Perfect Heroes

[sistermagpie]

This is sort of repost of a comment I made in a conversation elsewhere, but it seems to come up in fandoms a lot. It's the idea that heroes have to be perfect. Or, to be more precise, that bad fans demand heroes be perfect and pick on them for making mistakes when really, their imperfections make them even more heroic.

See, I don't think fans really do want heroes to be perfect--if by perfect we mean they never do anything wrong. Gallant (of Goofus and Gallant fame) doesn't seem to inspire all that much admiration. (*thinks fondly of that Goofus/Gallant slash fic*) Nobody ever actually says, "I wish this character spent all his time clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and tending the sick. I wish he never swore or got angry or wanted anything naughty. I'm going to re-read the Ten Commandments and imagine my Perfect Hero not doing all those things you're not supposed to do."

Of course not. Nobody asks for that. What they *do* do, and gets taken for that, is criticize the actions of heroes, which is a completely different thing, imo. People do not want their heroes to be perfect, imo. What they do want is that their heroes not suck. Only whether a character sucks is going to vary from reader to reader.

For instance, do the webmasters at Superdickery.com want Superman to be nice all the time? No, they just like pointing out places where he's being a dick. Superman can be a hero and a dick. He's the hero because he's the guy in the red cape who saves peoples' lives, and the protagonist of the superhero comic bearing his name. Nobody's challenging his status as the hero because he's a dick, or saying Jimmy Olson should be the hero because he never opened the cage of a man-eating tiger as a baby (they might wish somebody else was the hero because they're better and cooler at beating the bad guys than the actual hero, though *cough*Neville Longbottom*cough*). They're just pointing out that the hero of that series is a dick. Being a hero doesn't mean you're perfect, but being a hero also doesn't mean the audience can't take the piss out of you like any other character.

I think people want to be able to look at their flaws and think they just make them more heroic or cool so they can say: "I wouldn't want him to always do the right thing! The fact that he did this thing you didn't like makes him better! In fact, it's not even a flaw, it makes him human!" You want to like the hero's mistakes. You get that you're supposed to do that. This is easy to do if you actually like what the hero is doing.

However, if a character isn't doing it for you, you don't feel that way. And we tend to judge all characters, including heroes, the same way, on how we feel about them. The fact that Frodo Baggins gets the Ring to Mount Doom doesn't make people feel ashamed of saying, "He's a big mope--Sam should have thrown them both into the volcano" if that's how they feel reading it. Nor should it. It's not like anybody owes these characters anything for saving them--they're just characters in a book created so that they can save the world.

In short, I don't think people want their heroes to be "perfect" in the sense of doing nothing wrong ever. They want their heroes to be people that don't bug them, and that's going to vary from person to person. A person who likes Frodo thinks he's more heroic for his limitations. A person who doesn't like him thinks his limitations make him a whiny failure not worth the ink. A person who likes Batman is into watching him struggle endlessly with his inner demons. Another person thinks he's a dangerous neurotic who ought to just be in therapy. Once a character is presented as a hero, every audience member is going to judge whether s/he finds the hero personally inspiring. If s/he does, great--let's talk about how cool he is. If s/he doesn't, s/he'll talk about what a lame story/character they find there.

The story/character is lame to a reader because the reader doesn't find that the particular things this character does "makes them more heroic," they think it just gets treated as if it makes them more heroic in the story. They don't think, for instance, that it makes Hermione "more heroic" that she seems to them to struggle with megalomaniacal tendencies. They think her megalomaniacal tendencies are presented as heroism. That goes beyond her failing to be perfect for them. Complaining about a character says: "this is how I feel about this character" not "I only like characters who are perfect."

It's also probably impossible to remove the character from the context of the story as well. So it would be perfectly okay, imo, for a person to, say, really like Officer Bud White, the guy Russell Crowe played in LA Confidential, and also say they hate Harry Potter casting a Crucio. And somebody might reply, "But Harry just casts a temporary curse in indignation in response to this really really evil guy spitting at a heroic old lady he likes a lot! Bud White shoots people to keep them from getting a trial! He beats people up to intimidate them! He beats up prisoners! He hits his sympathetic love interest, for god's sake! And you're going to criticize Harry for one Crucio on a DE?" In which case I think it would be perfectly normal for the other person to defend their liking of Bud by saying that all these things are not seen as being the things that make him heroic in his story, that his whole universe is corrupt so he doesn't stand out, that he's trying to overcome being a thug etc. Or they could just say: Yes, because Bud White is a cool character in a cool story, and your boy is a whiny coddled little bitch. If Bud cast a Crucio it would be cool. It is not cool when Harry does it because he sucks.

Comments

great post

[spare-change.livejournal.com]

They don't think, for instance, that it makes Hermione "more heroic" that she seems to them to struggle with megalomaniacal tendencies. They think her megalomaniacal tendencies are presented as heroism.

I think you've got it right here.

This is one of my biggest complaints about DH. I like flawed characters, but not when their flawed behavior is endorsed by the author as yet more proof of their awesomeness.

Re: great post

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I do tend to wonder when people suggest others don't like flawed heroes whether they really believe it, because have they actually ever met somebody who likes heroes like Gallant in Goofus in Gallant? What they like is heroes whose flaws they like so that they don't seem so much like flaws. If you're reading a character doing something you think it stupid or just ordinary and people in the story are like, "You are so awesome and special!" you're going to dislike the character more for that.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

The major problem with Harry casting that Crucio was not that he cast it per se, but that Unforgivables have an enormous history and "backstory" in this series, and, therefore, there needs to be some sort of reaction, whether negative or positive on the part of the character or the characters around him. Given that it is a spell with baggage, the baggage needs to be dealt with.

