BAD, the protagonist of Gilmore et al.'s publication, is regulated by phosphorylation.
Wayne Ogden is a prince of a fellow, as long as you judge this bad-boy protagonist of Scott Phillips's caustic crime novel, THE ADJUSTMENT (Counterpoint, $25), according to his own perverse code of ethics.
And yet, here we are: Lightning, the dour heroine of 2009's Final Fantasy XIII (pretty good), mostly absent supporting character of that game's 2011 sequel (not entirely bad), and sole protagonist of 2013's XIII trilogy-concluding Lightning Returns (yeah, a bit of a damp squib), is about to be plastered across magazines and dance her way through promotional videos in support of the new range.
Try 60% good and 40% bad for a protagonist, or 40% good and 60% bad for an antagonist.
It also doesn't help much that the dialogue in the game is frequently quite bad and the protagonists become harder and harder to care about.
More recently, we've seen less reverential takes on the inspirational-teacher trope: comedies like "School of Rock" or "Bad Teacher," whose protagonists are pretty much precluded by the rules of the genre from being competent, even as they end up being, at times, inadvertently inspiring.
The lyrics speak of a love connection, where the protagonist makes bad decisions; "I never was smart with love, I let the bad ones in and the good ones go".
In subsequent volumes, Wells grew into a complex and satisfying protagonist, tackling bad guys across the world's conflict zones.
A movie in the works on Chesley B. Sullenberger III will focus on landing a plane in the Hudson, not on recreating a scene in a college bar where a girl called the protagonist a bad name — an important moment in the Facebook film.
The scene marks a crucial turning point for the protagonist, who breaks bad and embraces the yahoo (believes Kotcheff) inside all of us.
