Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "heroes"

I enjoy character-based stories and the sort of active and personable characters involved in those. They tend to drive the plot with their desires, aspirations, and dreams - and even when they don't, even when they're bound to the winds of fate, they're sufficiently three-dimensional and developed, with feelings and relationships and woes, for you to feel for them and hope things'll get better for them.

So when I found myself writing a story with a main character that had none of these traits, a blank slate simply content to go along where the plot told her to go, with no friends or personal connections whatsoever... my first instinct was to of course correct all this. I wanted to flesh her out, give her some backstory and people to care for. But this instinct passed quickly, as I got another idea: what if I left her a blank slate? What if I didn't develop her at all?

It felt like a weird thing to do, but the more I thought about it, the more fun I had with it. In a world - by a writer - full of fleshed-out characters, her blandness could actually be a characteristic in itself. It's not like such stories hadn't been written before. More to the point, it would give me practice.

Of course then I would have to make sure the setting - the world around her - was interesting enough to maintain the reader's attention, and I might also need to think about the plot more than I usually do. I can think of two famous examples with relatively underdeveloped main characters - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Alice in Wonderland - and both of them made sure their worlds were weird. I can't match them, for sure, but I can give it an honest try.

This is probably not universal for me, but I notice that in this particular story I've developed something of a priority on who holds the point of view in a given scene. Now that I've realized this fact, it's given me something to think about - and write about.

It goes something like...
Supporting characters > Minor antagonists > Main protagonist > Primary antagonist
A very short list - from the most likely to the least likely, usually in relation to who is present in the scene right now. Generally speaking, the second-rightmost present is the one whose eyes we're seeing it all through.

First, you've got all the minor folks, the support roles, and the victims of villainy, who hold on to the P.O.V. ball. Through their eyes and thoughts the reader gets to hear about their woes, about what's going on, and about these bad guys throwing their weight around. These early villains seem powerful and insurmountable.

Then the hero shows up. All mysterious and awesome, ready to aid the downtrodden and punish the wicked. And so we climb the ladder up by one rung, as the view switches to these minor petty lords and what have you: they're beginning to wonder, and doubt themselves, and fear. Through their eyes, the reader is introduced to the hero, and gets to see him perform, learn a little bit of him, but never truly to know him, maintaining his mystery.

Once these villains are dispatched, we drop back to the lower rung: the rescued civilians and the helpless peasants can now cheer on and wonder about this mystery fellow themselves. As he sticks around (if he does) and befriends these people, they get to learn more of him, pick up facets of his personality, hear his tragic backstory. Little by little, the main character is revealed to the reader.

Every once in a while we may get to see the story through the hero's eyes, when he's particuarly thoughtful or uncertain of himself, but it never really lasts... until the main antagonist enters the scene.

This guy is bad news. He's dark, and inscrutable, and intent on wrecking the lives of everybody for all time. He is unknown to us, and feared by us... and he evokes that same fear in everyone, even the hero. As these two titans clash, lesser people go to the sidelines, unable or unwilling to witness - and now we truly get to feel the hero's doubts, and struggles, and pains, through his eyes. We know him now, backstory and all, and we root for him - in essence, we are him, so of course we need to know what he thinks at all times.

When he wins, we will feel that too.

The thing I'm currently working on - Pirates of the Demure Sea - may be unclear at the outset on who the main villain even is: it has more than one character of equal status, power, and menace, each of whom might end up ascending as the ultimate threat once the other has been gotten rid of. But I'm going to follow the hierarchy outlined above, I think... planning to right now, at least. If I stick with it, it will provide you a clue.

More on the hero of The Straggler's Mask.



He's not the first of my main characters even in his setting (Aurel would hold that distinction, though there's a version of Mirari that's even older), but not only did he end up to be the first one to be published, ever since his conception the vast majority of my story ideas involve him. I guess it's his inherent underdogness – small, weak, and meek – the near-guarantee that he'll be at a serious disadvantage in almost any situation he's put, that makes it easy to write stuff about him. I like underdogs.

Peal hatched in midsummer of the year 1554, as the phase of storm was shifting to rift, under particularly inauspicious auguries. At that time an especially violent thunderstorm was rolling its way above the hills, the forests, the town of Floris, and this one bugbear burrow. Then just as the very first crack appeared in an egg, just as the shaman lit a candle so that a shadow was cast and the newborn was granted a soul - the whole tribe was shaken by the absolutely loudest thunderclap that anyone could remember, like the skies themselves were seriously angered by something no underdweller could even begin to guess.

