Trope of the Month September: Antiheroes

[Beth Pavell]

Antiheroes - the character archetype everyone feels they're familiar with, but nobody manages to satisfactorily define.

To give one attempt at a definition, antiheroes are the characters you're supposed to root for but are flawed in some major way. The flaws in their heroism vary, but in any case they are generally considered to be character traits the audience shouldn't emulate. Some antiheroes have good motivations for their bad actions - an example of this would be Walter White of Breaking Bad fame. Likewise, the opposite might be the case, doing good actions for the wrong reasons, such as Dr House of the eponymous House.

The line between an antihero and a villain protagonist can be a blurry one. At what point is a hero sufficiently flawed that they become a villain with redeeming traits, such as Tony Soprano of The Sopranos? What about characters who invite disagreement as to how good or bad their actions and motivations are, such as Stannis Baratheon of A Song of Ice and Fire?

 

[Greninjaman]

Yeah, this trope certainly is a tough one to get right. I can certainly see that.

 

[Rainfall]

...I thought about this a little while ago, and I still don't have anything substantive to say.
Instead, a small brainstormy (and quite not fully-formed) tangent, with little real consequence! womp-womp

In line with sentiments that others have mentioned before, I can readily enjoy mostly straightforward stories of good vs. evil, but sometimes, the casting of one side as the fate-defined right and the other as the clearly-wrong can become quite off-putting. As a layperson, I hear that's a highly typical basis for fantasy plots? This aspect can overlap with the presence of protagonists that are revealed to be the chosen ones. (stories I'll consume with relish anyway.)

It's part of what makes stories that blur the lines between good and bad so satisfying. It wades right into the gunky greyspace in the morality of action, motivations, and causes. There are many stories that showcase flawed heroes and villains with empathetic motives, and the entanglement may give you pause, make you contrast the factions, cause you to re-evaluate (if only a little) some of your beliefs, look at the world in a slightly different light. "Who knows but that on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

...that was a bit of a rehash.

The original desultory tangent I wanted to note was this. The tag-categorization of "anti-hero" and "anti-villain" better reflects the lack of a natural classification of norms. At the same time that it may challenge us to feel and think, it still retains the essence of confrontational factionalization and the assignment of a normative direction...

(Here's the silly tautological tangent, I guess?) Third-person omniscient may seek to be objective, but any bystander, journalist, or imaginary storyteller that reports on "things happening" will automatically introduce bias. No objective angle exists: there's always a "reference framing". Even the mere decision for where to begin and end the telling of each segment introduces sometimes-invisible framing to the comprehension and judgment of "what's (really) happening".

(and I'm probably too lazy to properly revise that to be any better)