Rantings: Why Dumb is Stupid

This may be a tricky story to tell, because it revolves around two characters from one of the game ideas I have dubbed too invested for me to share here, due to the time and page investment involved. But I believe I can get the general gist across without giving away details.

So here is the story of two women. The names have been changed to protect, well, to protect me really. Said characters were, in the original incarnation of this game idea, professional thieves, criminals, ne-er do wells, etc. They're not evil, at least in the world-conquering way that villains usually are in video games. They were more rivals to the party who took their failures personally. Well, one of them did. The first, who we'll call "L," was the brains of the operation. A professional thief, she was known for her elaborate plans, skills in infiltration, and an extremely large gun she stole from another villain. She thus became increasingly frustrated with every failure. Her partner, who we'll call "C," was more low-key, and by low-key I mean stupid. She didn't understand her partner's plans, her clumsiness and lack of observational skills usually was part of winning fight against them, and it was obvious she could barely avoid dying without her partner's constant supervision.

And it was funny, for what it was. It was also a total, unashamed rip-off of Kiyone and Mihoshi from Tenchi Muyo, though to my credit I at least made the blonde the smart one this time. But when I remade the entire story last year, in an attempt to make one of my oldest and most personal game ideas consistent with my current level of competency, something happened to them; I realized I had to do something new to make me give a damn about them.

I started to realize that this was very consistent with my work in character design over the recent years. One of the very easiest ways to make a character stand out is to make that character really stupid. This is very easy to telegraph to the audience; they behave like one of the classes of people we assume are stupid (the blonde ditzy cheerleader, the bullying child, the monosyllabic thug, etc.) they get confused with words we assume the audience will understand, they require exposition about every plan, and they misinterpret jokes and sarcasm literally, to name a few.

Why do we use characters like this? Well, the easiest answer is they provide comic relief. Another convenient answer for storytellers is the above-mentioned need for exposition. If a smarter character must explain a plot in the simplest way possible, then it also provides an excuse to give that information to the audience without breaking the reality of the story environment, and it especially helps justify common elements about the story's setting that any native with sense would know about from years of experience, but the audience is clueless about. A much less positive reason is to use the character's stupidity to target the identify of the person who is stupid. I shouldn't even have to mention the ways this could be insulting and offensive based on the stupid character's race, gender, or religion. But other social groups and identities are just as easy targets. Let's face it, gamers tend to be geeks or at least grew up as such, and we might still feel emotional conflict or even jealousy towards more popular social groups. The results are umpteen feral jocks, dimwitted preppies, and moronic authority figures.

I propose that while there are some cases where a genuinely stupid character is appropriate, this is a form of character definition we as an artistic culture should avoid. Never mind that it all too often becomes a cheap substitute for actual personality or it either is or it can easily be interpreted as petty revenge fantasies, it's not even realistic. Modern research on this subject tends to split what we call intellect into many categories: social skills, language skills, mathematical abilities, spatial awareness, and so on. Our stereotypical "dumb" characters might have some skill in social abilities or spatial abilities, but otherwise idiocy in one category reflects across multiple spectrums of intellect. And even the areas that dumb characters supposedly excel are often brushed aside. Instead of being portrayed as a shrewd manipulator of emotions and interpersonal dynamics, the high school ditz is simply portrayed as such a perfect physical specimen that she is attractive automatically. The brutish thug is portrayed as relying on pure strength, not any martial arts regimen or superior observational capacity.

I can't say that I am perfect on this subject, at least not yet. In my favorite game idea (which I once again can't go into detail here,) one of the characters remains such a dimwitted bully caricature that it could have been made 50 years ago. Another of the characters, however, has been transformed from a simple sadistic lackey into someone with a gift for wordplay, wit, and deception, making him both a deeper and a more dangerous opponent.

As for the ladies from my introduction, they have changed quite a bit from my original design. "C" is not the bimbo of the first idea at all. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but her problems are stemmed not from inherent stupidity, but by a form of naiveté. She is so committed to her friend and her ideals that she sees the two of them not as villains in the first place, but rather as noble, Robin-Hood like rogues. This hope still is often foolhardy, and it does get them in trouble; she once is so eager to defend her friend from an insult that she almost gets them both drowned when trying to retaliate. But it also humanizes her, sympathizes them both, and makes their own goals a reflection of the actual heroes. In fact, it makes their quest so much more interesting that I considered making their own spin-off game! Well, I would if the original game ever existed, but you see the point.