Yes, he’s sarcastic, jealous, selfish, and way too quick to judge, but he’s also funny, lovable, loyal, and affectionate and I think those are his more important traits. Everyone on all three of Joss’ shows were assholes at one point and a good percentage (majority?) were murderers, including two of the leads and possibly the third depending on how you want to define the term.
Evil, though? Hardly.
What? You quoted him in the post I quoted of yours.
Sorry, I just find Wash and Xander (my favorite characters, incidentally) so much more alike than any combination of Willow, Fred, and Kaylee.
No cites but I seem to remember him saying at some point (a commentary track?) that Xander is pretty much an extension of himself and, in the case of my having somehow imagined that, I believe it anyway.
Good calls on the badass gung-ho friends, and on the love interests. Come to think of it, he does better with his female characters in general.
Lords is an interesting take on Conroy’s archetypes, but I submit that they’re still visible. You’ve got an abusive military organization instead of an abusive military dad, but their role in the book (make the main character suffer in ways everyone agrees are inappropriate even though they’re not willing to do anything about it, provide the main character with a source of rigid order about which he is ambivalent) is basically identical.
As for cowardice, I was mostly thinking of Will and Ben when I wrote that. I guess it’s not fair in general.
I have another nomination: Mercedes Lackey. She’s nowhere near as bad as some of the others on this list, but for some reason she really loves the tormented gay supermage archetype.
On preview: If Xander had told Buffy about Angel’s soul, she wouldn’t have needed to fight at all. All she’d’ve had to do was show up and let him chase her around for however long was necessary. Still, I don’t think that makes him evil. On the other hand, if Joss really based Xander on himself, then the man must have self-esteem problems beyond anything ever seen. Wash at least had a skill, an area in which he was an undisputed master. Xander had nothing except occasionally-funny reparte and puppy love. That’s no way to live.
You’ve… read one in the past ten years? I don’t like to rag people on their taste in literature, but there’s such a thing as throwing good energy after bad, you know. Particularly if you’re over, say, thirteen. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you’re really gonna regret that time.
Stephen King is only an example of the tendancy of a whole lot of writers to write about writers, if that counts. His are different, but not so different that I’d make a point of it, if you know what I mean.
Anne McCaffery’s headstrong ladies got terribly boring at some point when I was a teenager.
I can’t recall Kaylee or Zoe ever being assholes; of course they didn’t have time.
You can’t expect us Rhymers to make sense in human terms, or to always pay attention to what we’re quoting.
Except that Wash was more skilled and confident than Xander–except of course for his fears about Mal & Zoe. And that was because he could see he had married up. (Of course, that was inevitable, given that it was Zoe; she couldn’t help but marry down.)
Which, we you think about it, is odd for a male writer.
Lords is an interesting take on Conroy’s archetypes, but I submit that they’re still visible. You’ve got an abusive military organization instead of an abusive military dad, but their role in the book (make the main character suffer in ways everyone agrees are inappropriate even though they’re not willing to do anything about it, provide the main character with a source of rigid order about which he is ambivalent) is basically identical.
As for cowardice, I was mostly thinking of Will and Ben when I wrote that. I guess it’s not fair in general.
I have another nomination: Mercedes Lackey. She’s nowhere near as bad as some of the others on this list, but for some reason she really loves the tormented gay supermage archetype.
On preview: If Xander had told Buffy about Angel’s soul, she wouldn’t have needed to fight at all. All she’d’ve had to do was show up and let him chase her around for however long was necessary. Still, I don’t think that makes him evil. On the other hand, if Joss really based Xander on himself, then the man must have self-esteem problems beyond anything ever seen. Wash at least had a skill, an area in which he was an undisputed master. Xander had nothing except occasionally-funny reparte and puppy love. That’s no way to live.
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