despite their name fallen heroes are often more a category of villain than they are hero they're often already evil at the time we meet them as antagonists in our story thematically more important as a commentary on our hero story than as a character on their own Journey right but they're one of my favorite tropes you've probably got one in your head right now let me know who it is down the comments by the way I forget to promote it but patreon is fundamental to how my channel Works how I'm able to keep doing what I'm doing if you like the sort of educational content mean a lot for you to go check it out there's also the Discord which has open to everyone Patron or not so come join the community and I apologize if you hear con noises in this video okay so in Percy Jackson the Olympians luk castellan is this recurring Fallen Hero antagonist throughout the books and is a reflection of Percy and many ways like both of them are sons of powerful gods they both feel betrayed and abandoned by their Godly Parents both have experienced loss and Injustice because of it both year for a change in this unjust neglectful system of haha love your kid but I'm out to buy some milk they're both social reformers in their own ways and both exemplify many traits of the traditional hero but where Luke channels that rage and Injustice into trying to Boom Mount Olympus to the ground Percy decides to change the system in the books Percy demands all demigods are claimed by their Godly Parents that minor Gods be respected and he does away with this pact between Zeus Hades and Poseidon to not have kids anymore and most importantly he doesn't let his pain and frustration control him in this way we can use the Fallen Hero to not only represent the different ways a hero's flaws or Ambitions might take them but they're often the consequence of genuine problems the current Hero has to now face and solve Luke is the most dangerous expression of a god system truly r with child abandonment and Injustice or what about Harvey dint he's toofaced he's the result of institutional corruption in Gotham manet's police force he is what happens to good men in an inept and corrupt system in many ways a problem Batman and Gordon have to contend with in the dark KN it was the very corrupt cops that dent was warning everyone about that ultimately gets his love killed and him mutilated in this way we can use fallen heroes as criticisms of Institutions or Societies or even other characters in your story if they were used or betrayed by ostensibly heroic characters on the good side we can see where that comes from with our current hero figuring out ways to navigate that problem too you thought we could be decent men in an indecent time this is why fallen heroes are so often heartbreaking not just because they often do really have a right to be angry but because they were genuinely screwed over by things outside of their control by institutions or people who should have cared for them it's that old line a child will burn down a village just to feel its warmth it's into this that fallen heroes often motivate or catalyze characters around them having a better understanding of their world of certain people of themselves or even their powers by representing the dangers and flaws of the institutions they exist and often ones that they weren't aware of before and they never have to Grapple with when people feel like tiny cogs in a system when they feel ignored when they feel dehumanized when they feel like there's no space for them no hope they can end up using that as a justification for doing wrong that hey the world disregarded me and so I will disregard it this does not absolve them of directions but it does partly explain it they reveal where the cracks are often violently with evil acts but if that is the place your full in here occupies what does defeating them mean you've got to reconcile with that what does it mean for the problems they represented so one of the main criticisms people have lodged against Legend of Kora is how Aon is the symbolic and real result of institutional problems with bender and non-bender inequality right so you've got a world with kind of two distinct classes of people but cor doesn't quite grapple with that as much as she possibly should have you know they get a non-bender president at the end but any aftermath is mostly off screen Percy changing the god system at the end matters as a way of solving the problem Luke represents killing the orphans spurned by Society does not solve the orphan problem it just sweeps it under the proverbial narrative rug but you can do more than that with a Fallen Hero in the Dark Knight all of our characters have to Grapple with how far they're willing to go outside the law into widespread civilian surveillance into unlawful search and seizure into breaking the moral laws we give ourselves how much Faith Can you truly have in the law to protect you like Harvey dented iscal a in violence and tactics are a constant theme in the story and in this way fallen heroes can become symbolic warnings of not just those institutional problems but of the real dangers of the flaws goals tactics and drives your hero might have in pursuing their goal a way to sort of show where they might end up without actually having your Heroes turn evil if we see the protagonist and antagonist are using the same methods face the same Temptations or are going down the same moral path it creates tension will they fall too it foreshadows where they might end up but you've also got to think about how you present the evil acts of the Fallen Hero and what that means for your story thematically like Batman's moral choice to not kill the Joker the people on the boat's choices to not blow each other up are important rejections of the idea that everyone can be pushed to kill and that escalation to murder is necessary to solve these problems and it's because of this Harvey de's escalation to murder to taking Justice into his own hands at that level becomes a choice thematically not an ability hopefully you can see how these things work together how we frame the actions and evil Deeds of the Fallen Hero will affect how we place