned black superhero The Black Bomber.
Easton Scott
kys
Ryder Hernandez
>Characters so bad as to be almost unsalvagable Hi there. I have no real purpose except to answer every 12-year old's question from the 1990's: >"Dude what if you combined Wolverine and the Hulk? That would be awesome!"
>"It's a ship of Theseus kind of thing" I would argue that this is a false equivalency. The Ship of Theseus scenario asks the question: >If you have a ship and you keep replacing the broken parts, once all the parts have been replaced is it still the same ship? This implies that the parts are being replaced with the exact same type of part. Characters being re-written/ret-conned is more like asking: >If one replaces all the parts with different types of parts is it still the same ship?
Jason Miller
In terms of capeshit there's only so much even the best writer can do because of the genre's limitations. Bling will never be allowed to grow up or graduate or be anything other than a mutant that stands in the background lamenting how much flatscans hate mutants because she didn't get her foot in the door early enough to be an important character and that's just what non important characters do in X-men. Until the sentinels or purifiers or some other group kills them so that the characters that actually matter can feel sad and avenge them.
Jacob Clark
That all just sounds like terrible writing though, not an admonishment of the character itself. Honestly most capeshit characters have a lot of flexibility and ride on aesthetics/powersets and sometimes background. Look at Mr. Freeze, who's to say a good writer couldn't find something good to do with this nobody X-Man?
Tyler Thompson
Her character is being a privileged cunt. She's a background character who exists for that, she really can't be expanded upon without knowledge of East Coast rap and also black lesbians. She's one of the most authentic black lesbians, I've seen written tough. The entitlement and total lack of morality is there.
Elijah Mitchell
Everything you complained about had to do with the writer though. Either she could have been written not to be a creep or she could have been written to be in the wrong, the former would be boring, the latter could actually be interesting, instead the writer is a virtue signaling retard.
Jaxon Bell
I don't really see your point.
How is any of that not the fault of bad writers?
Angel Peterson
I wish all of the new x-men/hellions died in the bus explosion, what a charisma vacuum. Gen X should have been the last group of students
Samuel Cruz
if she was super racist, it would be cool like this one fanfic with a half-black mutant that was so racist he put mutants below humans and himself above all of them
Connor Fisher
I agree and disagree. It's mostly a question of the writers not only having the skill to pull of a "bad character to good character arc", but they must also care about it to make it work. For example, Kaine Parker.
Leo Scott
I don't know why I can get SO behind Prodigy/Speed as a couple, but for some reason Mercury being bisexual is such a hard sell for me. I mean, Prodigy/Surge was just as heavily in the New X-Men comics as the Wither/Mercury subplot- but fuck. So hard to view Mercury as into girls. Maybe it is that it's Bling! who's her girlfriend when there was a heavy focus on how much she DID NOT like Bling! I don't even READ Bling! stories so shouldn't be phased, but the couple always struck me as off. I just can't buy Mercury as being into girls for some reason.
Anyway, Speed/Prodigy trashes the dull Hukling/Wiccan.
I guess once multiple writers write a character a certain way across many years it's just the character?
But even then all it takes is one writer to undo that via character development (if they were conceived as a shitty character) or to write the character how they were before (if a character is changed from how they were first conceived). Like Jade was originally a sweetheart if just a bit self absorbed in Infinity Inc, but then Winick, Raab, and Marz turned her the self-centeredness and bitchiness up to 10 in GL and Outsiders, and then Williamson decided to ignore what they did and write her more how she was originally in Infinite Frontier.
Evan Sullivan
If some parts of the ship are absolute shit and would sink the ship on open sea then it's is preferable that you replace them with parts that don't sink the ship.
Samuel Peterson
I'm so fucking glad Spurrier (I think?) seemed to ignore the relationship and put Mercury with Loa. I mean if we're just going to live in the Wild Gay West with characters, then I'd rather Mercury be gay with a cool and likable character like Loa than a piece of shit like Bling!.
Parker Brown
>lost her sense of taste, need for sleep Where do I sign up?
