Fandom Incidents

faramir's goodness ruined a crappy trope for me forever

Ok so I was rewatching Two Towers tonight (and the cable kept cutting out I cri) and I was thinking about Faramir after it froze on a shot of him (not creepy I swear)

He's got the whole tragic backstory/continued terrible treatment thing going on with him that's so often used as an excuse for characters to be shitty people among other things (lack of compassion for other people, exclusively thinking about themselves, even hating other people with little provocation) and you know what he does?

He's literally a great human being

Like, he makes decisions that basically only one person so far could make when he has the most reasons to go the other way. Keeping from taking the ring? He does it, even though that may be one of his only chances to become more powerful than he is. Not sending it back to Denethor? Crazy good. For two reasons.

1) Taking the ring (and the hobbits along with it) is the choice that puts the least pressure, and blame, on him. He doesn't have to deal with the ring being in his hands personally. No one is going to be mad at him for bringing it to them. The hobbits lied to him and know more stuff about Boromir? Not on him. Denethor uses the ring and it ruins a bunch of stuff? Not on him (for the most part) because it was Denethor's choice and Denethor's doing and he wasn't involved. Basically think about if anyone found out that he didn't  send the hobbits to Minas Tirith. All the stuff they'd be mad at him for? Gone. Bam.

2) Bringing Denethor the ring is possibly the only thing that could make Denethor like him (even if briefly). Faramir has a really hard time dealing with the fact that Denethor hates him and that Boromir was seen as so much better than him. This could change things, maybe even permanently.

Still, he doesn't do it. Even with the pressure of all the stuff surrounding his father, he lets them go because he knows it's the right thing. 

(If you're familiar with dragon age stuff then I'd like to add a tidbit about Dorian Pavus. His father, probs his family and most of Tevinter society if they caught wind of who he was, hated him, (his father literally had him kidnapped and held prisoner, tortured him and tried to use freaking blood magic on him to change him as a person) and he didn't turn it all into crappiness and bad character choices. He's still a good person, like Faramir is a good person. If anything it drove him further to be who he was, and to do what he thought was right even if it seemed crazy, because it let himself have faith in the person he helped himself become.)

 yeah ok I love dorian and I could talk about him all day but that's not the point of this

THE POINT IS: I get that in real life trauma and treatment like this doesn't always have this outcome, that people do change in ways that aren't like this and that it's a real thing that happens no matter what I personally feel, but Faramir taking all that crap and not turning into a really crappy rendition of a bad boy stereotype is so good that any time I see the trope being used it just seems lame and like they could've done better with a character.