Why We Love To Watch A Hero Fall | On Writing

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Publicado 2024-04-13
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Todos los comentarios (21)
  • @HelloFutureMe
    I HAVE BROUGHT PEACE, FREEDOM, JUSTICE, AND SECURITY TO MY NEW DISCORD EMPIRE which you can find here discord.gg/vvMBpZa6Xh and tell me your favourite fallen hero! ~ Tim
  • @WhatIfBrigade
    One of the best aspects of Kitara's mercy is Zuko made absolutely no effort to intervene. He was absolutely willing to watch her kill one of his countrymen. When she did not, despite having every reason to do so strengthened Zuko's character arc.
  • Clones Wars depiction of Anakin, really drives home how the infrastructure he is in sets him up to fall. Tales of the Jedi depiction of Count Dooku was also something that came to mind when you were talking about losing faith in a system with Harvey Dent.
  • I know Heath Ledger's Joker is what most people talk about from The Dark Knight, but Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent was a standout performance, too. There's an argument to make that it was even better. He really nailed that role.
  • @GuillotineGirlie
    Griffith’s betrayal of Guts and the Band of the Hawk is particularly is particularly well done because it’s completely in character for Griffith. His desire for power and the lengths he would go to to obtain it were well established; even his heroism was motivated by the power it granted him. He doesn’t change, his betrayal is merely him abandoning all pretenses and being his purest self.
  • @nathancarter8239
    That Captain America panel actually led into the Secret Empire event, and that was an interesting exploration if what makes Captain America who he is. You see, Captain America had been replaced by a doppelganger from a universe where he'd joined Hydra, in a world where Hydra won. The whole event was about Hydra!Cap (or Stevil, as some people call him) holding away over people and getting the populace and even other heroes to trust him because "It's Captain America... He wouldn't lead us astray, right?" Because Stevil had all the qualities that made Captain America great; he was charismatic, firm in his beliefs, relied on and uplifted others. But his strengths were rooted in Hydra's fundamental supremacist beliefs, and the culmination of the event was showing that he was ultimately unworthy. The whole event was pointedly reinforcing the lesson from Batman Begins: it's not who you are but what you do that defines you.
  • @TheManFromWaco
    Oswald Chambers was a British Army chaplain during the Great War, and in one of his sermons he spoke this line: "An unguarded strength is a double weakness". In context, he was instructing his listeners that a Christian's worst sins and failures often come not their known areas of weakness, but in something that's in their strongest moral area, because that's when human nature leads us to be inattentive and overconfident. Regardless of your worldview or religious beliefs, I think this is a really good idea to keep in mind when writing fallen heroes as well. Their greatest strength IS their potentially greatest weakness. Yes, Palpatine appealed to Anakin's arrogance and desire for power when he tempted him to the Dark Side, but appealing to Anakin's vices was the side dish. The main course was twisting Anakin's virtues of self-sacrifice and devotion against him.
  • @jamie8703
    I've never struggled to write a fallen hero mostly because I come from a family of deeply terrible people but I digress. 1. Start with a trait that would make you fall in love with the person (kindness, bravery, competence) 2. Now make that trait the driving force of their worst action, ideally a mistake (a kind person helps the enemy, a brave person leads trusted people to doom, a competent person creates a plan that Is used to subjugate others) 3. Now turn that trait into a weapon (kindness gets you into a lot of places, bravery can be intimidating, competence for strategy) 4. Now use that weapon to harm others how the fallen hero was harmed It's a cycle of abuse call on what you know
  • The Legend of Korra suffered from Nick studios sabotaging the production literally forbidding them addressing the issues Amon exploited.
  • @johnf7332
    “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise!” - Deep Space 9, Episode 21 of Season 2 I love Stark Trek’s DS9 because it takes people from this enlightened society “where all the problems have been solved” and puts them in desperate situations with no clear or right answer. The characters need to make decisions - and then live with the consequences of those decisions. One of the main characters in DS9 identifies as a former terrorist. She is absolutely haunted by some of the people she has killed and attacks that she participated in… but she does not regret those decisions.
  • @PetrosofSparta
    Big Boss aka Naked Snake from the Metal Gear series is probably my favourite example of the fallen hero. A man betrayed by his country, forced to kill his mentor to protect their image, later betrayed by his closest friend and inevitably finds himself at odds with his own cloned son, Solid Snake.
  • @supsup335
    Grifiths fall was so shocking because at every stage of it, there was no surprise. The man you meet at the start of thr journey, and the broken man kneeling in the lake are the same person with the same wants, ambitions and goals. And when he says the words, you still see him as the same person and only now realize that yes, this was something he was always capable of. It just took this circumstance for him to go this one step further.
