More Idiotic Hermes Concepts
Like I mentioned earlier, Dominic came by to visit he left me with Persona 3, which has slowly grown on me despite hating most of the characters, the gods awful music and having to fight in the same fucking dungeon over and over again (apparently he never thought I'd love this one and Persona 4 is much better but I should play this one first "in order to better appreciate how awesome 4 is" and because of some very tenuous story link...hey, whatever). Its got an interesting to me premise, a hidden period of time called "the Dark Hour" that exists between when one day ends and the next begins which most people don't experience and is when the monsters come crawling out. And I continue to be oddly amused that these people access their powers basically by shooting themselves in the head (oh its not a gun, its some invention called an "evoker"...whatever, its a fucking gun).
But either way, there still remains one character in the game I'd love to drag by the face across a gravel road. And that's mostly because his persona (some being that resides in their soul or whatever, not really important that you understand the whole thing) is Hermes.
And since I often see this guy described (not by me, I'd have a few different choice words) as a "smart ass" and a "class clown" in the manual that comes with the game as well as in a few walkthroughs I've found (hey, I'm only going to get to play it once, might as well do as much as I can :-)), and it seems to further inspire these manual and walkthrough writers (though this doesn't happen with any other character in the game) to talk about all the comparisons that can be drawn between Hermes and this asstard, how much they have in common so it makes perfect sense you'd team them up together, right?
*headdesk*
This guy is less a smart ass than he is a loudmouth, someone who starts speaking because five seconds has passed without him polluting the air with the sound of his voice and that is just not acceptable. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is particular witty, clever, funny or even anything that desperately needs to be said. Its just noise, like he's never had a thought that he didn't give voice to. You've probably run into people like that before, the guy that never shuts up and doesn't seem to realize that no one else thinks he's funny and if you actually tell him to fuck off you must be the one with the problem, got a hundred defense mechanisms up to keep him from ever having to realize the simple truth that he is a fucking douche bag.
At first I wondered if maybe I was taking him worse than I should be, after all the game is very much like a standard anime and that just isn't my genre, in large part because I tend to find many of the characters in anime shrill and grating (though that's usually the women more than the men). I actually stopped watching a series once (Evangelion) that I was otherwise enjoying (reminded me of my favorite video game series, obviously the man who wrote those games got much of his inspiration from here and it made me interested to see if it would head in a similar direction) because the characters, one in particular (that fucking red headed harpy), were too unbearable for me, every time she was on screen I couldn't stop thinking how much I wanted to rip pieces of her skin off and cram them down her fucking throat. Never had one person manage to raise my blood pressure quite that much, but she really was that bad. Anyway, I figured it was possible it was just me and my having low tolerance for certain kinds of personalities but someone else might see things differently.
Thing is though, all the other characters in the game find him annoying too. They're clearly just barely tolerating him and wishing every second that he would just be quiet for once. So no, I don't think its just me, not when everyone else in the game makes snide comments about him every time he tries to talk. No, I think he's supposed to be that obnoxious, that's exactly how he is supposed to be taken.
The female characters in the game especially don't like him. Of course, he would be one of those assholes that can't stop going on about "the ladies" and seems to think relentlessly harassing anything with breasts is going to get him laid, and then wonders why it doesn't work (because they're uptight of course, its not you, its never you). To give you an idea, during a trip to the beach he just wouldn't stop making comments about how the girls looked in their bathing suits, wouldn't stop following them around, splashing at them whenever they went in the water, no matter how many times they told him to stop (those guys never do get when enough is enough), that the next day the girls opted to walk through the woods instead specifically because they didn't want to deal with him and his bullshit again.
And as we know, Hermes is all about being a creepy jerk to women. And he wouldn't have a clue how to talk to women, not beyond the "ooh, look, boobies" twelve year old boy phase. *eye roll*
And again, I wonder where these Hermes as hyper active pixie comes from. At some point, I don't know when and I don't know why, he became the Screech of Mount Olympus. Its so deeply ingrained in the popular consciousness now, there is just no getting rid of it, not easily anyway.
