Just curious.

I love the concept of superheros but am so incredibly burnt out on the recurring generic theme of bad guys vs. good guys.

We all know in the real world things are not that cut and dry. I mean even on a show like COPS, (and I do totally respect how hard a good officers job is and all that) I see these guys making 50k+ a year, arresting some dude who is trying to sell $8 worth of crack?

I mean someone who is willing to RISK prison to come up with $8 bucks has some serious problems and difficulties in life. In a weird way that person should be given some level of sympathy, and how much of his actions would be a full on intent to "be a bad person?"

Not much, in fact most of it is probably survival?

This is just ONE example. It is so rare in our society when we someone who actually wants to BE a bad guy. Even the ones whom talk so tough about it are suffering mostly from horrendous programming or upbringing.

Half the time I'm watching a batman flick or whatever I almost wish the so called bad guy would get some love.

I mean Danny Devito as the Penguin, a retarted deformed child thrown in a river.

How am I, a big strong handsome guy supposed to want to see someone like that hurt?

Let alone hurt by some billionaire who thinks he's f'n god, lord of hypocritical judgement?

WTF?

So how do you feel about new types of heroism where the lines of good and bad are not so clear cut?

I just can't and don't care about them catching the bank robber anymore! I mean when I find out in real life the bank robber is an ex steel worker who dedicated his life to building this country and was robbed of his job by some evil contract George Bush signed allowing lesser quality steel to be imported from out of country is WHAT MADE THE GUY BREAK and feel he needed to rob a bank in the first place!

Do you hear me? Your thoughts? Examples of great heroism where the good and evil line isn't drawn in sand with a bright crayola marker of naivety?

A good movie example is The Siege, starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. It leaves you wondering a bit about who are the good guys and bad guys. Something that I found particularly chilling is that this was made before September 11th.

I just watched the new Italian Job this weekend and it was okay. It's sort of a bad guy vs worse guy thing.

Alien vs Predator. No this isn't a deep plot movie, but it still has a "lesser of two evils" theme.

The idea of an anti-hero has always intrigued me. Take the Elric series for example. Interesting character, I am not a huge fan of the series, but I love the basic idea.

I have been mulling over a story idea for about a month now and I am starting to flesh out an outline of that idea.

This type of story can be very good, beacause the character is always struggling between what he/she should do in a given situation. They usually choose what is best for themselves, but occasionally lay it all on the line for someone else. The fun part is trying to figure out when that is going to happen, and who they are going to care about. It also allows for a very deep character, with multiple flaws. Unpredictabilty is the key, I think. It adds to the excitement.

I don't want superheros, but I don't want stories where the person is driven to something becasue of something bad happening to them (by the way, that is not a nice jab you threw at Bush, evil contract. Really. You can do better than that.)

I want people to take responcibility for their actions. A good guy who had once been to prison but has changed is fine. Someone who has "gone bad" or "has no choice" because of the actions of another person is rediculous. That kind of thing will generate some minor sympathy if the person who was wronged trys to act well. But I don't want to read about these people who are not good guys but we are supposed to think they are. That is a bunch of Liberal nonsense. Bad things happen to good people and those good people should still be good people. I'd only read about them if they were actively trying to better their situation.

When I watch Batman I don't think of him as a hero either. He has no compassoin and caring for others. Look at the TV batman. He worked with the police and was good. Not without problems, but good.

A good guy should be good. He or she dosn't have to be perfect. Should not be, in fact. But they cannot do mean or immoral things, or kill people, unless there is no recourse at all--and that is a very rare thing.

A bad guy is someone doing bad things. I don't mean one little thing, but those who are consistantly doing bad. It really dosn't matter what drove them to it. When they stop doing bad, they are no longer bad. A converted bad guy makes a good guy. A good guy can go bad.

I'm tired of calling good things bad and justifying bad becasue of "feel good" ideals.

Yes, Danny Devito as the Penguin was a bad guy. He did evil things. He did them partly becasue of what happened to him. I feel for the guy. But he is a bad guy. If Batman were a real good guy, he would recognise there may be more to the Penguin and he might try something besides unbridled killing.

Also, Neither the jab at bush, nor the jab at liberals were very nice. Politics seem to always get very heated in an election year.

I'll have to go over them 1 by 1 and reply...

I envision the beginnings of one of those vapid self-treatment-psychology books. "Zo, tell me Mizter Zmith. How did it make you FEEL when you stabbed zat voman zeventy-two timez?"

As the resident comic nerd (apparently), I'll say that the Punisher only kills bad guys (murderers, rapists, drug dealers, etc), but his definition of bad is pretty wide. Muggers, kidnappers, and criminals who don't murder also warrant, in his opinion, a merciless death.

Maybe they like it.

Ever watched a kid tease another that can't stick-up for themself, or torture a little animal, or set fires?

Fascinated by it, transported, a kind of rapture.

You could get to like that.

Or what would happen if you woke up and discovered you had been appointed to be the next Satan. The last one was a screenprinter from Detroit, but he's had his go and now its your turn. But someone's keeping score, if you don't do your best to be the best Satan you can be then you don't go to heaven... so you get drunk.

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Or what would happen if you woke up and discovered you had been appointed to be the next Satan. The last one was a screenprinter from Detroit, but he's had his go and now its your turn. But someone's keeping score, if you don't do your best to be the best Satan you can be then you don't go to heaven... so you get drunk.

