Character flaws
Nov. 30th, 2003 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyI've been thinking about character flaws - hot spots and triggers and such. For some people, some flaws are unforgivable. I, myself, have a problem with hypocrites (Big ones for me include Willow, Spike, and Lana). That's the character flaw that I have the hardest time getting past. And it's a very specific kind - I dislike people who firmly believe in their own goodness and worth while not actually being very good. People who blind themselves to their bad sides and pretend that they don't exist.
Characters who know that they aren't perfect tend to get more leniance from me, since they're already beating themselves up. And when the characters that I dislike do see their bad sides, as Willow and Spike do in S7, I start to like them. Because finally, they understood that they weren't special. And each of them had - each of them felt morally superior, in their own ways. And they realized that they weren't, that they were just as flawed as everyone else.
S7 is the first time that I liked Willow for herself and not because I liked the person she was with. She managed to touch my heart by herself, not through Xander or Oz or Tara.
Everyone on a Joss Whedon show is flawed - that's what makes them realistic. But most of the characters are aware of their flaws, or are called on them. Willow escaped being called on her errors a lot. So much that she started to believe that she was never wrong, that her instinct always pointed the right way. Pride goeth.
Buffy pulls away from people. That's her main flaw (though she definitely has others). The first major showcase for it was When She Was Bad, when she did a marvelous job of trying to alienate the people who loved her most. That's what she struggles with throughout the seasons. She retreats into being the Slayer and stops being Buffy. She becomes 'the Hand', disconnected from her instincts, her emotions, and her ability to plan really well.
Xander idealizes and gets disappointed. He did it with Buffy. He did with Giles. With Willow and with Anya. He does want things to be simple. He wishes that Angel could just be a vampire and that Buffy could just slay him. He wishes that the world could just make sense. But it doesn't, and he gets frustrated. He sets himself up for disappointment. He wants things to be perfect. The more I think about, the more I actually do believe that he could have cast the spell in Once More, With Feeling - this is while they have two active witches in the group, so it actually makes sense that he'd have become a bit desensitized to what damage magic could do. And he does long for a happy ending. If one posits that the summoner can then lie in song whereas no one else can, it also clears up the nagging problem of I'll Never Tell, where he doesn't sing about his biggest fear. Hmm. And then, his 'merciful Zeus' at the beginning could be his surprise that the singing extended to more than Anya and himself. And he might not have wanted to tell Giles, because perhaps the book or whatever he researched mentioned that the singing didn't last forever - just until the ending was reached. And he was very concerned about whether or not the singing was connected to the 'burning and dying', which they hadn't cleared up at that point. In fact, I doubt they knew that for certain until Buffy started smoking at the end. Hmm. Witness me fanwanking.
Willow believes. She really and truly believes in what she's doing and that it's the right thing. True believers can be very dangerous. And she knows that she's the smartest person in the group, and regardless of whether or not that's true, her knowing that has given her way too much certainty about her conclusions. Willow believes that she's right. Willow believes in herself.
Interesting how closely those meld to their places of 'hand', 'heart', and 'spirit'. The body, the emotions, and the soul. Their greatest strength and greatest weakness.
And Giles, of course, is our resident mind. His flaw? Giles holds back, which is different both in form and intention from Buffy's, though it can mimic it in places. Like Willow, he tends to believe that he knows best. Like Xander, he simplifies things sometimes. Like Buffy, he pulls away.
All of them share flaws to a certain extent. Each overlaps into the others' territories at times. Because, of course, they're people, not ideas. Xander isn't 'the heart', he's a guy trying to find out who he is and where he belongs, and yet, there is, inside him, an essence of 'heart' that the others can never quite reach. Ditto each of them with their specialties. None of them are limited, but each excels when they're where their strength lies.
Edit: Have been thinking about the S3 Giles/Wesley relationship in terms of due South's Fraser/Turnbull connection. Hmm.
Characters who know that they aren't perfect tend to get more leniance from me, since they're already beating themselves up. And when the characters that I dislike do see their bad sides, as Willow and Spike do in S7, I start to like them. Because finally, they understood that they weren't special. And each of them had - each of them felt morally superior, in their own ways. And they realized that they weren't, that they were just as flawed as everyone else.
S7 is the first time that I liked Willow for herself and not because I liked the person she was with. She managed to touch my heart by herself, not through Xander or Oz or Tara.
Everyone on a Joss Whedon show is flawed - that's what makes them realistic. But most of the characters are aware of their flaws, or are called on them. Willow escaped being called on her errors a lot. So much that she started to believe that she was never wrong, that her instinct always pointed the right way. Pride goeth.
Buffy pulls away from people. That's her main flaw (though she definitely has others). The first major showcase for it was When She Was Bad, when she did a marvelous job of trying to alienate the people who loved her most. That's what she struggles with throughout the seasons. She retreats into being the Slayer and stops being Buffy. She becomes 'the Hand', disconnected from her instincts, her emotions, and her ability to plan really well.
Xander idealizes and gets disappointed. He did it with Buffy. He did with Giles. With Willow and with Anya. He does want things to be simple. He wishes that Angel could just be a vampire and that Buffy could just slay him. He wishes that the world could just make sense. But it doesn't, and he gets frustrated. He sets himself up for disappointment. He wants things to be perfect. The more I think about, the more I actually do believe that he could have cast the spell in Once More, With Feeling - this is while they have two active witches in the group, so it actually makes sense that he'd have become a bit desensitized to what damage magic could do. And he does long for a happy ending. If one posits that the summoner can then lie in song whereas no one else can, it also clears up the nagging problem of I'll Never Tell, where he doesn't sing about his biggest fear. Hmm. And then, his 'merciful Zeus' at the beginning could be his surprise that the singing extended to more than Anya and himself. And he might not have wanted to tell Giles, because perhaps the book or whatever he researched mentioned that the singing didn't last forever - just until the ending was reached. And he was very concerned about whether or not the singing was connected to the 'burning and dying', which they hadn't cleared up at that point. In fact, I doubt they knew that for certain until Buffy started smoking at the end. Hmm. Witness me fanwanking.
Willow believes. She really and truly believes in what she's doing and that it's the right thing. True believers can be very dangerous. And she knows that she's the smartest person in the group, and regardless of whether or not that's true, her knowing that has given her way too much certainty about her conclusions. Willow believes that she's right. Willow believes in herself.
Interesting how closely those meld to their places of 'hand', 'heart', and 'spirit'. The body, the emotions, and the soul. Their greatest strength and greatest weakness.
And Giles, of course, is our resident mind. His flaw? Giles holds back, which is different both in form and intention from Buffy's, though it can mimic it in places. Like Willow, he tends to believe that he knows best. Like Xander, he simplifies things sometimes. Like Buffy, he pulls away.
All of them share flaws to a certain extent. Each overlaps into the others' territories at times. Because, of course, they're people, not ideas. Xander isn't 'the heart', he's a guy trying to find out who he is and where he belongs, and yet, there is, inside him, an essence of 'heart' that the others can never quite reach. Ditto each of them with their specialties. None of them are limited, but each excels when they're where their strength lies.
Edit: Have been thinking about the S3 Giles/Wesley relationship in terms of due South's Fraser/Turnbull connection. Hmm.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-30 10:02 pm (UTC)So was there a sense of the characters growing out of those old habits as they got older? Or was it the usual fall-back for when they were stressed?
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-30 10:07 pm (UTC)I do think that there is. They each reach a breaking point, and then it lessens. It gets worse and worse as seasons go by, and then they hit bottom and though they return to it, it's not as deeply as before. It becomes less crippling and more something you sense that they can deal with and move past.