the blame how we understand the problems havant is the result of institutional issues but his actions cannot be entirely blamed on them alternatively the Fallen Hero isn't the result of institutional problems but the result of deeply personal flaws that they could not overcome no matter how much of a hero they really were where events before might have brought out those heroic traits events now might bring out their weaknesses leading to their fall in the king killer Chronicles LR is this legendary hero from the creation War this Mythic guy who took down monsters and ultimately sacrificed his own life to protect the weak only for him to be brought back now this conflict brought out L's heroic traits he's Brave and he's willing to sacrifice himself for the good of others but then he loses his wife after the war this is a different conflict a different problem and in his grief he pursues every kind of power he can to try and bring her back but it takes him down a dark path that ultimately leads to him burning cities to the ground a Fallen Hero the good heroic parts of his nature cannot solve this problem and so the darker unheroic weaker parts of him end up taking over his weakness is his lack of wisdom and inability to deal with his own grief which would only come out in certain conflicts so consider how different conflicts might bring out the weaknesses of your hero facets of them which might not have been a big problem before especially ones which lead them to new tactics new methods or new solutions that they might not be necessarily equipped for or just show how their heroicness cannot solve this problem leading them to fall and this is often like a chain of events a chain of conflicts which they cannot solve with the things that they would normally hopefully rely on by the way I really wanted to talk about melis and book of the Fallen with this but it's so spoilery that I cannot it's an amazing series one of the most heartbreaking tropes and one of my favorite is when the cost of being good gets so high that it just beats the hero down until they start breaking their own moral code one of the best ARS in Doctor Who is when the doctor who is about as genuine and heroic a character as you could possibly create gets fed up with losing people he loves over and over because of this moral Cody feels he has to stick to he calls them the laws of time he has to obey and he gets so pained by this that he eventually starts to punish himself he travels alone and eventually he gets so dark that we get this moment it's taking me all these years to realize the laws of time are mine and they will obey me it is one of if not the best episode of Doctor Who ever made and and it's about a hero falling part of what makes genuinely heroic Paragon characters so interesting is that being good is hard being a hero means taking the hard way instead of the easy way it can mean a lot of self-sacrifice it can mean giving up your peace and stability for that of others it can mean making your friends and family a Target it can mean putting yourself in danger instead of just being able to live your life often times the hero is defined by their methods by the rules that they hold themselves to so giving them a reason that those methods don't work anymore can break them like the doctor's moral code prevents him from saving people that he desperately wants to because they're meant to die according to the laws of time being good means constantly putting his loved ones in danger and he is fed up with it at this point these stories are often less about the draw of evil than they are about the cost of being good a cost that someone no matter how good they are might not be willing to pay these stories are so often about how much our moral codes are worth how far we can be pushed Psych Al before we too crack or even more than that how we psychologically justify changing our moral code and where that line is for us to slip from hero to anti-hero to villain not just in your characters but where we actually think ourselves would end up we as readers and audiences because people rarely think they're doing evil they think they're defending loved ones or they're getting Justice or they're just taking what they deserve and and sometimes the pressure to be a certain way to be the perfect hero can end up making people break if you have to HDE your flaws or suffer in silence like people often expect the hero too and It ultimately makes them crack Heroes can be these mythological figures up there in the sky somewhere right but real people are not mythological figures in discussing the story of ipus as this kind of Fallen tragic hero Sigma Freud said idip Us's Destiny moves us only because it might have been ours and fallen heroes do often feel forced into the circumstances they are forced to do what they have to even if that's just a way to absolve them of their own responsibility right but that's kind of what we do as humans right we too could be edus but all of this is why it so often feels cathartic to watch a hero fall just as often as it is tragic as terrible as that sounds to say like in Joker Arthur starts out struggling with his mental health with trying to be a good person in a broken world because he truly believes being a good person will get him what he truly wants the acceptance of others some semblance of control that inner turmoil is why we empathize with him it's the core of the film and we want him to find that acceptance that relief and then what do you get I don't when you cross AER from Arthur's point of view giving into violence and becoming The Joker Is him taking control of his life it is him getting the acceptance of others we see him dancing in the streets he's more at ease than ever before he's even happy because he finally stopped trying to be a good person he stopped fighting that losing battle it's not excusing his actions but Joker is more about that institutional critique that the happiness for many people at the bottom is directly opposed to what Society generally gives them but there is this catharsis in allowing a character to fail to get them something that they truly want and even more than that that we