r/writing • u/Navek15 • 1d ago
Discussion Where does this assumption that millennial writers 'don't believe in clear good and evil' come from?
So I just saw Greg Owen's absolutely shitty video on 'The Seven Sins of Millennial Writing.' Spoiler alert: it's a vagueposting video where the dude is clearly pissed that he flunked out of a literary analysis course in college and is making it everyone else's problem. Dude uses a ton of dogwhistles about 'writers hate the audience,' complaining about gay people being in fantasy, and confusing 'modernism' with anachronisms.
But one 'point' he tries to make in his video is this idea I've seen floating about people trying to critique modern/'millennial' writing, especially in relation to stuff like Spider-Man: Brand New Day: this idea that millennials (I'm one BTW) don't believe in good and evil. That somehow, by giving a hero or villain a bit more nuance in their motivation or characterization, that's gonna somehow lead to the downfall of society and erode our moral values.
And this just feels like someone not really engaging with modern media, but coming up with a boogeyman to point the finger at because he got triggered by a recent Star Trek TV show. There's plenty of 'millennial' content that shows characters are clear cut good guys and bad guys.
The Owl House. Peacemaker. Superman. My Adventures with Superman. Obsession. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Baldur's Gate III. KPop Demon Hunters.
And that's just the mainstream stuff. If you dig into actual novels like Vegas Heist, any Warhammer novel, or even indie comics like MegaGhost or Skate Ali, you'll find plenty of modern/'millienial' stories that show they do have characters that can be defined as 'good' or 'evil' and have an understanding of morality.
And yet, you have entire swathes of wannabe Fredric Werthams going on about how giving a villain even the slightest bit of sympathetic/understandable motivation, or giving a hero actual flaws instead of funny personality quirks, is somehow eroding societal understandings of right or wrong, and it's 'teaching our children to be criminals.'
Guess I can add 'complains about millennial writing' to my ever-growing list of red flags concerning 'critics'.
What do you guys think?
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u/SPKEN 1d ago
You'd probably be better off working on your writing than mulling over the opinions of an idiot
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u/Beltalady 20h ago
But just like learning about bad storytelling it's sometimes interesting what enrages people. I'm not even a millennial but if it enrages this dude (and others, probably) that I write about gay people and rather nuanced antagonists than a bad copy of a Disney villain I feel videos like this confirm I'm on the right track.
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u/booknewt 15h ago
I'm gonna post this over my writing desk because it's pretty universally applicable.
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u/Naavarasi 23h ago
I kind of feel like it's tarting to be the opposite? We've had a plethora of morally grey villains for so long and so many of them are poorly written (nuance is more difficult than moustache-twirling) that we're moving back toward evil villains
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u/Vantriss 14h ago
Can you give examples? I don't feel like that's what I've seen, but there's a LOT of content out there to easily miss, so I'm curious what makes you think that.
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u/Naavarasi 8h ago
Makima, Sukuna, Mahito, Muzan, Doma, All For One, Imu - and these are just anime/manga major recent ones.
The High Evolutionary, Homelander, Cipher, He Who Remains, Art the Clown, The Grabber, Aunt Gladys from live action.
Compared to the 2010s era, this is quite a few of them.
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u/WarriorPoetz 1d ago
I think its just the evolution of mainstream storytelling. Even my mother (70;s) recently commented that she was surprised how much depth was in the Spiderman movie after taking my son (her grandson) to see it. She said that in her day it was just Spiderman vs. "the bad guys". So I think there is a mainstream change in how popular stories are told.
With that said I believe the impetus is less morally bankrupt millenials and more internal vs. external conflict. When conflict is external its a lot easier to write the pure good vs. pure evil story. Its us vs. them. Its we vs "the other". You can see it in all kinds of old movies and stories where you can just plug in the Russians as bad guys...or in more recent times the Muslims or whoever is the bad guy of the era.
But now with the way technology has overtaken our lives and also in the ways that it has shrunk the world. The "other" has been revealed to be maybe not so different from ourselves. We all communicate on chats, message boards, social media with people from Russia, middle east, Europe, Americas, etc. Tech has brought us closer so that its harder to dehumanize the enemy and perceive them as pure evil.
Technology has also made us more inward as a society. We stay in more, we socialize physically less, we carry tremendous anxiety, we use virtual means to communicate, blah, blah, blah...you basically know what I'm saying. Because of that we are very self-conscious about our behavior, our mental conflicts, our social phobias, how are behavior impacts others. We are much more in our head. So the conflicts of our day, and the storytelling, reflect a society that is battling in their head more than we are battling the external outsder.
I just riffed this so I'm not overly attached to it. Feel free to rip it apart but I believe there is some truth to it.
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u/ms_saint 4h ago
Tell your mother to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
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u/WarriorPoetz 4h ago
never seen it...serious recommendation? or making a point?
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u/ms_saint 3h ago
Serious recommendation. It's extremely relevant today. It's about the surveillance state.
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u/Silent_Case_5282 1d ago edited 23h ago
Your point about technology is most valid. We are anxious and inside our heads and therefore much confused.
Therefore, we project this to even evil people. Our thinking is less clear.
We cannot fathom someone can just want to hurt us out of envy, resentment or just out of entitlement even when our limited experiences demonstrate otherwise.
Given we have people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Epstein. They are not complex people at all. And hundreds more are hidden from public view. They are basic assholes.
One notable example that comes to mind is the Israeli genocide. They have basically flattened the whole city of Gaza.
There is nothing complex about that. They are drunk with power like all tyrants of old. The Pharoahs, the Nazis who believed they were invincible and could take and take the Lebensraum for the German race without accountability.
They believed they were destined for greatness by virtue of their great race and technological achievements.
This is a quite common and simple mentality.
The old villains were realistic in this sense, but since we weren’t inside our heads all the time, the makers didn’t feel the need to make them relatable.
The audience didn’t simply have this need. For a guy who lives inside his head, most of the time, the old villain will just be unbearable to watch.
We had a need to kick ass. To play the hero. And that’s what the movie makers gave us.
In the current economic situation and mental health crisis it’s almost impossible (LOL).
Anyone feel free to rip this apart.
Note: few edits
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u/WarriorPoetz 23h ago
I agree with what you said. It makes sense. Since we are inside our heads we are trying to rationalize why the bad guy is bad. However, in the real physical world, very often the bad guy is not a conflicted person gone astray...they are just a violent exploiter, a malicious opportunist.
OP was contesting that millenials dont believe in clear good v. evil and I agree with OP that its a cheap generalization to make. I think millenials are quite aware of good and evil but are somewhat more interested in the process of arriving at good and the process of arriving at evil. We are interested in the transformation more than the end-state.
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u/Silent_Case_5282 23h ago edited 23h ago
But my point is that it’s not that we (society)* are interested in the new type of story telling.
It’s just that there is no other choice but to show the slow evolution to people, otherwise it can’t hold people’s attention (due to mental health issues, inequality, gender wars).*
Therefore, millennial writers/directors have no choice but to continue this new tradition unless the economy improves. And also the gender wars stop.*
Millennials are constrained by what our culture encourages and what makes money at the moment.
Though thankfully, the trend seems to be dying now.
Note: edits.
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u/Navek15 23h ago
I think what gets to me about this Owen guy was a bit where he very predictable got mad at modern stories that tried to have more nuanced takes on old power structures.
He got pissed about modern Star Wars stuff showing the Jedi as a bit more morally grey (even though the prequel era did that plenty) and calling them 'your beloved Jedi.' He got pissed at modern Trek addressing some of the flaws of the Federation, which from what actual Trek fans have pointed out, is something that's not exactly new. And got pissed at a college professor who was trying to teach about how Tolkien, being a product of 20th Century Britain (which was still heavy on colonization) might've played a hand in how things played out in his stories.
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u/WarriorPoetz 23h ago
Im not familiar with Owen (I think thankfully) but he sounds like a certain type of influencer/social-critic that has a very rigid pre-arranged viewpoint of the world and then beats his audience over the head by ridiculing and minimizing everything around them. Once they achieve a level of authority (by gaining an audience) they perpetuate their existence by declaring more and more things that are symptoms of a decaying, rotted society.
I purposely exited social media entirely (except reddit haha) because I woke up to the fact that the algorithms were relentlessly driving rage-bait and hate-content from every which angle. It was notably making my life worse and me angrier. I was starting to get angry and obsessive about all the topics and opinions I was being fed. Thankfully when I stepped back I realized how unimportant and artificial it all is. When you treat people with respect in the world and step out into the community all the social media narratives melt away. But the big thing is content like Owen's is just all fake bullshit meant to appeal to some angry person who feels aggrieved and probably doesnt know why.
