Wanted: Resolute Heroes
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| Title: | Wanted: Resolute Heroes |
| Creator: | DLGood |
| Date(s): | 2003? |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Buffy & Angel |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Resolute Heroes, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Wanted: Resolute Heroes is an essay by DLGood.
It is one of many essays at Octaves, a Buffy and Angel website.
The website's owner says: "I stole this little gem from Dlgood's LJ." It doesn't say whether or not they had permission.
Excerpt
In fiction, I've always been drawn to the conflict between duty and self-interest.In general, it's a conflict that can't be studied without also deconstructing the hero's determinations of what constitutes duty and self-interest for them. And that's plenty fascinating on it's own. But this week, I'm cantankerous, and don't want to leave it at that.
I want to see a resolute hero. A character that has developed a fairly coherent and rational definition of their personal sense of duty through reflection upon extensive experience. And who has developed an equally coherent understanding of personal interest. And instead of a story simply exploring whether "everything they think they know is wrong" - I want to explore the character actually having to rectify duty and want through a series of challenges after having rebuilt that sense.
This is not to say that I dislike stories of angst or anomie. Far from it. It's a fertile ground for storytelling. But, I'm far more interested in seeing what happens to the hero once the anomie has been resolved. Why? Because, by and large, I've resolved most of my own anomie - at least for now. And I find it's just as much of a struggle to actually *implement* the type of life I want to have, now that I have an understanding of what that is.
This (among other things) is what bugged me about Chosen, the series finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It's implied at the end of the series, that our heroine has finally come to terms with her destiny enough to try to pursue the sort of life she wants to have. And that's lovely, yet I find the implementation of this message terribly unsatisfying; the series ends without showing what this resolution actually is, and without showing the heroine putting her newfound resolve into action. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was, at times, a fantastic 'coming of age' story, yet I think it failed to show the heroine (and her two friends) actually be of age in its final season. And I very much feel that it should have.