topic: nasty or noble?

source: tumblr

" And he understood human nature so deeply, not just our great capacity for virtue and for goodness, and for love, but our capacity for pain and destruction and anger." Tom Hiddleston on Shakespeare

There's something about the way Mr Hiddleston (Mr Hiddleston, haha, why am I so formal? I don't know him personally, so I don't feel like I'm privileged to address him on first name basis) says things, about the characters he plays or on human nature itself, but whenever he says something like this, I get very inspired. Mind you, I haven't taken psychology or studies on human nature at all, so I don't speak from professional knowledge. 

"I believe we are born clean slates, and we all have a capacity to be nasty or noble"

Nasty or Noble?

They're two halves of a whole, I think, and we have to embrace both parts in ourselves. A person that is completely nice, completely passive and serene, is empty. He that never yells, or speaks his mind in fear of others judging him, and just sitting back is he that's a grey, empty, unfeeling person. I might have already said this, but it resounds in my mind the quote that someone once said "The opposite of love is indifference" A person who is 100% noble (I think that person doesn't exist) is not 100% human.


And on the other, extreme end, and occurs more frequently than the former, are those that are wholesomely nasty. Allowing oneself to become bitter, or mean-hearted, is allowing oneself to go the deepest, lowest pits of self-esteem and hurt. One can reach that place by just being sad and isolated, like I was for a time being, and it's clear whether or not one has reached there. The choice that has to be made is whether to fix it or not.


Striking the perfect balance, with preferably more nobility than nastiness, is easily done. When you feel like you're in a particularly grim mood, it happens to me when I'm hungry or tired, quickly try to remedy it and hold back any mean words or things you wouldn't normally say. Countless times, I haven't been able to do that, and I ended up hurting the people I love. It's not a good feeling! Lately, I've been preventing it from happening and I feel good about doing so later on.

Good or Evil?

I don't believe that a person is either good or bad, like black or white. There are, quoting a popular phrase "shades of grey" inside a person, and it's up to he or she to decide which to side to use and when.

In Literature

Like Mr Hiddleston said, all shades of humanity are explored in Shakespeare's works and I think it's brilliant. But how about in more commonly, sometimes more popularly, YA books? We take our complex personalities for granted, and it comes naturally while writing and reading, to understand people. What's more exciting is exploring the ugly side of human nature, in these books, and it's what's read about most often. In my previous posts on kindness and compassion, I mentioned how these actions/traits are  missing from YA books. Yet, I think it's good that books explore the ugly side of people's because usually, it'd remedied, and it's necessary to bring out the bad side of someone, to show it to readers, and also show the capability of overcoming that gunky, slimy bad things and break open the shell to become a re-discovered butterfly. Gosh, that just sounded so lame (haha!), but I hope you know what I mean?

On Male Characters: specifically "The Nice Guy"

Since most YA is written from the female perspective, and I think it's because the writers are female, that it's difficult to understand, yet alone write, male characters. Sometimes, I believe they're too shallow. There's either the nice guy or the bad guy. And the bad guys are more complex, have that small, tiny heart that's still capable of love. But the nice guys: they're just pure sugar: it's like they're not even worthy of having human characteristics, and are this one dimensional person with no layers. 


But of course this problem wouldn't be present, if there weren't any love triangles! My gosh, I'm growing quite...sick of reading love triangles. I've come to expect them, and them I'm happily shocked when I don't see one (very rare occasion!) Anyway, I'd just like to ask, if there are "nice guy" "bad guy" characters, to make them have both good and bad qualities, and not just based on looks, but their personality, traits, and feelings.


I feel like I have just ranted about the same thing a thousand times, in different wording. I'm so sorry if I just sounded preachy the whole time. Did you enjoy this post, or topic posts in general?