And so he was named, Peal-Of-Peeved-Heaven. Just Peal, for short. (I don't think he's ever given his full name to anyone actually.)

To a human this may sound like a pretty cool name with a badass origin, but to a bugbear it's... well, imagine if a really awesome and well-respected seer came over when you were born, looked at her seeing stones and fish guts and what have you, then solemnly named you Blind Joe. Even though your eyes work fine. How would that make you feel? How do you think other children would take it, and how would they treat you?

Bugbears like to pride themselves for their stealth, being unseen and silent, and see these traits as the only reason they can survive or prosper in the world at all. Being named basically the antithesis of the whole thing, Peal had few friends in his childhood, and was bullied a lot. No one gave him any respect: he tried hard to be as quiet as the others, but they'd always just laugh and (falsely) claim they could hear him coming from three tunnels away. In truth he was only ever, at worst, a little bit less quiet than the rest - even that because of his insecurities and lack of encouragement.

Usually he'd timidly take all this abuse, but every once in a while his temper would blow over and he would stand up to himself... loudly. As you might imagine, this only made things worse. He got into a few fights that - being nearly always outnumbered - he was bound to lose.

One of the few exceptions to this treatment was a girl bugbear named Floe. A bit older and bigger than him or his peers, she dissuaded the others from picking on him where she could, treated his injuries, comforted him, and was generally really nice to him - a tiny glimmer of warmth in an otherwise rather gloomy life. This not only led to him developing a crush the size of a moon towards her, it had a profound impact on him that would carry on to the rest of his days.

In the emberspring of 1561, some time before his seventh birthday, a number of his peers got each other dared into going outside the burrow, having a breath of the greater world around them, and seeing their shadows. At an age equivalent to a thirteen-year-old human, Peal was pressured into joining, and Floe (who'd gone through the same dare a year before) went along with them to make sure it'd all be okay. This is where things flipped around in a way that no one could foresee and that came to have a lasting impact in not just his life, but the world as a whole.

For a reason or another, Peal was just slightly more taken by the outside world than the others, and a little bit less frightened. He lingered for a bit to look at the stars... then followed a noise, wanted to have a look at the spoils of a battlefield, and came face to face with a dying human hero that gave him the Call to Adventure.

And for all his fears and insecurities, great many desires conspired to accept this Call: he wanted to see more of the world, to get his hands to this treasure promised at the end, to show off to his peers, and to impress his crush.

(A bit of spoilers for The Straggler's Mask follow. Spoiler tags don't seem to work, for reasons I can't tell.)

He had his highs and lows.

He got to experience true and overwhelming loneliness for the first time in his life, but he also made a number of genuine lifelong friends. He got to see endless expanses of the world and even beyond it, realize that there was more to see than he could see in a thousand lifetimes - but it all also nearly got him killed more often than he could count. He learned that the magic mask of courage on him was actually not magic at all, and that the courage was inside of him the whole time. He got his share of the treasure, but by that time had learned that the true treasure he'd attained was something far more than gold or jewelry. He grew to fill the shoes of the hero everyone thought he was, and irrevocably altered the destiny of a world far greater than himself. He returned home at the back of a dragon, to the tune of Return To The Tribe by Edguy.

But it was no longer the home he'd left behind.

No one bullied him anymore. Instead, unexpectedly to him, they came to fear and detest him for all the things he'd seen and done, having truly walked the world above and returned: it's like you never left your house and then went on to spend a year in hell. He had changed: he'd become something none of them, not even Floe, could understand anymore - nor could he understand them in turn.

And he couldn't fit in any better: it felt like such a small place now, cramped and stifling, when the wide world above called for him.

He lasted for maybe a few months - through his eighth birthday - before heading on out once again. He would still visit home, every once in a while over the years - but each visit would be after a longer time than the last, and each time he'd find that they remembered less of him, having reduced him to the status of a folk hero, a cautionary tale, or even a terror in the dark, a haunter, a living shadow.




Over the years to come, Peal goes on to leave his mark into the world in many ways. His activities run the whole gamut between saving children from predators, and taking an active side in the cosmic war between the forces of Law and Chaos. He brings balance to little towns, but also has a hand in toppling entire evil empires as much as rebuilding good ones. He travels to other worlds, alternate dimensions, even the streams of time itself. The high and the mighty come to know his name, and great many of the rest can feel the impact of his deeds.

Problem is, he's not cut for the job at all.

