V is for (Books About) Villains #atozchallenge

For A to Z 2018, my theme is Books About ____. If you’re stopping by from your own A to Z blog, feel free to leave a link. If you need help with how to do that, you can look here.

If you’re someone looking to read a lot of great blogs, here’s the link for the A to Z challenge.

I do love a good villain, one with their own story, who you can even sort of understand and root for. So many villains are one-dimensional and boring. When they’re not, they’re often the best part of the book.

Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, by Thomas Harris (horror): I loved Hannibal Lecter the moment he said he liked eating the rude. I think of that often in the grocery store. He appealed to me because of how manipulative he was, like a chess master, using people as the pawns. These books would not have been as good with a lesser villain.

Gavin in Fearscape, Horrorscape, and Terrorscape, by Nenia Campbell (YA horror): Before I get to the review part, I need to be honest about these books. The first one was fantastic, but quality went downhill as they continued. I still liked them a lot by the last one, but the last two would have benefitted greatly from better editing. (I think the second two were self-published. If they were ever re-edited and re-released, I’d definitely buy them.) Okay, so anyway… Gavin is a creepy stalker who develops an interest in Valerian, despite her friends telling her to stay away. I loved these books because they didn’t make the bad boy turn good with the influence of the right girl. He is a creep and that doesn’t change.

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey (classic): There’s nothing worse than someone who’s awful to people in their care. That’s one of the things that makes Nurse Ratched one of the evilest characters of all time. She’s a control freak, among other things, and McMurphy and his chaos are perfect foils for her. It’s a classic story.

Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain (horror): In my mind, there’s nothing better than a female villain (done well), and Gretchen is one of the perfect ones. She’s a serial killer who’s also a psychologist. She manipulates her way into working with police and then tortures the police detective in charge. Instead of killing him, she then lets him go and turns herself in, professing her love for him. But it turns out that it was all another manipulation, and she keeps manipulating him from jail, Hannibal Lecter-style. There’s a second book I haven’t gotten to, mostly because I didn’t know it existed. It’s now on my TBR.

Who are your favorite villains?

Promoting Kindness

I feel inadequate to talk about this, but I’m going to, because even if I don’t cover it well or completely, at least I may help others think about it.

The world is in turmoil. I think everyone knows that. And from what I see, everyone wants to place blame somewhere. I’m very afraid of the mentality I’m seeing: “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

I can understand the attraction of this idea, but I think it’s problematic on a number of levels. The most important one being: You don’t eradicate hate by promoting hate and divisiveness.

An Eye For An Eye Leave The Whole World Blind

Meeting hate with public shaming and more hatred isn’t likely to tame it; that’s like pouring gas on a fire. When you shame someone, most people don’t respond with, “Sorry; I was wrong.” They respond with anger and defensiveness, trying to explain their side. It reinforces their own idea that they’re right, because you’re treating them like the enemy. No matter how wrong thinking people are, almost no one is a villain in their own mind, and if you really want to bring people together, you won’t treat them as one.

That doesn’t mean that certain behaviors are acceptable; they aren’t. But you can hate the behavior and still show love and kindness toward the person.

People Can Change When Shown Compassion & Understanding

Daryl Davis is a black man who gets to know KKK members. As of December 2016, thirteen of them befriended him and turned in their hoods. Would he have been justified in hating these people who hated him for nothing more than the color of his skin? Yep, absolutely. Would it have changed anything? Unlikely.

Balpreet Kaur was the focus of ridicule online when a man snapped a picture of her. She’s a woman with facial hair. Instead of responding defensively (which would have been understandable), she explained that she’s a Sikh, and that looking different from most people does not interfere with her ability to be of service. As a result of her kind, lovely response, the original poster apologized to her, and she got lots of support. I first read this story in 2012, and I’m still thinking about it. My hope is that everyone who read her story thought twice about cyberbullying from that point forward.

Christian Piccolini became a white supremacist at 16, looking for a place to belong. After he opened up a music store and had contact with people of different races and religions, he said, “I received compassion and empathy from the people I least deserved it from.” That changed his thinking, and he’s now a member of Life After Hate, an organization that helps people leave violent extremist groups.

Understanding Matters

I don’t know what the solution to everything is. But people who seek to tear others down aren’t usually people who feel good about themselves. It’s not a good excuse, but it is something to think about. Making already insecure and angry people feel worse isn’t the way to change the world. People gravitate toward hate groups in order to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance.

People make changes when they feel understood, and more importantly, when they understand others. It’s easy to hate what you don’t know and understand. (This goes for both sides.) But it’s not as easy to hate something known. It’s like Ender said in Ender’s Game:

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.

Don’t Hate The Person

Hate the behavior. Hate the violence. Hate the rhetoric. But when possible, show compassion for the person. Because most people who join these groups aren’t evil; they’re just seeking belonging, understanding, acting out of fear, etc.

Is there a way to promote love and compassion without implicitly condoning bad behavior? I’m not sure. I’m afraid that showing love and compassion to everyone who needs it will be misconstrued as trying to stay in the middle and “not take sides.” I don’t want to do that, but I really believe that hating and shaming anyone creates a bigger problem. I want to be part of the solution.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. But please, no politics.

Annie Wilkes Had a Point

I love a good antihero, but don’t normally sympathize with villains. And Annie Wilkes (of Misery, by Stephen King) really was a villain. After all, she captured an injured man and refused to release him, making him write stories for her, then injured him when he made her mad. That’s firmly in villain territory.

