A-Z Characters that Transform: Westing and Other Aloof Heroes from Raskin's Fiction

Posts about characters who transform brings me to Ellen Raskin. 

Cool, calculating somewhat aloof heroes who see three moves ahead are quite popular in fiction. See House and House's predecessor, Sherlock Holmes. Ellen Raskin created a few notably aloof characters, such as Sam Westing in The Westing Game and Garson from The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues.

Raskin deserves credit for her aloof protagonists being full characters who transcend the archetype. She accomplishes this feat through the following writing choices:

(1) Raskin avoids omniscience. However clever, her protagonists are operating within specific parameters alongside idiosyncratic people who don't operate entirely according to plan;

(2) Raskin gives her protagonists flaws; they are idiosyncratic themselves.

The problem of the aloof hero is how easily the aloof hero can be a jerk pointing out everyone else's flaws. Although I enjoyed the early seasons of House, I felt that too often the audience was being invited to agree with House: "Yeah, isn't it stupid to have to do that petty bureaucratic stuff like fill out charts?!"

Consequently, I never felt like House learned or grew. He understood himself better.  But he never moved forward, and I eventually gave up on the show. 

In comparison, Sherlock from Elementary retains his basic personality while still trying to improve (without getting lecture-y).

Raskin's protagonists are more like Sherlock than House. Sam Westing has a sweet scene in which he waxes nostalgic (I won't give away more) and Garson is haunted by choices he made in the past. However, Garson is not allowed to wallow; he too needs to learn to move on.

I highly recommend both books, especially the second which doesn't get enough attention!

In regards to the issue of physical transformation, Westing's disguise (and subsequent reveal) are excellently done. *Spoilers.* He was in a car accident. Many of the people who would recognize him were quite young when they saw him last. His motivations--however extreme--are in keeping with the man's psychology and with the book's plot. And the person who unveils him is his equal in intelligence and self-control. His secret is safe. 

Characters Who Transform: The Disguise, Girls as Boys

One of the most classic characters archetypes is the girl disguised as a boy, and the one of the most classic examples is Violet in Twelfth Night. 

Before I continue: I am not tackling biological girls who wish to be biological boys. I am tackling a trope. 

The issue here is the disguise itself. I've argued in other places that there is something inherently satisfying about seeing a disguise ripped away, the true self or event disclosed. However, like the Beast's transformation to the prince, the disclosure brings with it other questions, such as, Was the disguise believable? Are we, the audience, happier with the "true" self or with the disguise? 

Unlike the transformation from beast to prince, the transformation of the boy back to a girl doesn't ask us to fall back in love with a completely different person in appearance. The second question isn't as much as stake as the first. 

To answer the questions, I watched two films based on Twelfth Night. Both are films where a girl pretends to be a boy, so she can get something she wants: play a sport--soccer--in one case; enter a journalism contest in the other. 

She's the Man

The movie works to a huge extent because of Amanda Bynes. She is hilarious.

It also helps that in the sport she wants to play, she ends up, initially, on the second string. She was the best on the women's team at her previous school. She has the hand-eye coordination and the kicking skills that Eve demonstrates in Last Man Standing. But she simply, in reality, doesn't have the stamina of a young Channing Tatum. 

She practices, acquires more skills, and moves up. It isn't entirely believable but somewhat more believable than her being, say, forward tackle.

The Malvolio character is one of the cleverest characters, being the overly rule-conscious dorm leader. He thinks he has figured out the switch--until Sebastian comes back from abroad and ends up a very confused player in place of his sister on the soccer field. 

Would Shakespeare have objected to the resulting nudity jokes?

Nope!

Just One of the Guys

Joyce Hyser as the Viola character makes a somewhat more realistic, if pretty, boy than Bynes--so much so that the scenes of Terry with Rick/Duke Orsino are somewhat more interesting than the scenes with Terry as upset girl. In fact, the end would have been far funnier, in the French farce sense, if Terry and Rick had let the prom attendees believe they were two guys making out. 

