How Do You Become a Badass

[amdreams]

As you can probably tell by the title of this thread, I'm asking about "Badass" characters, partly how to write them.


Now I put "badass" in quotations because, well, the characters I'm referring to (though not directly) don't really seem badass to me. With these characters, I get the feeling that they're trying way too hard to make their characters seem like tough action heroes, that it rarely works. At least to me, they seem more obnoxious and annoying. They're constantly getting into fights, either with other characters or npcs they created purely for fighting. They're either always dodging attacks or laughing off direct hits. Running and fighting all the same despite having a hole in their torso. Crushing skulls, like, a lot. Always ignoring authority or rules but are somehow always better "heroes" than those that do.


Anyway, back to the subject at hand, due to these characters, I'm often thinking about what exactly makes a character badass? Is it a set list of things you need to exhibit?m Is it simply the way you right them? Or is it purely the opinions of others? So, what I want to know is how would you people define what makes a character badass? How do you write them? What sort of things make you think someone else's character is badass?


And on a side note, I have a similar feeling about some "cute" characters. How the writer seems to try too hard and thus it has the opposite effect on me. So I'd like your opinions on "cute" characters as well if possible.


Thank you for the time you took to read this.

 

[JayTee]

It's about 10% luck, 20% skill, 30% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 15% pain and 20% having an excellent name.


Non-joke Translation: Being badass is about a lot of immaterial factors coinciding in the right way in the right time to produce something greater than the sum of it's parts.


It's difficult to define, but you tend to know it when you see it, and you know fake badass when it postures like it's real badass.

 

[Bone2pick]

As a primarily action/adventure roleplayer I appreciate a well put together badass. What the word means to me is simply a character who can strike fear into those who would oppose him/her. So the unconfident character hoping to muster up the courage to say no to the mob enforcer isn't a badass, he/she isn't capable and threatening enough. But when the 'take no prisoners' mercenary sticks his gun in a mob goon's face (assuming the scene is written competently) he's being a badass. He's in charge, he controls the conflict.


Do I enjoy reading a powerful action character that also feels stock and underdeveloped? Not remotely. Being just a badass won't hold most readers interest. I'm going to need to care about the character sooner rather than later, and combat alone doesn't build reader investment.


In conclusion badass characters can be entertaining, but they'll need to be more than that for people to care.

 

[Sunbather]

I find mental strength and confidence to be more badass than anything. You may even bow to authority or retreat. If your character seems grounded and absolutely in touch with who he/she is, then the character will give off a very specific vibe. And that, for me personally, is pretty badass.

 

[Archie]

It's a good question

As you can probably tell by the title of this thread, I'm asking about "Badass" characters, partly how to write them.
Now I put "badass" in quotations because, well, the characters I'm referring to (though not directly) don't really seem badass to me. With these characters, I get the feeling that they're trying way too hard to make their characters seem like tough action heroes, that it rarely works. At least to me, they seem more obnoxious and annoying. They're constantly getting into fights, either with other characters or npcs they created purely for fighting. They're either always dodging attacks or laughing off direct hits. Running and fighting all the same despite having a hole in their torso. Crushing skulls, like, a lot. Always ignoring authority or rules but are somehow always better "heroes" than those that do.


Anyway, back to the subject at hand, due to these characters, I'm often thinking about what exactly makes a character badass? Is it a set list of things you need to exhibit?m Is it simply the way you right them? Or is it purely the opinions of others? So, what I want to know is how would you people define what makes a character badass? How do you write them? What sort of things make you think someone else's character is badass?


And on a side note, I have a similar feeling about some "cute" characters. How the writer seems to try too hard and thus it has the opposite effect on me. So I'd like your opinions on "cute" characters as well if possible.


Thank you for the time you took to read this.

Good question I never thought about this and it's a smart thread


I think the "badass" characters you met broke the cardinal rule of badass adn that is not caring what other people think


If thye're picking fights with other characters or laughing off direct hits it means the roleplayer is protecting his/her ego and the character is trying to act tough


But the essence of badass characters is the mentality "I will do it, and nothing will stop me"


Let's do some examples.


Who is more badass?


