Fannish Pet Peeve

[scrollgirl]

Seriously, can we please stop with the "noble heroes are boring" crap? I would really, really like for this to happen. When did "hero" and "noble" become dirty words? What happened to boasting about our Big Damn Heroes? When did we start thinking "good" = "perfect

Comments

[gehayi]

It can be such a disappointment when writers topple heroes from their pedestals, too. I remember how deeply upset I was--indeed, how deeply upset most of the Highlander fandom was--as a result of the Ahriman Arc, when Duncan killed his student and surrogate son, Richie Ryan. It wasn't just that Duncan knew he was hallucinating (as he'd done in the past on several occasions), or that he had a number of opportunities to hand over his sword to prevent himself from hurting anyone. It was the way the writers wrote the aftermath of Richie's death. Afterwards, Duncan was initially shocked...but then went off to a monastery in Kuala Lumpur or something for a year. The audience never saw him experience any grief or guilt.

And I honestly wanted to see the grief and guilt. I wanted Duncan to feel that he'd failed and to fight his way back from the madness and the hallucinations to the person that mourned for the people he loved and who would not just brush this death off.

And the writers just brushed it all off, and got on with the action sequences. And that felt so very wrong to me. A hero isn't just what he does, it's who he is. Others HAVE to matter, or why do anything heroic in the first place?

Thinking it over, I wouldn't have been shocked if Methos had reacted with indifference, Methos is the ultimate pragmatist; such chill realism would have been IC for him. It just didn't fit Duncan MacLeod, emotional idealist.

I still regard MacLeod as a hero. But dear God, I loathe the Nonexistent Arc--and the Nonexistent Episode.