I find it kinda odd how people talk about writing “flawed” characters like the flaws are an afterthought
Like “cool cool we’ve got this perfect hero now to just sprinkle on some Irritability and Trust Issues then microwave for 6 minutes on high until Done”
But I’ve personally found it feels a lot more useful to just… think of the flaws as the Good Traits except bad this time
The protagonist is loyal? Maybe that means they have a hard time recognizing toxic relationships and are easily manipulated by those they want to trust
The hero is compassionate? Maybe they work too hard and overextend themselves trying to help people and then they refuse to ask for help when they need it themselves for fear of burdening others
They’re dedicated to their ideals? Maybe they’re also too stubborn to know when to quit and they have trouble apologizing for their mistakes
If they’re creative, they can also be flighty. If they’re confident, they can be arrogant. If they’re brave, they might be reckless. If they’re smart, they could be condescending. Protective can become controlling, and someone who’s carefree could very well also be emotionally distant
In my opinion, the best “flaws” aren’t just added on afterwards. The best flaws are baked in deep, ‘cause they’re really just virtues turned upside down
Additionally: the same, but backwards. A person’s greatest strengths often (but not always!) come from fighting their weaknesses, but in emotional situations they may fall back on old habits and reveal that the underlying weakness is still there, it’s just usually manageable.
For example, I know people who have ADHD (myself included) and have had to develop really strong organizational skills to combat it. So we may actually have some parts of organization down pat, like scheduling and writing everything down and making sure everything has a place, and yet we’ll still be the first to forget our hat, our wallet, or what we were about to say when we opened our mouth half a second ago, especially when we’re tired or stressed.
This helps write complex characters with seemingly contradictory but still believable traits: a woman who is insecure may always speak very positively about her accomplishments and write little uplifting “you can do it!” notes around the house for herself, but when she’s fighting the big bad she may run away because she doesn’t think she stands a chance.
A man who has been told he talks too quickly to be understood may develop perfect enunciation and diction. But he has chronic pain, and when it kicks in it takes up enough mental energy that he starts speed-talking like an auctioneer on crack.
Overcompensation is human, and having a break in that overcompensation is even more human. Just worth bearing in mind.
I frequently find myself at a loss when I discover the mindset that the Jedi Council, the Jedi Order, and even Obi-Wan provided a particularly good environment for Anakin to learn/grow up in. By comparing Anakin in TPM to AoTC, I believe it will become quite clear by the change in Anakin that the Temple provided an inadequate place for him to grow.
In TPM Anakin is a very self-confident boy. He is aware of his capabilities and limitations, expresses his opinion firmly, and, as a rule, doesn’t allow his detractors to get him down, or put him down. To list some examples:
He has the courage to initiate a conversation with Padme
In the novelisation, he even says that he’s going to marry her.
He stands up to Sebulba and confidently imitates a conversation with Qui-Gon
He invites perfect strangers to his home.
He calls Qui-Gon out on being a Jedi
He calls Qui-Gon out on slavery
He insists that he can win a podrace, and defends himself when his abilities are questioned
He ignores the ridicule of the children in his community
He talks back to the Council, not rudely, but forcefully.
He asks Ric Olie about piloting and is told he “catches on quick.”
He says he’s going to “see them all,” when he asks about star systems
He refuses to let people destroy his dreams-hard to do when you’re a slave.
He even talks back to and defends himself to Watto-his owner.
Clearly, Anakin is a very confident, and self-possessed individual. He states his opinions firmly, and defends them with conviction. Let’s compare that to AoTC Anakin:
Is far more nervous around Padme (which can admittedly be chalked up to hormones.)
Is shot down hard by Obi-Wan when he expresses his opinions-He does not ever really try and defend himself
Obi-Wan actually seems surprised he stands up as much as he does-clearly it is a rare occurrence that Anakin states his mind like that.
Anakin looks scared of what he’s done when he backs down
He looks timid in front of the Council-Far more so than in TPM
He is told “don’t do anything without first discussing it with either” Obi-Wan or the Council.
He just accepts Padme’s harsh criticism when he points out that she should discuss security concerns with him: Despite the fact that she is in the wrong, he does nothing to defend himself.
He expresses the opinions of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and mace, far more than he does his own. He actually seems afraid to give his opinions, as a rule.