I don't know what people want in their heroes. Is Harry a hero? Perhaps more a victim than hero. Harry doesn't struggle much in this series. He just does the good fight. And while I think JRK was striving for that hero mantle with the 5th book where we have the emergence of CAPLOCKS!Harry, IMO it just ended up making him look like an adolescent jerk. Even in the last book, he almost skips to his death. There isn't any sense that this is even a choice. He doesn't rail against his fate, Dumbledore, why didn't his parents have their goddamned wands that night, why can't someone else make this walk? Nothing. And then the business with Dumbledore. Nothing. No conflict. None. I think of heroes as those who are faced with impossible choices and perhaps don't make the right ones. Harry always makes the right choice. Always. From the opening of the book. And when he DOES make the wrong choice (like the Crucio), it is ignored. This is a tremendous lost opportunity to make him less saintlike and, if you will, MORE heroic. By removing the stain of the Unforgivable once Harry casts it, then you make him a saint, because by implication, everything that he does or chooses has no moral or emotional consequences. That does NOT make him a hero.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Re the crucio, I think the arguments against it are very clear and valid: there is very good reason for us to think they were set up as something "bad" that the heroes weren't supposed to do, and not only does Harry use them, he uses them when he doesn't need to just for a cool moment. And suddenly nobody's jumping on the fact that it was an Unforgivable at all. Maybe people were wrong for thinking that Bellatrix's "You have to mean them!" was supposed to say something good about Harry's character, but I don't think they were wrong for getting that impression. It actually does seem like Unforgivables are genuinely bad when it makes the heroes look good for them to be so, and not so bad when it makes the hereos look good for them to be okay. For a while now I've not taken them as seriously as many in fandom did, but I do think they had good reason to take them seriously given the books.

And the problem, too, is that when it's defended as Harry "not being a saint" that's not how it's presented in the books. He's not presented as making a mistake there, there's nothing difficult about the scene. He uses it as if he's always been okay with the idea of using Crucios, though we're not exactly sure why.

I love the review of DH here: http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/2007/ and it gets into Harry doing stuff because he's supposed to as opposed to out of some inner drive of his own. There's a lot of good articles there.

JKR on perfect heroes

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

When asked about Harry's Crucio, JKR herself used something very like the "perfect heroes" defense in her recent web interview:

Barbara: I was very disappointed to see harry use crucio and seem to enjoy it his failure to perform that kind of curse in the past has been a credit to his character why the change, and did harry later regret having enjoyed deliberately causing pain

J.K. Rowling: Harry is not, and never has been, a saint. Like Snape, he is flawed and mortal.

J.K. Rowling: Harry’s faults are primarily anger and occasional arrogance.

J.K. Rowling: On this occasion, he is very angry and acts accordingly. He is also in an extreme situation, and attempting to defend somebody very good against a violent and murderous opponent.

I find that answer profoundly unsatisfying, and I really feel sorry for Barbara, because I doubt it will satisfy her either. But I think JKR's response carries more than a whiff of "If you don't like the way Harry's acting, you must be one of those bad fans who wants your books to have boring cardboard figures of perfection instead of realistic, well-rounded characters with flaws!"

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I agree - I think context and subjectivity (the individual's standards for heroism and their interpretation of a character/character's actions) are definitely what determine a value of 'real' heroism for a person.

For some people, it seems really, really important that their fictional hero lives up to the value of heroism they determined, often upon first read/viewing, for that character. In complaints about a hero demonstrating flaws, I see a lot of "[character] would never do that," and "this isn't the [character] I fell in love with," and "the writer/show is ruining [character]." Nor does it seem to have anything to do with not wanting the character to ever change and develop. It has more to do, it seems, with having in mind an interpretation of the character that means that for that audience - that person - the character will remain in character (and sustain that original value of heroism) only if s/he changes and grows in a certain direction.

I'm not saying that people who get angry about their heroes doing things they see as out of character or unheroic = those people aren't seeing the 'real' character. The interpretation part of reading/viewing is an individual experience, because it's up to each person to decide on their interpretation. One person's interpretation or value of heroism may not agree with another's, but that's just the way it is. And they're both essentially right; or possibly, no one is right. The way I see it, no matter how many impassioned and well-thought-out discussions, articles or books happen, there can never really be a last word on who is right on that point that is anything other than academic (in both the literal and figurative senses of the word).

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's a good point--I hadn't thought of that, but it happens all the time. It makes sense, actually. You might be drawn to a character (or a story) because you get something out of it, but if it starts doing something that undercuts that it's going to be frustrating. Sometimes the complaints that one person might have about a character, "never doing that" might strike somebody else as completely bizarre--like what does it matter if they did that little thing? But that's probably because for them it doesn't strike at the heart of what they're getting from the character.

[trobadora]

Interesting post! I'd agree that people don't want flawless heroes. But I don't think it's necessarily that they only want flaws they like, more that the flaws need to make sense within the story, and be acknowledged as flaws within the story. Which is why, for example, I have no issue Harry's sulkiness and aggression and blindness (though I find them personally irritating) and can live with the Sectumsempra (though I'd have preferred some sort of self-awareness to come from it), but find the casting of unforgivables very hard to stomach. The story seems to violate its own framework in order to make Harry come out untainted, and that kind of storytelling I take issue with. (Same, actually, with the inconsistent application of the "killing damages your soul" problem, and the life debt - there are probably more cases that I can't think of at the moment.) It's when the story becomes inconsistent in order to avoid acknowledging a character's flaws that I really lose my patience.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. I mean, there can be a flaw that you like in one character or hero and not in another, and that's no necessarily a case of having your head turned by good looks or some other superficial thing. It matters how something is seen or dealt with in the story, how it effects the character, how it fits in with other parts of their personality.

With heroes we're going to be reading to see how they negotiate their own morals, and some things are going to stick more than others. Especially if, as mahoni pointed out, you start out thinking that a character is illustrating one pov and then seems to go directly against that.

