Exactly! Not the 1-D villains, and for me especially not the particularly externally-privileged villains either, unless they show me some kind of soul somewhere. (AND LOLWHUT, you mean there are people somewhere who somehow think of Wickham as like, an evil genius or something? Because really NO. He's a selfish, self-involved doucherag who does not think beyond his next bit of fun; that's the whole problem with him. If he'd had a lick of sense, he never in life would have taken Lydia with him.)
Oooh, I'm so glad the competence-kink makes sense of some things for you! Competence-and-talent kink FTW!!! Totally with you on that's what makes Luke and Harry awesome, too.
And I think there's a... thing... with both of them that explains the commercial success of both series, which is that Rowling and Lucas both shaded the stories such that a superficial reading allows for the Everyman thing, but then you look closely at Luke, or Harry (and Leia! And Hermione!) and OMG they are awesome in their own rights and even without a grand heroic narrative that's true. (and Han is awesome too. That's one place Rowling fell down, IMO, because Ron Weasley is a fucking everyman and just UGH.)
I think you're right that part of it is that need to set up insurmountable obstacles for the hero, and having a weak or everyman-ish hero is a way to do that; it's also not an angle I'd thought of before. (I'd always blamed it on playing to the lowest-common-denominator of the intended audience, you know--- in a way that all too painfully feeds the Nice Guy Syndrome and similar glitchery.)
And Eowyn! OMG Eowyn, and her narrative arc, and what for me is kind of a PTSD-induced response to Faramir, that just rips my heart right out.
And, yeah, Luke's arc is so much more interesting to me, that talent-development arc, and "now that you can use your abilities, HOW do you use them?" And that the same questions, ultimately, were the ones plaguing Anakin, but he got such BAD answers from the world around him. (Because the Jedi's answers were all about fostering their little codependent political relationship with the Senate, but Anakin had just enough outside experience--- HELLO SLAVE OF THE HUTTS MUCH?--- to know that "people in power" and "good people" aren't necessarily correlated and that the status quo isn't always okay, but he didn't have anyone giving him anything else to believe in, except sort of, with Padme and their family, except that of course it's happening at the worst time possible and now he has to worry about her dying--- because on the one hand, I think it's the first time in a while he's had a goal or a role that he understands and has had modeling for (as you said elsewhere, it appears that Shmi was a pretty good parent, at least for the young child Anakin was, so he knows what that looks like in a concrete way, whereas the signals he's getting from the Jedi Order are pretty messed up even without Palpatine's unhelpful help in the mix) and on the other it's being threatened by all these outside forces. The difference for Luke is that he had IMO a stabler growing-up experience--- Owen and Beru may not have been the most overtly affectionate people in the galaxy, a moisture farmer's life might have been really hard, Luke might have not had his dreams encouraged, but I don't think there was anything like the ongoing stress and threat that a slave would have lived with. (Reading between the lines: Anakin would have had to worry about things like him or Shmi being killed or sold away from each other, and some of the onus of dealing with that would have been on him, I suspect, from a pretty young age--- "win this race or I'll sell your mother!", that kind of thing.) So Luke is a far more stable creature when his big heroic choices and challenges come in.
I think that's something Yoda and Obi-wan didn't get, either: the kind of stability that a family-style upbringing, done at least tolerably well, can give. It won't get you emotionless devoted servants of the Jedi Order, of course, but I think Luke is in some ways inoculated against the Dark Side in ways that those dear little brainwashed moppets-with-lightsabers that Yoda was used to training weren't, because he's had choices, and feelings, and wants, not all of which have been met, all along, and he's learned how he personally has to wrestle with that. Temptation isn't so bad after you've actually fought it and won a few times, and--- I think you've said this elsewhere--- Luke also understands about duty; he doesn't run off with Ben the moment Ben waves a shiny lightsaber and a shinier Grand Destiny at him. (That for me is maybe the moment that Ben should have known to trust that Luke wouldn't fall to the Dark Side, because that boy knows how to wrangle duty versus personal preference. Sadly, I suspect--- retconnishly, anyway--- that Ben simply thought, oh, shit, another generation of overly-attached Skywalkers; we're doomed. And also that Ben, what with being an Old Republic Jedi and all, couldn't understand fully the idea of that kind of bone-deep duty that wasn't to a galaxy-spanning abstract ideal. He had flashes of it, in his willingness to defy the Jedi Council to fulfill Qui-gon's last wish, but I don't think he understood how powerful a force for good that kind of attachment could be.) And, oh, wow, was that ever a tangent.
