Tropes: Darren Shan, Dangerous Extremist

[Content Note: Drugging, Violence, Reference to Infertility, Ableist Language]

One of these days I'm going to get back to writing nice things so that you all don't stop following me Because Negative, but today is not that day. My only excuse is that annoyance, irritation, and blind searing hatred for random things is more motivating for me to write about than happiness and yummies. (This is probably why my forays into journaling never work.)

So today let's talk about Darren Shan of the popular Cirque Du Freak series. And here are your spoilers, courtesy of Wikipedia:

In the first trilogy, known as Vampire Blood or The Vampire's Assistant, Darren learns about and comes to accept his vampirism.

  • In Book One, Cirque du Freak, Mr. Crepsley makes Darren a half-vampire in return for saving the life of one of Darren's best friends called Steve Leonard.
  • In Book Two, The Vampire's Assistant, Crepsley notes that Darren is quite lonely and brings him back to the freak show, where he befriends a snake-boy, Evra Von, and a human, Sam Grest.
  • In Book Three, Tunnels of Blood, Crepsley brings Darren Shan and Evra Von to his hometown, where one of the vampires' enemies, a Vampaneze named Murlough, is murdering innocent people.

So now let's get some Ana-specific stuff out of the way first. One, I came to this series because a Real Life Person recommended it and I enjoyed the movie well enough for a YA novel spin-off. Two, I procured the first three books from the library and told myself I'd read them all before deciding whether or not to continue reading the series. (Sort of a "give it a fair chance" thing.) Three, I wholeheartedly think that Darren Shan (the character, not the author, and all references to "Darren Shan" in this post will be at the character) is the Mary Sue-ist of Mary Sues, the angstiest of the angsty, and intensely irritating to a degree I did not think was possible for fictional characters to achieve with me anymore. To put it in perspective: Darren Shan is the teenager that makes me think that being infertile is maybe not such a bad thing.

I never thought I'd type that sentence.

I mention all the above as fair warning that if you love Darren Shan more than you love peanut butter or jelly or peanut butter and jelly, you very possibly may not enjoy this post. I want to be clear, though, that I totally don't judge you for your love of Darren Shan, it's just that I can't personally share it because of personal preference. And I value differences of opinion, and I think variety is the spice of life, and THIS POST IS NOT INTENDED TO JUDGE YOU. I swear. Really.

Now let's talk about how much I hate Darren Shan.

Actually, let's not, because that post would be about eighty internet pages long. I hate that Darren Shan considers himself a Great Big Victim because he chose to steal the most poisonous spider on earth from a vampire that he chose to threaten and blackmail into silence (and in the process implicated his friend Steve as a Person of Interest by leaving a note saying, essentially, "It totally wasn't Steve who stole your spider and is now blackmailing you. It's someone else, honest."); then let the most poisonous spider on earth live in his closet on the assumption that it wouldn't escape and kill his unwitting mother, father, and/or sister; then decided to let the spider crawl all over his friend Steve's face whilst controlling the spider via hypnotic trance telepathy; then refused to let anyone know about the spider when Steve was bitten and the doctors didn't know how to cure Steve because if Darren came forward with "yo, I found this spider and it bit Steve" then Darren might get in trouble; then Darren went to the vampire to ask the vampire to risk his life and use a rare antidote to save Steve, and the vampire demanded that the antidote be paid for with a life of half-vampire servitude from Darren.

YES, CLEARLY DARREN IS AN INNOCENT VICTIM HERE. Ugh. Not a good way for me to start a series, especially not when the series bangs on and on about what a terrible gorram tragedy Darren's life is and how evil and awful Mr. Crepsley (the vampire) is for having demonstrated that actions have serious life-altering consequences, and how much Darren hates-hates-hates the guy who has been nothing but kind and sympathetic and polite and gentle with him despite all the theft and blackmail and betrayal and I hate you you're not my real dad teenage rebellious angst, and also Darren totally hates the mean spider forevers because everything is all that horrible spider's fault. Seriously, this is -- by my estimation -- about 50% of the first three novels. IT GETS OLD VERY FAST.

All this can be chalked up to the stereotypical melodramatic teenage angst that so many adult writers feel compelled to distill into their YA novels, but things take a disturbing turn in the third book, "Tunnels of Blood". As noted above, Mr. Crepsley takes Darren and Evra to his hometown, where he (Mr. Crepsley) starts stalking the streets moodily at night and becoming withdrawn and uncommunicative. In Chapter 6, Darren notes that Mr. Crepsley "look[s] terrible" and clearly hasn't fed recently. (The vampires in this series feed in small doses from humans, taking a little from the wrists or legs and then healing the human so that they don't die from blood loss.) But then -- DUN DUN DUN!!! -- in Chapter 9, it is revealed on the local news channel that six murder victims have been found in town, all drained of blood.

Well! Of course Mr. Crepsley must be the killer. I mean, he and Darren have traveled together for a year and a half now, and Mr. Crespley has repeatedly explained how important it is to never kill a human, how to handle himself so that Darren never accidentally kills a human, and his religious beliefs about how paradise can only be achieved by never taking life unnecessarily. Also, they live in a world where vampires and other supernatural phenomena are common to the point of being mundane, with a supernatural being around every corner. So clearly, when presented with six murder victims drained of blood, the only possible suspect is Mr. Crepsley.