The plot less directly follows the play. It is also full to the brim with 1980s scatological teen and pop culture jokes, which--again--is totally appropriate to Shakespeare. The Malvolio character is a dull-witted bully who is vanquished at the end.

The movie plays more directly with gender roles but, as mentioned above, pulls back from being as funny as it could be.

Of the two, She's the Man is more satisfying as a full story: it showcases more Viola-having-to-change-in-a-flash opportunities plus everybody loving the wrong person shenanigans. And Viola does help win the soccer game at the end!

As for the question--is it believable?--in both cases, the premise becomes its own excuse. That is, in certain cases, I believe the audience simply accepts (or is expected to accept) that certain things work, like magic rules in fantasy being consistent and therefore believable. As long as the rules are kept, we, the audience accept the result. So...male and female twins entirely resemble each other and nobody will guess, until told, that a boy is actually a girl. 

I suggest that the suspension of belief (or disbelief) also works here because Shakespeare's play doesn't focus exclusively on the "mix-up" but on the people involved. 

Detectives Need Jobs...But is P.I. Really the Best One?

I mention earlier on this blog that many amateur detectives double as priests, gardeners, writers...

The professional police detective, of course, shows up in dozens of police procedurals. 

As does the professional P.I. 

A great many shows in the 1980s used this approach--though the P.I. was often a kind of "fixer": Spenser for Hire; Remington Steele; Moonlighting; Simon & Simon; Riptide.  

By default, the P.I. would seem to make the most sense for a mystery show. Keep tripping over bodies? It's okay! The P.I. is supposed to be there!  

However, with the exception of Elementary and Monk--which are police procedurals with consulting detectives--the P.I. role seems somewhat more limited. A requirement of the genre is that an episode (or even book) end with an action-movie sequence. People crash into sheds and blow up buildings and deal with fires and fly helicopters to islands and race cars or, with some of the P.I. shows from the 1970s, have a fist fight. 

Oh, yawn. 

I have the same bored reaction to spy shows--in general. Sure, I find Scarecrow and Mrs. King amusing! But Scarecrow and Mrs. King, like Spy x Family, is part-spoof. 

Actually, a surprising number of the above listed P.I. shows are comedies. (The image is from Castle's splendid pastiche!) I wonder if the "now, it is time to throw punches and look angsty" stuff palls on writers. Sure, Humphrey Bogart is amazing--

But even The Maltese Falcon had its amusing moments.   

The Attraction of the Small: Thumbelina, Lilliputians, Gnomes and Borrowers

Thumbelina raises the question, What's the reason for the character's popularity? 

Thumbelina doesn't transform. There's no narrative arc. Just--lots of stuff happens to her...and she ends up okay. 

But I think human beings are enthralled by the small, going back to Gulliver's Lilliputians and before. The attraction lies in envisioning the small next to the large. 

Even more than fairies and the small, impish, and charming variation of elves (who are far less interesting than the tall, ticked-off, Tolkien variation), little people within human environments allow us to watch ordinary objects--spoons, soda bottle lids, rubber bands--being used for everyday use. 

It's the dollhouse under examination--and more enthralling, in many ways, than giants stomping all over stuff. The Lilliputians are the story within Gulliver's Travels that get remembered before the Brobdingnag. Gulliver amongst giants is basically a prisoner. Gulliver amongst the small transports us back into the world of adaptation. Look at how they make stuff work! 

Gnomes by Wil Hyugen is the same. The gnomes aren't prisoners. They are happy thriving members of a world that they use to their own ends. 

Competence! It's very attractive. 

My favorite examples are the Littles and the Borrowers. Competence and adaptation in both these series come to the fore.

A-Z Characters & Transformation: Scrooge

Scrooge is one of the best-known transformative heroes! 

In truth, Scrooge is not entirely believable. Dickens does a fine job preparing readers for the final transformation. He establishes that Scrooge was a lonely boy who became a sensible if workaholic young man who had the chance to marry the love of his life. He was, once upon a time, a friendly, sweet-natured guy, who turned into a "scrooge" due to his own choices and the bitterness of life.

