@@SpaceMonkeyBoi Oh good god, that’s a horrifying thought. Almost as horrifying as Hitler-Goring gay love fanfics. Yes, that exists. And I wish it didn’t.
The everyman only works if he's given a personality. This can easily be achieved by sneaking in a love triangle, as they are very effective in solving all problems in the writers struggles.
Uniquely this does actually work. As long as the writer gives a damn about the relationships. Each character at minimum will have an objective reason for liking the other person. Thus creating solid foundations for characterization, all the writer has to do is build on that one piece inorder to create a dynamic LIVE TRIANGLE!
Yes, because love triangles are pointy. They cause all this conflict in your story and that is what you want. The same can be said about continuity errors. They are combined with the love triangle are the butter and bread of a good story.
It's called the "Lowest Common Denominator". Everyone's a _little_ stupid, a _little_ lazy, a _little_ selfish, and a _little_ unsuccessful. Therefore, reason writers, someone who has all these traits is universally appealing. Therefore, Homer Simpson.
I'm remembering a terrible anime called maburaho that had this problem where the main character had a limited supply of magic that he constantly used to help random people... even though running out would literally kill him. While his harem girls fretted over trying to find a way to replenish his magic and stop him from dying he took a nap and never treated the whole thing seriously at all. If there was some purpose to this, like if he was expressing a dangerous level of lacking self worth like Shirou Emiya from fate/stay night, then this would maybe have mad sense, but no, he was just an idiot who is meant to be seen as "heroic" and "self sacrificing".
@@joelsasmad the only thing that I liked about that anime is that for the most part was the only anime harem that made sense, girls didn't "fall in love" with him because he was kind and gentle with them once, they only wanted his genes so they could give birth to the most powerful wizard which would give them status and lots of money, dumping the portagonist after getting pregnant. Sadly it was a harem anime and somehow the only 3 recurrent girls ended up felling in love with him.
Don't forget. The everyman is divorced and has to have a family that doesn't want anything to do with for good reasons. Because despite the MC being a MASSIVE piece of shit and not taking care of his family unlike the new person the wife has married. They are in the wrong.
Seconded. More broadly, it's really stupid that we have this false dichotomy of logic, rationality and science vs emotion and art. A smaller problem that I have with 'collected and intelligent villain vs emotional hero', which I have with every case of the villain being the opposite of the hero in almost every respect, is that it's more interesting when the villain embodies who the hero could be if s/he made worse choices. For example, both of them have a tragic backstory, but the hero manages to move on while the villain becomes bitter and full of self-pity.
Broke: Making the protagonist your self-insert and making them perfect Bespoke: Making the villain your self-insert and mercilessly ripping into your own worst traits
Artichoke: Making the villain your self insert and giving him/her an actual character arc, decent motivations, and goals that make sense while also fearlessly addressing your own flaws.
I liked the part where him being so bland and uninteresting meant the surveillance state couldn't actually find him because he was a perfect match for everyone else
It would be kinda cool to see what would happen if a super bland Everyman and a super overpowered Mary Sue met in a story. Whose story bending powers would be stronger? Who has the most luck? Do they fall in love and have a sexy calendar shoot??? What if the Everyman gains superpowers while Mary Sue struggles to maintain her higher status? This could be so cool
That's quite Re:Zero, an everyman who despite being likeable, gets submited to absolute horrors. in comparisson, his love interest is a Mary Sue with extreme plot armor. If something happens to her, main character has to undergo hell to restructure history so nothing happens to her.
Making the everyman stupid also numb the audience's intelligence or chase away those who mange to keep theirs-> You'ld be left with idiots who would not only swallow anything you throw at them but also defend you as the misunderstood genius
@@joelsasmad Yep. A lot of harem mcs from what I've seen seem like everymen done wrong. Who goes for everymen anyway? Unless said everyman becomes a great man despite humble origins. And has a drive to do so. That, I would love to see.
A good example of a well-used everyman is Emmet from The Lego Movie. The whole point of the character is that he's just a bland happy guy that likes simple things. He thus act as a foil to the rest of the main characters, who all have outsized personalities and a specialized focus. However, while that personality and ego makes them great creators within their niche, it makes them absolutely awful team players. Which is where Emmet, who has no ego whatsoever, and thus do not see any shame in following instructions to get to a common, predefined goal, gets to shine and lead the team.
Similarly, Emmet also grows from the rest of the cast around them, as while he makes the rest of the cast more team players, the rest of the cast bring him from being a hyper-normal everyman obsessed with the instructions into a more fully realized, unique individual.
One of the best everyman characters I've seen in a long time has been "Beau is Afraid" He represents the modern-man so much, its scary. A socially-recluse, romantically-inept, suffered a traumatized childhood, and every friendship he had seemed to end in despair and tragedy.
I might be a truly awful writer, but at least my protagonist isn’t an Everyman. Mostly because I hate boring characters almost as much as I hate my life choices.
The everyman protagonist- the perfect character to insert yourself while simultaneously giving yourself traits that don't exist or turning the existing ones into a magnet attracting hot people, for some reason
"While simultaneously giving yourself traits that don't exist or turning the existing ones into a magnet attracting hot people" Well how else is my self-insert, Gary Stu, supposed to be awesome and likeable? Giving my self-insert any of my real flaws and traits could result in my self-insert being a less than pleasant individual who's a cynical and socially inept agoraphobia shut-in with no real friends, no athletic ability, and no combat skills. This could lead to conflict, something we desperately want to avoid.
Normal person: “I wouldn’t be a little bitch like Shinji Ikari.” Also normal person: Wouldn’t risk their life by fighting an eldritch abomination inside a robot they don’t know how to use.
Finally someone says it! Before I watched Evangelion, so many fans warned me about how "whiny" and "useless" Shinji is, but when I watched the first episode, I actually thought that his reaction was very realistic: being forced out of nowhere to pilot a huge robot you have no idea how it works to then fight and eldritch horror that could kill you? No thanks. I admit he did annoy me in the final episodes. He had gone through so much and learned how to properly fight, and yet at the finale he STILL refused to fight?? Then again, it's not like Evangelion uses logic for the final episodes, much less in the movie.
@ThePigKnight I get your point, yet I can't help feel that - for at least a certain percentage of people - the "fighting [...] inside a robot"-part of the proposal might lead to rash and potentially suicidal decisions, especially when coupled with the argument that if you don't, the eldritch abomination is just going to kill you all anyway. I mean, thinking about it real hard, even for cowardly me it'd come down to a coin toss whether I would just say screw it, get into the damn robot and go out in a blaze of incompetence riding the high of one of my favorite power fantasies. ... But then LCL rising inside the cockpit pre-battle would have me banging on the exit hatch of the plug, screaming, crying and begging to be let out. And I'd definitely just descend into panic after realizing that *I feel any injury my "Mech" takes*. So, I'd go with "Shinji is a little bitch for not immediately getting into the robot!" as well as "Shinji's a minor badass for enduring everything the fight puts him through and not backing down AFTER he got in the robot!"
Teenage boys who spent most of their life without a positive role model tend to be whiny at the _best_ of times We see Shinji at the _worst_ of times He's realistically written, without a doubt
Bringing up the everywoman as a last-second punch is more hilarious when you consider that there's an internet sub-subculture dedicated to mocking writers who make pov women seem like aliens
I have seen the everywoman before in stories. The best that come to my mind is Bella from Twilight and Ana from Fifty Shades. There is a regular teenage girl or young woman in her early 20s. She tends to be a white girl with brown hair. She tends to be awkward, plain and humble. This kind of everywoman works as a blank slate for the presumably female readers to project onto. There is a wierd paradox to this kind of character. She thinks that she looks plain and unattractive, but a more objective physical description suggest that she is actually beautiful. Then she will have one or more males be attracted to her, even ones that would seem to be out of her league. This gets into the wish fulfillment. It is an odd thing to be both a blank slate and a wish fulfillment. Twilight gives a plausible explanation. One of the boyfirends is a vampire, which has super senses. So he is attracted to the teenage everywoman, because he likes her BO. It is funky.
@@sylviadailey9126 I was gonna bring up Bella. I recall thinking why does every1 love her even all the annoying regular kids in her school. one of the worst portrayed eveywoman
If you're gonna make your character vanilla, make him the good kinda vanilla, the type that you find in that kinda pricey vanilla ice cream. That's some damn good vanilla
@@eros439 the guy can cook, Have multiple powers, Gets advice from a Divine figure, have girls and guys falling for him(Including a former Idol), can hold almost 5 jobs and is the head of an investigation team to find a serial killer.
@@psychospeech6189 that can be said about any persona protagonist, and that's kinda the point since it's an rpg. You shape the character. It's like complaining that your character in WoW has no personality, like yeah, since you're supposed to put yourself in their shoes.
Audience: We like seeing characters we can relate to grow throughout a story. It gives us hope that we too can rise to the challenges in our lives. Author: Okay, so you want the character to be an unbeatable badass by the end of the story who solves all of their problems with brute force? Audience: Not necessarily, we just want character growth. Author: Okay, so the character has to start out as a complete and utter moron so that you can relish the power fantasy when they defeat the bad guy single handedly at the end. Audience: When was the last time you talked to other humans?
@@GamersHolyArmy MANY roasted Empress Theresa and Onisions Books, who i see as Siblings cause one is a famously unhealthy Atheist and one is a famously unhealthy Theist; effectively making them Odd Anti-Thesis to each other; but Krimson Rogue and Jabroni are still my Favorite Coverage of 'em! But i would love TH-camr Terrible Writing Advice to take a Look. I love his Humor for these Things.
Sasuke in a nutshell in naruto...dude literally just solves issues with powers and fighting and never changed ..audience would be bored by him if he wasn't given powers and upgrades all the time cause he had no other interesting characteristics....he's just a power fantasy emo
Love the comment about the "everywoman", because women, of course, are never common, everyday people. And if she is, it's a "girls story" and not for general audiences.
Female protagonists exist purely to give someone for their entirely-female readership to project themselves onto, and thus pretend that they too are being pursued by several hunky boys. Sure, there's probably a handful of books where the female protagonist goes on an adventure or whatever. But this is purely a mechanism to introduce new, possibly even hunkier boys.
I guess the everywoman would be a silly and clumsy girl with a lot of initiative but basically a doormat. Everywomen are obviously never hot but they're always cute under those boring clothes and messy hair. But, unlike the everyman, the everywoman isn't dumb, she's actually at least of average intelligence, only clumsy. Loves to eat sweet stuff while binge watching some show with her cat and going for some margaritas with the gals after a hard week of work at the office. She is the source of love triangles between herself, the nice guy who will inevitably get friend-zoned, and the hunk who may or may not be a complete dick at the beginning but thanks to her, will become more sensitive and open his heart
I like how these videos aren't just telling you to simply NOT use a trope only because it's a trope. These videos give tips on just how these tropes can be used to make for interesting stories. There are good ways and bad ways to use them. A trope is only as bad as how an author uses it.
