The Brooklyn Project: Protagonist-Centered Morality and the Double Standard

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accountability, ben hur, character development, characters, dynamic characters, ladyhawke, responsibility, story dynamics, the brooklyn project

Continuing from my first post on protagonist-centered morality; scroll to the bottom and you’ll find the comment from Sarahtps that inspired this post. I’ve also probably posted on this before, but who cares, you can never have enough character development posts. 😉

How annoying is someone who spouts preachy nonsense without following it in real life? … yeah, that’s what I thought you’d all say. ;-P This is another reason why protagonist-centered morality deserves to be ditched; it creates a double standard. Otherwise known as you-just-made-your-hero/anti-hero-a-hypocrite. And somewhere in the world, there is a reader who will call you on it. There are multiple readers who will hate on your hard-written book because of it.

Simply put, even if your heroes (well, only anti-heroes do this; real, actual heroes don’t,) don’t hold themselves to the standards they hold others to, you should.

If your hero breaks a rule and doesn’t feel any remorse for it, have karma come back to bite them in the posterior for it. Even if they later do feel remorse, do not hesitate to let the universe at large slap them silly for it. Temporal punishment is a thing, you know (and if you have never heard that term before, you are not a very-well-catechized-Christian and I can tell you what it is on demand. ;-P )

A good example of this would be in the case of the antagonist(s) in Ben-Hur; Massada ends up almost dying in a chariot race and then being permanently crippled, almost as a direct result of his abuse of Judah’s mother and sister, and Iras, the woman who betrays Judah earlier in the book, is stuck taking care of the now-utterly-boring Massada. (She tries to play the pity card with Judah, but she dug herself into that pit and he knows, I think, that the only way for her to ever redeem herself is not by attempting to seduce him but rather taking care of Massada. However, I think it’s pretty clear that she and Massada will eat at each other with their words until he gets her executed or she poisons him out of spite. Sorry, it’s been a while since I read it…)

I’m trying to recall the title of the book and names of the characters I had in mind while writing this post, but for some reason they continuously slip my mind. The story featured a redeemed thief who was continually held back from trying to be a hero due to his past… maybe it was Ladyhawke? Though that’s a movie, not a book…

Actions have consequences (I’m certain you’ve heard this before in much less polite terms.) Don’t forget that, and don’t let your heroes forget it, either. Even if they don’t hold themselves to the standard, it falls to you to hold them to it.

Protagonist-centered morality and double standards make Mary Sues. À bas les Sues!

The Brooklyn Project: Protagonist-Centered Morality and Why it’s Bad

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accountability, baroness orczy, bbc merlin, bbc sherlock, captain america, captain america: the first avenger, captain america: the winter soldier, character development, characters, dynamic characters, editing, harry potter, heroes, marvel, marvel superheroes, star wars, story dynamics, the brooklyn project, the scarlet pimpernel, undo the sue, writing

Sometimes, an author will become so preoccupied with his or her hero or heroine that they can do no wrong–even when they are. The rules bend for these protagonists. And people in the stories (and occasionally the reader as well) see nothing wrong with this.

This can potentially lead to the creation of a Mary Sue.

Protagonist-centered morality is bad because it takes away the possibility of accountability as well. If your hero does something wrong, you want it to have repercussions. They can’t just get away with a slap on the hand! It reinforces to the reader that the hero has done something wrong, and it also makes for deeper characters. If the hero has slipped up once, they have to fight harder to even be allowed to do it right the next time..

On the other hand, if you don’t add responsibility, your protagonist can become spoiled and obnoxious (as in real life) or unrealistically angelic (sickening.) The latter would make him/her a Mary Sue, no matter how many de-Sue-ifiers you threw in to try and balance it (without removing the lack of accountability.)

Apart from the message that it sends, that it’s okay to do bad things, it’s bad for the story at large.

I’m trying to think of a few examples, but all I can think of is that, though in the final cut, we never see the response to Steve’s failed attempts to enlist, falsifying information, I think there was actually a scene planned where someone found out and didn’t trust Steve for a while. They just didn’t officially tell anyone because if they did he’d be court-martialed and they couldn’t have that. In the planned Howling Commandos fanfic that I’m writing, I was going to have one of the people in the USO show tour find out and hold it over Steve. There are, however, strong consequences when Steve fails to predict that the train is a trap and save Bucky, even if it’s not technically his fault.

