# Good (sort of) Vs. Evil--Weigh in on Anti-Heroes (Inception)



## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

I got a great comment last week in a conversation about Inception, that the lead characters were merely a band of thugs raping others' minds to get what they wanted. The commenter poses an interesting question: *Is doing something wrong ever right, because a character believes it to be the only viable choice*?

I love anti-heroes myself. I love reading them and writing them, when they're in no-win situations with no clear moral choice. Someone's true character is revealed in times like this. He must chose how to act when, regardless of his decision, there will be some who perceive him as a villain. He must go with his own moral code, with how he percieves the world and right and wrong. I guess I like darker stories. But I also like a less cut and dry, less black and white, reality in my fiction.

I'm dying to know what you think.

*Do you like the edgier, not-all-good hero? 
Are you satisfied with book/movie endings where good never totally conquers evil?
How do you react to anti-heroes and the broken ways they conquer their demons*?


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## Jenni (Feb 20, 2011)

Anna_DeStefano said:


> I got a great comment last week in a conversation about Inception, that the lead characters were merely a band of thugs raping others' minds to get what they wanted. The commenter poses an interesting question: *Is doing something wrong ever right, because a character believes it to be the only viable choice*?


I love this question and I love posing it to my characters. In my current work in progress at the climactic scene my protagonist must choose between saving her mother and saving her uncle. The situation requires her to rethink her entire life and understand what really happened versus the lies she was led to believe all in the name of protecting her. While I don't think her choice is difficult for the reader to understand and I believe it is the only choice she can make, it forces her to reevaluate good and evil and is a lie, for the right reason, ok or is the truth, regardless, a better option?

I love the movie Gone Baby Gone for this reason. When I was first brainstorming this idea out Bob Mayer suggested I watch it as it posed a similar question that doesn't necessarily have the "right" answer. The protagonist is faced with a moral dilemma and some might think he made the wrong decisions, other might think he made the right decision. I loved how the movie ended just for that reason. I'm not sure there is a clear cut answer.



Anna_DeStefano said:


> I love anti-heroes myself. I love reading them and writing them, when they're in no-win situations with no clear moral choice. Someone's true character is revealed in times like this. He must chose how to act when, regardless of his decision, there will be some who perceive him as a villain. He must go with his own moral code, with how he percieves the world and right and wrong. I guess I like darker stories. But I also like a less cut and dry, less black and white, reality in my fiction.
> 
> I'm dying to know what you think.
> 
> ...


I think I answered the first two questions. Pretty much I like edgier, not all good. I love DEXTER! As far as the second question goes I think it depends on how the world changed and if one little small part was "wrapped" in a way that even though I know there could be a next big bang evil, this one was satisfied.

The broken ways anit-heros conquer their demons make them real. It gives us something to hold on to and a real desire to take the journey with the hero. It just needs to be done well.


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

JenniHolbrook-Talty said:


> I love the movie Gone Baby Gone for this reason. When I was first brainstorming this idea out Bob Mayer suggested I watch it as it posed a similar question that doesn't necessarily have the "right" answer. The protagonist is faced with a moral dilemma and some might think he made the wrong decisions, other might think he made the right decision. I loved how the movie ended just for that reason. I'm not sure there is a clear cut answer.


Gone Baby Gone is a great example. One of my husband's favorites.

I do think it depends on the type of genre you prefer reading/watching stories in. Some are more tolerant than others of the non-tradtional, not-so-happily-ever-after ending. I LOVE the cliff-hanger endings you get in a lot of sci-fi/fantasy and thriller vehicles. Like Inception, where the top keeps spinning as the movie fades and you're never sure if the protagonist made it all the way out of the dreams...

For me, this technique can be taken too far, though. Mystic River is a good example of a book I wanted to throw across the room when it ended. The damage done to another little boy at the end of the story that parallels the opening damage done to the group of boys at the beginning... It's just too depressing, the thought of another life being destroyed by something that happened long before the child was born. Realistic, perhaps. But that sort of thing is too, "What's the point?" for me to find entertaining.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Anna_DeStefano said:


> *Do you like the edgier, not-all-good hero?
> Are you satisfied with book/movie endings where good never totally conquers evil?
> How do you react to anti-heroes and the broken ways they conquer their demons*?


I prefer messy endings where good doesn't have a complete triumph and where protagonists are flawed, sometimes down-right awful, people. It is more true to life than 'and they all lived happily ever after'.

But then, as a side conversation, I also love antagonists who are complete people as well. For example, in the movie _Precious_, Mo'Nique's character was an awful woman and by the end I pitied her at the same time I hated her. I love a character like that.