Mhm, I've heard opinions about TWA where people say "So, I can't write a story then?" Bullshit! Go write one, just use TWA as a little stand-in for a second opinion and use it as reflection
@@HavingCrumpets yeah it basically tells you how to write by showing the main issues that can cause issues in a genre or with a trope. Its a handy "what not to do" with some helpful tips scattered in the background in text.
This implies that the everyman would bounce upon being kicked, which is too symbolically alike to the ups and downs of narrative tension imo. Instead, I'd say the every-orb is floating along on the plot's squeaky old pulley system where it can get the best overviews of all the environments that the author will be sure to overdescribe for several pages (and also any female character's _humungous_ hungamalongalagongas).
I'd say Peter Parker in most iterations was created to be an everyman. His appeal is that he is just a guy (or even a kid) given a lot of power and has to take the responsibility for his actions, and his powers rarely solves his problems, just adding more.
Good call He's the superpowered everyman, perfectly balanced to not turn into power fantasy but instead the embodiment of "with great power..." I'd never really given much thought to what makes Spidey so great, always just thought he was cool But you're so right
Even as a superhero he's stuck in the middle. He's strong but not Hulk strong. He's smart but not Iron Man smart. He's fast and but he's no Quicksilver. He can fight planet crushing demigods but most of the time he's fighting slightly superpowered gangsters.
When well written he’s got a lot of personality and interesting relationships. That’s not to say most adaptations aren’t as generic as heck. I think the problem is that early comic heroes like batman, spiderman, superman, etc set the standard that solidified the trope (and were honestly originally generically written to be “relatable” and an easy to grasp story; superhero comics were originally just a weekly fun escapade before they became an out of the box wacky multiverse of crazy ideas and every now and then fantastically deep writing).
Stan Lee has claimed Spider-Man was made in response to seeing how many teens were buying comics and wanting to make a character they could identify with. So you're spot on.
Finally, the real villain steps from the shadows. JP's inner greed threatens to consume all who oppose him. Also, at long last, something actually moved on-screen.
Idea: a story about a protagonist with the power of *being* an everyman. As in, his power is that he's completely average at literally everything, so he's able to pull skills and talents out of nowhere and provide mid-tier analysis of whatever situation he finds himself in. This naturally means he's able to beat a lot of more specialized opponents with some new weird trick, and I just think it'd be a neat concept to have in a story.
Probably not what you asked for but there's an anime called "Please make me average in the next life" where someone dies and gets reincarnated with the average power of all the life forms in the universe or something. So instead of being an average person like they intended, they have like, half the power of some cosmic entity
@@lolozo214 I'm aware of that anime, and you're right that that's not what I'm after. I'm talking about, explicitly, an average *person.* Supernatural creatures and such aren't factored in here, unless they're also human.
@@whereta3097 Honestly with the number of skills and tricks in existence it's more like fearing the man who's practiced a *billion* moves once and not the one who's practiced one move a million times.
The Everyman seems to be written to seem saner than mad scientists, serial killers, etc. and calmer than damsels in distress and more relatable than Mary Sues, aliens, Badass Normals and superheroes--in short, a "normal" person, like the audience.
More accurately, they're less of a nerd than the smart or specialized characters, less of a jerk than the villains, less of a wuss than the weak/woobie characters, less annoying than the comic relief characters, and in the end, less of a character than any actual character. By refusing to have any character trait that might make the audience dislike them, they fail to have any traits at all.
One good way to start an everyman/everywoman is to make an unidealized version of yourself. Common life problems٫ flaws٫ maybe even romance issues. But remember٫ this character is best used as a starting point. So just keep that in mind.
This. I'm open to the idea of an everyman/self insert character, as long as they aren't a blatant Mary Sue with no character flaws. The idea of an accurate representation of the writer working through their own flaws in the story sounds like a really interesting idea tbh.
@@marocat4749 I will say though it can be kind of surreal for the people you based the characters on to actually read your story. My dad published a novel a couple years ago and there’s a character based on me at age 9. It works for the story at hand and the character isn’t a one to one copy of me, but a bit of stuff I experienced around that age is in there and it was quite jarring to see my own memories from someone else’s perspective if I do say so myself.
Why Would I Write a Character who has EVERY Quality about Myself that I DO NOT Care about? If I Don't like Certain Aspects of myself; WHY WOULD OTHERS be drawn to parts of myself I wish I DIDN'T have?! Especially if I Don't WANT These parts of myself! I'M NOT GOING TO WRITE MYSELF IN A WAY THAT HIGHLIGHTS MY BAD SIDE/PARTS OF MYSELF I DON'T PARTICULARLY CARE TO EITHER HAVE, AND I'M NOT GOING TO EXPOSE THAT SIDE OF MYSELF TO THE PUBLIC!
Yeah, just use all the embarrassing stuff people do when others aren't around as inspiration. It'll give them quirks while being sympathetic to the audience. Like smelling your armpit because you can't remember if you wore deodorant. Or watching cartoons or kids anime when you're an adult other housemates will mock you for it.
Remember that if you have characters with an interesting backstory or personality, you should only bring them out just long enough to tease a more interesting story, before quickly hiding them behind the blank-canvas protagonist. After all, we wouldn't want them to overshadow our protagonist. If anything interesting happens to them, it's offscreen and only mentioned when they have the misfortune of meeting the protagonist again.
The 'everyman' trope is born from the wrong-headed belief that people are exactly the same, and the cynical desire to appeal to this mythical audience. In reality the average man is an individual, in no way interchangeable with another, with interests, hobbies, quirks and beliefs that would make him distinctly not a stand in for the vague, shifting masses of humanity. Remember just as there is no 'wider audience' there is such thing as the 'people' just large collections of individuals.
Something about this brings to mind, "When US air force discovered the flaw of averages - Toronto Star Jan 16, 2016 - There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you've designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you've actually designed it to fit no one."
This is definitely the reality of the world. I just wish the decision makers (be they writers, management, philosophers or politician's) would come to understand that.
Mickey Mouse and Spongebob Squarepants are primary example of an "everyman" protagonists, but the difference is that they at least have a personality. Personality and traits gives more flavor to the character and make it pop.
The same could be said about Luigi, not Mario since he has been since the begining an excuse of a character to give the player someone to play, but over the years Mario has gotten more and more charisma in the shape of being always a happy man who gets dead serious when it comes to competitions.
My favorite usage of everyman characters is as video game protagonists. I'm not talking about your average Nolan North character here either, I'm talking about RPG characters that you get to make yourself and you intentionally make them as boring as possible. Like in Pathfinder kingmaker I made a lawful neutral human fighter named Jim. That's it, that's his whole character. Didn't even give him a voice, I thought about potentially making him left handed but then I thought "no that'd be too interesting"
Now this reminds me of a lit rpg book series i read some years ago. The protagonist is very close to what you described, a total everyman and his name is Jim. Think the book series is called the mayor of noob town if your interested.
Pheonix Wright was a great everyman-protagonist. In the first Ace Attorney game, he acted as a conduit for the player, to solve the cases. He played the straight man to other (more comical) charcters but he also held some comical factors to how he acted in certain situations. Compared to Maya or Gumshow, he is putting up with their sh1t but compared to Edgeworth, he is fighting upwards to meet him on his level. Though it is hinted that he has more to him, as shown by his relationships, him and the player tend to be on the same page. HOWEVER, in chapter 4, when Edgeworth gets arrested, Pheonix decides to defend him, despite Edgeworth being nothing more than a jerk for all but the tail end of the last trial. This disconnect between player & character is what makes Pheonix stand on his own. It works because we are shown reason to care for him, upto that point, so we can handle change in status. Its not alot but it works surprisingly well to make Pheonix is own person, with his own agenda.
4:59 “Being smart makes you evil” Speaking of which; you notice how in every kid’s series, there’s an episode where the Dumb character suddenly becomes super-smart and turns into a jerk? And at the end of the episode they go back to being dumb? That is so anti-intellectual!
honestly, a character who would *willingly* watch paint dry and *willingly* collects eraser tops is interesting, cause i dont know a lot.. scratch that, any people who do that. i actually kind of like the concept of a character who has interest in boring, mundane things. it's like the writer *wants* them to be average, but is forgetting that such boring hobbies arent all that universal. it also could be a decent set up for development for the character, maybe they find comfort in these hobbies, the mundaneness and blandness of it brings them solitude while more daring activities scare them. maybe they like being "boring", but really, liking these boring things doesnt make them boring at all.
*Everyman:* "It's a good thing I'm just an average guy, or otherwise all this power I have might be abused! Isn't that right, girl hopelessly in love with me?" *Girl:* "Yes. Powerful and boring guys is what girls want. Please hold my hand, average-but-overly-powerful person." *Everyman:* "Of course I will! You're a good girl, who'll never go against me!" *Girl:* "(Please help me. Send someone, anyone, who's actually intresting.) *Everyman:* "What was that?" *Girl:* "..nothing. I love you, without condition." *Everyman:* "And don't you forget it!"
@@BonaparteBardithion To be fair Free Guy is inside a game where real life logic doesn't exist and in game you just need to know how to play. Anyone with game skill can basically become God in game.
I think Rock from "Black Lagoon" is a great example of a "everyman" protagonist. He's a genuinely relatable but also complex character who does serve a position in the story by using his experience as an underling businessman.
I thought Lister from Red Dwarf was a good version of the Everyman trope as well. He's lazy, a slob, and kinda dumb, but he's also funny, good hearted, when there's a problem he tries to fix it. Hes literally just an average human. You get to watch him mature and grow over the series.
The Everyman is one of the most useful and interesting tropes out their, there are so many cool ways of taking it. But writers somehow never go down any of these paths that are so clearly marked
@@marocat4749 The thing with Benny is that unlike Rock, he has been in the criminal world for much longer and he is much more used to seeing the horrors of what it means to be working with bounter hunters. His skills as a hacker and technology expert are more fit to help in combat and many other things which makes him more colorful as a character. Rock was just a guy working as a wage slave with the basic morals of normal society who later gets corrupted to use his business skills for far more dangerous means. Rock is still ultimately just a man who could get killed by some thief with a gun or knife and who needs to be saved by Revy everyday.
incredibly valid point as this is with the intense prattification of popular media, it’s almost all the more amusing how his first big leading role in the lego movie was actually like. one of the best modern executions of the everyman protagonist trope. it’s like every product that sought him out for that role since saw solely the “he’s just a normal guy!” part of the character and did not catch wind at all of the whole struggle and arc that derives from that character’s normalness, plus the nevertheless individual qualities that the character lends to the group dynamic of his extraordinary counterparts LOL
Emmett from The Lego Movie and Brett from Inside Job are my favourite everymen. I think they work because their stories are kinda self aware about their everyman status and they both have rather distinct personalities with the key flaw of being too much of a people pleaser/being insecure about how "boring" they are. Plus they have great chemistry with their foils (Wildstyle/Lucy and Reagan respectively).
