/lit/ - Literature

>>18751955
>The term you are looking for is spiral.
I’ve said this myself many times that pic related is actually a 2D representation of a spiral. And I agree with every point you made. In fact, I think there is a seeding process of one culture to another. For example, I think the reason that the west absorbed christianity so readily was because of the comparisons between Jesus and Caesar. I think Caesar literally “awakened” western culture with his Gallic wars, and I think it’s telling that in Dante’s work the mouth of satan contains judas, Brutus and Cassius. I read today that there’s a theory that the rape of Persephone myth likewise is actually some sort of Jungian outlining of their own “raping” from an outside culture, perhaps the minoans or egyptians. And I think that is a sort of archetypical male form of birth, the civilization birth, or handing of the torch as it was put forth, ie when a culture is old it has the urge to colonize and “spread its seed” maybe the way western culture has seeded every corner of the Earth in our time. Who knows?

Hi /lit/, I don't normally post here so apologies if this belongs elsewhere.
Over the past decade or so, I've increasingly felt that a lot of narratives in popular media have explicitly rejected protagonist progression arcs of the sort that Joseph Campbell calls the "hero's journey". Specifically, beginning in a position of weakness, learning from a mentor, enduring temptation, being figuratively destroyed and reborn, overcoming internal weaknesses and external challenges, and finally returning, in a transformed state.
If you look at the character arcs in a great deal of popular fiction novels and especially children's literature, we see this precise progression, for example in the Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series. We also see it in the scripts of a lot of older films, such as The Matrix, LoTR (again), most older Disney films, etc.
However, in the past few years, I feel that this structure has fallen out of popularity, especially in film scripts. If you look at the recent remake of Mulan, or Captain Marvel, or the remakes of the Star Wars movies, or the novels of N.K. Jemisin or Anne Leckie, all of which are tremendously popular, the structure described above seems to be explicitly rejected.
In these newer stories, heroes start out at the apex of their power, immediately outclass their mentors, rarely face temptation, and only need to overcome an internal lack of confidence or self-belief. They are usually more powerful than all their mentors and adversaries at every stage of the narrative, and the narrative structure is simply them encountering and deleting enemies. I'd say that the Name of the Wind somewhat falls into this category as well, especially re. a protagonist who is simply vastly superior in every way to all those around him.
So, my questions are: Has anyone else noticed this trend? Am I imagining a distinction and simply cherrypicking examples? Has there actually been a widespread rejection of traditional approaches to mythic heroism? And, at the more philosophical level: does it say anything about our society and culture that the idea of the Campbellian Hero is being rejected? If true, is it a good, bad, or neutral development in our collective aesthetics?
>mfw I avoided using any shonen manga examples out of respect to your board's integrity

Is The Hero's Journey a meme?

>>16028618
Characters usually are the focus of light novels I've read.
But if you really want to switch it up, have a meaningful plot with a punchline.
>Pic-related. Bonus points if you let the side characters have one too.