*Rant* Stupid MCs in modern manhuas and novels

So I discovered a manhwa called Revival Man and binge-read to the latest chapter. Throughout the entire story so far, the protagonist is your typical unemployed, down on his luck guy who can't catch a break because of how he is. With that said, I found myself asking so many times during my reading: Why the f*k is this guy so goddamn retarded? The way he proactively flaunts his ability and just reveals so much about himself for his enemies to study. The way he never truly finished off a person despite knowing the he ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO. The fact that up till this point, he has not killed a single person and brought the head count of the enemy down on his own. It is mind-boggling how stupid this is.

I understand that a lot of these manhwas require you to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride, but when in a modern setting, how can author be so disingenuous and make the MC so autistic that the reader feels so much frustration getting through the story. I find it particularly amazing how almost every single one of stories with this kind of problem come exclusively from the Asian region. I've read and even written fan fiction with more character building and depth of narrative. Is it really that hard for authors of action stories to not make their character a point on the autism spectrum? What are your thoughts on this phenomenon as we see it developing in the novels we read?

 

well, its because those story sell a lot for younger audience. so, money makes you slave I guess.

 

Entertainment in this case does not require logic.

 

I agree with the money analysis. I don't think that it is limited to the Asian region. Have you read any teenage fiction

 

What if the author is on the autism spectrum and doesn't understand other mindsets?
flaw in your reasoning.

 

I dont think you understand, these novels aren't meant as some form of artistic expression of talent from an author or individual. anybody in their bedroom can make a story even if they suck balls if they have a computer. Even more for an "artist" who puts on a manhua yet has the writing ability of a goblin with dyslexia. Also the culture is just that in China of control and it seems shit like this is their only outlet for self expression (even of retardation) so it's basically a drug for asia region. Welcome to actual oppression and the cancer than comes with it.

 

So in a modern setting it makes sense for some random guy to be able/willing to kill people? It's not actually that easy to take a life. For the majority of people, at least. Even trained soldiers have trouble with the act of killing, so why should a civilian be willing to go through with it?

If that's your only problem with it, he's a lot more realistic of a character than most Chinese WN protagonists at least...

 

Love the “goblin with dyslexia” ... but you know what’s weird, I can actually sympathize with that. Still working on a story of my own making, and the more I write the more I realize how horrible my vocabulary is. Grammar, plot, world building, everything. The more I read and write the worse it seems. Goblin with dyslexia, indeed.

 

Grammarly is a nice little plugin to check spelling and grammar on a very basic level.

But yeah most stuff you'll find here will be light reading with a plothole here and there. Buckle up and enjoy the ride

 

You don't get it, it's not about killing a random person on the street, it's about killing off your enemy so that you and your friends and family can survive and be safe in the future. I guarantee you that 99% of the modern population today will rather kill somebody than getting killed themselves, that's just logic. So no, he is not more realistic than CN protagonist because people like that don't exist in real world. And don't get me started on how CN novels world is different from ours. When you see how bad and cruel other characters in cultivation worlds usually are, MCs are saints compared to them. In fact, if you wanna have a protagonist that's more realistic then he should be more evil, because like I said people are like that, and only maybe 1% of people today are kind-hearted naive idiots like 100% of protagonists from Japnese manga and novels.

 

People aren't logical. And no, they will not. Like I said, even soldiers on the battlefield aren't always willing to kill their enemies. People actively shooting guns at them or their friends. A large part of combat training has become teaching people to shoot reflexively, building up camraderie for your friends, human-shaped targets for target practice, all for the purpose of making people ready to kill, but... even then, it's not enough. Again, this is about people who are in a situation where the other person is trying to kill them. With enemies at their mercy, it's even harder to justify killing them. For a normal person.

Now, take away all that training. An average person won't be willing to kill, no way, nuh uh. They might do it accidentally while trying to protect themselves, but if they can avoid killing they will. There are people able to kill without training or having no option but kill or be killed right now, but those people are the exception, not the norm.

 

I would suggest reading the manhwa I talked about in my rant. If you break down the actual reasoning for his willingness to attack the organization knowing that he's going to revive in 3 days. Then you can see he has no problem killing himself to protect the high school girl living beside him. Again and again despite threatening to blow himself and everybody up, he never takes the shot and does it. Effectively hurting not only himself, but the high school girl he's trying to protect as well as everybody around him. If you for sure know that the people around you do nothing but suffer because of you're cowardice to permanently end the threat, then you have zero right to feel bad when bad things happen to them.

It's standing your ground and nobody needs training when backed into a corner. The survival instinct that has been hard-coded into our DNA through hundreds of millions of years of evolution will make kind and decent people capable of appalling violence. History is chock full of examples of this and if you would like an example, I would recommend you read Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning. It is a great look into the psychology of good men and how they can be corrupted by their environment.

In the novel, this is the choice the MC is presented and like a coward he is toyed with by the people who hurt his love interest(?) the most. It's unbelievable to me that that is acceptable, regardless of the age demographic. If anything, more violence would be the key to really connecting with teenagers, especially boys because of the natural tendency towards violence that all men instinctively have. The Chinese novels where the protagonists go on a murdering rampages to avenge some slight is what the readers want, that's why there's so much of it. However, that violence is all based off the fact that the MC is in the right. Other than the novels where the MC's are devils or evil by nature, nobody wants to see an evil guy kill others, it's not fun because we expect that. Good people murdering others is where the "fun" lies, because of the fact that most people think they are good and the situations where they can settle their fights with violence allow for the most primal release of anger.

 

... No, survival instinct isn't "if I don't kill him now, he'll kill me later", it's "I'm being attacked so I'd better fight back until he stops attacking or run away". Even then, it's not about killing, but about incapacitating. Actually having the determination to kill someone, that's hard. The examples you gave aren't salient because those people didn't decide for themselves to become killers. They were told to do it, they saw comrades doing it, etc. All they had to do was not think about it. This guy has no one else to blame for the decision to kill but himself.

Killing people is also a great way to get yourself arrested, and apparently a sentence to life in prison would be a bigger issue than death to this guy. Not that I'm going to read it; doesn't sound like my kind of story.

 

Again the guy is an immortal who is fighting against what is basically the Korean underworld. Even if he goes on a mass murdering rampage with a bomb, he won't get in trouble. He has entered a seedy world of violence and gore after being actually killed by gangsters in downright horrible ways, multiple times. The fact that those horrifying experiences have zero effect on his personality and psyche in regards to the adoption of violence is laughable. If you were murdered multiple times and you felt the visceral pain every single time alongside it, any human being would develop cynicism towards the mere concept of death. My example is completely salient because through his own choices he has inserted himself into a violent world where death is a part of life. His induction was being fatally stabbed and then tied to a cement block and tossed off a bridge into a river. That's how this guy realized his ability and the fact that such a brutal death and constant violence towards him and his loved ones doesn't register on a deep psychological level is unrealistic. How he goes mucking about with his severely flawed and naive sense of justice is what causes his loved ones to fall into misery, that is my frustration with protagonists like this. They lack the basic humanity to understand that unless they get their hands dirty, people around them will die and they have no one but themselves to blame.