If the everyman can be relatable to everyone, then I can claim points for deep character and motives since everyone can just imprint themselves onto my blank canvas. 10/10 strat
I sometimes wonder what a story would be like if a superhero was just a superhero 24/7. Technically they wouldn't have a secret identity because being a superhero IS their identity.
Wonder Woman is this. Her real superpower is maintaining peak patience and kindness; while stuck slapping down an endless parade of humanities' douche-ness.
That would be Teen Titans (the 2003 show), 4 of the 5 characters don't/can't have a secret identity, and the other doesn't really act as if he has a normal life. A few other examples are more like parodies/comedies like the Tick or Hero Academia.
''Two Episodes in 1 week'' is probably because the previous one is age restricted. Speaking of age restriction, FUCK OFF TH-cam! I'm not going to give nor my identity card, nor my credit card!
Only guy I can think of who pulled off everyman protagonists consistently was Hitchcock. It didn't always work (see Saboteur) but he hit home runs more often than not (see Strangers On A Train, North By Northwest, The 39 Steps, etc).
Ah yes, the "Everyman". The typical protagonist that in my experience tends to be too good or intelligent compared to others. Can also be as interesting as White Bread.
This kind of character works perfectly for comedies, see: Homer Simpson, Emmet (Lego Movie), Rincewind (Discworld), Kazuma (Konosuba); and even then only that much, because all of them have proper, distinctive personalities.
Hmm...So would that make stereotypes a form of everymen since their general traits depend on the general public? One would assume what is normal for the life of a local resident, but it quickly becomes a different subject if they come from somewhere else. There's the "normal" American, but in between there's also the "normal" New Yorker, "normal" Texan, and Florida Man. Don't even get started on factors like class, hobbies, jobs, etc. It's like the environment shape the foundation of our being or something. Sorry for the rambling.
@@airhead1320 no not really everyman doesn't just mean exactly like everyone one else it doesn't imply the lack of distinctive character or personality
"You can tell it's (an exposition dump) because all characterization ceases the moment it begins." Wow. That is actually REALLY good writing advice. Damn. 👏
Regarding the "Moral Compass" use of the everyman, i saw it used in the SCP Foundation, where the O5 Council, a group of super-powerful, super-intelligent inmortals, keep a guy they literally plucked from the street around to keep them from going too far.
I mean, the easiest way to tell is listing out their habits, ideology, methodology, and personality. If they have no special habits, make one or two. If they have no clear ideology, either fit into that ambiguity or clarify their position mentally. If they have no clear methodology, repeat the step for ideology. If they have no clear personality traits, what the fuck are you doing?
I don't think the video was knocking the use of the "everyman" as a concept. Just that even they should have, like, personalities and opinions and responses, and you should think about using some of the many opportunities they provide in the narrative instead of them just existing.
@@wppb50 i almost thought you replied to me lmao, i'm high or tired or some shit Yeah, as with all TWA videos, nothing he covers is strictly bad; just that he's gonna 'encourage' you to do everything shitty and 'discourage' you from doing anything valuable with the trope/topic. Sarcastically, hence the quotes.
I remember many years ago there was one anime where the “hero” was a side character, because their power was to be so boring and uncaring that magic literally did nothing to them. They were clearly intelligent on the rare occasion that they tried but they almost never actually tried and if I remember correctly a significant portion of the story was just the main character trying to convince them to do invincible hero things.
Everyman works great in comedies Not so great in more serious stories where they're very likely to have their agency stripped and are constantly overshadowed by the more interesting supporting cast
I've been thinking of having an everyman generic anime protagonist but as the series goes on he receives many life threatening injuries from combat and ends up a mess of broken flesh and mechanical parts kinda like hank wimbleton.
@@LL-yd8zz fantasy cyborg dudes do be cool not gonna lie. Or someone that is literally bond armor (Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood did that right imo) Big metal dudes are cool. Tho remember it's just aesthetic and they still need to have personality and other stuff that properly maintained character has
The only writer I can think of that does the everyman good is Lovecraft, but that's because he's a weirdo and would project himself onto his "everyman" protagonists
@@TreeHairedGingerAle but no one is as weird as Mr. Lovecraft, the man would eat 20 flavors of ice cream when out with his friends, put so much sugar in his coffee that it becomes coffer syrup, put mountains of cheese on his spaghetti, never had a childhood so his only friend he had as a kid was his grandpa, vomit when eating anything seafood related, hates the ocean to such a abnormal degree, would starve himself because of his eating disorders and self loathing problems, he was so skinny and unhealthy that people said that when they shook his hand it felt like touching a corpse, was very anti-religious, and was a closeted asexual that his wife said that she would bribe him with books and poetry just get even a morsel of romance from him
Some Everyman protagonists, specifically ones adapted to anime from a source material, get hate, because they can come off as bland or too basic. However, in the source material like visual or light novels, you can understand their psyche and thought process by reading from their POV. I’ve come to love some of them because of this.
I know this is late, but I still don't get why adaptations get the thought process wrong. We can hear a character's internal thoughts and monologue just more often. What makes Kazuma in Konosuba a gem.
And remember, the everyman should always be from the normal world, because the audience can't relate to an everyman from the fantasy world. Writing a peasant striking out on their own, or a vending machine repairman on a starship, with their own attitudes and views on the world and state of affairs, is too hard to write.
How about a colorful protagonist in an everyman world? Protagonist is one guy who has to explain everything to everyone while also being the only one with a deep personality.
I think this line about everymen being "empathetic and humble individuals who wish to do good and help out in spite of their lack of powers" really captures why I still enjoy this trope so much. Sometimes I really just want to see an ordinary person actively choose to make a difference as a reminder that everyday heroes really do exist, that heroes can be made, not born, and that the average human being is a lot kinder than our other, worse qualities seem to suggest.
TWA TLDR: Almost every trope, even extremely common ones, can be used effectively if the author takes the time and effort to properly fit it into the story and nail the execution. BUT WHY BOTHER WITH ALL THAT WORK? I’m sure audiences will love my derivative and poorly constructed narrative that serves as little more than self-glorifying fan-fiction crossed with a political diatribe!
I agree, these videos are pretty entertaining and poke fun at commonly "misused" tropes and clichés, but they're just that. JP's arguments aren't constructive, and his content is nothing but strawmanning. That in on itself is not a problem imo, it's what the internet likes and if that's what he likes to do then so be it.
@@lakyshine1319 Ok, are you serious? He specifically mentions multiple times that there is nothing inherently wrong with any trope. His most common joke format is literally:'A writer could use this trope for this interesting idea or this one...But that's too much work, let's do this dumb shit instead!'
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I don't think there's anything wrong with the trope argument. My point is that the critique he gives is nothing more than entertainment, as the direction of critique is just general, concentrated "dumb shit" instead of real examples, for example.
“A writer will know their job is done right when the audience is begging for the story to focus on literally anything other than the main character” *High Guardian Spice intensifies*
@@channel45853 Tori is fucking awful as a person and as a character. It's like a vanilla ice cream, except the ice cream is literally just a clump of frozen vanilla extract.
Came for the A+(++) writing advice, but stuck around because I enjoy the arc the Dark Lord is getting. Weird spot to be in, but I don't really mind it.
I see the Everyman as a great _starting point_ for characterization: You write the story with a generic vanilla protagonist in mind, _until_ the plot forces them to act and/or react in a unique way. Then you can start fleshing their character out and rewrite what comes before, taking into account the new direction. For instance: The most boring plot possible: Average high school student gets teleported to a fantasy world. Then he finds a... FUCKING FIREBREATHING DRAGON... An average and generic protagonist would be scared and run away. Our VERY UNIQUE and INTERESTING character will... Try to SEDUCE the dragon. Then... Huh... That's donkey from Shrek... Anyways, the everyman works as a vessel UNTIL it's time to fill it in. People don't want to read stories about themselves. People want to read stories about ACTUALLY INTERESTING PEOPLE... I generally prefer to think about the characters first, but when I have this absolutely COOL plot, the Everyman works to get things moving until it's time that he acts in an interesting way.
I agree, the everyman is my ideal starting point for writing because I love to see the build up to greatness, I want it to feel earned and this is the best way to do it. Thats why I am kind of a sucker for a lot of shonen anime, the mc was some weakling who trains constantly to become someone important. Yeah they have their issues, they became more apparent as I grew up and developed some actual standards, but the core of them really feel compelling to me. I just love seeing some joe-shmoe like me become somebody, but I don't want them to have the attitude of a regular guy, but to instead have aspirations to become something more.
Eh, not Sakuta Azusagawa. He has an actual personality, his banter with all of the characters is witty, funny and engaging, and his attitude ofnm not conforning to expected standards of "reading the room" and not standing out make are what make him shine. And he does that without being an asshole, as shown by his repeated selflessnes shelping the other characters. Plus him and Mai are easily onenof the best couples out there in medium.
@@Nai-qk4vp Yes and now. First I said *almost* so obviously there are exceptions. Second, Sakuta still kinda falls under the everyman umbrella. In the broadest sense he still is your average short-brown-to-black-haired highschool boy you see a million times who self-professed to being "average in academics and sports". In a more general sense, his story is reactive where he doesn't have any personal goals and motivations until some events happen that forces him to help the girl of the arc to resolve the problem, which often times end up with them falling for him not for his personal characteristics but because of the sheer dumb luck that he happens to be the only person who can fix their problem. ie, replace him with any other boy in the situation and they would've fallen for him all the same as long as they're willing to help. He has "personality" in the way that he's actually committed to 1 girlfriend, but when the story continuously throw more girls at him, it came off as disingenuous, the same way Asuna is Kirito's "one true girlfriend". He is more fleshed out than the average, but it doesn't break him away from being a vanilla protagonist. This is extra noticeable in the anime. He might be sassy, but he still has the same dead-face almost all the time.
One of the best "everyman" protagonists in fiction I think is Sheriff Jack Carter from Eureka. He's a persistent driving force in the plot even when he is woefully out of his depth due to his drive to help others and status as the town Lawman. He isn't "stupid" he's just unlearned by the standards of this town that has the most brilliant minds in the world working on science fiction projects daily. Jack is clever, good at noticing clues, and proactive. He often proposes simple ideas that lead to solutions because his less scientifically minded view of the world gives him a perspective a lot of the other characters don't have.
"The audience must be constantly told that unlimited unchecked power solves all problems; not critical thinking skills, determination, or creativity." This one hit a little too close to home. I have a friend who is also an amateur writer, and it drives me crazy that the only way a conflict is ever settled in his work I'm editing is by his protagonists gaining sufficient power to be stronger than their opponents. He seems to have this mindset that any other antagonist defeat that doesn't come about in this way is equivalent to a kid's "My Little Pony" plot and is therefore childish, oversimplified, and unrealistic. But the worst part about it is that the antagonists in his story constantly have the mindset of "might makes right" while his main protagonist believes in ideas of justice regardless of how much power one has...and yet his protagonist only succeeds when he becomes powerful enough to beat down the antagonists---ironically proving the antagonists were right all along. I think I'm finally getting through to him and he's at least starting to make the victories influenced by things that are based on intelligence and strategy rather than raw power, but it just infuriates me some times because I know he's got more talent than that.