[rumpelgeist.livejournal.com]

I have Seen this Argument of "He is human" when some Fans talk about Dumbledore. They Seem sometimes to think that somehow because Harry forgave Dumbledore in his Limbo hallucination that This somehow redeemed the Character and that all Of the dickishness Made Dumbledore more well-rounded as If this was about him Being less of a dick. One Thing is 3d of character and another thing is Whether a character is likable for this reason or another Reason. I Do like Bud White, but I am Thinking that Bud White is more consistent because We can know the shade of grey he works with. Before Book 7 I Would have maybe called OOC on fanfiction that had Harry casting Crucio because I did Not see him as Casting any Unforgivable other than AK on Voldemort in a moment of passion.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, one thing I would say about Bud White, for instance, is that the story is exploring the very things that are flaws in him. You see other people criticize them (and they're not just there to be Proved Wrong about it), you see him suffer for it, it's part of the general screwed-upness of his world.

With Dumbledore it's a little more strange--I feel a real creepiness with Dumbledore, myself. His backstory is interesting in itself, but I feel like it's under this layer of sugary "and I was so good forever after that!" icing. Like with all the asking forgiveness of Harry and JKR's "he's the epitome of goodness" and all that. It seems like his problems with evil were just there to make him Complex and Not As Pure As Harry. It didn't make the twinkly mentor he'd been in the past more interesting for me, it just kind of exaggerated the creeping feeling that Dumbledore thought himself a lot better than I thought him. Like these were flaws that were supposed to make me like him when I would rather have disliked him for it--or maybe enjoyed him as a bad guy.

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

slipping out of lurker-mode to say, yes, especially this part:
However, if a character isn't doing it for you, you don't feel that way. And we tend to judge all characters, including heroes, the same way, on how we feel about them.

What gets frustrating though, are those people who don't acknowledge that their dislike IS purely emotional and have to dress it up in some facade of neutral reasonableness. That appearance always suggests a willingness to engage or debate -- and then very swiftly the discussion turns into dogmatic attacks and emphasis on minor transgressions (if not willful twisting of canon) to 'support' the position. And those sort of fans seem to WANT to engage, because they think they can debate people into believing their side, in face of fans who clearly have a very different view.

Having been sucked into one of those 'discussions' (and ho boy, did it get ugly) I suspect that sort of situation is what leads to the "bad fans only want perfect characters" rant. You're right, they don't really want a 'perfect' character. But they do fail to recognize that their dislike is just as emotionally based as a different fan's liking. And that's irritating.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I fear I've been that kind of fan myself! But I think I know just what you mean, because it's really not about minor transgressions. Those transgressions aren't so bad. Even something like Crucio--I think people make a good case for why it bothers them as something that went against what they thought was an established morality, but it's not about Harry having done the Worst Thing Ever. And whenever you try to argue why this character is a total dick against somebody who likes or is neutral against him, you are going to start giving more weight to stuff that really isn't that bad. Or that wouldn't be bad at all if another character did it.

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

People do not want their heroes to be perfect, imo. What they do want is that their heroes not suck.

Word. Also word to the Neville love, oh Neville, you are the Chosen One in my heart.

They don't think, for instance, that it makes Hermione "more heroic" that she seems to them to struggle with megalomaniacal tendencies. They think her megalomaniacal tendencies are presented as heroism.

Yes, wtf? This is exactly my issue...I'm fine with the hero having problems. Even really bad problems. What I'm not fine with is being told by the narrator, "THOSE AREN'T PROBLEMS THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" If Hermione were exactly the same but her megalomaniacal tendencies were PRESENTED DIFFERENTLY by the narrator, I would have a lot less trouble with them, because actually I DO like Hermione.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of people were really looking forward to Hermione getting down and dirty with Comeuppance. And I don't think they were all just people who wanted to watch her suffer. It could have been interesting if she was suddenly in trouble because of stuff she'd done to others. It could have been sympathetic and made it seem like she became a better person. More so than just having her tortured by a bad guy, for instance. Wanting a character to suffer isn't always about hating them--sometimes just the opposite!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I've always felt like a hero at least needs to be someone who always tries his best, even if he fails time and time again. Your Bud White example was perfect -- Bud's clearly a hero in spite of how many times he fails to do the right thing. The fact is, he's always trying to be decent, it's just that he can't always rise above his innate violence. Sometimes the only way he knows how to express his decency is with violence. That said, I wouldn't want to be his girlfriend -- but he's a terrific character.

It's not that fans want "perfect" characters, they actually prefer complex, flawed characters -- but ones that are well-crafted. Creating flawed characters that are still heroic is a painstaking task. It's not enough to sketch out someone who's basically depicted as perfect, throw in a few bouts of bad temper and say, "see, he's flawed." Because those sorts of flaws are the ones that stand out as not making sense or being out of character, and that get readers' hackles up.

Flaws have to make sense within the framework of the character and the story, they can't just come in out of left field. Even a character who's not depicted as perfect can't get away with anything. If Bud White had suddenly shot his girlfriend, it wouldn't have been just another example of his flawed complexity, it would have been completely indefensible from any viewpoint. It just wouldn't have made sense.

Do you mean to tell me there is actually Goofus/Gallant slash out there!?!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I remember finding that slash somewhere--it was hilarious. Written totally in the style of the series to: Gallant stays after school to put up posters for the charity drive. Gallant stays after school in detention. (With sexy results!)

Creating flawed characters that are still heroic is a painstaking task. It's not enough to sketch out someone who's basically depicted as perfect, throw in a few bouts of bad temper and say, "see, he's flawed." Because those sorts of flaws are the ones that stand out as not making sense or being out of character, and that get readers' hackles up.

God yes. That's such a classic "flawed" character--ironically that totally made me think of JKR's answer about Harry. He's "never been a saint" because he sometimes has a temper and can be arrogant. Only none of these things are ever really painful for him. He doesn't alienate anybody with either of these traits either.

