Welcome to the weekend! We made it to November!
I hope you're all doing well as we stumble into the colder months of the year. Now that we're heading towards the end of this very, very, very, strange year, we can finally talk about a bit more of a generalized subject not relating to said weirdness. Today, we're talking about what we really want in a story: what we really want out of art and entertainment.
Blog favorite YouTube channel, The Second Story, has been on quite the streak for some time now, digging into not just the writing industry, but also the tropes and ideas that have let it spin out into the gutter over time into what it is today. No one agree it's in a good spot now, but we also don't agree on how to fix what's wrong. So it is nice to see a place offering a real analysis that goes beyond catchphrases and cliches into one that bigger issues might be. However, this analysis is not for nothing or even really click-baiting, but in actual real attempting to steer discussion on topics no one was considering before: ones that need discussing.
Today's video subject is no different. In fact, it has more to do with a lot of The Discourse today than we might think at first.
The question of heroism in this video centers on what exactly a hero is. Mainly, it centers on how what a hero is and how it depends on the health of the very populace said stories are made for (as well as who is writing them). Whether the audience wants to read about white hats succeeding and protagonists to look up to, or whether they want to look down at the hero to give themselves a boost in their own life, all depends on the era and the times the stories are written in. In other words, "Anti-heroes" in a sense don't really exist: it's all perspective of the times and those living in them.
Stories are not propaganda, despite what some will say. Stories are a window into the times they are written, showing what the people thought and believed, and how they behaved. What they are is a time capsule of an era and place that cannot be replicated (hence why revival movements never stay still too long) or explained otherwise without context. When you read a book you are looking into a world beyond just the plot and the characters. You are connecting with a whole other space beyond even that. This is what makes writing (and all art, honestly) so fascinating.
There is more to life and art than repeating mottos for the mob of your betters in order to nod together over and be tossed approving glances. We always need to aim for more than that bare minimum. But the times we live don't want their artists to aim high. They want them to fall in line with entropy and slowly fade away.
 |
| Writing aims high. The industry? Not so much . . . |
Not to say any of this is new. Of course it isn't, there is plenty of bad art and entertainment out there, and there is much that come across as horribly dated simply for being filled with copy-pasted buzzwords, tropes, and acceptable topics of the time period it was writing. What is missing is that such art was looked down upon even at the time. All the more reason not to do it today. It didn't work then, it won't work now.
However, there did used to be alternative scenes and industries. Those have all gone away, but there is still a nostalgia for them. It has given us the illusion of more choice in a sense (as far as the mainstream goes, it was objectively better in selection and variety before), but when one looks into what the gatekeepers were trying to do it back then shows the decay over time into what it is today. We just didn't see it at the time because most of us were young or not plugged in.
It's one of the reasons so much 1980s and 1990s era art has remained so popular, even with younger generations not alive for it: people are desperate to see into a more exciting world, and the one we have now is simply not adventurous, ambitious, or hopeful. The audience want it to be but the industry will not provide that to them. Their inability to live in the present or look to the future means the only place left to dive into is the past. The loss of a monoculture and that a shared wider understanding of reality is still desired, and I'm sorry to say that they cannot get that in modern art regardless of how good it is. You can still get attention saying Lord of the Rings sucks; you won't get any saying King Leper is amazing. They want to feel part of a larger conversation before anything else, including engaging in art. That's just the way it goes.
When this era is looked back on in the future it is almost certainly going to be one of confusion, like a minefield that has expended all its explosives. Why is there so much good art that was barely touched on while crusty corporate swill that expired decades previously got all the cultural discussion will certainly be a big topic. That is due to the lack of cultural cohesion of these times, and it cannot be avoided. However, it will certainly not stay this way forever. It never does.
The 2020s are half over and we still have not quite gotten a defined identity or style to set us apart, and without a monoculture we probably will not, but what we can still do is seek Truth above all and find connections that way. Through the desire for more and higher places we can come together in a more natural way, a way that can allow true flourishing in the arts. This post- Cultural Ground Zero era will probably be defined as a Dark Age of some kind, where treasures will have to be unearthed long after the fact. As it is now, it's merely a mess that cannot be cleaned up.
Then the question becomes in how one can form a defined identity to connect with audiences in this era without having any shared Truth or traits beyond surface level. It is not impossible, nothing is, but how can we even begin looking for the answers? The preview of what this will look like is reflected in the above video's discussion on anti-heroes. So much of what shapes us is dependent on the era and also shared understanding of who we are. That doesn't go away even if there is no wider culture to connect us together. As can be seen by the way we behave even in these times of atomization, we still desire that safety net. We always will.
So without such a thing being enforced from the top down or without those old peer groups that don't really exist or care about each other anymore, where would it then be formed today? Where would it even come from, and is there a way out?
There is, but it's not an easy or satisfying answer. In fact, it's kind of a cliche one to suggest, not that we'll hold that against it. Sometimes the truth is really that obvious.
 |
| Standards like this benefit no one. |
There is something to be said about not worrying too hard about the outside world when writing or creating. After all, there is not much you can change or effect, so why worry about it? All you can do is what you can do, and not much else.
This is true. What you can do is limited, and you should never forget that. We all have things we want to do, and ambitions above us, however we need to remember we're a part of this, not above or beyond it. We're not Futurians: we don't have to mutate and die.
However, we still live in this world. We are still affected by it, we still react to it, we try to understand it, and we try to see where it's all going. All of that is unavoidable when creating art, even if the piece is deliberately ignoring all those questions in order to reject the discussion. This isn't political, social, or religious: it's just how art itself works. Art is all those things, and none of them, at once. To pick the process apart further is how you get propaganda, and how you lose audiences. All we want is to find a way this all comes together in a way that makes sense relative to the era we live in.
This isn't a call to tell anyone how to create, because that makes no sense. Part of what makes art so great is seeing how others approach certain subjects and ideas with their own angle or thoughts on the subject. Anyone who insists on rules around the creative process itself, or on what can and cannot be addressed in the creation, does not care about art itself.
Despite that, we also aren't in the 20th century anymore. It must be repeated until it finally sinks in. Wholesale rehashing of ideas and tropes from over a quarter of a century ago in an attempt to ignore the way things are now only works if you have something to add to the conversation of the world we live in. This is why old IPs are dying: their time and place has passed and their relevance cannot be replicated, especially when the creators themselves are either gone or uninterested in anything beyond their checkbook. There is nothing there anymore, and no matter who gives their "interpretation" of said properties to make them "relevant" to today, it can't change that reality. Those days are gone, and they cannot be replicated or relived. We have to find new paths.
But you already know that. We all know that. The path now is in choosing what future we will have next. What kind of hero are we going to be? What will we see as the anti-hero in this new era? Exciting times are ahead of us, and we still have yet to finally reach them.
It'll only happen when we finally choose a future worth having. That is going to happen sooner than we might think, but it's not something we should ever stop aiming for regardless of the end result. We're always going to want more. Hopefully this time it's the right kind of more we decide to aim for. We're about due!
The 2026 lineup for Cirsova as been announced, and I will be a part of it with my story Infinite Alley! Come see the full lineup here!
