I'm currently reading "The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines", subtitle: Sixteen Master Archetypes, by Tami Cowden, Caro LeFever, and Sue Viders.

The theme of the book is that there are eight classical 'types' of heroes, which they call: The Chief, The Bad Boy, The Best Friend, The Charmer, the Lost Soul, The Professor, The Swashbuckler, and the Warrior.

They also identify eight types of heroines: The Boss, The Seductress, The Spunky Kid, The Free Spirit, The Waif, The Librarian, The Crusader, and The Nurturer.

[That the number of types is the same for men and women at first struck me as either a great coincidence OR a contrivance on the part of the authors, but then I realized that you can pair the male/female types up, one to one, with the differences between the two being due to social and gender factors. Thus:

The Chief = The Boss, The Bad Boy = The Free Spirit, The Best Friend = The Nurturer, The Charmer = The Seductress, The Lost Soul = The Waif, The Professor = The Librarian, The Swashbuckler = The Spunky Kid, The Warrior = the Crusader.

I admit the pairing between Bad Boy and Free Spirit isn't very good, but all the others are quite clear, so that's what is left. The exception that proves the rule, whether you use the modern sense (that is, shows the rule is true) or the older one (that is, tests and * disproves* the rule) I'll leave you to decide.]

The authors also give three ways these archetypes can be used: either your hero fits into one archetype the entire story (what they call 'core'), or your hero is changed from one type to another as a result of the events in your story ('evolving'), or your hero is mostly one archetype with a minor in another, leading to internal conflicts in his motivation ('layered'.)

The first reason I'm bringing all this up is that I was amused by how exactly all the main characters in B7 can be slotted into a role (except Avon, who is layered, and possibly evolving on top of it.) I'm going to go through the cast one by one, using a bunch of quotes from the book's description of each archetype to show why I think they fit - this will be long, so I'll break it into a series of posts, all headed with H&H in the subject line so you can easily delete them all if you find it boring.

The second reason I'm bringing all this up is that I suspect it ties into what 'Jenny Kaye' sees as our 'conspiracy' in refusing to look at and be convinced by the evidence she so clearly sees on the screen for her alternate views on the characters (for example, Gan as psychopath, Avon *not * having the mostly-hidden good traits that some of us insist on seeing.)

The authors say we all (that is, people in general) have grown up being exposed to these hero archetypes our entire lives, from nursery school tales and fairy tales and on through every book read and hour of television or movies watched. As a result we are quick to spot the telling traits, and assign a new character to the 'proper' role - which is a great help to writers.

OTOH (and this is my supposition, so don't blame the writers of this book) it could be that it also introduces a bias in what we consider 'important' or 'pertinent' evidence when we watch B7. Once we have (consciously or not) decided that Gan is The Best Friend, we note and remember the details that point that way, and dismiss as unimportant or 'accidents' of production/continuity errors details that don't fit.

Obviously, someone who has decided to put Gan into a different slot, such as a non-hero one I'll call Covert Psychopath, will be struck by and puts great weight on the very moments 'The Best Friend' cohort ignores. And, contrariwise, the CP people will downplay the importance of what seems like overwhelming evidence to the BF people.

So, in a weird way, I guess I'm saying 'Jenny Kaye' is right that there is a 'conspiracy' and/or 'programming' that keeps the rest of us from seeing things her way. ;-)

It's just that the programming/conspiracy has nothing to do with being on the B7 lists - it's part of our heritage from living in our society - AND, of course, she is just as much programmed as any of us, she just happens to be using a different subset of the 'rules' than most of us.

Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)