Quote from: Jabroniville on September 19, 2012, 03:01:46 PM

One thing I've pointed out before is that Kevin's whole concept might revolve around the fact that he IS relatively flawless. It's sort of like Sidney Poitier's character in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"- the black man marrying the white woman wasn't so much a character as an embodiment of perfection. This made the point of the movie that the ONLY possible objection the father could've had was one based off of race. Since Kevin is possibly the first and only gay man many young Archie fans have seen/"met", perhaps he's supposed to reflect basically the Ideal Person as much as possible, so that young fans will come away with a positive impression of him (and homosexuality by proxy), while people who don't like Kevin will be seen as ONLY having a problem with his homosexuality- and thus they're easily painted as bigots.

Perhaps because of Archie's typically-young audience, that's for the best. It makes Kevin rather dull for us old folks, but hey- characters change personalities once in a while, so there's still time, y'know?

I know I've said opposing things on this issue before, but that was before I had time to really think about it I think.  The thing about making a character "flawless" is it produces the exact opposite reaction in the readers.  Resentment and alienation.  No one can relate to someone that has a perfect personality.  I think this goes for everything.  Like a lot of people don't like Kim Possible because she's a Mary Sue.  So it may have some kind of opposite effect than what is intended.  It also produces boredom.  I think they should have kept him flawlessly handsome.  Comic book characters should be perfect body wise to a significant degree, but perhaps they should have added something that was inherently funny about his personality (not an intentional pun  ) that is a flaw.

I think also approaching things from this stand-point creates a paradox of contradiction.  You don't want people to perceive minorities differently, so you treat them differently, doing the exact same thing you set out not to do.  Kids aren't stupid.  They will be able to pick up on the difference and infer something from that, probably not what you intended.  That's a second problem with this thinking, it looks down on the readers.

Looks like you had fun playing with the bbcode options

Jughead's Fantasy #1