Discussion: Heroes & Failure

So, a thought which occurred to me while writing earlier, which I would like to know the opinions of others on:

Because a hero is so much more than an ordinary human, his or her personal failures and tragedies must be proportionately greater.

Please discuss.

I don't know about must, but I am guilty of torturing my characters with out-of-proportion misfortunes so their stories end up more dramatic.

There is an irritating tendency for heroic characters to be drowning in angst. If done well, this can be good.

Unfortunately, the majority of characters like this tend to be nasty little Mary Sue, cliche-ridden messes.

I personally think that any person who strives to stand above the masses in matters of upholding what's right and doing the right thing has 2 effects.

1. Their decision to live according to a higher moral code will make them targets as others consider their motivations to be arrogant, self-righteous, even holier-than-thou.

2. When a failure occurs, there is an immediate association that this is directly linked to the aforementioned decision. I.E.: "the reason he failed is because he was unwilling to compromise his ideals" or the other end of the scale "failure was inevitable because he was hypocritical about his morals/code of justice".

Personal observations:

About Point #1: I find more and more (on Protector at least) that truly heroic characters are less and less common as time goes by. This is the same for comic book characters so the influence may stem from there. Anti-heroes and vigilantes always seem to draw more interest when the time comes to create a character (be it in a MMORPG or pen and paper). For these, "looking out for number one" is an underscore to their actions.

Examples: Wolverine, Punisher, Spawn, Midnighter (and the whole Authority team), Magneto (sometimes), The Boys, etc.

Yet, it's the truly heroic oriented heroes who garner the most attention generally - and even more so if they're dealing with some personal turmoil which they have to overcome.

Example: Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, etc.

The line isn't always clearly defined between these 2 types of superheroes, I'll admit. But depending on their motivations at any given time they can fit in either of these categories.

The difference is when Point #2 is added to the equation:

Anti-heroes are less likely to be publicly chastised for errors in judgement or downright F* ups. After all, it's expected of them.

Hero-centric characters will have entire arcs scripted when they make a mistake, and how public opinion has turned against them.

Why is this?

I personally think it's because, as flawed human beings, we actually don't want to associate with the lofty ideals, justice and morals of the hero-centric characters - while secretly admiring them.

That is, until...

The hero's fall occurs and we take a little guilty pleasure as spectators out of the experience: "I knew it would happen", "what a hypocrite" and "I told you so".

In real life, I've noticed a tendency for people to adopt a Bad Boy or Bad Girl façade as a defense mechanism to protect themselves for those times when a personal failure occurs. They appear to revel in being bad, if only to diminish the expectations of others towards them. The upside is they can also pretty much do as they please, adopting any behavior (however destructive or even anti-social) while retaining some approval from their peers.*

After all, they're "keeping it real" and living their life their own way, bu their own rules

This is not so of the one who tries to live according to a set of morals. That person retains public appeal only as long as the behavior is flawless. Since this is impossible, peers and bystanders will wait for the opportunity to catch this person in an act that is counter to the lifestyle they profess to live by.

So in reality, as in fiction, we tend to gravitate towards people and characters that reflect our human duality and moral dilemma more closely.

That is not to say we don't secretly aspire to be better, to act morally,and even sometimes admire those who daily strive to live this way. But the fact is we feel more comfortable around others who have a similar outlook on life and the world around us.


*NB - It's interesting to note that, if the hero is castigated against for his failures in living up to his ideals, the anti-hero or villain is not chastised in the least for failing to live up to theirs when, say, they take personal risk to rescue someone or anonymously help another. And yet both have acted against their professed ideals and are hypocrites in that sense.

Interesting points. I do think that there's a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in being a hero, because you're choosing to be set above the normal people (the majority of whom don't go out of their way to help strangers).

I do think it's more interesting to see super-powered beings screw up than it is to see "natural" human heroes screw up though. When a super-powered being messes up, there really is that level (like Stale said) of watching them for the slightest slip of character so that we can point them out to be just as flawed as we mere mortals are. When a "natural" human hero messes up, though, we sympathize much more easily (at least I do) because, after all, they're only human.

Well, as some of the people reading this may know, my character designs tend toward the subdued. Given a choice between creating a ten thousand year old spirit of divine retribution and a thirtysomething from Peoria who happened to be sharing a body with a ten thousand year old &c &c? I'll go with the latter every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Spider-Man was always one of my favorite heroes. He's funny in a fight, and he's fallible in his personal life. Being a hero was meaningful to him. We know because of all the sacrifices he had to make. Because...let's be honest. Being a hero sucks. Why do it? Because you feel like you should, for whatever reasons. If it was easy, every Outcast and Warrior would do it.

I'll side with the thesis of the OP. I've always thought that larger-than-life characters make taut, but otherwise somewhat routine, emotional scenes more visceral. Simply by standing on a larger-than-life stage, their triumphs and pitfalls are magnified. And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. You see, the characters we create in this game aren't that far removed, spiritually, from the heroes and gods of folklore. They are defined by their capabilities, but they are given life in their foibles (especially in European myths). Herakles may have had the strength of a god, but he was the victim of fits of rage. There's a reason his story endured for thousands of years.

