An Ode to Cowards

[00:00:00]On its surface, a coward is a repulsive sort of character.

[00:00:04]We like to idolize our fictional heroes to put ourselves in their shoes, and there's something sort of awful about looking at a character and seeing the worst of ourselves in them.

[00:00:14]This is why cowardice is a trait often assigned to villains. It's just deeply satisfying watching a cruel person deflate when their comeuppance reaches them.

[00:00:23]Being a coward when you're a villain means being willing to recklessly risk the lives of others for your own gain, and then hiding in the back of the nearest police cruiser to avoid the well-deserved kick to your face. But more interesting to me than those villain cowards were the heroes I just mentioned, >> [music] >> because I think they're often much more fun to talk about. The coward is a character that can go horribly wrong very quickly. There is nothing more annoying than a poorly timed coward archetype whining all over the cool action.

[00:00:49]So, what separates a cool coward from a wimpy whiner? Let's talk about it.

[00:00:54]Spoiler warning for all these things on screen.

[00:00:57]3 2 1 Why don't we start with one of the oldest and most famous examples? Shaggy and Scooby from Scooby-Doo. Perhaps the icons of this list, this duo has been responding correctly to horror movie scenarios since 1969.

[00:01:13]They've been portrayed in all sorts of ways throughout many many installments of their franchise.

[00:01:18]And as someone who grew up obsessed with Scooby-Doo media, they're either the best or worst part of any given Scooby-Doo, no contest. I think Shaggy especially is [music] at his best when played as the classic coward twist, the voice of reason.

[00:01:32]Shaggy is a supernatural mystery solver.

[00:01:34]He should be pretty aware by now there are going to be ghosts wherever the Mystery Machine happens to break down.

[00:01:39]He did sign up for this to an extent. My favorite showings from Shaggy were always when he was portrayed more as the character who's reminding his overeager friends maybe they should consider bringing a flashlight to the dark and stormy night.

[00:01:52]Many of the original episodes showed Shaggy as a genuinely smart character, being the one to solve multiple mysteries.

[00:01:59]He's just reasonably concerned about being killed by a zombie clown and would prefer to run away from that.

[00:02:05]We can see this kind of character portrayed further down the line with Chilchuck.

[00:02:08]Chilchuck isn't exactly a coward. In fact, he's one of the few people willing to stick with Laios and forgoes his usual pay to help him save his sister.

[00:02:16]Chilchuck falls strongly on the practical side of the coward line. It's not that he's scared of a fight, it's that he should not be fighting. As being a half-foot lockpick, he's not exactly suited for taking down dragons the way others might be.

[00:02:28]This is consistent with other half-foots, as Chilchuck hides with Mickbell during the fallen fight of the anime, because he really doesn't like taking unnecessary risks and feels like he'll get in people's way.

[00:02:38]This makes him hesitant to take swings at more dramatic plans.

[00:02:41]Ultimately though, he cares very deeply for his friends and will get himself into danger for them.

[00:02:46]I think he's the least typically fitting of the coward trope on this list for sure. He just knows what he wants and wants to keep danger to a minimum.

[00:02:53]In opposition, we have the worst Shaggy, the whiner.

[00:02:57]The whiner is a character I personally hate. This is the most annoying possible coward to me. The whiner is often characterized by having signed up for this situation and spending the whole time they're on screen complaining that they are in this situation and that they're all going to get stabbed by a ghost.

[00:03:13]Where this branches off from the voice of reason is instead of having any kind of direction, the whiner's complaints go nowhere.

[00:03:19]When the voice of reason watches their party make a rash and unsafe decision, they may try to talk them out of it.

[00:03:23]When they realize they can't, they may try and do what they can to protect themselves and their idiot friends from the danger.

[00:03:29]The whiner will just complain the entire time.

[00:03:32]One of the most grating to me is Demon Slayer Zenitsu, unfortunately.

[00:03:36]The pairing between his whining and general personality about women grated on me a lot when I was watching the show. And while I hope he does improve in the parts of Demon Slayer I haven't seen, in the early arcs it has so far driven me absolutely crazy.

[00:03:49]He has every right to be worried about demons, but the way he was portrayed made me kind of want to see one of them get a good punch in.

[00:03:56]The last of the major coward types is the storytellers, or really just the liars. Two that come to mind immediately are Psychic Kase Kaido and One Piece's Usopp. Interestingly, I find the live-action rendition of Usopp leans more into the voice of reason coward than the flat-out liar, which was a really sweet take, actually.

[00:04:14]He may be my favorite character of the live-action next to Zoro.

[00:04:18]Tangent aside, these characters tend to be professional truth stretchers, telling stories to build themselves up and seem like the coolest guy in the room. Most people don't usually fall for it. The stories really tend to be more for themselves, as these characters usually come with a heaping helping of self-esteem issues.

[00:04:34]The liar has desires, but are often too scared to pursue them themselves.

[00:04:38]However, they still want to feel strong, included, appreciated, so they make things up.

[00:04:43]It's usually through the help of others that they're able to actually start approaching their dreams on their own.

[00:04:47]For Usopp, this is through genuinely becoming a pirate with Luffy and starting to have stories more interesting than anything he could have made up.