Another example would be the BBC show Merlin. While, all around, this is generally a good show, the BBC slipped up a bit (for once); this show displays a bit of protagonist-centered morality. Though, later on, they add more consequences, even to past actions, early in the show there are a few episodes where Merlin slips up and gets away with it. However, for the show’s other protagonist, Arthur, there are always consequences to his actions. Inconsistent much? Or just waiting around? *sigh* I wish they’d done it earlier on.

In the BBC show Sherlock, we’re actually hoping to see protagonist-centered morality blown out of the water; at the very end of the last season, Sherlock killed someone, point-blank, in cold blood (attempting not to give spoilers here); we want to see how people react to this. There’s always mistrust, and rightly so, after something like that.

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan’s attempt to distance himself, to not become emotionally involved, backfires when Anakin turns to the dark side; Obi-Wan’s aloof affection was simultaneously too much and not enough.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes with a thorough message about accountability (where Civil War is essentially about people’s Constitutional rights, from what I’ve heard). This is especially true for Natasha, who risks, in a selfless action that proves she is capable, no matter what she (and incidentally, Hydra) thinks, of heroism, she spills all her dirty secrets across the Internet in order to bring Hydra down (again, trying to avoid spoilers.) Ironically, this bypasses the same failsafe that Hydra thought would protect them; they insist that Natasha (or anyone, really) wouldn’t incriminate herself like that.

From what I’ve heard, Harry Potter is really bad about this–it sounds like he consistently breaks rules of both the magician and human world without any consequences.

One very good book that could make better use of accountability (without outright protagonist-centered morality) that I love is “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” Except for Marguerite, the book doesn’t use it quite as well as it could…

Accountability. Use it for deeper character.

Thanks for reading, and God Bless!

TCWT: What’s normal?

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authors, baroness emma orczy, bbc sherlock, brian jacques, captain america: the first avenger, catholic culture, catholicism, christian fiction, christianity, creative writing, dee henderson, disney, dynamic characters, editing, editor, fantasy, frozen, generations, invented religions, jorge luis borges, living life with passion, loyalties, macguffins, magic realism, marvel, novels, o'malley series, paranormal, redwall, religious themes, roman catholic, sherlock holmes, sir arthur conan doyle, spiritual, star wars, story dynamics, story tools, supernatural, t.h. white, the avengers, the scarlet pimpernel, the sword in the stone, uncommon heroes series, urban fantasy, world building, writing

I thought that I would not be doing TCWT again. I’m almost too old to do it. But I decided to come back at least one last time. So, here you go.

The prompt was “What do you think is commonly done well in literature? Done poorly?” I think it depends on the author and genre as much as anything else. Some things are well-done in one genre and horrific in another, or okay in one and marvelous in another.

Religious themes. A character’s religion, how they practice it, if they really live their faith, if they even practice what they preach at all, is a marvelous tool in character development whether you are religious or not. I have never been able to understand why some people neglect it. A character’s beliefs, including their religious persuasion, tells us quite a bit about that character. (This is why, if someone leaves the religion space on their character sheet blank, I often have headcanons about their beliefs.) Some books where this is done well: Dee Henderson’s “Uncommon Heroes” and “O’Malley” series (among the only romance I actually read). Living what you preach is a sign of sincerity, honesty, and sometimes even of courage. Often, it takes courage to say more than “non-denominational” on your forms, and the thing is, these characters don’t overtly try to convert others. It is the way they live that makes others think, “Wow. I wish I had what they have.” A book where this is done poorly: Many books (sadly) in the Christian fiction genre. (Oftentimes, Christian fiction is like romance; you have to be extremely choosy to find the good stuff.)