(just to head off any potential comments in this vein, I suppose if you are someone who believes that we effect the existence of the gods and who and what they are, then I suppose you could say that a change in popular conceptions of the god would change who he is for better or, in this case, for much, much worse; I though don't believe that at all, I think the gods are who they are and their personalities are not effected by what we think of them, not anymore than if everyone here started thinking I was the sort of person that liked wearing pink frilly dresses is going to change anything about me)
But either way, there still remains one character in the game I'd love to drag by the face across a gravel road. And that's mostly because his persona (some being that resides in their soul or whatever, not really important that you understand the whole thing) is Hermes.
And since I often see this guy described (not by me, I'd have a few different choice words) as a "smart ass" and a "class clown" in the manual that comes with the game as well as in a few walkthroughs I've found (hey, I'm only going to get to play it once, might as well do as much as I can :-)), and it seems to further inspire these manual and walkthrough writers (though this doesn't happen with any other character in the game) to talk about all the comparisons that can be drawn between Hermes and this asstard, how much they have in common so it makes perfect sense you'd team them up together, right?
*headdesk*
This guy is less a smart ass than he is a loudmouth, someone who starts speaking because five seconds has passed without him polluting the air with the sound of his voice and that is just not acceptable. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is particular witty, clever, funny or even anything that desperately needs to be said. Its just noise, like he's never had a thought that he didn't give voice to. You've probably run into people like that before, the guy that never shuts up and doesn't seem to realize that no one else thinks he's funny and if you actually tell him to fuck off you must be the one with the problem, got a hundred defense mechanisms up to keep him from ever having to realize the simple truth that he is a fucking douche bag.
At first I wondered if maybe I was taking him worse than I should be, after all the game is very much like a standard anime and that just isn't my genre, in large part because I tend to find many of the characters in anime shrill and grating (though that's usually the women more than the men). I actually stopped watching a series once (Evangelion) that I was otherwise enjoying (reminded me of my favorite video game series, obviously the man who wrote those games got much of his inspiration from here and it made me interested to see if it would head in a similar direction) because the characters, one in particular (that fucking red headed harpy), were too unbearable for me, every time she was on screen I couldn't stop thinking how much I wanted to rip pieces of her skin off and cram them down her fucking throat. Never had one person manage to raise my blood pressure quite that much, but she really was that bad. Anyway, I figured it was possible it was just me and my having low tolerance for certain kinds of personalities but someone else might see things differently.
Thing is though, all the other characters in the game find him annoying too. They're clearly just barely tolerating him and wishing every second that he would just be quiet for once. So no, I don't think its just me, not when everyone else in the game makes snide comments about him every time he tries to talk. No, I think he's supposed to be that obnoxious, that's exactly how he is supposed to be taken.
The female characters in the game especially don't like him. Of course, he would be one of those assholes that can't stop going on about "the ladies" and seems to think relentlessly harassing anything with breasts is going to get him laid, and then wonders why it doesn't work (because they're uptight of course, its not you, its never you). To give you an idea, during a trip to the beach he just wouldn't stop making comments about how the girls looked in their bathing suits, wouldn't stop following them around, splashing at them whenever they went in the water, no matter how many times they told him to stop (those guys never do get when enough is enough), that the next day the girls opted to walk through the woods instead specifically because they didn't want to deal with him and his bullshit again.
And as we know, Hermes is all about being a creepy jerk to women. And he wouldn't have a clue how to talk to women, not beyond the "ooh, look, boobies" twelve year old boy phase. *eye roll*
And again, I wonder where these Hermes as hyper active pixie comes from. At some point, I don't know when and I don't know why, he became the Screech of Mount Olympus. Its so deeply ingrained in the popular consciousness now, there is just no getting rid of it, not easily anyway.
(just to head off any potential comments in this vein, I suppose if you are someone who believes that we effect the existence of the gods and who and what they are, then I suppose you could say that a change in popular conceptions of the god would change who he is for better or, in this case, for much, much worse; I though don't believe that at all, I think the gods are who they are and their personalities are not effected by what we think of them, not anymore than if everyone here started thinking I was the sort of person that liked wearing pink frilly dresses is going to change anything about me)