 The keynote session centered around the need for traditional heroes. The speaker made her point eloquently. But even when the talk finished and the audience wandered back out into the hallway, something didn’t sit right with me. I looked over my notes, but nothing stood out. I agreed with the points she made! I shoved my notepad in my bag and left for my next session. But every so often over the month afterward, I’d puzzle over what had unsettled me. After a lot of thought, I finally realized—the speaker seemed to claim that a lack of traditional heroes was the downfall of our society. And then she laid the blame for the lack of traditional heroes at the feet of antiheroes. Merriam-Webster defines an antihero as “a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities.” This doesn’t have to mean that they’re morally gray, but it often does. Hence why this speaker blamed antiheroes for our modern problems. That idea was what I resisted. But why? I’m not always the person who takes the more “traditional” route. I’ve built my entire brand around unconventional heroines. So was I pushing back because of some natural rebellion, some fatal flaw in myself? I’m inclined to believe no. Because traditional heroes have influenced me deeply, sure. I’m a Spider-Man fan like anybody else. But the books and movies and shows that influenced me (and my writing!) most deeply were the ones that starred antiheroes. And so I was left balancing the need for traditional heroes with the undeniable good that antiheroes have worked in my life. My resistance didn’t stem from a belief that we didn’t need more good heroes. My resistance came from laying the blame at the feet of one specific character type. She wasn’t the first Christian speaker I’ve heard take this position. Many Christian artists think God-glorifying authors are better off avoiding antiheroes altogether, or at the very least regarding them with suspicious scrutiny. You might have guessed that I’m not one of them. In this blog post, I’ll explain why I think antiheroes matter for Christians, and why I believe (when used thoughtfully) they have just as great, if not greater an impact, than a traditional hero. What Antiheroes Do That Good Guys Can’t I’ve noticed two main ways that antiheroes succeed where the “good guys” can’t. One: They can feel more human. And because they feel more human, they connect with readers differently. This is why stories like Six of Crows and Arcane: League of Legends stick with me. Each character made excellent choices and flawed choices, but I could see myself in both of the extremes. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying good people don’t exist! This is why fictional traditional heroes matter—they remind us of the good that remains in the world. (Which is exactly that keynote speaker’s point!) But even the best earthly person has a flaw. Antiheroes connect with our flaws. That forges a different and unique bond that draws us deeper into their story, for better or for worse. Two: They illustrate the consequences of evil without us going there ourselves. I’ll discuss this more later with a personal example (or you can fast forward if you’re a rebel), but when I read a book with a flawed protagonist, it exposes those same thought patterns and ideas in me—BEFORE I meet the same destructive ends that these characters do. Stories matter, and because of these antiheroes, I changed so I wouldn’t become them. They used that unique bond to create change. Maybe Labels are the Real Villains I’ve talked a lot about antiheroes and heroes and all that. But I think labels like that hold us back. When I say that my book has a traditional hero, now I HAVE to make sure their morals are pure so outraged readers don’t contact me. When I announce I’m writing an antihero, now I HAVE to make sure they’re the right amount of skewed without making everyone clasp their pearls. And if I’m worrying about those things, then I’m not worried about writing a good character. What would happen if we swept all the labels aside and created human characters? Sometimes they’ll have traditional heroic morals. Other times they’ll humor their dark side a bit. But they’ll be real. They’ll be authentic. Sometimes they might be antiheroes. The Ambiguity of “Moral Ambiguity” So why can Christian authors be so afraid of antiheroes? Because we don’t know what moral ambiguity is. Many Christian artists who despise antiheroes often speak about the evils of morally ambiguous stories. The prevailing belief seems to be that if you work with antiheroes or even very flawed characters, you’ve chosen a story without morals. I don’t think this is true. I’m not even quite sure it IS possible to write a story without morals. Here’s why. Merriam-Webster defines moral as “relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior.” Every person, whether they acknowledge it or not, has their own principles of right and wrong—even if they believe (or think they believe) that their actions don’t matter. They still have things that they will or will not do. They may not have a healthy sense of morals, but they have morals nonetheless. So if we create characters that are complete persons like I talked about above, they naturally have morals. They have their