The Hero & Villain Delusion

I just experienced one of the most brutal pieces of art on the cyclical nature of violence and the necessity of empathy. Many of you have brought up the idea of shadow work, and if anything is, this is that. I feel… scarred, but in a useful way. “Entertainment” rarely gets so under my skin. Still, I live to find this kind of work. 

   Deep in the Amazon, Asia, Australia, and even Africa, there live real-life zombies. No joke. We are merely separated by species-specific biology. Ophiocordyceps, a kind of fungus, takes control of the mind of its host ant, spider, or beetle and wreaks havoc on the surrounding insects. 

   (If you already know where I’m going with this because of something that you’ve seen, get your hands on a controller, because you need to experience the real deal. Not for the faint of heart, however.)

   One day this stuff mutates, and begins its work against humanity. Seeking safety during the initial outbreak, Joel watches his daughter get murdered at the hands of the government in an attempt to contain the illness. Years go by, and he grows jaded in a world turned pragmatic and heartless. 

   He unknowingly lands a job as a smuggler to take the last remaining hope for humanity across the country, the only known immune person, a girl named Ellie that’s about the age his daughter was. It’s hell getting there, but they invariably form a pseudo father/daughter dynamic, as she pulls the last remaining love out of this gruff old man. 

   They reach the research facility, where the vaccine is to be developed, but the procedure will kill her. The staff inform Joel, electively, knowing how he now cares for her. Joel kills all surgeons and staff to save Ellie while she’s under. When she wakes up, she asks him what happened. Did they find a cure? But he lies, telling her they just ran some tests, and that there are other immune people out there they’ve been studying. 

   Part 2. Random outing, Joel saves this lady from a swarm of zombies with adult Ellie not far in tow. She brings him back to her group, where they proceed to blow his leg off, hold him down, and beat him senseless with a golf club. Ellie races in while this is happening, hoping to stop whatever is going on. She’s held on the ground, forced to watch Abby (the lady Joel saved) deliver a final, horrific, crunchy blow to Joel’s skull. 

   This is where the plot kicks off for the 2nd game; you are avenging him, hunting down Joel’s murderers. You hate Abby. I hated Abby. The whole scene was so vile. So “immoral.” It literally had me clenching and squirming. Even though Joel might have “deserved” it, you’ve already fallen in love with the character. 

   You find a set of pics with all of Abby’s cohorts, and go hunting them down one by one. Just before you reach Abby, she escapes, making her way back to your shelter, killing your friend, and just before killing you—scene cut away. 

   You are now 13 year old Abby, back at the facility Joel saved Ellie from. You run to Ellie’s operating room, finding your father, the lead surgeon, bleeding out on the floor. For the rest of the game, you now play as Abby, seeking “justice” for her father. Doing your best not to be like his murderer, while simultaneously trying to avenge him. 

   You develop relationships with all the characters that were just “bad guys” to Ellie, each with their own beautiful, quirky personality. You find your love in cold blood after Ellie gets to him, along with your now-deceased, pregnant friend. 

   When the game reconvenes at the moment Abby gets the jump on Ellie, Abby tries to be the bigger person. She lets Ellie live. But that’s not good enough for Ellie. Game flips again! Back to Ellie hunting Abby. Ellie now has ptsd, and can’t get Joel’s death out of her head. Her violence is almost compulsory now.

   When you finally find her, she is nailed to a cross, by a slave-trading gang local to the area. You rescue her, thinking Ellie is going to see it as sufficient; instead, Ellie still wants to kill her. And Abby still doesn’t want to fight, knowing this is the justification Ellie is looking for. Ellie attacks her anyway and… I won’t spoil it fully. 

   By the end, I was team Abby. Yet, here I had already spent 40+ hours between two games, over several years, getting to know Joel and Ellie. I had started off hating her, having no idea what her motivations were, or what her moral compass was actually like. 

   This isn’t just a game about reciprocal violence. It's an interrogation of your empathy. By the end, you no longer want to hunt down the bad guys. You just want it to stop. It’s suddenly all gotten way too real. You move from judging the characters’ motives to judging your own motives in all your righteous indignation. 

   We don’t so much return physical blow for blow in today’s world, but personal attack for personal attack. It’s something I’ve been wrestling with, myself. 

   As the walk goes on, and social media grows, I feel my walls going up. My defenses growing. My desire to fight back, kindled by the fuel of so much hate in the world. 

   We all do this. It can be the beginning of individual violence, gang violence, or war. It’s also the justification for cutting off a great many relationships, cussing people out, and demonizing so many groups. “They said this or that, they like this or that, they do this or that.” And without the full story, “I would never…and this is what they deserve.” 

   We become punitive. But rather than anyone feeling like the bad little boy or girl we want them to, they just try to punish right back. If not directly toward you, they become more punishing in general, having become like the influence you were. And is it at all surprising? 

   Hollywood, news media, social media, and games are not influencing us with stories that develop our empathy; they are presenting us with “good guys” and “bad guys.” Us vs them. Hero vs villain. And now, it has become increasingly popular to anti-hero our heroes. The humanity of heroes is simply depicted as, “look, humanity is bad.” Rather than depicting “the bad guys” as often confused people trying to “do good.”

   We can lose ourselves so quickly to the stories we’re surrounded by. We can become cold, desensitized, prideful, and think in terms of black and white so easily. Because it is truly easier. 

   Good guys vs bad guys is an easy bedtime story that makes everyone sleep nice and justified at night. It’s still just a story though. A lazy one.

   We can’t lose ourselves to it. 

   The truth is far more complicated, but I know a few things that aren’t. 

   Love. Compassion. Selflessness. Empathy.