Secrets?

I've been thinking a lot about flawed characters recently. Characters who are jealous, or angry, or arrogant. And so I decided to make a list of flaws I secretly like to see in characters because I've experienced them myself. Because I love lists. And I really should post a bio thingy for Pitch Wars but I don't want to, so a list of dark secrets characterization tips should cover that, right? Right.

1. Jealousy. I'm the oldest of four girls, and my two sisters just younger than me had blond hair and blue eyes. They looked like Disney princesses (who were, excepting Snow White, blond), and I...well, I sorta matched the wicked witches. Oh, and there was the stop-following-me-don't-catch-up-to-me-in-swimming-lessons jealousy, too. I'm sympathetic to jealousy.

2. A feeling of awkwardness/not fitting in. My mom permed my hair in middle school. Like huge, poofy, I-was-struck-by-lightning perms. In middle school. And I wore Winnie the Pooh shirts. And I had braces. I did not get invited to parties until I joined the swim team in high school so the chlorine and wetness could kill all the frizz. I think everyone's felt alienation. But not everyone had to go to school smelling like horrible home-done perm. And that is a very good thing.

3.  Overconfidence leading to ruin or humbling failure. Two of my favorite authors growing up were Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance, Darksword, and Death Gate Cycle fame). I know they're nerdy, but I love a lot of what they write, largely because they're really good at this theme. Truly intelligent, talented characters who know they're intelligent/talented/magically supreme make extremely arrogant plans and end up trapped in the abyss, or leading their people to slaughter on the battlefield, or destroying their entire planet. I suppose I've never done anything that disastrous, but give me time. As a sleep-deprived mother of three young children, a teacher, a writer, a shameless book/video game/animation/MyLittlePonyDr.WhoTheLastAirbenderAdventureTimeJossWhedon geek, there's plenty of stuff (including small humans!) that I could mess up on (especially if I'm overconfident enough to think I know the schemes of my small humans...).

I like crises of faith, too. Oh! And anger while grieving, and humorous revenge (like Fred and George's takedown of Umbrage), and mistakes made in anger and exhaustion. But I've told you enough (yikes! the perms!), and I promised to post a video for my five-year-old if he went to bed  well (hooray for sleeping!). So the video below is for him, but feel free to list flaws you like in the comments! I like growing my lists. Maybe that's a flaw, too.

And, just because I like Imagine Dragons (did you hear about what they did?), I kinda like this odd music video...