This conversation unpacks how stories reflect cultural “turnings” in the zeitgeist, using Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, Marines in wartime, and superhero tales as case studies. The Thomas Umstattd Jr. and Jonathan Shuerger explore the spectrum from Grimbright to Nobledark, why reboots feel wrong, and how authors can write stories that actually fit the times and the audiences they serve.
Key takeaways
- “Grimbright” means a bright, stable outer world with characters who are broken inside, while “Nobledark” means a broken outer world with characters who are internally strong and at peace.
- Mary Poppins is a quintessential early Grimbright story set at the peak of empire, focused on a man turning from public greatness to domestic life in good times.
- You cannot simply “grimdarken” a fundamentally bright, wonder-centric character like Mary Poppins without changing the story’s mission.
- Many modern reboots fail because they mismatch the story’s original zeitgeist with today’s audience and conditions.
- Different “turnings” in culture need different kinds of heroes: destroyers of evil in Grimdark, preservers and builders of good in Nobledark, and enjoyers of goodness in Bright eras.
- Authors must understand both the cultural moment and their specific audience, then write to the real problems those readers are actually living through.
Mapping the Cultural Spectrum: Grimbright vs. Nobledark
Thomas:
We finally made it. This is the zeitgeist talk.
Last time, we talked about the cultural spectrum from Grimdark to Noblebright using a graphic that charted where we are and where we are headed. We said that as a culture we are in the process of transitioning from Grimdark to Nobledark. We also talked a bit about Noblebright and about “skating to where the puck is headed.”
What we never talked about was Grimbright.
Right now, we are in a Nobledark era, so Grimbright is the complete opposite end of the cultural spectrum. I created definitions of Grimbright and Nobledark to help differentiate them.
In Grimbright, the outer world is at peace, but the inner world is in turmoil. The world is stable and good, but the characters are not.
In Nobledark, the outer world is in turmoil. The world is broken, but the inner world is at peace. The world is dark, but the characters are strong and often virtuous.
Jonathan:
I actually reverse those in my head. To me, the “grim” or the “noble” belongs inside the characters.
So in The Lord of the Rings, the world is dark, but the characters are noble. That is Nobledark. You have these good, virtuous characters trying to fix a flawed and broken world.
Thomas:
Right. So in Nobledark you have good characters in a dark world.
Whereas in Grimbright, you have broken characters in a good world.
Jonathan:
In a good world, yes.
Mary Poppins as the Quintessential Grimbright Story
Thomas:
The quintessential Grimbright story is Mary Poppins. This hit me yesterday while my children were watching it.
Mary Poppins is such a fascinating story, and it was a smash hit. I think it was the very first Grimbright story to hit theaters after a major cultural turning point.
For Americans, the turning point between the first and second “turning” was the JFK assassination. People who lived through it all know where they were when JFK was shot. That was the moment when the golden era ended. “Camelot” came to an end, and it was the beginning of the Second Turning, which is known as the Awakening.
Let us walk through the bright and grim elements of Mary Poppins.
The Bright, Silly World of Mary Poppins
The bright elements are obvious. It is a very silly movie.
- There is an admiral who shoots a cannon that shakes the house.
- The mother, Mrs. Banks, is a very silly character.
- The laughing old man is very silly.
There is a sense of whimsy and silliness throughout. That silliness is enabled because they live in a very stable, happy world.
The children run away from home and the world is so safe that Mr. Banks is not even particularly concerned about it. It barely registers. The police find the children and bring them home. These are good and just police, not corrupt police. They are dutiful and doing their job.
Mary Poppins is actually the antagonist, working against what Mr. Banks wants.
Because the story sits at the very beginning of the new era, it still ends happy. It is still a bright story with a happy ending, with Mr. Banks back at work.
Another thing that makes it Grimbright is that the stakes are very low. The stakes are simply:
Will this father have a good relationship with his children?
It is not “the end of the world.”
Jonathan:
Well, that is the end of the world to the children, which is the point of view of the movie.
Thomas:
That is a really good point. Authors, and especially Hollywood, need to be reminded that the world does not have to be ending for the stakes to feel high.
High stakes are relative. A child does not care about railroads through Africa. A child cares about whether Daddy will be home for dinner or not.
Protagonist, Antagonist, and the Relationship Character
As I was learning about storytelling, one thing that stood out in Hollywood storytelling is that there are three characters that really matter:
- The protagonist
- The antagonist
- The relationship character
The protagonist moves the plot forward by making decisions and typically goes through the biggest change.
