The Hidden Science Behind Lovable Anti-heroes

number one trait of an anti-hero as Kate and I were preparing for this podcast we were kind of thinking about the concept of anti-heroes and flawed Heroes and trying to find the nuanced differences between them because we did a episode about writing flawed Heroes and that was a really good episode a story mining episode so if you guys haven't seen that we'll link it below um but kind of considering the differences of like okay well you have a hero with flaws and like internal conflicts and they make mistakes so how are they different than an anti-hero and I think the biggest difference is that an anti-hero character knows what they're doing is morally wrong but they do it anyway right like with knowledge of the fact that like going into it they're like I know this is wrong and I know it's gonna hurt people but I'm still gonna do it anyway so I think this is like the number one distinguisher between an anti-hero and a flawed hero because we're a flawed hero will act out of weakness and their fatal flaws the anti-hero is still acting out of their fatal flaws but they're like fully conscious of the fact that what they're about to do is going to be impacting others negatively but they do it anyway right so in many cases it's that the motivations are different yeah the driving force behind it and obviously not all cases but in many and especially the examples we're identifying here is that they're coming at this um this battle plan of theirs from a place of selfishness yes fundamentally even if they don't consciously recognize it they because they are constantly making choices that better them even if it hurts others It ultimately makes their decisions selfish whereas a flawed hero May struggle with making the choice but will ultimately make a decision that will help other people or at least not hurt them or put them In Harm's Way right where so we have that moral compass that will be much stronger for a flawed hero who may struggle with decision making but won't consciously make the wrong decision that will hurt other people right exactly so true and I feel like you did an amazing job of this in your Sparrow series with the character of Aaron Price who is probably my favorite character in that series and he's like just such a classic morally gray very internally tortured character he's definitely an anti-hero because he's not like the villain but his actions and decisions we can see are born from this place of like deep internal conflict and this struggle to belong and to feel like he has this place in the world and he's kind of always felt like an outcast in a way um because of his powers because of his history and his past and so much good wonderful backstory for his character but we see him go about doing the wrong things for what he thinks are the right reasons and that's kind of like the qualifier I think is like can your can your character who's an anti-hero like reason with themselves of like yes I know that what I'm about to do is gonna be harmful and maybe hurtful to people but I have to do it for XYZ reasons like there are there's a reasonable explanation for why I'm doing this and the ends justify the means you know and I feel like Aaron's character does that a lot in the sparrow Series where you see him like kind of manipulating sparrow and using her to his for his own ends and his own gains but at the same time he's kind of torn by this love he has for Sparrow too and it's like you see the battle inside the character and when you see the battle happening that's like what makes you fall in love with them I think because you see that they do have a heart deep down right you know exactly yeah and and it also creates not so much justifying what they're doing but it creates understanding for the reader because in the case of Corporal Aaron Price his character in The Sparrow series he has to make this impossible decision over because of his superpower he's invisible to everyone on earth except for this one person who is Sparrow so does he keep her for his own selfish reasons or does he let her go for you there's a lot more complexity to it than that but that's the very basic um premise here and because we see his pain of never being able to be seen by anyone and we start to imagine what would that be like to have to live in existence like that so we can almost understand the pull and the Allure of wanting that yes wanting to keep that one person who can see you even if it's um through means that aren't necessarily good or they're very selfish reasons but we can understand why he's struggling with it so even though it doesn't justify this these selfish behaviors that the character is exhibiting we understand the struggle and that's a that's a big part I think of what makes us as human beings who struggle and deal with flaws and conflicts to to relate we we get it we relate we're like oh yeah that's tough it's actually a similar struggle to um and I know this is an example that we've written down but this just came to my head is like Chris Pratt's character in the movie Passengers very similar conflict and like you know okay we're on the spaceship I'm the only ones who who's awake and am I going to wake up Jennifer Lawrence's character I can't remember either of the characters names I think her name is Aurora right so am I going to wake her up even though I know there's no way to put her back to sleep and the spaceship's going to go off into space for 80 years and and he has to make but we see how much he's struggling it's so devastating to watch and it's like oh we can feel just how gut-wrenching it is imagining Us in the place of that character so even though the action itself not really justifiable because it's like you know you're you're doing it for selfish reasons but we can understand why the character is doing it and that that's what creates that connection and it's the same with Corporal Aaron Aaron Price's character in The Sparrow series is we see throughout the two books searching for sparrow and Sparrow Rising how tortured and lonely this character is when we start connecting with those qualities of loneliness and and anguish those are very basic Primal human experiences that we can relate to and connect to with our own experiences and we can understand what's driving this character forward and that is part of what makes them not seem like a purely evil villain right because it's not just like I'm doing this because I want to be evil it's actually there they're dealing with their own suffering button all the wrong ways yes exactly and that's one of the things I think makes anti-heroes compelling and strong characters stronger to more compelling to read about in a lot of cases than the heroes because it's when you are developing an anti-hero A lot of times you are putting way more focus and attention on what they want and why they want it because you're digging deep into the the reasons why why would somebody be motivated to do something that's morally wrong to achieve this end so I think that's what makes us love them so much is because their goals are