One of the things that made her really mad was “cheating.” You know, when an author promises one thing and delivers another? Or when the author says one thing happened, but then backtracks and says “It was all a dream” or “It didn’t really happen that way.” I mean, when those things happen, I kind of understand her desire to break the ankles of the offending author.*

(*I’m not actually advocating violence here. Please don’t go out and break anyone’s ankles.)

I recently read a book that I love and hate at the same time. It was good, and it paid off all the promises the author made. But the ending was sad. I don’t want to like the ending. I want to demand the author take it back. Kind of like when JK Rowling went on a killing spree in Book 7.

But it was the right ending.

The author gave the book the ending it deserved. No flinching (well, probably flinching), no cheating. It hurt. I mean, if it hurt me, it probably hurt the author more.

It’s just that I was so emotionally invested in the book. I wanted everyone to be okay, to have a magical happily ever after. And while a lot of books do end like that, not all of them do. And not all of them should.

As a writer, I wand to give all of my characters happy endings. After all, technically, I can. I could write a happy ending for everyone because I’m the one typing the words on a page.

But stories are a living thing. The good ones breathe life into the reader, and the reader breathes back. If a writer forces the story into a corner, it will do what it’s told, but it won’t breathe magic anymore. Maybe in the moment, the ending will be satisfying, but ultimately forgettable. Because if the ending isn’t real, right, alive, then there’s no point to writing it.

And sometimes real, right, and alive hurt.

The logical part of me knows this. But the emotional part? Well… I think I’m going to go reread Misery.

Are there any books that ended in a way that felt right, but still hurt? Or any books you’re still mad about because they “cheated?”

(On a side note, for those of you who follow my blog, I’m going to try switching to a Monday/ Friday update schedule. Sunday/ Wednesday just wasn’t working for me.)

 

V is for Villians

But… but… I’m not a villain! I’m a good dog!

I love a good villain, but I prefer a complex villain.  One dimensional evil is kind of boring and doesn’t offer much in the way of character development or surprise.  I prefer villains with their own ethical codes.  It doesn’t have to be a code I agree with; it’s just important that whatever the code is, it’s consistent.

Villains are meant to move a story forward, but at their best, are foils for the hero, a way to contrast the hero’s choices and make the hero shine brighter.

So what makes a good villain?

I think that they have to be in somewhat understandable and relatable.  Who wants to read about a villain who is so far out there that no one cares.  That’s one of the things I liked about Hannibal Lecter (from Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal by Thomas Harris); he didn’t do things he considered to be rude, and he “ate the rude.”  Sure, a little extreme, but I agree that the rude should be punished.

They have to live by a set of rules.  Annie Wilkes of Misery (by Stephen King) was CRAZY.  But she didn’t like profanity, didn’t like cheating, and liked fiction.  Maybe she was okay with hobbling a guy, but she wasn’t going to say any naughty words while doing it.

They should be well-developed enough to be an actual character.  Seems a bit obvious, but I want to know a little bit about my villain.  Enough to know what makes them a villain.  In Watchers, by Dean Koontz, The Outsider’s character was so well-developed that I felt a little sad and wondered if he could have been redeemed, even though I knew he had to die.

Though sometimes mystery is good.  Darth Vader was much scarier in Star Wars IV-VI than he was in I-III.  ‘Nuff said.

They should be scary.  If a villain isn’t scary, what’s the point?  Evil should always scare us.  The Joker in The Dark Knight was one of the scariest villains in a long time, and what made him scary was his complete and total unpredictability.  (That’s not to say he didn’t live by a set of rules; he did.  But he was all about anarchy, which is inherently unpredictable.)

Sometimes the villain makes you kinda agree with them.  A little.  I love villains who make me question my views on morality.  Erik Lensher aka Magneto in the X-men movies.  He’s tired of being a second class citizen, so he wants to kill off all his potential oppressors.  Yeah, it’s wrong.  But if wrong is a continuum, it’s not at the far, far end.  Is it?

Writing villains can be satisfying and fun, but it’s also difficult to do well.  I’m not saying that a good villain must have all these qualities, but at least one or two, and scary is a MUST.

 

“The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were attractive—if their looks matched their charm and their cunning—they wouldn’t only be dangerous.

They would be irresistible.”
― Nenia Campbell

Who’s your favorite villain?

 

Watered Down Villains

I love a good villain, and so do lots of other people.  But it seems that the villains in books are way more colorful than those in movies and TV.  I’m not sure why, other than what appeals to readers may not always appeal to TV watchers.  For instance, Hannibal was a great villain, but he wasn’t completely black and white.  The movie transformed him into someone slightly, but ultimately very different than who he was.

I don’t typically find TV and movie villains all that believable or scary.  For one thing, I don’t really find anything I can see to be scary.  If I see it, it can be fought.  In books, the villains tend to be  more well-rounded.  Many of them are not all bad.   Many book bad guys have multiple sides to them, ultimately making them both more human and more scary than what can be portrayed on TV.  I like complex villains, especially ones with whom I’d sit and have a drink (though I wouldn’t leave my drink unattended).  I also like purely evil villains, who do things for reasons that would never occur to me.

My favorite movie villains are Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street), Voldemort (from Harry Potter), The Joker (The Dark Knight), Khan (from Star Trek), and Darth Vader (from Star Wars). Voldemort, Khan, and Darth Vader were all after power, the Dark Knight was after chaos, and Freddy Krueger was after revenge.  What made all of these villains great was their single minded adherence to their goals.

Best book villains are Mr. Hyde (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson), Hannibal Lecter (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, by Thomas Harris), Voldemort (from Harry Potter by JK Rowling), Gretchen Lowell (Heartsick by Chelsea Cain), Dexter Morgan (from the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay).

Who’s your favorite villain?