Board 8 > Rate the Character Day 43: Negan (Walking Dead)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to the most must-see recurring daily poll series on Board 8. I'm your host scarletspeed7. Everyday, I choose a category, you pick a character. I post the character you rate them. These are characters, you are raters, and this is Rate the Character.

Yesterday, Professor McGonagall scored top 10 spot with a 7.917 average.

All ratings are on scale of 1-10. Please do not rate characters with which you are unfamiliar. You may rate any previous characters you have yet to rate at any point; please post them in the thread. No more than ten retro-ratings per day. View your ratings here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P47gZ8N7QcS-ShXYjvteOnd_aCJbv3AcJdipiUChhAg/edit?usp=sharing

Today's character is Negan, a major antagonist in The Walking Dead.



Current Top Ten:
1) Han Solo (Star Wars) - 8.394
2) Scarecrow (DC Comics) - 8.293
3) Urdnot Wrex (Mass Effect) - 8.228
4) Tyrion Lannister (Game of Thrones) - 8.141
5) Furiosa (Mad Max) - 8.3
6) Severus Snape (Harry Potter) - 7.962
7) Bowser (Super Mario) - 7.937
8) Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil) - 7.921
9) Minerva McGonagall (Harry Potter) - 7.917
10) Doctor Strange (Marvel Comics) - 7.893

Current Bottom Ten:
33) Donkey Kong (Super Mario) - 6.128
34) Phil Dunphy (Modern Family) - 6.036
35) Randy Marsh (South Park) - 5.792
36) Mad-Eye Moody (Harry Potter) - 5.642
37) Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes) - 5.447
38) Pikachu (Pokemon) - 5.339
39) Squirrel Girl (Marvel Comics) - 5
40) John Cena (WWE) - 4.957
41) Kylo Ren (Star Wars) - 4.875
42) Akinator (Akinator) - 2.915

Hi MI.

Let's see if anyone gets the picture reference.
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Comic Negan is a lot better than show Negan.

I'll balance them out to a... hmm.

8

That's probably a little generous but eh

Hi scarlet.
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2. I lost all taste for Negan right around the time he was accidentally deflecting bullets with his bat. It's like the internal logic of the show adjusts to make sure nothing bad ever happens to him
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Kylo Ren - 7
Darth Vader - change to 8
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6
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1.5

Started off kinda solid. Got legit 'change the channel' heat from me and caused me to stop watching entirely when he cut the same Triple H cadence promo about how he owns everything for the 9th episode in a row.
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Basing my vote strictly on comic Negan.

10
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9
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My experience with Negan is pretty much just his comic appearances pre-time skip. Plus the first episode he appears in for the show. Soooo

10
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lol The Bear Jew

5.5/10

He's pretty decent in the comics but in the show he's solely created just to give you someone to hate.
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Between the bullet thing and the tiger and the spoiler Walker ambush I've realized he's basically Homer Simpson as described by Frank Grimes. There's no logical reason he should be alive except for dumb luck
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6
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Seems like

People familiar with only show Negan rate him as garbage
People familiar with only comic Negan rate him well

Strangely, I assumed comic Negan was somewhat consistent with the show based on Scarlet's write-up of the guy from the comic villain topic of yore. Seemed like the constant was "annoying dude who overstays his welcome" but I guess he's written a lot better in the comic so he comes off as an effective villain to some rather than just cheap heat.
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stopped watching the show at the end of season 5

BUT

stopped reading the comics after all out war, so I feel like I can still rate properly

9.5
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The biggest difference (imo) is that in the comics he's actually humanized.
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10 for comic negan
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My problem in the comic is that he has lasted more than twice as long as the Governor, and the Governor was starting to outstay his welcome in the comic as well.

For my rating, a 6.5. I'm going to be the big divergence here and say that I prefer the TV version because Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the type of actor I tend to really enjoy (despite the writing). I have grown so tired of Negan in the comics, and even Kirkman's attempts to bring some insight to the character have personally fallen flat for me (as has the entire series in all honesty).
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Jeffrey Dean Morgan is actually pretty good I agree. It's not the actor, that's for sure.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

lol The Bear Jew

I'm so glad someone noticed this.
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DeathChicken posted...