One could argue that sufficient thinking skills, determination and creativity are forms of power. Honestly the best debunking of that idea was presented on the Mother Series. Giegue was not defeated with power or smarts, but with love technically. He felt it and went out of control reminding his own life (since at that point he was the strongest being in the universe and was almost destroying it, you just can't win against him with power. He went beyond power itself, only love could.)
Please, make a video about writing characters of different gender than the writer, that episode could be a lot of fun considering how many men couldn't write a female character even with a gun to their head.
Can't forget that the opposite is true too. It's not nearly as common as "male writers don't understand female characters", but fairly shocking to see how women authors would make male characters into complete assholes, even if they are the heroes/love interest
You know you have succeeded the moment one of the fans of your work says "Oh my gosh, they're, like, totally me, tho..." Who DOESN'T see themselves as the living embodiment of the Surprised Pikachu meme?
I think a show that does this well is The Boys where Hughie is the everyman but has a history, and contrasts well with the other more colorful characters
Kinda curious about the idea of the everyman protagonist being an actual cameraman for the real heroes. Like he's just the dude filming a documentary about the heroes and ends up in the middle of the conflict despite being wildly underqualified for the situation, having a nervous crisis all the way through the story yet trying to keep it under control just to make it out alive. Then at the end he just cracks and bludgeons the big baddie to death with his camera's tripod and saves the day... he ends up going to prison for it of course.
This reminds me of most anime protagonists who either have no personality other than being denser than a black hole when it comes to girls feelings or being so perverted they deserve to be on a watchlist. I assume this is mainly because the shows are geared towards teenage boys and they think it's easier to be a self insert with either personality trait. Personally, I'd want more anime with MC's with anger issues. But then you run the risk of getting an edge-Lord with the attitude of a papercut
@@apatheticobserver5290 even more so. One of the characters I can think of would be Ichika from Infinite Stratos. He is so painfully bland and so goddamn innocent. Granted the harem treat him like shit but goddammit he has NEVER spoken to humans before
I actually have an Every Man Protagonist! His name is Tommy, and he’s a college student who agrees to start the Apocalypse because he was promised Student Loan Forgiveness. It’s fun because Tommy- a human with no powers- is constantly put up against characters WAY stronger (Demons, Archangels, and even THE DEVIL) and he still manages to outwit or talk his way out of it. He’s not the most interesting on his own, but I think he highlights the way more interesting secondary cast so I think it works
My favorite "Everyman" is Ryo Takatsuki from Project ARMS. He desires to live like a normal person despite learning over the course of the series that his life was never "normal" to begin with and having to deal with a secret organization that wants to use his nanomachine weapon to destory the world.
My Everyman will be a mechanic on a space station. He’s a blue collar sort of guy with a fine young family. He hates temporal mechanics though but loves history like the Battle of Britain and the Alamo. He’s friends with a pretentious doctor but their difference smooth out and they bond over shared interests.
3:00 this reminds me of a story I read where the protagonist is getting lots of info dumped on him and he just ask for a list of everything that is being given to him so he can read it later. Throughout the story there are a couple points where he thinks "damn, I forgot I had that!" because he didn't read the list and forgot some of what was dumped on him while in other points he uses things that had not being pre-setted that he had, because they were on the list of things that we didn't got info-dumped about
Terrible Writing Advice should do a video based on Plots on multiverses/shared Universes, It's a popular trope right now that I think he could/should talk about
If you write yourself into a corner, you can always just give the everyman whatever skill is needed to resolve the situation. No need to explain why this character who has literally never even touched a weapon before suddenly handles a variety of weapons quite competently in big chaotic action scenes. Just remember to remove these inexplicable skills again as soon as they are no longer needed.
That can limited work, but it best forshadowed like they really were into hema or something. And keep that. In limitd amounts that can work, if consistent.
The Everyman can actually be equipped with a variety of useful skills. If they've ever worked as a manager they may have talent at organizing a group of disparate personalities into an efficient team. If they've ever worked in customer service they won't flinch at even the most vile and depraved creatures imaginable snarling threats into their face. They will have immense stamina when it comes to extremely repetitive tasks usually performed in an indoor office environment. Suggestion for a future TWA: The Mafia
A good example of an "everyman" is the narrator in H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds". The character reacts to an alien invasion in a way that an average person might, while also showing distinct qualities and cleverness.
Ahhh yes, the protagonist, the perfect character to insert yourself.
Your profile pic is awesome.
you say that as if there are characters that are Not perfect to insert yourself?
@@johnnythompson3734 hard picture I bet he doesn't mind if I take a pic.
@@ethanritterbusch8910 Hitler from "look who's back":
**sweats profusely**
@@SpaceMonkeyBoi Oh good god, that’s a horrifying thought. Almost as horrifying as Hitler-Goring gay love fanfics.
Yes, that exists. And I wish it didn’t.
The everyman only works if he's given a personality. This can easily be achieved by sneaking in a love triangle, as they are very effective in solving all problems in the writers struggles.
Uniquely this does actually work.
As long as the writer gives a damn about the relationships.
Each character at minimum will have an objective reason for liking the other person. Thus creating solid foundations for characterization, all the writer has to do is build on that one piece inorder to create a dynamic
LIVE TRIANGLE!
Yes, because love triangles are pointy. They cause all this conflict in your story and that is what you want. The same can be said about continuity errors. They are combined with the love triangle are the butter and bread of a good story.
Exactly
i think the lego movie kinda did this
…the best way it possibly could have, thankfully. 😂
@@samdurfee6093 ew that sounds like it takes effort, no thanks
It's called the "Lowest Common Denominator".
Everyone's a _little_ stupid, a _little_ lazy, a _little_ selfish, and a _little_ unsuccessful.
Therefore, reason writers, someone who has all these traits is universally appealing.
Therefore, Homer Simpson.
I'm remembering a terrible anime called maburaho that had this problem where the main character had a limited supply of magic that he constantly used to help random people... even though running out would literally kill him. While his harem girls fretted over trying to find a way to replenish his magic and stop him from dying he took a nap and never treated the whole thing seriously at all. If there was some purpose to this, like if he was expressing a dangerous level of lacking self worth like Shirou Emiya from fate/stay night, then this would maybe have mad sense, but no, he was just an idiot who is meant to be seen as "heroic" and "self sacrificing".
@@joelsasmad the only thing that I liked about that anime is that for the most part was the only anime harem that made sense, girls didn't "fall in love" with him because he was kind and gentle with them once, they only wanted his genes so they could give birth to the most powerful wizard which would give them status and lots of money, dumping the portagonist after getting pregnant.
Sadly it was a harem anime and somehow the only 3 recurrent girls ended up felling in love with him.
Don't forget. The everyman is divorced and has to have a family that doesn't want anything to do with for good reasons. Because despite the MC being a MASSIVE piece of shit and not taking care of his family unlike the new person the wife has married. They are in the wrong.
@@juanrodriguez9971 I dunno man, that sounds even weirder
Remember when Homer would've been considered "lower class" because he only had a car, house, and family? Lol, those were good times to be an adult.
I really hate the "smart is evil and calculated, dumb/emotional is good and always wins in the end" trope.
Because it's anti-intellectual!
i dunno i like himbos
How come nobody questions that? Seriously, why can't smart heroes fight dumb villains? Just because a villain is stupid does not mean he's no threat.
Seconded. More broadly, it's really stupid that we have this false dichotomy of logic, rationality and science vs emotion and art.
A smaller problem that I have with 'collected and intelligent villain vs emotional hero', which I have with every case of the villain being the opposite of the hero in almost every respect, is that it's more interesting when the villain embodies who the hero could be if s/he made worse choices. For example, both of them have a tragic backstory, but the hero manages to move on while the villain becomes bitter and full of self-pity.
@@linkskywalker5417 spiderman vs rhino
Broke: Making the protagonist your self-insert and making them perfect
Bespoke: Making the villain your self-insert and mercilessly ripping into your own worst traits
Artichoke: Making the villain your self insert and giving him/her an actual character arc, decent motivations, and goals that make sense while also fearlessly addressing your own flaws.
@@michaelarchangel42 If I was able to address my own flaws or knew how to grow out of them, shouldn't I be flawless already?
@@pRahvi0 It'd still require you to act on that
@@pRahvi0 Acting on it is the key
Okay, that doesn't seem like terrible writing advice.
Emmet (from The Lego Movie) is probably the most entertaining everyman I’ve seen in any form of story.
Emmet is the Everyman done right!
@@Newfiecat he's basically a parody of the Everyman, honestly
That's what I thought!
I liked the part where him being so bland and uninteresting meant the surveillance state couldn't actually find him because he was a perfect match for everyone else
He's such an everyman that he sticks out even to the other normal people in the story, which puts him in quite a unique position
It would be kinda cool to see what would happen if a super bland Everyman and a super overpowered Mary Sue met in a story. Whose story bending powers would be stronger? Who has the most luck? Do they fall in love and have a sexy calendar shoot??? What if the Everyman gains superpowers while Mary Sue struggles to maintain her higher status? This could be so cool
That's a very interesting idea
The Boys maybe?
I predict it turns into a musical.
That's quite Re:Zero, an everyman who despite being likeable, gets submited to absolute horrors.
in comparisson, his love interest is a Mary Sue with extreme plot armor. If something happens to her, main character has to undergo hell to restructure history so nothing happens to her.
@@zahylon5993 Subaru is the plot armor
Making the everyman stupid also numb the audience's intelligence or chase away those who mange to keep theirs-> You'ld be left with idiots who would not only swallow anything you throw at them but also defend you as the misunderstood genius
Dang you be calling out the anime protags round here. Just missing the harem.
Sounds like an author's Evil Plan!
so basically we should make the everyman stupid then
@@joelsasmad Yep. A lot of harem mcs from what I've seen seem like everymen done wrong. Who goes for everymen anyway? Unless said everyman becomes a great man despite humble origins. And has a drive to do so. That, I would love to see.
Sounds like Jaune Arc in a nutshell
A good example of a well-used everyman is Emmet from The Lego Movie. The whole point of the character is that he's just a bland happy guy that likes simple things. He thus act as a foil to the rest of the main characters, who all have outsized personalities and a specialized focus. However, while that personality and ego makes them great creators within their niche, it makes them absolutely awful team players. Which is where Emmet, who has no ego whatsoever, and thus do not see any shame in following instructions to get to a common, predefined goal, gets to shine and lead the team.
The same thing with guy from free guy. He’s basically a live action version of Emmett.
Similarly, Emmet also grows from the rest of the cast around them, as while he makes the rest of the cast more team players, the rest of the cast bring him from being a hyper-normal everyman obsessed with the instructions into a more fully realized, unique individual.
@@bigmouselittlemouse2001 This is somehow something I have never thought of
One of the best everyman characters I've seen in a long time has been "Beau is Afraid" He represents the modern-man so much, its scary. A socially-recluse, romantically-inept, suffered a traumatized childhood, and every friendship he had seemed to end in despair and tragedy.
