ZEUS67

Why Woke Stories and Characters Suck (TL;dr: The people around the writers suck.) 'Good writers create, great writers steal.' Ernest Hemingway The above quote is central to the thesis. When writers write they invariably draw from person experience. This is especially in the case of characters but also holds for scenes. Most characters are not created 'whole cloth.' They are melds, exaggerations, direct representations of real people. I guarantee you that every character LOTR is based on a real person Tolkien knew, probably mostly from his time in WWI. Despite the fact that they are dwarves, elves, hobbits, etc. Sam is almost certainly based upon his 'bat man', the field servant all British officers had up to and through WWII. Frodo was to one degree or another a representation of Tolkien himself. And I've come to strongly suspect that Boromir is based upon C. S. Lewis. (Which, btw, means he considered Lewis to be a serious badass. Or it may have been based upon another officer he served with. In that case, probably dead. I'd love to know the real story of the 'loss of faith, regaining faith, dying in battle' redemption arc. Or perhaps there was none and he wrote a 'happy' ending for something that was hurting him.) And this gets to why 'woke' writing and 'woke' characters are shit. Think about some of my characters. Pahner comes to mind. This is a person who has their act together to almost insane degree. Stolid in battle. Wise in character. A good mentor and trainer. An absolute stud personally. He's based on a real guy, one of my NCOs in the Army. And he's not far off. Miles A. Rutherford was NCO of the Army, Infantry Board, Mortar Board, Airborne Board, President's 100 Rifle and Pistol. The guy really was a fantastic trainer, fantastic mentor, stoic to an unbelievable degree and an absolute stud. Thus the characters in my books, or LOTR, certainly the protagonist/heroes are based upon the best of humanity. People I've known over the years and while sometimes exaggerated (Faith is based on one of my daughters who is not and never will be quite that level) are still inherently great people. Because I've had the honor to have alot of great people in my life. Various moments in my books have come from personal experience or from stories told by such people. One scene that comes to mind (two come to think of it) are when Mike O'Neal is caught in an underground current in his suit and the feeling of complete loss of control. The other is when Butch's suit is breached. I've been caught in a current cave diving as well as had air malfunctions and thought I was going to die. Been there, done that. I can write it from personal experience. Overcome fear any number of times to complete a mission. BTDT Now, think about two things. 1. (Gah!) Starfleet Academy. 2. Anything you know or have seen about the 'woke' crowd. Think about Alex Pretti or Rachel Good. Think about Don Lemon. Think about any of the posters on Reddit or Bluesky. Now imagine being a creator SURROUNDED by people like that. Imagine BEING a person like that. Where are they going to get truly heroic, stoic, mature, sane characters? People who work the problem instead of be the problem? People who work the problem until it's fixed or they're dead? That some fat, incompetent cadet would say 'I think I swallowed my com badge' is TRUE TO LIFE FOR THEM. It's probably taken from some incident in their own lives where some idiot swallowed a key or something fiddling around with it nervously. Their friends and acquaintances are the sort of people to suck on something like a child when they're nervous. And stupid and incompetent enough to swallow it. Hell, it might have been the writer themselves. THAT'S TRUE TO LIFE FOR THEM. A boss lounging in a chair reading while everyone else works is something from their own experience. Every creator does this. They pull in life experiences. Every character is queer, gay, fucked up, because THEY AND ALL THEIR FRIENDS ARE QUEER, GAY, INSANE AND FUCKED UP. The reason there's always a lecture? Been around leftists? All the can do is lecture on Marxist critical theory. They can't just bullshit about 'cabbages and kings' because they are inherently ignorant of anything that they weren't catechized on in college. Conclusion: You cannot take a 'woke' writer and create anything of value. They have no personal experience of value, no role models of value, to draw upon. Same for directors, producers, etc. Since they are surrounded by nothing but shit people, they will always write shit. Woke stories and characters suck because the people involved suck. Written that way it's obvious, but the details matter.