Proper term of Anti-Hero, as opposed to a Villain that wins.

The other night, Deviantart.com ran a poll asking people how they preferred the hero of the story to win; though brains, brawn, both, alone, or with a team. Now, as much as I know a good story hinges on the fate of a main hero, I don't actually enjoy when he/she wins. That's right: I like it when the story is more down to Earth and the bad guy wins. Upon posting this, a commenter from DA took it as fighting words and wrote me a 3 paragraph reply. See it below:

• ~MarikBentusi 16 hours ago
  
  1. down to earth doesn't mean downcast, just like realism doesn't equal pessimism (pessimists like to differ tho). Earn Your Happy Ending through a Heroic Sacrifice is pretty common among certain genres. I'm rarely seeing variations on "slay the dragon, marry the princess" anymore, leave alone examples that are well done.
  
  2. if bad guys turn out to be heroes in their own right, they're anti-heroes from an antagonistic perspective (which can be flipped without changing characters: You can write a book from a villain's perspective and the hero will be the antagonist simply because they oppose the story's main character).
  
  
  So from what I can see you've just been reading a lot of books with a repeating pattern that starts to bore you, rather than really disliking it. Or something.

-end comment-

Now, you may not have read that (and don't feel bad because when I saw it I didn't either, I had to come back to it) But receiving this actually SHOCKED me. Are general readers that contrived and simple? It scared me, here I am, writing a story that breaks some serious and long time rules of writing a hero adventure, and someone comes along to show me that my work may not even matter because most readers may just be hive-minded. And he's not the only one to say this to me.

So, I'm going to break what he's saying down and shine some light on some incorrect statements.

•  down to earth doesn't mean downcast, just like realism doesn't equal pessimism (pessimists like to differ tho). Earn Your Happy Ending through a Heroic Sacrifice is pretty common among certain genres. I'm rarely seeing variations on "slay the dragon, marry the princess" anymore, leave alone examples that are well done.

Just because a concepts such as Heroic Sacrifice and Earn your happy Ending are common, it doesn't exempt them from being the prunes of concepts. They are common in fantasy and adventure and even romance, they span into every aspect of story telling as it is. But because of this, should all writing sticking to it? No! Good books aren't made by people who are afraid to stray from an old concept. Granted, they are GOOD concepts, they aren't required for a good story.

Also, I'm not sure what this kid reads, but they could seriously use a library.

•  if bad guys turn out to be heroes in their own right, they're anti-heroes from an antagonistic perspective (which can be flipped without changing characters: You can write a book from a villain's perspective and the hero will be the antagonist simply because they oppose the story's main character).

Whoa whoa whoa whoa-- NO. Anti-heroes are people given a task for the greater good they they don't want to do, but end up doing it through force or accident or something else. A villain who wins is not in that category at all. A Villain that wins is just an antagonist that wins. They're two separate concepts entirely.  And you don't have to follow the Antagonist through the whole story for him to be the main hero, there are books from multiple points of view but this person (and many) haven't read enough to know of them. A lot of Diana Wynne Jones books are like that.

Also, there are stories consisting of villains who are heroes throughout the book, but end up doing something damnable but instead of running away in shame they own it. Take the ending to the movie the Mist; based off of a Stephen King novel, but the novel ended on a different note so we're going to talk about the movie. The movie started with a man who was a defined plot mover, the main character, who ended up a leader/team leading hero figure. But that ending took all that and smashed it.

What he said, and many others agreed with him on, is that if a Villain succeeds, that just makes him a reluctant hero, which is grossly incorrect. Don't try to box yourself into such a black and white mode of story telling and reading, that's how good books are ruined.

• So from what I can see you've just been reading a lot of books with a repeating pattern that starts to bore you, rather than really disliking it. Or something.

"Or something" INDEED son. Indeed. I do read a lot of repeating pattern books, but the hero always wins. I have quite a few where the hero wins only to find out it was the antagonists wish for it to happen. I also have books where your protagonist does a 180 and becomes the antagonist. Books aren't all the same, you need to dig through the dirt to find gems and study the hell out of them until you can see the arc in story and points where you can say "This is what defines this book, this is the turning point, these are where the character developments are, ect...,"

So please, before you take someone's personal preference and try to tell them that they're wrong, think about how stupid you look, know that you don't know this person and always assume that they are smarter than you because, in most cases, they are.

Thanks for entertaining me random child, you've given me a blog post for the month.

I dream of an Apocalypse

Gabel Zeta was a girl born into the Wastes of America. She grew up in destitution, fending for herself and her mother; slaying, gardening, and learning the ways of her freedom. That was until a group known as the Civilists moved in and scooped her up, placing her into what she sees as the horror of a mundane life in a guarded city called New Haven. Shoved into a dead end job, with the choice to work for the society or die, she felt like the only one in the society of repositioned people who wanted her freedom back in the wastes.

As for Maxim Povlovo, a man in his forty-fourth year who had lived long before the Apocalypse and during it, has also been caught up in the travesty of the greedy human-hording Civilists and also wishes for his freedom. Together, after meeting Gable gazing towards the wastes, they plan a way to break free: To cause another Apocalypse of humanity and get back out into the wasteland, no matter the cost.