For Nagasvoice--Liking Villains and Underdogs
nagasvoice said, "I love your take on underdogs and "bad guys" who aren't given a fair shake in mainstream genre fiction. You're always looking for the other side's story behind the winner's story. I'd love to hear you came to that viewpoint."
This is tough, as there isn't just one reason. There are dozens. And I don't have the reasons organized in order of importance, either. However, let me try to make sense of it as best I can.
First, I'm curious--always have been, always will be. And for as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to know the bits of the stories that don't get told. Cinderella annoyed me--I figured that any girl who had her skill at cleaning could have left home, gone into service and gotten paid for her work--but I always wanted to know more about her stepsisters. Why did the stepsisters agree to cripple themselves at their mother's say-so? Why DID they hate Cinderella so? What was she saying or doing that annoyed them so much? I could think of a lot of things that Cinderella could do to make living in the house with her infinitely more miserable, and most of them could be done with poisonous courtesy. And why, oh why, didn't they just marry her off to the first man who didn't mind a dowerless wife? Why did they feel that they had to keep her in the house, even if it made everyone, including them, unhappy?
And Cinderella wasn't the only story I wondered about. I was that way about most stories. I didn't want more stories about Peter Pan, but stories about James Hook--who he was, how he'd become a pirate, his adventures, how he'd come to hate Peter so...I'd have given a great deal for that.
Snow White's wicked stepmother was another one who bothered me. The whole jealousy business just didn't cut ice. I couldn't believe that a grown woman would long to look like a little girl, however beautiful...and Snow White, who was only seven when the huntsman took her into the woods to kill her, was certainly a child. Besides, the queen was a witch, and could make herself look as spectacularly gorgeous as she wanted. She could look like Helen of Troy if she wanted to. So what did she have to be jealous of? And why be so determined to have Snow White die, rather than transforming the girl as wicked stepmothers were wont to do?
There had to be a reason. Some part of the story had to be missing.
I was gratified, years later, to read Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples. It was a relief to know that someone else wondered as well.
Agatha Christie is at least partly responsible for feeding this curiosity, as she had a habit of showing why anyone could feel innocent (or at least justified) and yet look guilty. It wasn't unheard of to finish one of her books and realize that you'd been seeing things from the point of view of the murderer all along--and been sympathizing with him.
Fandom played a large part in this, too. Three fandoms, to be precise: Quantum Leap, Highlander and Harry Potter.
Quantum Leap had a simple premise--the hero could "leap" into another person's life, essentially taking that person's place for a short period of time. And during that short period of time, he had to change something in that person's life in order to leave.
Which was fine--except that Sam Beckett didn't always leap into people whom he found easy to understand. Sam leaped into the lives of kids and old people, women as well as men, people of every race and ethnicity. This meant that Sam was constantly trying to see things from his own point of view, from his host's point of view, and from the points of view of the people around him. Not understanding how everyone thought was not only not an option, it could be downright dangerous.
Highlander tended to lean on the good-vs.-evil side of fantasy at first. The Immortal Duncan MacLeod was good, the K'Immies he killed were bad. End of story. ("K'Immies" being a fandom term for evil Immortals, almost all of whom had names beginning with either "K" or a hard "C.")
But then...some ambiguous characters started popping up. Methos, for one. Methos was a five-thousand-year-old-plus Immortal who wasn't particularly interested in killing other Immortals and who just wanted to survive in peace and quiet, thank you very much. He was intelligent, sarcastic, cynical, and made no pretense to centuries-old wisdom whatsoever. The ultimate survivor.
And then the writers reversed themselves with Methos, not once, but twice. First they had Methos fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love with a young woman named Alexa Bond. Who, as it turned out, was dying. And Methos found this out.
And he stuck with her, knowing that she didn't have much time, knowing that he would watch her die, knowing that he couldn't do anything about it. The audience only saw Alexa in one episode...but they saw what was happening to her in the increasingly haggard face of an increasingly desperate Immortal. Even more, Methos risked his freedom and the lives of himself, MacLeod and an Immortal thief named Amanda to get an artifact that he believed might grant Alexa health...or at least halt her illness in its tracks.
Hell of an idealistic move from a cynical survivor.
