AUTHOR: Phy DATE: 8/26/2003 04:00:00 PM ----- BODY: Posting this here for posterity and later reference.

Eclipsing Good Villains, by Zahir el Daoud
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I was thinking about this quite a bit for the last several weeks and wanted to share my thoughts and encourage comments.

Sir Ian McKlellan in the EE of FOTR repeated a famous quote "The Devil gets all the best tunes." This got me thinking about a technical problem that pops up again and again in all kinds of fiction--that of balancing good and evil in terms of interest.

For example, in LOTR Tolkien did something very clever in keeping the bad guys for the most part very much off stage. Conflict arose almost entirely from basically good people (Boromir, Denethor, especially) fighting their own worst impulses. And one can see why that is a good idea. Consider how many times a really top-knotch villain has stolen a film or story?

On reflection, I think there's a comment in here about the seductiveness of evil (after all, if it wasn't attractive, there wouldn't be much of a problem!). But I also think there's the question of dramatic process.

Characters are more compelling when they have specific goals. People who "wander" or just "react" to life are perceived as passive, hence uninvolving to watch (although perhaps quite delightful as neighbors). A character on BtVS said something funny about this: "Evil beings have plans. They have things to do." In other words, evil characters with their nefarious plans are inherently dynamic.

Here's what occurs to me to rectify this:

1) Virtue needs to defend genuine value. Tolkien's heroes are quite literally trying to keep the world from being enslaved. Okay, that sounds simple but is actually kinda tricky. It needs to be illustrated, make vividly clear in order for the audience to care. We only fear the desecration of the Shire after we learn to love it. Likewise, Carazil in The Curse of Chalion begins with desiring no more than a home. He reacts to his situation with grace and a surprising amount of dignity. From him he learn to care about the people around him, and understand when he goes to such extreme lengths to save them.

2) The Virtuous can also have specific and tangible goals of their own. One of the most interesting of these was in The War Hound and the World's Pain in which Satan seeks to find the Holy Grail in an effort to win God's forgiveness! Earning redemption, uniting the kingdom's factions (a la King Arthur), reaching the end of the world (aboard the Dawn Treader perhaps), etc. are all goals that not only make heroes compelling, it helps define what makes them heroes in the first place.

3) What makes good villains also makes good heroes. By that I mean complexity, individuality, and also the kind of ambiguity that censors tend to loathe. Snape is (evidently) a hero, and a mighty compelling one, but at first didn't we all assume he was a bad guy? And Tyrion Lannister certainly has many of the same issues as Richard III. I feel mightily for Thomas Covenant, because here's someone in the process of becoming a hero, and who frankly could easily slide into outright villainy. Watching him make the choices that form that process is, imo, one reason those books are such mighty bestsellers. -------- AUTHOR: Phy DATE: 8/26/2003 03:45:00 PM ----- BODY: Something that my buddy Blutarsky said has given my an idea about the Trindle pirates. All this time, I was assuming that they were unattached scoundrels and vagabonds roaming the great plains of Aerie for no particular reason, explicitly serving Maledon.

What if, instead, they're indiginous aboriginal natives with their own belief system (that is, indians). That might explain how Kish, in a moment of epiphany, is able to swing their allegiance from Maledon to Kish by appealing to their sense of fairplay, their faith, and (oh by the way) revealing that they actually are serving one whom they desperately hate?

Of course, they'll need a different name, but I think that may flow better and be more believeable in the long run - plains indians that rob and pillage and so forth, not indiscriminantly, but at the behest of Maledon (through an intermediary - they won't know who they're serving).

I think I like it. --------