Two interesting characters neither touched by evil or mysteries

-Superman
-Mario

In other words, roleplay characters. Now, you might say, “But these characters aren’t really interesting.”, but then why do people become so heavily invested in them? Why do people keep returning to these characters if they’re not interesting? It is because what matters most is the reader’s imagination and not the writer’s imagination. Characters do not always need to be flawed to be engaging. They just need to be cool.

Ask any comic book writer, and they say the emphasis has to be on the villain. You can’t have a superhero without a super-villain. It’s like trying to say Optimus Prime is interesting even though he turns into a truck we see everyday on the highway. He is interesting because of the presence of Megatron. Without Megatron, Prime is just a snooze fest. But the most interesting transformer was Starscream who kept backstabbing Megatron all the time.

Above: The Ten Second Reign of Starscream. After killing him, the writers realized they made a mistake because he was the most interesting character on the show. So he kinda tortures everyone as an eternal ghost.

Mario is an interesting character? No, he isn’t. No one thinks Mario is interesting.

During the Donkey Kong games, no one knew who Mario was. Donkey Kong was the star.

During Mario Brothers, no one knew who Mario was.

And Mario’s popularity fell after Super Mario World.

So why did Mario become popular in the first place? Aside from Mario being an ‘everyman’ that everyone sees ourselves as, a new villain was introduced in Super Mario Brothers: Bowser. In Super Mario Brothers 3, his henchmen/kids were introduced as well. The greater the evil, the more interesting Mario became.

Above: You can’t have good heroes without good villains. The Doomships are awesome!

One reason why Mario’s popularity fell after Super Mario World was due to how weak a villain Bowser became.

Above: Does this seem evil to you? It’s a clown car! What was Nintendo thinking?

I appreciate that people are trying to find some fictional character, somewhere, that is interesting without the experience of sin and evil on it. However, Shakespeare and Milton could not produce one. Every current writer today will admit they cannot make one. The truth points to itself.