in which I ramble about White Collar, Farscape, and 3 movies that pass the Bechdel test

I’m having some sort of values dissonance with parts of White Collar fandom. I keep reading these critiques that are like “Neal Caffrey is a thief, he’s selfish, he’s messed up, he has serious ethical and emotional problems!” and I’m like… yeah, and? Why is that bad?

Perfect characters are boring. Flawed characters are interesting. Why do people want flawed characters to be “fixed”? Presumably its those flaws that draw people to the characters in the first place. Real people are flawed and complicated, and they may grow up and deal with their problems in better ways, but people don’t become perfect. They keep most of their core issues throughout their lives, and the people who love them love them anyway. And of course, plenty of “flaws” are just personality traits that can be expressed in both positive and negative ways–take away the personality trait because you dislike its negative expression, and you lose the positive aspects of it, too.

I mean, yes, Neal Caffrey is a con artist. The Tenth Doctor was an arrogant know-it-all, Logan Echolls was a bully, Brian Kinney was an asshole, Sirius Black had the emotional maturity of a sixteen-year-old, Spike used to kill people and drink their blood, Jaime Lannister fucked his sister and threw a seven-year-old out a window, and Methos was a Horseman of the Apocalypse (hahaha, oh, Highlander, I miss you). I probably wouldn’t want to know any of these people in real life, but this is fiction–the more complicated and fucked-up they are, the more interesting they are to play with as characters.

This seems to come up in every fandom I’m in, to the point where I start wondering if there’s something wrong with me, like am I missing some core ethical understanding that comes naturally to other people? But, um, no, it’s just that fiction =/= reality, and I wouldn’t want it to.

Anyway, in other news:

( I went to see the Runaways and Kristin Stewart was awesome as Joan Jett )

( then I went to see Strange Days and it was fantastic on a big screen )

( and I saw Alice in Wonderland, which makes three films that pass the Bechdel test in a row! )

( then I got nostalgic for Doctor Who and watched Boomtown and missed the Jack Harkness I actually liked )

( and watched some Farscape which I've grown increasingly convinced actually was the best sci fi show ever )

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.