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Have you ever heard of the old series of comic strips known as Goofus and Gallant? If not, you may have at least run across any number of homages and parodies based on it, such as the Dimwit and Duke cartoons in Bioshock Infinite. The basic structure was simply that the boy named Goofus, positioned on the left, would always be doing things the wrong way, while the boy Gallant, appropriately positioned to the right, would approach the same situation with the proper actions and/or attitude. Goofus grabs, Gallant asks. Goofus mocks, Gallant empathizes. Goofus rebels, Gallant obeys. So on and so forth.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Maybe even too simple? Aren’t there, after all, situations where a bit of rebellion might be the correct choice? I think Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, could make a case for that.
When Dawn read the script page for last week’s comic, she laughed at the last panel and said, “Lacey has a point.”
“I like to have Lacey score a point every so often,” I responded. “Keeps things interesting.”
Having a Goofus and Gallant dichotomy where one character is always good and right and one character is always wrong and bad? I mean, hey, I liked He-Man as much as the next kid when I was a tyke, but my tastes are a bit more sophisticated these days in terms of both receiving entertainment and creating it. I like that occasional indulgence in the trope of “Jerkass Has a Point“. It keeps both the characters and the audience engaged, evaluating what they’re experiencing. Perhaps even more importantly, it keeps you as a creator doing the same, preventing the far more unfortunate occurrence of “Strawman Has a Point” where whatever you were trying to say on a more thematic level goes horribly awry.
Now of course, the rightness or wrongness of my characters at any given moment does not mean you have to like them any more (or less). Lacey does seem on the whole to be more Goofus than Gallant, doesn’t she? Yet I’ve heard people express that they find that endearing, feeling like those flaws make her more relatable. Those same flaws have led others to really, really not like her. But if she was made up of nothing but flaw, that would be as boring after awhile as it would be if Suzie were a shining paragon who never stumbled.
Good drama lies somewhere in the middle, I reckon.