I'm sick of "dark and complex" Protagonists, what about Heroes that actually wanna be good people and they're not alcoholics or sex addicts? I think the Wonder Woman movies are great because she doesn't have to be dark and broody all the time I miss these types of characters/Heroes and they honestly need to be brought back. that's why I write Heroes like that.
You get a lot of the more balanced heroes in a classical period. The dark gritty antiheroes and non-heroes start showing up and taking over in a decadent period like we're well into now, as a reflection of the deterioration of the society itself and its values.
I don't miss them, I write them. I don't do the dark, dank and disgusting crap. The "good guys" always win in the end, although sometimes it's difficult to tell which side is good and which side is bad because they're all fleshed out with their own motivations. My endings are always "happy", at least from a particular point of view. Everything I do is ultimately full of hope. I hate books that do otherwise.
Mine tend to be about decent people sometimes overwhelmed by the dark and destructive world around them (in other words like real life), and they need to learn to accept the darkness inherent in life and make their way regardless. They do tend to remain decent people, but have to toughen up. In other words coming of age stories where they have to shed their immature ideas about the world and life.
But does a tender "all good" knight in shining armour actually exist or have they ever existed? From what I gather when I read small historical pieces is that humans are often driven by necessity due to the various positions they find themselves in, not some extravagant notion of morality. Take us now for example, we are starting to give a damn about our planet and ecology not because it is the right thing to do, but because if we do not, we will die. For so long we have been fighting aginst each other beacuse we belong to different cultures and flags, and who is to say who is right and wrong? Historians? The victors? Who is good? And according to whom? That is why I have a problem with these shining examples of morality, they are unrealistic. There is dirt under every hero's cape.
In children's stories and morally simplistic ones like the old White Hat/Black Hat westerns. Otherwise there needs to be an acknowledgement of some of the subtlety and complexity of real relationships, where nobody is purely good or evil. As Solzhenitsyn said the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every person and we must fight to keep ourselves on the good side as much as we can. And often we don't recognize when we've slipped and out moral crusading has become totalitarianism.
I tend to take @Xoic 's approach. Heroes who are flawed but overcome it are much more interesting than shining knights. For some reason, people think a "lawful-good" character has to be a one dimensional hero, but you can make them so complex, driven by a sense of right and wrong that takes them down dark paths.
In fact this is exactly why I had a problem with the Legendary Tales of Hercules show in the 90's (whatever it was called), and why Xena was so much better—they made Herc out to be a goody two-shoes, so strong that he could enforce his morals on anybody (except when he got taken over by some dark force). But Xena was morally conflicted from the beginning, a former evil warlord trying to amend for her past sins and learning how to be good in a corrupt world, to what extent is really possible, with Gabrielle as a moral compass most of the time. But Gabby was also innocent and naive, so she had to learn the harsh realities of life as the show went forward. She ended up being a badass warrior herself, and even killing toward the end, when she traded in her staff for a pair of sai. In fact the Garden of Eden story from the Bible is a parable about growing up and learning that the world does have evil and corruption in it. In the Garden (childhood) Adam and Eve were innocent and unaware of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but once they grew up it tainted them forevermore and they had to live in the garden of thorns and thistles where they needed to labor from then on. Adam (men) had to work and Eve (women) have to deal with menstruation and the possibility of pregnancy (labor) from then on as their new reality. They were just blissfully ignorant of these realities before.
Eh, I can't agree or disagree with that without you explaining precisely what you mean by 'acknowledgment,' 'the subtlety and complexity of real relationships,' and 'purely good and evil.' There's a lot of wiggle room in all that.
Precision is for abstract things like science and mathematics. The real world we must live in doesn't allow for a lot of precision. Everything is always affected by its opposite to a lesser or greater degree. Good and Bad aren't moral absolutes, they're abstract ideals we strive toward or allow ourselves to sink to. And a big part of that is to learn that we can't often even see what's good and what's bad, it's very relative. People who become tyrants often believe they're working for the absolute good of all (Thanos, Hitler) while committing unbelievable acts of mass murder and the deprivation of basic human rights.
The problem is that we're all stuck in our own subjective viewpoints, unable to clearly see the 'objective world' outside, and we're subject to our own psychological issues, beliefs, biases, ideologies, etc. Those things can distort our thinking and muddy up the water. And we all have a tendency to always see ourselves as the good ones, and anybody we disagree with as the bad ones. It's difficult to rise above these natural tendencies and see things with greater clarity. Many people never get there, and even the best among us have bad days, bad weeks, bad years etc. I must once again post this brilliant line from a Dave Mason song of the 70's: "There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree." My first taste of philosophy and ethics.