There is a vast difference then between TPM!Anakin and AoTC!Anakin. The former defended his beliefs vehemently. The latter is afraid to even express them. Anakin only rants about Obi-Wan when Padme gives a hint of listening; it’s clear this has been pent-up in him for ages, but he hasn’t been able to let it out. Clearly, no one cares what he thinks or feels. When Padme shoots him down over security, he takes it meekly, but when she expressed doubt with him in TPM over his ability to win the Boonta, he just brushed it off, and told her “he’d win this time.” Before, in TPM, he said what he thought, now he just says “Master so-and-so thinks…” He feels uncomfortable saying what he really thinks. He honestly was more comfortable speaking up as a slave, than as a Jedi. Even just the body language difference can tell you that he’s gone from sure of himself to intensely insecure.
This is Anakin in TPM sticking up to his owner:
This is Anakin in AoTC, free, ostensibly, with his teacher:
It’s like chalk and cheese. One boy is sure of himself, the other looks brow-beaten. What could have caused such a massive shift in self-esteem? Well, a classic cause would be bullying. A child who is different, for whatever reason, gets humiliated, ostracized, beat-up, talked down to, and loses their self-confidence. I don’t doubt the same thing happened to Anakin. He was from the Outer Rim. He began his training late. He was different, unnaturally gifted. I’ve no doubt that was rough, and clearly he wasn’t given any kind of support to help with that, rather he was given the opposite. Hence, he is insecure.
This is in no way his fault. He’s barely an adult by AoTC, and it is up to the adults responsible for him during his childhood to provide a safe environment, if not a safe haven, for him to grow up in. Clearly, the Jedi have failed to do this. Indeed, as shown when Obi-Wan says “don’t do anything without consulting either myself or the Council,” they clearly had no faith in him whatsoever, (after ten years), so why should he believe in himself? In RoTS, Windu actually says when Anakin tells him about Palpatine, “If what you say is true, you will have earned my trust.” In thirteen years, Anakin who has worked diligently, and loyally as a Jedi, and he’s never earned Windu’s trust or respect! That is cold. What was Anakin suppose to do anyway as a boy? Go back to Tatooine? Anakin really didn’t have much choice but to stay. At least, with the Jedi he would get a good education, and would learn how to use the Force. There was nothing for him on Tatooine. What good would he do? By staying with the Jedi, at least until he was knighted, he might be able to help when he finally goes back to Tatooine. He’ll have the Force, and an education that would serve him well. (Then, of course, the war started so that went out the air-lock…) No, the fault for Anakin’s low self-esteem lies entirely with the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan, and the Jedi Council. You cannot blame Anakin, especially since he was a child at the time. Frankly, the Council should be ashamed of themselves. If you adopt a child, and he wilts that much under your care, you need to take a good hard look at yourselves.
I would have thought that it was bad writing too. However, the theme of the apathetic inadequacy of the Jedi is carried from TPM through to RoTS. In TPM, Mace Windu tests Anakin only as a formality, because “he’s too old.” When Qui-Gon insists that Anakin be tested, Windu just waves a hand and says “bring him before us then.” He’s pretty much done with it all. Unsurprisingly, the Council then rejects Anakin, (while talking about Anakin as if he wasn’t even there.) That’s not really the worst bit though, when Qui-Gon points out that Anakin has nowhere to go, they don’t express any concern for his well-being, his education, his future, even though he’s a freed slave with few options, and no money: He’s a child at their mercy. Even when this fact is pointed out to them they just say he’s Qui-Gon’s “ward” now to do with as he pleases, just don’t train him. How callous! I mean, would you do that to a poor boy with no prospects who needed your help desperately?
By the time TPM ends, Anakin’s behaviour is already beginning to foreshadow what happens in AoTC. He’s picked up on all this and this is how he looks when he finds out Obi-Wan is going to be the one to train him:
This isn’t just grief from Qui-Gon’s death; Anakin’s expression, the above expression, comes as a direct result of Obi-Wan’s promise. Anakin’s grief is enhanced by his insecurity over his future. As I pointed out in my post The Team: Built on Weak Foundations, Anakin knew that Obi-Wan initially didn’t believe he should be trained, and was even jealous of him due to Qui-Gon’s actions in the Council room. Anakin had every reason to be afraid that things weren’t going to go well, and they didn’t. Yes, he and Obi-Wan became friends, which was nice, but he was never allowed to feel safe in his environment at the Temple, because of the Council’s apathy, even antipathy toward him which most of the other Jedi would have picked up on and followed like Lemmings. After all, why wouldn’t they do what the wise and noble Council does? Hence, we get Anakin’s low self-esteem in AoTC.