Brandon Cook
You pretty much proved the opposite point, OP, because you're not arguing against the character herself but against her presentation and usage.
Josiah Lewis
the concept itself is dumb, but his comic was surprisingly entertaining
Jaxon Wood
Her initial conception is stupid and dated and when a character is largely the same under multiple writers then it starts to feel like the character is the problem.
William Bailey
I mean, you can completely retool a character while trying to preserve the things you like about them conceptually. You might ask if it's the same character at that point, though.
People will whip out "oh they have so much potential" when they're literally in love with a D-Lister, but I mean, if they see that potential and it's really there, then I guess?
Noah Jackson
In this case you don't have to change anything about Bling, OP's complaint centers entirely around how the narrative reacts to her actions.
Jayden Rodriguez
>suddenly an engineering whiz on the level of Forge Why do they make so many characters supergeniuses?
Angel Allen
You can always tell when a severely autistic individual has spent too much time believing he could fix comic books if only he was in charge.
Dylan Russell
if characters in fictions are supposed to be representative of people. shouldn't they be allowed to be static? wouldn't allowing them to change be as representative of humans as possible. other wise wouldn't every redemption arc or switch in ideology by characters like Lex when he decided to join the League mean they made a whole new character or "scrubed" them? wouldn't all of the xmen with their multiple storylines where they evolve and change as people make them multiple characters instead of one?
change in characters is normal and fair.
and i do agree. there are no bad characters. just lazy and shitty writers.
you can make the most atrocious and dislikeable characters likeable. if you're writing is decent enough
its just a comicbook trope thats convenient to throw im to make characters figure things out they shouldn't.
Ethan Campbell
Duggan couldn't think of any reason why the mutant would vote for her to be on the X-men otherwise
Josiah Hall
this. OP sounds obsessed.
Brandon Watson
Isnt he coming back in some upcoming team book?
Juan Anderson
He even has pouches
Thomas Thomas
Savage avengers with Conan, Electra daredevil, black knight anti-venom, and cloak &dagger
Joseph Turner
Nice could be fun. Conan in marvel has been entertaining.
Landon Roberts
>But she'd merely be kind of lame if that was it. What makes her bad is everything else. Bling! is a lesbian which isn't a problem in and of itself but where it becomes a problem is that Bling! is also an incredibly entitled character who tends to act like a creepy stalker towards the female characters she gets crushes on. Most notably, this happened with her being a creep to Mercury and harassing her which led to Mercury decking her. Bling! cries to Jubilee about how Mercury is a mean old homophobe and then proceeds to sexually assault Jubilee by forcing a surprise kiss on her. How does this end? With Mercury "realizing" she's in the wrong and being the one who has to apologize and agreeing to date Bling!. Mind you, Mercury had been pretty exclusively straight up to this point with her relationship with Wither being a giant part of her character. This could all be handled by a good writer just by making Bling the antagonist of the story and the narrative making it clear she's in the wrong, turning her into one of those characters "you love to hate", you picked a really easy character to make decent for this subject.
Nolan Campbell
Consider this: Marvel has far more bad writers than good, especially for X-Men books
Hunter Cooper
How many x-men lesbian couples are there even? I think I read a new mutants issue where they show wolfsbane in a couple, some girl with wings and another girl and then there was another girl couple hugging and kissing, All on the same page. Still surprised how they still haven't done Magik X Kitty
But then doesn't Bling in a way kind of prove that quote? She was fine before that writer took over. Not great but alright, just a background character. She wasn't horrible from the start. Sher was just there, really. Yeah she was doing nothing but she was harmless at least.
Anthony Torres
Yeah, I've now realised I can't remember a major fight scene with Mercury. What does she do?
Thats probably why the writers did it too. Actually it was probably for a more dumb reason than that too, probably just "their skin is silver."
Adrian Gomez
See also: America Chavez. While I do feel the 3 examples I just drop disprove the quote, I also agree the Big 2 do have a lot of bad writers that shouldn't be underestimated when it comes to ruining characters in ways nobody ever thought of.
