by Rajan Khanna

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Hello and welcome to the first installment of All Your Base(ment) Belong to Us, a regular column that I will be writing. My name is Rajan, and I'm part of the management here at Your Mom's Basement.

What can you expect from this column? Well, I'm an aspiring writer, a musician, a voracious reader of fiction, often in the speculative genre, and a lover of movies, television and video games. I enjoy talking about the creative process, the nature of storytelling, the blending of genres and much more. This column will touch on all of that and more. My main goal is to be entertaining though I would also like to encourage discussion, specifically on our message board. So, now that introductions have been made, let's get on with the actual column.

Have Some Sympathy, and Some Taste

I've been thinking a lot recently about 'villains'. The word conjures up the costumed criminals of the comics, or perhaps the mustachioed men of the silent movies often tying women to the train tracks. I'm using the term to refer to the antagonists in many stories, the criminals in CSI, Darth Vader, Magneto, Sauron. Too often, however, the villains in stories are 2-dimensional, characters created only to be evil. Characters who do what they do only because the story demands it, not because of any inherent motivation. Motivation can be simple - the desire for money, for example. This motivates many criminals. Revenge is another. Power, still another. But motivation alone is not enough for a villain. That motivation should arise out of their character and personality.

In my opinion, the best villains are those that are somewhat sympathetic to the reader or viewer. Those who we can relate to, or whose motives we can understand. Villains shouldn't be a stereotype, a convenient embodiment of evil for evil's sake; villains should be characters who have motives that bring them into conflict with the hero. Otherwise the stories ring false.

I am crushing your head

Magneto, of the X-Men comics and movies, is a great example of a villain. Magneto's views are not incomprehensible. He is merely looking to protect other mutants like himself from persecution by normal humans. But whereas Professor X and the X-Men believe in peaceful coexistence, Magneto believes in violence as an acceptable solution. Magneto's motivation is understandable even if we disagree with his methods. This creates a sense of tension in the storyline. We can see that Magneto and the X-Men share a goal, but their separate methods create the conflict between them which adds an element of tragedy to the story.

Much as I have love for the Lord of the Rings stories, I think that Sauron, the big villain of that series is not a good example of a good villain. In the Lord of the Rings, Sauron has no real motivation other than a desire to reclaim the ring. Of course he wants to do so to regain his power and take over Middle-Earth, but the reasons for that are never really explained. * Tolkien's work falls into much the same trap that much of high fantasy does - the villains are there to be the "evil enemy" and that's it. We don't even really see Sauron throughout the story. It's really his minions who take the stage as the main enemies, and even then,. They are little more than extensions of him who get more screen or page time.

My precious...

If anyone stands out among the villains of the Lord of the Rings, it would have to be Gollum. Now some may not consider him to be a villain, but he does come into conflict with the heroes of the story. Now Gollum we can understand. He is, in many ways, a tragic, sympathetic creature. Much is made of how the One Ring has warped and abused him. In fact he's like a person in an abusive relationship, damaged by what he loves and yet drawn to it all the same. In the end, it is Gollum and not Sauron that poses the final conflict for Frodo and ultimately determines the final fate of Middle Earth.

I prefer my villains to be less overt, more subtle and understated, if there are even villains at all. I'm currently reading the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny ** and one of the things about the book is that while there are plenty of antagonists, there are no real villains. There are just a bunch of people, all with differing motives that bring them into conflict (or sometimes the same motive). There's no good guy and no bad guy, there are just guys. We tend to relate and sympathize mostly with Corwin, as the viewpoint character and narrator, but even Corwin is not a white-hat wearing hero, and is notably an unreliable narrator. It lends more of a sense of political intrigue and there are no blacks or whites, merely many, many shades of grey.

Pleased to Meet You, Hope You Guess My Name

Sometimes, the supposed villain of a tale will actually seem more sympathetic than the so-called hero. This calls to mind the old fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin. If you remember your fairy tales, Rumpelstiltskin was a little gnomish character who helped out the poor miller's daughter who was expected to spin straw into gold. She was put into this position by her father, who trying to seem more important than he was, claimed that his daughter had this ability.

The king, being a greedy bastard, locked the miller's daughter (let's call her Sally for now) into a room and told her if she didn't spin all the straw into gold she would die. So, facing certain death, Sally is surprised when Rumpelstiltskin (un-named at this point)
appears and offers to do it for her in return for her necklace.

The greedy bastard king, rather than be happy, asks her to do it again. Rumpelstiltskin appears again and does it in return for her ring. Once again, he saves the day (though not without some recompense, as is fair, I think).

The greedy bastard king, still not satisfied, asks her to do it one more time, and this time throws in the added bonus that he'll marry her if she succeeds. Once more Rumpelstiltskin appears and says he'll help her for payment. She has nothing material left to give him so he asks for her firstborn child. What use he has for the child is unmentioned, but perhaps there is one - perhaps he just longs for a child of his own. Sally agrees and so the straw is spun into gold and she doesn't die and marries the greedy bastard king (who threatened to kill her, remember, if she didn't show him the money).

See? They make me look all maniacal...

A year or so passes and Sally, now queen, has a baby (I think it's usually a son in these stories, but the gender doesn't matter). Along comes Rumpy (I take license in abbreviation here) asking for what had been agreed to, Instead of giving him the child, a child born of the greedy bastard who had threatened to kill her, she balks. Now instead of being firm, Rumpy gives her one last chance to get out of it, by guessing his name. She tries and tries to no avail until with a messenger's help she finds it out and proclaims it triumphantly thereby getting out of the deal.

Rumpy, in the end, freaks out and clearly has anger issues (I believe he actually tears himself in two), but it can be said that he is not a bad guy. The fairy tale is typically told from the point of view of Sally, but as you can see, it's not as black and white as you might expect. That's another thing about villains - sometimes the villain depends on who's telling the story. The novel Wicked, for example, by Gregory Maguire, tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, from the Wizard of Oz, from her perspective, where her motivations are explained. And suddenly things change...

What's Puzzling You is the Nature of My Game

I think that's enough for this installment of the column. However, I'd love if people would stop by the message board to discuss your favorite villains, from any genre or medium, or to discuss the column. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Until next time.

* Granted, much of Sauron's background is explained in Tolkien's other texts, but that isn't really part of the LOTR trilogy.

** I'm actually re-reading the books for the fifth or sixth time. They are some of my favorite books ever. I heartily recommend them to anyone.

Please discuss this on the message boards.