[stupid competitive streak...]

[reenka]

Okay, I admit I really like it when (usually young & male) characters act like idiots or bastards... or maybe even idiotic bastards; it's cute. It's endearing. It's in character, etc. Bottom line, I like stupid teenage boys who act before they think. Men who think too much yet make mistakes all over the place just don't have that special flare, for me, because they have no excuse and it's annoying as hell to watch them, basically. But....

It struck me that there's a difference between 'dumb' and an 'idiotic bastard'; it seems like a subtle difference, but it's crucial for me to like the character. Say, Harry. A lot of people seem to think Harry's dumb. While that's true in some ways, it's really kind of annoying in others; especially since it often leads to him being dumb in comparison to Draco, which... don't even get me started.

Harry is pretty clueless a lot of times about things like girls, motivations in shades of grey, and the thinking processes of other people, especially people he doesn't like or hasn't observed close-up (since I think he's pretty clever when it comes to negotiating the Dursleys, though he doesn't bother to kiss up or anything).

I can accept this, and I actually find it cute about him (frustrating as I'm sure more snobbish discriminating people find it). But he's an idiot in a way that a lot of self-centered, rebellious teenage boys are idiots-- inexperienced, rash, given to temper tantrums and overreactions, wanting life to be on his terms and constantly bashing his head against the wall of reality not working like it should. It's okay because the other teenage boys he knows (or at least Ron and Draco) are pretty much idiots too. Neville seems to be missing the testosterone needed to be a first-class idiot, so far.

What bothers me is when 'teenage idiot' becomes 'just plain dumb'; meaning, it's not that he misinterprets things and judges too harshly and doesn't bother to analyze to save his life, but that he doesn't have his own sort of intelligence-- his own sort of wit and resourcefulness. I draw the line when he's incapable of learning in the natural course of things, and his denseness is somehow not normal; especially when it's implied another peer (even Hermione, in the long run) is smarter. Ahhh, that gets my hackles up.

    I'm just saying that most people are intelligent in different ways.


So while Harry might have no clue about what's going on in Cho's or Dumbledore's or Draco's head, he's got what I'd tentatively call street-smarts. Coping behaviors and thinking patterns learned during a high stress childhood, when you had to figure out who to trust or not & what to expect. He's good at thinking on his feet, having mocking come-backs and defending himself and dealing with painful things alone, but not so good at knowing when not to defend himself, when he's overreacting, when to think and not charge in, when he's going too far and becoming the thing he hates.

Ron's got a lot of the same flaws (hot-headedness, extreme mischief, disregard for common sense, emotional denseness), but he's a lot more protective than defensive, and he's more of a natural planner. He thinks about his future more, it seems, and doesn't have as violent of a brewing temper 'cause he doesn't repress it any. Ron's a stupid boy, sure, but he's not dumb; he prioritizes the sorts of things he wants to think about (Quidditch, chess) and the rest of the time he sort of goes by instinct. This doesn't make him less intelligent than say, Hermione, just less analytical. Hermione has her own gaping blind spots, in that she's rather obsessive about whatever project she decides to champion, for example.

Another sign of different kinds of intelligence is that Ron and Harry are actually quite funny-- or at least, they get the good lines (I'm thinking of Harry's sarcasm towards the Dursleys ever since book 1)-- and Hermione and Draco aren't, so much. Draco is all about the low blow, mocking high and low till something hits home-- he's pretty much your typical 14 year-old online flamer, wizard version. He doesn't win (well, not that it's really -winning-) by being more clever than Harry & Ron, he just wins by being socialized well enough to know what hurts. On some level, he probably understands them better than they understand him, but that doesn't really make him smarter in an overall sense, since a) he loses through not being clever enough to realize he'll lose; b) he loses by picking such embarrassing childish taunts that people could easily grow out of them.

I think it's perfectly fine for Draco to become smarter; it's just he'll never be smart the same way as Harry or Ron, say (since Draco's bollocks at predicting people's behavior or strategy, apparently). A lot of people do compensate with time, and their experience lends them a certain subtlety (sometimes). It's just that their strengths don't tend to change, and mostly neither do their overall mental comfort zones. Meaning, Harry's never going to be brilliant at analytically determining others' motivation, but someday intuition might compensate. And it's probably not even good for Draco to learn not to overestimate himself, but perhaps he might figure out how to use people's weaknesses without underestimating them.

If there's anything I've learned in life, it's that everyone's stupid, but in their own way. Or something.

Comments

[balfrog.livejournal.com]

'ahhh, thinking too hard! fucking good!'
Oh yeah!

hee hee. Love their emotional idiocy.