By Graham Olson
The creation of fairy tale characters is important in that they are the ones that the reader is supposed to follow and relate to throughout the story. When looking at a fairy tale character they have certain traits that make them that character. Rapunzel has her hair, Cinderella has her slipper, and Ariel has her tail. When you show someone this one aspect and ask them to identify a character with that trait they immediately know what you’re referring to because the trait is specific to the character and iconic in its symbolism. Video game characters are the same in that the popular characters can be summarized down into a few characteristics that make up who they are. The conception of a fairy tale character like little red and video game characters like Mario create community through colorful character design, simplified storytelling, and character tropes.
One of the most important aspects of a character is their overall design. The design of the most unforgettable characters is typically simple in nature. In the Grimm Brothers’ “Little Red Cap” everything to know about the character is quite literally in the title. She is named after her most defining character trait, her red hood. When a reader pictures the character in their head they latch on to the character’s most defining feature. In Tom Bancroft’s book about Creating Characters with Personality, he says that it’s important that a character is “Iconic, extremely simple, almost graphic”. This is to capitalize on the character’s ability to be recognized. A simple character with standout features can be recognized by a wider audience. Take the video game character, Mario. Everyone knows what he looks like, and in reality, he’s not that special. Other than his big mustache and signature red look he is just a human plumber. But this is the point of the characters; being simple makes them easily recognized by a large group of people. This gives characters like Little Red and Mario a larger appeal because a fan of these figures doesn’t have to know a 2 hours backstory of these characters to be able to relate to them. They see a bright red icon that resembles the character and they don’t have to do too much thinking to remember who they are. Most people probably even know that Mario is a character that jumps high and Little Red is an innocent young girl who is going to see her grandma. The point is that their designs are simple with easy-to-understand stories. The character’s simple designs also give the reader clues as to which role they play in the story. It’s really important for a character to be recognized as their role because it makes it easier for the reader to understand them and relate to them. What role the character plays in the story is also called their archetype and it is important to make sure each character fulfills the role they are given (Tillman). This ensures that the reader can understand the character’s thought process and will begin to recognize what decisions the character would make. Little Red Riding hood plays the archetype of the protagonist but also the damsel in distress as she is tormented by the wolf. It is important that this is defined because if the reader begins to understand that character is small and helpless and then out of nowhere the same character starts acting invincible and standing up to other characters with no apparent change in between, it makes the character less believable and overall less relatable to the reader. The reader expects a level of consistency which helps build a bond of understanding between the reader’s knowledge of a character and the character themselves. The characters simple, colorful, expressive character design allows a lot of people to recognize them which builds bridges across communities. Both a 15-year-old kid with a Nintendo switch and a dad in his 30s that grew up with the Nintendo Entertainment System can recognize and relate to Mario. The same goes for fairy tales. There are adults that grew up listening to the same fairy tales told to our youth today. These stories span many generations and it is a way to bond people together from different lifetimes.
Video games and fairy tales also use simplified storytelling to be accessible to the largest audience. The best example of how simplified fairy tale stories are is to look at their prop functions. The entire design of Propp functions is to provide categorization and breakdown of a fairy tale’s story so that they can be analyzed and sorted with other tales (Finlayson). The ease that these stories can be broken down into their smaller parts with ease is a testament to how simple the writing is. Its the simplicity of the stories that make them accessible to a large audience by requiring a lower reading level and literature comprehension. Very few people can read and understand the Odyssey because not only do the themes require a lot of thinking to comprehend but the writing style is convoluted and takes lots of effort to decode. Even without comprehending the deeper meaning behind a fairytale, a child would be able to understand the surface-level story of these tales. This is seen in the original video game Mario for the NES. The character doesn’t need to exactly understand what the character is doing at the moment they just need to know how to progress the story. The low entry for skill into this genre allows a vast number of people to enjoy the stories. This leads to an unseen connection between groups of people over this literature. If two individuals of different ages and cultures have both read and sympathize with a character from a fairytale it creates a bond of emotion across borders. The importance of these stories is discussed in Matteo Stocchett’s report on storytelling in a digital world saying, “Through… narrative enquiry, the world of methodology [can be] demystified.” As a culture, we may discount the importance of these stories because they can be thought of as old or simple but it’s these two aspects that make them an accessible form of storytelling. The story of Little Red Riding Hood creates a connection between the new and old generations through emotional understanding. While your grandparents may not know who Mario is they probably read you fairytales as a kid because storytelling is part of our culture, and by remembering these stories the passing of knowledge from one to another forms community. This is explained in a very scientific way in Elsevier’s, creating a shared clinical plot through interprofessional interaction in biopsychosocial pain rehabilitation. As the title states the creation of a plot is explored through emotional trauma. When reading the story of Little Red her grandma is consumed by the big bad wolf and this is meant to give the reader the feeling of loss. This emotion is not one confined to a culture or individual but applies to the human race as a whole. This feeling is created through a simple story but through the words, it creates a shared human emotion. It’s this emotion that brings people together and connects them on a human level rather than an economic or social level. Through accessible storytelling, fairy tales are able to connect a large number of people despite social and economical barriers.