By the time RoTS comes around, Anakin is doing a bit better. He has command of his own men. He’s no longer an apprentice. He’s gained confidence now that he’s needed as a General in the GAR, and he’s been acknowledged to be a really good one which also helps: He’s the Hero With no Fear. As a result, he pushes back a bit more, but the underlying timidity he has with the Council doesn’t quite go away:
While, Anakin starts to really express a lot of his deeply rooted anger that stems from way back in his childhood, both with the Jedi and from slaver, in RoTS, and the Council takes a lot of it, (ignoring Operation Knighthood), he still doesn’t get one of the things he desperately needs, and craves: Validation and respect. Anakin honestly just needs them to tell him he did a good job, and that they’re proud of him, but the Council can’t quite seem to manage it. He might get “arrogant.” (Oh, please. He wouldn’t be so keen to prove what he can do, if you’d just say “you did well, kid!) By the time RoTS comes around, Obi-Wan is the only one who ever really tells him he’s doing a good job, and therefore he is placed in the position of fielding between Anakin and the Council, as the relationship continues to break down.
Nevertheless, despite his slowly regaining confidence, and the increasingly tense dynamic between Anakin and the Council, Anakin still doesn’t feel secure enough to just stand his ground, or even leave. This is a result of years of emotional abuse. Anakin was physically and emotionally abused as a child on Tatooine, and emotionally, and arguably, spiritually abused as a an apprentice to the Jedi. To be honest, I think this behaviour was mostly reserved for Anakin. The Jedi may not have been stellar in raising other members of their Order; they lost sight of what their Code really meant some time prior to the PT. However, they came down cruelly on Anakin, because he was different, and they were scared of what that meant. (Fear leads to the Dark Side, oh yes, but you helped him on his journey through your own fear.)
to make that funeral scene even worse: Anakin has to ASK what’s going to happen to him.
I mean, think about it. The kid is all alone on a strange planet, surrounded by people he hardly knows, and the ONE GUY who appeared to be in his corner is dead, and no one will tell him what’s going on, or what will happen to him. it’s been at LEAST two weeks - to allow for Padme to consolidate her hold on the planet well enough for the Supreme Chancellor to visit, him to be ELECTED, and to hold talks with the Gungans as to how to include their voice in Naboo’s government from now on. Likely it’s longer. And in all that time, ALL that TIME, no one says ONE single WORD about what’s going to happen to Anakin going forward.
He can’t go back to Tattooine. Padme isn’t offering him a place on Naboo, she likely thinks that he’s already part of the Jedi and wouldn’t be receptive to her offer even if she did consider it.
Obi-wan has his head up his own ass and can’t be bothered to consider any feelings other than his own. He doesn’t get that with his new teaching gig, come responsibilities toward the well being (including emotional well being) of his charge. So he’s off in his own head during the funeral, and Anakin is forced to speak up.
and Jake Loyd is perfect here. Anakin’s voice is *resigned* as he askes the question. you can tell that the anxieties have already burned themselves out, and there’s nothing left but resigned acceptance. there’s no use fighting what comes next, because there’s nothing left to fight.
It’s only THEN that Obi-wan turns. Turns and tells Anakin that he has permission to train Anakin as a Jedi. Then he promises Anakin that he WILL be a Jedi, as if that makes it all alright.
I found out recently that at a time of his life when Tolstoy was in a slump and had stopped writing & earning money, his wife Sophia borrowed money from her mum to start her own publishing office and publish editions of his works—and in order to figure out how publishing worked, she travelled to St Petersburg to ask Anna Dostoyevsky for advice, as Anna had also spent the past 14 years planning the editions of her husband’s work, correcting proofs, placing ads in papers, battling official censors, etc. It reminded me of this post about women writers supporting each other—so many links between women in history that we never hear about. Someone please write a book about the wives of all the great male writers…
(In previous years Sophia, while giving birth to Tolstoy’s 13 children and raising them and managing his estate (he was a count) pretty much on her own, also wrote the clean copies of all of his manuscripts out of his nearly illegible drafts—the final draft of War and Peace was 3,000 pages and she copied it seven times, correcting spelling and grammar and offering key suggestions and critiques of the plot; for example explaining to him that people would be more interested in the social or romantic plots, the human aspects, than in the minutiae of the battles and war strategy plots. A few months before his death, Tolstoy named a male friend the executor of his literary estate rather than his wife, who had been doing this thankless job since she was 19, and gave to the public domain all the copyrights to his works that Sophia had previously owned (for her publishing company). She wrote in her diary “Now I am cast aside as of no further use, although I am, nevertheless, expected to do impossible things.”)
