Why Are Most All Heroes In Fiction Single/Unmarried?

[Spacescifi]

 

Picard. Sisko (well he was but his wife died). Kirk (no explanation needed why), Janeway.

Comics: Virtually ALL superheroes do not marry and lead a normal life with their one true love and have kids. More often nowadays they behave like wild party college kids wih regard to relationships, often having multiple ones on and off on the regular.

 

Why is this?

What? The writers are reliving vicariously their wild party days through the fictional characters they make?

Or is it a reason that is actually legitimate plot?

I hardly think so, since it is quite doable to do a main character with an actual family... hero or captain though they be.

[Galileo]

Got to give us married guys someone to look up to. 

Most guys don’t grow up and stop liking super heroes or wanting to be one, we like them and want to be them for different reasons as we get older  

for example, I was really into Spider-Man because he was a kid like me, and I could relate to him, but as I got older and married with kids, I find myself enjoying Batman and Ironman, for reasons beyond being super hero-ness.

 

so basically, sometimes the single, unmarried, playboy lifestyle is what entices some fans and perhaps major superhero authors know this?

 

Oh, but what about Mr. Incredible? 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Galileo

[Superfluous J]

It's much easier to be willing to die for your cause if your spouse and kids aren't sitting around a table waiting for you to come home for dinner.

Also how do you end every episode with a random sexual encounter?

[StrandedonEarth]

A hero's spouse is a target for the bad guys. Don't torture the hero, torture his wife while he watches! It's far more effective, if he doesn't get loose and kill you.

Clive Cussler's death-defying Dirk Pitt hero is one of those bachelors, who almost always lost the one he was falling in love with to the villain's actions. The exception was Loren Smith, whom he eventually married when he retired from active heroism after something on the order of 10-20 novels. He still cameos in Cussler's other novels, along with CC himself who loves to play the deus ex machina that provides vital clues if not active help. She took her share of beatings in the meantime, so I guess she earned him.

So yeah, give a hero a significant other and she becomes a target for torture. Probably not a lot of writers have the stomach for that, or don't want to turn off their readership.,.

 

[Spacescifi]

8 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

A hero's spouse is a target for the bad guys. Don't torture the hero, torture his wife while he watches! It's far more effective, if he doesn't get loose and kill you.

Clive Cussler's death-defying Dirk Pitt hero is one of those bachelors, who almost always lost the one he was falling in love with to the villain's actions. The exception was Loren Smith, whom he eventually married when he retired from active heroism after something on the order of 10-20 novels. He still cameos in Cussler's other novels, along with CC himself who loves to play the deus ex machina that provides vital clues if not active help. She took her share of beatings in the meantime, so I guess she earned him.

So yeah, give a hero a significant other and she becomes a target for torture. Probably not a lot of writers have the stomach for that, or don't want to turn off their readership.,.

 

 

That is a legit reason. And the fact that even she almost died makes her spot seemed earned indeed.

Although I will also say that any villain trying to make their conflict with the hero personal is also inviting a very likely final not so nice confrontation with the hero... assuming they are the vindictive type.

 

The other reasons? Pandering it seems to me. Because we all know that *** sells and is a very easy to give into.... especially for men.

So it's author profit motive I suspect at work.

[tater]

Once you have a family, things change.

Hard to do Batman type stuff when your "trolley problem" solutions narrow.

Ie: Trolley going down track towards a large % of the population of Earth on one side to get squished, and either of my kids on the other. Or my wife. Sucks to be that large % of the Earth, they're expendable.

So it makes the hero super vulnerable. Even doing things that might make them a possible target.

Edited July 4, 2020 by tater

[Spacescifi]

14 minutes ago, tater said:

Once you have a family, things change.

Hard to do Batman type stuff when your "trolley problem" solutions narrow.

Ie: Trolley going down track towards a large % of the population of Earth on one side to get squished, and either of my kids on the other. Or my wife. Sucks to be that large % of the Earth, they're expendable.

So it makes the hero super vulnerable. Even doing things that might make them a possible target.

