this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I've always wanted to tell this kind of story in fiction:
Someone goes 90% of the path down a 'Joker' story - they're mistreated and abandoned by society, unable to live, much less achieve their dreams, basically because of their lot in life. They've caused extreme, grievous harm that could genuinely be categorized as self-defense. Then, just as they're planning some final, very climactic action with some strong weaponry to remove someone that makes them feel unsafe, someone DOES hear them out - and saves them from the path of becoming a full anti-hero, establishing in a large venue of society that every "heinous" action of his was a necessary act for human sanity, and could have been avoided by countless people in their path. Those who wronged him receive due punishment, and the cruelty he's been exposed to is revealed to society at large.
Granted, that kind of thing does sound like a hero power fantasy; but when 90% of the anime I see these days is trash isekai "I'm overpowered in this alternate world" type of stuff, it feels like a fantasy we want to have these days.
The real power fantasy is being able to help people. Because that's the worst sort of helplessness, seeing bad shit happen and knowing deep in your heart that there's very little you can do about it.
Even if we explore fantasy, something I like playing into is revealing that we are not always "the main character" of the world - the person initiating action. Sometimes it's extremely hard for this non-Joker character I'm depicting to realize that they are not an "anti-hero who's going to slice apart the corrupt strings of the world", he's just a victim of injustice - someone who shouldn't have had these things happen to them, but also has no individual path to follow for correction. They didn't do anything wrong, nor is there anything for them to do as a follow-up.
I've met people that seem like they need help to put their life in a good, working state, but their mind is preoccupied with the idea of what they can do to help others, even if, when it comes down to it, they're not so capable of that just yet. It might internally be a way of pushing further social connections and making themselves feel valued. It could also be an attempt to follow off the many hero fantasies we see in fiction.