And another thing about flaws...

[oselle.livejournal.com]

There really needs to be a sense that the flaws create problems for the character himself, that he suffers for them in some way. I'm reading Nicholas Nickleby right now and in Dickens's preface he defends Nicholas's temper, which some readers had complained about, by saying that he never meant for Nicholas to be always "blameless or agreeable." The truth is that Nicholas's temper is always righteous, moral and justifiable, but even Nicholas is shown as paying for it -- which he does, throughout the book, often getting himself in a lot of hot water. I think the problem that some people have with Hermione or Harry in HP is that they never suffer for their flaws, so their flaws just become a part of their heroism, another way in which they show themselves as special or better than the other characters. Hermione isn't sneaky, she's brilliant. Harry isn't rash, he's gallant.

Re: And another thing about flaws...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. I said above that Harry doesn't alienate anybody with his temper, but I should qualify that he doesn't alienate anybody who *matters*. The people who don't like Harry are always marginalized or conquered in some other way. Or with Hermione they just fade away--so she can blackmail somebody for an entire year, and when the person shows up again she's going after Albus Dumbledore rather than, you know, getting back at Hermione.

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

Heh. In the Interests of Science, I've been reading "Little Lord Fauntleroy", because that's the only example I ever heard of this mythical 'perfect hero'. And boy is he perfect. He's adorable and polite and strong and sturdy and brave and good and kind. He's every bit as nauseating as you would expect. And you know what? I still like him better than I like Harry at the end of DH.

There's a scene where Fauntleroy is tempted by Satan in the form of his wicked grandfather, by being offered a choice whether to visit his mother (she's living off the estate for being American, or something), or to see his brand-new pony. He has a very profound struggle which I personally felt every sympathy with. I mean, come on-- A PONY. And Our Hero sucks it up and goes to see his mom despite the agonies this causes him (sorry-- should have flagged this SPOILERS FOR LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY!!). Now I'm running through the HP series in my head trying to think if Harry ever faced a comparable moral struggle. Harry would choose the pony and the universe would warp so that was actually the right choice. That's the thing-- it's hard to root for a character when God is on their side. If you know the team is going to win, why bother rooting? Especially if the rules keep changing so they get all the points?

The other thing about Fauntleroy is, he has a program I can get behind. See the best in people, fund small business, cheer people up when they're feeling down. Oh and infrastructure will make England great! What's Harry's program? Okay.. destroy evil wizards, but that's not even a general principle, the wizard killed his specific parents and is chasing him around trying to kill him, so it's not like it's a big value system for him. Aside from that... be minimally polite to people unless they give you a reason to beat them up. Save people when they're in immediate mortal peril is as close as it gets, and I guess I support that, but it's not really a platform.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OMG, now I totally have to read LLF. But yeah, at least he's it seems like what he's doing you can get behind. It's not like those books--can't remember their name now--where the hero is this little Christian girl whose constant demonstrations of "good" make me argue that they're good, or where I feel like other characters are mistreated and are characterized just to show how good she is. (Btw, I almost fainted today when somebody on HP4GU explained that really Harry was more than a hero, he was a saint. Because all heroes in the history of literature have ever only saved the goodies and killed the baddies. Uh-huh, yeah. Chalk that up to yet another thing you might have thought was standard, but in fact never existed before JKR thought of it.

Harry would choose the pony and the universe would warp so that was actually the right choice. That's the thing-- it's hard to root for a character when God is on their side. If you know the team is going to win, why bother rooting? Especially if the rules keep changing so they get all the points?

I think it was Elkins again who did a post once where she was sort of comparing Harry to classic boarding school stories and how he and his friends didn't even have to follow those classic rules of behavior. This was even before the Crucio, but for instance, stuff like the way the Twins join in on fights between the Trio and the Slyth Trio, even when that outnumbers the Slytherins and the Slytherins are younger. Where as in the past as older, good student, they should be simply stopping them from fighting and criticizing their behavior. Not that this stops people from earnestly saying that Gryffindor is the "chivalrous" house because unlike Slytherin they *never* outnumber anybody in a fight--it always has to be fair.

So they can actually break all the rules of fair play (especially if we're told they make a big deal sticking to them in situations designed to show that, like the way Slytherin is always supposed to be cheating in Quidditch while Gryffindor is fair, or Harry doesn't hex Draco when he's down in their duel in CoS) while still claiming to be the ones who stick to it. Because whenever they do something like that it doesn't count or is just showing their human.

I remember at PR there was a paper where everyone started talking about how great it was that the heroes in HP were so human--as if every other hero in literature is just such a bore and nobody's ever stepped outside the line--and I was just like: but here's the thing. When does it stop being "he made a mistake" and start actually reflect on the person's character? The answer is if you're in Slytherin--always. If you're a good guy: never. Not because the good guys' bad behavior can't be a mistake, but because it's never a mistake they acknowledge or learn from. When it causes any bad consequences it's always blamed on some wildly unfair manipulation by bad guys.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I was almost finished writing out a long and somewhat rambling response to this, when my power went out and I lost it all, so bear with me here.

Basically, I suggested that heroism is a process, rather than an essence or a personal quality. As a process, it requires the hero to have flaws, because the process involves a striving to be a better, more heroic person, as well as the struggle against whatever outside forces are involved. Of course, this only works if the flaws are acknowledged, because the character won't make an effort, if these flaws are excused. This means that the character can slip up in this effort, and even fail in it from time to time, because there is not a tally of hero points being kept, where a mistake necessarily means a permanent black mark against the character.

Of course, even seeing heroism this way, people are still going to disagree over who is heroic, because everyone has different standards of goodness. And, as you say, personal emotional responses to characters will affect whether or not we judge them to be heroes. I'm biased, but I'm not too biased to admit that Harry Potter would have to work a lot harder to overcome his flaws than, say Draco Malfoy, before I would consider him heroic by my standards, and I know that a good part of that is simply because I like Draco that much better.