Also I shouldn’t be surprised (but I am) at just how many “great male writers” read their wife’s (or female relatives’) diaries and drew a lot of inspiration from them, stealing ideas or even sometimes entire sentences / paragraphs / poems out of them. This is such a recurrent pattern. There’s Tolstoy (who read Sophia’s diaries and also asked her, when she was 17, to show him a short story she’d written, gave it back to her the next day saying he’d barely glanced at it, when he actually wrote in his diary “What force of truth and simplicity!” and used the story as the embryo for the Rostov family in War and Peace), but also William Wordsworth who read his sister Dorothy’s journal and drew a lot from it, and F. Scott Fitzgerald of course. When Zelda was still young a magazine editor offered to publish parts of her journals, and her husband (of 5 months!) said he couldn’t allow it because he drew a lot of inspiration from them and planned on using parts of them in his future novels and short stories. There’s also French novelist Raymond Radiguet who stole his female lover’s diary to write his novel The Devil in the Flesh, and was lauded by fellow male writers & critics for his brilliant insights into a woman’s mind. Which had been copy/pasted from this woman’s diary. [Also, while he didn’t read it until after her death, Henry James’s sister Alice mentions in her diary that he “embedded in his pages many pearls fallen from my lips, which he steals in the most unblushing way, saying, simply, that he knew they had been said by the family, so it did not matter.”] I really love reading women’s journals, and when they were married to a famous writer, you wouldn’t believe how often the person who edited them mentions in the introduction “if some passages sound familiar it’s because her husband was reading her diary and ~getting inspired” ie plagiarising although the term technically doesn’t apply because every word his wife wrote and idea she had was legally his property (just like she was).
It makes me feel so bitter to contrast what women do—decades of unpaid, unacknowledged work to proofread, copy, publish, preserve from censorship, improve, develop and promote their husband’s writing—with what men do—openly steal ideas and whole sentences from their wife’s writing while forcing her to give birth to 13 children that she didn’t want and he doesn’t help raise.
There has been a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet in my house as long as I can remember, and I held dear many verses from it for a long time. Then I read about his relationship with one Elizabeth Haskell, who supported and edited and worked so closely with him that, “Haskell’s contribution to his writing, including The Prophet, was such that by today’s standard she would be acknowledged as co-author.” (Wikipedia, but there was a much longer article about her I stumbled across once.)
Kind of takes the mystic-spiritual edge off a male writer when you learn that much of what was published under his name was discreetly written into his work by a talented but nameless woman behind the scenes.
okay so i LOVE mulan okay. as far as i’m concerned it’s a Perfect Movie and doesn’t need any fixing. but i was thinking today and -
- what if mulan didn’t go to war to save her father?
say her father is dead, okay, killed by the previous war. so she’s raised by her mother and grandmother, women who’s complacency and softness has been worn away by necessity. she needs to marry well, for her family’s sake, because her mother has refused the hand of every man who offered. but mulan is even more rough around the edges than before, is educated not only in books (her mother said men wouldn’t find smarts attractive and grandmother pointed out that men aren’t always around and off to school mulan went) but in the sword too, taught to her by her classmate, ping.
mulan is considered in the lower end of the upper class, coming from a family of military men and scholars and successful merchants. ping is near the top, the son or nephew of an advisor to the emperor. his family is very rich and very important, and the reason they become friends is because mulan manages to notice something about him that he’s been hiding from everyone else - he’s going blind.
not totally blind, enough to get around, but blind enough that reading is difficult and swordplay is even worse, although once he has it down he has it. ping is no fool, he’s not weak or bumbling. his eyes just don’t work. so mulan notices and confronts him about it. she promises to keep it a secret, and hey, she’ll even help him with his assignments by reading the books out loud and helping him study. but in return he must teach her the sword, must teach her about military and tactics. he agrees.
ping and mulan become very good friends and there’s some raised eyebrows about it but they are TOO far away in class for it to be inappropriate, so they make tutting sounds and disapproving faces and let it go.
then the draft happens. ping can’t go to war, he won’t survive it. not with his eyesight like it is. so mulan offers him a deal - she’ll go to war for him, in his place. in return, if she survives, he must marry her. if she dies he must take care of her family.
ping can’t make this kind of family decision on his own, so he goes to his mother and tells her everything, about the eyesight and how he’ll die if he goes and mulan’s offer. his mother says he must keep it a secret from his father, but agrees - if mulan fights in her son’s place and survives, a wedding will be arranged. either way, mulan’s family will be taken care of. ping will be sent to live with some cousins in the meanwhile.