Okay. But the end does leave one pondering whether the bitterness of life can be wiped out in a single night. Where exactly does personality come from if not one's choices and the exigencies of life? Can a person utterly undo what has made him or her a certain way in one fell swoop?

The best approach is to indicate that the Scrooge is changing perspective, not personality. In Joanna Chambers "Humbug," the thirty-something Scrooge, Quin, is inherently obsessive. That is, his personality is such that no matter what he does, he has to go at it to the nth degree. He gets into the consulting game by accident but once he is there, of course, he's going to be the best consultant ever whose team is also the "best". He's on the fast-track to becoming a manager.

Problem: the gig isn't totally in line with his personality, so he becomes--as characters in the story repeatedly tell him--a "dick." He later tells Rob, the Bob Crachit character, "I think [this job] brings out the worst in me."  Instead of becoming the kind of leader whose team is the best because they admire him and feel appreciated, he becomes (is becoming) the kind of leader who wrings work out of people through unreasonable demands and sheer sarky irritation. He is acting in accordance with what he believes to be the "role" of manager--and he does it well, but it makes him absolutely unpleasant to be around. 

After his epiphany, he returns to his first plan to be a math teacher. And here is where Joanna Chambers really knocks the characterization out of the park: because of course, Quin has to be the BEST teacher. Only this time, what he wants and what he brings to the table are in line. He'll get in his students' faces ("They'll love you," Rob says, "because you're sarky"). He'll get in their parents' faces. He'll tick off the school board but still win. The aggressive energy that makes him unlikable in one field (that he doesn't feel at home in) will make him an excellent advocate in another.

Quin is a Scrooge whose tweaks to his life believably result in a much, much happier life in the long-run. 

Another good "Scrooge" who undergoes believable changes is Phil from Groundhog Day. 

Phil is unique because his changes are linked to a romantic attachment. Although the original Scrooge lost a great love--the scene earns a song in The Muppet Movie--few movie/television versions of the book reunite him with that great love. Likewise, The Grinch doesn't start dating at the end--not in the picture book or animated feature anyway. And although Russ from The Kid has a girlfriend/wife waiting in his future, his change is due to a visit from a "ghost of Christmas past," not the potential significant other.

Yet, the repentant hero in Groundhog Day does have a romantic attachment.

The difference lies in the character arc. Original Scrooge undergo an internal realignment. The internal change is shown through external images and events. With Groundhog Day, on the other hand, the change is about the main character learning to get along with other people. 

Original Scrooge alters internally and shows that internal alteration through his treatment of others. 

Phil learns how to change internally by how he treats others--including a life insurance salesman!--better day by (same) day.  

I think that both types of change/epiphany are possible. But Phil is possibly a little more believable. Rather than an about-face (which could undo itself at any moment), he progresses over time. 

The Desire for Noble Criminals

In an episode of Decoy, Beverly Garland's character Patricia Casey has to bring a crime home to a small-time gangster. 

She convinces his subordinate to rag on him. Afterwards, she admits to the piano player that she didn't think her tactic would work; she didn't think the one man would give up the other. 

"Don't you know these guys are all out for themselves?" he says. 

The scene reminds me of Detective Sanchez in The Closer--his deep resentment of Italian mobsters being romanticized. Sanchez despises all gangs and that's what the mafia is: a gang. 

Detective Sanchez's assessments reminds me of research that suggests that offenders who work for gangsters don't make much more than minimum wage and that gangsters don't kill each other over complicated drug deals gone bad but, rather, over being "dissed." 

And yet American literature and film really loves the romantic image. I think the reason is not just the desire for a decent narrative. I think, referring back to the first example, humans prefer to believe that something noble or good or, at least, humane is going on: gangsters are loyal! 

Rather than gangsters being short-sighted, petty, shallow, and immature. 

What we want criminals to be says more about our moral compass than theirs.

A-Z Characters & Transformation: Is the Transforming Royal Fact or Fiction?

In my latest A-Z list--Characters who Transform--I've reached Prince and Princesses. 