Also, as other people have said, it is sometimes important for characters to suffer because of their flaws. Actions need to have realistic consequences, and these consequences have to be consistent no matter who is committing the action, unless the unbalanced consequences are meant to show a social imbalance of some sort.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point, that it's about a process--I agree. That's why it's sometimes frustrating when people feel like the process isn't happening, especially if it's because what they perceive are mistakes aren't treated as such. Like if a character screws everything up, but then the author or director makes something happen that the hero didn't earn so that he wins anyway, and the mistake is never addressed.

[alice-and-lain.livejournal.com]

People have written such long comments to this post, I feel a little weird with such a short one. I just wanted to say I liked the post and thought you made some very good points. Perfect heroes would be very boring and hard to relate to.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting at all--I appreciate it, and I'm glad you liked it.:-)

[1mpenitent.livejournal.com]

I know your original post was more generalist, rather than specifically HP-centric but as the discussion has focussed more and more on HP, I thought I'd just say...I have never considered the trio as a Heroic Trio. They are the protagonists, but not the Heroes. It's not really a mythic hero tale, but a coming of age one - and often when people 'come of age', part of the process is the understanding that life is not black and white, that there are shades of grey. That some things may be 'unforgiveable' but when push comes to shove, one may indeed do unforgiveable things - and that does change the complexion of the protagonist by providing more light and shade. Ordinary person placed in extraordinary situation may well behave unnaturally, uncharacteristically, unusually.

I think of those stories of ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations in times of war and conflict, people who did extraordinary things - some incredibly heroic, some quite the opposite, degrading, cruel, inhuman. And when the conflict was over, went back to being very ordinary people, able to compartmentalise that experience and lock it away.

Do people really interpret Harry as being more 'pure in heart' than Dumbledore? Than Draco? I did not. The book is written from the PoV of a Harry-phile and so the other characters are cast in appropriate colours accordingly but as a reader, I have not taken that on board. I have paused to consider an incident from the PoV of Malfoy, or one of the others.

Perhaps I am not adequately literary to be able to cast everything I read into discernible literary patterns.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Do people really interpret Harry as being more 'pure in heart' than Dumbledore?

I think Dumbledore does and we're possibly meant to agree with him!

I think I tend to read the book the same way you do, looking at other characters' povs. Some of them are actually more satisfying for me because they often have stories that really show actions and consequences for a limited person. There's something intriguing about even a backstory like the Crouch's, for intance. We don't see it play out in front of us, but it's a great story that resonates anyway.

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

I really agree with what you say here about the context of the whole story mattering a lot. Readers are remarkably adaptable; they'll accept behavior from characters that they'd never accept in real life -- and sometimes they'll judge harshly behavior that they would accept in real life. A well-crafted story establishes its own standards of judgment that readers grant implicitly at least while they're reading. So for example, when I'm reading the Narnia books, I understand how important it is for Jill to obey Aslan's directions, because that's the sort of universe Lewis is constructing. That kind of unquestioning faith isn't an important value in my own life, but it is hugely important to Lewis's universe, and this standard of behavior is upheld consistently throughout his books. Lots of characters don't live up to the standard -- all of them struggle with it. Some of them ultimately fail. Lewis is intimately acquainted with all the reasons why people struggle with it: all the little distractions and excuses they use to evade what is understood in Lewis's universe as both an enormous overarching responsibility and a source of joy. So for me as a reader the stories are psychologically complex enough to keep me interested even though the series is built around a moral standard that's pretty alien to me personally. The stories are just that well-crafted.

So, as a reader, I find flaws interesting, and I'll adapt to whatever the story I'm reading posits as a flaw. That process got a bit derailed in HP for all the reasons that you and several commenters here have said: by the end of the series it became difficult to know just what the narrative was postulating as good and what it was postulating as bad. Reliable characters said over and over again that the hero won because he was good, or at least better than the other side, so I don't get the impression that Rowling was deliberately constructing a morally ambiguous universe in which the hero wins just because he's more powerful, or luckier, or willing to cheat, or whatever. (Now that would be REALLY interesting to see in a fantasy series -- sort of a fantasy noir -- but I just don't think Rowling was going for that.) She seems to be working in a universe where good and evil are more or less fixed and characters struggle to live up to ideals. Cool. That's what Lewis does; that's what Tolkien and Pullman and Cooper do. But what are the ideals? Without some sense of what the standards are -- however provisional and riddled with exceptions those standards may be -- I'm not even sure you can say that a character is "flawed." He's just some guy doing stuff.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Without some sense of what the standards are -- however provisional and riddled with exceptions those standards may be -- I'm not even sure you can say that a character is "flawed." He's just some guy doing stuff.

LOL! Nice way of putting it.

It's funny that this makes me think about Quidditch in HP, and how in OotP I felt like it really fell apart. I mean, I was never that into it anyway, but one of the reasons was there was never any suspense because Harry always won. Then in OotP I though I was seeing all this stuff like Gryffindor and Slytherin both shooting themselves in the foot and losing themselves the cup because of their fighting, and Harry not winning all the time etc. And instead it was like Quidditch suddenly just morphed so that Gryffindor could still win thanks to the Keeper, which Ron was, rather than the Seeker.

There's a place where it just gets incoherent beyond the good guys winning by any means necessary--though even there it's only interesting if you're exploring the cost of "any means necessary." I really get a very different vibe from HP than I do from any of the other series you mentioned, and it comes across in interviews as well, I think.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

The story/character is lame to a reader because the reader doesn't find that the particular things this character does "makes them more heroic," they think it just gets treated as if it makes them more heroic in the story.

