I been thinking about this for a while. First with a the significant other of a hero without powers or a helping role, where we see their day to day life and how they feel insignificant next to the hero and all the action that take place away from them for the most. See different relations, ones where the hero over compensates for short-comings, one where they are toxic or even abuse panther in their. Mentors for heroes, who start the story with as mentors, mother/parents of heroes. Also when i mean full story, i don’t mean a single episode in a series or a poltline in a book, but a fully completed story centered around them alone.
some archs i thought of:
-the comedic relief -the powerhouse(usually written as dumb) -the villain(that is not just a serial killer) -the future seer/oracle
Feel free to add media/stories use the arch for the full stories
I’ve searched far and wide, and there are only a scant few books that do the classic wizard’s tower. POV of the master wizard that is retiring to do research and really dig into the limits of magic. Maybe pick up the hero of the world as his apprentice, but not from his pov at all. The wizard sees the aftermath of his misadventures and offers words of wisdom and the occasional spell he might be ready for. Sure there’s a romantic intrest with his other apprentice, but he ignores that too. They do a fine job at cleaning, cooking, and local monster removal.
He occasionally gets together with other retired wizards and they chew the fat and complain about their apprentices and how often they end up in the news or jail.
Comedy/ slice of life fantasy. No high stakes, if an apprentice brings back a problem it’s big in their eyes, but fixed with a wave of his hand, and a warning. Or they’re taught a lesson and have to fix it themselves by researching before the wizard has to intervene, because then it’s chamberpot duty with no magic cleaning for a month.
If you’re into anime you might like “I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level”. Not really what you’re talking about here but there are some parallels
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
More (anti) war films from the “wrong” side’s perspective. Flags of our Fathers and All Quiet on the Western Front are compelling as they tell stories that we all know but from a fresh point of view making you compare and contrast the experiences from both sides.
Something that fleshed out the lives and motivations of VC or NVA troops during the Vietnam War would be interesting as they’re only ever portrayed as screaming fanatics who’s only existence is to shoot at Americans in most films.
Or the story of a conscripted German teenager sent to Normandy on the eve of the allied invasion and the all-encompassing dread that must overwhelmed them as ships and planes fill the sea and sky.
Or what life must have been like on board a Japanese aircraft carrier before Midway, that unshakeable belief in your own destiny as a people filled with propaganda about your own superiority and stories of your endless victories to be so utterly shattered in a cataclysmic defeat. The ultimate story of hubris.
conscripted German teenager
Watch Die Brücke from 1959 some time. There’s a remake but it’s not worth it. The author of the story was one of those teenagers and wrote it to express his sense of betrayal. Adults had thrown them into battle and then condemned them for fighting. It’s a really good movie. You really get to know those kids as cringy teenagers.
A more modern German movie is Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad (1993). It’s in color and has a bit of budget, though it’s far from Saving Private Ryan. If you are interested in these things, watch it together with Stalingrad: Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever? (1959).
The differences between those 2 Stalingrad movies say a lot about how German society changed. The older movie wanted to be historically accurate and had input from some of the commanders. If you pay attention, you can tell who was still around to tell their side of the story. You can’t tell who was a convicted war criminal, though. Still, at the time, the movie was controversial for its (rather tame) anti-war message and not for its whitewashing.
In 1993, the conscripted teenagers were just retiring, after the german re-unification. That generation has been termed Flakhelfer generation (Flak-helper since they were made to operate anti-aircraft guns). Hans-Dietrich Genscher had been one of them. He was the (West-)German foreign minister during the reunification and had just retired in 1993. As a 17-year-old, he and, like many others his age, served in the Wehrmacht, in Wenck’s 12th army. If Western forces had marched on Berlin, they would have fought their way past those kids, or more likely over their dead bodies. As that didn’t happen, Nazi elites would have sacrificed them against the Soviets in the Battle of Berlin, as portrayed in Downfall. Wenck instead chose to secure a corridor from the Berlin region toward the West. Sabaton commemorates this in Hearts of Iron. Sabaton does not mention the Battle of Halbe, though. Genscher recalled seeing battle weary Generals marching past, wielding submachine guns.
I want more Dune, and by that I mean I wanna see more “prophet assaulted by their visions and without a hopeful monotheistic background (in which God fills in for the lack of competence and faith in it keeps you going)/the potentially inhuman wisdom required to deal with them and do something positive with them”. The problem is that you don’t just have to be a competent writer to create something like that, but you also have to be cultured, existentialist/philosophical and genuinely bright, and that reduces the potential pool of writers to like 6 people worldwide at any given time. 😔🤷
Is that what Dune is about? Isn’t his whole prophet status carefully engineered over years and years, and is actually a cynical ploy to reestablish their family dynasty? The whole series is a critique on Lawrence of Arabia type narratives…
No, it’s way more than that, just inspired by many things, some of them mostly aesthetically so. The Bene Gesserit plant myths but they themselves are just space witch nuns who have largely forgotten their origins, but they know there’s such a thing as “knowing the unknowable” and pursue the creation of the Kwizath Haderach, simply because they can see there’s something “behind the veil” they’re just simply ill-equipped to handle the knowledge and “know” a ‘male Bene Gesserit’ could handle it.
But it all basically puts you in the shoes of Paul, and later on Leto II, both actual prophets who can see peek/clearly see into the future (although, because the idea of seeing into the future sorta clashes against the idea of free will, it’s not 100% established on what is fixed and what isn’t, but it’s not super necessary) and it’s a character study on how one could handle such information. Paul, besides not being the most physical person, is actually as quick as a computer, extremely knowledgeable and of good character but, because he’s still just a person, he cannot handle it. His son, Leto II, is more than human, and can do something positive with it. It’s mostly a Solomon to Jesus (not the historical one but Christian “godly” one) allegorical story, and Dune will feel very familiar to anyone who has read Ecclesiastes, a character study and a philosophical deep dive (also, a little essay on ecology). The whole series is great, but I’d say Dune to God Emperor of Dune (yes, Dune inspired not just Star Wars, albeit superficially, but WH40K as well) are mandatory readings, lol.
I would guess that most or all have already been done in some way, although I would like to see more from the comedy relief and villains minion point of view.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is along these lines. Warning: Musical.
