Hey! What's up, you guys? It's Connor, and today I'm here to do a BookTubeSFF babbles
topic. If you guys don't know, these babbles topics are just different
discussions about different things science fiction and fantasy. Today we are
talking about anti-heroes. Anti-heroes are characters that they do good things
but not for morally correct reasons. They're not the best people, but then
they get sucked into doing the right thing sometimes for the wrong reasons. Or
they can just be straight up not good characters, but they're the ones that you
follow. And so we empathize with their side of the story, and we root for them
anyway. I have 10 books here to show you guys, so
let's just get started. First up is The Red Knight from The Red
Knight by Miles Cameron. The Red Knight is the captain of a group of mercenaries,
and they are hired by an abbess to protect their fortress from the wild
which is different types of mythological creatures that are attacking their home.
I just really enjoyed this book when I read it. I don't know why I have not
continued yet. The Red Knight and his mercenaries are super funny, and they
aren't the greatest of people. But because they're interacting with a very
morally upstanding abbess, they slowly over time start to change a little bit,
and they start treating people better. And then they actually start caring
about this fortress that they are protecting and do everything that they
can to help this abbess out. I think that the Red Knight is a super interesting
anti-hero, and I definitely recommend this one. Next up is Luffy from One Piece.
Luffy wants to be the king of the pirates which is not a very morally
upstanding goal to have in mind. When he was younger, he met a pirate, and because
of that pirate, he wants to be a pirate too. He steals from people, and he fights
people. And he doesn't do the greatest of things, but then he always ends up
helping people as well because he's not a bad guy... but he wants to be a pirate
which is a bad thing. I just really enjoy the One Piece manga series. I haven't
gotten too far into it, but so far I'm really enjoying Luffy and his pirate
crew. Here is some of the artwork. It's not the most detailed artwork in the world, but
you cannot help but root for Luffy and the people that he ends up recruiting
for his pirate crew. And they always ends up fighting these people and helping
other people out like this little boy here. Next up is
Miriam from the Miriam Black series by Chuck Wendig. This is the first book
Blackbirds. It follows Miriam. Once she touches
someone, she knows exactly when and how they're going to die, and she uses this
ability to steal from people continuously. She hunts down people that
she deems aren't worth keeping their money and goods, and she will be there
and be present for when they die so that she can steal from their bodies which
obviously is not a very moral thing to do. But you cannot help but root for her.
She has this very devastating ability that which gives her really terrible
visions of people being murdered, or people being hit by cars, or people
taking their own lives. She sees everyone's death, so that's had a big
impact on her mentally. The people that she goes after are bad people so people
that have done bad things in the past or people that are murderers or stuff like
that. It all changes when she touches someone
who she sees that she is gonna be present for their death, but she deems
that they're a good person. So she knows that she's not gonna be the one that
helps kill them. It's a very, very interesting novel. I really love Chuck
Wendig's writing. It's just very engrossing and very fast-paced. Because
Miriam is so fatalistic and pessimistic, it's a very funny look on everything
that's happening. I definitely enjoyed Miriam as an antihero. Next up is Jedao
from Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. I read this book last year. and I did a book
review for this if you want to know more about the world set up because it's
quite confusing. I'll leave that up in the card symbol. But it follows this girl
that's a part of this one section of society, but she was so smart that she
could have been in a couple of different sections. But she chose this one on
purpose. The military force of this world this society ends up needing her to host
the spirit of a dead traitor. He's done awful, awful things in the past, but I
really enjoyed seeing him interact with Charis who's the main character. I viewed
Jedao as an antihero because you don't really know if he's nuts or not. What are
his motivations? Why does he choose to do high-cost alternatives when he could
have done this and more people would have lived kind of thing? What is his
true end game, I guess really? So I enjoyed him a lot,
and he does good things. But he doesn't do them in the best way possible.
Yeah, definitely recommend reading about Jedao
because he is very interesting. Next up is Light Yagami from The Death Note
manga series by Tsugumi Oba and Takeshi Obata. Light Yagami is a young boy. He
finds this thing called The Death Note, and if you write someone's name in the
Death Note, they are going to die. If you don't specify anything, they just die of
a heart attack. Light comes into possession of this Death Note and
decides he wants to make a better world, and he starts killing off tons and tons
and tons of criminals. Throughout the course of the novel <text: manga series*> people are trying to
find out who is doing all these killings, how they're doing them, and how to stop
them. Light is trying to stay anonymous and kill off the criminals continuously. He's
definitely an anti-hero because he's trying to make a better world but he is
murdering tons of people. It is a very interesting manga. It's very suspenseful
because you don't know if he's gonna get caught. When he's gonna get caught?
