Make War, Not Love!

Star Wars memes!




So this post's topic is on conflict. Very important! Conflict is what drives a story and hopefully carries it through to its conclusion. Every story contains conflict, and necessarily so. Nobody likes reading a story about how everything goes perfectly and is just fine.


There are several types of conflict that can drive a story, but what is most essential is that there is always a conflict. In this post, I'll detail for you some of the different kinds of conflict seen in stories.




1. Good vs. Evil



Yeah, I think it's going to be a Star Wars post.


Good vs. evil is, as mentioned a couple of posts back, is the most common conflict seen in most known stories. It's the form of story that everyone likes to read: good, moral people struggling against powerful bad guys seeking power, world domination, whatever. The theme of good vs. evil is popular and often used because it's simple; readers can easily invest in the characters, and with the bad guy, they can often keep him/her at a comfortable arm's distance and assign him the vague evil aura.*


*I make these statements assuming that the writer's skill is such that he can draw empathy with his audience.


Books like Harry Potter and movies like Star Wars make the distinction between good and evil very clear. In Star Wars, the Sith were seeking galactic domination (surprise, surprise). In Harry Potter, Voldemort's like the Hitler of the magical world, with his supremacist ideology and devout followers. 







2. I Really, Really Want Something



Inception. Best movie in existence. No really, it is.


When it's not a matter of good vs. evil, it's a matter of someone really wanting something that's hard to get. This is the case with Inception, where there isn't precisely good vs. evil, but rather the main character vs things getting in the way of what he wants.


Inception was an excellent movie, which considering the popularity of stories without a good-evil conflict, is saying something. It was excellent because it had a premise that wasn't so far removed from reality, it addressed concepts and ideas that a lot of people were familiar with (dream within a dream, waking with the sensation of falling), and had characters that were real and believable. All of this created a story that could suspend our disbelief quite well. And then there's the fact that Inception accomplished what few movies nowadays can accomplish - it brought a truly original premise to the silver screen and set fire to the imaginations of the masses.





But I've gotten sidetracked. To wrap up, Inception was an awesome movie without the stereotypical good vs evil theme. It was awesome because the conflict was something that others could connect to, and it was strong and encompassing enough to drive the action and link the different story threads of the disparate characters together.




3. Do It For Love!


Love, the great motivator!





. . .let the Twilight bashing begin.





Actually, I might just use memes for this section of the post. Here's my favorite romance novel method:





For those of us that watch The Office:





And finally, this is how I have, and probably will for the rest of eternity, spend my Valentine's Days:





I'm such a killjoy when it comes to love. Now for the promised Twilight bashing.





And fact:







That being said, I leave you all to your Mondays. May the meme be with you.