This is MJ Muñoz. You are listening to Story Over Everything, the chronicles of an author, artist, and analyzer.
This recording is being made October 21st, 2022.
You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Today, I will be live writing a prompt that goes like this. What makes a dark hero shine?
But first, let's track my progress.
So progress on projects is I'm still working on the Grow Bug series.
I am going to just let you know that I
did not make any further progress on Grow Bug Book 1 and
Grow Bug Book 2 is completed and Books 3 through 5 need to be worked on. But I will not be getting to that
just yet. I'm gonna take this piecemeal and go one by one and finish the thumbnails for Book 1 that I'll move on to
Book 2. Then I'll finish the outline for Book 3 and then
write it, then go and make the thumbnails. So it's gonna be, I guess,
draft or creating the draft in whatever fashion, then
polishing it with editing and going back over and proofreading and just making sure I like it. And then after that, I'll do text descriptions.
That's right, and then thumbnails. So it's yeah, that's it. Anyway, so
next week, so I'm one week late on getting my thumbnails made.
Well, maybe technically I'm two weeks late, but I'm just gonna say for now. I'm one week late as of 10-21. So
hopefully 10-28 I will have those thumbnails done. That's the plan.
So that's what I'm going to be working on. That's the action I'm supposed to take next week or over the course this next week
is to get those taken care of.
So
that's, yeah, like I said, that's that. I follow up stuff to do that
I will not be able to do until I'm done with at least Grow a Bug Book 1
and I will address that at the time. So and by done, I mean me done, me being done with the thumbnails and then
because then I will then contact the artists again and work with them to see what exactly we're gonna do. Stuff on the book,
sorry, on the back burner is
MTM, the breastfeeding book, and
the Dragon book is completely on the shelf on hold for now and I'll take it off later.
I
did not get to write anything this week. I
didn't do any drawings either. The thumbnails would have been my drawings this week. I think that counts and I
was able to watch and analyze three shows which I'm going to discuss each of them in
the
Lessons Learned section, which is coming up right now actually.
Here we go. Lessons Learned from Don Brothers 33.
Appreciate your editors and creative guides. It has been said that those who cannot do teach,
I can imagine someone saying those who cannot write, edit, or produce, or even heaven forfend, analyze.
Haruka is in a slump and Soniza, her enemy, fan, and now editor,
or chief editor, has sharply criticized her further creative work, despite loving her debut manga, First Love Hero.
Haruka says she is still in a slump and he encourages her to push through and be her best creative self.
She graciously accepts that correction and takes it to heart.
So should, or, and you should do that too, as should I. So that's that's pretty much it.
And what were the lessons that I learned from
Episode 12 of Futopi? I would say it's find ways to balance out wins and losses for your heroes.
I famously dislike Shotaro from Combinator Double. Philip is the better half of Double,
and I like so much about him. Seeing Shotaro recognize and take a loss in this finale
gives me reasons to like him as a growing character and root for him to have a comeback as a hero.
This is my Lessons Learned segment from Combinator Geed's Episode 7.
Your hero does not have to be likable.
They can even be unlikable and still be enjoyable to watch in their world. Ace embodies this in Combinator Geed's.
How does it work?
Why do I like him despite his prickly aspects? He wins.
He does cool things to win, the actor is charismatic, and there seems to be more going on with him,
which either justifies him manipulating other players, or makes a decent excuse for it.
Does an audience want to believe in someone? Is that just me? I may not have
extracted a tactic or technique, but I think these questions
I'm asking are putting me closer to where I need to be to craft characters that people want more of.
Okay, so now I'm going to move on to the Fabula Ex Machina section, where I
brainstorm and draft out loud a little bit. But first, I'm going to go ahead and give you some background,
because this is a little bit of a special circumstance, but I'll describe it as I go. So here we are.
First, some background. I like some of the darker, edgier stuff.
I used to be really into it as a kid, and have grown out of it for the most part.
