Awful lotof grey stories nowadays

[joannekwan]

I believe the readers only root for the MC side, be it evil or good they will always follow the side of the MC since he is the audience surrogate

I dunno, I know a fair share of people that love their villains.

For our comic Goblins of Razard, we are finding that alot of people like the villains (King Laird and Zilck) a lot better than our heroes. (It's hard to get a huge amount of feels about Zilck for how far it is on tapastic, but we have through chapter 6 in print, and thats what people tell us.) It's not like people don't like the hero, it just seems like everyone thinks the villain is very cool. I don't think this is unusual either, I've seen lots of comics and movies and such where everyone l…

[IdiotWithPencil]

I dunno, I know a fair share of people that love their villains.

I stand corrected
I guess you could count a villain as an MC since they get just as much exposure as the hero =) if not more, maybe the audience don't care for sides if you expose or describe the characters well enough

[hades]

Nah, it's not overdone. It's a type of narrative that's brings in more complex characters, tropes, themes, and environments. To dismiss it is to brush aside a huge branch of narrative-driven work.

Black and White storytelling is considered mainstream and common due to its easy to digest nature. It's good for propoganda, fairytales, kids lit, cape comics, and easier to handle tropes.

There is nothing wrong or inferior with either style. Nor can either be overdone/overused. It's just another narrative tool that's just getting a little more limelight in popular media

[indagold]

Really? It feels underused honestly and the ones that try to evolve beyond black and white mentality kinda fail horribly leading to poorly written characters with no sides you want to relate to or end up being a black and white story masquerading as something deeper. I think it should be explored more since its a writing style tough to tackle...

[Chroma]

I think using the morally grey areas of life to explore your story is actually one of the most interesting ways to share your story out there. It's only used a lot because it offers so much to delve into, much more so than black and white stories. After all, how can your character be flawed when he's entirely in the right? How can a villain be compelling when he's completely in the wrong?

I feel one of my personal favorite ways this has been used is in the video game series Borderlands. Specifically, in Borderlands 2. The main cast of characters are the good guys, but as the game goes on you begin to question it. You're brutes, who wander a wasteland killing anyone who stands in your path and stealing their stuff. The planet is just as ruthless, full of monsters of all sorts.

The main villain, however, must be in the wrong, right? Well...not quite. Yes, he's definitely a psychopath, but his end goal is honestly...admirable. He wants to tame the planet of Pandora, make it into a paradise of his design. And how can you blame him, when everything and everyone wants on the planet wants you dead, including the heroes?

It's this kind of flawed ideology on both sides that make a story far more interesting. Black and white stories have their perks, the Superman storyline is going strong. But there are just so many good ways to tell a morally grey story.

[storytimebiondi]

I feel like I want to bring up Kurt Vonnegut here. He states that in his writing he never writes a 'villain' (Slaughterhouse Five). This is because that people are complex beings, and morality is just a construct of our own perception. There is no black and white because black and white are literally in the eye of the beholder. People do things based on their beliefs, which often are black and white, but in the end they always feel they are in the right.
It takes a seriously screwed up person to choose to do wrong.
What I'm getting at here, is that a story, if written well, and with compelling characters and good character motivation and philosophy, is going to be strong no matter if it is consciously a black and white, good vs. bad, story or otherwise. If the trope of 'grey narratives' is getting old, its simply because the writers attempting it are not achieving what they set out to do, and not to do with the concept of grey itself.

Sorry about the long post. Here's a potato:

[anitacomics]

I can't tell if you're talking about actual grey shades of colors, or if you mean there's no clear distinction between what's good and what's not. I suppose the latter, so I'd say it's a good thing! I mean, look at the old school evil characters: they usually don't have meanings, no real personality. It's just they are EVIL, no explanation needed. But nothing is that straightforward in the real world, and it can be more challenging both for the hero and the audience to deal with some actually shaped evil guy that has reasons behind his acts. That makes them more grey than black, I suppose.

If it's about the color...well, we just got out of the "everything is blue" trend for horror movies, I'm kinda happy about it.

[shazzbaa]

I think it's also worth mentioning too, that a "shades of grey" idea can be executed poorly, like any other story. If a story gets kind of a hamfisted BUT WHAT IF ITS NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE thing crammed into it to seem Complex™, that's gonna feel disingenuous, and people can tell when a story isn't honest.

There are stories that are only undercutting their protagonists' successes with doubt because the author is afraid that a story isn't complex or meaningful or realistic unless it's morally grey -- and if this is what you see over and over, it's easy to pin the blame on the moral greyness itself, seeing it as an overused and less honest story. But that might be less that "grey stories" are overused, and more that elements of ambiguous grey are being shoved into a bunch of stories that don't accommodate them and do not execute them well.