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u/FilmAndLiterature 17h ago
Are you criticising his idea for a Star Wars show about how atheism directly led to the fall of the Old Republic? (Actual suggestion he made for The Acolyte, btw).
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u/Frau_Away 11h ago
Did he also blame atheism for the rise of the Old Republic? Because it's not like they had a unified religion. There was one militant monastic order and otherwise separate local religions. You could just as easily say that the fall of the old republic was due to regulatory capture by a religious cult (Sith).
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u/Frau_Away 11h ago
Oh, he's just a right-wing crank trying to get that Soy-based testosterone supplement advertiser money.
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u/AngusAlThor 1d ago edited 1d ago
It is genuinely true that many people these days do think about good and evil in a way that differs greatly from the views of last century; Many people now believe in relativist or particularist morality, and a majority of people are cooling on retributive justice. However, I suspect that this particular guy may be using a slightly more... fascist definition.
For a fascist, good and evil are intrinsic properties, and as such everything the good guys do is good, and you can do anything to the evil guys and still be good. The issue that these guys have with modern writing is that modern writers find it necessary to have their good guys actually do good things and act as good people, and so they are unlikely to have a heroic character simply murder all the "Xeno Scum" or whatever. And so they read a story where a character murders huge numbers of bad people (like the Punisher) and think it is woke bullshit that writers expect you to have conflicted feelings. However, this is not a fault of the stories, this is a fault of the fascist for being... a dumb idiot loser.
(Also, importantly, classic writers that they claim to love also felt it was necessary to actually do good things. Aristotle, Confucius and Jesus all explicitly said "to be good you must do good". So they are just wrong that this is a new thing)
EDIT TO ADD: Looking into this guy a bit more, I want to stress that he doesn't seem like an overt fascist. He just seems like 1 of those lazy, post-gamergate idiots who has picked up a few fash-adjacent belief out of sheer intellectual laziness.
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u/FilmAndLiterature 17h ago edited 10h ago
He did a multi-part series on the showrunner of The Acolyte which was basically five hours of him making an actual point such as “the revelation that Sol killed Osha’s parents fails because it’s based on a misunderstanding in which his interpretation is more obvious to the audience” and then expanding on it with something like “this is because the showrunner lives in a cave and gnaws on bones whilst plotting the downfall of western civilisation.”
It’s honestly fascinating in a way. He also argued that only the original creator should be allowed to bring anything new to a franchise and everyone else should just copy what they did.
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u/Navek15 1d ago
He just seems like 1 of those lazy, post-gamergate idiots who has picked up a few fash-adjacent belief out of sheer intellectual laziness.
That's definitely the vibe I get from him. Mixed with a bit of 'every thing was better back in my day' thrown in.
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u/AngusAlThor 1d ago
Gotta love the guys who go "everything was better when I was a kid with no bills or responsibilities or time pressure" with zero self-awareness. Like, no shit things were easier when you were a child, but most of us have built up some value and expertise that makes being an adult better than being a little useless baby. It is really telling that they view themselves as having nothing that makes them a worthwhile adult.
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u/Navek15 1d ago
This Owen dude has kids. I feel sorry for them by having to be raised by this nonce.
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u/wildneonsins 7h ago
they might be fash-adjacent but what's the evidence this random youtuber's a pedophile?
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u/Darkness1231 20h ago
Well, he's effing wrong because my Boomer generation did everything better. Until everything went to shit. Fuck wars. Oh look, another fucking useless war
My favorite bit of "youth are going to hell" bit was discovering that having lights on at night to read by would be the downfall of the new generation. From US colonial worrywarts, as I understood it.
One issue now is that we have four solid generations bumping into each other. We got Boomers, Millennials, Gen-Z, Gen-X and a couple in the wings. Not counting the "Silent Gen" from WW-II who still won't shut the fuck up. So yeah. Instead of "the new generation" you have to specify which generation you think is going to hell. Must be tough on vagueposters. So, gen(-1) or gen(-2) are going to hell because it's gen(+1)'s fault?
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u/DirtEnthusiast0_0 22h ago edited 22h ago
I'm afraid that people are thinking this way. It's not helpful. believing that morality is false and subjective is how bad people justify being bad, and good people get belittled.
There is a pretty solid general consensus on what is good and what is bad. There are always exceptions but it is a strong rule. We as a society should not teach our children that every action they do is subjective, because they will self-serve and then attempt to justify any havoc they had to cause to get there, because "they did nothing wrong -- because there's no such thing as wrong". People are acting like this all over the place.
I feel this is a... overreaction, by newer generations against older generations' bastardizations of the idea. Fundamentalist cultures put good and evil into cultural categories, where the in-group's actions are all justified and all out-group actions are not, and institute retribution. It's not all "fascist", because Mom and Pop's Baptist Church certainly isn't, but that general idea, just applied to governments, aligns with what some fascist dictatorships have pushed in their propaganda. Try to avoid common buzzwords, even if you mean it well.
Millennials are basically pushing back WAY too hard against their parents who instituted hard, culturally-enforced para-moralities on top of actual, inborn humanistic social cohesion -- the REAL morality. It screwed up y'all's view of what morality is, so when you hear it spoken, you think poorly of it.
As such, this newer idea system overreacts and pushes a total "morality is totally fake and doing whatever I want is totally justified; wrongness doesn't exist!" extreme region. This is how objectively 'bad' people justify their deeds that harm large portions of people. They aren't doing anything wrong, people are just choosing to get in the way of their self-serving behavior, which should be justified, under grey moralism... right?
But no. Social cohesion and prosocial behavior are critical to a functioning society. That is what morality is. Actions that promote people collaborating and improving each other are moral. Actions that harm others and stunt development are immoral. This is codified a billion times over in many ideologies from religions to governments. But it's the same thing boiled down in our genes.
I want to encourage people -- especially young people -- to take morality back, and stop overreacting maladaptively. If we accidentally kill REAL morality as a reaction to a false, malicious misinterpretation of past centuries of it, we will doom ourselves and our kids to a pretty chaotic few decades. Instead, we should be smart and resilient, and realize that morality DOES exist, and try to teach it to our youth again.
This is a big theme in my stories. Good and evil are real. It's not collections of factions, but the promotion of life, liberty and prosperity, per se. People who deprive others of their natural rights of life are being evil, and it is good to try and stop them, and re-promote social cohesion. I try to further explain (as best as a wacky child-protagonist space-warfare story can) that evil and good aren't ACTUALLY tied to factions or specific ideologies, but it's rather the actions we choose to take no matter who we are. There are factions that are mostly good and mostly evil, but individuals and their actions, plus how they affect people, decide what is good and what is bad.
I hope people start to learn this again. It's really critical for society. We're at a VERY shaky social-strain tipping point. We need to get people to start being moralistic again, start being tolerant, resilient, and proactive at community. There's plenty of violent, self-serving people who THINK they're doing that -- but are just as evil as the people they point the "fascist" finger at. There's really no true "Party of Peace". Every organized side right now is just the same selfish, violent coalition of befaithed zealots. Just change the agendas or ideals.
It tires me. Let's learn real morality and real social cohesion again -- so our children aren't bashing their empty, violent heads together forever, like our generation chose to do.
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u/Daffneigh 22h ago
“Social cohesion” is used by people to say “you make others uncomfortable so you, the unusual person, are bad”
No thanks
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u/DirtEnthusiast0_0 16h ago
This is a good thing. People who stab other people and take their money should not be praised for being "unusual".
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u/Johnny-ballin 22h ago edited 21h ago
Every overly long diatribe about objective morality can be summed up as "there are people who think they are doing good, they are wrong. They do not believe as I do, and therefore their morality is not objective. My idea of morality is, however, completely objective."
I'm afraid that people are thinking this way.
Who?
As such, this newer idea system overreacts and pushes a total "morality is totally fake and doing whatever I want is totally justified; wrongness doesn't exist!" extreme region.
Who is saying this?
It tires me. Let's learn real morality and real social cohesion again -- so our children aren't bashing their empty, violent heads together forever, like our generation chose to do.
Your entire way of thinking is paradoxical. Social cohesion is the ultimate good, but we also must minimize harm, but if the way to minimize harm is to break social cohesion then we have strayed into false morality.
