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Welcome to My Official Web Page!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Compelling Characters- Sue Sylvester!



"...I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat. And then on some dark, cold night, I will steal away into your house...and punch you in the face." -Sue Sylvester

As a reader, I love it when a character plays with my emotions. We all know the type- the woman we love to hate, but really want to succeed (Scarlet O'Hara), the love triangle that has us all torn to bits (Katniss, Peeta, Gale), and the bad guy who we honestly like (Sue Sylvester).

I'm watching the first season of Glee on DVD. (I wish I could get the text to do the high pitched "glee!" from the beginning of every episode, but you're just going to have to imagine it.)

I love Sue Sylvester.

She's the cheerleading coach and an absolute b*tch, but she's hilarious. Like spit-my-chocolate-peanut-butter-ice-cream-all-over-my-white-couch kind of hilarious. You can't help but like her (although you'd probably never want to meet anyone like her in real life). She's not pure evil (but oh-so-close!) because she's got two things going for her.

1. She's funny.
2. She has a sister with Down's syndrome she absolutely adores.

Now you may think the latter piece is a cheap trick on the part of Glee's writers, but I'm telling you that it works. Just when I start to think Sue's becoming a cariacture of a villain, there's a scene with her reading a picture book to her sister. And then I get a little teary eyed.

That's the thing with characters- they have to be human. No hero can be too perfect and no villain can be too bad. They have to be a little bit of both.

Now, if you haven't checked out the rest of the Great Blogging Experiment, head over to Elana Johnson's blog for all the other links. Happy weekend!