I thought an antihero was someone dark and edgy, and I think I came by that understanding
after first encountering Giver 2, Dark Hero. That phrase, concept, idea hit me like a ton of bricks.
Seeing Giver looking so cool on the VHS box art, and reading that title, it
cemented in my mind what a cool hero, a dark hero, an antihero is.
I did some research and found out that my understanding was quite lacking on the matter, and
I made a playlist linked below to better understand the concept. So based on
going through, I don't know, lots of videos,
I learned myself, I taught myself
through the use of YouTube University,
not all about antiheroes, but a, you know, good, solid introduction on antiheroes, and then my familiarity with, you know,
media generally, you know, TV shows, and
some literature as well has helped me, and I think I have a pretty good grasp.
But I'll just let you know that there are
varying lists of antiheroes,
but I like this list of five, which it appeared in a couple different places, so I'll go with that.
There's the classic antihero, the knight in sour armor, the pragmatic, the unscrupulous, and the hero in name only.
I think I tend towards pragmatic. As a kid, I was bugged that the Power Rangers didn't just squash read as monsters
with the Megazord right away. That never made sense to me.
I also thought Batman should have just shot and killed Joker in the Dark Knight,
especially because he was already shooting bullets at him, you know, like to kill him with deadly intent.
You don't aim a gun at anything unless you're willing to destroy it or kill it, so, you know, that doesn't make sense.
And I also watched Michael Keaton's Batman Kill People as a kid, and I didn't realize that Batman doesn't kill is one of his
ethics, and I don't really get it, but whatever. Like, I can see Superman not killing,
and I'm okay with Spider-Man not killing, but I don't think Spider-Man says, I don't kill.
I just think he like usually doesn't have to kill people, and therefore he doesn't, so yeah.
I don't know. Seems odd. Seems odd to me. Anyway, below is a list of characters
I think of as fitting the mold of an antihero, based on my new understanding of what it actually is,
not just what I thought it was, not just a dark edgy guy.
I don't think it is entirely accurate, but they were top of mind when I was working on this, so
I will mention just a few now, and you can go to the show notes to read the full list if you want to,
and I will take about ten minutes later, or, you know, after this to come up with a little bit of a story
for an original antihero of my own, who goes by Skull, because he's dark and edgy, and he has a tragic history.
So, again, Sean Barker is Giver from Giver 2, Dark Hero, and one of the things that he says is that
the Giver kills, the armor, the alien armor kills, it's not him that's killing people, because he,
in the beginning, he fights these guys who are drug dealers, they're like smuggling cocaine, I think,
and I can't remember if they actually murder a security guard, or they are like beating them, and they're going to kill him,
they're going to murder him, and Sean somehow knows this is happening, and he shows up and he transforms into Giver,
or maybe he's already transformed into Giver when he gets there, and he beats the tar out of these guys,
and he, I'm pretty sure he kills a few of them, he's, at least he's superhuman, and he's extremely brutal with these guys,
so if he didn't kill them, he very much severely injured them, which, one of my things about Batman is like,
I don't kill people, I just break all their bones, it's like, well, I mean, you're basically killing them,
but then again, I'm so funny about that concept that if you don't allow somebody to work, or the whole cancel culture thing,
I feel like it's almost killing someone, you may as well murder somebody if you're going to drive them out of town,
and enable them to, or disable them from ever having a job or anything like that, and I know, that's kind of worse in some ways,
like, you know, the sweet release of death as opposed to living in a hovel or something might be welcome, I don't know,
I don't know, but just the thought I have, but yeah, Batman doesn't kill, but he utterly brutalizes, shatters people's bones and stuff,
I don't know how I feel about that, it's just kind of funny, kind of contradictory, but in the Giver anime,
which I watched after watching the movie, there was Agito Makishima, and he's a very cool character,
voiced by none other than the gravelly Steve Blum, which, is that, is he Steve Blum or is he Steve Blumenthal?
