Greetings book loving friend!
I want to talk about my love of superheroes. Don’t worry. I won’t rave on as much as I do at fandom conventions.
When I was a kid in the early 80s, I had a pretty big imagination. My parents did a wonderful job with feeding it and encouraging me to explore my creative side.
One of my favorite things to do on Saturday mornings was to watch Super Friends, She-Ra, Thundercats, or Spiderman. I loved going to the movies and watching Christopher Reeve play Super Man or watch Linda Carter play Wonder Woman on TV. My child brain liked their sense of doing the right thing no matter the cost and the way they defended people.
It wasn’t until much later that I discovered many of these superhero stories were based on ancient mythology of many cultures, modernized and repackaged. Even later than that, I learned in college that the ancient story structure is what we still used today. Joseph Campbell summoned it up in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Gail Carriger gave a different academic take based on matriarch societies’ myths in The Heroine’s Journey (Her book is one of my favorite rereads, and I recommend it, even if you’re not a writer). Instead of feeling betrayed, I understood that some concepts were fundamental to the humanity and timeless.
The heroine was our best self with ideal qualities. No one is meant to live up to the standard of a heroine.
Again, I was much older when I realized that.
So, when I write my own stories. I write my main characters with a sense of justice and protectiveness over those who can’t defend themselves, but I write them with flaws in their physical and mental attributes, maybe even some morally gray decisions here and there. Because the ideal human or supernatural doesn’t exist, but flawed people striving to do better do.
Best,
T.J.
P.S. My love of Diana and Greek Mythology continues in my new book, Westside Oracle.