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

Geoffrey said:


> I prefer messy endings where good doesn't have a complete triumph and where protagonists are flawed, sometimes down-right awful, people. It is more true to life than 'and they all lived happily ever after'.
> 
> But then, as a side conversation, I also love antagonists who are complete people as well. For example, in the movie _Precious_, Mo'Nique's character was an awful woman and by the end I pitied her at the same time I hated her. I love a character like that.


We are completely on the same page with our "hero" preferences. I tend to gravitate towards darker fiction with dystopian endings. I find seriously flawed protagonists much more interesting to read and write than someone who is heroic from the outset. There is a far greater range for character development when one starts at "bad" than when one starts at "good" (unless the upstanding hero is being set up to fall).

I don't like rosy endings, either. Nothing ever turns out exactly as one hopes, so why should a novel end that way? Life is incomplete, messy and oftentimes disappointing. Leaving the characters with a bit of a problem on their hands is definitely truer to life, and something I relish in fiction (and am repeatedly guilty of doing in my writing).


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

Geoffrey said:


> But then, as a side conversation, I also love antagonists who are complete people as well. For example, in the movie _Precious_, Mo'Nique's character was an awful woman and by the end I pitied her at the same time I hated her. I love a character like that.


What is it someone once said--that all villains are heros in their own stories. When we see them as fully fleshed out characters, it adds something to the story. Something real that makes them even creepier, because we can almost understand how someone could come to be the evil way that they are...


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

Averydebow said:


> There is a far greater range for character development when one starts at "bad" than when one starts at "good" (unless the upstanding hero is being set up to fall).
> 
> I don't like rosy endings, either. Nothing ever turns out exactly as one hopes, so why should a novel end that way? Life is incomplete, messy and oftentimes disappointing. Leaving the characters with a bit of a problem on their hands is definitely truer to life, and something I relish in fiction (and am repeatedly guilty of doing in my writing).


Both are exactly what I love. I want to see the flawed beginning and flawed ending (both realistic), with a magnificant journey in between as the character grows and changes and learns and re-thinks his or her goals, then accepts that triumph might be much different than he/she originally thought--but that doesn't make it any less a success.

This and the not-completely happy ending leaves room for the character to still grow beyond the ending of the story. Whether the author's writing as series, or we as the reader/viewer get to fill in the blanks with our own imagination, it allows the character to live on outside the pages. I LOVE that!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Maybe it's just semantics and different personal definitions, but to me an anti-hero does not preclude a happy ending, and you can have sad/messy endings without an anti-hero. A "normal" hero can have difficult moral choices to make, and an anti-hero can have an easy path (though that would likely not make for a particularly interesting story).


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

Anna_DeStefano said:


> *Is doing something wrong ever right, because a character believes it to be the only viable choice*?


Begs the question, doesn't it? I would say that nothing that is truly wrong can ever be right, but it is really more of an issue of something which under normal circumstances would be wrong might be right in other circumstances. For most of us, cutting people with a knife would be wrong. But it would be right for a surgeon. Or for a tougher example, during WWII, German codes were intercepted indicating there would be an attack on Coventry. They could have used this information to stop the attack, but this would have given away the fact that the Allies had cracked the German codes. Save one town or risk losing the entire war. It's a tough choice.

If protagonsists shouldn't be Dudley DooRight, they shouldn't be Snidely Whiplash either.


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

NogDog said:


> Maybe it's just semantics and different personal definitions, but to me an anti-hero does not preclude a happy ending, and you can have sad/messy endings without an anti-hero. A "normal" hero can have difficult moral choices to make, and an anti-hero can have an easy path (though that would likely not make for a particularly interesting story).


I think you're right. Many romances start with anti-heros, and the author gives you the happily ever after ending. Many normal heros are put into the middle of impossible situations that don't offer an easy resolution.

I think the journey's the thing for me. Regardless of how the protagonist of a story begins, I don't want to see a black/white, all or nothing race to the end. I'm often left wanting with these types of resolutions, though I get why others like them. I enjoy more grey area, even in my fantasy, where there are no moral absolutes. There's something that rings contemporary and true in that type of story telling. Something more realistic, even if the point of the book/movie is to escape.


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

Anna_DeStefano said:


> This and the not-completely happy ending leaves room for the character to still grow beyond the ending of the story. Whether the author's writing as series, or we as the reader/viewer get to fill in the blanks with our own imagination, it allows the character to live on outside the pages. I LOVE that!


I think that concept of viability beyond the last page is a big draw for me. Maybe it's my jaded outlook on life, but I have a more difficult time envisioning "happily ever after" than I do imagining the struggle continuing. I guess it's like TV shows where the male and female main character have chemistry. The story is always better while they're getting to "together" than when they've actually gotten there. While I love living my life as placid and drama-free as possible, I do not like my characters following suit!