 

Yeah... but Star Trek captains don't have that excuse.

So long the Captain let's his Number One (XO/Executive Officer/Commander) do all the hero away mission stuff instead of doing it himself.

Basically more TNG Picard than Kirk or Sisko or Archer. Sits on the starship bridge a lot.

I know Sisko lost his wife in a Borg attack... but frankly, Starfleet is foolish for not dropping off wives and kids before entering combat with an existential threat.

Edited July 4, 2020 by Spacescifi

[StrandedonEarth]

39 minutes ago, tater said:

Ie: Trolley going down track towards a large % of the population of Earth on one side to get squished, and either of my kids on the other. Or my wife. Sucks to be that large % of the Earth, they're expendable.

The Green Goblin sums it up nicely here:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by StrandedonEarth

[kerbiloid]

Because when a married hero starts showing off to impress the chicks, his wife is standing behind and laughing sceptically.

Edited July 4, 2020 by kerbiloid

[tater]

43 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The Green Goblin sums it up nicely here:

Hot chick FTW.

Spoiler

I'm a simple man.

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by tater

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

a Borg attack

Borg's wife is also Borg.

[EchoLima]

Easier for the reader to relate to the charachter. Married people know what it's like to be single, but single people don't know what it's like to be married.

Edited July 4, 2020 by EchoLima

[Spacescifi]

14 minutes ago, EchoLima said:

Easier for the reader to relate to the charachter. Married people know what it's like to be single, but single people don't know what it's like to be married.

 

Maybe they should... so they don't take it for granted whenever they do.

Which is why I will probably include married folk in my own scifi, just to be different... and to show it can be done.

 

[kerbiloid]

Also, when the chars are single, it's much easier to dismiss an actor when he wants money and/or starts starring in another soap opera.
Otherwise every second couple of them should be tragically broken to explain the character absense.

So, why bind the expendables?

Edited July 5, 2020 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

Interesting question.

I was curious enough to have a quick look along my bookshelves, real and virtual, and found a reasonably even split between books where a protagonist is married (although in the case of George R R Martin, I'd qualify that with 'sometimes not for very long'), books where a protagonist is single and, books which occupy the space in between in various ways. For example, a protagonist might not be married but may have a significant other, be hoping that another main character be their significant other,  or be in a long term relationship.

I'm using protagonist here as a more general term than hero and for context, my bookshelves are pretty solidly non-fiction or speculative fiction. I'd expect married characters to feature more prominently in other genres.

Where a protagonist was married I also found quite a range of relevancies (for want of a better word) to that marriage. Sometimes it, was a defining feature of the characters and a major plot driver - Charles Strauss's Laundry Files books for example. Sometimes the protagonists were married but the marriage didn't really feature very heavily in the plot - Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels for example. Sometimes a protagonist was married - and that told you something about their character - but you never met their spouse and their spouse never featured in the story. 

Sometimes, as you might expect, a book would feature more than one of the above - Terry Pratchett's 'Guards' books spring to mind.

I'm wondering if that might be an answer of sorts. Unless a character's marriage has a significant impact on the story, or on them as a character, then its quite easy for it to be overlooked entirely. Anecdotally, that fits with my own experience as a writer. One of my protagonists was married and that was a major part of their story arc. Other protagonists in the same book might have been married or might not. I honestly don't know because that side of their lives just never came up. 

Of course there are all sorts of reasons in-story for a character to be single. Some of them have already been mentioned but sometimes the character is just too much of a jerk or too self-centered or too socially inept to make it likely that they'll find a partner. I have a hard time imagining Kvothe in Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, getting married for example.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by KSK

[THierose]

Not all significant heroes are bachelors and not all heroines are, in the old english term, spinsters.

The lovely Fantastic Four couple everyone knows about thanks to the Fantastic Four movies. Yes, they really did get married, in comics.
Hank Pym and Wasp
Piotr Rasputin (Colossus) and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat)
Hawkman and Hawkgirl
Black Canary and Green Arrow
Cyclops and Jean Grey

[kerbiloid]

Alien queen and unknown number of the LV-426 colonists.