The antagonist is the obstacle to what the protagonist wants.
The relationship character is the person to whom or from whom the theme or message of the story is communicated.
In Mary Poppins:
- Bert is the relationship character.
- The children are actually none of those three.
They are not vital to the core message or structure of the film. That blew my mind, because as a child I completely related to the children and thought the story was “about” them.
Jonathan:
The children are the catalyst. They are why things change. They are not affecting the change themselves, because they are powerless, but they are the catalyst for the changes around them.
The Grim Undercurrent: Melancholy and Early Institutional Distrust
Thomas:
Now let us talk about the grim elements.
It is very silly, but there is also a deep sadness and melancholy running through the story.
Think of “Feed the Birds.” We are not going to anger Disney by singing it, but that song is very, very sad.
- The visuals are sad.
- The key is a very sad minor key.
- The tone is somber and dark.
The brightness of the story is tinged with realism about human flaws and family blind spots.
There is the lonely old lady struggling to feed the starving birds. There are the very beginnings of unhappiness with the institution.
They live in a very stable world, but the coming crisis of the Third and Fourth Turnings has its early seeds here. The Awakening (the Second Turning) is when those seeds begin to grow.
In the film, the big conflict is “feeding the birds” versus “investing in the future.” The film clearly presents feeding the birds as the better choice. It suggests that feeding the birds is better than investing in the future and the advancement of civilization.
Mr. Banks sings about what the tuppence could become if prudently invested:
“Railways through Africa, dams across the Nile,
Fleets of ocean greyhounds, majestic self-advertising canals,
Plantations of ripening tea.”
All from tuppence, prudently, fruitfully, frugally invested in the bank.
The father is inviting Michael:
“Come join me in building this civilization.
Come join me in creating greatness.”
He is inviting Michael into a world of manly sacrifice, to build a better tomorrow by sacrificing today, and also to grow his personal fortune.
Mary Poppins, on the other hand, invites Michael to spend his tuppence feeding the birds. She sings that the saints and apostles “smile” on those who show they care about the birds.
The big conflict hits when Michael rejects his father’s offer of manly sacrifice. His rejection helps bring the great institution of the bank crumbling down, triggering a run on the bank.
That is the grimness.
A “Happy Tragedy”: Mr. Banks Loses Everything He Wants
Thomas:
Now let us talk about the Grimbright aspect, because it is connected.
Narratively, Mary Poppins is a tragedy. Mr. Banks does not get anything he wants.
One of the wonderful tools for analyzing the zeitgeist in musicals is something called the “I Want” song. Usually, the first or one of the first songs in a musical has the protagonist singing about what they want.
In Epic: The Musical, the very first song is an “open” song that does this brilliantly. It is one of my son’s favorite songs, and he wants to listen to it over and over again.
So what does Mr. Banks want?
He does not want very much. He is content in his consistent, orderly life. He sings about how “pleasant is the life I lead.”
He wants:
- Control
- Order
- Precision
- Consistency
He has brought order to chaos, and he is enjoying that order.
Mary Poppins, the antagonist, wins in the end. Mr. Banks loses everything he wants:
- He no longer has order.
- He no longer has precision.
- He no longer has consistency.
Instead, he embraces inconsistency, chaos, and disorder.
The story shifts his focus from external greatness, like building railroads in Africa to help many poor and suffering people, to internal and domestic life.
The story is about a man turning away from external greatness and toward domestic life. That kind of turn is only possible during good times.
That is key, because now we connect it to the zeitgeist. This story only resonates during good times.
When good times surround people, they get bored, and they start to realize that their internal world, including family and personal psychology, is disordered. That is Grimbright:
The world is bright, but my life is grim.
Disney was wise to set the story at the peak of the British Empire and to release it at the peak of the American Empire. The film is set in the golden age of the British Empire, in the aftermath of the Victorian boom. It came out in 1963, the height of American cultural supremacy.
Americans in 1963 could really relate to the British in 1903.
This story is about good times creating weak men.
Mr. Banks sings later in the movie about his dream of “walking with giants.” Then the cup is shattered. His dreams have been taken away from him. He realizes he is no longer going to be a strong man. He is going to be a weak man.
But he is a weak man who has internal fulfillment because he is flying kites with his children.
Each turning corrects something that went too far in the previous one. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing, then has to be repented of and corrected in the next era. The turnings go around and around.