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

QuantumIguana said:


> Begs the question, doesn't it? I would say that nothing that is truly wrong can ever be right, but it is really more of an issue of something which under normal circumstances would be wrong might be right in other circumstances.


I think it was Donald Maass that said to know your protagonist's moral core, put him on a bus dangling over the side of a bridge, about to plummet everyone inside to their deaths. The hero can save only himself and one other person, and he alone must decide who lives and dies. To one side, an elderly priest who's saved countless souls and lived his life in unselfish service but is nearing the end of his life. To the right, a bastard of a doctor who the entire world hates for some reason or another, but because of his skill could potentially save thousands of lives in his career. Does the hero save the morally superior person, or the person who could better benefit socieity as a whole going forward? 

THAT's the type of no-win situation I love to see stories illustrate, and I LOVE to see how characters like this move foward from such a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking decision.


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

NogDog said:


> Maybe it's just semantics and different personal definitions, but to me an anti-hero does not preclude a happy ending, and you can have sad/messy endings without an anti-hero. A "normal" hero can have difficult moral choices to make, and an anti-hero can have an easy path (though that would likely not make for a particularly interesting story).


You're absolutely right. You can have a crappy character achieve nirvana, and a great hero sink to misery. I find both to be equally legitimate and potentially interesting story arcs. It is, however, my personal preference to see a less-than-good character suffer and suffer and suffer--and then not get that full happy ending. But, that's just a personal preference. As long as there's conflict, any variation mentioned so far would work.


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## Glenn Bullion (Sep 28, 2010)

Anti heroes are cool.  I have to admit though, I like "good wins" endings.  If I want to see messy endings or bad guys winning, I'll just watch the news.


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

Glenn Bullion said:


> If I want to see messy endings or bad guys winning, I'll just watch the news.


That _is_ a valid argument.


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

Glenn Bullion said:


> Anti heroes are cool. I have to admit though, I like "good wins" endings. If I want to see messy endings or bad guys winning, I'll just watch the news.


Exactly the reason a lot of the romance readers I talk with love the genre. No matter how much we torture our characters in the story journey, the reader's safe knowing all will be well in the end. Then again, I always tended to write outside the lines even then. I can be a pest that way.


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## Glenn Bullion (Sep 28, 2010)

Anna_DeStefano said:


> Exactly the reason a lot of the romance readers I talk with love the genre. No matter how much we torture our characters in the story journey, the reader's safe knowing all will be well in the end. Then again, I always tended to write outside the lines even then. I can be a pest that way.


I have to agree with their outlook. You typically spend more time invested in a book than watching a movie. Takes far longer to get through a book than a two hour movie. To spend that much time reading, just to get "Betsy dies, her cat is lost in the woods. No happy ending here", is rough.


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## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

I enjoy anti-heroes and morally gray areas for a large portion of any story. Anti-heroes are cool and funny and attractive by design. 

But at the end of the day, I still want a real hero that I can honestly admire to claw his way to the end and kill the bad guy. I want that glimmer of idealism that good will defeat evil. As other folks have said, I can get plenty of stories about evil winning on the 6 o'clock news.

In that same vein, I thought Inception was very interesting and cool, but didn't present any people I wanted to spend time with. Except Tom Hardy, I think.


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## Anna_DeStefano (Feb 28, 2011)

Joseph Robert Lewis said:


> I enjoy anti-heroes and morally gray areas for a large portion of any story. Anti-heroes are cool and funny and attractive by design.
> 
> But at the end of the day, I still want a real hero that I can honestly admire to claw his way to the end and kill the bad guy. I want that glimmer of idealism that good will defeat evil.


I like this--the "glimmer." It's what I want, too, even if the fight goes on. I want to be satisfied with how the central conflict of the story is resolved, even if the world isn't all well in the end. And I want a hero/heroine who's ready for the next battle. Who's learned something key in the story that gives them a better chance of winning the next fight, too, even though there are still flaws and new challenges to conquer.

I'll remember that. The glimmer...


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

I mostly ignored the fairly idiotic plot (sorry) and listened to the music. The music was fantastic.


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## Averydebow (Jan 20, 2011)

"The glimmer."  Nice concept.  I do agree there has to be that glimmer in some aspect of the story in order for it to keep the reader from tossing the book across the room at the end.  I enjoy telling stories where the characters in the end wind up more burdened than in the beginning--and usually even than the middle--but the hope for improvement, the "glimmer," comes from within the characters themselves.  Even if the world is still ending, the protagonist has made some marked change in his or her self--something that has very little impact on the story, but is a huge transformation personally.  I feel a seemingly tiny battle versus the self can have far greater impact than a giant physical battle in some cases.