"At least I don't have this problem," I say as the rest of my story crumbles around me
I might be a truly awful writer, but at least my protagonist isn’t an Everyman.
Mostly because I hate boring characters almost as much as I hate my life choices.
I have multiple Everydayman Mcs, but the world will continue to crumble till they change that
The everyman protagonist- the perfect character to insert yourself while simultaneously giving yourself traits that don't exist or turning the existing ones into a magnet attracting hot people, for some reason
True. In reality I know NOTHING about astrobotany, but now that purple jellyfish is looking at me with lust.
"While simultaneously giving yourself traits that don't exist or turning the existing ones into a magnet attracting hot people" Well how else is my self-insert, Gary Stu, supposed to be awesome and likeable? Giving my self-insert any of my real flaws and traits could result in my self-insert being a less than pleasant individual who's a cynical and socially inept agoraphobia shut-in with no real friends, no athletic ability, and no combat skills. This could lead to conflict, something we desperately want to avoid.
Hmm if only theres a term for that if only it isn't so heavily targeted towards women? Ary-su?? Iri-zuu??? Idk 😶
Normal person: “I wouldn’t be a little bitch like Shinji Ikari.”
Also normal person: Wouldn’t risk their life by fighting an eldritch abomination inside a robot they don’t know how to use.
Finally someone says it! Before I watched Evangelion, so many fans warned me about how "whiny" and "useless" Shinji is, but when I watched the first episode, I actually thought that his reaction was very realistic: being forced out of nowhere to pilot a huge robot you have no idea how it works to then fight and eldritch horror that could kill you? No thanks.
I admit he did annoy me in the final episodes. He had gone through so much and learned how to properly fight, and yet at the finale he STILL refused to fight?? Then again, it's not like Evangelion uses logic for the final episodes, much less in the movie.
Weeb
@ThePigKnight I get your point, yet I can't help feel that - for at least a certain percentage of people - the "fighting [...] inside a robot"-part of the proposal might lead to rash and potentially suicidal decisions, especially when coupled with the argument that if you don't, the eldritch abomination is just going to kill you all anyway.
I mean, thinking about it real hard, even for cowardly me it'd come down to a coin toss whether I would just say screw it, get into the damn robot and go out in a blaze of incompetence riding the high of one of my favorite power fantasies.
... But then LCL rising inside the cockpit pre-battle would have me banging on the exit hatch of the plug, screaming, crying and begging to be let out. And I'd definitely just descend into panic after realizing that *I feel any injury my "Mech" takes*.
So, I'd go with "Shinji is a little bitch for not immediately getting into the robot!" as well as "Shinji's a minor badass for enduring everything the fight puts him through and not backing down AFTER he got in the robot!"
Shinji is a cowardly LION.
He fears, he complains, but he tries to not run away and fight.
Teenage boys who spent most of their life without a positive role model tend to be whiny at the _best_ of times
We see Shinji at the _worst_ of times
He's realistically written, without a doubt
Bringing up the everywoman as a last-second punch is more hilarious when you consider that there's an internet sub-subculture dedicated to mocking writers who make pov women seem like aliens
do they have a forum or something
@@TheMoistestNugget yes, the one I know of is a subreddit called men writing women
I have seen the everywoman before in stories. The best that come to my mind is Bella from Twilight and Ana from Fifty Shades. There is a regular teenage girl or young woman in her early 20s. She tends to be a white girl with brown hair. She tends to be awkward, plain and humble. This kind of everywoman works as a blank slate for the presumably female readers to project onto. There is a wierd paradox to this kind of character. She thinks that she looks plain and unattractive, but a more objective physical description suggest that she is actually beautiful. Then she will have one or more males be attracted to her, even ones that would seem to be out of her league. This gets into the wish fulfillment. It is an odd thing to be both a blank slate and a wish fulfillment. Twilight gives a plausible explanation. One of the boyfirends is a vampire, which has super senses. So he is attracted to the teenage everywoman, because he likes her BO. It is funky.
@@sylviadailey9126 I was gonna bring up Bella. I recall thinking why does every1 love her even all the annoying regular kids in her school. one of the worst portrayed eveywoman
how about aliens who seem like women?
If you're gonna make your character vanilla, make him the good kinda vanilla, the type that you find in that kinda pricey vanilla ice cream. That's some damn good vanilla
In other words, use vanilla bean, don't make them the "beaver anus" vanilla? 😂
@@RWAsur i had forgotten that >:,(
Vanilla is a flavor. It's not plain.
I prefer French vanilla
I prefer Chocolate anyway.
When the everyman is a Chad, nobody is.
That just sounds yu narokma
When everyone is a nobody, nobody is?
@@neaosmt1562 how tho?
@@eros439 the guy can cook, Have multiple powers, Gets advice from a Divine figure, have girls and guys falling for him(Including a former Idol), can hold almost 5 jobs and is the head of an investigation team to find a serial killer.
@@psychospeech6189 that can be said about any persona protagonist, and that's kinda the point since it's an rpg. You shape the character. It's like complaining that your character in WoW has no personality, like yeah, since you're supposed to put yourself in their shoes.
Audience: We like seeing characters we can relate to grow throughout a story. It gives us hope that we too can rise to the challenges in our lives.
Author: Okay, so you want the character to be an unbeatable badass by the end of the story who solves all of their problems with brute force?
Audience: Not necessarily, we just want character growth.
Author: Okay, so the character has to start out as a complete and utter moron so that you can relish the power fantasy when they defeat the bad guy single handedly at the end.
Audience: When was the last time you talked to other humans?
Author: Haha, you already know the answer, voices inside my head.
@@GamersHolyArmy MANY roasted Empress Theresa and Onisions Books,
who i see as Siblings cause one is a famously unhealthy Atheist and one is a
famously unhealthy Theist; effectively making them Odd Anti-Thesis to each other;
but Krimson Rogue and Jabroni are still my Favorite Coverage of 'em!
But i would love TH-camr Terrible Writing Advice to take a Look. I love his Humor for these Things.
Then, it turns out Hollywood prdicers are just faulty AIs masquerading as humans.
Sasuke in a nutshell in naruto...dude literally just solves issues with powers and fighting and never changed ..audience would be bored by him if he wasn't given powers and upgrades all the time cause he had no other interesting characteristics....he's just a power fantasy emo
@@razkable He didn’t exactly start as an idiot though.
Love the comment about the "everywoman", because women, of course, are never common, everyday people. And if she is, it's a "girls story" and not for general audiences.
Female protagonists exist purely to give someone for their entirely-female readership to project themselves onto, and thus pretend that they too are being pursued by several hunky boys.
Sure, there's probably a handful of books where the female protagonist goes on an adventure or whatever. But this is purely a mechanism to introduce new, possibly even hunkier boys.
Honestly, As I listen to this, I think of Bella Swan.
I mean, I think a Mary Sue is basically the evrywoman.
I guess the everywoman would be a silly and clumsy girl with a lot of initiative but basically a doormat. Everywomen are obviously never hot but they're always cute under those boring clothes and messy hair. But, unlike the everyman, the everywoman isn't dumb, she's actually at least of average intelligence, only clumsy. Loves to eat sweet stuff while binge watching some show with her cat and going for some margaritas with the gals after a hard week of work at the office. She is the source of love triangles between herself, the nice guy who will inevitably get friend-zoned, and the hunk who may or may not be a complete dick at the beginning but thanks to her, will become more sensitive and open his heart
@@Danahell this is basically every background of kdrama and shoujo manga lol
"Writers can be freaking *weirdos* on a good day."
....I wish I could think of an argument against this but I can't--
Counter: So is the average person.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 if everyone's a weirdo then, no one is.....
@@Somespideronline Is that a challenge?
Yep! We are, it just varies on how socially acceptable our weirdness is.
As someone who writes almost every day, and barely goes outside, can confirm
I like how these videos aren't just telling you to simply NOT use a trope only because it's a trope. These videos give tips on just how these tropes can be used to make for interesting stories. There are good ways and bad ways to use them. A trope is only as bad as how an author uses it.
Good point there.
One thing I learned from gurren lagann.
The dumbest ideea can look amazing if done right.
Yeah, exactly. He actually touched on this in one of his Honest Thoughts videos.
Mhm, I've heard opinions about TWA where people say "So, I can't write a story then?"
Bullshit! Go write one, just use TWA as a little stand-in for a second opinion and use it as reflection
@@HavingCrumpets yeah it basically tells you how to write by showing the main issues that can cause issues in a genre or with a trope. Its a handy "what not to do" with some helpful tips scattered in the background in text.
The everyman is a sphere, no defining traits and no weaknesses he is just there to be kicked from start to finish by the plot
This implies that the everyman would bounce upon being kicked, which is too symbolically alike to the ups and downs of narrative tension imo. Instead, I'd say the every-orb is floating along on the plot's squeaky old pulley system where it can get the best overviews of all the environments that the author will be sure to overdescribe for several pages (and also any female character's _humungous_ hungamalongalagongas).
Wilson is the everyman?
TvTropes terminology is way ahead of you with the Pinball Protagonist. That's the definition, basically
fuck now I want to play some football
@@macoppy6571 WILSOOOOOOON!!
I'd say Peter Parker in most iterations was created to be an everyman. His appeal is that he is just a guy (or even a kid) given a lot of power and has to take the responsibility for his actions, and his powers rarely solves his problems, just adding more.
Good call
He's the superpowered everyman, perfectly balanced to not turn into power fantasy but instead the embodiment of "with great power..."
I'd never really given much thought to what makes Spidey so great, always just thought he was cool
But you're so right
Even as a superhero he's stuck in the middle. He's strong but not Hulk strong. He's smart but not Iron Man smart. He's fast and but he's no Quicksilver. He can fight planet crushing demigods but most of the time he's fighting slightly superpowered gangsters.
When well written he’s got a lot of personality and interesting relationships. That’s not to say most adaptations aren’t as generic as heck. I think the problem is that early comic heroes like batman, spiderman, superman, etc set the standard that solidified the trope (and were honestly originally generically written to be “relatable” and an easy to grasp story; superhero comics were originally just a weekly fun escapade before they became an out of the box wacky multiverse of crazy ideas and every now and then fantastically deep writing).
Stan Lee has claimed Spider-Man was made in response to seeing how many teens were buying comics and wanting to make a character they could identify with. So you're spot on.
He's well written though... most of the time
Finally, the real villain steps from the shadows. JP's inner greed threatens to consume all who oppose him. Also, at long last, something actually moved on-screen.
"..at long last, something actually moved on-screen."
You mean besides the gray blobs in the background?
@@ChaosRayZero He means the CHARACTERS!
I have to admit, that was a better final boss reveal than most atempts made by holywood in the past decade.
Idea: a story about a protagonist with the power of *being* an everyman. As in, his power is that he's completely average at literally everything, so he's able to pull skills and talents out of nowhere and provide mid-tier analysis of whatever situation he finds himself in. This naturally means he's able to beat a lot of more specialized opponents with some new weird trick, and I just think it'd be a neat concept to have in a story.
