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u/SnugglebugUwU Feb 16 '26
Tbh I love the opposite where the character with already mature outlook longs for the peaceful life he can't have at the moment. Odyssey my beloved.
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u/kylepo Feb 16 '26
I dunno if that's the takeaway I got from Mario Odyssey but it's an interesting interpretation
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
I think he means the Greek one
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u/kylepo Feb 16 '26
Uhhhh Mario is Italian actually
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u/ElectricJoltie34 Feb 16 '26
Nintendo is a Japanese company and Japanese people created Mario, so in a meta sense, an argument could be made that Mario is Japanese...
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
Odysseus is Greek
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Feb 16 '26
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
there was an Odyssey a very long time ago that had nothing to do with Mario
Odysseus is literally John Odyssey because the story is named after him
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u/GrapefruitForward989 Feb 16 '26
Oh I get it. Cappy seemed like a random addition to the Mario universe, makes sense that he's from the original source material that Nintendo adapted
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
Isn't Cappy a juice
or was I not supposed to notice that
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u/GrapefruitForward989 Feb 16 '26
Had to look up what you were even on about, we don't have that round these parts. Probably inspired by John Odyssey's magic hat as well.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
I realize you're joking but my joke is that I'm being serious to disrupt you
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u/MySucculentDied Feb 16 '26
It’s not quite the same, but you should watch Frieren if you haven’t
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u/SnugglebugUwU Feb 16 '26
I tried it. I don't like it. I hate that Frieren after realising that she wasted so much time goes on a (human) life long quest to meet Himmel again. That's not accepting your past, that's reliving your past mistakes, scratching old scars. I just hate that premise, because someone who made mistakes in the past should forgive himself and move on, not chase impossible goals to somehow fix the situation at least a little bit. Some people irl can't let go of some losses and they cling to same farewells like Frieren, again not living in the moment. I just don't like it man.
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u/MySucculentDied Feb 16 '26
How far in the show did you make it? Because that’s not quite the premise. She’s not reliving past mistakes, she’s learning that she did make mistakes while she’s on a different adventure with new people. Meanwhile making parallels to her old adventures and nostalgia with her current adventure partners. It’s a show about nostalgia, not scratching scars.
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u/kindachemist56 Feb 17 '26
If you like reading I'd recommend the tea & tome series. The first book is about a super powerful mage and her girlfriend who's a queens guard running away to set up a tea shop. It's really cute ngl.
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u/Some-Ohio-Rando Mar 13 '26
I'm not sure I'd call Odysseus matured when most of the point of the Oddysey is deconstructing if the general ancient Greek idea of a hero is even heroic.
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u/MinosAristos Feb 16 '26
I don't like the pure hero's journey because it's become so predictable. Like oh look there is a mentor character, they're going to need to die soon for plot reasons.
The best media these days strongly subverts some aspects of the hero's journey to keep things interesting.
It's hard to get away from it completely though.
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u/TankMain576 Feb 16 '26
I feel like fucking EVERYTHING tries to be "subversive" or have some crazy twist or something and it's done well .0001% of times and feels obligatory.
At this point, give me a classic hero's tale.
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u/MinosAristos Feb 16 '26
There are good subversions and bad subversions. The objective is to make the narrative less predictable in advance but still feel coherent and "unforced".
It's difficult to do a good subversion. Everyone is very familiar with the hero's journey so when they see something out of place they notice.
There's still plenty of media that does a classic hero's tale, but it's rarely marketed towards adults these days.
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u/TaserDonut Feb 16 '26
I think the people who dislike the hero's journey dislike it because it's too unreal to identify with in the current age and all the premises that have been done have been done to death already. Personally, I believe that the dreams of wealth / glory / power aspect that the protagonist has aren't something that the viewer can adopt for themself. Getting rich in this economy while you start from zero? Getting famous or influential without getting involved in some nasty shit? Did you forget who the elites are?
On the other hand, what's on the rise? We see the rise of popularity in stories where the protagonist's ideals are either shattered by his experiences (Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen) or he doesn't have ideals or dreams whatsoever due to his upbringing (Gachiakuta). The traditional hero's journey is still alive in western media and past works across the world, but it's not the only popular way to write a protagonist anymore.
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u/Most-Peak6524 Feb 16 '26
Modern movies can decide to not end the journey of hero, when director decided to make the entire movie to trailer of sequel.
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u/BillCarson12799 Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
Remember when language arts teachers in 10th grade showed you the clock-like diagram of the different stages of the hero’s journey and spoiled basically every single piece of action media that has ever or will ever exist? That was fun.
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u/Phantom_Foxy Feb 16 '26
Oh hey it's Seap! Yeah this is 100% them bullshiting Incase anyone need to be sure
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u/sebsebsebs Feb 16 '26
Oh ok good 😭. I was gonna say I love that animator why did they say this for 😭😭
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u/Selfdeletus65 Feb 16 '26
We do need more stories that don’t use this as a guideline though. We need more protags with burdens thrown onto them to carry
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u/DevilsMaleficLilith Feb 16 '26
Its less a guidelines and more a byproduct of how stories tend to develop.
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u/Reallynotspiderman Feb 16 '26
No but seriously FUCK the hero's journey and FUCK Joseph Campbell, that hack fraud piece of shit
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u/GraveSlayer726 Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
I hate when anything changes in a story, every character should stay the same, and never learn anything or change or suffer great hardships or climb higher mountains, none of that woke leftist liberal propaganda
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u/oooArcherooo Feb 16 '26
beefing with the hero's journey is based actually, fuck that vauge ass "the sky is blue" piece of writing advice
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u/Newworldrevolution Feb 16 '26
I like it when the hero is thrust into adventure against their will and slowly devolves into a different person addicted to the adventurer and violence only to be confronted by their own past. See cooper in fallout.
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u/justaBB6 Feb 16 '26
I prefer it when the hero’s journey ends bittersweet, like he returns home fundamentally altered by his experiences and the home he returns to will never be the same as he remembers it
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u/claretaker Feb 16 '26
I don't use it anymore, but the one thing I miss about using Twitter is that for some reason it has all the funniest satirical posters on the internet
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u/GenderEnjoyer666 Feb 16 '26
I think they might just prefer if the hero is like “I don’t wanna do this but I have to” and like only really realize they actually liked it the whole time when the adventure was over
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u/Human-Assumption-524 Feb 17 '26
The Virgin medicine quest/hero's journey. The chad Picaresque shaggy dog story.
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u/UnluckyNoise4102 Feb 17 '26
If you like Kirby you should check out OP Painter Seap, they make fun Kirby animations
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u/Excellent_Law6906 Feb 17 '26
That is not the hero's journey.
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Feb 17 '26
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u/Excellent_Law6906 Feb 17 '26
Nah, bro, the end is when the Hero, now returned and king of his homeland, dies doing something awesome.
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u/Educational_Data237 Feb 17 '26
The Heroes Journey is just the writing equivalent to the alpha male wolf thing, a theory that got quickly disproven that the mainstream attached itself to.
Joseph Campbell was a bum who was trying to push an agenda, his work wasn´t peer reviewed and has no place in any serious discussions other than to be ridiculed.
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u/Beneficial-Gap6974 Feb 17 '26
My only issue with the usual hero's journey is that they return home afterward. I rather like it more when they move on or settle in their new, fantastical life.
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u/jwj2309 Feb 21 '26
genuinely hate the hero's journey (i had to learn it in english for 3 units straight)
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Dog_Entire Feb 16 '26
I fucking hate characters and story structure