I'm Noticing a Trend, Here...

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Alright, I'm noticing a trend, here... Well, actually, both here and in the Television, Film, and Video section, as well.

So, what I'm noticing is that when writing, people around here seem to opt for completely dysfunctional characters with dark and troubled pasts. What's with that? Are mentally stable and physically capable characters not good enough or cool enough anymore, or what? What ever happened to "normal" protagonists? You know, the ones that are like everyday people, who weren't subject to parental abuse or abandonment, or got into drugs, alcohol and sex at an early age? The ones that grew up in a relatively normal family and had relatively normal lives? It seems like a lot of people around here want to write the next Kids or Ken Park or something, and it's starting to get on my nerves, honestly.

It's like transgression for transgression's sake, or something. Seriously.

I can't be the only one that's noticed this around here, can I?

Writing is hard, writing well even more so. Add an angsty backstory and you give the impression that you "know the world", that you "know how depressing life truly is", and that you "have a sense of depth"--all without actually developing your characters. :D

I recall creating very few dysfunctional, angsty, and mentally unstable protagonists like what you described. I don't feel drawn towards such characters anyway; I prefer skilled, competent, and powerful ass-kicking heroes. Sometimes they have fiery tempers, vindictive desires, or hungers for renown that get them into trouble, but they ultimately redeem themselves in the end.

Come to think of it, since we're talking about storytelling trends here, redemption is a common theme in my stories and plots. I like to have the hero make a mistake (often early in the story) and then fix it and become a better person for it. My reasoning is that if you want your flawed protagonists to be sympathetic, they have to correct their flaws and learn from their mistakes.

It makes the character more interesting I guess, and builds up a higher platform to launch stuff like character development and plot twists from.

Even so, like any plot device, it can be over-used. The more over-the-top the character's background is, the more it sticks in your memory and these things also give something major for the advertising/promotion of commercial titles to use. Certain things come in and out of fashion too, so I suspect there's an element of certain titles inspiring a whole raft of others.

Personally, I sat down and made some provisos for my current project. For both protagonists: 1. no super powers. 2. their parents are still alive. It's a conscious effort on my part to depart from the conventions so in that sense I can see where you're coming from.

I think people are attracted to "broken" characters because they can empathize with them on some level. After all, virtually everyone in the world has experienced some form of heartache, so when we see a character who is hurting, we can relate to them better. That's why I love a lot of the characters in Tim Burton's movies - everyone always points out that his protagonists are lonely, eccentric outcasts, and since I can relate to that, it makes me become attached to those characters and thus enjoy his movies more.

But I also think that cheerful, happy characters are very refreshing at times. I have a feeling that that could be one of the reasons why My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is so popular with teens and adults. At least, that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it.

I agree with you, Zokk. It seems that most of the main characters in the shows that I watch are all “flawed” or come from very hard backgrounds. It would be nice to see a few people come from a “normal” family. I would also like to see a show where people actually fall in love and stay together. The last show that I saw where that happened was JAG.

Truthfully though, flawed or vulnerable characters are nothing new. The entire Greek pantheon of gods were simply larger than life flawed characters.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NASB)
9 That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.

That's something I'm also doing for my post-cyberpunk novel, too. Making them 'normal', that is. All of the main characters have led relatively normal lives up to the point that the story starts. All of them have living families, and some members of their families (particularly the main couple's respective parents) actually come in as minor characters throughout the course of the story.

You might like the post-cyberpunk novel I'm writing, then. There's a major romantic subplot to it between the two 'main' main characters of the story. They're already boyfriend and girlfriend an living together ('domestic partners' is the proper term) at the beginning of the story, but you'll get to see their relationship progress further by the end; and get tested several times along the way.

Aw, crap, in the story I have planned, there's a romance between the male and female leading characters that ends when the man gets killed in a battle. They do stay together before that point though.

The trend started in film and literature in the 1970's after the hippie movement.
The idea of peace,love and hope died with the 1960's and the hippies.
When those ideas died writers found that more people could relate to mentally unstable,depressed socially isolated,insane characters.
It is still like this because the world is not improving at all.
These characters are also very entertaining. They are deep,dark,emotional and very interesting. People that don't relate to this find them to be fascinating .

Wait... so characters I can relate to aren't normal?

Random thoughts:

My mother used to rant about how the Soviets said they would take over our country by enticing our children away from us.

I heard in church a lot about how the devil used beautiful things to lure the unwary. Satan's plan is to undermine God's plan.

Marketing schemes? Pandering to the tough. Kinda like farts and burps pander to the inappropriate little kid in all of us, except controlling mothers...

Dumb ideas passed around. My daughter didn't start cutting until her Girl Scout leader gave her a book about cutting. She didn't cut for long but totally used it to guilt me - manipulate me.

Somewhere, the idea got started that it was cool to be evil. It's a self-defeating pathway that can lead to no good.

Uh... Deep, dark and emotional ≠ very interesting... At least, not unless done carefully. It has to be well-crafted and two sided. It can't just be "this darkness is all there is to this character", like it seems to be around here.

For example, one of the main characters in the dark urban science-fantasy story I'm writing. She had been a relativity normal, stable and open individual living in her race's home dimension, before being caught trying to use an extremely dangerous and destructive ritual to fulfill a prophecy given to her during her training as a priestess. Having been caught, she was arrested, tried, found guilty, cursed and exiled to the human dimension, with no way back to her own. Due to that experience, and the ensuing decades of persecution at the hands of superstitious humans who saw her as a witch or a demon due to her physical appearance and magical abilities, she became much more reclusive, aloof, suspicious, aggressive and rather vindictive towards people.

The other side to her though, is that she was also sealed into a tomb by a powerful human mage, going into a stasis-like state of hibernation because of it for over six hundred years*, until she was let out by chance two years before the story takes place. Due to missing out on those six hundred years of change, she also has a sense of innocence and curiosity about her, and even a sense of child-like wonder, at times, contrasting with her now-jaded disposition. She's had to learn a lot in a very short time; the evolved human language, the new technology and evolved and refined human social customs, among a whole lot of other things. She's picked it all up very fast and very well, but she's still thrown for a loop somewhat by certain situations or technologies, or just can't contain her curiosity towards others when she encounters something new.

* Her race is normally quite long lived, anyway; five hundred to six hundred years, on average. She's over eight hundred years old, though, subjectively (only about two hundred or so, subjectively, though) thanks to going into a stasis-like state of hibernation inside the tomb.


You can easily relate to schizophrenic, drug-addicted, alcoholic nymphomaniacs with parental issues?

Yes, actually. This may come as a shock, but not everyone comes from a so-called 'normal' family.

Correct me if I'm wrong about the implications of that statement, but I'm going to refrain from taking it as you're implying that I'm some naive little boy who doesn't understand the 'psychological effects of a broken home', or whatever. I'm not. My family's pretty dysfunctional in it's own right, but it certainly hasn't turned me into a self-destructive maniac because of it, or even someone who's able to empathize with characters like that unless I'm severely depressed, like I used to be. But even then, I could tell the difference between a character with a troubled past that actually had a purpose, and a character with a troubled past that the author was just flaunting to make the work seem more transgressive.

Many characters that are deep,dark and emotionally unstable are not interesting at all. I see many films where that type of character is poorly written.

When I read fiction It seems like I can relate more to very broken characters. It is hard to have sympathy for a normal character when normal people have socially isolated me. Reading about people that society considers to be normal is depressing.

When you are lonely,depressed and feel like a failure you like to read about people who are the same or worse than you.

You are wrong. Just because I can relate to these types of characters doesn't mean I am like them in any way.