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> The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment ... Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunc
by tivert 3y ago
> The hosts of hell remain strong and defiant even while in their realm of eternal torment ... Meanwhile heaven is pretty bland and the angels come of as a bunch of milquetoasts.
That reminds me of the observation that happy lives make boring stories, so fiction tends towards showing dysfunctional characters, awful environments, or both.
- QuercusMax 3y agoI believe it was Tolstoy who said something to the effect of "Happy families are boring, because they're all the same. Unhappy families are interesting because they're all different."
- perihelions 3y agoThat's the opening line of Anna Karenina. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1399/pg1399-images.html#chap01 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1399/pg1399-images.html...
- bombcar 3y agoTolkien echoed the same thing in The Hobbit: “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” And we see it on HN itself, there are many "very good" stories that get posted that get a lot of upvotes but few comments because really all there is to say is 'very good'. But stories about bad things happening get thousands of comments.
- wredcoll 3y agoAlso what we perceive as "heroic" especially in a fantasy/super-hero context, tends to ultimately be status quo preserving, which frequently means the villains tends to be the "cool" "disruptive" characters, and if the world isn't sufficiently perfect then it's easy for some people to start believing that any disruption is justified.
- 082349872349872 3y agocompare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer#Premise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer#Premise