The Adventure Begins! (Chapter 1)

               

        

You know, whether it involves a princess or not, I always find myself embarking on these quests both in the real and virtual world (THANK GOD Fallout 3 exists). I feel these quests don’t always have to require a princess for the hero to learn a lesson. Sure, love is always cool to have, but it can be distracting at times for the hero, and the hero has a higher chance of failing. As long as you have an enemy, a road, a goal/purpose, and a challenge that opposes the hero, you still have a great quest.
         A perfect example of a quest like this is a classic film called The Sandlot. You have the hero and his companions (Smalls and the gang), the challenge (Getting Babe Ruth’s autographed ball back), the enemy or dragon (Hercules the dog), the dangerous road (The Fence and Mr.Mertle), and the goal/purpose (Get the ball back before Denis Leary gets back home). A film like this just shows that you don’t really need a princess to make the quest serve as a life lesson for the hero. Other stories like The Catcher in the Rye, The Dark Knight Returns, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Night don’t have a princess and they succeed very well telling their own type of quest. That is why I prefer these different scenarios and stories rather than the whole gimmicky and predictable hero saves princess story (I’m looking at you Super Mario). The quests without the princess can be more exciting, suspenseful, and entertaining to be a part of. They also have a stronger impact and life lesson for the main hero (Never use a rare baseball as a baseball to play with Smalls) and each impact/lesson can be shown in a different way. If you were to have just the hero saving the princess (or prince if you want to do something different), what will the hero learn? Will the hero learn to be a better lover or kisser?

          As Foster mentions, all quests do involve self-knowledge, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always about learning from your mistakes. Hell, you don’t always need the typical young hero to be the person who is taught a lesson. Take Alan Moore’s Watchmen for example. Each hero in the graphic novel has their own quest, but not every single one of them is about self-knowledge. Readers deal with revenge, motives, wonder, and even the sense of finding one’s self spirit on a different planet (the closest to probably self-knowledge). It fascinates me that quests like these make the adventure worth remembering, therefore making the story worth retelling in the future.
        Quests as a whole can be funny or depressing as hell. It’s the moments that a writer creates (using the main requirements obviously) really determines that choice, and I feel that every trip is quest. The trip can be as simple as a kid fighting the urge to stay in bed or get up and grab something from the fridge. The trip can be as elaborate as a kid fighting off a werewolf, zombies, super soldiers, ghosts, and a monster with a machine gun (Such fun times…ahhh) just for the sake of conquering his fears of haunted houses. Either way, no matter how fast or slow a trip is, a quest is a quest. An adventure calls and will live on when it’s complete.