Choices that matter
Something that started to bug me around the time I turned 20 was the fact that romantic rivals were always swept under the rug in movies. If someone had loved and lost and wanted to get back together with his former love, it was a struggle, but the rival was always someone we didn't care about -- either that, or the rival would die and the protagonist and his (or her) love could get back together with no fuss. This seems to be the overwhelming standard. Why it is done is obvious: it's so that the protagonist doesn't do anything to make us dislike him.
If the object of his affections is with a great guy, it's not cool for the protagonist to break them up, right? Some exceptions:
* Duckman turns this completely on its head. When his sons are having girl troubles, he tells them the story of how he met their mother. Duckman is a completely miserable bastiche, and the only good thing he ever had was his wife, deceased before the series begins. It turns out she cheated on her husband with him, and her husband turns out to be the most decent, likeable guy in the world. Duckman insists on telling him what happened and that he and this guy's wife are in love, etc. The poor man has a heart attack from the shock and dies. Cut to Duckman's sons staring in open-mouthed horror...
* Casablanca is about a failed relationship and those involved accidentally becoming involved in each other's lives again, and the pain it causes them as they long for what is gone forever.
* Liar, Liar is actually the movie that made me start thinking about this. It had the ex-wife with a decent (albeit dorky) guy. The main thrust of the plot is that Jim Carrey is unreliable and his ex-wife and son are moving away so she can be with this guy. In the end the ex-wife and her boyfriend just kind of decide to part ways. There's nothing wrong with him, per-se, but the relationship just isn't going anywhere. This only sort of fits into what I'm saying, though, since she isn't necessarily a target of the protagonist's romance, except for in the last scene, set one year later. An amiable breakup isn't as dramatic as the usual solutions, but it's more real. It stuck with me.
Related to this is protagonists being faced with difficult solutions, but not having to deal with them. This came up for me recently when I watched The Hunger Games. The protagonist is put into a situation where she has to be the last survivor among 20(?) kids. Sounds dramatic, but there are clear bad guys who it's okay to kill and she never really has to deal with having to kill anyone who doesn't clearly have it coming. (Keeping in mind that this IS a book for "young adults," to be fair. Maybe she has tougher choices in the later books; I don't know.) I'm not against her outsmarting the bad guys at the end, and putting them in a situation where they can't win and both her and the other guy must be allowed to live. That was good. It just seems like it would have been more dramatic if it had been all normal kids (no murderous psychos) in the same situation; the story could have asked more significant questions. Of course, it probably wouldn't have been acceptable for young-uns in that case. :)
I try to stay away from these things in my own writing: if I've written them into a situation where they require a deus ex machina to escape, I re-write it so they can make their own way out, or more likely, just have them face the consequences of their situation, unpleasant though they may be. I have wondered about the possibility of an unlikeable protagonist and what can be done to make such a thing work. In a similar vein, can a story about a man reclaiming a lost love, to the cost of a decent man, work without making you hate the protagonist? I'm not talking about anything dirty or ruining someone's relationship or anything, but just coming out ahead and someone who is just as deserving coming out behind.
Speaking of secondary characters getting thrown under the bus by the plot, around the same time Liar, Liar struck my brain, I had a weird thought about a scene in, I think, Sleepless in Seattle. At some point the protagonist snipes a cab off someone and goes off in it. You see this all the time in movies: the heroes inconvenience someone else because it's an emergency. Well, I thought, what if that guy really needed that cab? What if he had an even bigger emergency? We don't know, because he is brushed aside and forgotten about. I foresaw a sequel where Tom Hanks ruined that guy's life and he came back for revenge, but that's a bit dramatic for this post. :P
Let me give another example: The Legend of Korra. In the first episode, Korra rampages through the city, causing all sorts of destruction. She fights some criminals, causing a lot of mayhem and wrecking some shops. She gets arrested and her mentor bails her out, and the matter is forgotten. But what about those shop owners whose livelihoods were wrecked by her clumsy attempts at saving them? Here's how I would have done it: Korra is bailed out, but she spends her time after airbender training working at the shop she primarily wrecked. First she repairs what she can with her powers, then she works at the shop for no money until they figure her debt is paid. She's the Avatar: she should learn responsibility. And it wouldn't necessarily be boring, since that's where she fought some criminals, who would no doubt be itching for revenge.
The episode in the original Avatar series with the underground library bugged me for the same reason, essentially. The owl that watches it says he doesn't allow anyone there because he doesn't trust people. The protagonists lie to him about their intentions, rob the library, then flee, leaving the owl to sink that irreplacable repository of knowledge into the ground forever. Nobody feels the slightest regret about any of this. I mean, this is the Avatar, for crying out loud. I know kids can be thoughtless about the repurcussions of their actions, but as a kid's show, I feel they shouldn't be so careless with their heroes' actions. I feel that it should have been written differently so that they could have proceeded with honor and honesty.