I can't remember, I think he's, yeah, Steve Blum is what he's mostly credited as, but you'll know him from such things as
Zev from Star Wars Rebels, and as Afro Guy who smokes from that one show, oh, Cowboy Bebop, which I didn't really like,
but we don't need to talk about that right now, and he was Black Org Raymon in Digimon Frontier, he was, not Uekawa,
he was, I can't remember the guy's name, the Hypnos guy from Digimon Tamers, he's got a great voice, he's been in a bunch of stuff,
but I don't like him because of the voice specifically, I like him because he's this more extreme version of the Giver,
the main protagonist has a nice bluish-green armor, and while he is killing monsters who are attacking his friends,
he is always acting in self-defense, so, I mean, maybe, show is an anti-hero, really, in the true definition of it,
because he's like, unsure of himself, and he's a little weak, and I don't know if he's conventionally attractive or not,
but he seems like he's not too popular with the ladies, and he might just be your average Joe, and then he's thrust into this role,
well, he's thrust into the armor, well, anyway, it doesn't matter, all the details don't really matter,
but he's an earnest hero, but he's an anti-hero, much like somebody who I'll talk about in a little bit,
and despite the fact that he's a brutal, cutting people's arms off, and not people, monsters, people who transform into monsters,
he's cutting them up and lasering them and all these things, he's always doing it in an act of self-defense,
and he only transforms into the Guyver when he has to, when he's threatened, he never uses it for personal gain or anything like that,
so he's like, straight-laced, but he's this ultra-violent hero, because he's facing ultra-violent foes,
whereas Guyver III, Makishima, seems to, one, enjoy the violence and bloodshed, two, be happy to deal death,
like, for instance, there's one episode where there's a whole town that I think has been turned into zoonoids against their will,
I don't know if that's the monsters in Guyver, I don't know if people ever get turned into zoonoids according to their will or not,
but whatever, like if you're recruited, and like, oh, we're going to turn you into a superhuman, but regardless,
he wipes out an entire village or town, and he says basically, like, I think in the dove, he dramatically says, you know,
it's for the hereafter to judge them now, or something, that's my Steve Blue, it's not very good, but I like it, anyway,
and he's basically like, look, I'm going to kill them, I'm going to let God sort it out, because I think they were turned into monsters against their will,
and they were going to murder all of us if I didn't stop them, so I did what I had to do, I'm pragmatic, you know, so he was the pragmatic hero, right?
But also, like, in the other, there was a secondary adaptation of the Guyver manga into an anime, and in that one, he seems,
well, in the original one, he seems like he wants to take over Kronos, which is the evil organization that makes the monsters,
but it almost seems as if in the second anime, which I believe is more faithful to the manga, that he also has all these ulterior motives,
and he's basically using a show, and he gets him seriously injured in order to have an exploit so that they can take out Kronos,
but it's like, that's really bad, dude, you should have done that, anyway, that's enough time talking about them, just a quick mention of Raphael,
he's angry, he's irritable, he's not very nice, but, you know, he loves his brothers more than anything, or, I mean, more than them,
he loves his dad, and he wants to do what's right, and he's been trained to hone his anger, or to, like, channel his anger and his rage,
and all this dark emotion that he has to do the right thing, you know, thanks to Master Sweater, so that's a real strong one.
I like, I notice in a lot of Japanese stuff, like actual stuff from Japan, not like Ninja Turtles, which is inspired by Japanese stuff, sort of,
that there's, like, a hot-blooded hero, like the red Power Ranger or Super Sentai guy, and then there's, like, the blue or the black or whatever,
in Digimon, you've got Tai, who's the hot-blooded guy, and then you have Matt, who isn't technically a dark hero, he's, like, a loner,
and he withdraws, he's very emotional, very moody, but he also is very thoughtful, he especially thinks about his little brother TK a lot,
and tries to make sure that they don't do anything as a group that's going to endanger the weaker among them.
