On Flaws, Fortitude, and Failing Spectacularly in Yellow
Homer Simpson is not intelligent. He’s not disciplined. He’s not brave in any traditional sense of the word. He panics under pressure, avoids responsibility with athletic commitment, and routinely chooses donuts over dignity. And yet, for over three decades, he’s remained one of the most enduring main characters in storytelling.
That alone should deeply unsettle any writer still clinging to the idea that a protagonist has to be competent, noble, or emotionally evolved to work.
Homer works because he violates nearly every polite rule of character design while obeying the ones that actually matter. If you want to build a main character readers will follow through chaos, humiliation, and poor decision-making, Homer Simpson is a masterclass in how it’s done.
Let’s break down the ten lessons he keeps teaching, whether we admit it or not.
1. Character Flaws Writ Large
Homer isn’t “a bit lazy.” He’s a gravity well of laziness. He’s not “impulsive.” He’s a walking demolition crew of bad ideas. His flaws aren’t seasoning. They’re structural supports. Entire plots exist solely because Homer cannot stop being exactly who he is.
This is where many writers go wrong. They give their protagonist a charming vulnerability. These might be anything: overthinking, mild insecurity, occasional doubt. And then they wonder why the plot feels underpowered. Homer teaches us that a main character’s flaw should be big enough to actively sabotage their own goals.
If your character’s flaw doesn’t routinely wreck their life, it isn’t a flaw. It’s a personality quirk.
2. Character Likability vs Realism
Homer lies. He cheats. He panics. He betrays people. He quits when things get hard. Repeatedly. And yet the audience keeps forgiving him. Not because he’s good, but because he’s honest about being terrible.
He doesn’t dress up his cowardice as strategy. He doesn’t call his selfishness “self-care.” He knows he’s weak. We know he’s weak. There’s a strange kind of moral transparency to that.
Readers don’t require virtue. They require sincerity. A morally compromised character who owns their flaws is infinitely more tolerable than a morally sanitized character who pretends they don’t have any.
3. In Characterization, Consistency Beats Charisma
Homer isn’t consistently likable. He’s moody, childish, and frequently unbearable. One thing he is, however, is consistent. We always know how he’s likely to react: impulsively, emotionally, and in the worst possible way.
That consistency builds trust. The audience may not approve of Homer, but they understand him. And understanding creates narrative stability.
A protagonist who shifts personality to suit the plot feels fake. A protagonist who stays stubbornly themselves, even when it ruins everything, feels real.
4. Humanizing Flawed Characters
For all his catastrophes, Homer loves his family. He loves them clumsily, selfishly, and with frequent lapses in judgment. But have not doubt, the love is real. That single emotional anchor rescues him from becoming unwatchable.
This is one of the most important character lessons in all of fiction: the audience will tolerate enormous moral failure if it’s balanced by genuine attachment.
You don’t redeem a broken character by making them suddenly noble. You redeem them by showing what they refuse to completely let go of.
5. Let Your Protagonist Be Wrong. A Lot
Homer is wrong about nearly everything: money, relationships, parenting, work, health, loyalty, timing, and sometimes gravity. And he’s wrong with absolute confidence.
This is why the story keeps moving. A protagonist who’s always right stabilizes the world. A protagonist who’s chronically wrong destabilizes it.
Certainty is dangerous. Overconfidence is radioactive. Homer reminds us that one of the fastest ways to create plot is to give the main character just enough certainty to destroy themselves at scale.
6. Character Motivation: the Cleanest Character Engine
Homer wants very few things. These include food, comfort, praise, and the shortest possible path back to the couch. What’s important is that his desires never change. And that’s exactly why they work.
Writers often overcomplicate motivation. Homer proves you can build hundreds of stories from embarrassingly primitive wants. The world may be complex. The protagonist doesn’t have to be.
In fact, placing simple desire inside a complicated environment is one of the easiest ways to generate friction, comedy, and tragedy all at once.
7. Comedy and Tragedy Use the Same Machinery
Some of the best Homer episodes are funny on the surface and quietly devastating underneath. Think of these: losing self-respect, failing his family, realizing he peaked decades ago, fearing that he’s replaceable, discovering that his mediocrity is permanent.
The jokes land because the pain underneath them is honest.
Writers often separate comedy and drama like they require different engines. They don’t. They run on the same emotional fuel. These are loss, fear, longing, humiliation. There are others, of course. Comedy just lets us survive the impact.
8. Character Arcs: Growth Doesn’t Have to Be Meaningful
Homer often learns a lesson. And then, inevitably, he forgets it. This horror of impermanence doesn’t cancel the growth. It simply reflects reality.
Character development doesn’t require a straight, upward line. It can be circular. It can relapse. It can be temporary. What matters is that the insight feels real in the moment it occurs.
Permanent transformation is aspirational. Temporary self-awareness is human.
9. Self-Sabotage. Your Protagonist Can Be the Disaster
In many stories, the antagonist causes the chaos. In The Simpsons, Homer is the repeating weather system. The world responds to him like a slow-moving storm.
This is one of the most underused tools in modern character design. Writers want their protagonist to be heroic, reactive, justified. Homer shows us the power of making the main character the problem.
When the protagonist creates the conflict, every solution becomes personal. There’s no clean external villain to blame, only consequence.
10. The Audience Roots Flawed Heroes
Homer fails constantly. And yet the audience keeps rooting for him. They do so not because he succeeds, but because he keeps trying in the wrong direction with impressive commitment.
Effort creates momentum. Success only ends things.
Readers don’t bond with perfect execution. They bond with doomed persistence. They bond with the character who knows they’re outmatched and keeps going anyway—often for the worst possible reason.
Readers Don’t Want Perfection
Homer Simpson endures because he isn’t aspirational. He’s diagnostic. He’s the part of us that wants comfort over courage, snacks over self-improvement, and applause for showing up late. He’s who we’d be if discipline were optional and consequences had commercial breaks
And that’s the quiet trap for writers. We keep trying to build heroes readers should admire, when what they actually crave is someone they recognize. Perfection is impressive for about twelve seconds. After that, it’s dead on the page. But a character who keeps choosing badly with sincere emotional commitment? That’s a franchise.
Homer teaches us that main characters don’t need to be noble. They need to be legible. They need wants that get them into trouble, flaws that won’t politely stay in the background, and just enough heart that we hate ourselves for rooting for them.
So if your protagonist is currently too competent, too controlled, and too emotionally tidy—congratulations. You’ve written a manager. Throw a donut at them. Let them panic. Let them ruin something important. Let them try again for the worst possible reason.
That’s not bad writing.
That’s character.
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.