  • @stingspring3168
    16:48 I really like how clone wars handles Anakin's fall. He starts off the show with all these traits that despite the chastising of Jedi Masters, lead him and his padawan, Ahsoka, to victory. However the problem arises in the fact that he is incapable of change. All of the traits he starts the show with, are the same traits he has at the end. As the world changes around him, he cannot adapt and all of his strengths become weaknesses. His love and devotion that pushed him to save people becomes obsessive and controlling. The people in his life become things that he desperately clings on to for stability. His aggression no longer gives him the will to fight for whats right, but instead leads him to further violence and desensitization. His character remains exactly the same and thats why he falls. He cannot adapt and so he can only choose the path of least resistance, of evil.
  • @lazyhobbit9955
    The Doctor (Eccleston) being told by a Dalek “you are a good Dalek” was one hell of a moment for me, the juxtaposition of the emphasis on the “good” or the “Dalek” highlights how far the doctor has fallen into anger and rage. Edit: misspelled Dalek, I accept the judgement
  • It's ironic that the most destructive Avatar villains are former friends of the Avatar. Jianzhu being Kuruk Earth Bender mentor corrupting the Earth Kingdom and being Kyoshi inspiration for the Dal Li. Then there's Sozin being Roku childhood friend starting the 100 year war and genocide of the dragons and air nomads.
  • @pyeitme508
    P.S. Title was called: "Why Heroes Fall | On Writing".
  • 14:40 id argue that, considering the timing and context of the event it's not simply because he wanted power, but because he has nothing left other than to seek power from his perspective. Guts was the only person he ever seemed to connect to and when he left Griffith showed emotions he hadn't been demonstrated to have before. And he was a totally different person from that point onward, immediately hitting a self-destructive spiral. Taking actions that he knew would get him imprisoned, killed or worse and was subsequently tortured for his crimes leaving him more than a little unstable
  • @Zunawe
    It doesn't parallel your atla example, but the scene where Anakin executes Dooku is great. Much better than his murder of the tuskens. We've already been shown Anakin's tendencies to act on his instincts, desire for control, and dissatisfaction with restraints put upon him by the systems around him. He thinks he knows best. When he disarms Dooku, and there's no question that the fight is over, he's ready to take him prisoner to be judged by the senate. He's still willing to put his faith in democracy and the justice system, even despite its red tape. But it's Palpatine urging him to take control that pushes him over the edge. Telling Anakin that he should trust his own judgement. That Dooku deserves death, and Anakin knows it, and that turning him over to the justice system would only be costly and dangerous by comparison. And even once he carries out the execution, he expresses that he feels wrong about it. But the only person around him in the moment he can look to for wisdom is Palpatine. It's one of the better examples of seeing Anakin tipped toward his authoritarianism in a way that feels believable. And it gives us an example of how Palpatine manipulated him into Vader, but only by playing into aspects of Anakin that were already there. Makes it all the more cathartic to see Vader reject Palpatine at the end of the original trilogy.
  • @Bardic_Knowledge
    The first Fallen Hero that popped into my head was Sephiroth, who was technically pushed into falling. His only friends, Genesis and Angeal, start falling apart because of experiments performed on them, and Sephiroth decides that he'll retire after One Last MIssion. So his creator, Hojo, engineers things on that mission to cause Sephiroth to snap, turning him into the Big Bad he's known for being.
  • @hudsonbakke8836
    One of the best tropes for fallen heroes IMO is when their contact and conflict with the main hero exposes them to the main hero's ideas/values/beliefs, and that ends up changing the fallen hero, usually leading to them turning around and making the right choice in the end. Both Percy Jackson and Star Wars have fallen heroes which foil the main hero. Anakin/Darth Vader foils Luke, and Luke Castellan foils Percy. Throughout both stories, we get hints at each character's true motivations, and we start to see cracks in their tough facade. This is especially the case in Percy Jackson, where Luke continually shows apparent pain and regret at the positions he's in, and later we learn he even tried to get out of it and run away with Annabeth. Finally, at the end of the stories, both of these fallen heroes end up making the right choice which saves the main hero. Luke uses Annabeth's dagger to kill himself, and thus kill Kronos in the process, and Darth Vader kills the Emperor while Luke is helpless. These stories aren't just one-dimensional good guy-turned-bad arcs. They show depth and true change. They show how characters can be redeemed even from their own bad choices, and that once someone has "fallen" that doesn't necessarily mean they're always going to be evil. Inside every person is the capacity to do good, and sometimes all people need is a reminder of who they are.