And you know what? Fine. Really. I've done the Ridiculously Predictable YA circuit before and I'll do it again. This is a road that I've traveled more times than I'd like to count, and it's a road that smells of cow turds and eggy farts, but it's not like jumping to ridiculous unsupported conclusions isn't a time-honored literary tradition. I'll play along...

...up until Darren Shan declares himself freaking Judge, Jury, and Executioner and literally jumps on Mr. Crepsley wielding a rusty knife and fully determined to murder him in cold blood because he totes must be the killer! 

Oh. My. God.

Remember when the road to Unsupported Conclusions Land involved nonsensical arguments about, I dunno, flowers being in the trash? But not so for Darren Shan; he leaps straight to the stabbity. A very well-adjusted young man, I must say. Anyway, at the last moment, the Real Killer bounces out of the shadows -- we know he's Evil because he's fat and has a flushed face, so how could he not be, really? -- and stops Darren from killing Mr. Crepsley for reasons that make no sense whatsoever, and the truth comes out that Darren is a dangerous vigilante extremist asshole for making unsupported assumptions about a guy he's known for over a year now. And now we're going to have The Chewing Out moment where the older, wiser mentor points out Darren's horrible character flaw and Darren learns that he needs to not do this in the future, right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO.

No, we do not chastise the Mary Sue. That would be silly. You are silly to think that would happen.

“You thought I was a murderer?” Mr. Crepsley roared. I nodded glumly. “You are even dumber than I thought! Do you have so little faith in me that you —”

“What else was I supposed to think?” I cried. “You never tell me anything. You disappeared into the city every night, not saying a thing about where you were going or what you were doing. What was I supposed to think when I heard six people had been found drained of their blood?”

Mr. Crepsley looked startled, then thoughtful. Finally he nodded wearily. “You are right.” He sighed. “One must show trust in order to be trusted. I wished to spare you the gory details. I should not have. This is my fault.”

I. You. What. *headdesk*

THIS IS MR. CREPSELY'S FAULT. Like all the things, really. It's Mr. Crepsley's fault that Darren stole his spider, nearly got someone killed, and chose to turn into a half-vampire rather than give up the spider to the doctors in the first place and possibly Get In Trouble. And it's Mr. Crepsley's fault that because he didn't tell Darren every single thought that crosses his mind so that Darren decided murder was the best response to a vague unsupported suspicion that something funny might be going on. Darren is blameless for choosing murder over, say, confronting Mr. Crepsley or going back to the Cirque to get help from Mr. Tall or alerting the authorities or anything other than murder. No blame for Darren the would-be vigilante killer!

But, you know what, fine. Mr. Crepsley is a vampire, after all, and maybe Darren was right to be suspicious. He didn't have a lot of good options available to him, and he was trying to save people's lives, and he's just a kid, so despite the you are totally blameless fawning in text, maybe we can cut him some slack and assume that he's learned that he doesn't have the right to decide who lives and who dies. Right?

LOL, UR OPTIMISM.

The Bad Guy captures Darren's friend Evra and announces his intention to kill the boy. Darren needs to lead the Bad Guy into an ambush, so he manages to get captured by the Bad Guy and then offers a trade: the life of Evra for the life of Darren's local-unsuspecting-human girlfriend. Darren will lead the Bad Guy to Debbie's house and will let the Bad Guy feed on her, after which Evra will be set free. Classic hostage exchange, really.

But here's the thing: vampires have kick-ass senses. They can tell how many heartbeats are in the house, whether or not people are breathing, and every little scent and smell. (Spoiler: Actually, they totally can't, Because Plot Contrivance, but we're not supposed to notice.) So in order for all this to actually work, what do they do? Does the unexplainedly rich Mr. Crepsley rent out a house and hire some actors to 'sleep' there in order to make the trap realistic? Of course not!

No, what they do is this: Darren goes to Christmas dinner and brings a bottle of wine as a present. He then drugs every person in the house with the wine, arranges them unknowingly in their beds, and brings the Bad Guy back with him to their house. AND THEN HE BRAGS TO US ABOUT HOW THIS PLAN MAKES HIM A GOOD PERSON.

Murlough could have beaten Mr. Crepsley. If he had, all six of us would have died: Mr. Crepsley, me and Evra, Debbie, Donna, and Jesse.

It had been a dangerous gamble — and unfair to the Hemlocks, who knew nothing of their role in the deadly game — but sometimes you have to take chances. Was it wise to risk five lives for the sake of one? Probably not. But it was human. If I’d learned one thing from my encounter with the crazy vampaneze, it was that even the undead could be human. We had to be — without a touch of humanity, we’d be like Murlough, nothing more than bloodthirsty monsters of the night.

OMGWTFBBQ.

This isn't a "character flaw" included to round out a protagonist into something flawed and realistic. It literally can't be; the placement and verbiage makes that impossible. When something is celebrated as the climax of the book and the proof of your character's "humanity" and the thing that separates him from the horrible ravening murderous bad guys, then it is not a character flaw. It is a something the reader is supposed to agree with. And the idea that I'm supposed to think this is awesome and sweet and wonderful freaks me out.