There's a little bit of, like, a dark side to that, but, like, he's an anti-hero because he doesn't want to act, he wants to be as reactive as possible, I would say,
and he doesn't embody, like, the bold, let's go out there and have an adventure, he's like, let's stay safe, let's be calm, let's be cool, you know,
I don't want anybody getting hurt, that kind of thing, versus, like, Tai is a more proactive hero, I'd say traditional class, more of a classic hero,
where he's bold and adventurous and he wants to go out there and do these things, although it's a little murky.
Maybe in some ways Tai's an anti-hero, but if he is an anti-hero, he's an anti-hero who thinks he's a hero, whereas Matt, I think,
wouldn't think of himself as a hero, except for after he's proven himself, so, like, older Matt from Digimon Season 2 would think that.
Oh, Yosuke Yurameshi from Yu-Hakusho is definitely an anti-hero of the grumpy hero variety.
He's irascible, he's crabby, he does inappropriate things, he's a punk, he fights kids for fun because he has emotional issues,
but ultimately he does the right thing, and, like, he grows into such a beautiful character, he has such a beautiful character arc,
throughout the course of the hundred and whatever episodes of Yu-Hakusho, the anime, I'd never read the manga, so I couldn't say, but I'm sure it's from the same thing.
Ash from Army of Darkness is, like, a weak, cowardly man who's put into situations where he has to rise above,
and he sort of does it in the worst way possible, so he's definitely an anti-hero.
I don't know that I want a character like that, but I think he's interesting.
Peter Parker, Spider-Man, is definitely an anti-hero because he has so much trouble and he has that lack of confidence.
Kamen Rider, I would say maybe he's an anti-hero because he had these things thrust upon him, Takeshi Hongo, he had these things thrust upon him,
he had his body changed against his will, and he uses that and the pain that he suffers from being a cyborg and no longer a normal human who can never, you know, have a...
Well, he has friends, but it's more complicated than that.
Like, I don't think he could ever have a lover or have a family or anything like that.
So, like, part of him is dead and he has to, you know, fight against shockers, cyborgs in order to protect people.
And to me, there's an anti-hero thing to him.
Like, I think it's... He's not, like, grumpy, though, because he's very positive and he's very happy.
He might just be a reluctant hero, which is another anti-hero type person, but, like, he's a good-looking guy and he's really smart and he's responsible,
and he's got all these other heroic traits, so maybe he is more of a classic hero than anything else.
I think Batman is more of a classic hero, too, but then again, I only know him from the movies, not from the comics so much, so I couldn't really say.
Wataru and Otoya Kuronei, father and son, or I said the son first, then the father, from Combinator Kiva, are definitely anti-heroes.
Wataru is afraid of the outside world when the show starts.
He has these abilities, but he has no confidence and he doesn't know what he's doing, whereas Otoya is selfish.
He's a braggart. He's got a lot of problems. He's got a lot of character flaws, but he does the right thing, ultimately, and it's not that he chooses to do wrong.
It's just he cares more about and is wrapped up in himself more than anything, and that causes him to make certain decisions.
I'm going to throw out a weird one from the Bible. Samson, I believe, is an anti-hero because while he does good things and he does great things,
like a Greek hero character, he also visits prostitutes and he marries foreign women, which wasn't supposed to be done in Israel,
and he does these things that are counter to what Israel should be doing, his fellow Israelites, but in that he's able to provoke the Philistines around them,
and then when they attack he massacres them and kills them.
The idea is that's good because they were oppressing the people of Israel, I guess specifically people from the tribe of Dan in that area.
I don't know about all of Israel. The book of Judges, yeah, is very hard to grasp what's happening where, and I need a chart and graphs to figure it all out,
but I would definitely call him an anti-hero.
Then the last one, who I think is the most unlikely of all, is Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit, and it's because he isn't a big man.
He isn't muscly, he isn't strong, he does do some sword fighting against bugs, against the giant spiders and stuff,
but he's also a reluctant hero and he lacks the other heroic traits, like I mentioned, but he does the right thing and he wants to do the right thing.
Actually, I think I like him better than Frodo. In fact, I think I like The Hobbit better than I like Lord of the Rings,
but maybe because they're two very different stories and I'm more into the story being told by The Hobbit than Lord of the Rings, but whatever.
