Jurgan writes...

On the Voices from the Eyrie podcast, you talked about how Xanatos isn't petty, and something funny occurred to me. You know who can be extremely petty? Goliath. For starters, he does have a thirst for revenge. I remember a discussion once in the CR about the characters' vices, and we decided Demona and Goliath have the same one, that being vengence. The difference is that Goliath usually keeps it under wraps, probably because he's able to admit when he's in the wrong and de-escalate.

However, G's pettiness shows up in other ways, too. In Deadly Force, he looks very smug about blowing up Xanatos's fancy guns. He gets jealous and overly protective of both Elisa and Angela at times. But my favorite is in The Edge, where he shouts at Xanatos for a while and then runs off, but not before smashing his street lamp. I don't know if that moments was intended to be funny, but it makes me bust out laughing every time. What did you think you were accomplishing, Goliath? Just venting, I guess. And then it even gets a follow-up in The Cage where Derek knocks Xanatos's desk lamp over. He can also be quite petty, or maybe it was just his cat DNA compelling him to push things off of tables.

Anyway, just a bit of disjointed praise/analysis. Summary: You can make characters more compelling by giving the heroes some villainous traits and the villains some heroic traits. This show is still teaching me stuff a quarter century later.