“you’re not in love with me, are you?” ping asks, helping mulan saddle her horse in the middle of the night. she scoffs and rolls her eyes, “not even a little. but marrying you will make my family happy, and besides, you’re my best friend,” she says, smiling, “better you than some grabby old man.” he smiles and hugs her and says, “i’m not in love with you either. but don’t die out there. we have a wedding to plan.”
so mulan goes to the camp, pretending to be ping, and she’s a little bit less lost but things still go as they go. she’s educated and trained, so it’s not hard for her to pass as ping. shang is keeping a special eye on her, thinking that she’s the son of an advisor, one of his father’s friends. and he sees how easily she excels, how quick thinking and smart she is, and starts giving her more and more responsibilities. by the time they’re called out, shang considers ping ie mulan to be his right hand man, and possibly his best friend.
he’s also a little bit in love with ping, and he’s long known he’s attracted to both genders, so he watches ping laugh and smile and the crease between his eyes when he frowns and does his best to let his feelings chase away the best soldier he has. every time shang looks at ping his heart clenches and he things to himself: i wish i could have you, i wish this was a time and a place where one man could have another, i wish you were a girl, is wish i was a girl - i wish we could be together. he’s literally a step away from doodling ‘li ping’ with little hearts over his battle plans.
so the battles happen. shang and ping lead their men together, respected and loved. they each get promoted, and promoted, and promoted. it’s been years, and it comes to a point where they’re both generals in their own right. they trust each other, care for each other. and are both secretly in love with the other.
mulan is so conflicted. because she wants this war to end and to go home and settle back into life and become ping’s wife, so she can have an easy life spent studying and learning with her family taken care of. that’s what she’d wanted. but now what she wants is shang, her best friend, her brother in arms, her fellow general. she wishes to be everything to him, aches to be the woman on his arm and in his bed, but knows it’s the one thing she can never be.
then that final battle happens. mulan’s quick thinking saves them all and ends the war - but she’s injured.
shang finds out the ping has been a girl all along. he demands explanations - so she tells him everything, that she traded places with ping to save him, to become his wife.
and the lies should sting the sharpest, but they don’t. she’s still the same person, after all. it’s that she’s promised to another man, for one second he’d thought he might have her, but no. so he agrees not to reveal her but he’s furious and furious at himself for being furious and they’re not the same now, broken and splintered and neither of them know what to do.
the war is over. they leave. mulan returns home, and thanks to her ping is now known as a respected general. she’s done her part and survived, and now she gets her reward - ping’s hand in marriage.
but she sees ping for the first time and flings herself into his arms and starts crying. she tells him everything, because he’s still her friend, her very best friend besides shang, the man whom she lied to and betrayed and loves. and ping listens and takes her by the shoulders and says - i’ll uphold our bargain, if that’s what you want. you can be my pampered wife, you’ve more than earned it. but if you want to go to shang, i won’t blame you. you deserve your happiness.
and mulan goes back and forth, but ultimately she decides she has to try. if shang rejects her she’ll return and marry ping and uphold her family honor. but if shang wants her - he’s not as high up as ping, but he’s high up enough to satisfy her family, and also she would love him and want him if he was no more than a farming peasant so it doesn’t matter much anyway.
she rides to the capitol. she finally meets ping’s father, running into him while looking for shang. “ah mulan,” says this man who was never supposed to know of her until she became his daughter-in-law, “i didn’t expect to see you here. how fortuitous. walk with me.” she does, wary, and that’s how she discovers - he and the emperor had discovered her deception a year in, but at that point she’d already proven herself too skilled and valuable to lose. he tells her that he will uphold his son and wife’s deal and gladly welcome her to his household - but that she’s earned her rank as general, and that he and the emperor have no problem with letting her keep it.
she says thank you, shocked and joyful, but that she has to talk to someone first. “ah, yes, young general li,” he says, eyes twinkling, “i do believe he’s around here somewhere.”
she has no idea how he seems to know everything, but she finally tracks down shang who’s ecstatic to see her and hates himself for it. she confesses - says she loves him, that she’s engaged to ping but willing and able to break this engagement for shang. who is dumbfounded and elated and says yes, of course, finally and forever.
and mulan accepts her rank and marries shang, and they become the literal power battle couple of the general li mulan and general li shang. ping becomes a scholar and marries a very nice young woman who loves reading and is happy to read aloud to her husband with his failing eyes.
“Lie close,” Laura said, Pricking up her golden head: “We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?”
A wolf goes for a walk in the woods and meets a dog for the first time