And then, some time after Alexa's death, the writers revealed that Methos had been, at one point, seriously evil. In pre-history, he ran with a group so vile that they became the models for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Methos was Death.
This could have been handled very badly. Instead, Methos never apologized for what he'd been or done. He never justified it. But he admitted it...in a speech of rage which I would swear was calculated to drive MacLeod away. And though Methos had left the Horsemen of his own volition, the fact that they had been friends, not to mention the fact that Methos still felt some friendship for the other three, even thousands of years later, was still faced squarely by both the script and the actors.
Keep in mind--the Horsemen were presented as evil bastards. Violent, dangerous, capable of coming up with chillingly modern schemes of bioterrorism. Yet Methos--one of the most popular semi-regulars--had been one of them. Had been one of the leaders.
And despite the fact that they were bastards and had done a hell of a lot of damage, destroying tens of thousands of lives, they were presented as having been friends, and of trying to find that old trust again after thousands of years apart.
Villains are not often depicted as being capable of friendship and love.
I learned a lot about bad guys when writing about the Horsemen--and between lyric wheels and a site called the Camp of the Horsemen, I wrote a fair bit. I focused on Methos and Kronos (a.k.a. Pestilence) the most. They were the two leaders-- the brightest, the most devious, the most dangerous and the most complicated.
I also wrote a story or two about James Horton, who had to be the most hated character in the series, because he murdered a well-beloved character, the gentle priest (and former warlord) Darius, in a church. Even if Darius had been inclined to fight back, he couldn't have done so there. Holy Ground--anyone's Holy Ground, for the compulsion was quite ecumenical--was the one place that Immortals, no matter how evil, couldn't do violence to anyone, be they Immortals or humans. Humans, however, were not under the same obligation.
Horton was a Watcher, an observer of Immortals and their lives...but one who had become convinced that Immortals, no matter how benevolent (and, to tell you the truth, most weren't), were a threat to humanity. He felt that the last Immortal left might well use his power to take over the world, creating a tyranny that no human would ever be able to overthrow. And, in series terms, this was a reasonable fear. There were plenty of Immortals whose ambition was to take over the world...or destroy it. And even the good ones...well, you know what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Horton committed any number of crimes, as well as cruel and immoral acts, out of a mixture of hatred and fear of Immortals and a desperate desire to keep humanity from being enslaved. He wasn't a good guy. He wasn't nice. He wasn't likeable. But he was acting at least partly out of a sense of what he thought was right.
You've got to love a TV show that will do stuff like this. Based on this, I can almost forgive the Highlander writers for the Nonexistent Episode and Season Sux. Almost.
And then, of course, came Peter Pettigrew.
I freely admit that I didn't like Peter in the beginning. I don't think that's too surprising; he wasn't written to be endearing. But the more I read Suethors' tales about MWPP over at deleterius and checked their stories against canon, the more I saw that there was more to Peter than the fanon version.
I noticed, for instance, that this allegedly magically weak character ("not quite in the same class" as James and Sirius, to quote McGonagall) was one of the three youngest Animagi in four thousand years. Far from being stupid, he managed to brew the resurrection potion without trouble, though it's said to be extremely difficult to make..not to mention fooling the entire wizarding world for twelve years.
I also saw that Peter, who is most frequently lambasted for cowardice, is nevertheless the only Death Eater who has the nerve to tell Voldemort when he's wrong. Which he does, not once, but twice. He tells Voldemort that killing Bertha Jorkins is a bad idea, and he argues against using Harry Potter in the resurrection ritual. The "cool" Death Eaters like Lucius, Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers never argue with Voldemort. Only the coward does.
Most significant, I think, is the fact that in the Shack, he begs for mercy. Which implies, does it not, that he knows he's guilty, and that he doesn't deserve mercy. For mercy isn't granted to those who earn it. It's a gift to the undeserving.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Peter had a lot of potential as a character. There were so many contradictions in his history and his personality, so many glimpses of the person he could have been.
Around that time I got into an RPG, now defunct, in which I played seventeen-year-old Peter, as well as a fifteen-year-old Hufflepuff named Hugh Tynbridge. I learned a lot about writing Peter and original characters from that comm, and from its sister comm which contained RPG-based fic. In fact, I learned a lot about writing in general from the characters.
I discovered George R. R. Martin around this time, which made me even more of a believer.
