Protagonists

So I was talking to an acquaintance whose family hails from Tennessee. He said, “In my family we used to be embarrassed that the Yankees came and took away our plantation. But now what’s embarrassing is that we had a plantation in the first place.” Which is enlightened self-knowledge, if you ask me. And which further brings to mind a question I asked at a panel at Boskone, a month ago. We were talking about protagonists, I think, and who or what could be heroes, and I asked, “Can you have a S...