1. A tough muscular guy standing 7 feet tall who's a bouncer outside the bar, crosses his arms and has 50 tattoos, and if anyone laughs at him he beats their heads into the ground, t-bags them, mocks them, insults their family, and urinates in their mouths while laughing


2. An old 80 year old man who lost both his legs but was a veteran who, despite being athsmatic, was top of the list in the special forces at one point. Practices every day and has amazing arms because he moves around with them and does a ton of pull ups. When people try to mug him, keeps on going with his wheelchair before they stop him, and only then does he beat two of them up, then just rolls on and says nothing, since he has more important things to do.


#2 is badass. #1 is disgusting. Why? Because #2 overcame a lot "nothing will stop me" and nothing is gonna stop him from going home, while #1 might be the perfect type of a masculine guy who scares people, but scaring people isn't the goal. He's a total douche and it's clear he has ego problems.


Douches put people down because they're sensitive. Badasses don't care.


Stoicism is a big part of badass in the past, where you say "nobody but you can change how you feel" and accept stuff that comes along, but don't change the plan. Ancient stoics bathed in ice cold water. Because they could, that's why.


Which leads into how the players you're RPing with are thinking too much to have their characters be badass. Badass choices aren't always good ones, but they involve very little thinking and are really simple and direct because they don't care.


Second principle is make no concessions. This hurts people a lot, but it happens.


I don't know a lot of historic stories, but there are some that stand out a ton.


Greeks ruled half the mediterranean pretending to be Romans after Rome fell. But they had an age old problem: Persia


The Persian emperor invaded the Greeks in the 600s. The Greek emperor, Phocas, paid them and gave them land to focus on internal problems. Sensible right? Not badass.


He was overthrown eventually by Heraclius. The Persians came knocking again. This time, Heraclius basically said come at me. In an exhausting but brilliant campaign, Heraclius pushed them out and defended the Greek empire.


In the process, he bankrupted his whole country, killed tens of thousands, created hyperinflation, and made his empire so tired that it lost to a disorganized band of tribes just a decade later: the Arabs.


He was a badass, and Phocas wasn't, because Heraclius refused to give in, even if he paid the ultimate price.


Cute characters:


To them, the main thing's the mindset "I'm not going to assume anything bad". Gossips? Not cute. Suspicious eye glances? Not cute. Looks of hate? Not cute. Wide eyed, uncomfortable when people bring up bad stuff? Cute.


But giving people a torrent of compliments? Not cute, manipulative. And that's cynicism, the opposite of cute. Any character who tells everyone how sweet they are we have an instinct in saying "they're out to get something - aka bad", and cute is all about assuming nobody's bad (not necessarily that everyone's good).


Works with bodies too. Pain-stricken, jacked body? Not cute. Flawless but skinny? Cute, because it's natural beauty without pain.


--


Hope this helps.

 

[JayTee]

Well said.

 

[SavedBySept]

I think the "badass" characters you met broke the cardinal rule of badass adn that is not caring what other people think

Essentially sums up what I was going to say, but much better said.

 

[RedTimbre]

I think the "badass" characters you met broke the cardinal rule of badass adn that is not caring what other people think

Or is it purely the opinions of others?

The irony is thick enough to waterboard someone with this concept. I completely agree with you @Archie when it comes to being a bad ass in real life. And, I liked your comparison between the huge meat head and the old man. I think with regards to reality you've nailed it: unfortunately, the art of fiction is so perversely opposite of reality that we often are forced to be as unrealistic as possible.


In other words: a bad ass character, as opposed to a real human being, derives his status entirely from the perception of others. In my opinion you have to, as a writer, employ the skill and dedication that's indicative of a real life bad ass in order to cater to the expectations of your audience: they need to be left a trail of bread crumbs in order to reach the conclusion that a character is a bad ass on their own. There's nothing worse than the tatted up ass hole who just demolishes everything in his path because he can. That's not bad ass because you're not leaving a trail of bread crumbs - you're suplexing your readers into an industrial bread oven at Subway.


