You Make My Heart Glow~

You Make My Heart Glow~

I think something that gets missed in a lot of the "good guy characters are boring" debates online is that there doesn't actually have to be a debate. There needs to be a deliberate awareness that conflict is what drives story. And the source of the conflict doesn't have to just belong to the narrative.

Good guys can be incredibly interesting and dynamic if given the chance.

I do think it's harder to write a compelling hero than it is to write a compelling bad guy (or even antihero) because... villains are usually about conflict. They create competing interests. It's usually their specific function in a story. They often surrender to their impulses, and sometimes they say what we, the audience, are thinking - because a lot of good villains are characters who took a noble idea to an ignoble extreme.

And in a sense, "good guys" can seem flat compared to the villain, depending on how the story is written. If they're just nice, polite, moral, mild-mannered. always have self-control, always know what to do, never face any serious challenges to their morality then... there's no real innate conflict. There are no questions to answer.

But in real life? It is really. really. hard. to be good. Which I think can even make the hero characters like this feel a bit threatening or disconnected from the viewer.

There is so much potential to show the hero being human in stories, that gets missed. The good guy becomes a lot more interesting when they have serious reasons to doubt themselves or their ideals - and even if they don't doubt them, then that stubbornness becomes much more narratively significant.

Or times when doing the good thing means going against what their friends or family want, what other people who claim to share their beliefs want, or what we the audience want that puts them in danger of ostracism or injury. When they choose to do something radically, dangerously, kind in a situation when we, the audience, would expect and understand them to do otherwise. When they face backlash for it. When their kindness isn't repaid. The person they want to help spits in their face, or didn't want help to begin with.

I'm not just talking about a character who sticks to their guns and stays upbeat. Those are difficult things to go through, even if you've got healthy coping mechanisms. Letting the character struggle with it, in one way or another, makes it more believable. Even if they still make the right choice in the end each time.

All that being said, if someone is enjoying a character who's just... good. Who doesn't face any serious conflicts in their story, who always wins and gets to go home happy at the end of the day? Maybe it's that person's real life that has the conflict, the stress, the unresolved questions and tension. Maybe that good guy is the balance to the villains running rampart in their real life day to day, and they need to see that character win, over and over, to balance it out and keep hoping.

We live in a world today where there's... a LOT of conflict. Every day. Everywhere. News spits it in our faces because bad news sells better. Work can be hard to do and hard to find. Family can be difficult to deal with. Health can be stressful.

So I don't think it's wrong for some people to want to read "simple" stories where the good guys can just be good, because stories are humanity's mythology. It's our escape. It's how we give context to our lives. We need "good guys" just like we need "bad guys."

*emerges from the other room covered in blood* you should see the word document

Get Sebastian mental help

Every single person who reads this, I want you to create art. Write, draw, knit, sew, build, sing, compose, etc. I don’t care about your skill level, I don’t care if you think you can. I want you to create. Do it well or do it badly, just do it.

Write a sentence. Outline a story. Make a doodle. Strum a chord.

Then do it again.

Because art is resistance, art is the weapon, art is love, art is life, art is god like creation. Art is an act of love.

Make your art and never let them stop you.

"YA books are brain rotting at any age" okay I know booktok is annoying but please get offline