TheCrystallineEntity
Istar
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series explored the 'what now?' scenario.
My stories never have villains, and the characters never 'save' the world. They just do what they can when they can.
In the second book, a dark force known as the Korion Maiden is supposedly breaking free from an enchanted sleep, and many believe that she will destroy everything if awakened.
My current WIP is actually kind of an "after story". At the very beginning the MC is shown killing the leader of the invading army and the mountain sized monster god he revives. When she comes back from the dead after 3 years, she reunites with her lover and son and tries to fix the problems between the allied "good guy" countries in her absence, only to learn her continent which floats in the sky is at risk of falling soon and go searching for a way to prevent that. Meanwhile an anti-magic user faction seeks to free the continent from her and her family's grasp (she's the princess of the nation that leads the alliance).
My perspective is that there are a handful of existential questions that people dedicate certain periods of their lives to answering. Coming-of-age mostly deals with the questions of "who am I? Who can I be? Can I make it in the world?". Adulthood is probably more "can I make my life count? What is most important in my life?" and probably deals more with work and family than the peer/idol relationships of a coming-of-age story.
Old people would probably have questions along the line of "what have I accomplished?" and "what do I still need to accomplish?"
Does that make sense?
I actually took a class on Campbell-style storytelling and my instructor told me that after the hero's journey, there's another hero's journey. Life is just a series of quests. After the evil overlord is beaten, the hero starts another quest. It's just that the stakes may not be as high or the obstacles may not be as exciting.
Star Wars (and Dune) worked with this neat idea that the cycle of hero's journeys are continued by the later generations. That seems pretty logical.
Huh.
So I was looking over this thread, which I hadn't thought about replying to yet, and I realized that the graphic novel I'm planning kind of is a post-hero's journey story.
I'll give some background. It's a superhero story, that takes place after the Big Bad has been defeated. The heroes of the tale are finished with their journeys and now are attempting to assimilate with society and adjust to normal life. Except none of them can hold jobs and/or keep getting kicked out of their apartments for various reasons like power-related mishaps, or non-human mutant traits freaking out the customers, or being an alien who doesn't understand human society...so, three years after the Big Bad has been defeated, the group is reunited, living together, and mooching off the (former) millionaire kid whose powers come from his inventions.
It's kind of like a sitcom...but it has a darker and more poignant side as they find out that they didn't really know each other at all. Lots of revelations about sexuality and troubled pasts and mental illnesses. And they start to grow both together and apart as they try to fully move on from being super heroes and figure out where they want their lives to head from there.
In the end, they're growing apart and starting to blend into society and leave behind their old identities when they're shaken by the sudden suicide of one of the members of the team. Then, when they're at their most broken, a new villain (who's been gathering power behind the scenes) rises and they are forced to reunite and fight him.
Thoughts on how this fits in with what y'all have been discussing?
This used to bug me quite a bit, especially with the fantasy type epics. Ok, so the MC and his companions spend three books defeating the 'dark overlord,' growing in personal and political power along the way. Then they win. The dark overlord and his empire are no more, subsumed into that of the MC and company.
What then?
At that point, in the more superficial sense, MC and company are among the most powerful characters around. No serious competition. Options for continuing came down to some variant of:
1 - a 'clean-up' story, where the MC's go after the remaining top flunkies of the dark overlord - a bit like the 'scouring of the Shire' in 'Lord of the Rings.'
2 - the world is a big place after all - most fantasy 'worlds' are actually rather small portions of worlds, and what was portrayed as the overwhelming menace is just one foe or potential foe among many in the larger world. Feist took this route in his 'Riftwar' saga.
3 - life goes on. The MC becomes a mentor to the 'next generation' of heroes, or becomes embroiled in some personal project or other. This happened with Obi-Wan in the 'Star Wars' series.
@ glutton
When can I play that Jrpg?
The heroine fights a mecha in it too.
@ glutton Which of your books has or will have the mecha?
I guess I'm late to this party, so I'm not sure if this has been entirely addressed. I'm also not sure if the original post was looking for examples of the "post-victory" story or reasons as to why they don't exist.
I think for the former they're a little thin, but some good examples have been noted. I haven't read the thread in its entirety, but one that springs to mind for me is a video game series called "Overlord" where you play as a villain resurrected by his minions to go confront the heroes that brought you down. While you do that, you discover that many of them succumbed to their own version of corruption. That being said, beyond epilogues there isn't a whole lot of "post-victory" story telling, which I think is explained by my next point.
The latter issue, if it's what the OP was asking, is explained by the simple storytelling maxim that stories are centered on conflict. No reader really wants to sit around and listen to how everything is going well. There needs to be some element of conflict and so to the extent that stories exist after the hero has triumphed they usually just use that setting the "post-victory" setting to tell a new conflict. Star Wars, as was previously mentioned, is a good example of that. Luke blows up the Death Star but the Empire still exists, so it was the first of what turned out to be kind of three journeys for Luke. There's also the credible argument that episodes 1-6 all serve as the story/journey of Anakin Skywalker fulfilling his destiny to bring balance to the Force. Again though, once we reach a lack of conflict in Episode 6 where the Empire is ostensibly toppled there really isn't a reason to tell another story unless a new conflict happens. Any wrapping up and "what happens now" questions would be best handled in an epilogue. This article details the purposes of epilogue and a few potential uses.
I guess that's the only commentary I have. No one tells the tale of what happens after the victory parade because it simply isn't interesting beyond a recitation of facts that shouldn't be much longer than a paragraph.