Back on point: I think you've definitely hit on something about how it's the internal struggles of talented/competent people that kind of make the story, and that a lot of what looks like woobiefication is, "Let's wander around in this process." And sadly, all too often, the really competent people are the villains or at least the antiheroes. (Darcy does play to that type, a little, in that he's got the smarter-than-Bingley-but-also-less-likeable thing going on.) (The whole implicit-demonization-of-talent/glorification-of-the-ordinary is another hobbyhorse of mine, btw!)
no subject
Oooh, I'm so glad the competence-kink makes sense of some things for you! Competence-and-talent kink FTW!!! Totally with you on that's what makes Luke and Harry awesome, too.
And I think there's a... thing... with both of them that explains the commercial success of both series, which is that Rowling and Lucas both shaded the stories such that a superficial reading allows for the Everyman thing, but then you look closely at Luke, or Harry (and Leia! And Hermione!) and OMG they are awesome in their own rights and even without a grand heroic narrative that's true. (and Han is awesome too. That's one place Rowling fell down, IMO, because Ron Weasley is a fucking everyman and just UGH.)
I think you're right that part of it is that need to set up insurmountable obstacles for the hero, and having a weak or everyman-ish hero is a way to do that; it's also not an angle I'd thought of before. (I'd always blamed it on playing to the lowest-common-denominator of the intended audience, you know--- in a way that all too painfully feeds the Nice Guy Syndrome and similar glitchery.)
And Eowyn! OMG Eowyn, and her narrative arc, and what for me is kind of a PTSD-induced response to Faramir, that just rips my heart right out.
And, yeah, Luke's arc is so much more interesting to me, that talent-development arc, and "now that you can use your abilities, HOW do you use them?" And that the same questions, ultimately, were the ones plaguing Anakin, but he got such BAD answers from the world around him. (Because the Jedi's answers were all about fostering their little codependent political relationship with the Senate, but Anakin had just enough outside experience--- HELLO SLAVE OF THE HUTTS MUCH?--- to know that "people in power" and "good people" aren't necessarily correlated and that the status quo isn't always okay, but he didn't have anyone giving him anything else to believe in, except sort of, with Padme and their family, except that of course it's happening at the worst time possible and now he has to worry about her dying--- because on the one hand, I think it's the first time in a while he's had a goal or a role that he understands and has had modeling for (as you said elsewhere, it appears that Shmi was a pretty good parent, at least for the young child Anakin was, so he knows what that looks like in a concrete way, whereas the signals he's getting from the Jedi Order are pretty messed up even without Palpatine's unhelpful help in the mix) and on the other it's being threatened by all these outside forces. The difference for Luke is that he had IMO a stabler growing-up experience--- Owen and Beru may not have been the most overtly affectionate people in the galaxy, a moisture farmer's life might have been really hard, Luke might have not had his dreams encouraged, but I don't think there was anything like the ongoing stress and threat that a slave would have lived with. (Reading between the lines: Anakin would have had to worry about things like him or Shmi being killed or sold away from each other, and some of the onus of dealing with that would have been on him, I suspect, from a pretty young age--- "win this race or I'll sell your mother!", that kind of thing.) So Luke is a far more stable creature when his big heroic choices and challenges come in.
I think that's something Yoda and Obi-wan didn't get, either: the kind of stability that a family-style upbringing, done at least tolerably well, can give. It won't get you emotionless devoted servants of the Jedi Order, of course, but I think Luke is in some ways inoculated against the Dark Side in ways that those dear little brainwashed moppets-with-lightsabers that Yoda was used to training weren't, because he's had choices, and feelings, and wants, not all of which have been met, all along, and he's learned how he personally has to wrestle with that. Temptation isn't so bad after you've actually fought it and won a few times, and--- I think you've said this elsewhere--- Luke also understands about duty; he doesn't run off with Ben the moment Ben waves a shiny lightsaber and a shinier Grand Destiny at him. (That for me is maybe the moment that Ben should have known to trust that Luke wouldn't fall to the Dark Side, because that boy knows how to wrangle duty versus personal preference. Sadly, I suspect--- retconnishly, anyway--- that Ben simply thought, oh, shit, another generation of overly-attached Skywalkers; we're doomed. And also that Ben, what with being an Old Republic Jedi and all, couldn't understand fully the idea of that kind of bone-deep duty that wasn't to a galaxy-spanning abstract ideal. He had flashes of it, in his willingness to defy the Jedi Council to fulfill Qui-gon's last wish, but I don't think he understood how powerful a force for good that kind of attachment could be.) And, oh, wow, was that ever a tangent.
Back on point: I think you've definitely hit on something about how it's the internal struggles of talented/competent people that kind of make the story, and that a lot of what looks like woobiefication is, "Let's wander around in this process." And sadly, all too often, the really competent people are the villains or at least the antiheroes. (Darcy does play to that type, a little, in that he's got the smarter-than-Bingley-but-also-less-likeable thing going on.) (The whole implicit-demonization-of-talent/glorification-of-the-ordinary is another hobbyhorse of mine, btw!)