Religious themes in general: If a character actually lives what they preach, then religious themes in the plot itself are generally a given. Normally, you won’t run into actual angels or demons “on-set”, but the forces of evil vs. the good guys will probably happen. I very much prefer the sort of stories with a fallible main character, who falls and fails and then gets up again and apologizes for it (or, sometimes, doesn’t apologize and then sees the error of his ways.) Everything else just feels like another Christian fiction forgettable Mary Sue.

I also like to see slightly-different versions of real-world religions in stories (such as the world where Christianity developed slightly different, though all the teachings are still the same, the practices are different; some practices never evolved, while some that don’t exist in the real world did.)

Magic Realism. Now and again, I love a good story with spiritual/supernatural themes in the magical realism style, where it’s all strongly realist and then seamlessly in comes a bit of the supernatural. I love it when the plot twist throws me off, but when I look back into the rest of the book, I can see how it was subtly setting it up the whole time. Sadly, many “paranormal” stories tend to be “paranormal” throughout, without any magic realism. For me, it’s not urban fantasy if they don’t have the urban before they have the fantasy. Otherwise, it’s just fantasy.

A few notes on urban fantasy: I have read a couple of very good dystopian/urban fantasy novels where the story was very well-written. One of the biggest shockers, in my opinion, is when something that’s out of our normal experience happens and the characters treat it like a normal occurrence, because in their world, it is normal.

Items with character and/or significance. Now and again, there will be a MacGuffin that really ties everything together; it doesn’t even matter what the MacGuffin is, it is the significance that goes along with it. For instance, in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, it was Padme’s charm that Anakin gave her when they were both very young. (I swear, Attack of the Clones would have been so much better if at some point, Padme had slipped the japor snippet out of the collar of her dress and said quietly, “I still have the amulet you gave me.” I would be shipping Anidala so much harder than I do now, trust me.) In my novel Loyalties, it is the multi-generational hand-me-down amulet, the symbol of a master’s care for his apprentice, which is worn hidden in the French braid across the back of an apprentice’s head (or, alternatively, depending on the circumstances, hung on its ribbon around their neck,) that ties the generations together, as it is passed down from Rynnar to Winter (who tries, upon his leaving active service as a Ranger, to return it, but Rynnar refuses to accept it), and later from Winter to his apprentice Elían, and is constantly there to remind Winter of Rynnar, even in Rynnar’s absence, during the first book. (I’m certainly praying to the Muse that I end up doing it right.)

Martin the Warrior’s sword, in the Redwall series, is a recurring object that serves to both tie the series together, and to remind everyone of Redwall’s first Champion. Another example would be Sir Percy Blakeney’s “pimpernel” signet ring in the Scarlet Pimpernel books (which, though not recurring, was key to the first book–was that a spoiler? I hope not…)

Items that get left behind. In my opinion, many authors these days tend to forget about this. Things get broken and left behind. Things are not overly important, and things should not be overly important to the characters. For instance, someone can and will lose their arrows or throwing knives (which, believe it or not, is a loss that was, in the past, a very hard one, since both were very valuable, especially arrows, which were hard and time-consuming to make by hand and thereby expensive. There will be times when someone rips their shirt or goes swimming and loses it. For some reason, authors these days seem too often to ignore these instances.

On the other hand, a character losing something with sentimental value can be a very emotional moment. It can be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Or it can illustrate that at this point, the character doesn’t even care any more, or is just grateful that they got out of there alive. Martin the Warrior loses his father’s sword, which Tsarmina snaps in half, pushing him into vowing vengeance on the wildcat, as it was the only thing he had left to remember Luke by. Someone’s horse dies, and it’s a very emotional moment. Beaumont the hound in The Sword in the Stone (book, not the movie.)

Or, someone escapes a burning building to find that they left their old notebook behind. When the other character offers sympathy, the first just says, “It’s all right. It was only a notebook. I’m just glad we both got out alive.” Or even, “I don’t need it any more,” illustrating a dynamic moment in a character’s journey. Moments like these are a tool that is sometimes sadly neglected. People tend to forget that in a prior era, people would attach value to things using a different methodology than we do today. They would keep things because they were valuable or hard to replace, not because of sentiment, quite so much. In realistic historical fantasy, this is sometimes a stumbling block, though not always. (Kristoff losing his sleigh in Frozen could have been done so much better. At least they weren’t afraid to have people lose their gear in the movie.)