[00:04:54]In Kaido's case, he's just lonely and wants some friends.

[00:04:58]These kinds of cowards are very situational.

[00:05:01]>> [music] >> This is a very easy thing to make annoying and start leaning into whiner territory. Hence why I think Usopp was tweaked a little in the live-action, since they don't have nearly enough time to change it from whiny [music] to endearing.

[00:05:12]The storyteller is a rare subclass, but one I thought deserved an inclusion.

[00:05:16]So far, in almost every example I've given, the cowardly behavior is shown in a comic relief character.

[00:05:22]While anime and cartoons can make great examples because of how easy it is to identify and talk about tropes, they tend to play things in a very exaggerated way.

[00:05:31]I think it would be doing this topic a disservice if I didn't talk about a proper main character where this idea is played entirely emotionally straight.

[00:05:39]This is Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary.

[00:05:42]Grace does try to keep things a bit light, a bit funny. You'd go crazy in his situation if you couldn't.

[00:05:48]He's trapped light-years away from his home on a mission that's doomed to kill him. And if he stops moving to think about the implications of that, it would be very bad for him.

[00:05:57]The movie flashes you back and forth between his past on Earth and his present on the spaceship Hail Mary.

[00:06:02]And what all that flashing serves to do is present you with gradually growing sense of dread and concern as it becomes clear Ryland Grace is not the sort of man to sign up for this mission.

[00:06:11]Everyone set to be on the Mary knows this voyage is one way. He may have helped build it, but there's no way he'd get on.

[00:06:19]I found myself waiting scene by scene to find the point in which Grace would have his epiphany, >> [music] >> when his moment of destiny would come and he'd steel himself to save the world, making his heroic sacrifice.

[00:06:31]It never comes.

[00:06:32]The dread just continues to build until you watch Stratt tell him that it's him or the world and he can't do it. He can't sacrifice his life.

[00:06:43]It's pathetic, almost, but a feeling so visceral and uncomfortable it's hard not to identify with.

[00:06:51]It is one life for billions. [music] We'd all love to say we'd do it in his shoes, but Grace doesn't want to die.

[00:06:58]And even though he knows he dies either way, at least he'd live here until he froze into a popsicle or something.

[00:07:04]It's hard to say when faced with that impossible situation we wouldn't also be selfish. He learned he had to go the same day.

[00:07:12]That's not a great feeling.

[00:07:14]Stratt sits there listing off the reason he's expendable, that there's no one to miss him anyway, not even a dog. She weighs his value against others like it's a point system. They will leave people behind. He won't.

[00:07:28]He still can't do it.

[00:07:30]She forces the issue in the end.

[00:07:33]And he watches the disappointed eyes of the people he just tried to damn as he's knocked out and put in a coma, waking up years later in space, alone.

[00:07:43]Ryland Grace is a deeply complicated character. He's not unwilling to do his part. In fact, he forces himself on the science team looking into the Astrophage aliens eating the sun.

[00:07:53]He wants to make a better world, but he wants to be a cog in that machine, not the person doing the space exploring.

[00:08:01]In the end, Grace finds his courage, building with all the insane and impossible things he does to find a cure for the Astrophage issue, spurred on probably by the fact he's pretty sure he's dead either way.

[00:08:12]He works with Rocky, building up his confidence.

[00:08:15]He has something new to fight for, has someone, as the movie says, to fight for.

[00:08:22]In the end, Grace is placed in another situation that mirrors the one from his past. He can use his fuel, acquired from Rocky, to make it home.

[00:08:30]He'll be heralded as the hero of Earth.

[00:08:32]He'll get to return to his comfortable life like none of this ever happened.

[00:08:36]Play it safe.

[00:08:38]But he learns that Rocky is in serious danger, and his entire home planet by extension.

[00:08:43]Grace doesn't know what would happen after he saved Rocky. He doesn't have enough fuel for both saving him and going home.

[00:08:50]Choosing himself or choosing a planet.

[00:08:53]And ultimately, he goes back for Rocky, finding his courage to fight for the person he cares about, even if it means he has to make a sacrifice.

[00:09:02]The coward's arc always needs to show that last part, their courage, to feel satisfying.

[00:09:08]In episodic pieces like Scooby-Doo and Psychic Okay, this is in small things, like Kaito jumping in front of someone to save them from a rampaging snake, despite being reasonably much weaker than the person he's protecting.

[00:09:19]But in cases like Ryland's, it can be a very satisfying conclusion to their stories.

[00:09:24]The voice of reason needs to learn to live a little, to step out of their comfort zones and try new things.

[00:09:30]The whiner needs to suck it up a little and find what they can do about their situation, taking agency and control back.

[00:09:37]And lastly, the storytellers need to learn to find confidence in who they are and trust they can be the person they spend so much time telling stories about.

[00:09:47]So, what are your favorite examples of the coward archetype? There's a few I couldn't include here because I couldn't find a smooth way to narratively include Luigi in this video.

[00:09:55]But, I'd love to hear your comments about it. As always, leave your thoughts down there. I love reading them. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks for watching and good night.