Because oh-my-god, NO. I mean, there were people who thought Katniss drugging Peeta in The Hunger Games was problematic, and though I personally thought it was well-handled I do absolutely see their point. But this is worlds beyond that; this is a young man being so perfectly convinced of his own moral superiority and his perfect planning capabilities and the rightness of his cause that he thinks absolutely nothing of drugging innocent people who know nothing of the situation and using them as bait in order to further Darren's personal agendas.

Also: Remember how I said the whole thing was bullshit because of plot contrivance? They put a living, drugged goat from the zoo in Debbie's bed, smeared with Debbie's blood to "mislead Murlough's sense of smell". So now there are four heartbeats in the house, one of which is breathing entirely wrong to be a human, and also there is the all-pervading stench of goat in the bedroom which the vampire with heightened senses totally didn't detect. So it clearly wasn't necessary for Debbie and her parents to be in the house at all for this to work and they could have made a go with it just fine with a couple more pieces of livestock.

Endangering innocent humans was just a perk!

The entire night had been planned. The wine I brought for dinner? I drugged it when I was in the kitchen. I added one of Mr. Crepsley’s potions to the wine, a tasteless little concoction that knocked everybody out within ten minutes. They’d be asleep for several more hours yet, and wake with sore heads, but otherwise no ill effects.

I smiled as I wondered what they’d think when they woke in bed, fully dressed, with no memories of the previous night. It would be a mystery, one they’d never solve.

Hahahahaha, Darren Shan, folks! Dangerous extremist utterly convinced that everyone around him are just little puppets in his all-knowing and all-powerful hands. CHEER FOR THE PROTAGONIST.

This kid? He is freaking terrifying. The fact that apparently the author doesn't want us to seem him that way just squicks me out even worse.

82 comments:

CantsOnFire said...

Darren Shan, Darren Shan,
doin' the things
a sociopath can ...
evr'ybody loves
Darren Shan!

SherryH said...

Oh, ugh. I'll tell you what - you can look at it as Being Negative if you want to. I'll read your deconstruction and think of it as "Ana reads this muck so I don't have to."

Of course, I have two teenagers (19 and nearly 18) so I'm already so over the "nothing is ever my fault and the world is so mean to me" - but I don't think I'd get on with Darren Shan at all... Bleah.

depizan said...

I...words...what...arblegarble...

The only way this seems remotely salvageable is if Darren Shan is meant to be a villain protagonist. But it really doesn't appear that that's the case (I checked wikipedia for a summary of the last book of the series and no...he doesn't seem to be a villain protagonist).

What is it with young adult fantasy and authors not realizing their characters have gone to the Dark Side? (Or possibly started there.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Bahahaha, this. It's funny, though, I didn't like angst even when I was a teenager. I actually have a higher tolerance for it now, I don't know why.

I do recommend the movie, though. Mr. Crepsley is played by That Guy who was in Chicago and Talladega Nights and Walk Hard. I love That Guy.

And the movie makers basically jettisoned everything from the books and rewrote it all.

bekabot said...

"It had been a dangerous gamble — and unfair to the Hemlocks, who knew nothing of their role in the deadly game — but sometimes you have to take chances. Was it wise to risk five lives for the sake of one? Probably not. But it was human. If I’d learned one thing from my encounter with the crazy vampaneze, it was that even the undead could be human. We had to be — without a touch of humanity, we’d be like Murlough, nothing more than bloodthirsty monsters of the night."

Does "human" equal "stupid"? If so, this train of thought makes sense; if not, not so much.

"I smiled as I wondered what they’d think when they woke in bed, fully dressed, with no memories of the previous night. It would be a mystery, one they’d never solve."

They'll never solve it if they're as dumb as you, son, but that isn't a given. Don't count on it.

Ana Mardoll said...

Yeah, that makes conversations REALLY difficult about the book. Thank you for being conscientious with the edit.

Lonespark said...

Do you mean John C. Reilly? He is boss.

Ana Mardoll said...

Seriously. (This book made Bella Swan look like a humanitarian.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Yes!

The whole movie is basically Ana going in as all "I'm so over Sad Panda Vampires" and John Reilly being all "what about MY Sad Panda Vampire?" and Ana going "omg forgle gawk" because John Reilly is that awesome.

Makabit said...

Goat? Doesn't work. Too small. A goat's normal temperature is 102-103 Fahrenheit, substantially higher than a human's, although it could, I guess be a human running a high fever. The pulse rate is about the same. But I'm not even a vampire, and I'm gonna guess that a goat smeared with human blood smells like a goat smeared with human blood, not like a human. I'm not even dead, and I can smell a goat. They smell like goats.

Aidan Bird said...

And this is why I stopped reading the series. Though I couldn't get through the first book, so it's impressive you read the first three. I just... can't understand those that love Darren Shan. They must see something that I don't, which is fine. Just don't really get it.

depizan said...