Between the bullet thing and the tiger and the spoiler Walker ambush I've realized he's basically Homer Simpson as described by Frank Grimes. There's no logical reason he should be alive except for dumb luck

I mean, expecting him to die in what's basically the beginning of the arc and then getting mad when he doesn't seems a bit unfair to hold against the character itself. >_>

Getting upset that the main villain didn't die in the first episode of the season is silly.
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It might be different if he survived any of these things by his own competence. As is, it's like the writers keep having him run up against situations where by any logic he should be horribly killed, and then he bumbles out of it for meta reasons of "He's the villain and can't die yet". That's a terrible character
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Like, remember that neat scene with the Governor where he got pinned down in a building with a hell of a lot of Walkers, then proceeded to bash his way out through nothing but baddassery? If that were Negan the roof would have magically caved in on those Walkers and he would have been propelled clear by a gas leak that happened to be nearby. Somehow he would be unharmed
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Snake5555555555 posted...

lol The Bear Jew

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8.7 for Negan

Says a lot about him that he killed my favorite character and I still can't help but like him
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all I know about The Walking Dead is that I got yelled at a lot in DYLTC for trying to do a Rick Grimes topic without making a distinction between the comic version and the show version because people didn't know how to vote otherwise
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LeonhartFour posted...

all I know about The Walking Dead is that I got yelled at a lot in DYLTC for trying to do a Rick Grimes topic without making a distinction between the comic version and the show version because people didn't know how to vote otherwise

I'm a comics guy and I hardly think of them as different in any notable way.
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There's certain characters that are different enough I feel like you'd have to specify.

Andrea is the comics is a 10.
Andrea is the show is a 1.

Rick... not so much.
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Lopen posted...

Seems like

People familiar with only show Negan rate him as garbage
People familiar with only comic Negan rate him well

Strangely, I assumed comic Negan was somewhat consistent with the show based on Scarlet's write-up of the guy from the comic villain topic of yore. Seemed like the constant was "annoying dude who overstays his welcome" but I guess he's written a lot better in the comic so he comes off as an effective villain to some rather than just cheap heat.

Na there are a lot of people that only watch the show but like Negan
I think it comes down to "Do you like a character that tries too hard to be cool?" or not
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There's a bunch of characters that I'd rate vastly (+/- 4) different between the show and the comic fwiw
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Negan: 1
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FFDragon posted...

There's a bunch of characters that I'd rate vastly (+/- 4) different between the show and the comic fwiw

The only multiple versions of a character that you will see here are alternate timelines (ie: Red Son Superman or Darkest Timeline Annie).
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I mean, technically the comics and the show are alternate timelines since while there are some shared overarching events the means and ways to get there are wildly different.
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6 out of 10
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Technically we could rate 500 Batmen but I feel like it would be more interesting to rate the characters as a whole, forcing people to take into account their entire experience with a character. It allows for more variety in the ratings and more discussion for each character. I really have no interest in running this any other way. I do appreciate the opinions though as it gives me food for thought.
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Then alternate timelines should count for their base form too imo

I have no horse in this specific race though since I never got to show negan.
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There are certain characters that interact with their alternates and therefore it makes it unreasonable to consider them as not separate characters. Kal-L and Kal-El are going to be considered as separate. They have a relationship with each other that helps to define the characters. Similarly, Darkest Timeline Annie is impacted by real Annie; when a character's alternate has interaction with their original, it's almost impossible to not consider them a separate character. However, Flashpoint Batman in the film would not be considered as different from Flashpoint Batman in the comic. One is just an iteration of the other. Similar to an Oliver Queen on TV or in comics.
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what about something like looper

where old joe interacts with young joe and are pretty much two different characters but on the same timeline
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I would consider those as two different characters for that particular film. They are presented as different characters, and that makes all of the difference.
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Making distinctions between mediums is important. Like in the L (Death Note) topic it was really silly that the manga/anime version and the Netflix movie version were counted as the same character.
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alright your logic is internally consistent then

i'll move on
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would teenage Mikuru Asahina be considered a separate character from adult Mikuru Asahina

asking scarlet an anime question on purpose
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KamikazePotato posted...