Even having discovered his courage and confidence, it turned out that there isn't much of either in him. He's far from the tall, handsome, and mighty warrior-sorcerer that you'd typically imagine in this line of work. Put him next to his predecessor, Aurel, and he'd look like nothing at all. Indeed, it's often doubtful that he could take on as many as three thugs in a fair fight at once, let alone hordes of mooks like most other heroes could. With almost everyone he ever meets being twice his size, he's easily intimidated. He's naturally a pack creature, yet for his size and meekness - combined with him often facing prejudice for being some weird monstrous little goblin - he has a hard time making friends. Things are often tough for him, especially when he first arrives to a new place and has to tackle all the stares and what have you until he manages to get through someone.

What he needs the most, usually, is for someone to hold on to him, comfort him, and help him unwind all the mental and physical scars his many issues tend to leave behind - and like with Floe, doing so is more than likely to evoke feelings of deeper attraction, which in turn tends to lead to heartbreak. He has a terrible love life and is pretty much inherently incapable of long-term relationships: he'll grow to recognize this eventually, I think, but I'm not at all sure he will ever find a way to amend this flaw.

He adores children. They're small and harmless, and tend to take him for what he is - unburdened by expectations or preconceptions, all they see is some cuddly creature to shower with hugs and affection. Anyone that would harm a child, or knowingly put a child in harm's way, is in for a bad time: he'll pull all stops to put the fear of darkness in such heinous folk.

Really he just wants to see the world, marvel the sights, try the foods and drinks (apple juice is his favourite), befriend the locals, sample everything there is to offer to him, maybe fall in love and actually not blow it for once, instead of getting involved in all these heroics and cosmic wars. But still he persists, because he feels like he can make a stand - and therefore should. Give him some darkness and shadows to lurk in, a few friends to give support, and he'll get the job done.

If he survives, long enough for it to become too much to bear and for his body to start breaking up under him, he'll probably retire somewhere involving children. Perhaps he'll haunt a school or an orphanage somewhere.





(Art credits, in order: Chai, jemmyky, Ink-Stained Matchbox)

Warhammer 40,000 is one of the most relentlessly bleak and horrific fictional settings ever imagined. It's an endless war that dominates the entire galaxy, and has virtually every life revolving around it one way or the other. Even the afterlife was corrupted by it, many millions of years ago, completely beyond repair: the spiral into final death and darkness cannot be stopped or slowed down, and in the end they're all doomed.



This often raises a question: why then should you care? If everybody is doomed anyway, what's the point? The usual answer - it's the people, the individuals. The few precious lives whom you can save, or protect, or destroy. They're in peril, and you're in position to help. And if you do, they may live the remainder of their natural lives in relative happiness and peace and comfort. And that's something you should always cherish, and always fight for. You can't solve the grand underlying problems of the world - no one can - but you can do your share to help somebody. Every life is precious.

So now my mind drifts on: what about the opposite?

My own setting is as bright and hopeful as I can make it - a golden age of high adventure where I myself would not mind living. If a grimdark setting is a bleak reflection of our world and a reminder that things can always be better, then I guess a noblebright one is more of escapism and wish fulfillment with perhaps a dash of hope for a better future. In the former case you can't do anything to make things better in the grand scheme of things; in the latter, you don't really need to.



But we're still not looking for any sweeping great reforms: we're looking at the little folks. And because nothing can ever be perfect - especially not mankind with our flaws and sins - they're still menaced and victimized, their lives and livelihoods in danger. The reader still feels their plight, and once the hero has come around to save them, their gratitude.

I guess the takeaway here is that the setting doesn't really have too much of a relevance, in the grand scheme of things. It's big and imposing and scary, but it's the little things you want to focus on. Maybe that's no big news to anyone here, but then again... lately, Warhammer's been pulling the lens back and covering the entire setting, bringing forth grand changes and raising the stakes. Things are coming to a head. It feels like it might be End Times all over again.

And I'm really not a fan. The older I get, the tougher time I have getting into these vast, galaxy-wide conflicts. They feel... hollow.

But I also understand that Games Workshop needs to sell more models.

You've got your heroes who start out weak, and overcome their challenges by getting stronger, and just keep the cycle going until the story ends with them being the strongest around and having beaten everyone up. You've got your underdogs, who start out weak and never get stronger, and prevail by being quick and clever instead, and/or by relying on stronger friends. And you've got your supermen who are the strongest around, yet are constantly challenged by even stronger foes and higher stakes, or else the story is a power fantasy where we get to feel the thrill or hilarity as they beat things up with ease...

...or they're someone like Saitama.



