One of the hallmarks of good storytelling is the creation of a memorable villain (or villains). Creating that emotional investment on the behalf of the reader/viewer means that they get more out of the story. A side effect of making a villain memorable is that the reader is often left clamoring for their return and the author is left twisting their story's credibility to allow this villainto escape at the end of their story to do so. Giving the readers what they think they want is not always the best thing.
Fiction is littered with such examples. Take Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lector. A memorable, but in the grand scale of the story a relatively minor character in Red Dragon, he really stole the show in The Silence of the Lambs (helped in no small part by Tony Hopkin's performance in the movie adaptation). The public fell in love with this anti-hero and wanted more. And Harris gave it to them with the book Hannibal. Now Hannibal Lecter is an amoral monster - he eats people for crying out loud. Unless you're Brett Easton Ellis, it's rather hard to have the major protagonist of your book a completely unlikable monster. So begins the reform of your bad guy.
Now, eating people is kind of nasty, but it is part of the Cannibal's shtick... so lets sure that most of the people he eats are equally as bad as he is.... say a child molester. While we're giving the fans what they want, let's cater to the real sicko's on the net by having Lecter & Clarice Starling fall in love. Now this is rationalised by Lecter claiming he is fascinated by her intellect & reasoning capabilities. So what's Lecter do the first chance hegets? Brainwashes her & turns her into his mindless f#uck-buddy. Giving the readers what they think they want is not always the best thing.
By the way - think I'm going a bit far with this transformation of Lecter into some kind of hero? Then explain this? But I digress...
The second example of this syndrome is the character Spike of BTVS/Angel fame. Now when this character was first introduced he was supposed to be a brutal bloodthirsty killer who had taken out no less than two slayers (a big deal on this show). Now over the course of his many appearances the show has proceeded to de-claw, de-ball & ultimately destroy the character. It gets so bad that for almost an entire season, he is kept a pseudo- prisonerby the good guys who choose not to destroy him because he's got a chip in his head stopping him from doing bad things.
Keep in mind something here. This isn't a human we're talking about here, it's a monster. It's was a well established fact in the Buffy mythos (at least until Spike came along and the rulebook got thrown out) {mythos?? - god, that sounds wanky reading that}, that when a person is transformed into a vampire, they are taken over by a demon - the person they were is destroyed. So Spike isn't a person - he's a monster. A monster that has killed and tortured countless people just because he could Just because he doesn't look as ugly as most of the monsters doesn't explain the reticence to destroy him for two seasons when he was at their mercy. You know what does - giving in to fanboys and catering to the anti-hero syndrome. Of course, it's also convenient that the only thing that his chip allows him to hit isbad guys - further helping his transformation from cool character to Angel 2.0 replacement. Lame.
Which brings me via a long-winded & convoluted path to what I originally wanted to talk about - the Atticus Kodiak books by Greg Rucka. These books (Keeper, Finder, Smoker, Shooting at Midnight & Critical Space) tell the stories of Kodiak - a Personal Security Agent, or bodyguard, and the people he protects. The first two books I really enjoyed quite a bit. They seem fairly accurate and grounded in reality. When people got shot it tended to really hurt instead of being a minor inconvenience. Perhaps it says something about being a member of the X Files generation that I didn't really blink when it came to the second books plot about a cancelled black ops slush fund.
Book three is where I felt things started to hit the skids. In this book - Smoker - the villain of the piece is a current popular one - Big American Tobacco - who is trying to silence a former employee before hetestifies as to how evil and nasty his former employers were in creating an addictive product. The way they do this is by hiring a professional assassin - in this case one of the Ten - as the name implies one of the ten deadliest assassins in the world. And Atticus is hired to protect the target from these unwanted attentions. Now through good planning, hard work and allot of luck, Atticus & his team manage to protect the target - but it's made perfectly clear that this was by no means an easy job. The book itself is still a good read which I enjoyed. It stays pretty much true to the characters and doesn't stretch its credibility too far (no more than you'd expect in a thriller). The problem lies in the seeds planted for future books in the form of the assassin Atticus & co. fight against - the assassin known as Drama.
Now Drama is a classic poster-child for Anti-Hero Syndrome. She's a cool character with a mysterious, shady past. She's ultra-competent - almost literally able to hand the so-called hero his arse on a number of occasions. And because we're teased by the character and only get the briefest glimpse of who she really is, we're left wanting more. And like so many authors before him, Rucka feels obliged to respond.
We come to the plot of the fifth book - Critical Space (the fourth book being more of a detour into the past history of Kodiak's on again/off again sometimes girlfriend's past - so much a detour that it almost isn't a Kodiak book... but I digress...). So what's the plot of this book? In a nut-shell - because a journalist wrote a book based on the events of the third book, other member's of the Ten decide that Drama has come too close to lifting the lid on the secret underworld they live in - and have decided it's time to rub her out. And Drama's response?Disappear into retirement never to be seen again? Nope. Kill the killers before they get to her? Nope. She instead decides to kidnap the latest person Kodiak has been hired to protect in order to barter the kidnapped person's life in exchange for Atticus's services in protecting Drama. That's right - she wants to hire the guy who protected his previous client through mostly sheer luck and who obviously can't protect his current client - witness the successful kidnapping - because he can somehow protect Drama from another member of the Ten??? Hello??? Excuse me??? This belief is based on what??? That he got lucky once??? What rational reason is there other than "Shit, I've gotta work out away to reintroduce this cool character into my story and I've go no idea how. I know - she can hire him as a bodyguard." What possible purpose can Kodiak serve as a bodyguard? Moving target maybe. But Rucka's already demonstrated on multiple occasions that Drama is more skillful, better equipped, better trained and generally a superior athlete. I'm stumped as well...
Leaving aside the basic idea that practically there's no real purpose behind hiring Kodiak as a bodyguard, let's look at the second problem - Drama is a monster. She takes money - sums in the seven figure range - to kill people - quite successfully I might add. She has no qualms about doing so, and doesn't worry about why she's doing this or for what purpose the killing is for. Heck - Atticus himself states on a number of occasions that she's a monster. Yet at the end of the day he agrees to help her - even though he's coerced; even though she's a killer. Seems crazy right? Even Kodiak's own friends point out this discrepancy to him. And yet he ignores them and goes along with this.
And that is my problem with anti-hero syndrome. If you're going to make the bad guy (or gal) out to be a monster, then there has to be some kind of come-uppance to them. If the Hero is in the situationto finish off, or defeat of capture, or punish the bad guy, then that is what the Hero is suppose to do if they are going to stay the hero. Otherwise, the Hero has sold-out all for the sake of keeping the cool anti-hero. Joss Whedon (or more precisely Marti Noxon- the twit who
Of course, that could just be my misguided opinion..
[Listening to: Gomez - In Our Gun - Ballad Of Nice & Easy (2:51)]
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