Wait, Did We Outgrow Archetypes?

I had a dream you approached me in a supermarket, ridiculed the script I had in my hand and that’s about all I can remember.

bro had a villain monologue at the end.

I gasped out loud because "get Ennegramed doofus" is the name of the Spotify playlist I made after watching your first vid about ennegram stuff, doing a two hour deep dive into what type I was, and then listening to a bunch of Marina songs.

I totally agree; the autonomy of Chani and Stilgar in the movie adds such an interesting dimension to the story of Dune and gives the Fremen an actual perspective, which makes the universe feel more alive while benefitting the characters. I also like that they added an ideology that conflicts with the Fremen fundamentalists, even if it isn’t shown much.

I go to a theatre and watch Dune 2, I go to sleep, and when I wake up there's a video from my local script man on it. Perfection

The reason that Joseph Campbell's hero archetype lacks human complexity is because it is intended to be applicable to all people. Complexity demands specificity, so any system intended to be universally applicable has no room for it. You could theoretically build a bridge between the hero's journey and a more Localscriptman-type character sheet. It would read the hero's journey as a process of self-discovery, and would tie the character arc to the hero's process of understanding their core flaw and its source. Or you could do the same with any beat-sheet or plot template.

Singling Star Wars out for not having a complex character journey when the franchise sorta became famous for having the biggest plot twist in cinema history that explodes the main character's simplistic view of the world and forces him to reconsider everything he thought he knew is certainly...a take. Like, you can't watch Episode V and VI and come away thinking Luke's conflict with his father isn't somehow representative of a complication of the Hero's Journey. That's what makes the Vader twist so compelling; the Hero's Journey in part involves the reconciliation with the father figure, but in Luke's case, the father figure is also itself the dragon figure. They very evil he'd nominally be destined to slay in a normal story is also the very man who's legacy he's trying to uphold. And what that legacy even is, and his relationship too it, forms the inner turmoil he struggles with through V and VI; whatever Vader is capable of, he is capable of as well. Like it's entirely possible to read Star Wars as almost iconoclastic. The binary good and evil morality that the first movie espouses is upended by the second film, and thoroughly deconstructed by the third (with the prequels forming a kind of framing device through which we can better understand this). Taken as a whole, the Jedi are repeatedly depicted in the films as being in the wrong, with only two characters in the franchise--Qui-Gon and Luke--able to see past the dogmatic view of the Force the Jedi had become complacent with. They do not know how to handle human connections in a healthy way and repeatedly make the same mistakes, thinking they can destroy the Sith because they've erroneously concluded that the Darkside is inherently evil--and that anyone who goes down that path is eternally damned, hence why the Jedi tried to essentially trick Luke into killing his father without telling him who he is. Episode 6 rebukes that notion by having Luke save Anakin--something they deemed impossible--through the very thing the Jedi thought caused him to fall in the first place: love. That might make it sound like a trite "love conquers all" message, but Star Wars is more complex than that. Luke's love for Anakin stands in contrast to everything Anakin had been taught about the Force--by the both the Jedi and Sith. He'd been taught to shun attachments and reject the kind of love he desperately needed when he lost his mother, and later his wife, due to them being sources of anger and jealousy, which lead to the Darkside. Thus isolated, he felt used by everyone around him; his starting the story off as a slave is an important detail, as it illustrates Anakin having been a slave his entire life. First to Watto, then to the Jedi as a weapon to be used against the Sith, and later by the Sith against the Jedi. Only three people truly treated him like a human being in his life: his mother, his wife, and his son. And it's his son's deeply personal love for the man Anakin was, and could be again, that cuts through the dogma and self hatred the Jedi and Sith have wrapped Anakin in, and allows Anakin to spend the last minutes of his life finally a free man who threw off his own shackles. That is a deeply personal family tragedy disguised as a hero's journey, and it's why in my mind Star Wars is the best example of what can be done with the monomyth if one understands its structure, and is willing to subvert it to create something truly profound. Dismissing Star Wars as lacking in dynamic humanity does a disservice to the films.

I like archetypes early on as foundations so I can deviate or deconstruct them which lends me into fresh avenues that feel unorthodox and very much worth exploring to me. It feels like holding onto the edge of the pool when I don't know how to swim but then eventually I figure it out and end up doing underwater handstands in the deep end. If someone is writing something nowadays that sticks to the formula so to speak, then they better have the the Ace of all Aces to ever ace up their sleeve. Otherwise, it's over for them :)

Bit of a category error here. Don't confuse character tropes for archetypes. Archetypes aren't complete people, they're aspects of the psyche; motivational and emotional forces. Myths aren't modern films & novels, they're distillations of other stories, more like dreams than everyday reality

This channel actually gives good advice that changed my writing instead of just “show don’t tell”. It’s genuinely refreshing when your videos come out. Keep up the good work man. Also I think watchmen is a pretty good movie that takes “hero archetypes” and spins them on their head while also exploring humanity’s darker side.