When the world is broken, we need men who are willing to make sacrifices, to build railroads through Africa, to build institutions that will fix a broken world. Mary Poppins is quintessentially a Grimbright story that only fully works in that context.
Adapting Mary Poppins for a Nobledark Era
Thomas:
To help explain the turnings, I want to see if we can adapt this Grimbright story into a Nobledark story. Jonathan, I want you to compare my imagined adaptation with the actual reboot, which I have not seen.
The reboot came out, and I still have not seen it. What I want to do instead is talk about how we might tweak Mary Poppins if it were to come out today in a Nobledark era.
It will be worse, because Mary Poppins is very much a creature of its time. It is not just a Grimbright story. It is an early Grimbright story about that exact transition. You almost see the cultural transition happening inside the movie.
The very first song Mr. Banks sings is about how happy he is in the life that he leads. He is rejoicing in a Noblebright time.
At the end of that song, his wife says, “The children are missing.” In other words, “Your internal world is disordered.” That is when the grimness begins.
Darkening the Setting for Nobledark
So how would we change the story?
We need to darken the setting.
I would set it in present day London. The world outside is clearly broken. For example:
- There are migrant gangs roaming about the school, beating up fellow students.
- The cops are no longer good and noble. They are dragging people away to jail for complaining about the gangs online.
- There is an ever-present fear of the government and of neighbors.
- Everyone feels that something is broken. Society is not right. People are not safe.
Mrs. Banks does not actually need to change much structurally. I would keep her as a feminist, but now she is fighting for women’s spaces not to be invaded by perverted men. She is no longer chanting “Votes for Women” but chanting “Loos for Women.” She sings about friends who are being arrested for “misgendering” men who are pretending to be women.
She is still a feminist, just oriented to the current form of conflict.
Mary Poppins is now a Nobledark angel of discipline. She is still kind, but flint-hard. She trains more than she coddles. She drills:
- Thrift
- First aid
- Courage
- Grit
She remains “practically perfect in every way.” So you are not really changing Mary Poppins herself that much, because she never smiled very much in the original either. She has always been strict.
I would age up the children. Jane and Michael become teenagers so that they can grapple more directly with the broken world around them.
I would change Bert into an underworld fixer who uses his shady connections for good. He teaches the teenagers how to defend themselves and others from danger.
Instead of going on a magical outing to the countryside, perhaps Bert and the children violently rescue the bird lady from muggers. Jane and Mary Poppins then use their first aid skills.
They are actively working to fix a broken world, but at a small, childhood level, learning as they go. Mary Poppins is teaching them not to be victims. She is training them to be agents of change, to go out and be a light in a dark world.
These are the hard times that make strong men and strong women.
Corruption, Repentance, and Institutional Restoration
Mr. Banks still works at the bank, but now the bank is corrupt. They are profiting from the “micro crisis” and from societal collapse.
Mary Poppins helps Mr. Banks repent of profiting off that collapse. As he repents, he starts ruthlessly working to root out the corruption in the bank. The restoration of the institution becomes a key part of the story.
Mr. Banks must act quickly before he gets pushed out by those who benefit from the corruption. He must either rise to power or get fired. He works long hours, and those long hours keep him away from his children.
At the same time, the children are struggling against the violent world in their own sphere. They are fighting the same evil, but doing it separately. That struggle is pulling the family apart even as they share the same cause.
The crucial plot change is this:
When Mr. Banks invites Michael to help him at the bank, Michael accepts the invitation rather than rejecting it.
Michael accepts because Mary Poppins has helped him see that he can do more good by working with his father to build a virtuous institution than he can by having street fights with criminals. The invitation to the bank becomes a call to adventure.
In the Awakening (Second Turning), there was intense conflict between generations. Boomers and their parents, generally speaking, did not get along. In a Fourth Turning, that shifts.
Now, families tend to work together more. There is often unity inside families. Many people still live with their parents, get along with them, and feel “we are in this together.” The world is broken, and families band together.
So the resolution of the story would show the father and children working together in the bank to advance the good, the true, and the beautiful.
In the final scene, now that they have purged the bank of corruption, they are able to fund the railroads through Africa and restore their broken city. Together as a family, they build a new, beautiful world.
This rhymes with the ending of Epic: The Musical, where Odysseus and his son Telemachus fight together to rid the palace of the evil suitors. Father and son fight side by side to create the new beautiful world Odysseus has longed for the entire story.