Probably not what you asked for but there's an anime called "Please make me average in the next life" where someone dies and gets reincarnated with the average power of all the life forms in the universe or something. So instead of being an average person like they intended, they have like, half the power of some cosmic entity
Fear the man who's practiced a millions moves once, not the man who's practiced one move a million times.
@@lolozo214 I'm aware of that anime, and you're right that that's not what I'm after. I'm talking about, explicitly, an average *person.* Supernatural creatures and such aren't factored in here, unless they're also human.
@@whereta3097 Honestly with the number of skills and tricks in existence it's more like fearing the man who's practiced a *billion* moves once and not the one who's practiced one move a million times.
Literally a "Jack of all trades, master of none"!
The Everyman seems to be written to seem saner than mad scientists, serial killers, etc. and calmer than damsels in distress and more relatable than Mary Sues, aliens, Badass Normals and superheroes--in short, a "normal" person, like the audience.
That's why it's called the "every" man, they are like "every" other man in existence.
More accurately, they're less of a nerd than the smart or specialized characters, less of a jerk than the villains, less of a wuss than the weak/woobie characters, less annoying than the comic relief characters, and in the end, less of a character than any actual character.
By refusing to have any character trait that might make the audience dislike them, they fail to have any traits at all.
Everyman are also mary sues and gary stus
One good way to start an everyman/everywoman is to make an unidealized version of yourself. Common life problems٫ flaws٫ maybe even romance issues. But remember٫ this character is best used as a starting point. So just keep that in mind.
This. I'm open to the idea of an everyman/self insert character, as long as they aren't a blatant Mary Sue with no character flaws. The idea of an accurate representation of the writer working through their own flaws in the story sounds like a really interesting idea tbh.
I think you can roughly base them on persons you know too. And quirks of peoiple are normal and interesting. That should be in there too.
@@marocat4749 I will say though it can be kind of surreal for the people you based the characters on to actually read your story. My dad published a novel a couple years ago and there’s a character based on me at age 9. It works for the story at hand and the character isn’t a one to one copy of me, but a bit of stuff I experienced around that age is in there and it was quite jarring to see my own memories from someone else’s perspective if I do say so myself.
Why Would I Write a Character who has EVERY Quality about Myself that I DO NOT Care about? If I Don't like Certain Aspects of myself; WHY WOULD OTHERS be drawn to parts of myself I wish I DIDN'T have?! Especially if I Don't WANT These parts of myself!
I'M NOT GOING TO WRITE MYSELF IN A WAY THAT HIGHLIGHTS MY BAD SIDE/PARTS OF MYSELF I DON'T PARTICULARLY CARE TO EITHER HAVE, AND I'M NOT GOING TO EXPOSE THAT SIDE OF MYSELF TO THE PUBLIC!
Yeah, just use all the embarrassing stuff people do when others aren't around as inspiration. It'll give them quirks while being sympathetic to the audience.
Like smelling your armpit because you can't remember if you wore deodorant. Or watching cartoons or kids anime when you're an adult other housemates will mock you for it.
Remember that if you have characters with an interesting backstory or personality, you should only bring them out just long enough to tease a more interesting story, before quickly hiding them behind the blank-canvas protagonist. After all, we wouldn't want them to overshadow our protagonist. If anything interesting happens to them, it's offscreen and only mentioned when they have the misfortune of meeting the protagonist again.
It's amazing how many times the side characters in stories are way more interesting than the protagonists.
@@kirstenpaff8946 cough cough My Hero Academia.
"You all are a waste of radiation!"
"I thought we were being paid in exposure?"
This got me good. Best lines!
It's pretty ironic that vanilla has become shorthand for boring, flavorless and basic- it used to be that vanilla was an expensive spice.
I think it still is! At least it's hard to come by Real vanilla extract where I live. Can only find artificial ☹️
@@Newfiecat And it *is* still a strong flavor, or at least a strong *scent,* not an absence of either at all.
@@Newfiecat Which is good, cause real vanilla is really bad for the environnement, cause it takes a lot of space and ressources to make very little.
"Most writers are freakin weirdos on a good day."
Looking at my reflection: Well you're not wrong.
An that who are never weird or think they arent, are the weirdest.
The 'everyman' trope is born from the wrong-headed belief that people are exactly the same, and the cynical desire to appeal to this mythical audience. In reality the average man is an individual, in no way interchangeable with another, with interests, hobbies, quirks and beliefs that would make him distinctly not a stand in for the vague, shifting masses of humanity.
Remember just as there is no 'wider audience' there is such thing as the 'people' just large collections of individuals.
Very well put.
Something about this brings to mind, "When US air force discovered the flaw of averages - Toronto Star Jan 16, 2016 - There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you've designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you've actually designed it to fit no one."
That's very well said. Insightful.
This is definitely the reality of the world. I just wish the decision makers (be they writers, management, philosophers or politician's) would come to understand that.
Mickey Mouse and Spongebob Squarepants are primary example of an "everyman" protagonists, but the difference is that they at least have a personality.
Personality and traits gives more flavor to the character and make it pop.
The same could be said about Luigi, not Mario since he has been since the begining an excuse of a character to give the player someone to play, but over the years Mario has gotten more and more charisma in the shape of being always a happy man who gets dead serious when it comes to competitions.
SpongeBob is more of an “everyboy”
Yeah, because the average person tends to have a personality. People aren't normally blank slates.
@@ABCodeX more of an "every kid as an adult"
@@juanrodriguez9971 “Boy” also means that.
My favorite usage of everyman characters is as video game protagonists.
I'm not talking about your average Nolan North character here either, I'm talking about RPG characters that you get to make yourself and you intentionally make them as boring as possible.
Like in Pathfinder kingmaker I made a lawful neutral human fighter named Jim. That's it, that's his whole character. Didn't even give him a voice, I thought about potentially making him left handed but then I thought "no that'd be too interesting"
"So, you've finally arrived... but you'll never save Prince Horace. Mwahahaha. Are you prepared to stand and face me.... Jim?"
@@Semudara "hehe, That's me!"
@@nooneofimportance3577 the fact that it's _you_ saying this line, with _that_ username... It sends me.
Now this reminds me of a lit rpg book series i read some years ago.
The protagonist is very close to what you described, a total everyman and his name is Jim.
Think the book series is called the mayor of noob town if your interested.
@@0la_N0rdman hey is it a good read ?
Pheonix Wright was a great everyman-protagonist. In the first Ace Attorney game, he acted as a conduit for the player, to solve the cases. He played the straight man to other (more comical) charcters but he also held some comical factors to how he acted in certain situations. Compared to Maya or Gumshow, he is putting up with their sh1t but compared to Edgeworth, he is fighting upwards to meet him on his level. Though it is hinted that he has more to him, as shown by his relationships, him and the player tend to be on the same page.
HOWEVER, in chapter 4, when Edgeworth gets arrested, Pheonix decides to defend him, despite Edgeworth being nothing more than a jerk for all but the tail end of the last trial. This disconnect between player & character is what makes Pheonix stand on his own. It works because we are shown reason to care for him, upto that point, so we can handle change in status. Its not alot but it works surprisingly well to make Pheonix is own person, with his own agenda.
YES! Good point. Making the everyman disagree with the audience on a seemingly obvious point adds suspense.
4:59 “Being smart makes you evil”
Speaking of which; you notice how in every kid’s series, there’s an episode where the Dumb character suddenly becomes super-smart and turns into a jerk? And at the end of the episode they go back to being dumb? That is so anti-intellectual!
looking at you, spongebob >->
Gravity Falls done this trope kinda rigth
honestly, a character who would *willingly* watch paint dry and *willingly* collects eraser tops is interesting, cause i dont know a lot.. scratch that, any people who do that. i actually kind of like the concept of a character who has interest in boring, mundane things. it's like the writer *wants* them to be average, but is forgetting that such boring hobbies arent all that universal. it also could be a decent set up for development for the character, maybe they find comfort in these hobbies, the mundaneness and blandness of it brings them solitude while more daring activities scare them. maybe they like being "boring", but really, liking these boring things doesnt make them boring at all.
*Everyman:* "It's a good thing I'm just an average guy, or otherwise all this power I have might be abused! Isn't that right, girl hopelessly in love with me?"
*Girl:* "Yes. Powerful and boring guys is what girls want. Please hold my hand, average-but-overly-powerful person."
*Everyman:* "Of course I will! You're a good girl, who'll never go against me!"
*Girl:* "(Please help me. Send someone, anyone, who's actually intresting.)
*Everyman:* "What was that?"
*Girl:* "..nothing. I love you, without condition."
*Everyman:* "And don't you forget it!"
Wasn't this a side character in Free Guy?
@Bubba's Big Blast thanks to your comment, you gave me an idea for a story
@@BonaparteBardithion To be fair Free Guy is inside a game where real life logic doesn't exist and in game you just need to know how to play. Anyone with game skill can basically become God in game.
90% of harem and LN protagonists.
Every Isekai protagonist be like.
I think Rock from "Black Lagoon" is a great example of a "everyman" protagonist. He's a genuinely relatable but also complex character who does serve a position in the story by using his experience as an underling businessman.
Yep, also he does change in the story, by gradually becoming more jaded.
I thought Lister from Red Dwarf was a good version of the Everyman trope as well. He's lazy, a slob, and kinda dumb, but he's also funny, good hearted, when there's a problem he tries to fix it. Hes literally just an average human. You get to watch him mature and grow over the series.
The Everyman is one of the most useful and interesting tropes out their, there are so many cool ways of taking it. But writers somehow never go down any of these paths that are so clearly marked
He is more complex, i think benni is more of an everyman, thats a hacker, but also just chilling out. Rock becomes something else, .
@@marocat4749 The thing with Benny is that unlike Rock, he has been in the criminal world for much longer and he is much more used to seeing the horrors of what it means to be working with bounter hunters. His skills as a hacker and technology expert are more fit to help in combat and many other things which makes him more colorful as a character. Rock was just a guy working as a wage slave with the basic morals of normal society who later gets corrupted to use his business skills for far more dangerous means. Rock is still ultimately just a man who could get killed by some thief with a gun or knife and who needs to be saved by Revy everyday.
It's a me, overcasting Chris Pratt!
Mario time
Okay, but Emmet from the Lego Movie is the perfect take on the everyman trope
incredibly valid point as this is with the intense prattification of popular media, it’s almost all the more amusing how his first big leading role in the lego movie was actually like. one of the best modern executions of the everyman protagonist trope. it’s like every product that sought him out for that role since saw solely the “he’s just a normal guy!” part of the character and did not catch wind at all of the whole struggle and arc that derives from that character’s normalness, plus the nevertheless individual qualities that the character lends to the group dynamic of his extraordinary counterparts LOL
@@emmamaz2360 Ah, the prattification of the film industry.
