In my next post on my favorite things to read and write in fiction, I'll be discussing villains. Although, "favorite thing" is a strong word for this one, since I almost never like a villain, even one of my own creation. But here are the kind I see as being a (cough) necessary evil.
Unsympathetic Villains
First off, I like unsympathetic villains in my fiction. By this, I mean villains that aren't merely a victim of a series of terrible circumstances that would "force" practically anyone into "villainy."
I can sympathize with people who do like those sympathetic villains, some of whom perhaps feel kinship with them because of their own terrible circumstances in life. As I've acknowledged in previous posts and especially the last one on soft heroines, we live in a hard, dark world, and I can understand how sympathetic villains might seem to some people to be not just more realistic but perhaps even more relatable than the hero.
That saddens me, but I understand. Because my incredibly fortunate circumstances shaped my preferences, when I say the following, I am not saying someone should feel guilty or inferior for preferring the opposite. We all have different paths to hope and healing, for us and for this world. The following merely reflects my own.
In my personal experience, villains—true villains who control, ruin, or end lives for their own gain or pleasure—are not the least bit sympathetic. All that I have learned about the real tyrants of this world has not convinced me that villainy is some inevitable result of the crushing darkness of this world molding someone who has no other option but evil. Rather, the opposite. The most terrible real people I have learned about have had every chance to turn back or into something else . . . and have chosen not to. So do I find sympathetic villains in fiction realistic? Personally . . . no.
I do think villains should have an understandable, human motive, but I avoid fiction that is portrays that motive as all-excusing—fiction that essentially makes the villain the hero of the story. Or at least the most likeable character in it.
Loki of the Marvell universe comes to my mind as an example of the kind of sympathetic villain I find most distasteful, although I bring him up cautiously with the caveat that I am not a knowledgeable Marvell fan. But from the movies I have seen and from what I've heard from other fans, I'm troubled by how Loki always seems to get a pass for what he's done. In one movie alone, he kidnapped and mentally enslaved people; brought an invading army to Earth; fully intended, in his right mind and with full consciousness of his actions, to conquer and enslave us all at all costs; and caused untold destruction and the deaths of perhaps thousands of people before he was defeated. Now, I don't know about you . . . but that sounds like pure evil to me—greater, even, than the plotters behind 9-11.
And yet those horrendous crimes just . . . get swept under the rug. Why? I honestly don't know enough to know the answer here, only that apparently Loki never really has to answer for what he's done for any real length of time within the story. Even more disturbing to me, outside of the story and in real life, all his adoring fans seem to not care. Why? Because he's attractive, witty, interesting? Because he has such a tragic backstory that exonerates him of everything in their minds? It certainly doesn't in mine.
I see the recent trend toward sympathizing and empathizing and elevating villains as deeply troubling, especially when this is done not, as I mentioned above, in the attempt to reach people who live in darkness but because the consumers who live in the light say they simply find villains more interesting.
I seem to be increasingly alone in my stance that evil is not as interesting, let alone vitally important to explore, as goodness. But I didn't use to be.
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." —Ursula K. LeGuin
I'll admit, it's becoming harder to write engaging, authentically good characters who still face pure, unsympathetic evil. But as I said in the soft heroines post, I see no calling for myself as higher.
And yes, if my villains are sometimes a bit unsympathetic, a bit less interesting than the consumers of increasingly dark literature are used to, perhaps even a bit less scary . . . well, that's simply because I have very little appetite for exploring the depths of evil. I just . . . can't. I simply can't mentally handle swimming through darkness without drowning. I can barely even handle poking it with a stick. So call me weak, call me soft, call me boring if you want. That's just not my calling in life or as a writer. And if that means I lose some readers because of it, so be it. I was probably never the one meant to help them anyway.
Nebulous Villains
Part of my reasoning for all the above is my belief that as surely as there is an ultimate Good in the universe . . . there is an ultimate evil. An evil so great, so terrible, and yet so intangible we cannot comprehend it . . . and we would do well not to even try.
This is the source of all evil, the true enemy of us all, the true seeker of the destruction of all light and life. It has no sympathetic, tragic backstory. It cannot be reasoned or bargained with. It cannot be understood. It is nebulous, it is out there . . . it is in our very hearts. It seeks to control us to bring about our own destruction, tear each of us apart, bury us in misery and despair, and swallow us whole for eternity.