I think this is part of this debate for me. Harry casts Crucio, and he's "not a plaster saint." Even people who are not saints don't all go around casting torture spells. It was not merely an OOC moment, it was completely useless. Other spells with less baggage would have worked. I think, in this moment, it was plot hurrah moment over character, a cheap shot.

The three Unforgivables really have been set up in the books to be wrong. I've always had an issue with the AK and Imperius, since I can see perfectly valid neutral or even good uses of them. Crucio... well, someone suggested a fanfic that used Crucio like some sort of electric shock therapy, that worked for them, so in canon, it's okay to use, even if it wasn't a last-ditch effort to save someone's mind.

I had no trouble with Harry using Imperius. It worked in the context of the scenario. The scenario itself didn't work as well as this little snippet of it, IMO, but I saw Imperiusing someone in order to successfully complete the mission was forgivable in the context of a war.

I should mention that I'm not a big Harry fan. He's had too little growth and too much self-absorbtion in the last two or three books, IMO, for me to care much. So I think (I may be wrong!) that I'm coming at these two different Unforgivables on the plot points alone, and finding one wanting and one okay. I missed seeing any sort of reflection on the part of Our Hero for either. I also wondered how he just learned how to do a perfect Imperius, and when.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It bugs me when everybody seems brought to Harry's level just at the outset. I remember one time somebody talking about Hermione's "mistake" (if it was so--I'm referring here of course to her scarring her for life rather than being so into getting together a secret club she didn't screen the membership at all) about Marietta and I think it was Betsy who said, "Excuse me? What do I have to learn from that? I've never scarred anybody for life. Isn't it Hermione who might have to learn something there?"

But that's a very common assumption in HP fandom that I haven't seen in other fandoms I've been in, where you're always being told that "you would do the same thing" no matter what the character does. Like "tell the truth, wouldn't you torture Bellatrix if you had the chance?" Um, no. And that's not so unusual. I'd certainly want her taken care of so she couldn't hurt anybody again. But I'd be much more likely to want her dead than to want her tortured. But everyone has to be an assumed torturer by default because that's what characters in the book do. Claiming you're not into torture is claiming to be a "plaster saint." So you wind up with a book that at least for me rarely inspires me with behavior I think is impressive, and seems to spend far more time convincing me that behavior I think is dodgy is justifiable and great.

And I don't have a big problem with Harry using Imperius or even Crucio, I mean, in the sense that it didn't totally throw me because for me Crucio had already morphed into a not so bad spell. But there's nothing about the scene where he uses it that makes me identify with him.

[aewyn7.livejournal.com]

That “you want the characters to be perfect! But their flaws make them human and interesting!” thing tends to come up quite often when somebody talks about a character’s flaws, and it’s always kind of strange to me. If their flaws are what makes them human and interesting, why can’t we talk about them? It’s almost like it’s some sort of a mantra meant to shut down criticism about a character, not a genuine opinion that a character’s flaws are interesting. It’s like the flaws are there so the character isn’t an annoying Mary Sue/Gary Stu or some sort of a plaster saint, but we shouldn’t discuss the flaws either because that would be bashing the character.

However, if a character isn't doing it for you, you don't feel that way. And we tend to judge all characters, including heroes, the same way, on how we feel about them. The fact that Frodo Baggins gets the Ring to Mount Doom doesn't make people feel ashamed of saying, "He's a big mope--Sam should have thrown them both into the volcano" if that's how they feel reading it. Nor should it. It's not like anybody owes these characters anything for saving them--they're just characters in a book created so that they can save the world.
That’s a really good point – I wonder if that’s why people sometimes seem to not like it when others criticise the heroes, that they feel that now that these characters have saved the world it’s unfair to complain about them being whiny or annoying or whatever? But you’re absolutely right that readers don’t owe anything to them.

In short, I don't think people want their heroes to be "perfect" in the sense of doing nothing wrong ever. They want their heroes to be people that don't bug them, and that's going to vary from person to person.
Yes, that’s it exactly, I think. I’ve never wanted Harry and co. to be perfect, but they do things that make me extremely uncomfortable. Like Harry happily using crucio. It’s okay to have flaws and to make mistakes, but torturing people is kind of unacceptable to me, especially in a hero of a children’s/YA book series about good and evil.

I also think some of my discomfort with the crucio scene comes from how it was presented in the text – it’s not presented as a huge mistake that Harry makes, it just seems like the author pretty much approves of what he does there. The unforgivable curses were presented in the earlier books as just that – unforgivable. They were something the bad guys were supposed to do, they were supposed to be truly evil and shocking. And now Harry tortures another human being and it’s no big deal at all and that bothers me a lot. It’s like either JKR keeps changing the rules of her own fictional universe, which is annoying, or she has a view of morality that I completely disagree with (that good guys are good no matter what they do, that good and evil define people, not actions). I think readers do sometimes react differently to character flaws when they’re clearly recognised by the text as flaws and to the kind of flaws that the text doesn’t seem to see as problems at all.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

If their flaws are what makes them human and interesting, why can’t we talk about them?

That's absolutely always a question, as if you're not supposed to say anything about them except about the ways that they aren't there at all, because they're keeping the character from being insufferable. There's so little interesting about hearing characters flaws described in generic ways as well, like, "He has a temper. He doesn't listen to others. He thinks he knows best." The flaws that are more intersting and stick with you is when you see those things in a really specific way connected to a character and really can complain about them.

Like with Hermione, "she always thinks she knows best" isn't interesting at all. She could just be some slightly pompous person thinking to herself that she knows best. It's interesting when you actually point out her acting on this and say why it's a flaw because it's wrong.

That’s a really good point – I wonder if that’s why people sometimes seem to not like it when others criticise the heroes, that they feel that now that these characters have saved the world it’s unfair to complain about them being whiny or annoying or whatever?