This is an unfortunate implications thing, I hope, but "Vampaneze" really bothers me. I get that the author wanted different types of vampires, but to give the evil ones a name that seems uncomfortably like a spin on, oh, say Chinese and/or Japanese strikes me as a terrible, terrible idea. Perhaps he didn't even notice it, but I can't seem to unsee it.

JonathanPelikan said...

"One of these days I'm going to get back to writing nice things so that you all don't stop following me Because Negative,"

Honestly that is one of the reasons I don't check back here quite as often in recent months, but I have to say, that's entirely on me and my own mentality and mental outlook and whatnot and not a 'Cheer Up, Bby' from me to you or anything.

"My only excuse is that annoyance, irritation, and blind searing hatred for random things is more motivating for me to write about than happiness and yummies. (This is probably why my forays into journaling never work.)"

I know that feel all to well.

You want to tear something a new metaphorical asshole, you've certainly got the mental tools to get it done impressively well, and I'll read the hell out of it. Always did think you were going too easy on Twilight (let that sink in a bit, heh)

Yes, I did just say Negative Is Driving Me Awaaaaaay and Yay Angry Deconstructions And Reviews. I contain multitudes.Well the things that kind of make me take a step back are more in the personally negative than in the 'here's why your work sucks' which is pretty well always excellently done.

Never heard about Darren Shan before except an offhand mention in a reading of one of those horrible goffick Harry Potter 'fan'fictions, and I thought he was some obscure or expanded-universe HP character. Oh boy. I'm in for a... treat?

Randall M said...

So Darren Shan the character is angstier and mary-sueier than Lestat deLioncourt? Non, ce n'est pas possible! (I apologize for the lousy french)

Thomas Keyton said...

Oh, Darren Shan and your self-obsessed whining and showing no signs of maturity even in adulthood with actual responsibilities and the weird weird ideas about what genetic engineering could conceivably do and the vampire names (as far as I can tell) not deriving from real languages despite vampires being converted not born and not even having their own language.

Spoilers for the last book:

He actually does have a "what have I done" moment at the end related to one of the flaws you point out, Ana, but it doesn't really affect anything because one of the side characters manipulates him into rewriting history and undoing everything we've read about for twelve books.

And the prose. The prose.

Gelliebean said...

Aw, here I was really hoping there was a vampire-chimpanzee running around somewhere. At least, that's what the name "vampaneze" made me think of first thing.

Aspermoth said...

(I'm FalconWhitaker from Twitter, by the way – hi!) I think you've raised a lot of good points here, despite the fact that I am a big Shan fan and really like the Saga. I do have some counterpoints, though!

Considering that Darren is supposed to be about twelve, I think, the fact that he blames other people for his own stupid actions is perhaps understandable. However, I can see how it could become annoying pretty quickly. It didn't bother me, but different things for different people and all that.

Mr Crepsley taking all the blame onto himself makes more sense if you read the prequel series, "The Saga of Larten Crepsley": guilt and self-blame are pretty strong character traits for him. However, I do admit that this is possibly stretching the author's original intent at least a little bit, and I also agree that something should have indicated that the way Darren behaved was Not Good.

I never thought about the goat-sensing thing. That is a rather outstanding plot-hole, there. Oops.

But, of course, the biggest thing is Darren himself. Encrypted because it spoils the big twist ending of the series: jr svaq bhg arne gur raq gung Qneera vf gur fba bs Qrf Gval, jub vf vaqrfpevonoyl rivy. V qba'g xabj vs jevgre!Qneera unq cynaarq vg sebz gur fgneg, ohg guvf pbhyq or na rneyl uvag gung Qneera vf zber guna ur nccrnef. Ur pbzrf npebff nf fpnel orpnhfr ur'f fhccbfrq gb: ur'f n jrr ovg rivy. Be nygreangviryl, jevgre!Qneera jnf sbphffrq zber ba "Guvf vf pbby npgvba fghss, jbb-ubb!" naq qvqa'g guvax gung zbfg crbcyr qba'g graq gb uhag qbja gurve zragbef jvgu ehfgl xavirf vafgrnq bs gnyxvat gb gurz svefg.

But hey, just because I still like the series despite its flaw doesn't mean that you've got to love it, and just because I see different things in it doesn't mean the things you see aren't there and vice versa. It's nice to find out new things about a series you like, I think, even if those things are problematic, because the more that problematic things are revealed to you, the easier they are to find. :)

depizan said...

Bwahahaha!

I have no idea why I find the idea of a vampire chimpanzee hilarious, but I do.

Ana Mardoll said...

To clarify: I have no problem worth Darren being evil. I have a problem with the narrative not calling it out. If we're truly to see his reckless endangerment of the Hemlocks as wrong (and foreshadowing of evilness), then someone must call it out. Evra could have been easily utilized for this, but wasn't.

To me, if a narrative treats something Evil as Good, with no indication that we should think otherwise, there is a problem with the narrative. There may or may not be a problem with the character, but that's secondary to the narrative problem. Imho.

GeniusLemur said...

A vampire consumed with guilt and self-loathing? What an innovative characterization!

Ivy Sylvan said...

I read the entire series; they only get worse as you go. The first... five? I think? were pretty much right up my alley when I read them in my late teens, but I wasn't very widely- or well-read, so my tastes were a bit lacking. Still, even my nineteen year old self looked at the sixth book and went "What?"

