100 things | characters & ships 001 | leonard hofstadter

Jun 10, 2012 00:50




#001 | tbbt | leonard hofstadter



a moralistic, holier-than-thou, petty little earwig with the emotional range of a teaspoon of mud: a thoughtful discussion of why i want leonard hofstadter to fall off a glacier and die.

I know, I know, I'm not starting with Cas, who are you and what have you done with Astrid, etc etc. But... let's face it. I have a LOT of Cas feels, I'm gonna need a run up to do them justice. Plus... I don't know, I have a lot of love, I just need to actually... organise it.

And I've just finished a rewatch of The Big Bang Theory (in preperation for writing a Deanna/Cas crossover) and I have a lot of feelings on the subject of how Leonard Hofstadter is a Grade A Douchehat who needs to DIAF and get away from Penny and Sheldon.


Now, I've always been largely apathic towards Leonard in the past; he's a rather obvious everyman insert, there so the audience can universally identify with the poor guy trapped with all the weirdos. He's boring, especially since he can't be allowed to develop as a character too much because he needs to stay universally identifiable; an eternal blank slate for the audience to write himself into. He's the veritable Bella Swann of TBBT.

So, generally, I've mostly just ignored his existence, and wished the writers would stop trying to push him so hard as the main protagonist, since... eh, Penny, Sheldon, Howard, Raj... even Bernadette and Amy, who don't come in until a lot later (and have still developed more over the course of two seasons than Leonard has in five) are hella more interesting.

But Jesus Christ, actually watching the show with an eye towards probably writing the characters? The douchery comes across so much worse.

Like, even beyond the fact that he's petty and self absorbed and does things with the sole purpose of triggering someone who is supposedly his best friend and who he knows is neuroatypical but nah it's all cool because isn't Sheldon hilarious when he's freaking out, lets change the routine on him without warning and not let him speak and torment his germphobia.

Which. Even just stopping there... triggering people? IS A DOUCHEHAT MOVE. Doing it to someone who is supposedly a friend, let alone your best friend, is just... and doing that while presenting yourself as the moral centre of the group is disgusting.

And it's not even that he's a low grade douchebag. Because there are times when he is LORD GOD KING OF THE DOUCHEBAGS.

For example? Penny, having been harrassed and hit on by Howard constantly, despite constantly asking him not to and expressing how uncomfortable it made her and how no, really, please BACK THE FUCK OFF YOU ARE CREEPING HER OUT AND THAT IS NOT OKAY, finally snaps and tells Howard that no, never, it is never happening ever, he is creepy and ew and STOP SEXUALLY HARASSING HER, YOU PERVERT, IT IS NOT A COMPLIMENT TO SAY "IT HAS TO BE JELLY BECAUSE JAM DON'T SHAKE LIKE THAT" etc etc.

Leonard, supposedly Mr. Morality and Fairness in the group, orders her to apologise to Howard for hurting his feelings, gawd Penny how could you be that harsh, you totally overreacted to this constant sexual harassment. And when she refuses, because ...uh, no IT NEEDED TO BE SAID, he gets all REMEMBER WHEN I WENT TO GET YOUR TV FROM YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND'S BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO SCORE POINTS TO GET INTO YOUR PANTS AND YOU SAID YOU OWED ME ONE and basically forces her to apologise.

Because, y'know, objecting to sexual harassment is "being mean".

Or when the boys accompanied Sheldon on his trip to the North Pole to run an experiment to attempt to prove string theory, which he has been working on for years, Leonard comes up with the brilliant idea to feed Sheldon fake results. Which is not only scientifically about the worst thing you could ever do but... just.... I have no idea how to even.

And when Sheldon finds out and calls him on it? His response is basically "well you were really annoying and OH WAIT YOU THOUGHT THOSE RESULTS WERE REAL AND WERE EXCITED FOR DISCOVERING THE BIGGEST BREAK THROUGH IN PHYSICS IN DECADES AND SO TOLD PEOPLE ABOUT IT YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT".

Because, obviously, Sheldon wanting to share his news and trusting his friends to not be complete dickheads was a stupid thing to do and it's not Leonard's fault AT ALL because Sheldon is neuroatypical and his idiosyncracies got annoying, so obviously it is COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE to be the world's biggest douche and just a mildly amusing prank that they can laugh off.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST HOFSTADTER THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR BEST FRIEND. That was not a mildly amusing prank. It was CRUEL. And saying "well, you can still publish the original results (which were complete bupkiss)" does not make it okay.

But, of course, these things can never be acknowledged, or dealt with becuase Leonard is the "underappreciated" everyman character, and he's supposed to be the audience surrogate, so he needs to be seen as a blank slate, because if he has any flaws more specific than "Leonard is a socially awkward geek", then he might not appeal to everyone. So they get played for laughs and brushed off instead, while Leonard keeps getting pushed as the protagonist and the moral compass of the group and he never gets called on the fact that he is being totally gross.

Fall off a glacier and die, kthnx muchly.

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