A remarkable number of fictional prince and princesses have transformed, from bad people to good ones; from being in disguise to being revealed. 

Prince Hal is supposedly one of the former. In reality, he never went through a dissolute phase and even in Henry IV, Parts 1 & 11, Shakespeare remarkably has him confess, in monologue, that he is mostly playacting. He is quite clear with Falstaff, even as prince, that Falstaff's influence on him is negligible and will eventually die. 

But the IDEA of a playboy reforming to be a good king is too good to pass up. It's the underlying character evolution of Gilgamesh! So the oldest tale on record has a prince (he is actually a king when the tale begins) acting like a playboy and annoying his citizens--until Enkidu comes along. It is Enkidu's death that propels Gilgamesh to hunt for answers to something larger than "hey, yo, how drunk should we get today?" Upon his return to the city, he retakes his place as a wise and productive sovereign. 

The manga and anime, Royal Tutor, presents a back story of a not-exactly-playboy prince but a prince who doesn't seem to be all that aware of his citizens' needs...until he begins to sneak out at night and pal around with Heine. Likewise, Mark Twain uses growth with his prince whose disguise allows him to learn about real life. 

In C.S. Lewis's quest tale, The Silver Chair, the prince is enchanted (disguised) as a kind of blithe, unthinking playboy (with a mommy complex). When he is chained to the silver chair, his underlying nature is revealed: he is, in fact, a prince in captivity. I think it would be quite easy to back-write a playboy attitude into the prince's character development. He is ensnared by the enchantress when his mother dies but, seriously, what was he doing rushing off to act all angsty around the first smooth-talking fae who crossed his path...rather than sticking by his dad and assuming more responsibilities? 

In the above cases, trials hone the prince into someone who CAN be a good king. 

I'm not sure that outside of narratives, this type of honing is a given: Prince Harry doesn't seem to have imbibed the American idea that work = virtue. I suspect that politicians and celebrities are so cushioned by sycophants, they require a certain amount of chutzpah to see through the fawning to begin with.  

The Writing Problem of Omniscient Detectives

Too many writers of detective fiction want their detectives to be super super smart, which they translate as omniscient.

That is, they misunderstand Sherlock Holmes. Sure, Holmes is nearly always right--but it's a right that has been tested. Like Monk and Sherlock from Elementary maintain, guesswork is just guesswork. Without proof, the guess remains a guess.

The brilliant mindset is a separate phenomenon and kind of irritating. It also creates a writing problem.

In Marsh's Singing in the Shrouds, the insightful, intuitive, etc. etc. Alleyn suspects the bad guy. How could he not? He's so smart! 

And yet for the sake of a dramatic climax, he leaves the suspect unwatched. The result is a death. In the text, Alleyn admits that he blundered. But this isn't a blunder. His actions are gross incompetence IF Alleyn had specific suspicions in the first place.

The problem of wanting perfectly wise characters who nevertheless mess up leads to annoying plots where characters who should be fired are treated as victims of an unkind system. But the "solution" to the mess-up happens because the writers want the characters to know more than a reasonable person would know--to be all that.

There is a variation on this archetype: the detective who knows but doesn't act because to act without proof is morally wrong or a waste of time (Columbo, Poirot, Sherlock, Gibbs). Unfortunately, too many of the omniscient detectives, like Alleyn, are praised for their intuition--that is, they are expected to trust to their brilliance. And yet...

Dead bodies.  

The Fruitfulness of Gardening Detectives

I'm a big believer that characters need jobs--even full-time detectives! After all, Sherlock has his bees; Joan from Elementary keeps up her license and eventually gets a kid. Jobs give characters things to master and discuss.  

I've mentioned in previous posts that writers and priests provide decent "other" jobs. 

So do gardeners!  

The British comedy-mystery Rosemary & Thyme--with the excellent Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris--is a great example. Their contract work allows them to visit different locations, from French and Italian villas to ritzy neighborhoods (during a local gardening competition) to a small allotment to a churchyard to a university. So much variety lends itself to a variety of crimes (though most of them fall into the "cozy" category).