However, I'm not saying Archie is wrong about needing to not care what others think. There's all sorts of ways to have that element lend to a character appearing bad ass to your audience. The beautiful irony is that in order to create a character that doesn't care what others think - in order to make others think he's a bad ass - you have to care a profound amount as the writer in order to do it right. That's why this is so relevant:

If thye're picking fights with other characters or laughing off direct hits it means the roleplayer is protecting his/her ego and the character is trying to act tough

You need to care enough to properly make your character appear not to care - for the sake of seeming like a bad ass - while not caring too much about your ego in the process. There will always be an element of ourselves in our characters, we just need to remember that them losing a fight doesn't make us lesser beings in the real world.


The word "care" is starting to lose it's meaning to me in this redundant ass post.

You may even bow to authority or retreat.

To me, this is what really makes a bad ass. They have to have limitations and real hurdles to over come. I like Archie's old man because that's a serious set of handicaps to look at in the mirror every morning. But, the guy just turns the "I don't give a fuck" knob to 11 and does what needs to be done anyway. Being a bad ass isn't doing something just because you can: it's trying to do something simply because it needs to be done, even if it's very possible that you can't.

I have a similar feeling about some "cute" characters. How the writer seems to try too hard and thus it has the opposite effect on me.

/vomit


I can't stand this at all when it's done wrong. No nuance, no subtlety: don't tell me how to feel about your character. Just like with the bad ass: you need to care enough to lead me to the desired conclusion, not brand the center of my forehead with contrived adjectives that I'm forced to look at every morning in order to try and beat my subconscious into submission. Anime is a huge offender of this - though, as role players we have far more flexibility with the written word which can result in a far more heinous infraction of abusing our reader's sensability.


And, this goes for pretty much any set of attributes or characteristics you can imagine: bad ass, cute, sexy, sly, witty etc. etc.


If you want your audience to feel that way about your character, then you need to paint a picture of the type of person that embodies those things to you yourself. Create for me a portrait of an attractive woman with your words - don't blind side me with a 10 foot neon sign that just says "SEDUCTIVE!" And, if you craft the image of a beautiful person - using your own standards - and your reader doesn't find them attractive: fuck 'em. I've never once looked at Angelina Jolie and thought "damn gurl, I just wanna be wit u." There's no one thing that everyone will agree on, so don't kill yourself trying to convince everyone at once.


Here comes the irony train again: you can care too much as a writer - about the wrong things - and the end result will be your character coming across as the very antithesis of what it was you set out to create in the first place.


TLR: Care about your creations enough to carve an interesting path for your readers to follow in order to achieve their desired perception. Don't force feed your audience and never tell them how they should feel - subtlety is your strongest weapon.

 

[amdreams]

Wow. These are some amazing responses and I really do love what everyone has to say. It certainly gives me a whole lot to think about, that's for sure. Still, it's nice to know that what I've seen was not how you'd go about doing it. I'd hate to think that they were right and somehow my perception of things have inverted.

 

[AlexSilverX]

The 5 rules of bad-assery (totally a word) are basically:

1. If you must put in serious effort to be one, you're not one.
   
2. Do not care what other people think of you.
   
3. Losing is not an option. Avoid it as often as possible. This causes what is known as "badass decay". You can be out-skilled, or out-muscled, or (in the case of the old man above) out-abled, but must avoid defeat at all cost. If you can't win (and look damn good doing it too) find a way to avoid the situation altogether (see rule 4)
   
4. A real badass doesn't just out-muscle and out-skill, he out-thinks. Good comebacks and Strategical gambits are the domain of the badass, putting him a league above the "muscle head", the "martial arts master" and this combined with his other assets puts him above the "wisecracker".
   
5. The most important rule after rule #1, despite its complete contradiction of rule #2 which is equally important; What matters is what others think of you, not what you think of yourself. You don't become a badass by claiming you are one, but by being called one.
   

EDIT: The dictionary definition (google dictionary) of "badass" is simply;


bad·ass


ˈbadˌas/


NORTH AMERICAN, informal


noun

1. 1.
   a tough, uncompromising, or intimidating person.
   "one of them is a real badass, the other's pretty friendly"
   • 
     

adjective

1. 1.
   tough, uncompromising, or intimidating.
   "a badass demeanor"