A truly well written-character could have something seemingly small and human greatly torment them. As it is with the case of actual people, what may seem simple at a stranger's glance can be terribly complex to the person experiencing it, and part of good writing is bringing the reader into that characters world and allowing you to see and sympathize with their reality.

It is easy to sympathize with a calamity, the effects are obvious to everyone, and everyone can find things that are bad in them without requiring much explanation or exploration on the part of the author. I'm typically more impressed or moved by the smaller details in that calamity than I am the fact that it happened.

My main has had many failures over the years; she's fallen, risen, fallen and risen again and is considered by some as a Mary Sue (actually, that's quite deliberate too )

Her biggest failure though, the one thing she's never ever been able to fix and the one thing that haunts her is a completely human thing; small to anyone else but massive to her.

When she became a Peacebringer she lost her father. He considers her a filthy alien bodysnatcher who murdered his little girl and stole her body.

She has friends, she has loves, but what she's lost is the one thing that can't be replaced; the love of her father.

Harsh.

If, you mean by the virtue of simply being a hero, his problems are turned up to 11, then I'd have to disagree. A hero must face greater decision points over the course of a heroic career and those decisions will have repercussions when those decisions turn out poorly, I'd say his professional failures are more spectacular than that of a regular human.

Putting a hero on a higher pedestal just so we can watch them get pushed from it seems rude to me. The things that make a personal failure or tragedy in a person's life do not become less because that person is a hero. The inability to maintain a relationship with a significant other due to heroing activities is somewhat sad, but is it more sad than a regular person who cannot maintain a relationship due to constant lying? I would argue no, the problem is the same, just the myriad of circumstances that provide it. A hero might try to justify it by claiming that their activities are more worthy than others, but the root of the problem is still the same.

Heroes often have the same problems regular people have in addition to problems gathered by their heroing activities and a hero might like to think his personal tragedies are greater, to go on blaming his hero lifestyle for his problems, but falls into the realm of believing his own press, falling into hubris--which could be an entertaining story of its own.

I think Heroes can get more harshly judged on their failures because there's an element of trust by the societies that Heroes will do the right thing. Heroes get a lot of free passes to operate and in return it's expected that they'll hold themselves to as high, if not higher, moral code that police are required to have. Heroes forcibly disarmed nations in the Cuban Missile Crisis in CoH and the world cried out that it was the right thing to do (The Governments involved were no doubt far less impressed) When they don't, there's a feeling of betrayal and a worry that perhaps the public allowed them to get away with too much, which in turn makes the public cry out for the screws to be tightened on them.

The pressure of being a hero I've done for a few characters. Fanservice Girl was a neurotic mess for her first few months in the limelight and Cerridwyn who spends a lot of time with Longbow in the Rogue Islands has gone from a happy, opinionated liberal free spirit to a somewhat more tough but probably less likeable character, who isn't afraid to give someone a tongue lashing if they don't meet her standards.

But for the initial question? Heroes failures can be big and dramatic, they can also be small and quite personal. Both can make good stories (And bad ones) so it's not really a case of picking one or the other!

I believe that failure is up to the individual to define.

True, you can set your heart and resources to something and see no profit from it. Hell, I do that all the time with my writing.

Am I successful? No. Am I failing? I don't believe so. I'm learning from what I do.

A hero has the same issue to deal with. Stopping a bank robbery is one thing. Stopping the robbers from taking and/or murdering hostages is another.

The hero shouldn't beat himself up for the decisions made by criminals, however.

In a piece of fiction I wrote on another site, I had a robber threaten one of my vigilantes. The robber held a gun to a hostage's head and threatened to kill her. My vigilante's response was to say "Then I won't have any reason not to kill you."

Was this proper? Was this appropriate? My vigilante in question is the type who actually HATES killing. He prefers to subdue opponents with as little harm as possible.

Still, he had to end the situation, bring these criminals to justice and keep people from being hurt. The best way to do that was to look like he was willing to execute the criminals on-site. If they'd called his bluff, he didn't know what he'd do, but it likely wouldn't have been pleasant.

So... What's his failing? He was able to stop the criminals, save the hostages, but he obviously terrified the civilians at the same time. Should he be beating himself up because he didn't live up to the ideals of the hero?

If he had been a cape-wearing "icon," this behavior would have been seen as wrong. What alternative would the icon hero have had, though? His only option would have been to let the robbers go, likely with their hostage(s) and possibly with loot. It would have been a "no-win" scenario.

I'm of a philosophy that a hero is what they do, not what they stand for. If you're obsessing over what the public thinks of you, you're not going to do your job. You're not going to be able to make everybody happy, so stop worrying about it.

Now, say the icon hero winds up losing the hostage anyway. The robber goes ahead and slaughters the hostage, just to prove he's serious. Should the hero feel regret? My argument is that he shouldn't. No hero should feel guilty for the decisions and actions of the criminal. The criminal is obviously deranged and amoral. The criminal is living with complete disregard for the consequences, and is oblivious to the fact that he's still going to suffer consequences for the things he's done. The hero can't be everywhere, the hero can't save everybody.

Learn from the experience and move on, Superman. It's okay to be sad, but don't let the media tear you down. They don't know what you're going through. They don't have any frame of reference to understand the situation. They're just celebrities and journalists who are all too often on the receiving end of the evil you prevent and forget too quickly what you've done to help them.