Even as a child, I always hated the "hero" type characters everywhere, especially in books. Every single one of those heroes was an idiot, a stupid stupid person that frankly disgusted me with their proud anti-intellectualism, their middle-of-the-road mainstream banality, the average Joe Shmoe character there for the purposes of maximum number of readers identifying with him... You could see what mistakes they'd make sometimes 50 pages in advance, they always do the stupidest mistakes, fall for the most transparent lies, and didn't see coming the most shockingly obvious of stuff. No wonder they have to be brave and strong - their ignorance and stupidity expose them to raw danger all the time. Who in their right mind would want that in real life? Putting yourself on the line, like living paycheck-to-paycheck for example - should we admire the bravery of it? Or maybe consider how not very smart it is to play with fire in this way...

The villains, now that is something else. Foresight, planning, scheming, networking, pulling strings, manipulating puppets, now those were the things an intelligent mind would do. And the way the dumb unseeing hero always wins over the smart sophisticated villain always struck me as both unrealistic and kind of pathetic. Even as a child I told myself.. these silly authors, how weak do you have to be to conjure up this whole strong brave hero character and cook up an entire story where the smart mastermind gets defeated, how realistic is that, it's just sad wishful thinking. Like a girl of divorced parents playing with her Barbie and Ken dolls, making them play a couple in the dollhouse when her real-life parents are no longer a couple. So these authors were kind of like that to me - making their little hero character "win" like a good little puppet, to make the author feels good for a while and forget how this type of "hero" (standing for you) doesn't win in real life due to stupidity, lack of planning, foresight, timing, knowledge and skill, etc.

In my teenage years I started reading proper books, not this hero-wins-in-the-end garbage. Books with complex characters, conflicting inner motivations, multiple possible interpretations of behaviour, not just some good vs bad oversimplicity. Books with multiple main characters, that you can choose to identify with or not, etc. Branching story lines, playing with time, memories/stories within stories/multiple perspectives etc. etc. etc. just complex stuff that is not ultimately clear in one specific way. This is what real life is like. In comparison. the "good guy wins over the bad guys" type of storytelling (like in Hollywood since forever) - just pales in comparison. I honestly feel sorry for anyone who takes comfort from some hero in a book defeating evil, sure, a kid can be idealistic and naive like that, but for an adult person to cling to that... Imagine how horribly dull and boring world would be if it really fitted a black-and-white model like that...