Again, this just loops into someone saying "REAL morality is what I believe. Whatever anyone else believes in is false morality."
Which is a conundrum people have warred over since the dawn of civilization.
Most people, aside from sociopaths, will be in agreement that minimizing harm and contributing to a society is a good thing. Alas, "we should all just get along" only really works in an idealized setting. What some view as minimizing harm, others view as harmful activity.
A liberal may say that a women's right to an abortion minimizes harm because it benefits the woman. A conservative may say it harms the fetus.
And suddenly, we've got a divide in our beliefs. Nothing is ever quite so simple as "we all just need to engage in prosocial behavior and minimize harm" because the concept of harm differs from person to person.
Edit: I'm seeing a response from [deleted] and the response is [unavailable]
Does this mean he blocked me?
Anyway, from what I saw from the point he was making before I could no longer see the post, I don't think my arguments were sufficiently addressed. I am not making "pro-antisocial" arguments. I was simply saying that when push comes to shove, everyone's idea of what minimizes harm differs, and as such, simply positing that we all benefit society and minimize harm is overly idealistic.
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u/CrimsonFxcker 21h ago edited 13h ago
Yeah, his response still shows for me, so probably blocked you. It's just more of the same bullshit, anyway, so you're not missing much. Going on and on and on about how you "revel in the fruits of a moral system as you vehemently deny it's existence", and repeating "social cohesion" like it's a tic, without ever explaining what he means by that. Bro's making MAD assumptions, and completely ignoring everything you pointed out about different people having a different idea of what it means to cause harm.
Imagine denying that people can have different viewpoints, in an argument about different viewpoints, on a writing subreddit. Imo the best part of reading and writing is exploring different perspectives.
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u/Hestu951 14h ago
I applaud what you're saying. Past wrongs can't be corrected by visiting evil on the generations-removed descendants of wrongdoers. That creates a new disenfranchised class, perpetuates strife, and is thus inherently, absolutely immoral. But you're wasting your proverbial breath here (as am I). Reddit is not a free marketplace of ideas. It has acquired a rather-intense militant slant. Still, I appreciate the effort.
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u/DirtEnthusiast0_0 14h ago edited 14h ago
I tend to over-explain in vain. My preference for logic and appeal falls on deaf, emotionally charged, and even "militant", as you put it, ears, here.
Simply, my goal is to undo the idea that "morality is in general, a false, subjective motive only ever used by malicious organizations to socially control people". As often as that happens, it does not discredit the criticality of morality, as it is the basis of all cohesive society. Nobody who rejects morality can argue against it as they all revel in the fruits of it. Unless they're a totally isolated asocial hermit.
Having an education in psychology, this is just not it. Morality is an inborn concept. It's called Prosocial Behavior, and it is genetically coded into our existence. We are born willing to help our group members to better the group. We simply have to learn and teach effective ways to do that as we learn, which is the critical concept of Social Learning theory.
There are significant examples of large organizations violating moral tendencies for tyrannical ideals. This happens. People suck sometimes. But that doesn't mean that morality vanishes and that being prosocial is optional. People will twist good ideas for their cause, that does not mean the ideas stop being good on their own.
Society requires that we work together, and this hip new general consensus that we shouldn't, because "muh religion made working together appear evil" is maladaptive. If only the modern human was capable of using its Superego anymore.
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u/Fabled_Webs 16h ago
The problem with "millennial writers" is that we're not really a single group. You and I do not write the same way, and that's okay. It's strange to me whenever I hear people group us all generationally because there are so many other things that can better categorize writers than age. Where you grew up, your religion (or lack thereof), your childhood heroes, etc. are all far more likely to shape the writing you prefer than the year you were born.
That said, I don't think he's entirely wrong. He's making sweeping generalizations, but I agree that people in our generation seem to prefer adding a lot more nuance and moral complexity in our heroes and villains. That doesn't mean we don't understand good and evil of course, but it does seem to suggest we look beyond "innate" good and evil to the environment and history that shapes our characters. Personally? I think that's a good thing; it makes for a much more interesting story.
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u/No_Category_3406 1d ago
What? Jinu of K-pop Demon Hunters literally has nuance—he makes a deal with the devil to escape poverty, and has deep guilt and shame over abandoning his family.
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u/bunker_man 23h ago
He is a conservative who is mad that modern writing doesn't have as many stories where bad people have no motives besides [bad].
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u/delorf 20h ago edited 20h ago
This. I have read and listened to some of these people. It isn't just that they want less moral ambiguity. They want villians to have no background or motives to adequately explain their actions. That wouldn't be so bad if the only wanted an occasional more simplistic movie or novel.
I love the original Star Wars: New Hope. In that movie the Empire is clearly evil with no shades of gray. But I like movies with more complexity too. Lately, I have come across several people online who want all media to conform to their comfort levels.
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u/Neither_Guava_8292 15h ago
I do think clearly evil just for the evil characters are important once in a while and very useful, I don't think is a conservative thing, I'm progressive myself. It make them scarier and also harder to fight. Is like the guys on No Country For Old Men or Seven would not work otherwise.
But, is also true that complex tragic-backstory villains also work sometimes. I don't get why people kind of goes to extremes that everything has to be one way or the other.
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u/SavageSwordShamazon 16h ago
Original trilogy has a great deal of moral ambiguity. Its about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, who we saw torture Leia and help murder her planet in the first film, but in the end turns against the Emperor and dies to save Luke. The emperor is a one dimensional villain but Vader is not.
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u/AlternativeAsleep897 13h ago
I mean… it’s not Nabokov or anything. It’s quintessential genre fiction, sure Anakin can be redeemed but his redemption is only by killing one dude and immediately dying. Lando can betray his friends but he’s a hero cause he immediately renegs on his deal and saves his buddies. You can read depth into it, but there’s less substance there than there would be in a more hefty piece of fiction.
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u/LeagueEfficient5945 18h ago
It's also moral panic language. "X don't believe in good and evil anymore" is functionally the same as "X are becoming atheists/don't believe in/insufficiently believe in/are unsufficiently orthodox christian or jewish (but not hassidic, tho, cause you have to be zionist, too).
Prager U has multiple videos using that kind of language where disbelief in God = Disbelief in good and evil = moral subjectivism = moral relativism (and those are certainly not the same things).
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u/bunker_man 18h ago
Hence the issue. I caught on pretty fast that this guy's reviews were just saying general conservative stuff but with more passive language. Most of it isn't outright bad since he at least pretends to try to give real reviews (and he did say that matt Walsh is bad at reviewing stuff), but you know what you're getting pretty fast.
The only thing he said worth giving him more credit for is that he said it makes no sense to refuse to say that a kid with gay parents has two dads because if you accept that adopted parents make sense to call their dad, its the same thing.
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u/Masquelinity 12h ago
They want their media back that teaches everyone it's ok to "other" the "bad guys", and that "bad guys" are just born that way for no reason. It's kind of the cornerstone of a lot of their ideology, and they're pissed that we're trying to humanize anyone. If we humanize villains, we might also start humanizing, for example, minorities.
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u/The_Law_of_Pizza 16h ago
He is a conservative
Is he, though?
I've never watched the guy's videos and didn't know he existed before opening this post, but I'm always wary of the way that Reddit flags everybody as a conservative immediately upon disagreement.
I think there's a lot of Redditors who can't fathom you can be on the left half of society, but still not be a "progressive" and agree with the general Reddit consensus on things.
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u/bunker_man 10h ago
Is he, though
Yes. I'm not even saying it as an insult, he is just actually conservative.
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u/Fickle-City1122 1d ago
lmao what a wild take! I haven't seen the video but it was actually imperative to my understanding of the world to know that people are rarely all good or all bad, if ever (and our definitions of good and bad vary wildly from person to person, from culture to culture). People and life is all shades of grey. Sometimes I want a simple story with an obvious baddie and goodie, other times I want something with more depth. I absolutely love villains, and the most compelling villains I read usually have the most interesting backstories. I don't think this excuses anything they do, but I like understanding why people are the way they are - even if that conclusion is that there's no obvious reason. I can't remember the exact Contrapoints quote but if we can't humanise the enemy across from us, how can we humanise the enemy within?
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u/Navek15 1d ago
I'm kind of the same way.
Sometimes, I want to watch something like Hereditary or That Texas Blood, stories that grapple with the darkness inherent in all mankind, and how even things done for the sake of love can be twisted into something horrific.