(CN: Spoilers below)

In the sixth book, instead of being punished by the vampire court--he was supposed to be executed and fled--they reward him and make him a vampire prince. The series just gets weirder from there, more abstract and strange and logic-bending. Even with the strangeness, though, it was easy for even me to call every plot twist from just a few pages in. I finished the series just because I hate to leave something half-done. I really wish I hadn't.

depizan said...

I was going to say that writing in first person might make it harder to call out as wrong actions the viewpoint character takes... but then it occurred to me that there are third person works that have just as much trouble. (As well as first person narration doing nothing to keep other characters from saying "What the hell?")

There's a whole ton of fiction that seems oblivious to having questionable heroes. Sometimes it seems to be straight up values dissonance (the author really does think that the hero is being heroic, though some chunk of the audience is now staring at the work in horror), sometimes I think it's the creator thinking that the problem is so obvious there's no point in calling it out (could explain the Clone Wars series's issues), sometimes it appears that the author somehow has no idea what they've written (Fifty Shades of Grey leaps to mind here.).

What I really don't get is how no one catches these things before they get published. I suppose it's a matter of their not being editors any more. *sigh*

theKatriarch said...

Yes, I thought vampire chimpanzee too! *high five* But I think I was transposing a couple of letters and thought it was vampanzee. Which I wish it was.

So what the heck IS a vampaneze?

Isator Levi said...

Hmmm.

I very much like the Darren Shan series (although I read it some time ago), so I'll need to mull some of this over for a while and try to come up with words to express my opinion and perspective.

But something I'll say from the outset is... calling Darren a teenager just feels really weird to me, because I got the impression from the early books that he's about ten.

The books also being fairly explicit in that the reduced aging of vampires and half-vampires also restricts their mental and emotional development; Darren is going to look and think like a ten year old for... a few decades, if I recall.

Making a vampire out of young children is also something I recall as being called out as a discouraged thing.

I have a recollection of feeling that the narrative wasn't necessarily framed in a manner that meant we were supposed to take our main character as mature and thoughtful.

Isator Levi said...

Well, yes, but...

Gur guvat ur jnf fhccbfrq gb or "chavfurq" sbe jnf univat n sevraq vagreirar va uvf cbvagyrffyl qnatrebhf vavgvngvba evghny gung ur'q orra sbeprq vagb gnxvat cneg va.

Naq ol "univat n sevraq", V zrna gur sevraq vagreirvavat bs uvf bja nppbeq, abg orvat nfxrq.

Naq gur guvat ur'f orvat erjneqrq sbe vf nyregvat gurz gb n genvgbe jub jnf gelvat gb yrnq gurz vagb n znffnper.

I think those details frame it a bit differently.

Isator Levi said...

Vampaneze is the term the series uses for the breakaway sect of vampires who believe that it's more right and proper to drain all of the blood when feeding from humans.

They're later developed into having significant proclivities against being indiscriminate and violent in the course of this, as well as their feedings being far more infrequent.

theKatriarch said...

Thanks :) Out of curiosity, do they call themselves that or do only the good, non-killing vampires call them that? I would have guessed that they would try to posit themselves as the "real" vampires and have an insulting name for the ones who don't kill humans.

Ana Mardoll said...

It looks like his age is not mentioned in the book. In the movie, the actor is 17 and he's pretty clearly (imho) in high school.

If he *is* ten, then ... a lot of the third book doesn't make a lot of sense. The girlfriendy stuff feels at *least* 13 to me, especially with them out and about town (shopping, movies, taxi cabs, etc.) late into the night with the girl's parents being cool about it all.

(He also notes in Book 1 that the soccer team has been ravaged by boys wanting to suddenly hang out with their girlfriends. That says "puberty" to me.)

So I may well be wrong about his age -- it wouldn't be the first time a kid in YA read "puberty" to me but was 8 or wev by Word of God -- but that's why I said what I said. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

Good point, but I think there's a lot of ways to call out problematic actions in first-person if an author wants to. (We should have a writer's exercise!)

1. Have Narrator call it out: In this case, instead of CROWING about how human it makes him, Darren could admit that it was hella risky and ambiguously immoral, but that he was driven by desperation and didn't know what else to do.

2. Have Alternate Character call it out: In this case, Crepsley could point out nonchalantly that what Darren did was hella risky and that, had he miscalculated, he'd be responsible for as many deaths as he (previously) was angsting over thinking that Crepsley had killed. Or Evra could react with outrage and state that saving his life wasn't worth victimizing those people, even if Darren had a plan.

3. Have Victim call it out: In this case, Debbie could wake up and piece together that Something Happened (for fuck's sake, they eviscerated the vampaneze in her room. There's blood on the carpet. These vampires don't "ash". PLOT HOLES EVERYWHERE.) and call out Darren for being an asshat.

Of course, ALL OF THESE will knock the precious Mary Sue off hir precious high horse. But they're not HARD to employ, in my opinion. That many authors forget/refuse to do so strikes me as ... telling. As an author, when one of your characters is Behaving Badly, I generally* want my audience to know that I don't condone that.

