Tragic heroes and Mary Sues. This is going somewhere great.

Here's your literary term of the day: Aristotle's tragic hero. If you don't know what it is, well, read up. :)

1. The tragic hero is a character of noble stature and has greatness. This should be readily evident in the play. The character must occupy a "high" status position but must ALSO embody nobility and virtue as part of his/her innate character.

2. Though the tragic hero is pre-eminently great, he/she is not perfect. Otherwise, the rest of us--mere mortals--would be unable to identify with the tragic hero. We should see in him or her someone who is essentially like us, although perhaps elevated to a higher position in society.

3. The hero's downfall, therefore, is partially her/his own fault, the result of free choice, not of accident or villainy or some overriding, malignant fate. In fact, the tragedy is usually triggered by some error of judgment or some character flaw that contributes to the hero's lack of perfection noted above. This error of judgment or character flaw is known as hamartia and is usually translated as "tragic flaw" (although some scholars argue that this is a mistranslation). Often the character's hamartia involves hubris (which is defined as a sort of arrogant pride or over-confidence).

4. The hero's misfortunate is not wholly deserved. The punishment exceeds the crime.

5. The fall is not pure loss. There is some increase in awareness, some gain in self-knowledge, some discovery on the part of the tragic hero..

6. Though it arouses solemn emotion, tragedy does not leave its audience in a state of depression. Aristotle argues that one function of tragedy is to arouse the "unhealthy" emotions of pity and fear and through a catharsis (which comes from watching the tragic hero's terrible fate) cleanse us of those emotions.

This is why the fifth Harry Potter book is my favorite, even though everybody seems to complain that Harry's being a whiny little jerk who thinks he knows better. And I'm like, YES! Harry's being a whiny little jerk who thinks he knows better!

First of all, he was a heavily traumatized fifteen-year-old in the book. Of course he'll act like that. Second of all, it comes back to bite him in the derriere in a major way. He is so sure that he knows what he's doing when it comes to Voldemort and that prophecy, that he basically causes Sirius to get killed. No, it's not completely his fault. But it's partially his fault. If he had, y'know, tried a little harder with Occlumency or called Sirius directly on those mirrors, the battle at the Ministry probably never would have happened.

But then the Ministry workers wouldn't have seen ol' Voldy escaping, and who knows what would have happened in the sixth and seventh books. So yeah. Kind of brilliant how that turned out, actually.

Now... Mary Sues. Some people seem to think that Mary Sues don't have any flaws at all. I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't want to use a certain hated book and movie series (which, believe me, I have a whole laundry list of reasons for despising), so I'm going to resort to what Google says is the worst fanfic of all time.

My Immortal. (Warning: TV Tropes link.) (Now you can really tell I'm a nerd.)

I am so sorry. If you haven't come across this... thing before, I don't encourage you to take it on. It's dangerous to your sanity and you probably will start losing faith in humanity and literacy.

But basically, the main character (Ebony... Enoby? It's anyone's guess) is just this horrible, horrible person. She tortures and murders people, she's self-absorbed, she dresses and acts like she's been around the block a few times, and... ugh, just plain evil. Her (main) boyfriend kills himself twice (*sigh* yeah...) and she doesn't even react. Basically, even though she has nothing BUT flaws, she never makes a mistake that she's held accountable for. And everybody who knows her either wants to be her friend or falls in love with her or is Voldemort. Wait, no. Voldemort falls in love with her, too, I think. I dunno, I can't remember.

You can see what I'm talking about, though, right? Yeah.

So... in other news... I guess the video on 13 Reasons Why isn't working correctly? :/ I'll post it again tomorrow in two parts.