He's the fastest thing around, nothing can harm him, and he famously beats all his challenges with a single, usually half-assed, punch. He's ridiculously OP - nothing can stand up to him. And yet in every other aspect of his being... he kind of sucks. He's just a regular guy. He has trouble managing his finances, isn't very good at video games, and struggles with the sheer boredom and ennui that his superpowers have brought him. It's a great juxtaposition, demonstarting that just because you possess godlike power doesn't mean your life - even mundane existence - isn't without its problems, and your godlike power might even make things worse.

Sadly, One-Punch Man is quite prone to forget its greatest strength, the superhero parody premise, and all too often devolves back into your usual stock shonen fights where enormous power and inhuman abilities duke it out. It's not bad shonen stuff, by any means, but it's kind of a missed opportunity. I'd like to see more of Saitama just trying to manage his mundane life. There was the short bit with video games once, but still.



The same story also features King, who possesses the fearsome reputation of an unbeatable hero... and only the reputation. In truth he's just a perfectly regular person, barring his phenomenal skill at video games. Basically the exact opposite of Saitama, and just as compelling to me: he gets around by staring his foes down until they submit, or coming up with some bullshit to convince them out of it, but there's a good deal of tension there in that as soon as this doesn't work, he's mush.

You see how I might like this kind of heroes the best of them all? Heroes that are basically unbeatable in one thing (doesn't have to be strength, or even related to fights at all), and beat any challenge without trouble so long as it's within their comfort zone, yet have just as much, even more, trouble as a normal person in other aspects of their lives. They can tap into a lot of experience and knowledge, but they also have great weaknesses that they all too often need to get around. It's the best of both worlds - underdogs, and the occasional power fantasy!

Not to mention, it's a perfect reason to make friends: bring forth some more well-rounded heroes to support them, to play off of them, and to have great mutual character growth and friendship and romance. Perhaps these friends are also really good at something but suck at something else, giving an even greater contrast and more things to distinct them. If I didn't do that, I'd just have to rely on subtle stuff like personalities and goals and likes and dislikes... like an actual good author would. No thanks.

Let's count the guys.

There's Peal, of course. He's far beyond just your regular sneaky little rodent - he has a deep inborn insight to all matters of stealth, subterfuge, and subtlety. He can hind himself or others or things up to a vast starship, set up your internet on absolute incognito mode with like a dozen proxies, and find Waldo, all with about equal ease. And yet he tends to crumble in social situations, is easily browbeaten or charmed if you can see him and stare him down, is hard to be taken seriously what with how cute and cuddly he looks - and he's plain starved for affection and can't handle being alone, ensuring this weakness will always come up sooner or later.

His best friend, Ivar Stormling, is also his exact opposite in this regard. He's a people person - charismatic, handsome, with big presence and a loud voice, not to mention a great personality and desire for good things for everybody. He can rouse the entire kingdom to follow his lead in a pinch. Yet, he's terribly unsubtle and simple-minded, and tends to have trouble approaching challenges from any other direction than straight head-on. He's honest and honourable to a fault, less because he thinks this leaves the best impact in the world (though he does), and more because he just doesn't have the imagination to lie or cheat. And when put in a bind, he tends to default to violence: often it catches the foe off-guard and gets him the advantage, but just as often it leads to even bigger trouble.

But when the two of them join forces, they can complement their strength while eliminating each other's weaknesses. Together, there's almost nothing they cannot do.

Sadly, the next three aren't as lucky.

Mirari Aedelwine is also good with people, albeit more with individuals than with crowds. She knows how other people work, what they think, what they feel, and can with quite the ease figure out their motivations and background, just from a quick conversation. And it's just as easy for her to get under their skin, make them want to do what she wants them to do, or destroy them verbally. Good at sleight of hand and misdirection, as well. But when she doesn't have anyone to talk to or swindle, in the case of beasts or eldritch horrors or some environmental challenge... well, she's not incompetent, but she is in trouble just the same. Not quite as extreme a minmaxed example as some others here, but she definitely counts.

Keam Vitrio is the fastest man in the cosmos - no one in the two galaxies of the setting can come even close to a match. If he's ever involved in a race, all the bets concern themselves with the second place, because the first place's decided before anything even happens. And he's a smug, unrepentant douche about it. Terribly high opinion of himself. Most people can't handle his company very long. It's lonely at the top - and boring, far more so than even he himself realizes. He wins on the racetrack, but typically loses elsewhere at the same time.