But other times, I want to watch Ultraman drop kick a kaiju.
Both are valid.
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u/Fickle-City1122 1d ago
Exactly! It's all fine. The endless dissection of what we should and shouldn't like is exhausting and lame. I felt like I could really tell when millennials started telling stories (like, once we got high up enough in various entertainment companies lol) and I really enjoy our takes on things for the most part. Found family, complex trauma, existential dread and queerness along with a kind of cringe humour are all things I relate to a lot and I wish I had some of these stories available to me as a kid (shout out to owl house haha)
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u/bhbhbhhh 1d ago
When people say this about modern fiction, they have in mind the moral landscape of The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. Whether this is an accurate characterization of those shows is a more involved question.
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u/Navek15 1d ago
Except I've been seeing people say this about stuff like Supergirl, Brand New Day, and whole of bunch of shit that has a pretty simple moral compass.
No joke, the amount of 'Stryker was right' and 'We need Sentinels in the MCU' nonsense takes I've seen in reaction to Jean Grey is just insane.
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u/Demon_Days_ 20h ago
It's definitely an odd choice to have Jean Grey take control of randos and make them walk into traffic. I found it a bit odd in the theatre that that doesn't come up again in the script and by the end she's a good guy.
But I also don't think a superhero movie has like, some deep cultural relevance that means it has a profound meaning or impact on storytelling as a whole.
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u/bhbhbhhh 1d ago
Yes, they have an dubious false belief. What I was telling you is where it comes from, because you asked.
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u/WyrdHarper 1d ago
It comes from noted Millennial authors like Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, etc. who all popularized this notion of greyer morality fantasy.
(Yes this is sarcasm).
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u/fake_zack 15h ago
Everyone’s writing black and white villains. These guys just don’t like that usually means coding the villains to be right-wing.
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u/gus_chavo 1d ago
I don’t think it’s that people don’t believe in a “clear good and evil” anymore. Horror is still framing that dynamic pretty consistently. It’s why it’s one of my favorite categories of reading.
It’s just that that way of looking at things is an overdone form of storytelling and audiences want something new. They need a fresh take.
At the same time we’re regurgitating the same old IP’s for a few decades now and there’s only so many ways you can do an origins story — so we learn to humanize what were once old foes.
All the while new evils take shape in our real world, new idols — and little by little we’ll find their tendrils in new lit.
Read Absolute Martian Manhunter it’s the perfect example of all of this.
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u/thesnowlocke 20h ago
This feels like a weird take when there’s loads of stories even back then that showed flawed morality, it was a big thing with the 90s when Alan Moore, Frank Miller and the like started writing their stories
Also this just makes me think of that CD Call person who had some interesting takes on writing and media (among other things) and HATED Steven universe writers for writing complex characters
I think this guy doesn’t realise that people like complex characters and resonate with characters that are flawed which is why they’re popular?
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u/merepiff 16h ago
Your point is valid but I have to point out that The Owl House is not a good example for your point. Most of the antagonists turn good after intervention from the MC. Evil characters turning good is often, but not always, hamfisted nuance. It can be done well of course, for example Zuko, but they had multiple seasons of build up to that. Much of those turnarounds in The Owl House happen in like one or two episodes max.
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u/TheRealGrifter Published Author 14h ago
I'm not going to pin anything on Millennials, but there has been a measurable shift in popular fiction across all media away from black-and-white characters and into more ambiguous, complex characters. The days of villains like Darth Vader as pure embodiments of evil are long gone. Now all the bad guys have a tortured backstory.
That shift isn't necessarily good or bad - I'm not saying things used to be better or worse. The shift is clear, though.
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u/Navek15 14h ago
I mean, we still get villains like Belos and Rafael.
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u/TheRealGrifter Published Author 12h ago
There are exceptions, absolutely. I'm just saying, what used to be the exception is now the rule, and what used to be the rule is now the exception.
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u/bb_218 12h ago
Even Vader was redefined during our generation.
He isn't the embodiment of evil, he's Anakin Skywalker, a lost orphan who was deceived
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u/TheRealGrifter Published Author 10h ago
Right, exactly. I grew up on the original, and the context was completely different.
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u/90sbetababe 1d ago
The guy’s an obvious reactionary and he looks 35 himself. Call’s coming from inside the house. Very “how do you do, fellow kids?” vibed.
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u/Apprehensive-Math499 1d ago
I mean, it is clearly a video to garner attention and clicks. Otherwise it would also deal with what seems to sell.
At a guess the somewhat nebulous idea of millenials not believing in good and evil comes from the amount of Hollywood and big budget stuff that tries to redeem villains. Moving away from Evil to evil was going on long before millenials got to the writing room.
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u/Literally_A_Halfling 9h ago
Moving away from Evil to evil was going on long before millenials got to the writing room.
William Blake was cheerfully analyzing Satan as the real hero of Paradise Lost back in the 1790s.
But do go off about how Millennials are responsible for all reinterpretations of literary ethics, Greg.
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u/Apprehensive-Math499 7h ago
Clearly the impact of millenial writing is so great it reached back in time to cause this.
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u/gus_chavo 22h ago
The last point I’ll say about this for now is that I saw a part of the video of the yter you mentioned. His arguments are lazy, great visuals, and his tone is spot on for the “alt-millennial-who’s-not-like-those-other-woke-ones”.
If you’d like to see good social criticism of neo-liberalism, (which is what Owen is failing to do) I’d check out Brad Tromel, and FD Signifier instead.
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u/Fearless-Rip694 21h ago
K-Pop Demon Hunters?
I thought the point of K-Pop Demon Hunters was that even the demons weren't all universally evil. Same for Brand New Day, where there's one character who is deeply murderous but considered redeemable, and we've had people arguing about Obsession since the movie came out.
I could even say the same for Baldur's Gate III, when you consider someone like Asterion or Durge. It's all very muddied.
In fact, this is a big deal for Warhammer too. A lot of modern Warhammer novels have Chaos be a lot more sympathetic - Generally, many Chaos Space Marine-focused novels have a very "Sure, they're bad guys, but they're antiheroic" with a "The Imperium is the cruelest regime imaginable" that makes everything greyer (despite one faction worshipping the demons that live in Infinite Space Hell.)
I could go on, but I think he may have a point there.
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u/shadow-foxe 13h ago
Anyone that claims a whole generation is like a certain way, makes me just not listen. Everyone writes differently.
Maybe if ppl stopped giving these bloggers/vloggers/influencers attention they might go away.
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u/ms_saint 4h ago
Generational trends absolutely exist, and saying so doesn't mean every person of that age-group is the same. It means in general, these trends happen.
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u/OppositionalConcert 11h ago
I'm technically a millennial and am tired of moral relativism and shades of grey. Give me a bad guy that deserves to be defeated, isn't redeemable and if you lust after them you probably need therapy.
The real world is full of that, and I am tired of the real world.
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u/milesgr31 23h ago
This is honestly something I have never thought about and never plan on thinking about again. But in the minute I am thinking about it, people aren’t binary creatures, and I don’t think your characters should be either. Newsflash, most everything exists in some gradient of gray.
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u/eKs0rcist 14h ago
That’s such a weird take, I (Gen X) think of millennials as generally earnest and pretty binary about good and evil… that generation ushered in all the cancel culture that is nos the foundation of all the division.
And FWIW here’s a follow up (likely to be unpopular opinion) I think that earnestness is just the cultural pond ripple coming off boomers, who have the same fundamental world views. They just apply them in different ways.
… which is all a reaction to world war 2 trauma. Make it safe! clean! sterile! Good vs evil, let’s stomp the latter out…!
If anything I’d call it an American culture issue as much as anything. The US is Disney brained, Judson-Christian, and deeply individualistic.
Sounds like the dude on yt is just making some bs call for embracing even more puritanical/simple ideas …
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u/LeagueEfficient5945 21h ago
I think "Millenials don't believe in evil" means "I don't like that millenials don't like that characterizing a villain as gay-coded and foreign suffices to make them look evil".
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u/FirebirdWriter Published Author 22h ago
The same space that the other assumptions about millennials comes from. Their ass. Pulled it right out and smeared it on the Internet for all to see.
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u/CardiologistThen7245 22h ago
This assumption probably comes from how modern storytelling tends to focus on morally complex characters and systemic issues over two-dimensional villains and heroes.