* There are exceptions for character flavor, of course. Every book does not need to be a PSA on the evils of cheating at homework or the perils of second-hand smoke. But these things are not like This Thing Here.

depizan said...

4. Have Questionable Protagonist suffer some type of consequences from hir actions. Though that's potentially covered under 3. as well.

Though, whut. They left her room looking like a murder scene and they think there will be no fall out from this? The first thing any normal family would do if they woke up in their clothing, with their daughter's room looking like a murder scene, and no memory of the night before is call the police. Well, okay, first they'd freak and then they'd call the police, but the point still stands.

Oh, wait, I've got another:

5. Have characters already established to be bad or immoral approve of their actions.

Ana Mardoll said...

5. Ah, yes, the OOTS Belkar Gambit: "Your approval fills me with shame."

Heh.

rikalous said...

I have it in my head from somewhere that chimpanzees can be vicious, so I'd file it with wereswans in the "Giggle after fleeing in terror" box.

Dragoness Eclectic said...

"You would make a good Dalek".

Makabit said...

Chimps are strong, much stronger than humans, smart as hell, and can be pretty damn mean if they feel like it. Most of our less charming characteristics as a species are shared with chimps, who are commonly believed to be our closest genetic relations.

I would not want to mess with a vampanzee.

I once read a charming article by a researcher who worked with primates. He said you can think of the differences between three species of apes like this:

If you give a gorilla a screwdriver, she will instantly recoil in horror. "OMG, it's going to hurt me!" Once reassured, she will try to eat it. Failing that, she will lose interest.

If you give an orangutan a screwdriver, she will have a ball. She will play games with it. She will use it to eat. She will dig holes. It will be used for everything except what a screwdriver is for.

If you give a chimpanzee a screwdriver, she will play with it briefly, then 'lose' it. When you leave for the night, she will begin to dismantle the cage.

Ivy Sylvan said...

(CN: mild spoilers)

I'll agree that the circumstances suck, and that they probably should have panned the practice a LONG time ago, being "civilized" and all. But the rule is the rule, and instead of changing the rule or acknowledging, hey, this rule is really asinine, they just make him the special snowflake exception. I might react differently to it if I read the books again, but at 19, the whole thing just made me gag.

Snoof said...

Actually, that's last one is orangs. You give a screwdriver to a chimp, they'll bash it against a rock, then stab someone with it.

Lonespark said...

Vampaneze first made me think of Italian food, then chimpanzees.

Aspermoth said...

Ah, I see. Yes, that does make a lot of sense. And you're right: Evra, being outside vampire culture, would have been the perfect one to pull a "What the hell, hero?!" moment.

Anthony Rosa said...

Ha, the fact that you are aware of the OOTS Belkar Gambit fills me with approval!

...hopefully MY approval does not fill you with shame, lol!

Ikkin said...

5. Have characters already established to be bad or immoral approve of their actions.

Bonus points if Questionable Protagonist recognizes they have no real defense against this; major point deduction if Questionable Protagonist is able to successfully defend against it.

Here's another related option:

6. Create a villainous foil to Questionable Protagonist whose own behavior shares the same problems with QP's, then point out the parallels between them (possibly in the form of 5.).

Isator Levi said...

The thing is that, as the series goes on, the vampaneze are given more nuance in a manner that makes them look less like "evil" vampires, at least in the eyes of the other vampires. It appears to be widely looked upon by the vampires as mostly an extreme lifestyle choice; kind of like a reverse veganism, if you will. Likewise, the vampaneze themselves don't generally look on their estranged cousins as lesser, just as having less investment in the more spiritualised relevence of consuming human blood (since the series also gives vampires the power to contain the memories and personality of those they fully drink from; vampires view this as an intimate gesture for close friends, vampaneze see it as an honour to confer on a wide swathe of humanity).

The series actually ends with moves to reconciliation between the two clans, on the basis that their conflict was engineered by an external godlike provacateur.

Isator Levi said...

"(He also notes in Book 1 that the soccer team has been ravaged by boys wanting to suddenly hang out with their girlfriends. That says "puberty" to me.)"

I don't know, I have vague recollections of kids around eleven and twelve starting to edge into the idea of boyfriend and girlfriend, even before proper puberty started setting in.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing; the author is an Irish man, so maybe his and my perspective on that would be different from the American one.

I think there's also a few points in the series where some numbers are given, and I did the math.

"If he *is* ten, then ... a lot of the third book doesn't make a lot of sense. The girlfriendy stuff feels at *least* 13 to me, especially with them out and about town (shopping, movies, taxi cabs, etc.) late into the night with the girl's parents being cool about it all."

That's something where I think it plays in at being chronologically 13, but still kind of biologically/psychologically stuck at ten, which creates complications in how he relates to non-vampires.

In a later book, Evra is definitely in the late stages of teenage, while Darren (who should chronologically be the same age), is still about the same person (and this is something fairly explicitly due to the slowed down vampiric aging).

Isator Levi said...

I can't edit, so I'll also say here that the character in the movie is definitely aged up significantly.

Isator Levi said...

I view there as being another matter to it.