But life isn't, and stories are reflections of life. But I get that some people write stories that don't realistically convey the complexity of moral concerns. It's a matter of different tastes or different worldviews.
I have a short story gathering dust about a hero who frees the slaves in a kingdom after winning a glorious victory. But the slaves worked the farms where most of the kingdom's food supply came from and without their labor, the cities began to starve. As the cities starve, the military deserts and turns into roving bands trying to pillage for food. With no military and a starving populace, the kingdom is invaded and taken over by an evil tyrant next door. The hero, now blamed by everyone, including the slaves he freed, for the starvation and death at the hands of the tyrant, has to try and figure a way out of the mess he made by trying to be good. It started getting really dark and I only found myself able to work on it when I was well into a bottle of scotch so I set it aside. This character was white knight through and through with only the best of intentions: free the slaves, end their suffering. But his short-sighted good caused long-term destruction and chaos. I think if I finish it, he would find redemption and succeed at rebuilding what he broke, finding a way to compromise so that slavery could still be abolished and food still produced. But right now it is not on my to-do list. Anyway, that is how I tend to write my lawful-good characters.
But I must say, there are times when I'm emotionally distraught or just really stressed and I sit down to watch a favorite movie and suddenly it troubles me because of all the conflict. I just wish that didn't have to be there, and it could be just the happy parts. Of course that wouldn't be a very good movie when I'm back to 100%. I guess it's sort of a safe-space thing.
Forgive me, but I'm unclear on your point here. Is it your position that precise definitions — for example, what someone means by 'purely good' — are unhelpful or unavailable in storytelling theory? If so I wouldn't think that's true. At least in most cases. But I wouldn't be interested in hashing that disagreement out.
That's a perfect example of a character learning that their simplistic (childish) ideas don't reflect the complexity and subtlety of reality. It sounds like he needs to grow and accept that complexity, make new plans dealing with the facts he was unaware of before, and go forth in the world that he now knows is corrupt and filled with misery and suffering.
Kinda weird that all you do is ask questions and demand that I keep explaining myself. You haven't put anything forward yourself yet. I feel like I'm laying my ideas out for all to see and you're just sort of sniping at them without exposing your own ideas. And to clarify, I meant that those abstract ideals don't reflect the very specific (opposite of abstract) realities of life itself. I already clearly said that—if you still don't understand it I don't think you're going to. Abstraction is very clean, very theoretical. Reality is dirty and has a way of smacking theories in the face. Also, 'storytelling theory'—the rules or whatever you want to call it, are only guidelines to help you see and overcome the common beginners mistakes. When I write it isn't from theory, it's from actual life experience and my ideas and convictions. By that point I've already learned and absorbed the 'rules' or the 'theory' and it just guides me in my work. I suppose some people work directly from theory though. If that's the way you do it, more power to you. It's just not the way I work.
I can't comprehend how it's weird to make an effort to understand the things you're saying to me. And if you're interested in hearing any of my ideas in regards to storytelling, all you need to do is ask. Fair enough; I'm not going to.
I am interested. What kind of stories do you write? What are the tenets of storytelling theory as you understand it? You're something of a mystery around here. You make excellent posts on What New Word Did You Learn Today, but aside from that I haven't seen you open up and say anything about yourself or what you believe in. And I'd like to.
I'm happy to answer these types of questions — though the first one is a bit too large in scope to tackle in my opinion — but doing so would take us completely off track of this thread's topic. So it's probably best to open a new thread and not hijack this one. Maybe in the lounge.
There's a difference between a flawed hero and an evil one. Everyone has flaws. The protagonist in a book I'm re-reading right now, something I wrote back in 2019 that I'm about to launch into a full series with, they might have been classed as deeply flawed and perhaps even evil in their distant past. As the story is going on though, they have improved and over the course of the first book, they become, if not perfectly good, they're doing a really good approximation of it. Part of their arc is becoming a better person. I'd never want to read a book about a character going the other way. I find those books to be terrible and nihilistic. No thanks. I'd rather read the kind of books I write, and, in fact, I do.
A couple of us have done it briefly above. Here's mine. If you could boil it down to something like that it would fit here, or if you want to go into greater depth, yeah, maybe elsewhere. Cool, looking forward to it! And I should qualify—it's my latest few stories/attempts that fit that description. Definitely not everything I've written. But probably everything since my early 30's, unless I'm forgetting something. Plus of course I boiled it down to the barest essence. No more than a blurb.
I just remembered, in my 30's I did write a few more entries in the adventure and comedy series(es) my friend and I had been writing since we were kids, but there was a new maturity showing up. They weren't yet like what I described above, but moving toward it.
