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Oct. 16th, 2010 08:30 pmYarn Eyecandy and me talking about the look I'm going for these days with my shop photography!
(I call it "rural shabby-chic" but it means "the cool weird stuff in my front yard in Oklahoma"...)
Roses by Moonlight feature post
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Obsessive Book-Lover's Month of Books Meme
I knew this was going to be a hard one for me.
To be quite frank...I don't pay much attention to whether villains work for me or not.
I do know that I appreciate it when I can completely sympathize with a villain--so a villain that is evil just BECAUSE is...yeah, lame. In the more literal sense of being robbed of power, too.
I also don't really appreciate it when the bad guy is just a sociopath or lunatic. That's not lame automatically, (it can be quite frightening, hello Criminal Minds) but I don't like it--what's the point then? No matter what the victory is, basically you're just taking out a nutter, the equivalent of a man-eating lion. Though a psycho can be done so you do empathize with them and that is both freaky scary and unlame. (HELLO CRIMINAL MINDS.)
Because then there is an emotional victory, and an emotional defeat--on the side of the hero.
Note that this does not mean I find Sauron or Voldemort lame. If someone has become so consumed by their goals as to be a force-of-nature level of villain, it can be done well. Sauron is like a god and his very power and inevitability are becoming part of the world's very face--and his servants, like Saruman are his avatars. Saruman basically *is* his avatar, the revelation of what he is in the very progression from most wise to most deceitful.
And Voldemort is clearly insane from the start, but his rise to power was due to sane people, and his destiny being tied up in the hero's makes this work quite well.
Examples of villains who don't work for me are harder to drum up than ones I can make exceptions for...
it's not like I have those books on my shelf, so no visual cues, either...
...I also dislike when you don't meet the villain behind all the villainy until the very end--if he's been there all along and a mystery, that's great! But then you don't get to connect with them at all.
Eragon is such an obvious, conspicuous flawed book I hesitate to bring it up but it's the only one I can recall feeling quite that blah about. The Blue Sword sorta falls into this category, but the political enemy is not the real source of conflict in the first place--it's more of a romance, so the conflict is square between the two main characters more than anything.
Um. Um.
That's it. I'm out of ideas.
(I call it "rural shabby-chic" but it means "the cool weird stuff in my front yard in Oklahoma"...)
Roses by Moonlight feature post
***
Obsessive Book-Lover's Month of Books Meme
Day 16
Any villains you think are too lame?
I knew this was going to be a hard one for me.
To be quite frank...I don't pay much attention to whether villains work for me or not.
I do know that I appreciate it when I can completely sympathize with a villain--so a villain that is evil just BECAUSE is...yeah, lame. In the more literal sense of being robbed of power, too.
I also don't really appreciate it when the bad guy is just a sociopath or lunatic. That's not lame automatically, (it can be quite frightening, hello Criminal Minds) but I don't like it--what's the point then? No matter what the victory is, basically you're just taking out a nutter, the equivalent of a man-eating lion. Though a psycho can be done so you do empathize with them and that is both freaky scary and unlame. (HELLO CRIMINAL MINDS.)
Because then there is an emotional victory, and an emotional defeat--on the side of the hero.
Note that this does not mean I find Sauron or Voldemort lame. If someone has become so consumed by their goals as to be a force-of-nature level of villain, it can be done well. Sauron is like a god and his very power and inevitability are becoming part of the world's very face--and his servants, like Saruman are his avatars. Saruman basically *is* his avatar, the revelation of what he is in the very progression from most wise to most deceitful.
And Voldemort is clearly insane from the start, but his rise to power was due to sane people, and his destiny being tied up in the hero's makes this work quite well.
Examples of villains who don't work for me are harder to drum up than ones I can make exceptions for...
it's not like I have those books on my shelf, so no visual cues, either...
...I also dislike when you don't meet the villain behind all the villainy until the very end--if he's been there all along and a mystery, that's great! But then you don't get to connect with them at all.
Eragon is such an obvious, conspicuous flawed book I hesitate to bring it up but it's the only one I can recall feeling quite that blah about. The Blue Sword sorta falls into this category, but the political enemy is not the real source of conflict in the first place--it's more of a romance, so the conflict is square between the two main characters more than anything.
Um. Um.
That's it. I'm out of ideas.
