1) Well, yeah. But I don't care as much about that. (As demonstrated by my fondness for Niki et al, perhaps.) I am okay with it being a slow-moving sideline so long as I find it an interesting one.
2) ...Yeah. There is that. And it's a problem.
3) I care less about that, because to me that's more a fandom issue than a canon issue, and people will woobify serial killers in any fandom given the tiniest of chances. And, yes, that bugs me, but it doesn't bug me so far as the creators are concerned. Even if they are more in touch with fandom than most.
And I like the added depth to Sylar. (Or, rather, to Gabriel.) I like having a scene in which I abruptly feel sorry for the psychopathic cannibal bad guy, because otherwise it feels too much like HE'S EVIL BECAUSE HE IS, OKAY. EEEEVIL. EVIL AND CRAZY AND TOTALLY OUTSIDE SOCIETY. Do I think his mother is the whole reason he turned out as he did? No, of course not, because plenty of people have parents like that and do not turn out to be brain-eating manipulative serial killers. (To the best of my knowledge.) But she clearly has contributed to the instability of a guy who started out several steps left of normal, and that does work for me. And is something I'd felt was lacking in Sylar -- not family issues specifically (although given that it's Heroes, I am so not surprised they went that way with it), but a backstory and a more human connection between the Gabriel he was and the Sylar he became, and any kind of reason he became the way he did. Besides the inherent nutso factor; that's clearly there, but I was never satisfied with Chandra's research being the only emotional catalyst for the sudden switch-flipping change between Mild-Mannered Watchmaker With Secret Yearning For More and Brain-Eating Psychopath. I wanted someone he did care about, even more than his ambiguous fondness for Mohinder, even if it was a teddy bear or someone's memory or a vaguely creepy celebrity-crush-cum-imaginary friend. (And the fact that his mother rejected him when he went psycho, by the way, I loved. Even if I felt the apparently accidental killing was vaguely irritatingly over the top.) I would have been okay if we'd never gotten any, because a tv show has time limits (especially since Sylar was largely a mysterious figure offscreen for the first several episodes), but I was glad we did.
And, sure, a distressing number of fans make him a woobie. But some sectors of fandom make everyone a woobie, just about, if they're in more than one episode (and sometimes then) and I don't see how a show could be written to avoid that. Let alone written satisfyingly.
That said, I would have preferred it if this particular side trip had happened earlier in the series. It would have been backstory then that wasn't inserted into the building-to-climax part of the show to the same degree, and I think the moral quandaries would have been less jarring if they'd happened when his body count wasn't quite so high. And then we could have kept it in mind while nonetheless seeing him continue to kill people and remove their brains, which might mitigate the "awww, all he really wanted was a hug" factor somewhat.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 12:57 am (UTC)2) ...Yeah. There is that. And it's a problem.
3) I care less about that, because to me that's more a fandom issue than a canon issue, and people will woobify serial killers in any fandom given the tiniest of chances. And, yes, that bugs me, but it doesn't bug me so far as the creators are concerned. Even if they are more in touch with fandom than most.
And I like the added depth to Sylar. (Or, rather, to Gabriel.) I like having a scene in which I abruptly feel sorry for the psychopathic cannibal bad guy, because otherwise it feels too much like HE'S EVIL BECAUSE HE IS, OKAY. EEEEVIL. EVIL AND CRAZY AND TOTALLY OUTSIDE SOCIETY. Do I think his mother is the whole reason he turned out as he did? No, of course not, because plenty of people have parents like that and do not turn out to be brain-eating manipulative serial killers. (To the best of my knowledge.) But she clearly has contributed to the instability of a guy who started out several steps left of normal, and that does work for me. And is something I'd felt was lacking in Sylar -- not family issues specifically (although given that it's Heroes, I am so not surprised they went that way with it), but a backstory and a more human connection between the Gabriel he was and the Sylar he became, and any kind of reason he became the way he did. Besides the inherent nutso factor; that's clearly there, but I was never satisfied with Chandra's research being the only emotional catalyst for the sudden switch-flipping change between Mild-Mannered Watchmaker With Secret Yearning For More and Brain-Eating Psychopath. I wanted someone he did care about, even more than his ambiguous fondness for Mohinder, even if it was a teddy bear or someone's memory or a vaguely creepy celebrity-crush-cum-imaginary friend. (And the fact that his mother rejected him when he went psycho, by the way, I loved. Even if I felt the apparently accidental killing was vaguely irritatingly over the top.) I would have been okay if we'd never gotten any, because a tv show has time limits (especially since Sylar was largely a mysterious figure offscreen for the first several episodes), but I was glad we did.
And, sure, a distressing number of fans make him a woobie. But some sectors of fandom make everyone a woobie, just about, if they're in more than one episode (and sometimes then) and I don't see how a show could be written to avoid that. Let alone written satisfyingly.
That said, I would have preferred it if this particular side trip had happened earlier in the series. It would have been backstory then that wasn't inserted into the building-to-climax part of the show to the same degree, and I think the moral quandaries would have been less jarring if they'd happened when his body count wasn't quite so high. And then we could have kept it in mind while nonetheless seeing him continue to kill people and remove their brains, which might mitigate the "awww, all he really wanted was a hug" factor somewhat.