There is still the "my goodness, everywhere you go, murders crop up" issue (which leads Natalie in Monk to accuse him of being "the Prince of Darkness"). But again, eh, it's British, so it's allowed. And the murders--like with Jessica on her book tours but unlike the local priest--are at least not all occurring in a single area. 

However, like the local priest, the ability for Rosemary and Laura to investigate WHILE replanting gardens and getting waterfalls to run is, oddly enough, a little more of a stretch than Jessica doing interviews and then returning to her hotel. 

Still--the use of a flower project in nearly every episode is delightful. Just as Rosemary and Laura resolve a case and bring social harmony back into alignment, they also resolve the gardening issue and beautify their immediate environment. The closure of both "cases" at once is quite enchanting!    

The Heroes Forget in The Dark is Rising Series: How Tedious

One common variation on the "it was all a dream" trope is when the protagonists forget the fantasy/dangerous world they inhabited. The Narnia books sort of do this (but not entirely). The children revert to childhood and are not sure what they experienced. However, by the final book, if they choose to remember Narnia, they do. (As has been stated elsewhere, there is no reason to suppose that Susan won't come back to remembering Narnia.) 

In my fantasy Olympus series, gods and humans who leave Olympus forget--but only in their short-term memory. Their habits and skills remain. They are still drawn to Olympian matters. And they retain a kind of memory of the place in their dreams. 

However, if I ever figure out a way not to do the above (without taking the books off-topic), I will drop the idea.  

Because the forgetting trope in fantasy fiction strikes me as rather pointless. 

I read The Dark is Rising and Over Sea, Under Stone when I was growing up. I recently finished the remaining books in the series. And I was somewhat disappointed. 

*Spoilers* 

Unlike the Narnia books and my Olympus series, the fantasy action of The Dark is Rising takes place in our world. It slides back and forth between other planes of existences and other times. Otherwise, the action is based in the world of Will, the last of the Old Ones. 

He has helpers. But at the end, everyone else leaves or forgets. 

On the one hand, though I didn't find the last two books all that interesting, they are beautifully written with haunting scenes full of mythical motifs. The individual hero left alone to carry the burden of knowledge is in line with those motifs. 

On the other...I think human beings are fully capable of adjusting to new information. In truth, I don't bother to have people remember in my Olympus series because most of the action takes place on Olympus (the main characters all retain their acquired knowledge). And, too, I wanted citizens and gods to pay some price for leaving. 

However, I have Alima from His in Herland (related world) remember because, again, I think human beings are surprisingly, alarmingly, ready to adapt. Take AI: once something supposedly Terminator-like arrived, people simply shrugged and started new businesses. 

Barney and a bad guy

I suppose an "okay, we had a grand adventure--let's have a reunion!" reaction would be too prosaic for a grand saga (though C.S. Lewis pulled it off). But the "we are having you forget for your own good, so you will have no regrets" explanation is incredibly condescending, especially when aimed at main characters. And I don't buy it. 

I wrote a short story years ago ("Untainted") in which a character who chose to forget a particular event digs it back up again out of sheer (to borrow from the Brits) bloody-mindedness. 

In my fan-fiction for The Dark is Rising, I have Barney, the most insouciant of the characters, figure out who Will must have been. He tracks him down to become his boon companion because, hey, the guy needs someone!  

The Dumbest Trope of All Dumb Tropes

Okay--maybe there are dumber ones. But this one is pretty dumb:

The bad guys (or vampires in hiding) set up in a SMALL TOWN. 

And...they get pinpointed and "outed."

Well, duh. The whole point of the small town is that "everyone knows your name." It's all about the regulars, what so-and-so is doing this week. The sheriff quite literally walks around and asks folks how they are doing. 

I give a pass to Andy Griffith's "Aunt Bee Gets a Job" in part because the counterfeiters ARE stupid. They are EXACTLY the type of people who would buy into the trope. And their clients are equally stupid since one of them exchanges Aunt Bee's employment check for part of his fake cash. In truth, I quite enjoy the episode since I like the Andy Griffith "case" episodes where Andy puts together clues. The episode also offers some truly hilarious moments.

