HELP? Should I avoid this...

I have a question... should I completely avoid the whole "Omg, the bad guy is really the good guy's father" idea? You know, it's classic: Good guy never knew his father. Good guy gets caught up in wanting revenge over bad guy. Bad guy ends up to be the good guy's father. Surprise surprise.
The idea works rrreeeeaaaaaaaallllllyyy well with my story, but is the idea too over-used? Is it boring? What if I make it super unexpected? Any help will be extremely appreciated!!

LUUUKE I AM YOUR FATHER.......


I think it was actually the only time it really was used....to bad it's pop culture now.

If it works for your situation, run with it.

hey there was a story on MSN this week: A guy who fought for the french resistance was told that Hitler was his father. Talking about irony.

Maybe you should avoid him thinking his father is dead, his mentor telling him the villain killed his father, the villain killing the mentor, AND it coming out in a duel between the hero and the villain, which the hero is losing at that point.

Super unexpected -- that's what happened in Star Wars. No one saw it coming. So if you tried to pull it off like that, people would start to think Star Wars and you'd lose their focus on your story.

So maybe your hero knows his father left but could still be alive, his father is a wizard (yeah, I read your synopsis), and might start to get an inkling, so it doesn't feel like it completely comes out of nowhere.

He may have sired the hero, but he's definitely not his father. At least that's what Raven of the Teen Titans thought of Trigon. It's not like he was much of a father figure, really, so there's really no problem with taking him down emotionally. She's not going to miss him, and if your hero never knew his father, he won't miss him either. Come on. "Where were you when I needed you, dad? You were never there for me."

Though my favorite example of this happened twice on Cyberchase. Dr. Marbles builds Hacker to help him. Hacker turns evil and Marbles exiles him to the Northern Frontier. Hacker builds Digit to help him. Digit defects back to Marbles. All three are aware of this outcome, though I guess this is more related to estranged sons, not fathers.

Then there's the even more exaggerated example in Jinks's Evil Genius novels, where by the end protagonist Cadel ends up with three suspected fathers and when the third one ends up being someone he doesn't know or care about, he decides to give up on the whole parent thing because it's not important.

It's something to start with. Add and delete to it, over and over again. Modify it like a million times and you'll arrive at a great idea. If you've already got a story to add it then this works.

As famous an example as it is, Star Wars was hardly the only thing ever to do this.

Although most stories don't go so far as Oedipus...

My personal opinion is yes, you should avoid it. I would not appreciate this happening in a book. I'm sure it is quite possible to do this still, and do it well. But my advice is to not use this plot twist.

Unless the main character is aware that the villain is his father. I think that would make an interesting story.

...This is all just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt.

what makes it work well for your story? what reaction are you expecting from the hero? what about from the villain?

because that'll influence whether you should avoid it or try to put an original spin on it.

As a child, his mother used to tell him fabulous stories about the father he never knew. Perk's expectations of his father were far greater than they should've been, and when his mother dies, he can only remember the things she told him about his father. Believing in his father the whole journey, Perk is oblivious to the fact that he would have to face his father to defeat him. It catches Perk by extreme surprise, even though his father already knew... and that is the fact that leads up to a devastating (but happy) ending. It all works quite well, the way I see it, because I'm the one writing it. If you think about it, if you found out that your father is really the worst villain in the world, it would give you a lot to think about. Perk's mind would think back to everything his mother said, and he'd discover they were lies.
Any "original spin" ideas?

What if the weren't lies? Since no one is completely evil to EVERYBODY, the stories could have been true, but they had horrible consequences for the people who weren't on the father's side. So yes he did some great things, but he also did some really horrible, inhumanly cruel things, and sometimes they were one in the same just depending on which side you viewed it from.

Maybe if he knew from the start and that is what drives him. There aren't many stories like that.

Seriously, who else really does this besides Star Wars?

Oedipus doesn't built up the father as a figure of evil, he's just this dude.

Dont forget, toy story used this with buzz and zurg :)