Kevin Taylor
Retcons and reboots can also help salvage a character and make it easier. Like America Chavez. Gabby Rivera fucked that character, who was growing in popularity thanks to her Young Avengers role. Rivera turned her into the mockery of the internet and a symbol of everything wrong with modern comic books, and a symbol of characters purely there to push diversity with no other sense of character beyond their race and sexuality.
So they just straight up retcon and reboot her origin and just wipe most of her run completely.
Logan Hernandez
I mean Chavez was already doing the,"Everybody gay when I come at them." shit, which is always the fucking worst.
Christian Richardson
I think X-Men is a prime example of what you said too due to the large cast of characters and each writer having their own unique favorites. Sometimes when a writer takes over we'll get complete and utter randoms on the X-Men team just because that writer likes the character. Like Marrow or Maggott's run in the 90s, Or Omega Sentinel and Lady Mastermind in the late 2000s. Then when that writer's run is finished they fade right into obscurity again and stop being important. Its entirely up to the writer and how they write the character, and it can entirely change the reader's perception of that character.
Carson Hall
Its all about chemistry. Prodigy and Speed have it, Mercury and Bling! Don't. In fact, they have anti-chemistry because like you said, they didn't like each other until they suddenl got together. The entire storyline before that was Mercury not wanting to be with Bling!
Also the issue with Hulking and Wiccan is that they're treat like the apex of the gay rights movement. They're absolute poster boys for homosexuality in Marvel. They were very sweet and genuine in early Young Avengers runs but nowadays its just them doing gay things and being gay and look at how gay we are.
Parker Bennett
That's how it always ends up.
Jaxson Thompson
But that's what happens to every myth. British King Arthur and French King Arthur are two different guys, hell most of the Arthurian myth is. They used the core concept but reframe the characters to fit whatever they prefer. Thing is, anyway giving copyright laws, companies are forced to either use characters or let them slip into public domain, so at the end they prefer to rework them into something new than to lose them.
Aaron Phillips
Sorry meant major fight scenes with Bling! Whats her role on X-Teams? What does she do? They're too scared to in case black lesbians yell at them on twitter.
Jeremiah Scott
I feel its easier to retool a character if they're a D-Lister as they have less of a fanbase. Like for example, Polka Dot Man in The Suicide Squad. Completely retooled, because they know fans weren't gonna complain that they changed his origin and powerset because its not like he's an important character with a huge fan base.
Evan Collins
>Homo superior >Next step in human evolution >Atleast half of them end up gay uhhhh
Matthew Thomas
Have you run the numbers? I though the vast majority was bisexual after the island.
Jacob Reed
>Yeah, I've now realised I can't remember a major fight scene with Mercury. What does she do? I think she managed to stop Hulk (recently back from his planetary banishment and pissed at everything on Earth) from wrecking the mansion by showing him all the graves on campus and convincing him that enough mutants have already died without his help.
Thomas Taylor
I don't know how Prodigy/Speed was an easily sell to anyone, it was literally "disregard their past, they're gay now because Gillen's writing and everyone in the book has to be gay now". Like is saying they're basically not the same characters anymore.
Sebastian Perez
Girl was ready to jump his dick first time they met. DeFilipis and Weir even said they intended for them to get together had they remained on the book.
I wholly believe in it. Even with "good" characters, the ratio of writers who actually have entertaining stories to tell with them versus those who are simply in it for the paycheck is always going to be uneven in the latter's favor just by way of how the industry works. In a way it'd be unfair to place all the blame on the characters.
That said, it's entirely true that there are characters that sorely test the limits of that statement. Even in those cases they simply need the right writer with the right story in-mind to refresh said characters. It's just unfortunate that those instances are one-in-a-million.
Even a Ship of Theseus argument begs the question of how much of the character is comprised of their initial presentation versus their core concept. Case in point: Batman. As originally created, he's just a vaguely bat-themed hero with a domino mask. Are the last 80-plus years of stories suddenly invalid because the modern version is so vastly different from the initial concept, let alone how he was originally portrayed in actual stories?
Long story short, if you scrutinize too much you won't be able to tell natural progression from radical revamp.
