Writing Stories of Corruption and Madness

Come check out the components to writing a compelling story of corruption and madness by taking a look at Avatar: The Last Airbender, Game of Thrones, Death Note, and more!

Below is a link to my 90 page fantasy book, A Heart of Woe. Chapter 1 should be fully available as sample at the Amazon website!

Music: Forgive me-

Leaves from the vine: ATLA

Procession by Puddle of Infinity

[anonymousdesigner]

Hi, I really like your videos. However, to quote what I've said in a reply below:

"Schizophrenia's a biologically onset thing, not an illness that can be caused by some kind of betreyal, however traumatic." Even the term madness is really controversial and vague modern day.

[WalterLiddy]

Danny didn't abandon her morals in further pursuit of her goal. She had already achieved it, and THEN abandoned her morals. That's one of the reasons for fan outrage. It was ummotivated.

[xIllMadeKnightx]

Azula's character is introduced with "Only a hair out of place." And then, in the closing moments of her character-arc and the story, we actively see her trying to fix her own hair to disastrous results.

It's little touches like this that makes Avatar: TLA storytelling perfection.

Great work on this video. Thanks!

[zhadumshasheer]

Death Note truly did one of the best depictions on corruption of power and the question on what justice truly is.

[kevintierney]

Dude, showing Azula while playing leaves of the vine gave me so many mixed emotions and I don't know why

[Timberwolf]

*sees Azula in the thumbnail* This is gonna be good *gets popcorn and notepad*

[IAmNumber]

One problem with Dany’s story is that she didn’t “abandon her values in pursuit of her goal”. She had already won the battle for King’s Landing when she decided to kill everyone.

You missed a good parallel with Zuko and Azula. They both got corrupted. Zuko was as selfless as Aang once. Then he became selfish and hateful, with one goal: the Avatar.

Zuko was saved before he fell into madness. Azula was not. Really good parallel you helped me notice.

[talymyc]

I think GOT managed to achieve this way more successfully with Cersei's storyline through seasons 5 and 6. In her quest for power, she gets arrested by the Faith Militant (after giving them the power to do so) and endures terrible humiliation, which ultimately leads to her burning the sept of Baelor and causing the death of her last child (the one thing she loved and cared for beyond herself). She temporarily achieves her goal of power, at the cost of her children, only to then lose it all once Daenerys comes to Westeros.

[christianleichenauer]

Azulas obsession with perfection was her downfall. Her control of her emotions eventually caught up with her when she lost everything from shutting off her humanity

[rikudoubapeck]

The spider-man quote was actually orignally written as "with great power THERE MUST ALSO come great responsibility". The original phrasing makes it clear that there has to be concious effort to be repsonsible otherwise, naturally you'll be corrupted. The new phrasing makes it seem like the responsibility is inherent to the power when it isn't.

[notenote]

Dany could have been fixed by one simple small change: if she had attacked the Red Keep to kill Cersei first, the flames of her dragon would billow through the tunnels below and ignited the Wildfire, thus killing the civilians in the city. Done.

[trainzen]

Questions:

Does Power corrupts those who have it?

Or Does Power reveals who they always were?

Should power be interpreted in a case by case basis???
🤔🤔🤔

[Shlonzs]

It’s brilliant (and evil) playing little soldier boy/leaves from the vine while discussing azula’s descent into madness pointing out how sad her descent and life truly is.

[DemiImp]

My biggest problem with Daenerys is that they didn't SHOW her descend into madness. She was fine and pretty darn rational and then 2 episodes later she goes and does something she KNOWS is wrong. I would have been ok if she was remorseful afterwards, but they took all the character building they developed over seasons and expected a few traumatic events to be reason enough for her to throw everything into the wind. If they spent a few more episodes showing how she was dealing with the loss of her dragons and friends they could have really made a convincing argument.

[WalterLiddy]

The Dark Knight is a story of corruption, just not of the Joker's. It's Harvey Dent's corruption, orchestrated by the Joker. "You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain." A pretty empty claim, but there it is. Harvey is a stand-in for the general populace and its hopes for a better world, and his soul is contested by the Joker on one hand and Batman on the other. In the end he succumbs to madness and corruption, but Batman pretends he didn't for .... reasons. "He's not the hero we have, but he's the hero we deserve, because he's not a hero, but he's the hero we need." or somesuch nonsense.

[michaelm]

Dany didn't go mad because Cersei chopped up her favorite duolingo app or something like that. She went mad, because GRRM had told the writers she would, and there were only two episodes left so it needed to happen now.

[aproppaknoife]

"A slow decent into madness" is basecly my life story from 1th to 9th grade.

[simongotborg]

I really like "a christmas carol" by Charles Dickens which, although it's rarely discussed, paints a very tragic picture of a man who grew up with a skewed world view that resulted in mistakes that cost him most of what he loved in the pursuit of money. With little else left in his life he became obsessed with profit and ended up sacrificing everything for a goal that brings him nothing but misery.

[sulphuric_glue]

You should watch Vsauce's video on the Stanford prison experiment. It was very biased, they chose aggressive people to be the prison guards and encouraged them to treat the prisoners badly. It is not a case of normal people going mad with power.