Last, and the latest in my line of heroes, Toryōshi Otsugi is one of the finest duelists in the land: she learned the way of the blade from her father, a notorious sword-saint, who had no sons and therefore had to groom his daughter into the position - and she demonstrated great talent and aptitude to it, picking up his arts and then some, almost without trying too hard. And indeed she did not try too hard - because she simply did not give a shit. She never wanted to be a warrior. She's plain sick of all the wandering swordsmen coming around to challenge her, and doesn't see the point in dueling to see who's best. She would have liked to learn to do other things, but can't find enough time for it. And perhaps worst of all, she's desperately lonely: no man would care to court her, in this feudal and patriarchal world, because she's as far away from your traditional delicate wallflower as she can get.

You could almost see her as a deconstruction of your common, by-the-numbers, Strong Female Character: she can kick ass and take names, show the men what for, yet she was thrust onto that path against her will, by a man, and now everyone around her sees her as more a man than a woman. So she's hardly your independent feminist icon. Her arc involves finding agency, deciding for herself, and growing to be her own person. But... that's really a talk for its own blog post.

Stormbringer, Grayswandir, Sting and Anduril, Dragonslayer... as far as I'm concerned, a Sword & Sorcery tale is rarely complete if their hero does not wield a magic weapon. Here's the iconic weapon of one of my first heroes.



Void is a shortsword with a pitch-black blade - like a hole in reality rather than a slab of metal. It's light as a feather, well-balanced, and sharp enough that even a weedy three-foot-tall bugbear can cut off limbs with a single strike, or carve into hard stone as if it were soft clay. So far so good, but on a more sinister note, whatever strange substance its blade is made out of, it drinks light: nearby sources of illumination flicker and dim whenever the sword is brought anywhere near, and touching a candle or a torch, or a lit fireplace or a weak lamp, will have the light instantly snuff out and die. A very nice weapon for a sneaky skulker, then. But be wary, for if you can drink something, you can drown in it: more powerful lights such as the midday sun will render the sword brittle and weak, and powerful blinding bursts might even cause it to disintegrate altogether. It's never truly gone, reforming as soon as you place a hilt someplace dark for a couple days... but it's still an inconvenience, often a lethal one.

What is it made out of, how, and by whom? This is a sketchy thing, for no one truly knows, not even myself. It could be an advanced weapon of hardened dark - like an anti-lightsaber - constructed by alien beings with unknown superscience... or it could have been forged out of winter-metal by an ancient and semi-divine blacksmith, employing sorceries and blessings along with an enchanted hammer. Whatever it was, they built in one final secret, a sinister trait of the weapon that even Peal is only vaguely aware of:

It's intelligent. Be it a minor demon captured into the hilt or an advanced and efficient A.I. programmed by alien beings, the weapon has a will of its own. It's not much of a will, only minor instinctive urges that Peal can usually dismiss altogether without even noticing... but sometimes he feels the same murderous intent as the weapon does, and its faint whispers are all it takes to drive him over the edge. It may or may not be what fanned the flames leading to the infamous Red Mending.



Void knows one thing, and one thing only - it is a killing tool. Not for hunting like spears, not for chopping wood like axes, not for forging or repairing like a hammer: a sword is made for taking lives and nothing else. So it does just that. Whenever struck in anger, it will kill, even if the blade has to alter reality to make it so: should the victim survive, the universe will think them dead anyway and bring forth some crazy accident to correct the matter. Take a scratch of the sword, and a stray arrow will soon hit you in the eye, or your footing slips and casts you into the abyss, or if nothing else, you have a fatal heart attack. It's like a virus, maliciously rewriting the source code of the universe to work its will.

Void is a +4 weapon of Chaotic alignment, with an intelligence score of 7 and an Ego of 13 (Peal's ego is 32, indicating how unlikely it is for it to ever grab a true hold of him), and the special purpose to, sure enough, kill. Any light source will fall one step dimmer anywhere within thirty feet of it, or two steps within one foot - going out altogether if this would make it less than dim. Upon injury, the victim must make a saving throw versus death or, you guessed it, drop dead by next round.


This year's NaNoWriMo will feature another sword, cast into the distant past to do battle against the serpent-men that at this time hold humanity as livestock. It's a Lawful thing, to contrast the above weapon: its mind is that of a future scientist named Aizuv, a very neat and orderly person that wishes for humankind to unite and throw off the yokes of Chaos; while the steel forged around him has been enchanted to kill off snakemen specifically.

It might be technically the very first sword in existence: neither serpent-men nor their human slaves possess the metalworking knowledge for forging some, and mainly wield spears and bows.

Its precise powers and abilities are yet to be determined.