[punkarsenic]

given that you bring up the last jedi, i wonder if the issue is less that its being done too much, but its frequently being done badly. and in situations where clearer morals are applicable

when it comes to star wars, like, the argument for grey morality has always been there - bot the sith and the jedi are portrayed as corrupt and unsustainable institutions. however, the moral stakes laid out by the force awakens, that were carried into the last jedi, did not leave room for the movie's focus of grey morality, which was this strange, forced attempt to redeem kylo ren. idk, other people have explained all that better than me, im still gathering my thoughts on the issue.

but i do believe that right now grey morality is being used lazily, largely as an attempt to redeem irredeemable characters without doing the work. its bloody annoying bc grey morality is so good when done right (see: loki in more recent books and in ragnarok)

[DiegoPalacios]

I think the sum of how entertaining,memorable and relatable is a character affects his/her popularity, no matter the side or how relevant he/she is for the story. (some may lack one of those atributes, but make it up with the others)

How solid is the characterization of those characters varies depending of the role. But i think the rule is at least "just enough to touch the audience`s hearts".

[Wumbl]

We live in a culture where black and white stories no longer apply.
As kids, we are kind of cultured to believe in polar good and bad, but with the way the world is and the way our generation is growing up it's only natural to see things differently.
Writing reflects the writer's feelings towards the real world, quite a lot.
As millennial adults, we see the world as a much more complicated place than our contemporaries because back then the one major threat to the world was the cold war, or outsider groups such as al qaeda.
Nowadays we have more to fear in our own communities because people can be radicalised right in our own towns. There is more and more mental illness and more abusive behaviour in friendships and relationships. The economy is also worse. We are more paranoid towards more aspects of life, so we are no longer afraid of just one thing at a time.

As a result, our writing tends to reflect more 3-dimensional morality. Hell, my own story explores a character who is both a criminal and an idiot in love. We don't see people as just good or bad anymore. We are more nuanced.

[revisionstudios]

I think a lot of people here are right in that it's more a symptom of people trying it and not executing it right. Personally though, I would rather have them try it and get it wrong than never try at all--as a collective, the community is practicing, and eventually we'll start getting a lot of really good stuff.

I personally really enjoy consuming and writing morally gray works because people don't see enough nuance in their own lives. A lot of people are pretty close minded and insular, only seeing the world through the lens of their own experiences even if they don't realize it. When done right, these stories teach us to be more empathetic and aware of people's situations around us.

I have no idea if I'll be successful in my own story or not, it's too early in to judge I think--but I am striving for it.

[mpiradarada]

I think it's the natural evolution for modern stories.

That being said, it does kind of annoy me when nearly every single friggin' thing is morally grey, like in a Bioware game. Makes me feel like the writers are just sadists who enjoy tormenting the players and the character for the sake of presenting complex moral choices.

[joannekwan]

I would like to ask though, since people keep saying there are a bunch, what is an example of a bad morally grey story? What areas does it fail in?

[DiegoPalacios]

We live in a culture where black and white stories no longer apply.

Some actions may be good or bad depending of the situation, for example: lying may be good or bad.like lying to save an innocent`s life is good, but lying to frame an innocent for a crime you commited is bad.

Other actions will always be horrible and messed up, like torturing innocents or rape.

While is important to have an open and understanding mind, is also vital to have a moral compass.

Black and white will still apply, but with more obvious topics.

Stories with grey morality have an incredible potential not only to entertain, but to make us think and to understand that everyone has the potential to do good or bad, and to understand there are good and bad people in almost every group. You can recognize the virtues of people you disagree, and the vices of people you agree with.

Both kind of stories can be good or bad, but it will depend of the execution.

[NickRowler]

Off the top of my head...any of those stories which has a villain who is not "bad' they are just misunderstood.

A good example is Frozen. Like Disney was too afraid to push the envelop to how evil Elsa could be. Her parents were abusive to her, the town treated her like a monster, she could have gone crazy and started causing pure chaos. But instead we have Hans who was the good guy turn bad but his motivations didn't make much sense. I think they should of had him be good but misguided. Like have that he wants to protect the people from Elsa and keep everyone safe. All and all, neither Elsa nor Hans were strong villains in the movie, and they both come off as lack luster when compared to villains from Disney's past.

[Chronitis]

Maleficent Is best Disney villain of all time.

[NickRowler]

And the live action Maleficent is another example of the awful "they are just misunderstood" narratives.

[Chronitis]

staying with animation. IDK if you watched Dragon Ball. But I feel as though Freeza was good villain in the first arc of Z.

[joannekwan]

Haha I thought that was just poor characterization in general.

Like Frozen was bad not cause it was grey, but because the character motives were poor to middling.

I guess when it boils down to it, don't set out to make a story grey or black and white, just set out to make characters and a plot that makes sense.