But when an author actually thinks "oh, of course, nobody will find my characters in this tiny town!" I have to surmise that the author is too dumb for me to read. 

Sayers explains in Unnatural Death better than everyone why CITY is the better hiding place:

To the person who has anything to conceal--to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest--to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London. Where no one know his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter. Where strangers are friendly and causal. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious, and all-enfolding London.

Parker still tracks down the information he wants, but it takes him trekking through 37 law offices to find a witness. A less dedicated law officer would have give up! 

Cities are far better hiding places than small towns. 

The Prison Trope in Mysteries

A common trope in mysteries is a case that must be solved during a prison lockdown. 

It bores me only slightly less than mafia tales. And doesn't strike me as terribly different from plane or Titanic mysteries--the problem must be solved before we land! Or sink! Or die in a riot! 

The prison trope does have the merit of the mystery usually being linked to the riot in some way. In Murder She Wrote, the prison's poor conditions are linked to fraudulent behavior by several prison employees. Uncovering the reason for the first death leaves to uncovering the deceit. And Angela Lansbury does a more than credible job as the woman holding everything together. 

But. Still. I get weary of the surge in violence before the commercial break (where the commercial break obviously came when the show aired): "Oh, no, the prisoners are about to kill the hostages! Oh no, what will the detective do?!" 

One exception is the NCIS episode "Caged" with Martha Hackett as the man-killing serial killer. The episode ends with McGee proving that he can handle a difficult situation diplomatically and intelligently without losing his fundamental kindness. 

Monk sharpened and cleaned his shiv.

The prison trope still isn't one of my favorites. I always suspect that these episodes are like clairvoyant-shows-up episodes--they are thrown in there for the viewers who really, really like that kind of thing. Next week, the show can go back to less irritating crime stories.  

After all, even Due South and Monk and Bones did prison episodes. Though in all three cases here, the episodes were deliberately humorous.

The Corrupt Bourgeois: Oh, Please Make The Archetype Go Away

It is not uncommon for Hollywood and New York Times Bestseller lists to promote, as Updike does with Gertrude & Claudius, books in which a suburban family life is seething with drugs and promiscuity underneath seeming respectability. 

In fairness to Updike, that could have been his point regarding his retelling of Hamlet. Not great drama! Just two somewhat pathetic people living out a typical intellectual trope. 

Unfortunately, the idea that suburbia is riddled with ghastly secrets and all kinds of repression is the main reason most current products with Miss Marple entirely misunderstand Christie's point. 

Christie wasn't preaching the dark underbelly of seemingly refined middle class mainstream life. She fully supported middle class mainstream life! She was pointing out that the dark underbelly of human nature on a resort wasn't too different from the dark underbelly of human nature in a village. People are much the same everywhere. 

Again, in fairness, Updike may have been making the same point. But this not-entirely-normal obsession with suburbia makes one wonder if the writers--and Hollywood--are indulging mostly in a kind of wishful thinking, in both directions: what they wish they had and what they wish would happen to all those people in those neighborhoods.

When Bones did its evil suburbia episode, the writers deliberately filled it with every supposed suburban underbelly trope. They topped all the cliches with ordinary neighbors and, ultimately, as the excuse for the murder, the utterly mundane. 

Still, Blue Bloods generally did better with Danny's neighbors: community is community. No point in dismissing it until one learns its value. 

Sandlot truly is closest to the truth.

I Act Dumb But I'm Smart: Columbo

A common trope in mysteries is the smart detective who acts dumb. 

Bones refers to this behavior quite directly when a few people point out to Brennan that Booth allows himself to be the physical guy who doesn't know stuff to give their relationship balance. Booth's behavior only works, however, because he is a fairly confident guy who doesn't mind how others see him.

Columbo is equally confident, even if he appears less so. He is also the quintessential detective of this type. His elf-like appearance, assumed bashfulness, and seemingly random stories about people in his family who may or may not exist disconcert others. Not to mention that supposedly forgotten "one more thing" that brings him back into the room.