Garfield :(
Emmett from The Lego Movie and Brett from Inside Job are my favourite everymen. I think they work because their stories are kinda self aware about their everyman status and they both have rather distinct personalities with the key flaw of being too much of a people pleaser/being insecure about how "boring" they are. Plus they have great chemistry with their foils (Wildstyle/Lucy and Reagan respectively).
FUCK YOU, NETFLIX! LET MY BOY END UP WITH REAGAN!!
The last time two videos were uploaded this close together, I could've actually come up with a good punchline for this joke!
So you're saying this has never happened before
If the everyman can be relatable to everyone, then I can claim points for deep character and motives since everyone can just imprint themselves onto my blank canvas.
10/10 strat
good thing i'm writing my story with 2 main characters, now i know i can NEVER abuse my power and this isn't just a commentary on my bipolar disorder!
nobody expects the second self-insert!
@@kirtil5177 yes, after all, how can you be two opposite characters
Plot twist
I sometimes wonder what a story would be like if a superhero was just a superhero 24/7. Technically they wouldn't have a secret identity because being a superhero IS their identity.
Didn’t the Phantom do that?
I think this is what happened to Metroman from Megamind
That sounds like a man whose job is his entire life. I can imagine the burn put that would come from that eventually.
Wonder Woman is this. Her real superpower is maintaining peak patience and kindness; while stuck slapping down an endless parade of humanities' douche-ness.
That would be Teen Titans (the 2003 show), 4 of the 5 characters don't/can't have a secret identity, and the other doesn't really act as if he has a normal life.
A few other examples are more like parodies/comedies like the Tick or Hero Academia.
3:18 Have the every man develop into a superman!
"You've freed us!"
"Oh I wouldn't say "freed" more like, under new management."
expectation: responsible and kind
reality:
"being smart is bad" ah yes, Divergent
Wow Two Episodes in 1 week. Must be a special occasion. That or JP probably wants ad revenue after last episode
LOL, I just noticed, two in one week. I'll check it out.
Oh, just saw what the last episode was about.....😐😑.... JP is attempting to get remonetized?
''Two Episodes in 1 week'' is probably because the previous one is age restricted.
Speaking of age restriction, FUCK OFF TH-cam! I'm not going to give nor my identity card, nor my credit card!
@@user-dc5dc3qb7z
You do not have to give TH-cam any cards to watch age restrictid videos.
@@Ninjaananas Tell us more, how do we learn this power?
@@Ninjaananas In Europe it's mandatory.
Only guy I can think of who pulled off everyman protagonists consistently was Hitchcock. It didn't always work (see Saboteur) but he hit home runs more often than not (see Strangers On A Train, North By Northwest, The 39 Steps, etc).
Ah yes, the "Everyman". The typical protagonist that in my experience tends to be too good or intelligent compared to others.
Can also be as interesting as White Bread.
Now let’s not go underestimating White Bread
Whitebeard, lol.
Strongest Man in the World
This kind of character works perfectly for comedies, see: Homer Simpson, Emmet (Lego Movie), Rincewind (Discworld), Kazuma (Konosuba); and even then only that much, because all of them have proper, distinctive personalities.
yeah the everyman trope is more of a foundation for a character
Comedy is One of the Few Times where the Everyman Protagonist is more of a Parody of them.
People forget that an everyman is a completely relative concept like whats considered normal is itself relative to a setting
Hmm...So would that make stereotypes a form of everymen since their general traits depend on the general public? One would assume what is normal for the life of a local resident, but it quickly becomes a different subject if they come from somewhere else. There's the "normal" American, but in between there's also the "normal" New Yorker, "normal" Texan, and Florida Man. Don't even get started on factors like class, hobbies, jobs, etc.
It's like the environment shape the foundation of our being or something.
Sorry for the rambling.
@@airhead1320 no because stereotypes are just broad assumptions rather than norms
@@tyronechillifoot5573 But an everyman can still react differently/not closely relate to another everyman, yeah?
@@airhead1320 no not really everyman doesn't just mean exactly like everyone one else it doesn't imply the lack of distinctive character or personality
"You can tell it's (an exposition dump) because all characterization ceases the moment it begins." Wow. That is actually REALLY good writing advice. Damn. 👏
Oh looks, its our Japanese shonen Isekai manga protagonist!
Regarding the "Moral Compass" use of the everyman, i saw it used in the SCP Foundation, where the O5 Council, a group of super-powerful, super-intelligent inmortals, keep a guy they literally plucked from the street around to keep them from going too far.
Which tale is that?
I need to read it
@@funybirbman3813 i forgor 💀
@@funybirbman3813 SCP-001 O5-13
Was that before or after they were all killed?
The 'perfect' everyman should be more boring that watching grass dry
Or watching paint grow, for that matter.
@@ChaosRayZero I mean grass does actually dry considering that it can get wet and get dehydrated
@@noble6752 I actually thought of evaporating morning dew when I first read it, _I was just being silly._ =^p
Two vids in one week? Am I going insane?
Me clicking this video to make sure I’m not writing the everyman as my protagonist
And finishing the video having found out that you in fact are writing an everyman protagonist
Me clicking this video to make sure i'm writing the everyman as my protagonist:
I mean, the easiest way to tell is listing out their habits, ideology, methodology, and personality.
If they have no special habits, make one or two.
If they have no clear ideology, either fit into that ambiguity or clarify their position mentally.
If they have no clear methodology, repeat the step for ideology.
If they have no clear personality traits, what the fuck are you doing?
I don't think the video was knocking the use of the "everyman" as a concept. Just that even they should have, like, personalities and opinions and responses, and you should think about using some of the many opportunities they provide in the narrative instead of them just existing.
@@wppb50 i almost thought you replied to me lmao, i'm high or tired or some shit
Yeah, as with all TWA videos, nothing he covers is strictly bad; just that he's gonna 'encourage' you to do everything shitty and 'discourage' you from doing anything valuable with the trope/topic. Sarcastically, hence the quotes.
I remember many years ago there was one anime where the “hero” was a side character, because their power was to be so boring and uncaring that magic literally did nothing to them. They were clearly intelligent on the rare occasion that they tried but they almost never actually tried and if I remember correctly a significant portion of the story was just the main character trying to convince them to do invincible hero things.
Everyman works great in comedies
Not so great in more serious stories where they're very likely to have their agency stripped and are constantly overshadowed by the more interesting supporting cast
Rock from black lagoon and Akane from psycho pass would have a word with you..
I've been thinking of having an everyman generic anime protagonist but as the series goes on he receives many life threatening injuries from combat and ends up a mess of broken flesh and mechanical parts kinda like hank wimbleton.
Psychological consequences of living a life of constant danger would be even more important.
@@Boris_Belomor Important maybe but there have already been many stories that do it well
Sometimes you just wanna write about a cyborg dude
Tetsuo: Iron Man?
Go for it.
@@LL-yd8zz fantasy cyborg dudes do be cool not gonna lie. Or someone that is literally bond armor (Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood did that right imo)
Big metal dudes are cool. Tho remember it's just aesthetic and they still need to have personality and other stuff that properly maintained character has
So basically how every harem anime protagonist is created
*every anime lol
@@rohang8246 Yusuke Urameshi , Gon , Jotaro , Ichigo
The only writer I can think of that does the everyman good is Lovecraft, but that's because he's a weirdo and would project himself onto his "everyman" protagonists
This is honestly probably why _any_ of my stories work. I am an incurable whack-a-doo, and it shows. 😂
@@TreeHairedGingerAle but no one is as weird as Mr. Lovecraft, the man would eat 20 flavors of ice cream when out with his friends, put so much sugar in his coffee that it becomes coffer syrup, put mountains of cheese on his spaghetti, never had a childhood so his only friend he had as a kid was his grandpa, vomit when eating anything seafood related, hates the ocean to such a abnormal degree, would starve himself because of his eating disorders and self loathing problems, he was so skinny and unhealthy that people said that when they shook his hand it felt like touching a corpse, was very anti-religious, and was a closeted asexual that his wife said that she would bribe him with books and poetry just get even a morsel of romance from him
@@duskdweeb1368 Horror classic material. Understandable why he was so good at inducing fear, especially with ocean creature like powerful beings
Some Everyman protagonists, specifically ones adapted to anime from a source material, get hate, because they can come off as bland or too basic. However, in the source material like visual or light novels, you can understand their psyche and thought process by reading from their POV. I’ve come to love some of them because of this.
I know this is late, but I still don't get why adaptations get the thought process wrong. We can hear a character's internal thoughts and monologue just more often. What makes Kazuma in Konosuba a gem.
And remember, the everyman should always be from the normal world, because the audience can't relate to an everyman from the fantasy world. Writing a peasant striking out on their own, or a vending machine repairman on a starship, with their own attitudes and views on the world and state of affairs, is too hard to write.
Halo finally found the perfect everyman in Echo-216, who provided a foil to Chief, an audience surrogate, an emotional focus, etc.
honestly the relationship between chief, the weapon, and 216 is the best thing 343 has ever written.
How about a colorful protagonist in an everyman world? Protagonist is one guy who has to explain everything to everyone while also being the only one with a deep personality.
Yeah it’s called fish out of water
I think this line about everymen being "empathetic and humble individuals who wish to do good and help out in spite of their lack of powers" really captures why I still enjoy this trope so much. Sometimes I really just want to see an ordinary person actively choose to make a difference as a reminder that everyday heroes really do exist, that heroes can be made, not born, and that the average human being is a lot kinder than our other, worse qualities seem to suggest.
This is absolutely the BEST version of the everyman!
Yep that despit overwhelming odds an becaue even fear did the right thing to stnd up.
Yes it's cool... As long as he actually does through the story, instead of making big speeches and contributes only when main villain fights him
Mumen Rider from One Punch Man
Amazing how an exotic spice with a strong and overpowering flavor has become the word for bland and ordinary, simply through overuse.
The TWA expanded universe is getting me on the edge of my seat.
TWA TLDR: Almost every trope, even extremely common ones, can be used effectively if the author takes the time and effort to properly fit it into the story and nail the execution.
BUT WHY BOTHER WITH ALL THAT WORK? I’m sure audiences will love my derivative and poorly constructed narrative that serves as little more than self-glorifying fan-fiction crossed with a political diatribe!
Is it weird that I read this in JP's voice?
I agree, these videos are pretty entertaining and poke fun at commonly "misused" tropes and clichés, but they're just that. JP's arguments aren't constructive, and his content is nothing but strawmanning. That in on itself is not a problem imo, it's what the internet likes and if that's what he likes to do then so be it.
You forgot the love triangle!
@@lakyshine1319 Ok, are you serious? He specifically mentions multiple times that there is nothing inherently wrong with any trope. His most common joke format is literally:'A writer could use this trope for this interesting idea or this one...But that's too much work, let's do this dumb shit instead!'
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I don't think there's anything wrong with the trope argument. My point is that the critique he gives is nothing more than entertainment, as the direction of critique is just general, concentrated "dumb shit" instead of real examples, for example.