own sense of what’s right or wrong. But for the sake of this example, let’s say I did somehow create a character completely without morals. Guess what? I am still also a person, and I bring my own morals and worldview to the story. But let’s say I wrote something completely without my own morals or my characters’ morals. The reader who picks up my book also brings their own morals and worldview to how they view this story. Merriam-Webster defines moral ambiguity as “a lack of certainty about whether something is right or wrong.” So in that sense, I’m not quite sure it’s possible to truly have a morally ambiguous story. My character might not be sure what’s right or wrong, but those stories will lead me or the reader to make our own decisions on whether they were right or wrong. For instance, I love the Six of Crows duology. The Crows might think that committing fraud is a good way to solve their problems. Maybe the author does too (I doubt it). But I don’t, and I’m reading the story through that lens. Somewhere in every story there are morals. Someone—the character, the writer, or the reader—has principles about whether something is right or wrong. So Christian authors who worry about moral ambiguity are actually worried about books with bad morals. Which is a VERY valid concern. Because a reader’s sense of morals can be strengthened, challenged, or even changed by my story. So if I write an antihero with questionable morals, it’s all the more important that I, the author, write from a place of healthy, secure morals. Because I can’t count on the reader bringing those morals to the story. And hey, if I do that, I’ll avoid that moral ambiguity, if it does indeed exist. Which brings us to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes—aka one of the books that impacted me the most deeply. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and . . . Myself The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes did something that none of the other Hunger Games books could. I started Ballad certain that I wouldn’t like it nearly as much as the original books. After all, I knew what Snow would become. I would NOT feel any sympathy for him. Spoiler alert: I did. The Snow we meet at the beginning of Ballad didn’t seem quite so bad. Was he a bit judgy? Sure. But he just wanted to provide for his cousin and grandmother. Maybe I could relate after all—just a tiny bit. The story continued, and Snow made worse and worse choices. I’d cringe a little bit—oof, that particular choice was pretty bad—but I could see how he got here, why he made that decision. Who’s to say in his situation I wouldn’t do the same? And then the epilogue punched me in the face. It left no doubt—Snow was absolutely evil, completely wrong both in what he valued and in what he chose. He had been that way from the start. And I had sympathized with him. Ballad made me confront the darker and less honorable parts of myself in a way that Katniss and all her good morals could not. Does that mean Katniss is useless? Far from it! But Snow’s story captured unique advantages that hers could not. Ballad shaped how I think about and value other people. Lucy Gray and Katniss Everdeen didn’t make that change in me. Coriolanus Snow did, of all people. I can argue for antiheroes all day long, but when it comes down to it, this is why I can’t lay all the blame at their doorstep. Because flawed stories and flawed characters have personally impacted me for good. All Things in Balance as They Should Be We humans tend to overcorrect. We read about the need for traditional heroes and resolve to never write an antihero or anyone else whose good morals are not crystal clear ever again. Or we read about the good that antiheroes can do and we throw out traditional heroes. (I’m guilty of both.) But we need both heroes and antiheroes in different ways and for different purposes. Don’t worry about creating a good hero, or a good antihero, or a good anything else. Create good characters first. Discover what makes them human. Give them both good and bad parts of themselves and make them a whole person. Look past the labels. And by all means, create your traditional hero. Create as many as you like! We need them. But don’t relegate antiheroes to the platform that lifts them up. What if we all released our labels and created raw, human characters instead? What if we confronted the good and the bad of our own morals and our readers’ morals on the pages? I think that might have more power than a thousand “traditional” heroes combined. Hi, I’m Rachel! I write young adult/new adult fantasy novels that walk the line between the darker elements of fantasy and the weirder elements of cartoons. But more importantly, I write the novels I needed growing up—the novels I still need. Novels for the weird little girls and the women they’re becoming. Maybe you need those stories, too? You can get one for free by signing up for my email newsletter via the “HOME” page of my website. It might involve a girl and the magical violin she didn’t want, plus maybe a metaphor about grief? Plus, you’ll also get email-exclusive updates about what I’m reading, watching, and writing. Sound good? I hope I’ll see you there!
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