Sometimes, the villains see through the pose/persona but even when they do, they can't entirely guess which way Columbo will jump, especially since Columbo manages--like Milan with red-zone dogs--to do something that every cell in the human body rebels against:

Columbo doesn't mind looking stupid if it helps him do what is necessary. 

One of my role models! Not caring what others think--while still aspiring to help others--is a great trait to emulate. 

Don't Give the Audience What It Thinks It Wants

Re-post from 2011.

I recently posted about ignorant characters. I point out problems with such characters. What I don't mention is how the ignorant character is often preferable to the noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfectly good or perfectly evil character. 

The problem with the latter is how often filmmakers and authors do the equivalent of what Plinkett describes below--they make that noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfect character the focus of every prequel. 

Giving the audience what the audience (supposedly) wants is a mistake.

* * * 

In Plinkett's latest Star Wars' review (which is amusing though not as complete as the others), Plinkett, like always, makes a very cogent point.

Here is the cogent point in my own words:

Just because Darth Vadar became an iconic image of Star Wars doesn't mean the prequels needed to be about him. Just because Darth Vadar is important to us doesn't mean he was important to that universe at that time.

There is a writing conundrum here. Yes, it helps when you are writing a novel/short story/movie/show to use motifs and plot-lines and characters that people actually enjoy and recognize.

However, if all you do is stick together the most common motifs/plot-lines/characters, 9 times out of 10, the product will be a dud--or, at least, remarkably lacking in staying power.

Plinkett does a thorough job proving that, unfortunately, this sticking-togetherness is how Lucas approached the prequels. He took iconic images from IV, V, and VI and simply expanded and rehashed those images in the prequels even when the rehash made no sense.

So, for example, instead of the robe Obi-Wan was wearing in IV simply being the kind of robe people wear on desert planets, suddenly it became the robe ALL Jedi wear.

And instead of the training tools on Han Solo's ship simply being what was at hand, suddenly those tools became the way ALL Jedi are trained.

The result is unimaginative. And irrational.

It also highlights a very important principle. Classic motifs are good. Classic motifs backed by an actual vision are BETTER.

In a large, but not unmerited, segue, C.S. Lewis' Narnia series has been criticized for basically being a collection of every single fairytale/folktale/mythological image/motif C.S. Lewis encountered in the course of his extremely well-read life.

But as many critics, including Lisa Miller of The Magician's Book, have pointed out, it isn't the images and motifs that delight us, it is what Lewis did with them. He wasn't pretending to create new stuff; he was taking what he knew and rearranging it into a new pattern. He had a vision.

Every writer has to have a vision. Without the vision, the writing sags. And should the writer give up that vision to satisfy the audience's supposed desire for an iconic image, the audience will feel the vision dribbling away.

The writers did NOT make

Frasier a repeat of Cheers. 

Which is one reason why writing to satisfy fans doesn't always work. The fans LOVE a couple of minor characters, so the writer(s) make those characters a bigger part of the drama, and, hmm, what do you know, the show is less satisfying.

On the other hand, refusing to give the audience what the audience wants out of sheer "BUT I HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT" perversity isn't too smart either.

The solution is writers who give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision. This, of course, isn't easy, but I see two solutions:

1. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when they like what the audience likes.

If you want to write romance novels, it helps if you like romance novels.

2. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when the writers and the audience agree on what the writers are trying to do.

To clarify this second point, not all novels/stories/movies/shows have to focus on the latest popular topic: vampires, for example. People vary; interests vary. There are a lot of audiences out there to satisfy. I would argue that people want much of the same thing within their separate genres, but that leaves a lot of room for individual creative vision-making.

Hey, there's even room for those people who think that reading stream-of-consciousness profundities about Life in Middle Class America is NEW and DIFFERENT! (Shhh, don't tell them they are being pandered to.) The point is, the writers and audience agree that that is what is going on.

In other words, the rules are agreed to--even when the rules are Monty-Python randomness.