I will never not appreciate the flat-out clarity of your explanations, my dude. Thank you so much. You're using English words with your flesh mouth, like a lot of other people do, but when you say the words next to each other, my brain just fkn gets it for some reason... You must be the Liscal-Scralpt-Mainb or something. A+

Some really interesting ideas here, and I have some core disagreements, though I find a lot of merit in what you have to say here. Archetypes, meaning "First Form" are not so much what Campbell portrays them as. Campbell has some interesting things to say, but overall, he is a second rate thinker, at least in comparison to his forefathers, especially Carl Jung.  Campbell, also, only breaks down one type of Mythic story, the masculine Hero's Journey. He doesn't break down Creation Narratives, Deluge Stories, Apocalypses, Goddess mythologies etc. "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a fun tool, and there is value in such structuralist thinking, but Campbell simplifies to a level where information starts getting lost. Jung , in his book, "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (A far better analysis on the human mind, and structuralist concepts) argues that Archetypes are something like the organs of the Collective Unconscious, that we can't really get at. We will never know the archetypes in their full form, because we cannot comprehend them in their vastness of applicability. Therefore, we only recognize Archetypes by seeing things like them in dreams or in narrative found in myths and stories. In my opinion, a writer shouldn't use archetypes to structure their characters, the collective unconscious already puts that structure onto the characters we create. When we try to use things like Campbell's Hero's Journey, or Jung's archetypes to make characters and structure stories, they will always come out as one note. Myth can help us understand stories after the fact, but these archetypes and patterns emerge on their own because Archetypes are omnipresent in the human mind.  Dune's author, Frank Herbert, fell into this trap by making his core characters reflections of Jung's core Archetypes. Paul the Individual who seeks integration, Jessica the Great Mother, Leto the Great Father, Jamis is the Trickster, Chai is the Anima, Alia is the child/maiden, etc. While this gives Dune a lot of depth and room for analysis, it makes smaller characters like Chani, fall a bit flat. I think therefore, that Villeneuve's changes are well reasoned, and help with certain character's depth. The core disagreement I have with your video is your characterization on past culture's Mythologies. (Full disclosure I study World Mythologies in University, so I'm not totally unbiased) The ancients who told and retold the stories of Perseus or Gilgamesh, etc. they did not make those stories based on some Campbellian ideal of what a Hero's story should be, they constructed characters that spoke to them culturally and individually. It just so happens that those character's stories tapped into the collective unconscious, the home of archetypes, and therefore, were able to speak to them and us, regardless of time and place. I think what you respond to negatively are artificially made archetypes, and rightly so, but characters who genuinely tap into archetypal concepts, do so unconsciously, and therefore seem more genuine and compelling. I think what you are doing, breaking down the enneagram types and trying to make compelling characters who connect to the story in meaningful ways, that is the right way to go about it. But hopefully, in doing that, you will stumble on something that looks like the immortal pattern of the archetypes. We can't outgrow archetypes, but hopefully we may stumble upon something that looks like them.

"People doing people things" is my writing ethos. Nobody ever sets out to do evil, aside from anomalous psychopaths that just don't go far and usually end their journey in jail because their pathology for cruelty makes them short-term thinking and stupid. No, most evil starts out as good, highjacking the human desire to work together for something greater, whatever it is. Of course we have to fight the The Other, why, they are not like Us and want us to stop being Us and be the Other, and we're just good lil' guys wanting to be left alone. And this is fine and heroic even, up to a certain point. But this is also why I think Campbell's archetypes aren't yet destined for the garbage can. Because even though it's not necessarily great writing or fully universal, people DO think like this. They DO like to boil things down to simple good vs evil narratives, they DO want a simple view of the world because unending deluge of complexity just doesn't feel good to our monkey brains. To have every action, every news, everything we see and hear to be constantly scrutinized and weighed and measured against whether it's true, good, necessary - it's just too much. It's why youthful activism often ends in a depressive, anxiety-ridden spiral. We just can't deal with problems that we cannot directly influence with measurable, visible results. With time, we burn out if we keep coasting on ideals alone - so our brains spare our sanity. They detach us from reality, they try to save that critical capacity for stuff we deal with in our personal lives, our imminent dangers, and replace the people on the world stage with caricatures and mythical thinking to "solve" those issues and put them away in a box of stuff we don't have to think too hard about. And that's why Dune book series is so damn good. Perhaps too cynical at times, perhaps a product of its time in others, but it does scratch at that very uncomfortable human truth - we really do crave a messiah. We really just want a charismatic leader that does what we think is good and right, and feel good being accepted by that leader. But such people are not real, can never be real. These evangelized leaders are just men - they are flawed, they are sometimes irrational, they are often fallible, and they can never ever live up to some fantasy ideal people have created in their heads, least of all because to each person that ideal of a leader is completely different! That is why any historical character-based movement really takes off long after the glorious leader is dead and buried, when they can be safely held away from the mundane fallibilities of man. I can't wait for Dune Messiah. Right next to God-Emperor, it's my favorite part of Dune. It's probably the most human depiction of struggling with the hero myth, cult of personality, hero-worship and finally succumbing to it, despite one's best efforts. Deep down inside, despite our rational thoughts and arguments, we all desire for that Voice from the Outer World that will guide us to Paradise, that will give our personal struggle the worth we've always secretly felt, place it at the center of the universe and acknowledge it with divine grace. And what's a small little atrocity or two if it's for that glorious ideal? It's not an atrocity, really, the Other deserved it anyway, right, and really when you think about it, it's for their own good... so no harm done at all, quite the opposite! Great video, can't wait to see the final character design flowchart.

