Good Always Prevails

''Antagonist: Why did I sign up for this role? I should've just joined the Goodie-Two-Shoes Patrol and won for no reason all the time.''

The idea that the protagonists of any media will just about always come out on top of whatever hardships they endure. As the focal point of the story, the Good Guys cannot be beaten too hard or else the story goes down with them. It's because of this principle any suspense or danger regarding the Good Guys is fake. Any defeats the Good Guys or Main Cast had to endure will be neutralized by a big win later down the line. There are times when not even death itself is enough to stop the protagonists from securing the win of the day. Good Always Prevails can spoil a high-action moment like the Big Fight or Final Challenge if the audience keeps this UnTrash in mind.

Good Always Prevails negatively affects a story beyond throwing all suspense out the window. If all the audience sees is the Good Guys winning every last fight they enter, a disconnect between the two parties is born. The audience can't relate to characters who seem essentially perfect with a 100% win rate in their battles' results. Even if they don't truly come out victorious every time, this is still true if the creators opt to simply make the Good Guys lose every seventeenth battle. As mentioned in the paragraph above, the hotfix to a perfect win streak won't do any good if the protagonists can make up for previous little failures with one big success. There may come a time when the audience roots against the Good Guys just to see their smug faces get shoved into mud for a change. If the audience is exceptionally young, they make take home the wrong message, that being winning in life is as simple as making any attempt to get there. They won't learn that life is much harder than lifting a finger to get your way because their heroes don't learn this either. What's worse is even if the Good Guys do fumble from time to time, they're usually excused from any real consequences, swiftly moving on to the next thing. The audience will in turn think that for as much as they may Roll A 1 in their daily lives, they can still hope to come out like their loss never happened. This simply isn't true, but the story that teaches this Anti-Moral doesn't spare any effort in teaching otherwise.

When writing a story, creators should aim for balance between win and lose for their starring protagonists. If Good Always Prevails, the audience will lose interest in the franchise at hand. If The Hero Can't Hero, the Good Guys will give the impression of being worthless and endangering everyone else by virtue of weakness. If there's something of a fair split between success and failure for the lead characters, the audience will be more compelled to go with the story since the outcomes of their next challenge is always unpredictable. Another bonus that comes out of losing more frequently is learning from failure and changing. If the Hero starts out as a Weakling who can't do a single thing right, they can use the time to figure out where they messed up and do it less when facing a similar situation. If they're more on the Ace side of their skills, their wins should come at some kind of price, such as a Pyrrhic Victory where a win is more akin to a loss. If the Hero has middling competence in their duties, Alt Wins are the way to go. After they defeat an exceptionally strong foe, the Good Guys are banged up and in serious need of recovery, which takes some time. The audience feels relieved that their heroes aren't killed, but they have a strong idea that their most recent struggle was a Near-Death Experience that might shake them for a little while.