Use of small cues. This is a big one. Some people nowadays seem to want everything to be blatantly obvious and to avoid the search for small meanings and symbolism. This is the reason why some people hate character movies and characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi; they don’t see anything past the not-really-action of the movies or the character’s quiet, unassuming exterior. Forsaking dynamic characters for the sake of flash, some people end up creating Mary Sues.

However, I believe there are authors out there who do this really well (Brian Sanderson, Liam? I think I got that impression,) using small character cues, such as a slight movement, a nervous habit (such as fiddling with one’s sleeves) that recurs throughout the book, and tiny facial expressions that are left open for the readers to interpret to subtly build well-rounded, fleshed-out, dynamic characters. After a while, the reader becomes familiar with a repeated movement (“oh, Halt’s up to something; there’s the eyebrow!” “He’s reaching for his cuffs, even though he’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Poor kid.”) and learns to associate it with certain moods or actions. After a while, if you’ve seen The First Avenger, you get to recognize Steve Rogers’ nervous half-smile and distinguish it from his awkward smile, his stage smile, and the genuine article in Avengers. (Did anyone else notice how eerily similar Coulson’s non-offensive “I’m not a threat or even important to the plot at all; take no notice of me” half-smile is to Steve’s awkward smile? Since we know Steve better than we know Coulson, this tiny little fact, whether intentional brilliance on the part of Joss Whedon and whatsisname who plays Coulson or happy serendipity, tells us loads about Coulson as a character.)

Excessive stage drama queens. Basically, some characters just draw attention to themselves when they shouldn’t, detracting from the plot and being blatantly obvious (“don’t be obvious!”–>Moriarty’s best advice ever!), so much so that it’s sickening. This is just annoying. If it fits into the plot and the character, all well and good; it works! (This is why we actually can like Tony Stark.) But if not, then… then what’s the point? Seriously. All you have is an over-made-up actor who can’t even recite his lines properly. BORING. *shoots the wall* Sickening.

For me, most of what annoys me is blatantly obvious or lacking when it should be there. Of course, my pet peeves will be different from other people’s, but I think that all authors should try to improve their work based around these issues.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this listing of things I think are well-done but could be improved in fiction, thanks for reading and God bless you, as always, and don’t forget to drop by the other blogs on the chain through the rest of January! 😉

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5^th – http://whileishouldbedoingprecal.weebly.com/

6^th – http://jasperlindell.blogspot.com/

7^th – https://erinkenobi2893.wordpress.com/ (you are here) and http://nasrielsfanfics.wordpress.com/ (this would be Rosalie; I still need to read her post so now I’m done with mine I’m heading over to do that.)

8^th – http://miriamjoywrites.com/

9^th – https://ramblingsofaravis.wordpress.com/

10^th – http://semilegacy.blogspot.com/

11^th – http://kirabudge.weebly.com/

12^th – http://thelittleenginethatcouldnt.wordpress.com/

13^th – http://maralaurey.wordpress.com/

14^th – http://dynamicramblings.wordpress.com/

15^th – http://theedfiles.blogspot.com/

16^th – https://horsfeathersblog.wordpress.com/  

17^th – http://www.juliathewritergirl.com/

18^th – http://butterfliesoftheimagination.wordpress.com/

19^th – https://gallopingfree.wordpress.com/

20^th – http://www.alwaysopinionatedgirl.wordpress.com/

21^st – https://deborahrocheleau.wordpress.com/

22^nd – http://irisbloomsblog.wordpress.com/

23^rd – https://clockworkdesires.wordpress.com/

24^th – https://introspectioncreative.wordpress.com/

25^th – http://wanderinginablur.blogspot.com/

26^th – https://anotefromthenerd.wordpress.com/

27^th – http://randommorbidinsanity.blogspot.com

28^th – http://unikkelyfe.wordpress.com/

29^th – http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com/ (We’ll announce the topic for next month’s chain.)

(Hey, look! Rosalie and I share a day! Awesome. ^_^)