so clear their motivations are so clear and it's easy for us to connect the dots and see how their internal conflict relates to their mission it's like very clear and very obvious and another um morally gray or anti-hero character that immediately comes to mind is Dimitri from Anastasia who's probably like one of my favorite anti-heroes because we very well we grew up watching Anastasia loving that film and just the the hate to love romance is fantastic also but Dimitri's character how he's kind of just like going about getting what he wants in all the selfish ways he's basically using Anastasia or Anya to get all this money from her grandmother who he doesn't even think is her real grandmother until he finds out at the very end in fact oddly enough we're going to Paris ourselves ah and I've got three uh well this one is but I've got three tickets here uh unfortunately the third one is for her Anastasia [Music] the motivation is basically like I want to be free I want this money and that's kind of like that's kind of the clear goal like and as he continues down the path of like conning this woman into believing that Anya is her granddaughter and her long-lost you know relative that she's been looking for this whole time and that whole ruse that whole manipulation that's set up we can clearly see why he's doing it and it makes sense you know the the ends he thinks the ends justify the means look I think we got off on the wrong foot well I think we did too okay but I appreciate your apology apology who said anything about an apology I was just saying that we don't talk anymore okay it's only gonna upset me fine I'll be quiet I'll be quiet if you will all right I'll be quiet fine fine fine but slowly as time goes on he begins to have a character Arc and we're going to talk about character arcs in a little bit but that's another great example of like an anti-hero with very clear goals and a very clear objective and we can see why he's doing what he's doing like it's it makes sense you want no reward not anymore why the change of mind it's more a change of heart I must go and another example that comes to mind this which is very similar actually I was contemplating how similar this is is Flynn Rider from Tangled um because he's kind of even though he ends up being heroic at the end of the story he starts as kind of an anti-hero I can't believe that after all we've been through together you don't trust me foreign he's a thief he wants to you know make money and and be free again like Dimitri um and of course not work for it he wants to steal it where is my Satchel I've hidden it it's in that pot isn't it so he ends up having this transformation of course where he ends up helping Rapunzel and falling in love with her and risking actually sacrificing his life at the end to save her but in the beginning we see the stakes are clearly set of like she has the precious crown that I need to sell to make money to be free to have the life I want very clear dots to connect right and so we can like clearly follow that little path to the character back to the character's deepest motivations and see what drives them a book I used to read every night to all the younger kids the tales of Flanagan writer swashbuckling Rogue he had enough money to do anything that he wanted to do he could go anywhere that he wanted to go and and for a kid with nothing I don't know I just seem like the better option and it doesn't always have to be like a physical like thing like you know all anti-heroes care about is money like that doesn't that's not always the case sometimes it's more deeply rooted into their internal conflict like you were saying with with Corporal price in your book um it's more rooted to his sense of identity and and feeling loved um and that he wants to feel seen and loved and has never experienced that but he's also dealing with this Revenge from his past um involving the anomalies and how they've um you know impacted his life in a negative way so he's kind of dealing with so many different layers of conflict and sense of identity can be a really interesting conflict to dig into with an anti-hero um and one another anti-hero that comes to mind some people might consider this more of a villain character but in this particular film I would call him more of an anti-hero and that is the character of Loki from the first Thor movie in the MCU so he kind of slowly becomes the villain throughout the course of that film but in the beginning and throughout quite a bit of it I would consider him more of an anti-hero in that he's kind of still Bros with Thor he's like still paling around with Thor and like part of the squad and he's not really looked at as like a big Threat by anybody but we see that he's deeply insecure and he wants to be the king of Asgard and he will do literally whatever it takes to be the king to be better than everyone because he has this inferiority complex of like believing himself to be an outsider an outcast and not one of them and so that's like the springboard like the deeply rooted misbelief is that he is not one of them he doesn't belong and that he's different and that he um can't have a place in in their world so I am no more than another stolen Relic locked up here until you might have use of me why'd you twist my words you told me what I was from the beginning why didn't you right that's really the birthplace of all the resentment and conflict that follows to make up the rest of the stories is this inferiority he feels about not belonging and not having uh a place in in society and in his family he feels like he's not as much a member of the family and so that's a really great example of identity complexity feeling like um you know those really multi-layered conflicts that's not so much something he's trying to get it's something he wants to be but feels he isn't why have you done this father that I am a worthy son when he wakes I will have saved his life I will have destroyed that race of monsters and I will be true heir to the throne yes so these are a good questions to ask yourself as you're crafting an anti-hero is like is it is it that they're making selfish decisions or destructive decisions based off of something they want to get or achieve or is it something that they feel that they are not and so they're actually in a defense mode of how do I sort of build this wall around myself to protect myself from ever having to face up to the truth that I might not be this thing that I think I am yeah and really isn't that like the isn't that at the core of like all character conflicts even if it seems like their goal is more on the surface or like more of a surface level um you know achievable quantifiable thing like really beneath the surface it all comes from this sense of like who they are you know who they want to be so that's a really good really good question to ask yourself and start digging into [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Abbie Emmons

Views: 25,514

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Id: IoNFNXubGCI

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023