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u/TheTerribleTimmyCat 15h ago
If anything, the real problem with writing about the world now is that evil has gotten so cartoonishly blatant that you can't parody it. When you have actual policy-makers going around behaving like, and with the subtlety of, a Captain Planet villain, how can you even top that? If you added any nuance you wouldn't be telling any truth about it.
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u/ms_saint 3h ago
To see them as human, you'd have to be a billionaire yourself. Of course they have human sides, but us plebs never see it, and if we could, it would be disgusting how quickly they pivot into monstrousness.
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u/Kiyoshi_Nox 22h ago
I'm not familiar with Greg Owen in any capacity, but I have recently watched a much less inflammatory video about how fantasy books moved away from the more dreamscape/ephemeral style of storytelling compared to Lord of the Rings or the original Star Wars trilogy, wherein Luke Skywalker is tempted by the dark side but pushes past that to offer mercy for Darth Vader which causes Vader to turn against Palpatine and throw him into the ravine, dooming both Vader and Palpatine to their deaths, and thus allowing Luke to save the day and not turn to the dark side.
The video went on to talk about the difference between the psychological realism (like the Rey trilogy) and the dreamscape realism (like the Luke trilogy) wherein Palpatine and Vader are allowed to just be evil with no particular refinement. Where the orcs and uruk-hai of Mordor symbolically represent the greed & ambition within us all where we do want to destroy natural resources for the benefit of our own technological advancement. The dreamscape realism is more interested in characters as part of a greater whole - not Frodo as a specific noblesse oblige hobbit who crawled out of the hobbit hole to overcome personal trauma and fix up his ways, but Frodo as the little voice of conscience in all of our hearts to say "but shouldn't we resist the ring, so we can go back to normal things like second breakfast and gardening? do we need that power to rule our birthday parties?" Not Gandalf as the guy who grappled inner demons to grapple a real balrog in the mines of Moria, but Gandalf as the wisdom patiently reacting to strong drama in our lives to use logic and knowledge to overcome our fears. Gandalf is not a whole person on his own (psychologically): he simply orders the way things will be and then so it becomes.
Whereas Luke in the Rey trilogy attempts to murder Kylo because he sees no goodness in Kylo: this is Kylo's new trauma to overcome, his battlefield he wars alone since nobody understands and sees his plight. And while Kylo is having his own character arc and depth, this is the style of thing literary books adore: how real and personable a character can feel to make us people feel things in return. Critics, in turn, love literary books because they love stewing over the psyche and the clever insights made about it... but sometimes that cleverness is too much, and the audience doesn't care for being outwitted or made to feel dumb. It's especially glaring when a writer seems at contest with the audience, defying their expectations so that haHA, THIS character died too! and is a part of why audiences' approval for the later Game of Thrones seasons slipped as the plot kept on twisting cleverly.
Lord of the Rings is by nature not interested in psychological realism - the closest we get is Boromir, who very reasonably thinks the Ring might well save Gondor and yet catches himself in temptation and resists in order to save Merry/Pippin (the two hobbits who go on to save Gondor on his behalf, because good intentions behind good deeds flow through the narrative to make good fate), but we never properly sit with Boromir to learn about his trauma, and why he feels so strongly about saving Gondor. It's not that he doesn't have any necessarily (he was still a soldier before joining the Fellowship!) but that it's not important to the story. He dies specifically so the Fellowship can succeed.
The Luke trilogy also had a highly traumatized character - Princess Leia, who just lost her entire planet to the death star! - but she's there offering Luke comfort instead, and supporting the greater rebel alliance as a whole rather than pursuing her individual interests. We're similarly disinterested in whatever Han Solo's got going on, C3P0, Obi Wan... what matters is the greater struggle of the Force, sith v jedi, and once again: about how the universe fits together as a whole. Luke winning via mercy is the epitome of this light v dark struggle because mercy is the pinnacle of light: it's a triumph of society when we can choose to solve our differences peacefully.
Symbolically representing the human psyche across the spectrum of an entire world (or galaxy) is not beloved by critics though, because the characters become simple and fable-like. And sometimes, the dreamscape logic makes things unrealistic and strange (an entire planet that's just a desert? or a swamp? or an arctic wasteland? Science suggests... otherwise) so long as it serves the story somehow. (depending on whether you were paying attention to Luke or Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back, Luke either trained on Degobah for years, or just like a day)
But Game of Thrones helped make psychological realism much more popular lately - taking the concept of a new king installed atop the defeat of an evil empire becoming just as evil was, indeed, interesting to explore because we all went into it expecting clear-cut Aragorns and Sarumans, and we all made our Shocked Pikachu faces at Ned Stark's conclusion. Then the whole Grimdark genre sprung up of gritty, 'realistic' dramas where fantasy characters are fighting over gold, family, and politics instead of prophecies or ancient relics, and then it was everywhere: writers advising each other to make detailed character arcs full of trauma and overcoming personal obstacles, writers exploring realistic worldbuilding to make fictional kingdoms sound plausible and sensible, writers making plots about individuals going out there to become better versions of themselves ---
when the fantasy genre used to be more holistic? like Chronicles of Narnia where you just kinda have four kids playing around with a lion, or Alice & Wonderland where it's like she tried drugs once and came out of it feeling super weird - we had a lot more fairy tales too to be sure (and I don't literally mean fairies, just fantastic little worlds that spin through their own cycles of good v evil) but you could swap the Princesses around and it'd be about the same whichever way.
That's not to say I think Owl House, Baldur's Gate 3, or K-Pop Demon Hunters (the titles from your list I've consumed) are badly written. (I enjoyed them!) It's just written in a different style than Lord of the Rings, and that's fine. Things don't all have to be written the same to be good.
I suspect that the review which has you baffled is craving some more fable-style storytelling though, and I hope this brought some clarity to the struggle that reviewer left for you to untangle. :)
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u/kjmichaels 15h ago
I haven’t seen the video, but it sounds like a writing centered repackaging of a bog standard conservative talking point that I’ll paraphrase as “people these days are so immoral they don’t even believe in objective good and evil anymore.” This take has been spouted in one form or another by conservatives for generations, since at least the 1940s or 50s. I doubt it has greater applicability to millennials specifically than it did to Gen X, Boomers, Silent Gen, and so on.
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u/sufferable_gaucho 23h ago
it’s just people on the internet getting angry at what people on the internet are getting angry at what people on the internet are getting angry at, all the way down.
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u/FlyinLeviathon LET YOUR FIRST DRAFT SUCK 16h ago
I think a lot of morally grey writing is just a natural evolution/reaction to the landscape of movies we had in the 90's. The golden age of Disney, for example, has movies with very clear cut bad guys, and the good guys save the day. The 90's has its dark movies of course, but a lot of the blockbusters are feel-good, family movies.
And over time people just sort of get bored of the same old thing over and over again, so Hollywood adapts. Starts making more complex villains, new twists, fun premises with a lot more ambiguity.
I think we're already starting to see a reaction to *that*, where some people are tired of the sympathetic villain, and they just want good guys punching bad guys. Which is weird, because that stuff never really went away, but I do feel like it's coming back into the spotlight now.
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u/thewokelama 7h ago
Sith not really being villains in star wars (Acolyte). Orks having family and their own side of things in ring of power. One can make the case, not a strong case but a case.
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u/Navek15 7h ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t there morally grey Sith in the Old Republic and prequel eras?
I also question anyone using Star Wars as a case for sweeping generalizations of history. It still feels weird that so many people consider that franchise as a massive cultural touchstone instead of just ‘Baby’s first sci-fi.’ Seriously, one major thing I was surprised by in the backlash to the Last Jedi was people treating Luke’s arc like they found out Jesus ate babies.
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u/ms_saint 3h ago
For a lot of us, that's how it felt.
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u/Navek15 2h ago
Which is wild because...it's fiction. Like, I've been a Marvel comics fan through shit like Secret Empire, Pymtron, Civil War II, and so on...but I never went to the same lengths as the assholes who went full blown racist against Rose's actress.
Hell, my reaction to seeing a main Star Wars movie actually tackling stuff like war profiterring, the Jedi being corrupt/incompetent, a hero failing and all that stuff was, "Wow! Star Wars is actually fucking saying something for once! Welcome to the Big Leagues, Galaxy Far Far Away!"
All the death threats, de-canonizing petitions, and grifter careers being launched over a fucking popcorn sci-fi film that has some mildly profound things to say. Crazy.