Lastly Mario and Little Red Riding Hood create community by using character tropes. While it may seem cliche to put character tropes into a story it is very useful when trying to tell a simple story because it lets the reader know what they should expect from a character. Tropes are “simple entities that, at the same time, are particular and have an intrinsic nature”(Jose). This means that they can be general while still remaining an individual. It is important to “Notice that character-making is a proper species of character-grounding. In general, a character-grounder is that in virtue of which something is charactered in some way”(Garcia). In character creation, a trope can help the author articulate to the reader what they are supposed to know about a character. Little Red fulfills the character trope of a damsel in distress and the actions that come with that trope. This means when someone is reading the text they can relate Little Red to other damsels in distress and that provides a foundation to their understanding of a character. She isn’t a new complex character that the reader has to piece together but rather something familiar that the reader has probably seen before. In the same way, Mario is the standard protagonist trope. He is there to destroy the villains and rescue the princess. This allows these works of art to be understood by a large group of people because they’re simple. The characters being simple is a strength of both of these characters because even children can enjoy it as much as an adult would. Simple characters don’t take away from the story in this case but rather expand the audience it appeals to.
Community is important because our world can seem very divided at times. Through these forms of media, people are brought together across invisible barriers. Location, ethnicity, social status, all of these go away when people bond over things they’re passionate about. A 23-year-old student and a 60-year-old professor can both bond over their love for literature. A 13-year-old boy and a 40-year-old father can both bond over their love for video games. When we come together to express what we are passionate about with other people that creates community and fellowship with other humans. When both the rich and poor have the same vocabulary they can relate to each other. In this case, that vocabulary is the stories in both Mario and Little Red Riding Hood. If more people openly shared what makes them happy maybe we could live in a more united world.
Works cited:
Tillman, Bryan. Creative Character Design. Focal Press, 2011. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.electra.lmu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat08516a&AN=hlec.b5043959&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Bancroft, Tom. Creating Characters with Personality. Watson-Guptill, 2008.
Finlayson, Mark Alan. “Inferring Propp’s functions from semantically annotated text.” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 129, no. 511, 2016, p. 55+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A449930138/LitRC?u=loym48904&sid=LitRC&xid=30f4db3a. Accessed 7 May 2021.
Stocchetti, Matteo. Storytelling and Education in the Digital Age : Experiences and Criticisms. PL Academic Research, 2016. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.electra.lmu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat08516a&AN=hlec.b5410336&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Battin, Gudrun Songøygard, et al. “The Puzzle of Therapeutic Emplotment: Creating a Shared Clinical Plot through Interprofessional Interaction in Biopsychosocial Pain Rehabilitation.” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 277, May 2021. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113904.
José Tomás Alvarado. “Natural Classes of Tropes.” Filosofia UNISINOS 15.2 (2014): 148-60. ProQuest. Web. 7 May 2021.
Garcia, Robert K. “Tropes as Character-Grounders.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94.3 (2016): 499-515. ProQuest. Web. 7 May 2021.
Grimm, Wilhelm, et al. Little Red Cap. CreateSpace Publishing, 2018.