Another local script man banger! The love interest in the Hero's journey reminds me (and is probably one of the first examples of) the Satellite character, whose entire existence revolves around another character. When it comes to more major characters, this is a problem, and its something i worry about creating

cool to see someone else talk about the Enneagram, it's a great tool that I agree has been mishandled

I think you've undersold the character work of Star Wars. Luke is not just trying to help people. From the very start we're told he wants action, that at some level he wants to do all of it because it's COOL and he's bored out of his mind in his literal hole in the ground, and because he's probably attracted to his sister, and after episode V because of his hate for and denial of his father. This leads to him being over eager in his training rather than actually waiting until he is ready to help people. And having Luke be the protagonist is the perfect set up to then reveal that the central arc wasn't even his but Anakin's. Luke and Darth Vader and even Palpatine are more than archetypes. There are reasons that Willow or even LotR or Dune aren't Star Wars, beyond the music and the designs.

In the book, Paul does worry about the blind hero worship of Stilgar.

It's nice to encounter areas where I don't agree with you, because your writing advice has been some of the most helpful because you're so different from me and you say things that my own brain doesn't but which I need to hear. Like treating this as a job and a business and a craft rather than getting lost in the art and the vibes and the love. I write stories about universal human drives, or at least even if that's not literally true, the vast majority of everyone experiences some form of survival instinct and sexual attraction, and large swaths of the population will resonate with it. So it was interesting to notice how entirely you discount those as 'like boring bro,' and more importantly why, which you articulate excellently. Well, mostly. Implying that Star Wars is easy to write and that the only reason it got popular instead of a million others is like marketing or whatever is peak, well, marketing brain. No wonder you have disdain for the idea of appealing to the audience. I would ofc agree that seeing people as humans is way better than as avatars of light or possessed by demons, I'm a materialist as well, and that is distressingly far from a universal opinion IRL, but your categorical disdain of archetypal stories as if that has to follow logically is just a crying shame. It just reeks of the same sublime arrogance of like a 1950s sci-fi writer saying that we will 'outgrow' the concept of religion or whatever the hell. I'm much more of an escapist, like many creatives you've seen online, and there's a lot of ways where I don't want stories to reflect reality or how things really are, I hate that shit. Or at least could really use a break sometimes, and that includes power fantasies and wish fulfillment for days. But at the same time there has to be that connection back to humanity, the part that does read as true. Not really here to argue you into adoring Luke Skywalker's journey or whatever, just to sound off and say that I always find it deeply moving and resonant, and in fact more psychological than many people give it credit, obligatory shout out to So Uncivilized, but also that the archetypal part calls to me too. Your work is a great lesson in how creative output comes from someone's worldview and philosophy though, and how to recognize that, analyze it, try and express one's own worldview that same way. It's a thing that just happens with stories, but like a lot of the subjects you cover, better to be conscious and deliberate about it. Discovering your channel is one of the big reasons I'll ever actually end up writing something that I can feel proud of, because I understand things, myself, all that stuff, thanks for that.

You're totally on point with Neo. I used to be confused about breaking The Matrix down because it's very blunt and yet very subtle at the same time. I've always believed that Neo's flaw is that he needs to have control of his life, which is in contradiction to "you're the one, just because". He even states it "I don't like the fact that I'm not in control of my life". It's having FAITH in a greater destiny vs self-determination and CONTROL over your own life (a stark comparison in Morpheus and his team are putting their faith over a prophecy against the logical machine like enemy that controls humanity). Neo says at the all or nothing moment; -"Morpheus did what he did because he believes something I'm not." ... "Morpheus believes in something and he was ready to give his life, I understand that now. That's why I have to go. Because I believe in something. I believe I can bring him back. " He proves this change when he challenges the agents(which he is told not to do) because "he's starting to believe".

"If you can write a Theoden, you can write an Aragorn." This is a funny statement, as these characters are similar by design, and employed in a complementary way to explore themes of duty and leadership. Denethor is too, but only for the benefit of the reader. Aragorn's character arc only reaches its conclusion thanks to Theoden influencing him. Theoden is afraid to lead, because he compares himself to his greater forefathers. Aragorn does not want to lead, because his ancestor failed. Denethor is unwilling to let anyone but himself lead, because none are capable in his eyes. Denethor tragically fails. Theoden tragically succeeds. The story concludes with Aragorn, who steps up to do his duty. LotR is a great story, and there are many stories within it, this being one of them. It seems you have changed your mind on how complex characters should be in a story, judging by this video compared to the utilitarian way you talked about character writing in your Avatar video. ("But they are one-dimensional." ... "So? Did you think that characters in a story were supposed to be realistic?")