I think Bilbo's a great anti-hero, and now that I know he's an anti-hero, I can understand, because it didn't make sense to me quite,
why do we have these characters as the heroes? I sort of got it in Fellowship or in the Lord of the Rings series,
but when I read The Hobbit, I originally didn't really get it, but now that I know he's an anti-hero and he was used as an archetype by somebody talking about anti-heroes in this playlist,
I thought, oh yeah, that totally checks out. I can see why that is. So there was a really interesting video by somebody who's a little...
I can see having disagreements with them, but I like the bulk of their analysis on heroes and anti-heroes, like heroes and amorphous thing they were saying,
and heroes are more based on the ideals of the society they come from, therefore anti-heroes are going to be...
...counter, basically, or outside of the normative...they're going to be outside of the ideal, they're going to be on the outer edges,
which makes a lot of sense why you'd have smugglers and gunslingers and outlaws and things like that, like Robin Hood, for example, be anti-heroes,
because they do good things, or they do things for the right reason, but they do bad things, right? That's kind of the idea, but that could be smoking, that could be being gay, that could be whatever.
And I'm neither endorsing nor condemning either of those, I'm just saying. Wow, I have a great joke I could make right now if I didn't want to be a jerk.
Or if I was okay being a jerk, but I don't want to be mean and petty, so I'm not going to make a joke, but it's a good one.
Anyway, so yeah, that's some of my thoughts and impressions on anti-heroes. Those are some anti-heroes that I have liked in various pieces of fiction throughout the years,
and just a little bit about them and why I do think they fall into the category of anti-hero, but I'm not going to name the categories that they all fall into, because I think that would just be too laborious.
So I'm going to pause and I'll come back in a couple seconds and I will go ahead and write on my prompt, which is, what makes a dark hero shine?
And I'm going to need spoilers. The answer is that they have to have darker villains that they're fighting in order to make them shine, but I'll get into it.
Okay, so going into this prompt, I'm thinking of a character whose code name is Skull, and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to convey what I want to convey in this right now.
So here's my best effort for the next 10 minutes. I think I got the angle here. Here I go.
I know exactly how a creature like this thinks, because not long ago, I was just like it.
Hungering and thirsting for power for any scrap I could get to have one over my fellow man and worst of all, my malevolent cohorts.
The creature will seek out the weakest prey it can find.
I say creature with a bit of disdain, but I must apologize to all creatures everywhere, for to call a man such as this a creature is an insult to our lesser brethren.
While it is true that every predator seeks its prey, there is one principal way in which the most vicious of beasts is better than a man.
Driven by instinct, the most ferocious hunter will seek out its prey, dispatch them, and feast on the bounty they have attained.
They may share it with their pack, their mate, their cubs, or other young. And though it may seem cruel and cold to us, the cold calculations of nature make no room for the depraved indulgences of man.
Beasts do not murder one another. Predator hunts prey.
Each day millions upon millions of players take part in the intricate dance of life, unknown by most men who simply seek to eke out an existence.
By various methods, the more industrious of us will plot and scheme and take inspiration from the natural world.
But ours is a hideous mockery of nature's elegance. Men kill in fits of jealousy and rage, drunken braggarts and foolish youths, as well as those other little and weak men who should know better.
While the greatest of us, to achieve our ends, whether they be twisted bloodlust, answering the call of avarice, or amassing power and wealth to ourselves, will plant war, sow seeds of violence,
and think little of the victims we leave behind. The focus is on the self, on the accomplishment, on the boon.
Yes, I was such a man for enough time that whatever good you may think of me now, it can never compare to the ill, the rancor that I harbored in my heart, and the vileness of my true mind.
That is why I can tell you with certainty that we have arrived at the location of this uniquely human aspect of creation, a grotesque monster shaped and formed by the darkest desire of this so-called man's heart.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, you can find more at mjmunoz.com, as well as my entire library of analysis, art, and fiction.