Art & Story 112 – The Big Good Guy
December 9, 2009 by Jerzy
Filed under Art & Story, Podcast
We’re following up a discussion started in Art & Story 82 -The Big Bad Guy, with a mammoth discussion on some broad archetypes on the other side of the line!
We tried to chart these archetypes on a continuum, but we soon discovered that it was nearly impossible. Unlike villains, even the most simplistically written good guys are difficult to peg on a chart between fun and serious stories.
With that, we leap into our conversation about the following types of good guys (and gals!):
The Smiling Good Guy
What you see is what you get. No baggage, just a sincere desire to do good. They cannot be flummoxed, which aggravates the villains that much more. Often the “Keepers of the peace”.
Examples:
- Lee Majors
- He-Man
- Zorro
- Duke
Justice/Compassion
Operates out of a sense of inequality or injustice in the world, and takes action to rectify that. Tends to be a bit more “serious” or “intense” than the smiling good guy.
Examples:
Ideal/Restorative
The least “realistic” of the good guys. These heroes represent the highest ideals of their respective culture, and thus act as a yard stick to measure ourselves by. In stories, they tend to be characters who restore or redeem the world through their actions. They can also be perceived as “preachy” when handled by certain authors.
Examples:
Redemption
Good guys who fall from grace and later redeem themselves through their actions in the story. One of the more popular kinds of characters, these good guys teach us that we each have the power to be a good guy, no matter what came before.
Examples:
Reluctant/Coming of Age
The good guy who doesn’t feel that he/she is up to the challenge placed before them, yet discovers that they are capable of great things.
Examples:
Leave Me Alone
The capable good guy who just wants to lead a simple life. Events in the story pull him or her back in to reluctantly fix a problem in the story. They resist throughout the first two acts, but by the end they are terrifying to evildoers.
Examples:
Stinker
A sub-category of Leave Me Alone and Reluctant/Coming of Age, this good guy makes things rough for the rest of the characters with their obnoxious personality during down-times, yet are great to have during a crisis.
Examples:
Spiritual
The good guy who finds inner strength through a “higher power”. Not magic necessarily–more of a deeper understanding of the larger ideas of being a good guy.
Examples:
Revenge
The good guy who is after justice, but it’s a personal fight as well. The Anti-Hero fits under this description, as the Revenge character’s actions often fall outside of “heroic” or “noble” definitions.
Examples:
Everyman vs Faceless Horde
The normal person faced against the overwhelming power of the bureaucracy, or the millions. Often the protagonist used in darker stories.
Examples:
Dual Nature
The walking contradiction, often used in various iterations of Star Trek. This character lives and operates in a world with a certain system of values, while also maintaining an aspect of their character that is utterly at odds with the people around him or her. This character is not usually at ease with him or herself.
Examples:
Leader
A good guy with a lot of baggage but an unflinching dedication to do good. These characters have to make the most difficult decisions in Western stories, often putting the welfare of the greater good before their own happiness. Some of them have to compromise their principles in order to serve that greater good, which might easily swing them over to villainy.
Examples:
We close out our discussion with some comments from Zach BoSteel, who offers up a few more categories worth consideration.
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First of all, i’m loving these shows. I got into drawing because I wanted to create visuals of the stories I read, but as for creating my own, they were pretty shallow and weak. I’m learning to look at all of these channels of entertainment in new ways.
As for Kirk falling in love, I think it was either in The City on the Edge of Forever or the episode Requeim for Methuselah, where he fell SOO in love, that Spock came by at the end of the episode and basically Haitianed him into forgetting his feelings for her. Makes me picture Spock, after every episode, sighing and mind melding w/ Kirk to keep him on track and out of depression. Hmm… there’s a thought. We all think Kirk is the leader and the hero, but really, he’s just Spock’s puppet.
Thanks for taking the time to share the kind thoughts, Chris!
That scenario you described takes Kirk and Spock to a strange Zap Brannigan/Kif relationship!