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I hope you're going to write that story now.

Simple. They can. But if they want to be, then it still doesn't happen in a vaccuum. A desire to hurt, main, kill is a sign of psychosis or other mental disorder. That can "just happen," certainly, but as a reader, you'd better make it clear that they are sick if you want me to find your character believable. Otherwise they are evil just because the author wanted them to be evil, and that's lazy writing.

And no one said anything about excusing evil or bad behavior, only that it doesn't come from nowhere. That's a simple fact of humanity; we become what events, experience, and a certain amount of nature make us. If you create a character (and I am talking fiction here, folks, not real people), you'd better make his actions believable, and to do that, they can't just come out of a void. Otherwise, they are shallow, and worse, boring.

[This message has been edited by Hildy9595 (edited September 02, 2004).]

For that matter, read a bunch of OSC's work. The Worthing Saga has some really great characters, Jason among them, where it isn't really clear what is good and what is evil. Or his short story about the flesh harvester, I think it is called "Kingsmeat".

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if a person gets his kicks by watching another suffer, then he's evil

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Been to any elementary school playgrounds lately?

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No doubt. And yeah. Actually, I have. And the majority of those kids are the ones whose folks get a kick out of watching guys beat the hell out of each other (virtually or otherwise) on WWF, or whose mothers get a kick out of verbal catfights, or whose parents have that 'boys will be boys' attitude.

And how many of you people think your kids are learning valuable socialization skills at school?

Second point:

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And no one said anything about excusing evil or bad behavior, only that it doesn't come from nowhere.

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I just can't and don't care about them catching the bank robber anymore! I mean when I find out in real life the bank robber is an ex steel worker who dedicated his life to building this country and was robbed of his job by some evil contract George Bush signed allowing lesser quality steel to be imported from out of country is WHAT MADE THE GUY BREAK and feel he needed to rob a bank in the first place!

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I don't read comics and have no idea who the punisher is, but the moment we feel sorry for the criminals when he kills them is the moment he becomes the villain.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can approach the line, but you can't cross it.

An example for me of that line being crossed was "The Brethren," by John Grisham. In that book there simply was NO protagonist--at least in my view. No one to by sympathetic with or care about, and therefore no one to keep me compellingly glued to the story. I kept reading the darned thing ONLY because I kept hoping for a hero to emerge. He never did.

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I don't read comics and have no idea who the punisher is, but the moment we feel sorry for the criminals when he kills them is the moment he becomes the villain.

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I think you can get a strong ending if the "bad guy" was someone you could empathize with. Say your bad guy has lost his wife and goes on a rampage to kill the... oaf, Mafia good for you? But in his rampage he kills innocent people, because it's hard to fire a rocket launcher at an armored limousine and have no collateral damage. But he is blind with rage and will keep blowing stuff up, and the "hero" (the cop who was investigating the wife's murder) shoots him before he detonates a bomb in a high-rise building that houses a front corporation for the Mafia (I am pulling those details out of thin air as I write btw, no specific reference to movies or known novels)

So. We feel pity for the widower. We empathize with him. But he still needed to be put down. Bingo, a bad guy you "can" identify with and you can be sorry he's dead.

Ever seen the movie "Falling Down?" (1993)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/

You feel sorry for the guy, but he had to be stopped.

I think saying that "something is impossible" in writing is narrow-minded. We can do anything, dang it!

Oh, and the scene with the rocket launcher and the little boy is hilarious...in a weird "I'm going to blow up the world" way.

You may have a personal distaste for moral relativism, but most readers prefer a character with a motivation so strong you can feel it pulsing from the pages. Most of us want strong cause and effect in our stories. Characters must face tough choices, and when they finally settle on their agonized decision we want to know the reason.

"Michael had to lie to his wife because he reveres his father" is a good cause and effect. "Scarlett had to lie to her husband because she secretly loves another man" is a good cause and effect. Unfortunately for you, they reek of moral relativism.

And remember, the audience really doesn't want Michael Corleone and Scarlett O'Hara to get away with things. If you do a wicked and morally weak "hero", be prepared to make that person pay the price of being evil.

I think that well written books about really "pure" heroes are quite rare mostly because there are so few real life models. Usually, when some writer tries to portray moral purity, the portrayal has a hard time rising above the moral level of that particular writer.

Do you believe that it has anything at all to do with what readers find exciting?

Personally, I believe that Margaret Mitchell did not expect readers to hope Scarlett would get away with her crimes. I also believe Mario Puzo did not care whether the reader hoped Michael Corleone got away with his.

And in a sense, through the whole novel Scarlett is being punished. Except for her pampered beginnings, Scarlett lives in a world where she believes she has no one else to rely on but herself.

The reader may see she has more friends than she realizes, but Scarlett doesn't. Not until the end when she loses it all. And her determination when she has her epiphany makes me almost admire her.

Note: I would also like to say that I think the Melanie Hamilton portrayed in the book is much stronger and more admirable than the one in the movie.

I think that even if a hero truly matches our perception of what a really good and pure person is like, we still need to see some suffering. Good people suffer, after all. That is the essential nature of being good.

I don't know about exciting, but I do know that all literature which I really consider great has good people who willingly suffer for the sake of an important cause. And all literature I find even remotely tolerable has bad people being punished...or at least good people being punished for their bad actions.