Anyway, the gist is: good guys should have to face real choices and take real responsibility for their choices.
If the object of his affections is with a great guy, it's not cool for the protagonist to break them up, right? Some exceptions:
* Duckman turns this completely on its head. When his sons are having girl troubles, he tells them the story of how he met their mother. Duckman is a completely miserable bastiche, and the only good thing he ever had was his wife, deceased before the series begins. It turns out she cheated on her husband with him, and her husband turns out to be the most decent, likeable guy in the world. Duckman insists on telling him what happened and that he and this guy's wife are in love, etc. The poor man has a heart attack from the shock and dies. Cut to Duckman's sons staring in open-mouthed horror...
* Casablanca is about a failed relationship and those involved accidentally becoming involved in each other's lives again, and the pain it causes them as they long for what is gone forever.
* Liar, Liar is actually the movie that made me start thinking about this. It had the ex-wife with a decent (albeit dorky) guy. The main thrust of the plot is that Jim Carrey is unreliable and his ex-wife and son are moving away so she can be with this guy. In the end the ex-wife and her boyfriend just kind of decide to part ways. There's nothing wrong with him, per-se, but the relationship just isn't going anywhere. This only sort of fits into what I'm saying, though, since she isn't necessarily a target of the protagonist's romance, except for in the last scene, set one year later. An amiable breakup isn't as dramatic as the usual solutions, but it's more real. It stuck with me.
Related to this is protagonists being faced with difficult solutions, but not having to deal with them. This came up for me recently when I watched The Hunger Games. The protagonist is put into a situation where she has to be the last survivor among 20(?) kids. Sounds dramatic, but there are clear bad guys who it's okay to kill and she never really has to deal with having to kill anyone who doesn't clearly have it coming. (Keeping in mind that this IS a book for "young adults," to be fair. Maybe she has tougher choices in the later books; I don't know.) I'm not against her outsmarting the bad guys at the end, and putting them in a situation where they can't win and both her and the other guy must be allowed to live. That was good. It just seems like it would have been more dramatic if it had been all normal kids (no murderous psychos) in the same situation; the story could have asked more significant questions. Of course, it probably wouldn't have been acceptable for young-uns in that case. :)
I try to stay away from these things in my own writing: if I've written them into a situation where they require a deus ex machina to escape, I re-write it so they can make their own way out, or more likely, just have them face the consequences of their situation, unpleasant though they may be. I have wondered about the possibility of an unlikeable protagonist and what can be done to make such a thing work. In a similar vein, can a story about a man reclaiming a lost love, to the cost of a decent man, work without making you hate the protagonist? I'm not talking about anything dirty or ruining someone's relationship or anything, but just coming out ahead and someone who is just as deserving coming out behind.
Speaking of secondary characters getting thrown under the bus by the plot, around the same time Liar, Liar struck my brain, I had a weird thought about a scene in, I think, Sleepless in Seattle. At some point the protagonist snipes a cab off someone and goes off in it. You see this all the time in movies: the heroes inconvenience someone else because it's an emergency. Well, I thought, what if that guy really needed that cab? What if he had an even bigger emergency? We don't know, because he is brushed aside and forgotten about. I foresaw a sequel where Tom Hanks ruined that guy's life and he came back for revenge, but that's a bit dramatic for this post. :P
Let me give another example: The Legend of Korra. In the first episode, Korra rampages through the city, causing all sorts of destruction. She fights some criminals, causing a lot of mayhem and wrecking some shops. She gets arrested and her mentor bails her out, and the matter is forgotten. But what about those shop owners whose livelihoods were wrecked by her clumsy attempts at saving them? Here's how I would have done it: Korra is bailed out, but she spends her time after airbender training working at the shop she primarily wrecked. First she repairs what she can with her powers, then she works at the shop for no money until they figure her debt is paid. She's the Avatar: she should learn responsibility. And it wouldn't necessarily be boring, since that's where she fought some criminals, who would no doubt be itching for revenge.
The episode in the original Avatar series with the underground library bugged me for the same reason, essentially. The owl that watches it says he doesn't allow anyone there because he doesn't trust people. The protagonists lie to him about their intentions, rob the library, then flee, leaving the owl to sink that irreplacable repository of knowledge into the ground forever. Nobody feels the slightest regret about any of this. I mean, this is the Avatar, for crying out loud. I know kids can be thoughtless about the repurcussions of their actions, but as a kid's show, I feel they shouldn't be so careless with their heroes' actions. I feel that it should have been written differently so that they could have proceeded with honor and honesty.
Anyway, the gist is: good guys should have to face real choices and take real responsibility for their choices.