Hi Guys,
(All graphic elements were taken from PhotoMorgue.)
New topic for me. Having completed the
first draft of the third volume of the Wizard At Law books – Money Matters, I
had a little time on my hands. Enough time to create new covers for all three
of them, and then to go on my various fora and get back into some serious
chatting with other writers.
On one of them a question was asked that
fascinated me. Not so much for the question itself, as what it said about the
entire genre of fantasy and where it's heading. And yet on the face of it the question
was a stupidly simple one. How do we make our villains more real?
This is a topic I have touched on briefly
before when I wrote about not really wanting to understand villains – just
dispatch them. But it's not really something I've explored in any depth. This
time though I want to go into the psyche of the fantasy villain in more depth.
In particular the concept of making the villain more “real” and the place of
this within the modern fantasy sub-genre known as grimdark.
Grimdark is as the name implies, simply a
movement in the genre towards the creation of worlds and characters that are
more gritty – grim and dark. It is a movement where the heroes are flawed and
the villains are often as much misunderstood victims as they are actual
villains. And currently the best example of this movement and certainly one of
the most popular is George R. R. Martin's Game of thrones. In his world, every
hero has feet of clay and every villain has a reason for being as dark and
terrible as he or she is.
Proponents of grimdark, and fans of course,
will argue that this is more real. That real life is not black and white. That
there are no white knights slaying evil dragons. And on the face of it that
almost seems reasonable – until you remember that we're all writing fantasy!
But then when another writer asked that simple question I I turn had to wonder
– is it actually any more “real” than what preceded it? And my thought is that
it actually isn't.
The movement towards grimdark in fantasy in
my view has been born of a dissatisfaction with and a rejection of the former
typical heroic fantasy of the golden age of science fiction and fantasy. It is
a reaction to having read and seen too many heroes of pure nobility and courage
and of course pure hearts, racing in to save the world from the dastardly
villain – and maybe kill a dragon or two along the way. And I understand that.
You can only read the same thing so many times before you start to want to read
something new and fresh. But while it makes sense to want something new, it
doesn't make sense to believe that that something new is more realistic. True
the white knight and the Bond villain were not real. But neither are the new
crop of fantasy heroes and villains.
Nowhere is this seen more clearly in my
view, than in the villains.
Consider the archetypal big baddies.
Starting with Ming the Merciless – and seriously what baddie would call himself
“the merciless” to begin with – it sort of gives the entire game away as to who
he is! Ming was a simple villain. He wanted nothing more than ultimate power
and to rule the universe, while his arch enemy Flash Gordon was the all
American hero. Really there wasn't a lot of character development that went
into our baddie. His motivation was simply a lust for power and that was enough
to explain him.
And that pattern has continued for decades
with a while host of Bond villains. You know the ones – petting their cats and
coming up with ingenious plans to take over the world. They had no great depth
until the more recent movies. And obviously this is no longer enough for
audiences.
So obviously as writers we can't use these
archetypes so much any more as a basis for our villains. But what do we use
instead? Because that is where grimdark falls down.
We can't use real villains, no matter how
much we want to make our villains more “real”. The reason is unfortunately as
simple as it is sad. Real villains are sort of pathetic. Most of those who
commit serious crimes, are from bad homes, raised with little in the way of
education, and by and large simply aren't very bright. The reason they commit
their crimes is usually a horrible lack of coping strategies. They actually
find themselves in difficult situations and the only way they can think to get
out of them is by doing something bad. As a basis for arch-villains they would
by and large be unconvincing and boring.
Sociopaths became rather fertile ground to
explore with the advent of villains like Hannibal. And for a while we were all
thrilled by the idea of this super-intelligent plotter with no moral compass.
But unfortunately while sociopathy is not nearly as rare as we would like it to
be, the reality is that most sociopathic criminals aren't incredibly smart. In
fact they aren't particularly smart at all. For a rather disturbing view of one
of them you should watch the interviews done with Richard Kuklinski – the Iceman
as he was known. With what is believed to be over a hundred assassinations that
can be laid at his door, the man was cold and not particularly bright, with a
violent temper and little actual understanding of people.
In reality the reason he was not caught for
so long was that he was protected by organised crime and there was no
relationship between him and his victims and therefore no reason to suspect
him. It is this same lack of connection between victim and killer that makes
most serial killers harder to catch than others – not any great intelligence.
Last I suppose there's the tortured soul.
The angst ridden, long suffering wretch who is so twisted up inside that he can
do the most vile things. Probably the benchmark for grimdark villains. These
are the ones that readers want to believe are real. But really are they? Yes
there are such people in the world. Sadly I've worked in an institution and met
some of these people. But the sad fact is that these people don't generally
become major villains. They sometimes commit crimes, sometimes horrible crimes.
But as to taking over the world etc, it's not usually in their compass. It's
hard to be taken seriously as a master villain when you spend your days talking
to yourself, or curled up in a corner staring at a wall. And that's the sad
fact of the matter. The more tormented the soul is the more likely the man is
to be so badly broken that his capability to be an arch villain is destroyed.
Which brings us back to the central thrust
of this post. The question that was asked. How can we as writers make our
villains more “real”? And my answer is that we can't.
This is fantasy, and the villains we write
are not real at all. They never were. They weren't real when they were
archetypal power crazed despots and Bond villains. They weren't real when they
were super-intelligent sociopaths. They weren't super-villains when they were
based on actual criminals and in fact they were too boring for the most part to
even pen. They weren't real either when they were tortured souls reacting to
the horror's of their past lives.
Grimdark is no more “real” than heroic
fantasy was before it.
So my thought is that as authors instead of concerning
ourselves with questions like how real our villains are, we should instead ask
the more accurate question – how believable are they? Because that's what
people actually mean when they talk about “real”.
Well, enough wild ranting from me for one
day. As always be good or don't get caught.
Cheers, Greg.