think they truly deserve that was unjustly taken from them for the doctor it's the fact he can finally save people who deserve to live this whole episode gives us some of the best side characters we've ever seen in Doctor Who he doesn't have to watch people die over and over anymore it's giving him agency it's giving him control in fact the music playing when he has this moment right it is called time Lord Victorious he's finally winning after losing for so long for Lucas stellin it's Justice for child abandonment for Jinx and Arcane it means no longer being in this wretched conflict with herself over who she is whether she's the powder VI wants her to be she has changed too much lost too much and simply wants to be who she is now these stories show us the pain of being good over and over so this dark path while tragic it's still satisfying to see their inner conflict resolved to give them a degree of Peace we feel their own conceptually this is often because the strengths or nature of a character is at odds with their goals or their weaknesses are perfectly set up to Make Them Fall the more tension between these things the more cathartic it will be and you can do this from the planning stage right and design your characters on that fundamental level these stories don't just interrogate what it is to be good or bad but why we do good and if you challenge those reasons then whether they're doing good or bad matter is a lot less because it's the reasons we empathize with but these stories are often so painful as well because of that Cath asers the Divergence between what we know they want what they deserve what they need and what they're doing if your protagonist finds them up against a Fallen Hero especially one who wants the same things as them love acceptance agency then the Fallen Hero can represent what falling would mean for your protagonist what could get them what we kind of Desperately want for them an easier way for them to get it now in the books Daenerys is ostensibly pretty heroic no slavery no cruelty no bad stuff right she wants a just world but she also wants power her Birthright the iron throne and her story is about the cost the compromises of that Morality In a broken world and the conflict between those two desires those desires are at odds and becoming a Fallen Hero giving into that could give her one of them it could give her the Iron Throne it could give her slav Bay but it will not give her the other now let's be honest the show did this poorly but the books you know when they're finished so don't just think about who your Fallen Hero is but consider consider what they might represent to another character who might want the same thing as them how they reflect and embrace the strengths and weaknesses of other characters now these parallels between the hero and Fallen Hero often end up with that we're not so different you and I even as a point of in a conflict and tension with a hero might be tempted to do similar things to the villain but also like these scenes are often really dumb because the hero and villain might have like a similar backstory they were both abandoned when they were young or something but one of them thinks being the genocidal apocalypse bringer as a valid choice and the hero does not and so if they're like getting into this crisis of like ah maybe we are similar it's always like come on really if you want this beat to really land there's got to be more than a superficial similarity between your hero and Fallen Hero a genuine possibility that the hero might be like them in some way and some stories go far enough to actually make this true and in these scenes the heroes realize they have fallen in some way and that realization can be a galvanizing force in their character AR either for the good or worse this is kind of what happens to Kratos and God of War and man bent on Justice and revenge against cruel Gods but whose brutal and violent actions make things so much worse that he ends up becoming the villain and this kind of in the end motivates him to be different not to pass that violent streak onto his son a trus of course sometimes they fall not because we live in a society or For Love or for Honor or agency or whatever sometimes they just fall because they want power and they actually want to be evil and for lust and greed not for good reasons now I'm going to give spoilers for the manga berserk so if you don't want spoilers skip to this time stamp 3 to 2 1 all right berserk features this to a truly terrifying degree when one of the most heroic characters in the series basically becomes an evil God and sacrifices everyone around them to get power because they want Power secretly all the time all of it beyond that they wanted power and his name is Griffith and he's known as the Falcon of light he's meant to be the greatest hero across the whole continent in a world which is incredibly dark and that story be is structured more for the Twist and the Shar than it is playing on our empathy for this character the emotional weight comes not from the tragedy of this desire at odds with one another or anything like that or the catharus of it it's not them finally getting something we want for them it's just the horror of how it affect the characters around them at the loss of this person basically and this is especially painful when the Fallen Hero is the lynchpin of the group The Paragon the characters so many others around them rely on psychologically Griffith turns and it kind of breaks everyone around him but it's also important to think about what the hero falling says in your story thematically Heroes aren't just good people they can represent ideas symbolically the best of humanity truth justice the American way and when they fall what does it say about those ideas you might have heard of that Infamous Captain America comic where it turns out Captain America's evil he's part of Hydra hail Hydra and all that and a lot of people kind of hated this because it felt like betraying the values he represented Captain America is this mythological Beacon of Hope meant to inspire others and he's someone truly honest genuine empathetic and is that a lie now is