Anyway, that's how I came to like grey characters--the underdogs, the villains, the ones capable of both good and evil. Why I like them...now that might be another post altogether.
This is tough, as there isn't just one reason. There are dozens. And I don't have the reasons organized in order of importance, either. However, let me try to make sense of it as best I can.
First, I'm curious--always have been, always will be. And for as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to know the bits of the stories that don't get told. Cinderella annoyed me--I figured that any girl who had her skill at cleaning could have left home, gone into service and gotten paid for her work--but I always wanted to know more about her stepsisters. Why did the stepsisters agree to cripple themselves at their mother's say-so? Why DID they hate Cinderella so? What was she saying or doing that annoyed them so much? I could think of a lot of things that Cinderella could do to make living in the house with her infinitely more miserable, and most of them could be done with poisonous courtesy. And why, oh why, didn't they just marry her off to the first man who didn't mind a dowerless wife? Why did they feel that they had to keep her in the house, even if it made everyone, including them, unhappy?
And Cinderella wasn't the only story I wondered about. I was that way about most stories. I didn't want more stories about Peter Pan, but stories about James Hook--who he was, how he'd become a pirate, his adventures, how he'd come to hate Peter so...I'd have given a great deal for that.
Snow White's wicked stepmother was another one who bothered me. The whole jealousy business just didn't cut ice. I couldn't believe that a grown woman would long to look like a little girl, however beautiful...and Snow White, who was only seven when the huntsman took her into the woods to kill her, was certainly a child. Besides, the queen was a witch, and could make herself look as spectacularly gorgeous as she wanted. She could look like Helen of Troy if she wanted to. So what did she have to be jealous of? And why be so determined to have Snow White die, rather than transforming the girl as wicked stepmothers were wont to do?
There had to be a reason. Some part of the story had to be missing.
I was gratified, years later, to read Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples. It was a relief to know that someone else wondered as well.
Agatha Christie is at least partly responsible for feeding this curiosity, as she had a habit of showing why anyone could feel innocent (or at least justified) and yet look guilty. It wasn't unheard of to finish one of her books and realize that you'd been seeing things from the point of view of the murderer all along--and been sympathizing with him.
Fandom played a large part in this, too. Three fandoms, to be precise: Quantum Leap, Highlander and Harry Potter.
Quantum Leap had a simple premise--the hero could "leap" into another person's life, essentially taking that person's place for a short period of time. And during that short period of time, he had to change something in that person's life in order to leave.
Which was fine--except that Sam Beckett didn't always leap into people whom he found easy to understand. Sam leaped into the lives of kids and old people, women as well as men, people of every race and ethnicity. This meant that Sam was constantly trying to see things from his own point of view, from his host's point of view, and from the points of view of the people around him. Not understanding how everyone thought was not only not an option, it could be downright dangerous.
Highlander tended to lean on the good-vs.-evil side of fantasy at first. The Immortal Duncan MacLeod was good, the K'Immies he killed were bad. End of story. ("K'Immies" being a fandom term for evil Immortals, almost all of whom had names beginning with either "K" or a hard "C.")
But then...some ambiguous characters started popping up. Methos, for one. Methos was a five-thousand-year-old-plus Immortal who wasn't particularly interested in killing other Immortals and who just wanted to survive in peace and quiet, thank you very much. He was intelligent, sarcastic, cynical, and made no pretense to centuries-old wisdom whatsoever. The ultimate survivor.
And then the writers reversed themselves with Methos, not once, but twice. First they had Methos fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love with a young woman named Alexa Bond. Who, as it turned out, was dying. And Methos found this out.
And he stuck with her, knowing that she didn't have much time, knowing that he would watch her die, knowing that he couldn't do anything about it. The audience only saw Alexa in one episode...but they saw what was happening to her in the increasingly haggard face of an increasingly desperate Immortal. Even more, Methos risked his freedom and the lives of himself, MacLeod and an Immortal thief named Amanda to get an artifact that he believed might grant Alexa health...or at least halt her illness in its tracks.
Hell of an idealistic move from a cynical survivor.
And then, some time after Alexa's death, the writers revealed that Methos had been, at one point, seriously evil. In pre-history, he ran with a group so vile that they became the models for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Methos was Death.