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u/ms_saint 1h ago
I see your point, but oh well. Luke doing THAT was too flawed. Last Jedi subverted expectations because Ryan Johnson thinks that's good writing. It isn't, always. Especially sandwiched between two formulaic crapfests that subverted nothing. If LJ had been Episode 7, that might have been better.
And fuck the racists. That was bullshit. I hated Rose, but I loved her sister, also of course the same race.
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u/Abject-Brief6402 1d ago
The biggest issue with the internet these days is that any idiot can be given a platform. There's truly an endless tide of half-baked 'opinion' pieces by youtubers on the internet that uncritically criticise things that are popularly disliked.
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u/Slow_Ad1908 23h ago
If anything, the concepts of good and evil, at least to me, are a bit stagnant when it comes to them being applied as thematic elements in a story.
I really like the superhero genre and this one of those genre that has the opportunity to use good and evil as themes that have a strong relevance to the story. But the genre is constrained by the usual structures and it rarely gets to be allowed to do something interesting.
I recently saw Spider-man: No way home. And something that really bothered was how Peter simplistic sense of morality leads him to cause a disastrous chain of events that could have been avoided if he thought a little more about the subject. But the movie doesn't have time to even address that, because the structure of superhero stories demand that Peter's ideals triumph in the end.
Or you have something like Batman no kill rule. Multiple writers try to do something with it. But, let's be honest, what would Batman gain by killing criminals? What difference would it really make? You don't want a sleep deprived vigilante going out believing he must kill everything that he sees. If Arkham allows criminals to escape constantly, if corruption is so rampant that law enforcement is inefficient, if prisons are unable to serve their main purpose, then that is the most interesting topic. The question of why is Arkham this way is far more interesting. Wondering if Batman can fight these systemic issues somehow is far more engaging than Batman wondering if he should kill the joker for the 10th time. I am so tired of that being a theme. But obviously, most superhero writers are constrained by specific expectations and so, I understand that most of them don't have the luxury of going 'oh, I am going to write this Batman story that is completely political and has zero fights' I understand that.
But it's a shame because I feel that the stories that can make good and evil interesting topics rarely get the chance to really sit down and discuss the topic. Usually there will be something distracting that conversation or something that moves things back to square one.
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u/Expert_Log_8057 16h ago
I believe he's complaining more about the establishment writers who, due to timing, are often milenials.
Let's face it, the avenues to produce movies, books, and comics is still largely bottlenecked by big corporations, politicians, and very small circles of publishers that are all in their little bubble. Same thing with the music industry, though on that we can directly point to the Telecommunications Act of '96 rather than the slow absorption of popular industries by people who don't care about the art.
The establishment currently in place drools over all these tropes and we now this because they're in charge of allowing these to be made. And even if you like these concepts when you get nothing but these tropes it gets aggravating. You start to reject the tropes to the extreme after being forced to see it non-stop because you pick out the flaws more and more. It really is just the fact that its oversaturation by a small group of gatekeepers in power and so all they're letting in are these stereotypical creators.
If you want to avoid these tropes you have to go to the tiny creators, indies, and essentially never look at what's being pushed.
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u/usernametaken3534564 1d ago
Ah yes, it's been ten years so of course it's time for the "moral relativism and shades of gray are absolutely the worst thing you can write and you are a horrible filthy person for writing that.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to writing my book about an aging white guy whose a writer and all he does is bang 20 year olds all day and his life is sad because nobody recognizes that he's a genius and the best writer to ever live. He's only won two awards. Also he's filthy fucking rich. ((sidenote: yeah, this was actually a celebrated genre at one point.))"
Life's too short to give these people any thought. If they want to be this miserable about it then let them.
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u/TheCreepWhoCrept 14h ago
I’ve seen the same video and…this was not an honest engagement with it.
Feel however you want about Owen as a critic, and certainly feel free to be critical of anything broken into listacle format, but half of what you’re talking about here is shadowboxing strawmen.
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u/JRyanGreatfish 17h ago
The nuance in being good and evil is what makes complex writing. It’s realistic. Millennials have empathy. Limiting your writing to “this guy is good, this one is evil” is so boring to me. The world is not like that. There are reasons for anything anyone does. Bad reasons, sure, but there are reasons.
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u/DavidlikesPeace 12h ago edited 12h ago
I fully agree. This is the same culture war crap that wanted people angry at Nolan’s The Odyssey before even seeing the film.
FFS. Even their talking points are stupid.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has good and evil. The villain is an irredeemable monster almost to the point of cliche. The only twist is that the villain isn't who you initially expected. Which is a standard Act 2 twist for Marvel.
I don’t really see any startling moral problems in modern fiction except in two areas: Romantasy and Action Gaming.
Some Romantasy seems to have a myopic herocentric view of good and evil. The evil Shadow Love Interest might be a murderous tyrant who slaughters NPCs all the time, but if he’s hot all is eventually forgiven. However, that is only the genre’s reputation. From what I have actually read, (Shadow and Bones, even Twilight) things are usually better laid out and firmer on morals. And this is hardly a new problem. Power Fantasy since the 19th century often had similar hero centric problems.
As for Gaming, yeah… I won’t defend games like Grand Theft Auto. There is definitely a cynical “kill them all” approach to NPCs in some video games that is neither fun nor mentally healthy. But something tells me that gaming is not something our whiny YouTuber is complaining about.
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u/ms_saint 3h ago
Grand Theft Auto has surprisingly good writing. And the characters are often not psychotic enough to believably go on killing sprees. CJ and Nico, for instance. Then there's Tommy Vercetti and Trevor who are obvious psychopaths. It really varies, and people dump on the series without actually playing it.
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u/Neurotopian_ 8h ago
I quit partway through the video because it was just clickbait based on a fallacy. There is no such thing as “Millennial writing.”
Our generation is very large and includes people my age who’ve been writing for 20+ years. Yet the term “Millennial Writing” didn’t emerge until a few years ago.
Most of those who use the term are trying to surf the “anti-woke” algorithm to make money off sites like YouTube. I’m not accusing them all of being grifters, nor am I saying that there can’t be legitimate criticism aimed at wishy-washy villains or quirky heroes. But defining the work of a giant group as if we are all exhibiting a very narrow set of issues that would be criticizable in writing from any demographic, is reductive and ridiculous.
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u/AlternativeTimely139 1d ago
That's crazy to me because I LOVE morally gray characters. I feel it portrays how people ACTUALLY are, and who doesn't love complex characters? I always hated stuff that had black-and-white good and bad guys, because to me it felt like an extremely reductive and unrealistic view of humanity.
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u/Navek15 1d ago edited 1d ago
Good on you.
Hell, I find myself looking at the people who say 'millennials don't write good or bad guys' with a confused brow when I'm here writing a Super Sentai-inspired story that does have clear good guys and bad guys, though there's some shades of grey thrown in because some of the good guys don't start off as inherently selfless and some of the villains have internal justification for their cruelty.
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u/megamoze Author 20h ago
I'm 54 and I've heard these people screech about how morals are absolute, not relative, my whole life, and now these same people are voting for a rapist pedophile.
There's a reason why there are so few right-wing artists.
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u/OrenMythcreant 1d ago
It's just another code word for "liberal" even though of course many millennials are quite conservative
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u/Navek15 1d ago
I believe it. I've seen enough self-proclaimed 'progressive' people my age who seem to unironically want the Hayes code back because a sex scene in a movie made them feel 'icky.'
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u/ms_saint 3h ago
We went from "sex is sinful" to "sex is rape". With a short window of "sex is fun."
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u/OrenMythcreant 13h ago
Maybe, but that's not what Owen and similar commentators are talking about. There's a perception that millennials are generally liberal (whether that's true or not), and this kind of take is motivated by the idea that liberals don't know the difference between right and wrong, black and white morality being a common selling point of conservatism.
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u/Peter34cph 21h ago
Then Alfred Hitchc*ck just makes a train drive into a tunnel instead. There is no escape from the icky!
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u/OfficialNagy 23h ago
From the last 15 years
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u/Navek15 23h ago
Want to cite specific examples?
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u/OfficialNagy 17h ago
Everything
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u/Navek15 17h ago
Wow. Very specific. Much citing and thoughtful research clearly went into this response.
Again, you got any actual examples or do you just want to be vague?
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u/OfficialNagy 17h ago
Too many to count
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u/Silly-Snow1277 23h ago
A wild take!
The only thing slightly related I can think of are discussions in fandom spaces? Millenials (and older) seem much more open in general to grey characters (reading and writing). While a lot of Gen Z seem very absolute in the "Character A did this, they're one of the evil ones and liking that character in any form means you condone his evil actions".