America built on a lie should we stop striving to be like Captain America Hero's turning evil shatter the faith that we or the characters have in the institution or rules that they represent this kind of character twist and betrayal and pain might fit in a grim dark story like berserk but it doesn't necessarily fit for something like Captain America because in berserk the Thematic messaging is very intentional the faure of human nature is a constant theme fro falling at the end of The Lord of the Rings taking the ring for himself is tolken speaking to the inherent fall of human nature that nobody no matter how good can hold out against evil forever it's very much weaving in his Catholic world world view it's no secret that fallen heroes often show up in prequels because who doesn't want to see her a favorite villain turn genocidal and these kind of stories often play with dramatic irony this is where we as the readers as the audience know something about what's going to happen about the story and the characters don't and the story plays with that for tension seeing how close and intimate and genuine obiwan and Anakin's friendship is how truly heroic Anakin can be how Obi-Wan sees him as a son how Anakin sees him as a father how Anakin tells Palpatine his fate will be the same as ours it makes no how far Anakin will fall more heartbreaking it takes us to that height but only because it knows that it's going to rip it from us and we know it will be ripped from us like I'm not saying the prequels are great I'm not a big Star Wars person but I think one of the things the prequels did well was that friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin it's like the thing that you get attached to it's why their final dual is painful it's almost less about seeing a hero fall at that point than it is the fracture of this relationship and makes it so much more intimate and personal and the more attached we get the more we know we're going to lose so consider not just how devastating the turn might be but what it's going to do to the characters around them and what that says thematically in your story but how do you actually do the fall the turn well foreshadowing is often really useful now I've got a whole video on foreshadowing link up in the corner go watch that uh that goes into more detail but one of the common ones you'll see is a pre scene that I want to discuss this is a scene before the fall which foreshadows the way in which they're going to fall or an action that they will take that will lead to it allowing them to exhibit their flaws in a less important but definitely their way in John langan's the Fisher a fantastic modern cosmicar Noel by the way Dan tragically loses his wife and child and turns to these old fishing myths as a kind of reprieve a way to escape his misery and early on in the story we learn about him still seeing their faces everywhere he looks the trucks grow like a great set of chrome teeth grinning at him as it prepared to take a bite out of his life whatever was on that screen was replaced by Sophie's face turning away from him her mouth opening to make a sound Dan had never heard this beat foreshadows his later tragic fall where he starts to see his wife and child in the faces of these strange creatures from another world creatures defined by their hideous teeth who in turn try to devour him his intense desire to see them again altering how he perceives reality coming up in a small way before a big much more consequential way later on and these prec scenes don't have to be big of course it can just be them stealing something small like whatever or uh going a little bit too far at one point uh often in ways which are inconsequential or have very few consequences that allow them to sort of accept it as a part of themselves it's just something that's pretty fine it allows that Flor to take root to be accepted as okay and it's going to come out more and more and more and bigger and bigger ways until there are big consequences and it can be really interesting when that same thing is portrayed as a positive trait before something that we should admire especially if them doing the wrong thing has positive outcomes but you'll see Fallen Hero Stories are lited with moments like this moments where the hero faces choices choices not just to do good or bad but to do good for bad reasons or in bad way ways or to do bad for good reasons or in good ways or to do bad for understandable forgivable reasons these stories ask us how far we're willing to go with this character when does it become inexcusable when does it no longer become heroic but just as much as these stories are about what makes us fall to the dark side they're also about what holds us to the light and with that in mind I want to compare two scenes Anakin killing the Tuscan Raiders and qara going after yonr in avatar The Last de Bender um now to be clear I don't actually think the tuskan Raider scene is actually very good but I'm using it as an example here cuz I know a lot of people are famili with it in both cases these characters are looking to avenge the death of their mothers both are fiercely protective of those they love these are positive heroic traits both have access to powerful magical abilities others might consider unnatural and both have anger issues which has a recurring flaw for both of them but with Katara doesn't kill yonr Anakin H so why it's not as simple as just saying well Qatar is a beta person like yeah that is the case but it's not as simple as that on a writing level we got to think about how the authors set up these moments the conscious structural decisions they made to make these moments make sense bringing your character to their lowest point and asking them which direction they will go is fundamentally forcing them to figure out their most important principles placing them in a position where they have every justification every opportunity every right to do the bad thing or the good thing right shows who they are on a fundamental level it's easy to be good when it's easy when your emotions align with it when it's what you want anyway but here there's no institution forcing them to be good