Folk Around and Find Out (Good Folk: Modern Folktales #2)(133)

Hank obviously isn’t.

If I’d written Hank to be like my perception of the club owners I’ve met and interviewed, he wouldn’t be a flawed character, Hank would be an irredeemable character. A villain. People in Green Valley see Hank as a villain because they assume he must exploit the women who work for him.

In order for Hank to be a “hero,” I felt that the core motivation for his character had to be creating a home for the desperate because he had once been desperate. He created a place for people who society had abandoned or never cared about in the first place, making it safe and profitable, teaching them how to create and hold firm boundaries for those who would exploit them, so they didn’t have to be desperate, so they could make money and take control of their own futures.

A clear flaw (to me) in Hank is that he starts the book with an “eat or be eaten” mentality. As I mentioned above, he teaches his dancers to exploit rather than be exploited. This is not ideal (or good), but Hank doesn’t care about being good, he only cares about being fair (at the start of the book). Like Hank or hate Hank, I understand his logic. I may not agree with it, but I understand it. He’s someone who takes perversive delight in leveling the playing field through rebellious acts because he understands that being good and being fair are often opposed to each other, and he values fairness above all else.

Which was why I felt he was the perfect partner for Charlotte.

Charlotte

Charlotte is based on a number of real people. There exist plenty of individuals in this world who have made a poor choice when choosing a spouse, marrying in a haze of infatuation and being too immature to understand the difference between passion, excitement, lust, and enduring love. It’s an honest mistake, and I believe we should be compassionate toward individuals who find themselves in this situation rather than revile or judge them. I’m guessing that Charlotte drove you a little crazy at times, but as long as she felt realistic—like a real person, making real choices and real mistakes—then I consider my job done.

Like these real people I know, Charlotte is so concerned with being good now, being a better person, more responsible, and less selfish than the teenage version who ended up making poor decisions, that she often treats herself unfairly, ending up with the short end of the stick. She’s not a pushover, she stands up for herself, but she (like all of us) has no control over the decisions of others.



Thanks for reading my weirdo stories. Until next time!

<3 Penny