What's gonna happen if he gets caught? All of those different things: who he's
gonna kill, who he's not gonna kill. You have no idea, and he teams up with a
death God to accomplish all of these things. After that is Prince Zuko from
Avatar: The Last Airbender I love Prince Zuko. He has one of the best redemption
arcs ever. He starts off as this guy who's trying to hunt down the avatar, and
then he starts to realize that the Fire Nation isn't the best place to be from
and their way of thinking is not the greatest. I just loved Prince Zuko's
character. I enjoyed him in the cartoon. I'm enjoying him in the comics. He has
the ability to control fire. If you guys don't know what Avatar is, I'm shocked.
But there are four different elements that people are able to control: air, fire,
earth and water. And Prince Zuko is from the Fire Nation. He is able to control
fire, and I just enjoy reading about him as a character so much. After that I put
the Six of Crows crew on here especially Kaz... actually all of them. Each of them
has a reason for being in this thieving, heisting group, and I think that each
of them are very interesting characters. Some are more interesting than others. I
think Kaz is probably one of the more interesting characters, and Nina is
definitely my favorite character in their little group. But they all make
their living by stealing things from other people and cheating people out of
their possessions. All have different vibes to them, and so it makes the book
really entertaining. This one follows them as they're
trying to steal the source of a formula from these other people. It just so
happens that that source of the formula is another person, and I just really
enjoyed this duology. Naturally it follows that I would have the Mistborn
crew on here as well led by Kelsier who is the greatest. All
the members of Kelsier's crew also are thieves and they cheat people out of
their money as well. So a similar vibe to Six of Crows but instead of trying to
steal this formula for this other person that hired them, Kelsier and his crew
decided that they want to take down the government and kill off the leader
that's been controlling this world for generations and generations. Kelsier was
such an interesting anti-hero because he's doing it for revenge. Like, he does
not care as much about freeing this world from this evil lord ruler. He is
doing it because he was thrown in these pits which are basically like a prison.
It's a death sentence really, but he survives. His wife unfortunately did not.
So he is taking revenge for his wife's death, and he wants to kill the Lord
Ruler. That's his motivation. It's not to save all of the skaa who have been
treated like trash, He was himself wronged by this person,
and he wants to get back at him and kill him. All of the other people also have
different motivations. They all think that they're gonna get some big rich
cache of a rare metal that is found in this world, and that is why they're doing
it. They're not doing it to save society They're not doing it to help the world. They're
doing it because they want to get money or they want to get revenge, and then as
the story goes along, it changes a little bit. But that was the seed of motivation
of each of these characters, and so they're definitely anti-heroes. And you
guys know how much I absolutely love this book. And I wrote out notes to do a
huge, long review and discussion of this book, but I never did it. So hopefully
this year sometime I might reread this book again and actually do that review.
Second to the last book is gonna be Curse Words. This one follows this wizard
who is an evil wizard, and he gets sent to Earth to destroy it. But then once he's
here, he decides that he likes it better on Earth than he did on his home planet.
He decides that he is gonna become a wizard for hire,
and he wants to protect Earth. Obviously the people that sent him are not gonna
love that, and so he has to continuously protect Earth from the people that sent
him to earth to keep them from destroying it. This is so funny because
he is a villain, so he's not good at doing superhero/ good guy stuff. So
the way that he saves people is that he shrinks them, and then he can't figure
out how to make them large again. So then he kind of just hides him away, and it's
just really funny. And I enjoy his talking koala. I have not read volume two yet.
I'm not sure if it's out yet, but I definitely recommend this one because it
is so humorous. And the last anti-heroes that I'm going to talk about for this
video are going to be Locke Lamora and his crew from the Lies of Locke Lamora
AKA The Gentleman Bastards. Locke is definitely one of my favorite
anti-heroes. He's compared to a Robin Hood-like character where he steals from
the rich, but he's not really Robin Hood because then he doesn't give to the poor.
He just steals from the rich and then keeps all the money, and his crew just
acquires more and more wealth. And then they can use that wealth to get better
costumes and better props so that they can steal more. They worship this unnamed
13th god, I believe. I don't know what number it is,
but it's the unnamed or the unknown. <text: Nameless*> I can't remember now, but it's the god that
doesn't have a name. But it's just a very interesting story, and you have no idea
how it's all gonna come together at the end. But then it always ends up coming
together. Locke and Jean are, like, the greatest. I just love it so much. So those
are all the anti-heroes I'm going to talk about in this video. If you liked it,
please give it a big thumbs up and comment down below some of your favorite
anti-heroes. If you guys want to know more of my favorite anti-heroes - because
I have a few other ones that I haven't talked about yet - let me know that down
in the comments, and I will talk to you guys next time. Bye! <finger gun and clicking noise>
No comments:
Post a Comment