No antagonist?

I've found that I have a real problem with antagonists. Every time I see a good guy/bad guy encounter in fiction, I think right away: "Can we just get this over with? We already know the good guy's gonna win." But if the good guy doesn't win, then I think, "Well, what the hell was the point in all that? We've accomplished nothing!" So it's sort of a mental Catch-22 for me. Good guy wins, I don't care; good guy loses, I don't care.

So my question is twofold:

1.) What the hell is wrong with me?

2.) Neither of my settings seems like it would necessarily have a villain/big bad/what have you. What now?

There's nothing wrong with you. You just have your own perspectives and instincts and preferences that don't fit into some formulaic story.

A lot of reviewers complain about Final Fantasy XII not having just one main protagonist, going so far as to criticize it for "forgetting proper story structure" or some nonsense, but I personally really enjoyed that you get to swap around the playing character, that everybody has a share of agency in the plot, and that it's really an ensemble story.

A Song Of Ice And Fire can get away with having multiple main characters and complications. The good guys die more often than the bad guys. Except for the dragons, that's fairly realistic. That is, if your standards of "real" are nihilistic.

Psycho also pulled that off well. She's bad! No, wait, she's trying to make up for it! No, wait, she's not even the main character after all. There's somebody evil! No, wait, it was somebody good…sort of…or trying…but Issues...

It gets complicated and ambiguous, and that can still be satisfying.

If your stories don't have a clear antagonist, then perhaps the conflict that needs to be resolved isn't as easy as "That Person is the conflict. Do away with That Person and the story will be over and everybody else will be happy." It could be about themes and ideals. It could be the story of a Tragic Hero even.

edited 10th Apr '15 7:53:40 PM by Faemonic

Conflict is required for narrative, but it doesn't have to come from an "antagonist" - it could be the protagonist's own failings (e.g. "I want to be a famous singer but I suffer from terrible stage fright") or from the environment ("I want to buy a Coke but the store's three miles away, the car's busted and there's a blizzard outside") and many other things.

Also, the antagonist does not need to be a Big Bad that could easily be removed by shoving them in a cell somewhere - it might be the protagonist's girlfriend's mother who does not want her daughter to marry someone like the protagonist. You can't just kill her or throw her in jail, you've got to find some way for the protagonist to achieve his goal (marry the girl) without "bumping off the opposition" (apparently, killing your girlfriend's mum is a sure-fire cock-block. Who knew?)

I don't like writing stories with Big Bad antagonists, either, I prefer to have conflict arise in other ways.

edited 10th Apr '15 8:03:26 PM by Wolf1066

The other problem is, my reductive view on antagonism is kinda affecting my enjoyment of a lot of things.

Reductive, how so?

The meat of the conflict doesn't engage me any time a conflict comes up in a work of fiction, because I'm all "Can we just get this over with already? Either the good guy wins and I won't be satisfied, or the bad guy wins and I won't be satisfied".

Then I'd say you're seriously screwed as far as entertainment goes because, aside from a number of "slice of life" works, entertainment is predicated on conflict.

Though, as I said, it doesn't have to be an external antagonist. How do you feel about entertainment wherein the conflict derives internally? Such as when the protagonist has to overcome their own failings, fears or weaknesses in order to achieve their goals.

Do you have "either the protagonist overcomes their fears/weaknesses and succeeds and I'm unsatisfied or they don't and I'm unsatisfied"?

I don't even think of those as conflict, just "Stuff that happens".

They're another form of conflict that can be used instead of, or as well as, an antagonistic character. (No reason why the hero can't be going up against a villain while simultaneously battling his own self-doubt or trying to overcome the fact he's shit-scared.)

What of antagonists who aren't Big Bad material? Normal OK rational people with a conflicting agenda (such as having their own perfectly reasonable ideas about who their daughter should marry or just happening to want something perfectly reasonable that for whatever reason gets in the way of the protagonist's plans)?

edited 10th Apr '15 10:10:58 PM by Wolf1066

What about Tragic Hero and Redemption Arc stories? Those can be gray rather than a "disappoint/disappoint" binary.

My whole life has been Tragic Hero. Last thing I want is a constant reminder of that.

Wait, so…you are a villain? (How did that happen in Real Life ?)