Hopefully this will be more monetizable then his last video
😏
“A writer will know their job is done right when the audience is begging for the story to focus on literally anything other than the main character”
*High Guardian Spice intensifies*
HGS is more like asking CrunchyRoll to *make* anything other than *the show*
Victorious show intensifies
@@channel45853 Tori is fucking awful as a person and as a character. It's like a vanilla ice cream, except the ice cream is literally just a clump of frozen vanilla extract.
Came for the A+(++) writing advice, but stuck around because I enjoy the arc the Dark Lord is getting. Weird spot to be in, but I don't really mind it.
I see the Everyman as a great _starting point_ for characterization:
You write the story with a generic vanilla protagonist in mind, _until_ the plot forces them to act and/or react in a unique way. Then you can start fleshing their character out and rewrite what comes before, taking into account the new direction.
For instance: The most boring plot possible: Average high school student gets teleported to a fantasy world. Then he finds a... FUCKING FIREBREATHING DRAGON...
An average and generic protagonist would be scared and run away. Our VERY UNIQUE and INTERESTING character will... Try to SEDUCE the dragon.
Then... Huh... That's donkey from Shrek...
Anyways, the everyman works as a vessel UNTIL it's time to fill it in. People don't want to read stories about themselves. People want to read stories about ACTUALLY INTERESTING PEOPLE...
I generally prefer to think about the characters first, but when I have this absolutely COOL plot, the Everyman works to get things moving until it's time that he acts in an interesting way.
This is neat. I'll take it
I agree, the everyman is my ideal starting point for writing because I love to see the build up to greatness, I want it to feel earned and this is the best way to do it.
Thats why I am kind of a sucker for a lot of shonen anime, the mc was some weakling who trains constantly to become someone important.
Yeah they have their issues, they became more apparent as I grew up and developed some actual standards, but the core of them really feel compelling to me.
I just love seeing some joe-shmoe like me become somebody, but I don't want them to have the attitude of a regular guy, but to instead have aspirations to become something more.
AKA almost every light novel protagonist ever.
Even good ones like Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 use an everyman.
Eh, not Sakuta Azusagawa. He has an actual personality, his banter with all of the characters is witty, funny and engaging, and his attitude ofnm not conforning to expected standards of "reading the room" and not standing out make are what make him shine. And he does that without being an asshole, as shown by his repeated selflessnes shelping the other characters.
Plus him and Mai are easily onenof the best couples out there in medium.
@@Nai-qk4vp Yes and now. First I said *almost* so obviously there are exceptions.
Second, Sakuta still kinda falls under the everyman umbrella. In the broadest sense he still is your average short-brown-to-black-haired highschool boy you see a million times who self-professed to being "average in academics and sports".
In a more general sense, his story is reactive where he doesn't have any personal goals and motivations until some events happen that forces him to help the girl of the arc to resolve the problem, which often times end up with them falling for him not for his personal characteristics but because of the sheer dumb luck that he happens to be the only person who can fix their problem. ie, replace him with any other boy in the situation and they would've fallen for him all the same as long as they're willing to help.
He has "personality" in the way that he's actually committed to 1 girlfriend, but when the story continuously throw more girls at him, it came off as disingenuous, the same way Asuna is Kirito's "one true girlfriend".
He is more fleshed out than the average, but it doesn't break him away from being a vanilla protagonist. This is extra noticeable in the anime. He might be sassy, but he still has the same dead-face almost all the time.
The dreaded bane of all protagonists.
NNNOOO!!! NOT FUCKING KIRITO COPY-PASTE 😭
One of the best "everyman" protagonists in fiction I think is Sheriff Jack Carter from Eureka. He's a persistent driving force in the plot even when he is woefully out of his depth due to his drive to help others and status as the town Lawman. He isn't "stupid" he's just unlearned by the standards of this town that has the most brilliant minds in the world working on science fiction projects daily. Jack is clever, good at noticing clues, and proactive. He often proposes simple ideas that lead to solutions because his less scientifically minded view of the world gives him a perspective a lot of the other characters don't have.
He has a lot of strong characterization as well
The Everyman happens to be either the High School Student or the Salary Man.
"The audience must be constantly told that unlimited unchecked power solves all problems; not critical thinking skills, determination, or creativity."
This one hit a little too close to home. I have a friend who is also an amateur writer, and it drives me crazy that the only way a conflict is ever settled in his work I'm editing is by his protagonists gaining sufficient power to be stronger than their opponents. He seems to have this mindset that any other antagonist defeat that doesn't come about in this way is equivalent to a kid's "My Little Pony" plot and is therefore childish, oversimplified, and unrealistic. But the worst part about it is that the antagonists in his story constantly have the mindset of "might makes right" while his main protagonist believes in ideas of justice regardless of how much power one has...and yet his protagonist only succeeds when he becomes powerful enough to beat down the antagonists---ironically proving the antagonists were right all along. I think I'm finally getting through to him and he's at least starting to make the victories influenced by things that are based on intelligence and strategy rather than raw power, but it just infuriates me some times because I know he's got more talent than that.
Nah he just has high test lol and is unironically right. No but seriously MGR is the only thing that did that right
to be fair, not all stories are meant to be deep. Some stories are good because they are simple and action packed.
One could argue that sufficient thinking skills, determination and creativity are forms of power. Honestly the best debunking of that idea was presented on the Mother Series. Giegue was not defeated with power or smarts, but with love technically. He felt it and went out of control reminding his own life (since at that point he was the strongest being in the universe and was almost destroying it, you just can't win against him with power. He went beyond power itself, only love could.)
Please, make a video about writing characters of different gender than the writer, that episode could be a lot of fun considering how many men couldn't write a female character even with a gun to their head.
The women must always be mean with each other is the worst trope there. Not that i am, but i want to believe female friends can be supportive as well.
Can't forget that the opposite is true too.
It's not nearly as common as "male writers don't understand female characters", but fairly shocking to see how women authors would make male characters into complete assholes, even if they are the heroes/love interest
@@ligtningdog6399 100% agree. That's why I wrote "different gender than the writer" in the first sentence.
Even the best writers are just slightly better at writing people from the same gender as themselves, in my experience.
When it comes to writing characters of the opposite sex. I just ignore the gender and write all characters equally.
You know you have succeeded the moment one of the fans of your work says "Oh my gosh, they're, like, totally me, tho..."
Who DOESN'T see themselves as the living embodiment of the Surprised Pikachu meme?
I think a show that does this well is The Boys where Hughie is the everyman but has a history, and contrasts well with the other more colorful characters
"You're all a waste of good radiation!"
"I thought we were being paid in exposure?"
That's actually a really good joke
Kinda curious about the idea of the everyman protagonist being an actual cameraman for the real heroes. Like he's just the dude filming a documentary about the heroes and ends up in the middle of the conflict despite being wildly underqualified for the situation, having a nervous crisis all the way through the story yet trying to keep it under control just to make it out alive.
Then at the end he just cracks and bludgeons the big baddie to death with his camera's tripod and saves the day... he ends up going to prison for it of course.
Honestly that sounds amazing
This reminds me of most anime protagonists who either have no personality other than being denser than a black hole when it comes to girls feelings or being so perverted they deserve to be on a watchlist. I assume this is mainly because the shows are geared towards teenage boys and they think it's easier to be a self insert with either personality trait. Personally, I'd want more anime with MC's with anger issues. But then you run the risk of getting an edge-Lord with the attitude of a papercut
Or you could make someone like Bakugou. Anger issues but not edgy
denser than a black hole you mean???
@@apatheticobserver5290 Uh yeah I hope so 😅
@@apatheticobserver5290 even more so. One of the characters I can think of would be Ichika from Infinite Stratos. He is so painfully bland and so goddamn innocent. Granted the harem treat him like shit but goddammit he has NEVER spoken to humans before
Most? I think that's a generalization.
Saying the everyman is vanilla is an insult to vanilla because that least has sweetness to it.
I actually have an Every Man Protagonist! His name is Tommy, and he’s a college student who agrees to start the Apocalypse because he was promised Student Loan Forgiveness. It’s fun because Tommy- a human with no powers- is constantly put up against characters WAY stronger (Demons, Archangels, and even THE DEVIL) and he still manages to outwit or talk his way out of it. He’s not the most interesting on his own, but I think he highlights the way more interesting secondary cast so I think it works
I wanna read your book about Tommy, lord of the apocalypse.
Shinji Ikari is, to me, the best way to write an “everyman”
Or Seras Victoria and Harry Potter
oh, or Travis Touchdown. Travis Touchdown is amazing
And don't write an everyman the same way Kirito was written.
My favorite "Everyman" is Ryo Takatsuki from Project ARMS. He desires to live like a normal person despite learning over the course of the series that his life was never "normal" to begin with and having to deal with a secret organization that wants to use his nanomachine weapon to destory the world.
@@endergamer.mp4 Of course an everyman should be a master in kendo and coding, there's no problem with that at all.
My Everyman will be a mechanic on a space station. He’s a blue collar sort of guy with a fine young family. He hates temporal mechanics though but loves history like the Battle of Britain and the Alamo. He’s friends with a pretentious doctor but their difference smooth out and they bond over shared interests.
J.P. using the word "Normie" has shaken me
I have never wanted an ad to continue more than I do now
Wrote a protagonist who's just some dude I'm now a billionaire
3:00 this reminds me of a story I read where the protagonist is getting lots of info dumped on him and he just ask for a list of everything that is being given to him so he can read it later. Throughout the story there are a couple points where he thinks "damn, I forgot I had that!" because he didn't read the list and forgot some of what was dumped on him while in other points he uses things that had not being pre-setted that he had, because they were on the list of things that we didn't got info-dumped about
Terrible Writing Advice should do a video based on Plots on multiverses/shared Universes, It's a popular trope right now that I think he could/should talk about
DOUBLE TROUBLE EPISODE!!
Wow, I was planning to write a character like this and this popped up on my recommended.
If you write yourself into a corner, you can always just give the everyman whatever skill is needed to resolve the situation. No need to explain why this character who has literally never even touched a weapon before suddenly handles a variety of weapons quite competently in big chaotic action scenes. Just remember to remove these inexplicable skills again as soon as they are no longer needed.
That can limited work, but it best forshadowed like they really were into hema or something. And keep that. In limitd amounts that can work, if consistent.
You’d think writing an everyman character would be hard, but it’s actually super easy, barely an inconvenience!
Reminds me a lot of the issues of isekai protagonists and why Kazuma (Konosuba) as a satire is a great usage of this archetype
The Everyman can actually be equipped with a variety of useful skills. If they've ever worked as a manager they may have talent at organizing a group of disparate personalities into an efficient team. If they've ever worked in customer service they won't flinch at even the most vile and depraved creatures imaginable snarling threats into their face. They will have immense stamina when it comes to extremely repetitive tasks usually performed in an indoor office environment.
Suggestion for a future TWA: The Mafia
A good example of an "everyman" is the narrator in H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds". The character reacts to an alien invasion in a way that an average person might, while also showing distinct qualities and cleverness.
I just realized that the last chapter was chapter 69. Things make a lot more sense now