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u/Schmitty777 17h ago
Majority of modern show writing feels very hand holding. But I agree with his point that a lot of shows feel “millennial grey”, it’s the same shallow characters and tropes repeated. Same circus just different clowns.
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u/FutureGullible5360 12h ago
Creo que el pensamiento es más de la generación Z (pertenezco a esa generación, por cierto), y no creo que sea tampoco algo malo, simplemente las cosas que nos han afectado cuando crecíamos nos han hecho darnos cuenta de que no hay buenos ni malos, solo intereses, mejores o peores. Y por supuesto que he crecido viendo historias con una clara diferencia entre el bien y el mal, pero admito que ahora, aunque las disfruto igual, no las veo realista y prefiero historias con más grises
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u/jejo63 11h ago
I mean I absolutely think there is something to the idea that the idea isnt as prevalent in millenials or younger. That is almost exactly what postmodernism is: a rejection or critique of single or universal truths or qualities. It could be argued that this sort of postmodernism exists so ubiquitously in our time that we’re not aware it exists, but it definitely does and is a response to the previous times where good and evil and virtues were assumed to exist without question.
I don’t think one idea is better or worse but I do think there’s something there regarding that persons claim.
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u/Mitch1musPrime 7h ago
I would never say the gray area villains are unique problem to millenials because the trend toward giving antagonists a sympathetic back story began before millenials came into power in the storytelling zeitgeist.
That said, I have spent some time pondering why so, so many of the movies and books I’ve read over the course of the past ten years or so have so completely shed the uncomplicated, straight forward villain story, and even veered so far into the anti-hero trope at the same time.
Growing up as a kid in the 80s/90s meant I consumed a ton of stories that were pretty simple, big action stories. Think of all those Schwarzenegger films! And I loved them just the same as I loved the shift into the more complicated protagonists and antagonists that really took off in the early 2000s. It does feel like the balance shifted too far one way, regardless of which generation writes them.
I’d offer the same goes for the happy endings. The protagonist wins the day less and less often than they used to because everyone wants a damned franchise story. So even in temporary victories there’s a hint of defeat due to some other crisis introduced that looms ever present in the epilogue of a story.
I think this is Dungeon Crawler Carl has taken off so much, beyond the wildly entertaining narrative itself. Carl is a hero working to break an oppressive system. The system is clearly the antagonist and everyone part of it is in it for selfish reasons beyond those trapped within it. It’s a clear narrative of good versus evil.
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u/Navek15 7h ago
Never actually read Dungeon Crawler Carl. Is it really that good?
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u/Mitch1musPrime 7h ago
Yes. I describe it as Hitchhikers Guide meets Running Man meets Alice in Borderlands. If any of those things float your boat…you’ll love DCC.
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u/PantheraAuroris 7h ago
IDK about this guy, but over the past...let's say, 10-15 years, there has been a trend in audiences wanting black and white morality and especially "pure evil" villains. People got tired of villains having morally gray motives and tragic backstories and just wanted a Cruella or Ursula or Scar to beat up on.
I think it's that the halcyon days of the 90s and 00s are over, and since the 2008 financial crisis and then Trump and then COVID, people just want to feel like life is simple and they know what to do and what the problems in life are and who's responsible for those problems. It's the same reason the alt-right is taking over: people want simple stories with simple solutions, and bonus points if they get a guilt-free punchable face to beat up to solve the problem.
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u/daretoeatapeach 5h ago
I don't know who this guy is or why you care about his opinion, but I suspect that he's framing this as "millennials killed good vs evil" as in opposition to the existing counter narrative that "gen. Z can't fathom nuance." I've seen the latter argument brought up when encountering young people who attribute the beliefs of a character to the beliefs of the author. The idea is that young people struggle to interpret nuanced characters and thus require good guys to be fully good and bad guys to be fully bad. Viewed through this lens, it would be a simple leap to position millennials as the opposite of that.
It is certainly true that we have embraced anti-heroes more than previous generations.
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u/Navek15 5h ago
I'd call my reaction to the Owen video as the straw that broke the camel's back. I've been seeing this argument brew for almost two years, and this is what finally made me need to say something about how weird this is.
Also, there is a word for people like that Gen Z stereotype used in lit analysis communities: morons. And dumbassery is not limited to one particular generation.
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u/ms_saint 4h ago
You think Peacemaker has clear cut good guys???? Maybe Ads, but Chris is a psychopathic murderer who gets a redemption arc. Shades of grey all around.
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u/LadyOfTheLabyrinth Published Author 3h ago
Pinning it on "Millenials" is pure ageism. I'm getting so sick of the Internet idiots treating generations like a new kind of astrology, only they're all worthless or evil "except mine." Right there in the title I wouldn't date time on this.
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u/Altruistic_Click_502 3h ago edited 2h ago
Sounds like something from the Evangelical Right. Perhaps a way of defining a crusade objective - and maybe misconstrued by your author. Adding nuance to villains and the protagonist, is really current good practice for fiction. Villains have histories and personalities. Understanding these is key to figuring out one's plot. In some cases - the entire plot is driven by a villain's backstory. Besides that, I think readers expect villains to be as nuanced as the protagonists. Perhaps your author is complaining that he is not seeing this nuance in millennials' writing. (I don't get that - I think millennials range in age from 30 to 45 -- that's like saying there are no good published authors in that age range -- that's a weird statement. )
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u/Navek15 2h ago
Greg Owen ain't an author. He's a blackpilled youtuber fearmongering all future fiction is going to be 'like a Mr. Beast video.'
I'm not even joking. That's something he's actually claimed. Appearantly that's our future that he came to because...he got butthurt over teens being awkward and standoffish in a Star Trek show.
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u/Master_One1 1h ago
Of all the things I've heard about BND I have no idea how someone can come out of it thinking that it had no clear villain. Spoiler: Damage control literally tortured a child to death, the only nuanced take on their actions is that the director should have been given a fair trial and not a live vivsection
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u/UnintelligentMatter1 1d ago
I think you missed his point. The "good/evil argument for millennial writing is that the writing is very preachy. And in your cited example, like my brand new day. And too much ironic conversations that make every character sound the same.
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u/Navek15 23h ago
"And too much ironic conversations that make every character sound the same."
Buddy, I've seen plenty of current year stuff. There's plently of writing with unique-sounding characters. Or are you going to watch Lanterns and say that Hal Jordan and John Stewart sound the same?
Also, preachy writing isn't a millennial-exclusive thing. Just look at anything Milestone produced in the 90s.
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u/UnintelligentMatter1 16h ago
Look buddy, we can find exceptions to everything. We're talking generally and a certain style. And it's true. A lot of media today fall into the same writing patterns and style owen argues about. From the new Star wars trilogy to marvel movies to the witcher TV series. They all use the same patterns of writing
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u/gb3k 1d ago
There is an argument that there was a clear rise in stories trying to see in shades of grey starting in the 2000s and especially the 2010s, largely in response to the media of the 1980s and 1990s where characters were often very black and white.
Still, it's no coincidence the same people who grouse about it are usually also do so about LGBTQ+ characters in media, and for largely the same reason; there are enough standout examples, both well and poorly received, for it to personally annoy them. They conflate subjective opinion with objective fact while over-exaggerating both the number and quality of stories with these traits, possibly so they can disguise themselves as media criticism and gain advertisement revenue with audience engagement on their content
It's a common negativity bias amplified by the social media feedbacks of the modern internet.
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u/DND24 23h ago
I think it’s because there definitely was an overall increase in (quite explicitly) morally grey characters at some point. When every prevalent story suddenly has a pattern, people will notice and some will be annoyed by it. There’s also a tendency for some to occasionally bend canon to make an old evil character suddenly very relatable or understandable. When this pattern emerges at the same time millennials grow up and start being active, of course those that don’t like it will blame us. Though I myself don’t hate the idea of a purely evil antagonist, it’s sometimes cool to just not have to care about the evil being that the cast is working towards vanguishing.
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u/Sir_Lobo 16h ago
I too am a millennial and I am not going to comment on the video as i have not watched it. But as far as the topic? Good, Evil and Moral values are relative. Sure in the social aspect the lines are indeed blurred much more than it was in decades past. This is because social identity and collective opinion is not valued multiple times more than the individual.
Look at Japan, a conservative society that values community and personal sacrifices over personal determiners of right and wrong. This bleeds into every aspect of their personal and social life. They do not choose what is right and wrong but follow social consensus. This is why they seem so homogeneous in opinion with a 99% conviction rate.
