I was running through some old Portal 2 quotes in my head and realized that it Cave Johnson were a real person, people would absolutely hate him.
I was running through some old Portal 2 quotes in my head and realized that it Cave Johnson were a real person, people would absolutely hate him.
Amos Burton from The Expanse. Fans love him but he is a deeply damaged, disturbed, violent individual with no sense of right or wrong. At one point in the books, he looks at somebody and thinks he may have to kill them. The idea doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t get pleasure from it. But they’re in his way so he’ll do it.
What made me like Amos Burton (from the series, still have to read the book) is that he is self aware enough to know this about himself, and intelligent enough to understand it as a shortcoming in many situations.
He’s a man where some part of him wants to do good, even be used for good, but doesn’t know how. But he recognises good people, and anchors himself to those he believes can use him for good.
That somehow makes him smarter than most people in the series… Or in real life, for that matter.
I tried to play a TTRPG character a bit like this one, more like a dumb brute who knew his inclinations were usually not great and aimed to find a leader who could use his strength for good. Problem was the other players weren’t experienced enough for any of them to be a leader. Usually I’d just launch into some dumb action hoping (as a player) the rest would stop me in time and get the idea they needed to be the thinkers.
Amos is self aware though. He knows he was born without a moral compass and allows Naomi, who he knows is good, to give him direction. He trusts that her decisions will keep him from crossing a line that he knows is there but he can’t see himself.
Yep.
In one of the books he is on Earth without his shipmates and pretty quickly regresses back to sociopathic behaviour.
But he recognizes this and does not welcome it. After killing a stranger just to get access to gear he needs, Amos realizes that he is making the wrong choices and states: “I need to get back to my crew.”
He has an understanding of what is good and what is bad. He cannot understand why there are limitations to by which means “good” can be achieved. But he knows these limits do exist and should be respected, therefore he needs Naomi and Holden to lead him.
True, he latches on to people he thinks are righteous, first Naomi and then Holden, and uses them as his moral compass. But when they are not around, he beats people up and kills then as his go to reaction to a threat and he has no remorse over doing it. As Naomi tells Holden about him, He is a monster. He doesn’t want to be a monster, but he is one.
Plenty of Amos’s IRL already though.