This Nobledark adaptation becomes a story about hard times creating strong men and strong families.
It is not as good a story as the original Mary Poppins, because Mary Poppins is a pure Grimbright story. Still, this is how I would tweak it to resonate with the current zeitgeist. I am curious what Jonathan thinks and how this compares to what they actually did in the reboot, which I imagine is nothing like this.
Why Grimdarkening Mary Poppins Fails
Jonathan:
The original Mary Poppins is about wonder.
It says, “Enjoy the world. Enjoy feeding the birds. Enjoy magic.”
Jana says in the chat that you are ruining a classic, and I agree with her: your Nobledark version might be a good story, but it is not Mary Poppins.
Mary Poppins at her core is a transcendent character. She actually fits into the realm of cosmic horror. She is something from beyond that comes in and changes the world according to the dictates of transcendent morality, or cosmic morality, whatever that is.
She floats in on an umbrella. In most contexts, that would be horrifying.
Then she takes the kids out and teaches them to enjoy the world. They go with the chimney sweep, the street sweeper, the man from the underside of society. The chimney sweeps are silly and joyful. They are dancing and having a great time. It is a great song, and my kids love that dance.
In reality, those chimney sweeps are all dying of black lung.
Thomas:
Exactly.
Jonathan:
Exactly. But they are having fun while they are doing it.
The question the story poses is:
Is the world good if you are not having fun?
You cannot lecture me about railroads and “greyhounds of the ocean” if we cannot enjoy the world we are in.
The father does not enjoy his children. He is always at work. When he comes home, he expects the kids to be washed, give him a peck on the cheek, and go straight up to bed.
That is not a father enjoying his children. There is no reason to have a family at that point other than maintenance of the status quo.
That is the great evil in Mary Poppins:
You are not enjoying life in a good time.
In a good time, at the peak of the British Empire or the American Empire, if you are not enjoying it, what is wrong with you? Something comes down from beyond to tell you, “A little chaos is fine, as long as you are enjoying the good time you are in.”
So your Nobledark version might be a good story, but it is not Mary Poppins. Grimdarkening Mary Poppins is a mistake, because the problem she was sent to solve is not a Grimdark problem.
You do not need to learn how to enjoy things when the world is terrible.
In a Grimdark story, the hero needs to be a destroyer. The hero must be strong enough to destroy evil.
I would distinguish Grimdark and Nobledark this way:
- Grimdark is about destroying evil so that good can grow again. Good has been suppressed and needs room to breathe.
- Nobledark is about building the good in the rubble left after evil has been checked.
Thomas:
I would add that Nobledark is also often about the good being under siege and losing, and we are looking for a hero who will make sure the good does not lose.
Jonathan:
Yes. Nobledark is the good under attack. Think of Gondor under siege. The White Tree is fading. The Ents are losing their forest.
Aragorn leading the armies of Gondor to the gates of Mordor is the last desperate battle, and they lose. The only reason they win is because Frodo gets the Ring into Mount Doom. That whole attack is a distraction.
Noblebright is different again. In Noblebright, there is good and it is so good that even the innocence of children can help it grow.
Think of Narnia. Children become kings and queens of a mystical and magical land, as long as the witch that is suppressing everything can be removed. They do not destroy her themselves. Aslan does.
Who does what and why is what determines which “turning” you are in.
Grimbright is a good world that we are not enjoying because we are broken inside.
Christopher Robin and How to Update a Classic Without Ruining It
Jonathan:
I brought this up to you before. A good example of a proper Grimbright update is Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor. It is not a remake, but a continuation. Christopher Robin is older now, with a career, and Pooh comes back.
Christopher Robin is talking to his stuffed animal companions again, and we discover he is not happy even though he “should” be.
The stuffed animals are more concerned with the fact that Christopher Robin is not happy. “Why aren’t you happy, man?” They are trying to fix that problem.
The whole movie does a good job because it is not Winnie the Pooh. It does not have the same mission or message. It is about Winnie the Pooh visiting his kid years in the future and helping him fix a different problem.
It is a Grimbright story about an adult in a good-enough world who is broken inside.
Thomas:
And that points to the quintessential question of the zeitgeist. Each era asks, “What is the big problem now?”
In solving that problem, you create a new problem that the next era has to deal with, and the wheel turns on and on. There is nothing new under the sun. We end up back with Solomon.
Jonathan:
To answer a chat question: could I write a military science fiction story with Mary Poppins as the main character?