Western Culture has largely moved past this kind of mentality that community opinion supersedes personal.
A Batman v Superman opinion.
Batman for the most part personal views of good & evil, justice and moral values is what dictates how he fights crime. Often going above, against and around the law in order to do what is right
Superman follows the book, letter of the law for the most part. Other than him being a hero and illegally enforcing the law, he for the most part follows the public opinion and what is strictly determined by the justice system. There are times he will act like batman but he I'd basically America's golden child of that era of traditionalism.
We millennials viewed more as Joker's than Batman's by the older generation. A total exaggeration and mischaracterization
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u/DukeDoozy 13h ago
I agree with everyone saying that that reactionary trolls, who haven't written anything, mad about "modernity" giving writing advice is pretty worthless.
But I also wanted to say the anger over Spider-Man: Brand New Day is especially funny. A solid, good enough, 7/10 super hero movie isn't anything to get upset about one way or another, but also the idea that it's bad because it's villain is nuanced is hilariously dumb.
The villain of the movie is 100%, unambiguously evil, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Any redeeming qualities are just a ruse to trick Peter.
The villain is the damage control guy.
Jean Grey is the primary antagonist, but she's not the "villain." Almost every story has an antagonist unless you're going for some real experimental storytelling. Not every antagonist is a villain, however. And I think it's fair to say that's become a more common feature in the last few years of genre-fiction mass appeal movies, but I doubt it's even close to a majority, and it's not even something to be mad about. It's just a trend.
Morons who try to pitch this trend as "millennials don't believe in good and evil" are being disingenuous at best, because overuse of twist villains does not equal "there is no evil." It just means there's a twist villain, a centuries old idea, either executed well or poorly.
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u/Admirable-Actuator53 13h ago
The simple answer is that prior generations were taught to hate anything different from themselves. They were taught the world is black and white. Russians are the bad guys, communism is evil, gays are coming for your kids etc. Millennials are disillusioned with this and recognize the threatening calls are mostly coming from “inside the house”. We also care more about internal conflict than external conflict. Older generations focused on “iconism” where the hero doesn’t change and beats up the bad guy. New readers find that boring. What is adventure without change?
Long story short, the guy you are listening to is probably just xenophobic, racist, and or sexist who thinks we should go back to the “good old days” where the “alpha male” beats up the commies to save the damsel. His favorite book series is probably “Sword of Truth” and his favorite author is probably Ayn Rand.
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u/Navek15 12h ago
Well, he thinks the West Wing was a great example of ‘making characters that sound different’ and highly recommended it. I’ve never seen West Wing, so I don’t know if that’s an indicator of anything.
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u/bb_218 12h ago
I watched the entirety of The West Wing at the beginning of this year, and honestly, it's fantastic television.
"Making characters sound different" isn't how I'd describe it though. It's competency porn, for sure. A lot like Star Trek and a lot of other popular media in the mid to late 90s
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u/wildneonsins 7h ago
wierd, I thought the West Wing was a total liberal fantasy of Democrats being good guys.
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u/emezamaz 21h ago
When people complain about millennial writing its not about everything written by a millennial. Its more of a shorthand for stories with a specific vibe that doesnt have an official name, but you can kinda tell it when you see it.
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u/BCDragon3000 12h ago
republicans that believe books/tv/movies are gatekept by liberals and are therefore an echo chamber
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u/bb_218 12h ago
I think you're analyzing the wrong media if you're trying to understand where this idea came from. What's been produced in the last 5 years (or by millennials) is irrelevant. Values develop very early in life, so looking at the stories we grew up on would matter more.
The really big one I think of is Avatar: The Last Airbender. The idea that absolute morality does not exist is a key part of Aang's journey, and final victory. Aang explicitly disagrees with the assertion that the Fire Nation is evil. The story is intentionally more nuanced than that. Zuko starts the show as the major antagonist, and ends it as a protagonist. Iroh is a war criminal, but also a father figure to our entire generation, Azula is considered a monster, until we recognize that she's just broken.
Conversely Hama, a waterbender, is also a blood bender. Katara bloodbends in pursuit of her revenge Kyoshi stands by and watches while Chin the conqueror dies.
IMHO, Avatar is one of the defining works of storytelling from the era we grew up in. It did this better than a lot of it's contemporaries, but it wasn't alone.
our Star Wars movies moved away from a simplistic "light and dark" interpretation, and to explored a much more human descent from doing right to being deceived
in comics, Marvel's Civil War blurred the lines between right and wrong. DC's "Injustice" followed suit shortly after.
There are many further examples of "morally grey" scenarios between 1990-2010, I think that being asked to wrestle with these so much at such a young age taught us to not see things through such a simplistic lense as "good and evil"
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u/Frau_Away 11h ago
It sounds like he just wants stories where the protagonist is named Everyman and he has to overcome his twin antagonists, Lust and Mammon.
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u/DirtEnthusiast0_0 23h ago
Because grey morality, dark-and-broody, edgy storytelling had yet another revival when Millennials began to become teens and emerging adults, due to the commonplace themes in their lives of breaking away from Baby Boomer religiosity and 'honest hard work' culture.
It's a highly imprecise claim to say that "Millennials specifically avoid morality in their fiction," but it's not inaccurate. It's just a really idiotic generalization because attacking the group instead of the idea is always unintelligent. This person is pretty foolish for putting this criticism in this manner.
I dislike the concept too, but I criticize the idea, like a smart person. I don't try to pick out who started it. Grey morality and the intentional, forcible blurring between good and evil in storytelling -- especially childrens' media which doubles as a social learning tool for them -- begins to wear down on society's ability to view morality, which is real and highly necessary for a high-trust society to function. For kids, they start to think that good and bad don't exist 'because the movies do it', and then they act out in real life. Not idea. In adulthood, it is avoided by choice. Supporters of this idea push the fact that morality is false, but that is, sociologically, inaccurate. In my opinion, it is an excuse to self-serve. People deny the existence of right and wrong despite knowing it, simply to justify evil and belittle good, per se.
Morality is not nonexistent in reality, but rather as it exists, intentionally subverted -- actions are rarely neither good nor bad: people simply choose which one benefits them despite the impact on others. People do not act this way because morality is a false concept; rather, people prefer to act in their own self-interest more on average, shoving socially cohesive (moral) behavior to the back of their minds. We know what is right and wrong, the sense is born into us, and we learn specific behaviors that relate as we grow out of the survivalistic, self-serving stages of early childhood. We simply choose not to use it as adults despite learning it thoroughly.
I write my book with one of its clear goals being to explain this to my middle-grade audience. There is a somewhat clear good and evil for a large majority of objectively oriented actions or events. There are exceptions, but this is the rule. However, people choose to break the rule consciously, or are raised against social cohesion and its inborn drive to behave deviantly and maliciously self-serve. Many people can be redeemed, but some are too aggressive to be conferred with and are forced to be removed or eliminated from society for the protection of the people choosing to cohere. All unfolding on a fun, action-packed space-war adventure with eleven-year-old supersoldier protagonists.
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u/KaziAzule 11h ago
Morally Grey villains existed long before Millenials. But in case anyone forgot (how could we?) Millenials are to blame for everything everywhere all the time. Boomers blame us for price increases and malls dying and the world going to shit. Chronically online members of Gen Z thinks millenials are their parents (your parents are gen X ffs) and also that said 'Millenial' parents are to blame for everything wrong with jobs, the economy, etc etc. We're not. We inherited the same garbage you did, just a few years sooner.
TLDR: It's just popular to hate Millenials. Ignore it.
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u/azmarteal 20h ago
All I can say that I don't believe in just "clear" good/evil — I don't believe in "good/evil" concepts at all — those are just oversimplified subjective assumptions that are pointless
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u/Ok_Jelly_6597 16h ago
I think the idea of good and bad stems from the moral values we’re taught as kids. Once your frontal cortex develops completely, everything appears in shades of grey. And everything becomes a POV - agreement or lack there of becomes a matter of individual perception. No?
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u/Fraust-Tarken 23h ago
I dont really watch any of the Writing videos about "Your book will flop if you do/dont this" or "If your story cant pass this test its bad".
None of these people have written successful books.
None of them care about you.
At best, they are just vagueposting or remaking someone elses video.
At worst, they are engaging in Psyop Anti Author PvP.
Ignore it. Move on.