or justifying what they're doing no friends holding them back these are what we're going to call scenes of maximal agency where literally everything that happens in the scene is down to them and only them and they're really important in both of these scenes the victims are virtually defenseless helpless they have all of the power they have every justification but it goes different ways these scenes often appear at the end of the second act or just at the lowest point your character faces but they can appear anytime throughout the story really in Anakin scene we see he is fundamentally driven by Revenge Justice power and yes love these are the thing he goes to at his lowest point the story constantly reinforces and rewards Anakin for his Initiative for his decisiveness for his ferocity as a warrior and yeah for his violence as a Defender as a Justice bringer while the story repeatedly reinforces qara as a Healer as full of Rage but also optimistic empathetic to a fault with multiple precin of qara stopping others from doing a similar thing in the past in Anakin's case his narratively reinforce strengths ferocity violence power align with his desires here to kill the Raiders while hara's narratively reinforced strengths empathy love righteousness are at odds with her desires to kill yonr all of which have been previously established but you can use your scenes of maximal agency to reveal the imperfections of your character even if they don't fall entirely like qara is not purely morally good she is vengeful and unforgiving in fact she even uses blood bending a dark power to get her to this point and that ambiguity can actually be a really fun thing to play with your hero wanting to do the bad thing to kill but not being able to bring themselves to even even if they can't articulate why but on some fundamental level there is a more important principle than revenge for her than power for her killing is not who she is so think about what values your story narratively reinforces in your characters and how you can use those to foreshadow and draw out to the scenes where they fall or don't fall the more you reward negative traits the more tense these scenes are going to be because we actually think they might choose wrong and consider what keeps people doing good or evil in the case of a Fallen Hero in a Redemption Arc is it a mentor a friend a strong moral code the expectations of others the rewards they get for being good the more you strip away the infrastructure of why people do good the more you see who they are on kind of a fundamental level but there's also a common problem with Fallen Hero characters all right just because they have a tragic B story and they would kill a few people sure right understandable does not mean that suddenly they hate democracy and uh would kill everyone and like torturing the babies for fun finally there is one little subse of fall in her as I want to talk about these are people who have fallen away from the good but they're not entirely evil maybe they're a Hermit they're just not definitively on the good side anymore they're no longer fighting for the institutions that they started out for they're no longer the hero on the front lines they're jaded and cynical and they might be neutral and not helpful but they're not necessarily evil they've fallen from lawful good but only to True neutral and not like chaotic evil they can still be used to criticize institutions or Societies or to represent uh other options or to reflect your hero in some way but they're a bit more subtle you've probably got a favorite Fallen Hero in mind but don't just tell me down in the comments tell me over on the Discord that's where the community is it's all free it's open the link is down below uh check it out you're welcome everyone is welcome there uh and also if you're up for it go check out my patreon a couple bucks a month it means a lot um it really does keep the channel float it lets me make the content that I know you guys want to see uh educational content is really where my heart is at and I love being able to provide this for free I love being able to provide it in a way that is accessible to everyone it's meant to be a resource and I'm so glad that I'm able to do that thank you if you are supporting me really does mean a lot there's about a thousand of you over there it um is you know one of the most important things in my life let's drag all this together falling down into a summary all right first fallen heroes often represent real institutional societal problems the protagonists have to reckon with consider how defeating them is not the same as solving those problems two fallen heroes also often reflect the real flaws of your protagonist and show what they could have by giving into them three the Fallen Hero story can be about the cost of being good and this is why they're often cathartic seeing the hero get something we feel they deserv after suffering for so long four consider how a hero's strengths or nature are at odds with their goals or how their weaknesses fit into the opportunities within the story five if you want to parallel your hero or villain give them substantial similarities even potentially using their similarities to motivate change in a character six keep in mind what a character represents and what their fall might say thematically sometimes the pain comes less from the fall and more about how it fix the other characters around them seven a prean can establish character traits and foreshadow later changes litter the story with choices and different contexts with different Stakes reasonings and moral problem often culminating in a scene of maximal agency eight in your scene of maximal agency consider how your characters narratively reinforce strengths and weaknesses oppose or align with their desires in that scene and that is US patreon Discord I hope your stories are going well I hope you're feeling okay uh let me know how you've been down in the comments below uh and what you're writing and all that sort of stuff I'd love to hear it I'll try and be down in the comments for a bit uh stay nerdy and I will see you in the future ah I filmed it in the wrong Rao