I have sort of already done that, structurally.
The first story I ever wrote was called The Exorcism of Frosty the Snowman. That was my first published work.
The Frosty the Snowman movie is a very silly movie about a transcendent character. Frosty comes from somewhere else, and we do not know where.
In my story, Frosty is a cosmic-dark character who comes from another place in a grim setting.
Thomas:
He is your shades-of-black Mary Poppins, the evil villain.
Jonathan:
Potentially. I have not put it into exactly those terms, but he is an angel of discipline, an evil angel. That is Grimdark. He is creating a good thing by breaking the grip of evil, because good is not strong enough. That is his problem.
The reason it works is because of who I wrote it for. I wrote it for Marines who were having a hard time. It was Christmas. They were deployed in Iraq. Suicides go through the roof around winter.
Marines do not live in a good world. They suffer, and much of that suffering feels unnecessary. So if you show them the original Frosty the Snowman, it does not work.
Trying to tell a bright story to dark people feels like gaslighting.
“Why aren’t you happy?
Things are good. Smile more.”
That is what it sounds like. It feels fake to someone whose soul is howling inside because of how broken they are.
So Frosty the Snowman does not work for Marines who miss their families at Christmas.
But The Exorcism of Frosty does.
The message there is: be strong and overcome this overwhelming evil so that you can make it to the light. That is the story they need.
Why So Many Modern Reboots Feel Wrong
Thomas:
Jana made a profound comment: “It would be a good story. It is just not Mary Poppins.”
That is exactly the problem. The story you are telling has to be connected to the time in which you are telling it. It must match the zeitgeist.
When you adapt a story to a different zeitgeist, you are making a different story.
That is why people are so frustrated with Hollywood right now. Hollywood does not know how to tell a story for the current zeitgeist.
Instead, they keep telling stories from previous zeitgeists, with better computer graphics, trying to retrofit them into the present. It does not fit, and they keep trying to ram it in. It is frustrating.
People in the chat are asking about Epic: The Musical, and we are getting there. In my analysis of these turnings, I will eventually talk more about it.
Jonathan:
Let me talk briefly about the actual Mary Poppins reboot. It was weak.
It did not fulfill the mission of the first Mary Poppins.
She comes back, but what is she doing? There is some silliness. She seems harder.
I really like Emily Blunt, and I think she did a good job. But her character in the reboot was harder and more inflexible. She could handle silliness, but she did not enjoy it.
The silliness did not change her. She was not interacting with it. She was inert to it. “The children should experience the silliness,” is the vibe.
I am not a musical guy, but I can enjoy Mary Poppins with my kids because they enjoy it. That lets me tap into the value they are getting. They do not enjoy Mary Poppins Returns.
They do not like the reboot.
That is because the reboot did not understand the mission of Mary Poppins in her original zeitgeist, and it did not quite find a new mission that matched our own.
Matching Story to Audience and Era
Thomas:
I want to highlight one more thing about the graphic we referenced earlier, which maps the four turnings. It came from Neil Shenvi on Twitter. I do not know if he made it, but he is the one I saw share it first. The four turnings are not original to him or to me, but we did an episode on them long before that graphic circulated.
Whether or not the graphic drew from our earlier work, the bone-deep issue for writers remains the same:
The story you are telling has to match both the zeitgeist and your audience.
Mary Poppins is a classic, and classics can transcend the zeitgeist. Because it is such a masterpiece, people still enjoy watching it today.
Fiction lets you visit other parts of the turning wheel and learn the lessons those seasons had for society and for individuals. Those lessons are still good.
Even when times are hard, fathers should still spend time with their children. That is not just a “good times only” lesson.
But if you are writing a new story that you want to sell well right now, you have to match the current zeitgeist.
Sometimes, authors write stories out of time. They write for a future era or for an era that has already passed. Most of those books are forgotten. But occasionally, a story pops long after it was written, because it was for a zeitgeist that had not arrived yet.
The wheel turns ever onward.
Mentioning Mary Poppins gets people singing lyrics in the chat, which is its own proof of how powerful and sticky a story can be when it fits its time.
Not Everyone Moves Through the Turnings at the Same Pace
Thomas:
Let me close my side with this:
Remember your “Timothy.”
While society moves collectively through the turnings, we do not all move through them at the same pace. Some people are on the bleeding edge and are almost already into Noblebright. Others are on the trailing edge and are still very much in Grimdark.
Where you place your story, and which audience you are targeting, will affect the decisions you make as a writer.