Making distinctions between mediums is important. Like in the L (Death Note) topic it was really silly that the manga/anime version and the Netflix movie version were counted as the same character.

Honestly, too bad, so sad. The only few considerations for this I would consider have pretty much been named. And I likely will not run polls on those anyways. The point of this series is really to include all incarnations of a character together. There are a ton of Sherlock Holmes-es; if/when we rate him, that's a day. That's the ball game. Only when a narrative makes a point of the distinction between two versions of a character will I consider it important enough to make that sort of distinction on a polling day. For example, on the day of Poseidon, I said that it included any version of Poseidon as a god of the sea just for clarification's sake.

I don't like that some people haven't read or seen some things I love and base it off of things I don't, but that's how the game goes. People are entitled to vote based off of their experiences with a character. The only time I discount votes is when someone obviously has no experience with the character and is just throwing in a random rating (Preston).
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LeonhartFour posted...

would teenage Mikuru Asahina be considered a separate character from adult Mikuru Asahina

asking scarlet an anime question on purpose

Likely I wouldn't know the difference and if it came up, I would ask someone knowledgeable in that franchise to determine if there should be an errata added to the day for clarification. Probably Wickle and/or JONA.
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FFDragon posted...

alright your logic is internally consistent then

i'll move on

It's no problem to discuss if you have other questions or thoughts. I enjoy discussion in these topics, even when it's about the general administration of said topic.
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Dracula was a similar one. Honestly he should only be a one-day character but with how many different interpretations of him there are...

Hell a lot of people were commenting that day about how difficult it was to give him an overall score.
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Deep down, I think a lot of people like to focus as specifically on a character as possible to toss out as many dissenting opinions as possible

Now granted, there are times where I won't vote when I feel I'm not familiar enough with the character as a whole, but that would be the case when they're in different mediums or not. Like I abstained on Vegeta despite having enough familiarity with his character to give him a vote due to lack of familiarity on his primary source material (base DBZ). Negan I feel more or less okay with just dropping a vote, though, particularly when Scarlet has the exact same problem with the comic character (overstaying his welcome) that I have with the show character.

Like for another example we've already voted on, Bowser. I think he gains a ton out of the Mario & Luigi series. I doubt literally every Bowser voter had experience with that. I strongly suspect there are more differences between M&L vs Standard Bowser than Comic vs Show Negan, despite being in the same medium, but no one would suggest splitting Bowser votes.

So yeah long story short I don't think it's important to isolate mediums. Not really.
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Well, yeah, RPG Bowser is probably the best character Nintendo has ever created.

I do like regular Bowser though, too, and cartoon Bowser. Just not enough to give him the 9 I gave him (I think) when he was rated the other day.

But yeah, I agree that you can't really make distinctions just because they're portrayed differently in different media and just because someone may not be familiar with the version you really like. It doesn't mean that person would really like them, too.
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DeathChicken posted...

It might be different if he survived any of these things by his own competence. As is, it's like the writers keep having him run up against situations where by any logic he should be horribly killed, and then he bumbles out of it for meta reasons of "He's the villain and can't die yet". That's a terrible character

Man, you must have really hated Glenn, then.
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Aside from the infamous scene with the dumpster, I don't recall Glenn walking into many "Okay this is pretty clearly the end of you" situations and walking out via a DEM. Negan does that practically every episode
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DeathChicken posted...

Aside from the infamous scene with the dumpster, I don't recall Glenn walking into many "Okay this is pretty clearly the end of you" situations and walking out via a DEM. Negan does that practically every episode

Dude, Glenn was in "You should be dead" situations like, all the time. He was the king of that.
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