Goal in Life...

...to write a French character that's not stupid, evil, or destined to die. This idea has always been somewhere in the back of my mind. Most people who know me, know that one of the easiest ways to tick me off is to insult the French. I actually don't like it when any nationality is insulted, not just because of the obvious reasons but because there's rarely ever any intellect in such jokes. They're just used when a person wants to say something funny but lacks the imagination to come up with any new material so it's just "The French/Mexicans/Canadians blah, blah, blah..." followed by Neanderthal laughter as if they've just said the cleverest thing in the world. If any of these people could actually trace back the real origins of these animosities throughout history, I may be vaguely impressed. But perpetuating them while not having any clue why they exist in the first place won't get any respect from me.

Anyway, I admit I've always had a soft spot for the French since the language is my major. My thoughts on their portrayal in literature resurfaced while listening to Artemis Fowl: The Artic Incident, an excellent book but sadly containing yet another stock French character like in movies The Matrix and The Core, both examples of the evil/stupid/destined to die. I'm sure there's more, but I just can't think of them off the top of my head. One good thing about Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code is that Sophie Neveu was none of these things. But such examples are sadly limited in popular English fiction. I was happy when Fleur Delacour showed her mettle in Harry Potter 6, but there's still the fact that most people didn't like her before, and she's relatively stereotypical.