I think that a lot of how characters can be taken can be conveyed in the framing and context. In a narrative framing where it's apparent that we're supposed to feel, at least basically, that the characters or setting are driving towards good things, then occasions where they do things that are bad should be called out, either by the condemnation of other characters or causative consequences, or something. Failure to do so suggests bad writing, or bad perspective from the author.

In a framing and context in which it's a bad world, filled with bad people driving towards bad things, I feel this is less necessary. The framing makes it implicit that we're not supposed to view these things in a good light; the absence of characters who condemn, or consequences that harm, contribute to this framing.

The world of the Darren Shan series, as I see it, is a grim, macabre unpleasant place, where things are driven by horrific forces that favour people who will make bad choices without it ever really seeming to them that they were bad choices (and it's nothing compared to Darren Shan's other series, the Demonata). It doesn't look to me like a setting interested in holding up its characters in a good light, and also refrains from knocking them down. It does not condone or condemn, it merely depicts this horrible world and the people existing within it.

That's why I always viewed it as an effective horror series.

(As a similar example, I'd look at a film like Inglorious Basterds, where the characters are never really punished or condemned for the horrible things that they do, but the framing makes it clear that they're as much monsters as the Nazis they kill, and it's all part of the idea that war makes monsters of all involved in it, and something like, say, 24, where even if Jack Bauer's monstrous violation of legality and human rights is never referred to within the narrative as heroic and laudable, the framing is clearly lionizing his actions.)

Isator Levi said...

I'll also admit, on this point, that such framing obviously won't create stories that are to everybody's tastes. I just think the framing distinguishes it from a story where the writer fails to understand implications of what he depicts, or is depicting something ... whatever the anotnym to "laudable" is, or a story in which the main character succeeding like that makes them a Mary Sue (it's not that he's faultless, it's a world where such faults can have no repurcussions, because it's so grim).

chris the cynic said...

I have it in my head from somewhere that chimpanzees can be vicious

Paraphrase-quoted from memory:

"Wait, you were planning to make a game preserve with animals genetically engineered to be extra cunning/viscous/hard to hunt so that the richest and most arrogant hunters would come here and pay you for a challenge they literally could not get anywhere on earth AND YOU CHOSE CHIMPS AS THE ANIMAL?"

*Shakes head* "The chimpanzees were just the test animal." Pause. "There were over eighty species of game animal on this island when I left." (Note that at this point everyone knows that when he left was when he and the few other survivors ran like hell to avoid being killed off.)

*everyone is silent for a long time*

quietly, fearfully: "Did the chimps kill them all?"

"I don't see them. Do you?"

Ana Mardoll said...

What you are saying here does not make sense to me.

The framing is NOT "implicit that we're not supposed to view these things in a good light." It actually EXPLICITLY states that playing Vampire Roulette with the Hemlocks' lives was the good thing to do. Not just the best choice available, but the ONE THING that separates the good guys from the bad guys. It doesn't get more explicit that that.

Now, if Darren is meant to be an unreliable narrator, that's a point for consideration, but we can't just call Unreliable Narrator when convenient. A UN must be set up within text, via the means fleshed out here with depizan and the others.

Without that, implicit can't win out over explicit, because the author hasn't used literary convention to mark the explicit as unreliable.

Will Wildman said...

I'm not sure it would particularly improve anything if it was supposed to be canonically indicated that Darren is a bit evil because uvf sngure jnf rivy naq zbenyvgl vf trargvp naq lbh pna'g envfr crbcyr gb or orggre guna gur fgbpx gurl jrer obea sebz qbagpunxabj.

Ana Mardoll said...

(Also, i'm confused by the statement that the narrative does not condemn any actions. Condemning is 70% of Darren's inner monologue, by my estimate. This whole book is about him executing Mr. Crepsley for his crimes against humanity. How is the narrative not interested in condemnation? Is there a narrative other than the first person narrative in this conversation? Perhaps you mean "sub-text"? I'm just really confused.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Is that a movie? Please say it is.

chris the cynic said...

It's sort of a movie. You see, I remembered wrong. The Baboons were the test animal. No chimps in the movie. Major screw up on my part. (It's been a LONG time since I saw it.)

Interestingly I got it right when I mentioned it talking about an idea for a series of creature movies but that's probably because I had to look it up because Amazon doesn't carry it. (Who ever heard of a movie Amazon doesn't carry?) so my usual method of linking to things didn't work and I was forced to search the internet finally discovering that I did actually know the name, Amazon just doesn't have it.

The movie is Primal Force, and it starred Ron Pearlman and a bunch of people I've never heard of.

Ana Mardoll said...

Well I do like Ron Perlman...

chris the cynic said...

Who doesn't? (Note, rhetorical question, I am aware that there are probably people who don't.)

Random Ron Perlman related tidbit. My father's father and his partner* saw a movie and loved it so much that they went back to see it in theaters again. This is apparently extremely rare for them, possibly to the point of being unheard of. My father, who has probably classed his father in the "Old People" category since before he was my age asked what this movie they loved so much was expecting it to be an "old person movie".

