Characters and Competence

I’ve been watching the Apple TV adaptation of the Mick Herron’s Slow Horses book series and I started thinking about likable characters. I see lots of complaints from writers about getting reviews that say that their characters are not likable or the same said of characters in movies and TV shows and I wondered is that really a problem, and I’m increasingly thinking that the real problem is that the term “likable” isn’t very precise.

In Slow Horses the character Jackson Lamb is one of the most entertaining characters I’ve ever seen, but he’s definitely not “likable.” You would not want to hang out with him. He has a moral code, but there’s lots to his personality that is far from setting a good example. But he is highly competent and he is entertaining to watch (or to read about depending on if you’re viewing the show or reading the book series.) Lamb has all sorts of tricks, showing off tradecraft techniques that I’ve not seen in other spy series. Seeing Lamb sneak around and trick and embarrass his MI5 bosses is as fun as seeing him and his crew figure out the main plot.

Jackson Lamb would be my favorite all time character, but Walter Bishop on the scifi show Fringe already holds that title. Bishop is highly competent, and also likable, but has done some very unlikable things. Many of the episodes of Fringe are all about having to solve the mystery of something Bishop himself caused with his actions decades before hand.

Daemon Tagaryen in House of the Dragon I think is another good example. From seducing his niece to going to war despite being ordered by his brother the King to stand down, Daemon is hardly a good guy, and yet it’s tempting to root for him. His brother is a weak king, and oddly much of that is because his brother is much more invested in trying to do the right thing. He desires peace instead of bloodshed, he desires peace and prosperity for his people, and he wants his daughter to inherit the throne rather than his spoiled grandson, because it’s what he believes would be for the best. But he appears weak to his people, and I think frustrates the audience because if he gets his way everything stagnates. Viserys is hard to root for because he’s not making things happen, Daemon is making things happen and is quite effective at making those things happen.

In Star Wars A New Hope, Luke is clearly the hero, and yet as kids on the playground pretty much everyone wanted to be Han. Han is not altruistic, his motivations are more selfish. He shoots Guido first. This is not to say though that Han is unlikable, just that if you explained his character and Luke’s character one would think that Luke is the one we’re meant to like more, and that doesn’t happen. A better example is Kerr Avon from Blake’s 7. Avon and Blake are somewhat similar to the dynamic between Luke and Han, only much bleaker. Blake is motivated by altruism, Avon is motivated by self interest. Blake is the title character of the show. And yet by the second season it was abundantly clear that Avon had more fans. Some of this is that Avon got particularly snappy dialogue, especially when in conflict with Blake. Some of it may be due to the show examining that some times the most righteous become dangers themselves. But a lot of it I think is because Avon was a very competent character who was often the one saving the crew (if only because he needed them for his own survival) and often saving them from traps that the zealous Blake had gotten them into.

I’ve written at length about how much I enjoyed Stranger Things. Part of what I think I found so appealing about those characters is that they are remarkably competent, especially for characters in a horror story. I posted before about how some of this derives because in their world stories and media set in the same genre exist and this allows them a shorthand to discuss it. But it’s more than that. Being the AV/Science nerds doesn’t merely make them outcasts, it also means they consider weight ratios and how to communicate across barriers and are ready to figure things out.

I think it’s possible to have a far from competent character and have them be entertaining. It is possible to commiserate with a lovable loser as they fumble their way through a story. But that’s where I think the character has to be likable so that we commiserate with them instead of just having Schadenfreude as it all goes badly for them. I think Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a good example of a character that doesn’t know what he’s doing but is just likable enough that we can easily empathize with him as things go wrong over and over for him. We’ve never had the Earth destroyed for a hyperspace bypass, but we’ve all had days where everything went wrong, and Douglas Adams handles Dent’s misery with a sense of humor that makes it all both relatable and entertaining.

Also there’s a difference between being competent and being magically good at everything, or worse cocky about it. All characters need to have their flaws, even the highly competent ones. It makes them feel both more realistic and also more relatable. But discussing character flaws would be its own blog entry.

At the end of the day I think this all goes back to the cardinal rule: whatever you do with the story don’t make it boring. And this goes for characters. I think when people say “likable” what they really mean is “interesting” or even “someone we can cheer for” or at least “sympathize with.”