In Defense of the Good Guy

When my eldest was three years old, she bawled her eyes out while watching Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast. The moment she dehydrated herself wasn’t at what I would have called an appropriate time. She didn’t cry when the Beast died, or when Belle and her father, Maurice, were trapped, or even when Belle saw that her father was sick and the Beast was finally selfless. None of these moments produced an emotion great enough to leave her cheeks stained red. No, the moment this happened was when the Beast threw Gaston off the castle.

It was then that I learned she was rooting for Gaston the whole time.

Throughout the years, she rooted for Kylo Ren, Draco Malfoy, and others. Our daughter would also consistently ship herself with the bad guy. Draco Malfoy and Kylo Ren were just a few of her husbands in her magical land of make-believe. At first, I was a little surprised by all of this. Why didn’t she ever gravitate toward the “good” character? All children should have good characters they can look up to and imitate—why wasn’t she choosing any of them? And then, while looking at old photos, I was reminded of an incident at GenCon 2016.

Way back in the wonder years of the twenty-teens, we went to GenCon as a family of three (we were actually a family of four at that time, but didn’t know it yet). Our then-three-year-old loved seeing all the cosplay, especially since she was familiar with many of the characters (because we’re nerds raising nerds, so of course she was familiar with many of the characters). As any good fan of Star Wars, my husband had introduced her to as many of the shows and movies as were reasonable for her age, and so when she saw Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader she immediately wanted to go to them.

This, friends—this is when it all started. I want to say, before I go any further, that if you’re going to a public place filled with fans of fandoms and you dress up as a character from said fandom, you should expect attention. You are literally dressing for attention, and I am more than willing to give you said attention. I am not talented enough to create, often from scratch, these elaborate costumes, and I want to give you your due praise. However, Obi-Wan Kenobi did not feel the same. My little three-year-old wanted a picture with this less-than-stellar impersonator, and he was not having it. But guess who was more than gracious with my three-year-old? Darth Vader. He was kind, gentle, and patient with her as she eased up to wanting a picture—but also, a three-year-old coming up to Darth Vader! He was amazing. And it was in that moment, looking back, that her love of the bad boy began.

Besides the fact that this is a funny story, it shows the desperate need for our children to have good guys in their life. We have so many fantastic fandoms to share with our children, but we are inundated with the anti-hero, the cool guy, the bad guy turned good, etc. And while those characters have compelling stories and character arcs, we are not giving our children the simple and pure good guy. We do not have the knight leaving home to defeat the dragon and rescue the princess. Yes, that cosplayer was absolutely charming toward my daughter, but what would have happened if the reverse took place?

What if Obi-Wan Kenobi was the gentle and kind one, and Darth Vader was, well, Darth Vader? I truly believe seeing a pure good guy treating a little kid as a pure good guy would have given my daughter a different character arc to go after. She would have cried when Gaston stabbed the Beast, not when Gaston fell off the castle to his doom. Yet our children do not see many of those characters—and when we do, they’re bland and basic. They’re not written with depth or struggle, or in a constant state of denial for the greater good.

What then? We need stories for our children that are good—good stories worth telling, with heroes worth praising. Yes, it’s just fiction, but how many of you can hear Samwise say, “But there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for,” and not be moved? It’s hopeless—Faramir is bringing the captured hobbits to his father, and ringwraiths are overhead, Gollum has returned and Smeagol is gone, and there is no clear path for a brighter future. And Samwise forces both him and Frodo to see it—to see the good, to be the good, and to strive toward the good, even if it means sure peril.

And it’s powerful. Frodo and Sam are solid, good characters who have been forced into the impossible, survived all odds, and live with scars. When my eldest sister was a tween reading these for the first time, she cried when the hobbits returned to the Shire, thinking, “They’ve already been through so much!” What a beautiful picture of perseverance to show our children.

What ended up changing for my daughter? When did she stop this? Around the time she could read by herself, she entered the world of Narnia. Here we have good, solid characters. Here we have Christ represented in fiction. And here we have characters our children can model themselves after. When she saw the good executed well, as only Lewis can for children, she was drawn to it.

Truth is always compelling, even if you have to weed through the lies to get it. Truth shines through like a blooming lotus in an ocean of seaweed, and we owe it to our children to show them the truth in Scripture, and also to show them truths littered about in fiction—where we are the good guys. The young man who wants to save his country and the young woman who wants to save her family. We owe it to our children to give them those stories. We owe it to them to give them stories drenched with purpose and goodness to inspire them as they enter adulthood.

While the anti-hero is fun, he’s nobody for our children to look up to. Let’s bring back the good-guy archetype of heroism—if not to challenge current practices, then to give our children somebody worthy of admiration.