There are a few useful abilities in the understanding of literature and history, that I would like to speak up for in cases like this.
1) The ability to observe banal, rotten, stinking malice in people one would otherwise like, and recognize the contemptibility of their sewage-pond souls.
2) The ability to observe sudden, remarkable, genuinely impressive human moments in people like a crystal spire, and think "gee, that is a pretty crystal spire"
3) Importantly, the ability to look at a sewage pond and go "yuck, that is a sewage pond"
and simultaneously think "gee, that is a pretty crystal spire," without losing the ability to remember the existence of the sewage
or the spire.
So many people would have you think that because the crystal spire is there, the sewage pond doesn't matter. This is very convenient for them, since they are usually lost to sewage.
But overcorrecting and saying that because the sewage pond is there, the crystal spire doesn't matter, is... it serves a practical purpose of being angrily resolute to never let ourselves be tricked again, to never ever ever ever tolerate an evil that we could have
not tolerated.
But i don't think that's the only human goal, and I think being able to see crystal spires, appreciate them, and then go back to hauling sewage-souled people to the waste treatment plant where they belong,
spires and all... I think that's good enough.
Doof is in denial about how much of a hero he is but he still isn't a hero. To be a hero he just has to get over his insecurity/megalomania problem.
I dunno. I think that in the right situation, neither insecurity nor megalomania is enough to undermine the more basic principle that heroes are as heroes
do.