This could have been handled very badly. Instead, Methos never apologized for what he'd been or done. He never justified it. But he admitted it...in a speech of rage which I would swear was calculated to drive MacLeod away. And though Methos had left the Horsemen of his own volition, the fact that they had been friends, not to mention the fact that Methos still felt some friendship for the other three, even thousands of years later, was still faced squarely by both the script and the actors.
Keep in mind--the Horsemen were presented as evil bastards. Violent, dangerous, capable of coming up with chillingly modern schemes of bioterrorism. Yet Methos--one of the most popular semi-regulars--had been one of them. Had been one of the leaders.
And despite the fact that they were bastards and had done a hell of a lot of damage, destroying tens of thousands of lives, they were presented as having been friends, and of trying to find that old trust again after thousands of years apart.
Villains are not often depicted as being capable of friendship and love.
I learned a lot about bad guys when writing about the Horsemen--and between lyric wheels and a site called the Camp of the Horsemen, I wrote a fair bit. I focused on Methos and Kronos (a.k.a. Pestilence) the most. They were the two leaders-- the brightest, the most devious, the most dangerous and the most complicated.
I also wrote a story or two about James Horton, who had to be the most hated character in the series, because he murdered a well-beloved character, the gentle priest (and former warlord) Darius, in a church. Even if Darius had been inclined to fight back, he couldn't have done so there. Holy Ground--anyone's Holy Ground, for the compulsion was quite ecumenical--was the one place that Immortals, no matter how evil, couldn't do violence to anyone, be they Immortals or humans. Humans, however, were not under the same obligation.
Horton was a Watcher, an observer of Immortals and their lives...but one who had become convinced that Immortals, no matter how benevolent (and, to tell you the truth, most weren't), were a threat to humanity. He felt that the last Immortal left might well use his power to take over the world, creating a tyranny that no human would ever be able to overthrow. And, in series terms, this was a reasonable fear. There were plenty of Immortals whose ambition was to take over the world...or destroy it. And even the good ones...well, you know what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Horton committed any number of crimes, as well as cruel and immoral acts, out of a mixture of hatred and fear of Immortals and a desperate desire to keep humanity from being enslaved. He wasn't a good guy. He wasn't nice. He wasn't likeable. But he was acting at least partly out of a sense of what he thought was right.
You've got to love a TV show that will do stuff like this. Based on this, I can almost forgive the Highlander writers for the Nonexistent Episode and Season Sux. Almost.
And then, of course, came Peter Pettigrew.
I freely admit that I didn't like Peter in the beginning. I don't think that's too surprising; he wasn't written to be endearing. But the more I read Suethors' tales about MWPP over at deleterius and checked their stories against canon, the more I saw that there was more to Peter than the fanon version.
I noticed, for instance, that this allegedly magically weak character ("not quite in the same class" as James and Sirius, to quote McGonagall) was one of the three youngest Animagi in four thousand years. Far from being stupid, he managed to brew the resurrection potion without trouble, though it's said to be extremely difficult to make..not to mention fooling the entire wizarding world for twelve years.
I also saw that Peter, who is most frequently lambasted for cowardice, is nevertheless the only Death Eater who has the nerve to tell Voldemort when he's wrong. Which he does, not once, but twice. He tells Voldemort that killing Bertha Jorkins is a bad idea, and he argues against using Harry Potter in the resurrection ritual. The "cool" Death Eaters like Lucius, Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers never argue with Voldemort. Only the coward does.
Most significant, I think, is the fact that in the Shack, he begs for mercy. Which implies, does it not, that he knows he's guilty, and that he doesn't deserve mercy. For mercy isn't granted to those who earn it. It's a gift to the undeserving.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that Peter had a lot of potential as a character. There were so many contradictions in his history and his personality, so many glimpses of the person he could have been.
Around that time I got into an RPG, now defunct, in which I played seventeen-year-old Peter, as well as a fifteen-year-old Hufflepuff named Hugh Tynbridge. I learned a lot about writing Peter and original characters from that comm, and from its sister comm which contained RPG-based fic. In fact, I learned a lot about writing in general from the characters.
I discovered George R. R. Martin around this time, which made me even more of a believer.
Anyway, that's how I came to like grey characters--the underdogs, the villains, the ones capable of both good and evil. Why I like them...now that might be another post altogether.