Yeah, I can see that there can be a clash when one person's enjoying the glow of the story as if it were "real" on that level while the other person is more in the stage where they're just picking apart the thing as a fictional construct. If you've just finished LotR and loved it of course you're going to be annoyed by somebody saying, "Frodo was an annoying turd." But of course, that's why you have to stay away from negative reviews if you don't want to read them. If you do go onto a messageboard, it's open season.

I also think some of my discomfort with the crucio scene comes from how it was presented in the text – it’s not presented as a huge mistake that Harry makes, it just seems like the author pretty much approves of what he does there.

I've been reading discussions with people who had a problem with this and people who didn't, and it came to that as well. The problem with the argument that he "wasn't a plaster saint" and that this was "showing the difficulties of war and mistakes people make" or whatever is that it isn't shown that way at all. Any more than LotR is showing that sometimes in war you make a mistake by destroying someone else's jewelry.

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

I always feel a bit out of line with fan response, because in the end what's good about heroes is that they're average people that make the good things about humanity work so well that you get a rush of hope. So you need the flaws and something disturbing to anchor that feeling of still dealing with real people, otherwise it turns fake, it's wish-fulfillment. That's why I want heroes to be flawed, but oddly enough the heroes who are actually flawed (meaning the authorial voice is pointing that out and making them go through arcs that deal with it) seem to get a lot of backlash. Heroes where the flaws seem after-thoughs because "modern heroes need flaws" but really don't have the story deal with it, or have flaws that are actually depicted as positives get a lot of people cheerleading them. But they aren't really flaws, so what's the point.

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

I forgot to say that I really like your last paragraph, both the part about context (context always makes all the difference) and the part about genuine reaction. Talk of context is more intellectualized and gets more into talk of tropes and archetypes and the way characters are built, but I really related to the idea that the most wildly different reactions can all be genuine responses. A lot of times people on the other side (I'm guilty of this) immediately dubs it as bad faith or delusion, like you had to force yourself to feel like that. Often there is a further explanation to why we have that emotional reaction and it could bring up unpleasant motivations in yourself (or unpleasant things in the text) it could bring up ... but it doesn't mean the initial reaction was faked.

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

Yes, people do like characters that don't bug them and everyone has different things bugging them. However, I'm not sure that nobody wants to have perfect heroes. You bring Neville as an example. If Neville has ever broken one of the ten commandments then it was that he possibly failed to love himself as much as he loves his neighbor and his superiors, but as he always tried very hard to love himself as well, we can conclude that he is an absolutely perfect person. He is not a Gary Stu because he has weaknesses he has to fight, but he is an angel whose moral righteousness really knows no bounds.

Besides, there are lots of flawless heroes, especially in children's literature and movies. One example: Neverending Story? Bastian is like Neville. Atreju is ... wow he is complete Stu, isn't he? (I crushed on him heavily.) Another example: Oliver Twist. An angel.

I'm rambling, but my point is, people do express a desire for flawless heroes all the time. You are probably right they often do this because they are criticizing a very specific flawed hero or flawed universe that happens to bug them, but some people probably just don't like moral ambiguity or flawed protagonists much. All possible, all happens, all fair in love and questions of taste.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's true about Neville-though I don't think that's what makes people like him. The reason people wanted Neville to be the hero in DH, imo, was because he honestly seemed more competent and brave, not because he never threw a Crucio or did anything wrong.

Though I agree with you that Neville is far more saintlike, and I think if he had been the hero that would have gotten old fast--unless you really like the whole underdog thing and that's enough for you. But I think if we were in Neville's pov and he still came across as just as wonderful as he does now, it might be much more boring.

I don't know a lot of the other characters, but Oliver Twist, for instance, is an angel--but barely a hero. He's passive, more of a symbol of goodness than anything else.

But still I do take your point. People do like the wonderful heroes too. But I still have yet to ever hear anybody in fandom demand a perfect hero, especially not when they were being accused of it because they criticized something some other hero did. And also, from the other side, if somebody thinks a hero's flaws just make him more heroic, isn't that a perfect hero?

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that people generally tend to think of heroes as embodying some sort of social ideal, some traits that should be universally respected, if not emulated. But I was struck, in DH, by how many roles of that sort Harry refuses, from the outlaw hero to the commanding general; and I gradually came to think that JKR was doing something very different. Her prescription for heroism seems almost therapeutic -- very much tailored to the individual's personal psychic dangers, without necessarily being normative for anyone else.

There are heroic stereotypes that it would be toxic for Harry to inhabit -- his experience of abuse might have made him a monster of vengefulness and self-assertion, and I think the crucio incident was precisely a reminder of that capacity within him. His negative traits are part of the story because, in part, they define his agenda, the things he has to work on, the hazards he has to avoid. And his heroism amounts to learning to get over himself, to some extent -- to acquire the disciplined power to do useful things for the public, while avoiding his innate tendency to do some harmful things.

I've been thinking about this a bit in terms of the way DH disappointed genre expectations for a hero-story. If I ever get around to doing my post-DH post, it will be more about this. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Her prescription for heroism seems almost therapeutic -- very much tailored to the individual's personal psychic dangers, without necessarily being normative for anyone else.

I thought Harry wasn't those things because he had to follow her plot and find the Horcruxes. I admit, I don't remember ever thinking Harry's psychic dangers were much tailored to. I didn't feel much struggle in DH for Harry, so it was more like he just did everything he had to do.

I've been thinking about this a bit in terms of the way DH disappointed genre expectations for a hero-story.

I'm not sure it disappointed whatever expectations it did (some people thought it was great) on purpose. Harry seems to be viewed as an amazing hero by many, and within his own universe he seems like the most awesome thing anybody can imagine. The things I thought he had to work on or avoid seemed neatly avoided in favor of other stuff.

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

I'm playing catchup with my flist (out of town then compounded problems with my internet connection) but this, as usual, was a thought provoking post.