What's your Fatal Flaw? How do you know that your doom and downfall is inevitable? Who is it that you've harmed, and what makes them the hero of the piece?

edited 11th Apr '15 12:02:19 AM by Faemonic

My fatal flaw is Asperger Syndrome, crippling laziness, and naïveté, and I know I'm doomed to fail because I haven't succeeded once at much of anything in almost 30 years.

…and what part of the description says that's even a villain-only trope?

Just from what I remember of 10th grade English class, the defining feature that a Tragic Hero has is a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall.

For Macbeth, it was ambition. For Hamlet, it was vengeance. For Oedipus, it was (a bit foggy about this one) ignorance of his really hot mom being his mom.

The kicker was suppose to be: if you warned them not to do the thing, they'd still do the thing. They wouldn't be themselves if they didn't. But they usually do a lot of harm on the way down, which is why someone else sends them on that way with a climatic battle. Although Oedipus just gouged his eyes out and left his daughter Antigone with an embarrassing family to contend with or something.

Ergo, villainy (usually) but told from a perspective that makes them the protagonist rather than the antagonist.

edited 11th Apr '15 12:01:55 AM by Faemonic

Still don't get it.

First, let's say that we came in knowing that this was going to be a tragedy. The main voice is going to lose and probably die horribly.

The point of interest, then, is not so simple as Win or Lose but how whatever comes to pass…comes to pass.

If we didn't come in knowing that this was a classical tragedy, then we'd think, "This is the protagonist." Because we're shown so much of their point of view. "I should be rooting for this person to win." But what they do is…antagonistic, but the audience is put on their side.

So then, even though you've observed that you're disappointed either way, this disappointment (if that is what's provided) has that gray area of Not That Simple.

Is it a win or a loss? It's both and neither. It's a Tragic Hero story.

Same with a Redemption Arc. Gail Carson Levine rewrote the fairy tale Diamonds and Toads because that was simply good versus evil. As Levine wrote it, what is Good in the original fairy tale is merely nice. What is Evil in the original fairy tale is merely a character trait in the wrong context. So, that mixes it up a bit. Everybody Wins, but it's not pointless, because it's (kind of) new exactly how that happened when we're used to the binary Good/Evil Win/Lose or even the binary subversion of Good/Evil Lose/Win.

edited 11th Apr '15 12:17:37 AM by Faemonic

Still not getting the Tragic Hero. I haven't witnessed a single example on the page, to my knowledge.

Wait, but if you've never been an audience member to a Tragic Hero story in any media, then how does it remind you of your life? If you've never seen it, then it can't have had any effect on you (yet?)...

I can't guarantee you'd enjoy it just because it's different from Antagonist stories. The Tragic Hero can be done badly, like anything. Or it might just not be your type. Like: I'm bored by polyamory-proof love triangles.

But that, and stories with Redemption themes, can be something to consider.

And also Stuff Happens. Sometimes, some stories are simply just Stuff Happens and no antagonist.

edited 11th Apr '15 12:28:06 AM by Faemonic

Polyamory-proof love triangles as in "I can't decide between these two possible lovers" leading the audience to scream "why the hell don't they just openly get together with both of them"?

If that's the case, I'm sick to death of them as well.

Exactly. That and then some. I could create a thread exactly like this one, except entitled, "No Love Triangle Conflict?" (Or even, "No Romantic Subplot?")

I'm a shipper, but I loathe to sail three sheets to the wind. Loathe it. Unadulteratedly.

I still don't really even get what a Tragic Hero is. "always losing" was all I understood, so I joked that that was me. Explain further what a tragic hero even is? It's just not making sense to me at all.

Simply put, the tragic hero is a hero who fails at the end of the story because of their own character flaws. Usually they die, but not always. Most commonly, their fall is caused by greed or jealousy.

They have a goal, they may have a traditional antagonist against whom they're pitted, but ultimately it's their own failings that cause them to fail, not any antagonist.

Contrast with a protagonist who has serious personal failings but manages to overcome them and succeed.

Add to that, the antagonist of a Tragic Hero is usually a good person. Most Real Life people have flaws, so the Tragic Hero can be somebody the audience relates to but cannot root for. That weirds up the good/evil binary.

I have never related to a character in my life. I doubt anyone in fiction has done anything significant that I have too, unless it's something I hate the bleep out of myself for, like being insanely lazy.