blogs_blog_1633

Er, the YT link doesn't work.

It doesn't? Lemme fix it...

Try that.

Working with archetypes in writing is tricky. You don't want to fall back on clichés, but archetypes have power. They resonate with audiences due to their prevalence in media from ancient stories to modern TV. It's a tricky balance of when to use an archetype to pull viewers in, when to subvert one, and when to go completely off the rails to create a new story.

 

Aang is an example of that done well. He's The Chosen One (a common archetype) but he fled from that responsibility (a subversion of that archetype, but one that has been used so much to become an archetype itself). The biggest thing that sets him apart from other uses of the same archetypes is his pacifism, something that he maintains until the very end. True, all-encompassing pacifism is an uncommon trait in a world-saving hero, and it makes Aang's story into something very different from others that have been told before.

The refusal of the call is actually one of the points in the theory. I've seen that one a lot.

 

I personally think that likable charterers is more important than an "original plot." You can have a fantastically well laid plot and have everything line up perfectly but it all means nothing if your characters are 2 dimensional.

This misses one problem though, and its that Monomyth is overtly generalizing and eurocentric, and takes many of the stories and myths and forcibly makes them follow a rigid structure despite their context, and has since then become a mass-produced limitation that fooled itself into being "a fundamental aspect of human though".

 

More on this subject discussed on this excellent blog: http://www.philipsandifer.com/2011/12/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for.html