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## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

It probably reflects the culture of the time. We're living in a pretty depressing world right now. Terrorism. Oil disasters. Housing disasters. Financial meltdowns. It makes sense that we would want more actual heroes (and superheroes!).

I guess in a more optimistic era, people would be more interested in dark stories with downer endings and unredeemed characters.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

I love shades of gray in a story--what appeals to me most about shades of gray is unpredictability, which keeps me turning pages. None of us is perfect, all of us feel we're the hero (or heroine) of our personal story, and fiction should reflect this. It's impossible for me to root for a hero who is too perfect or feel sympathy for a villian who is all evil. And while I don't think sympathy is a necessary feeling for a villain (certainly I love _Lord of the Rings_, and I don't sympathize at all with Sauron), certainly feeling some sympathy or understanding for a human villain makes that villain all the more scary.

One thing that drives me batbombs is a Mary Sue or Gary Stu protagonist. Mary Sues never have to face the consequences of their actions--they either are too cardboard perfect to make those actions in the first place or the author rescues them at the last minute. The best plots grow from character development, and Mary Sues are the antithesis of good character development. Heros and villains alike should make mistakes and face the consequences of their actions, not be put through the motions of a rote plot like marionettes.

And Anna, if you haven't seen _The Prestige_, I highly recommend it if you enjoyed _Inception_. I love the Nolan brothers and their amazing movies!


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## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

_The Prestige_ was fantastic, and it stands up to repeated viewings really well. What a great cast!


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## R. H. Watson (Feb 2, 2011)

My favorite ambiguous hero in a movie from last year was Scott Pilgrim, really.

Here's an article about a Russian book, The Last Ring-bearer, that tells the story of the Lord of the Rings from the losing side. http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer

I haven't read The Last Ring-bearer yet, but it sounds interesting.


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## Tara Maya (Nov 4, 2010)

The Prestige was excellent.

I enjoy ambiguous heros, and flawed heros, but not unlikable heroes. I also don't like the sense an author is throwing me an anti-hero just to jerk my chain. In that case, the character is not actually fleshed out or well rounded, just a cardboard cutout of a different type. 

Also, I admit I feel a certain sympathy for characters, especially romantic male characters, who are good and therefore too "boring" -- the nice guys who can't make it with women who are busy falling all over jerks.


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

Tara Maya said:


> Also, I admit I feel a certain sympathy for characters, especially romantic male characters, who are good and therefore too "boring" -- the nice guys who can't make it with women who are busy falling all over jerks.


Good point. In one of my stories, a smooth-talking, rich bad boy pursues the heroine and obsesses over her. She hates him, tells him so, and eventually falls in love with another man, who is far from perfect but is at least is struggling against his demons and trying to do the right thing. Several of my betas (mostly women) loved the rich bad boy and seriously thought that there was a chance the heroine would end up with him--in fact, I think a couple of them wanted her to end up with him, when he clearly had performed unethical acts to obtain his wealth and disregarded the heroine's boundaries time and again. Under his charming facade, he was a rotten, no good so-and-so who disrespected women, yet some readers were falling all over him. Why? I personally wanted to throttle him.

Can't think of any titles off the top of my head, but I know there are books with romantic themes that glorify the bad boy and that some readers respond positively to this. Personally, I find this disturbing. There's a difference between an anti-hero and a sociopath. The former might inspire love despite his faults; the latter, no matter charming, should inspire women to run, not droll over him.


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## Joseph Robert Lewis (Oct 31, 2010)

But to be sympathetic, doesn't a boring nice guy need to have some other attractive attributes?


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I think I tend to measure all anti-heroes against Elric of Melniboné (at least the original series ending with _Stormbringer_). Here is a protagonist who is about as flawed a character I've seen that I still rooted for: physically abnormal, almost genetically evil in a way, in a co-dependent relationship with


Spoiler



an evil demon in the shape of a sword


, the enabler of the genocide of most of what remained of his race, the accidental murderer of the woman he most loved


Spoiler



and later his best friend


, a worshiper of an evil god of chaos, and a supercilious elitist. Yet his struggle with all his demons (literal and figurative) leave you (or at least me) caring for what happens to him, and across the story arc you see him try to deal with his internal conflicts as he tries to escape the evil path that originally seemed pre-ordained for him, ultimately becoming a tool of greater forces to redress the evils perpetrated by his chaotic patron, with the ending being as poignant and tragic as the long journey deserved.

Now, how exactly Mr. Moorcock pulled this off, I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure out. All I know is it worked for me. Maybe it's just a case of providing _reasons_ for the way he was, as well as letting the reader see that he knows things are not right and that he is constantly looking for answers and solutions to the problems he sees.


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