Quote:

Wednesday said:
2. He's a bossy turd.

This is my slightly-less-unPC way of saying he's an asshole. In your very first story post, SMM showed up and immediately began bossing Wednesday and Ace around. In your most recent post, SMM called Wednesday the leader and immediately called a team meeting which he presided over with an iron fist. "Liberally sticking the boot in to get the JLR off their backsides, Spandex finally gets the meeting under way." That may make you feel good but from the outside it look like just another SMM glorifying post.

Wednesday hasn't been your only victim, though. The entire JLR has been smacked by His Lord Majesty SMM. Do you really think the rest of us want to deal with a character that scorns our own and does his best to make the rest of us look like idiots? Don't get me wrong, the rest of us are fine and dandy with our characters looking bad--that's always been a part of the JLR's shtick--but not when it's done for the sole purpose of making SMM look good.

The JLR doesn't need someone to waltz in and become its problem solver. This is a team thing, not an SMM thing.

Now, as far as being the team's chief asshole is concerned, Wednesday is your only real competitor, methinks. That's due, in part, to the fact that I am an asshole. I'm so much of one, in fact, that I'm gonna use my own character to illustrate how a character can be the right kind of asshole...

The difference is that, while Wednesday can be a big, gaping asshole at times (see my most recent post to the story), he's an asshole for the sake of comedy, not for the sake of making himself look good. He's an asshole drowning in his own flaws.

(I don't think I've ever typed the word "asshole" so many times in one sitting.)

Which leads me to the last thing...

3. He's written as a man who can do no wrong.

Wednesday is, quite often, about as wrong as wrong can be in his choices. His self-centered attitude gets him in trouble 9/10ths of the time. He thinks he's great but that couldn't be further from the truth, and that works for our stories. Yeah, he does come off as looking real cool sometimes, but that's usually followed shortly after by him looking real bad.

But he's not the only character that's looked bad at times. Chant is probably the best of us at poking fun at his own character. Chant can fumble the ball just like anyone else, perhaps better. Fused, TTT, and Dogg do an excellent job of balancing the good with the bad in their characters. They're more than ready to laugh at themselves. Because of this, their characters come off as three-dimensional, and because of that these character come off as interesting.

But SMM is practically faultless. Does anyone really like that? Just ask the guys who write Superman. They constantly have to work against the perfection of their character to make him interesting (and they often fail miserably). Just ask the guys who write JL and JLA. Superman's constantly being downplayed to fit him into the team schematic. Just ask any of us who had to write MS during his (young) Nightwing days. Now that was a guy who got very little time in the light (until later).



To respond to you second point first, I've tried to balance Spandex's character, drawing attention to his less heroic facets in an attempt to point out just what a git he is. Maybe this was the wrong tack to take, but it's what I tried and I can't do anythign else now because having undergo a radical change of character mid-story wouldn't work.

And as for Wednesday's 'asshole-for-comedy' solution, being English I struggle to write the same kind of humour as the rest of you. In terms of comedy, I'm a satirical kind of person, so making a joke of Spandex's flaws (and there are hundreds, believe me) is difficult for a person who can't write that sort of comedy.

Spandex is not written as a character who can do no wrong. He deliberately gloated over Islington at his death, treats the others as inferior due to an intellectual snobbery of quite vast proportions, and (this will come along later) has the lousiest temper you've ever seen. Hardly perfect, I think.

To respond to the idea of him being an asshole, that was a response to the likes of Wonder Woman and Batman, who act like they know best all the damn time and have a decidedly superior attitude. In fact, Batman was probably where I drew most of my major influences from in terms of character.

I don't want to glorify this asshole. That was never my intention. It's just that, well, I think the team needs some-one who will get them off their asses and out to work, otherwise they'd do nothing. With Brit currently out of action there's nobody to pull this off, so Spandex had to step up to the task. Unfortunately he's written as an asshole, so he comes across very badly. Do you see my problem?

OOK OOK ACK EEK!