The various characters you mentioned were interesting choices as well. Not that I've ever been really into comics but I've always liked Batman more than Superman because he is flawed whereas Superman is just a bit too super to be really interesting. And Sam is my hero, not Frodo, because he's the ordinary man who does the extraordinary.

Of course I've got to get back to HP. oselle noted something very pertinent, I think:

I think the problem that some people have with Hermione or Harry in HP is that they never suffer for their flaws, so their flaws just become a part of their heroism, another way in which they show themselves as special or better than the other characters. Hermione isn't sneaky, she's brilliant. Harry isn't rash, he's gallant.

I think it's interesting compare Harry and Hermione to Ron and Neville. Harry and Hermione, for all they've faced, have never really struggled and most things came easy to them, at least the things that mattered. And they've made few mistakes with consequences. Sirius and perhaps driving Ron to Lavender are about the only things that come to mind right now, and the latter had no lasting consequence beyond delaying the romance. Though I should say DH was the book where Harry really finally connected with me. Prior to that I'd thought he was pretty overrated. But anyway, Ron and Neville both are more average but ultimately more human and, for all the parallels Neville has with Harry, there are some significant ones with Ron as well. Both insecure and unsure of their abilities. Both overshadowed by their families and friends. Both with very domineering maternal figures.

You mentioned in another response readers wanting Hermione to have some sort of comeuppance and I was among them, I think. Not that I want her to suffer permanently but she's done lots of dubious things with no consequence, like Umbridge, Skeeter, and Marietta. I'm currently working on a Ron/Luna+Hermione story where Hermione basically kept things from developing with Ron. I do think she'd be more likely of the two, because of personality and culture, to not want to get too serious too young, and would likely want to prioritize her career, at least for a time. So the story has two main arcs: Ron's finally moving on from Hermione and developing a friendship and romance with Luna and Hermione realizing the consequences of her actions and ultimately coming full circle back to only a friendship with Ron. I figure she'd always had the idea that she and Ron would get together someday, and even sort of ignored the signs that Ron and Luna were becoming more serious. I'm certainly not trying to vilify Hermione in any way, just give her a fairly large failure. And I think most of us have a "what could have been" relationship in our past where we made serious mistakes or kept things from developing, even if only through inaction.

I've gone on long enough about the story but do I hope to have it finished fairly soon (family stuff has kept it on the backburner recently).

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I loves stories like the one you're describing--and I don't think they villify Hermione at all. That's why I'm always surprised when people wanting her to have comeuppance is taken to mean they want her villified. It makes her sympathetic, imo. It's partly why I love Hermione in Mira's story, because she's just a woman who's dealing with the realistic loneliness or disappointment that she might actually deal with given her personality, where it's not just always agreed to that she's right and that she's the best.

In canon, by contrast, I'd even say that the Ron/Lavender thing, while you can see Hermione's behavior as being part of it, seems to come down to Ron. It's Ron who has to realize that he made the wrong choice, while Hermione is first just frustrated and then smugly gets to watch as Ron proves her right by getting sick of Lavender. As annoying as it is for her to watch him all over her, there's never any threat to their relationship because Ron doesn't really have one with Lavender in terms of coming to like and connect with her as a person. She doesn't have to deal with what you describe in your story, where her best-laid plans and ideas about what's right for everyone don't pan out--since romance often doesn't work that way anyway.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

....you're kidding, aren't you?

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard or read "Perfection is boring! I want my heroes to be flawed," I'd be quite nicely well-off right now.

Who is going around saying that heroes should be perfect? I honestly thought that idea was well and truly dead.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Um, it's the same people saying "I want my heroes flawed! Perfection is boring!" This is the accusation they then level at people who disagree with them on the actions of their heroes--"if you don't like something my hero did then YOU must want the hero to be perfect and without flaws!"

When of course the other person isn't saying that either. Not liking a character doing a certain thing does not mean you want them to be perfect. It's a dishonest way of attacking the other person's argument.

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Sorry for spamming this entry, but you've touched on a subject that I find really interesting. I knew there was something I'd been meaning to say about it that I hadn't gotten out in my original post, and I finally remembered what that was.

If you ask people what sort of heroes they like, they will almost always say "I want flaws!" But when someone manages to create a character who's engaging and not obviously flawed, in a lot of cases they won't even really notice it. (Take the example of Anne Elliott's popularity in my post above, for example.) And then when someone points out that the character isn't particularly flawed, they'll scramble to look for a flaw that they can hold up to save the character from the dreaded charge of perfection.

In other words, not only do "bad fans" supposedly want their characters to be perfect, but perfection is also the mark of a bad character that no one could truly love. I can't help wondering if this fear lies behind the way J.K. Rowling kept piling flaws onto her "good guys," particularly in the last three books. Unfortunately, in some cases she went overboard IMO, to the point where I couldn't get behind them as "good guys" any more. OotP hit just about the right balance for me, but then she continued to add flaws--though in some cases, I don't think she realized she was doing so--and it drove me to dislike all of my former favorite characters.

I confess that I saw the Ricky Schroeder movie version of Little Lord Fauntleroy on television as a child, and I really liked it! But for some reason, I never read the book.

Also, I sent a link to this essay to a friend who had an interesting comment. He suggested that, just as reactions to a character's flaws are individual, so are reactions to a character's good qualities. Maybe the key is not so much the balance of flaws and good qualities, but that all the character's qualities (good and bad) be "something we want to watch."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally agree! Because the thing about characters who are "perfect" isn't just that they're boring because we like flaws but because there's no flaws to make things happen and that we enjoy. But flaws are fun--if you like the flaw. It doesn't seem like a flaw so much as something interesting or something that draws you to the character. Just as good things can either be something that's annoying or something we really like to watch.

I hadn't thought about piling on the flaws in HP--that could be true. But as you say, for me tehre wasn't enough of a balance.