The stories we tell and hear are both signs of our culture, and what makes it. They influence us, give shape and color to our beliefs and our understanding of the world around us. They reflect what we believe and what we see, whether that’s deeply religious sentiment, or simply how we think human interactions do in fact play out – or what they could be. The connections might not always be obvious, and they might require a great deal more context than the stories themselves to understand, but they are there.

They might be about what we think human beings do most often, or what we imagine the motivations of others to be, or what we hope we could be ourselves.

But I think they are there. And I think they shape who we are and who we become. They are not the sum of it, they don’t cause us to make one choice or another. We can be more than the stories we hear and tell, but we can also be less. We aren’t defined by them, but they influence us.

More than that, I think what we believe we – and others – are capable of, influences us.

This is why I think it’s important for us to have and to tell stories with characters who are, more or less, good. Even characters who are incorruptible – who can’t, and will never, become villains, no matter what they are put through.

And please, no matter what you think about this, stay with me for a moment.

I understand some of the origins of the grimdark genre. I do. I was reading an epic fantasy – or more accurately, re-reading one – recently, and I could feel the possible grimdark fantasy that could have arisen out of it. If only the angle were changed a little, if only it were a little wider, if only it were taken a little further … it was only too easy for me to see how the “good guys” were as evil as those they fought against, and how the new society established by the victors could come to be even worse than the old thing they overthrew. The story was practically begging for that side of it to be told.

I am not saying these stories should not be told.

Truthfully, they need to be told. There are, in my opinion, too many “noblebright” epic fantasies that paint one society, one culture, one people as the good guys, probably with some real flaws, but fundamentally good while the other side is fundamentally bad, and then all the things they do to win are justified – or, for some reason, the dirty things are just never seen, or else a way is always found around them. The stories that show that all the sides in a war are usually bad are, I think, a good thing.

And stories that show that the people often called heroes can be bad guys and villains, and might even be worse than the other side’s heroes, your villains, need to be to told, too. The stories that ask you to see what you might look like to others – those are a good thing.

But I think we need something else, too. I think we need stories about the people we wish we were, the people we want to be – or the people we would want to be, if only we dared.

I’ve been thinking lately about a lot of things. If you put any stock in history, or what is thought about ancient cultures and other peoples, one of the things you realize is there’s a lot more breadth to human experience and what human beings are capable of, than a lot of modern … novels, and guides to writing human characters would have you believe. The grimdark novels, where every character can be broken by the right torture, coerced into betraying everything he is and the things he loves most, are as narrow and frankly, to put it bluntly and offensively, preachy as any of the religious or Christian ones.

This dark side of human nature exists, but it’s not the whole story. Somehow or other, human beings have chosen to starve to death, and far from eating each other, some of them have given their lives and not eaten when they could have, so that others may live. Somehow or other, some human beings have not only endured torture without betraying anything they believed or anyone they cared about, have not only endured torture without hating those who hurt them or wanting revenge, but have actually looked to it as an obstacle to be gloriously overcome and an honor.

Just as plenty of human beings have enjoyed happy relationships most religions have considered sinful, have fought and died for their friends without believing in God, and have given of themselves to help the unfortunate without “faith,” and have been happier after rejecting religion than before.

And sometimes, human beings have fought for what they believed, and for their rights, without any violence at all, at least on their parts. Look at Gandhi, and at those who followed him and emulated him. Tell me Gandhi or Martin Luther King were morally gray, grimdark MCs (and if you want to try, I will listen).

But that question put aside, this still tells me that human experience, and the possibilities open to us, are pretty wide. And if we want to be better people (whatever we decide that means) …

Well, I think we should tell and hear stories that are about better people, and about how to be better people. Not about how we’ll be broken, and we can’t help surrendering who we are, but about how not to be. Even just stories that let us keep that image, that hope, alive in our minds to call us forward.

Images that let us go into the trials that await us thinking, “I can triumph,” and not “This is hopeless; the line that runs through good and evil runs through my own heart, and it is evil that is stronger.”

I do not think we necessarily need incorruptible MCs. As many have pointed out, it is poison to believe that we or our heroes are incorruptible, if by that we mean simply that we can do anything we want to our enemies, and it’s okay because we’re the good guys (and anybody we don’t like or who hurts us is “the bad guys”.

But I do think we need stories with the belief that we don’t have to be crushed – that we can triumph in even the darkest of places, and that no one, not even the worst of villains, is irredeemable.

Because if no one is irredeemable, then we are no exception to that rule, and we are redeemable. We can get back up after we’ve failed, however horrible we feel, however much our failure feels like the worst sin on earth, and we can try again.

And it also means we will keep that compassion and that hope alive for others, instead of hating them as “the bad guys.”

I guess this can come across pretty narrow. You might think, for example, that I am proposing that everyone should be pacifists. I’m not. I actually don’t think that, and I have no right to think that.

I’m just proposing that it’s a possibility, for at least some human beings (and one, I personally, find attractive, to put it weakly).

And that while we’re not defined by the stories we tell, and that you might very well know nothing but stories about human weakness, and believe that everything human about you can be crushed, and yet be the only person to never give in in some horrific pit, and the last person to let the instinct for self-preservation come between you and defending others even when it’s “hopeless,” – for most of us, I don’t think telling ourselves stories about how anyone will betray their friend if only the right torture is applied to them will give us that strength. I don’t think it will make us stronger to love our family and friends in the day-to-day struggles of life, and I don’t think it will give us greater courage to stand up to oppression.

But I think stories of victory, and the belief that we can, the belief that it is a human thing to do, if not the human thing to be, might very well help at least some of us.

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