Back to characters--the connection between this repost and characters is that giving the audience the characters they love as ALREADY those characters, despite the movie or book being a prequel, destroys the characters. I found Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Emeralds a disappointment because it presented a young Wimsey as already ahead of everyone else in the mystery. There was no learning curve. He met Charles Parker but didn't learn from Parker, a policeman already. 

In truth, I think filmmakers read into audience engagement something that isn't necessarily there. Yes, we like Gandalf's wise remarks to Pippin. We also like Gandalf's snappishness. And we like his confession to Galadriel that he is afraid. We like the noble, semi-omniscient bloke. But we like the imperfect, struggling bloke as well. 

 

As my obnoxious (but accurate) fifteen-year-old self said, 

"If everyone is special, then no one is special."

If there is no contrast between the character THEN and the character NOW, there is nothing for us to delight in. 

Rival Characters: The Good, the Bad, the Pointless

Robin McKinley's Beauty in her seminal work Beauty brings up the issue of rivals. In the classic tale, Beauty's sisters are rivals (as are the stepsisters in Cinderella). In McKinley's retelling, the sisters are entirely sweet and pleasant and supportive. Their behavior is a nice change from the over-the-top unpleasant version of the sisters (see #2 and #3 below). 

Love Boat has a Cinderella tale where the stepsisters are too gauche and rude and unappealing to be even vaguely believable; the episode is hilarious, however, because the stepmother has no qualms at cozening up to Cinderella once she realizes which way the wind is blowing. The rivals are played for farce. 

Rivals  can be useful characters. Unfortunately, they sometimes feel like the product of vindictive self-indulgence by the writer. 

Rivals fall into several categories:

1. Awful people but not really rivals. 

Miss Bingley falls into this category. Whatever she, her sister, or Charles may have hoped, Darcy has zero interest in her and doesn't even seem to realize that he is supposed to. 

However, Austen plays fair. Miss Bingley isn't entirely unlikable. She isn't evil. Mostly jealous, she ends up sabotaging her own efforts. At the end of the novel, Austen tells us that Miss Bingley will make nice with Elizabeth: better to be a family friend of the Darcys than not!

2. Obviously awful & conniving.

Lucy Steele uses her "secret" engagement to  Edward to put Elinor in her place. Her arrival in the story is a little too convenient to the plot.  However, Austen is fair to Lucy or at least to the situation. That is, Lucy is complex enough that her "confidences" are not really something that Elinor can protest. Is Lucy jealous? Honest? Cruel? Self-satisfied and smug? 

The behavior is obviously unkind and the opposite of honorable. But what the character believes about herself is a different matter.

3. The non-friendly serious rival. 

Here is where I get creeped out. The non-friendly serious rival is actually trying to break the couple up, and the sheer arrogance of "I know what is best for you--it is me" sends me searching for something else to read/watch. I gather from the number of films and series out there with this type of rival that some people just love for a male or female protagonist to have endless choices but I find the constant competition tedious at best and nearly sociopathic at worst. 

4. The friendly serious rival. 

However, the friendly serious rival--common in manga--is quite fun. The friendly serious rival competes but gives way graciously, or at least gracefully, and remains friends with the main characters. 

Ryu Jihye in Semantic Error falls into this category. She's a decent person, honestly interested in Sangwoo (not for his potentially great future or family or money). She helps him relate to people and remains his friend after he and Jaeyeong pair up. 

Her rivalry is with Jaeyeong. And Jaeyeong knows it. He cleverly out-maneuvers her on several occasions, as indicated by his wink.

5. The hilarious rival. 

The teenage female high school students in His Favorite fall into this category. They pursue Sato. Then he starts dating Yoshida and tells everyone. Instead of beating up Yoshida (which Yoshida expects), they tell him, "Stop being such a wuss. We're going to keep competing with you, you know." 

Except often their competition backfires--as when they get Sato to study with them and he spends the whole time asking them for dating advice, which annoys them to no end. Don't you understand that we are serious competitors here? 

Rivals are going to arise in romance: here's to hoping writers handle them in a non-revolting manner!