Jonathan’s target audience is Marines. They extend Grimdark as much as possible. They are often the first into Grimdark and the last out of Grimdark.
Jonathan:
We feel kind of useless after Grimdark, to be honest.
If the world is at peace and everyone is happy, Marines are just looking around asking, “What do I do now? What do you need me for?”
We are here when you need things broken. We are not very useful if everything is right and good.
Thomas:
It is interesting you say that. I was reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Inklings. It is a really good book.
At one point, Arthur and his knights have cleaned the kingdom of bandits, brigands, monsters, and Saxons. There is peace. A light shines on the Round Table. That is the peak.
Right then, things internally start going bad. They start seeking the Grail. That quest forces them to look inward and deal with their own sins. Things begin to fall apart.
Lancelot starts cheating with Guinevere. The Grail quest separates and tests the knights.
You get this very visual moment: the light shines, the Round Table is illuminated, and the wheel clicks into the next era.
Sometimes the transition from one era to another is slow, like falling asleep. You do not realize it is happening until it is already happened.
Other times it is like getting knocked unconscious. The president is shot, and the world is now different. There is the time before Kennedy was shot and the time after. Or the time before the war and the time after the war.
I was reading a quote from Mark Twain about the Civil War. He noted how differently people in the North and South remembered the war.
For people in the North, by the 1880s and 1890s, the war rarely came up in conversation. It did not impact their daily lives as much anymore.
For people in the South, they talked about the war all the time. Being conquered was so disruptive that their whole life had shifted.
So as an author, Twain was writing for two audiences at very different points in the wheel. He had a foot in both cultures.
He could write a compelling Yankee protagonist in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
He could also write compelling Southern characters in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
He realized those audiences occupied different points in the turning. Culturally, we were not “one people” the way we were in the 1950s. We were two different peoples, and different stories resonated.
His writings may have helped unify the country. That would be interesting to investigate.
Heroes, Suffering, and Writing for People Out of Time
Jonathan:
If you want to serve the people you are writing for, I highly recommend you look at what Jesus did, whether you are Christian or not.
Jesus looked on the multitudes and had compassion.
He did not start with compassion as an abstract principle. He spent time with them. He looked at them. He saw them. He observed them. He experienced what they were going through.
Then he had compassion. Then he turned to his disciples and said:
“Fix it. Your whole mission is to fix this.”
You need to look and see what your audience needs.
I know what my Marines need. We are people out of time.
We deploy to Iraq and experience the worst things in the world. Then we come back and we are out of sync with normal American civilians.
It feels like there are now two peoples. We are working hard to get back to where we can enjoy life again.
Watch the movie American Sniper. Chris Kyle is incapable of ever fully coming back, because the evil still needs to be destroyed.
He suffered because he could not destroy enough evil. It offended his spirit that evil still existed after everything he had seen. He had to witness horrible things, and he could not fix them fast enough.
He felt responsible for the deaths of the people he could not save. For the evil he could not destroy fast enough.
That is something very difficult to understand about heroes.
Sometimes the pain is not about what they do. It is about what they cannot do fast enough. Who they cannot save.
That is something I want to explore with Superman:
Who he cannot save, and how fast he cannot save them.
That would be great for storytellers to explore with Superman.
In Man of Steel, I thought the ending was great. He has to save those people and does something he would not normally do. He breaks Zod’s neck to save them. He breaks his own code to do the right thing.
People disliked it, saying “Superman would not do that,” but that is the point.
Look at The Mandalorian, season 2. He takes off his helmet so he can log into the system and find where Baby Yoda is. Later, he has to confess that to the priestess of his people.
“Have you taken off your helmet?”
“Yes.”
They cast him out. He has to earn his place back in the tribe because he violated his code to save his family, to save someone he loves.
Everyone loves that arc. It is powerful.
I do not think people always verbalize what it is:
Heroes suffering and breaking their own codes in order to destroy evil so good can live again.
That is what my people need. That is why I am so passionate about this. That is who I write for.
Whatever you are working in and whoever your people are, not everyone’s audiences are going through the same thing.
If you are writing for women in the UK right now, it is Grimdark.
The reminder here is how important your work is as an author. Whatever story you are writing and whoever you are writing it for, you are giving them a narrative framework to better interpret and make sense of this complicated, broken world.
Thomas:
Exactly.
So love your book. Love your reader. Then write a better story for the time and the people you are actually in.