I understand if you do not believe the same. But if you wish to understand my worldview and why I write the way I do, then I hope you can understand why now.
So, yes, I actually like the ultimate villain in a story to be something a bit nebulous. One can almost call this a preference for the character vs. nature conflict, if one thinks of this dark force as "natural." This is the most helpful and realistic conflict for me to personally explore, because I see it as calling out the true enemy of us all. We are never really fighting each other in this world. We are fighting the darkness inside that is trying to destroy us all.
I've been weighed down since high school by the crushing mass of character vs. character or character vs. society conflicts, because I keep mentally shouting that's not the issue here. Don't believe in a God or a devil if you'd like, but I want to see more people exploring how an individual and a society immunizes themselves against their own self-destructive tendencies. How do we all, as a symbiotic whole, combat our worst selves and elevate our highest? Forget dystopian societies. Forget The Man. Forget fiction that simply assumes human depravity and corruption are the norm and always will be. I am so tired, so exhausted by it all., and worried we are creating the self-fulfilling maelstrom of negativity that was fueling the end of the world in Tomorrowland.
What does a society that is trying to be better look like? What does the nebulous force that is trying to stop them look like? When did we lose the dream that was possible?
Part of this stems from a hope, born from my experience, my compassion, and what's necessary for my sanity, that my government and my society is generally good—it is simply full of people trying their best to fight their inner demons in an increasingly complex and darkening world.
So my question is, if people are fundamentally good and trying their best . . . what's darkening our world? And how do we stop it?
I can't give up the hope that we can.
Redeemed Villains
An exception to my distaste for sympathetic villains are villains who are redeemed. Man, I love a good, well-written, believable redemption arc, but man are they so hard to write. Perhaps the hardest of them all.
I don't think much needs to be said here, so I'll just give a few examples of ones I thought were well-done (or not). Perhaps the best one I've seen on screen is Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Zuko had very compelling reasons to be as hard and ruthless as he was in the beginning and yet have the seed of goodness that was the eventual undoing of the "villainous" part of him, and believable catalysts for that character growth to finally take place. Not only that, but the length of a TV series lends itself much better to the time needed to make a convincing redemption case than feature-length film.
Of a movie-length version, Sinbad comes to mind (also an animated work for children, but hey, it's the entertainment I actually enjoy). Sinbad was never evil—merely hardened to self-centeredness, but again, he was given the core of goodness and catalysts needed to make his selfless actions by the end believable. Much more believable than, say, Flynn Rider from Tangled. (Cute movie, but I don't buy his redemption arc. Very clever, poetic defeat of the true villain, though....)
See, not only does the character in question have to have some fundamental goodness inside them all along to make the eventual breakaway believable, the redemption has to be in proportion to the original crime. That's why Darth Vader had to die in Star Wars for his complete redemption, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Gyorn Hrathen from Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. Lesser crimes (or lesser hardness of the character) lead to an easier-to-write redemption—and a lesser price to be paid for it. Usually.
My favorite redeemed character, though, is Edmund Pevensie from the Chronicles of Narnia. He's just a slightly selfish young boy who has the misfortune to fall in with the villain first thing after entering Narnia, so his "villainy," such as it is, is believable and relatable. The price paid to redeem him, then, seems shockingly high by comparison. And yet the law is the law. Sometimes, justice and mercy cannot coexist without an incredible price paid by someone else, forming a debt that changes the debtor forever—as it changes Edmund. The reason he is my favorite redeemed character is because of the degree of that change. Edmund ("the Just") forever after is the most somber, steady, and wise of all the Pevensies, the one least likely (perhaps even more than Lucy) to be lured into darkness. Though his saving everyone from the White Witch's resurrected avatar in the Prince Caspian movie isn't book-canon (if I remember right), it's so utterly appropriate to me, I still love it.
I think the reason I like a good redemption arc is the same as the rest of us: we all make mistakes, and we all have to believe there's a way of coming back from them, a way of not just being forgiven but becoming something better. Becoming . . . a hero.
And that's what the next post is all about.