It was Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

-

* I think this has become a euphemism for same sex partner but in this case I'm just using it because I don't know their marital status. They're certainly together in the way that would make the casual onlooker assume that they're married, but I don't actually remember there being a wedding or anything like that so it could be just that she's his live-in girlfriend. And I feel kind of awkward asking because if they did get married and I missed it (which is completely plausible) then that probably reflects poorly on me and might hurt their feelings.

And for some reason it has never occurred to me until this moment that I could just try to glance to see if they have wedding rings at a time when we're together.

depizan said...

That would be the opposite of helpful. But I hate that trope with a passion.

depizan said...

(As a similar example, I'd look at a film like Inglorious Basterds, where the characters are never really punished or condemned for the horrible things that they do, but the framing makes it clear that they're as much monsters as the Nazis they kill, and it's all part of the idea that war makes monsters of all involved in it, and something like, say, 24, where even if Jack Bauer's monstrous violation of legality and human rights is never referred to within the narrative as heroic and laudable, the framing is clearly lionizing his actions.)

I think this is easiest in film/TV and hardest in a book with first person narration. Movies and TV give so many additional ways to sway the audience - music, camera angles, juxtapositions, facial expressions (without having to explicitly call them out as you would in text), lighting, tone of voice, the list goes on and on.

Also, I'm not sure that simply placing it in a bad world full of bad people who do bad things necessarily does anything to the question of whether we're supposed to agree with the main character, or whether they're a reliable narrator.

Ikkin said...

I think this is easiest in film/TV and hardest in a book with first person narration. Movies and TV give so many additional ways to sway the audience - music, camera angles, juxtapositions, facial expressions (without having to explicitly call them out as you would in text), lighting, tone of voice, the list goes on and on.

First person narration has its own advantages, though, in that you can really dig into your Questionable Protagonist's mind and show how uncomfortable and alien their priorities and thought processes really are. A mindset of desperation or ruthless calculation, shown starkly, will likely provide indictment enough on its own; an ethically-grounded reader can be expected to judge the narrator as immoral if said narrator is obsessively focused on their goal at the expense of all else or explicitly treats other people as things without any self-justification.

The problem lies in the authorial tendency towards justification of the protagonist, not in the protagonist's tendency to self-justify. Most Questionable Protagonists, as written, either shouldn't self-justify or should self-justify in a much less comfortable, more incoherent way. Darren Shan wants us to think that his "dangerous gamble" was rooted in his human desire to protect the people he cares about, but fails to show the concern for everyone involved that he ought to be overcome with if he really thinks his actions are awful-but-necessary. He doesn't show the utter confidence of someone who's entirely sure they're doing the right thing or the amoral coldness of the sort of person who honestly sees nothing wrong with toying with people's lives or the vanity of someone who cares more about appearing to be good than about other people, either. Instead, his actions are justified at the cost of inconsistent characterization -- the narration tells of concern it fails to show, but doesn't present this as a lie.

...or, in other words, it's completely possible to write a Bad People In A Bad World story in first person. You just have to be committed to letting your protagonist look bad where appropriate instead of running interference for them.

depizan said...

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible. Just a lot more difficult. In addition to the running interference for your protagonist problem, there's also the fact that first person puts the reader in the head of the narrator to a degree that can either get the reader to identify too much with them (which can be used to great effect, mind) or just get the reader to put the book down because they don't want to be in that person's head.

Isator Levi said...

Hmmm...

Looking back on it, I think at least part of my perspective on the series may come from the later books when Qneera vf pnyyrq bhg nf univat orra ba na varivgnoyr fcveny bs zbeny qrtrarengvba gung jbhyq yrnq uvz vagb orpbzvat n jbeyq pehfuvat glenag jub jbhyq ervta bire uhznavgl va n cnrta bs punbf naq zvfrel sbe nyy rgreavgl, and this is more or less explicitly stated to emerge from his natural character and something that none of the other characters are really surpirsed by (it certainly felt organic to me.

Gur zbfg "aboyr" guvat Qneera qbrf vf onfvpnyyl xvyy uvzfrys fb gung ur'f vapncnoyr bs rire shyyl orpbzvat gung zbafgre.

So I guess the narrative kind of does get around to calling him evil, in the end.

"Also, i'm confused by the statement that the narrative does not condemn any actions. Condemning is 70% of Darren's inner monologue, by my estimate. This whole book is about him executing Mr. Crepsley for his crimes against humanity. How is the narrative not interested in condemnation?"

In the context of a first person narration structure, I distinguish between the terms "narrative" and "narration".

I'm not sure how to enunciate precisely how I draw it... perhaps subtext would be a better term.

Basically, when I say "narrative", I mean the overall tone of events and circumstances and character interactions, of which the narrator is merely a single part.

In this case, a part who is petty, prejudiced and more than a little spiteful.

I've always seen first-person narration as the last kind in which we're supposed to take anything that's told to us at face value. I've generally seen that as part of the fun of the framing device.

When I read the book, I frequently got the impression that Darren was coming to the wrong conclusion or perspective, and we were supposed to see it as such.

I never really saw him as a character we were supposed to look on especially well.

I feel that the spoilered points kind of represented the culmination of the narrative reinforcement of that.

Perhaps I should reread the books...

Ana Mardoll said...

True, not everyone wants to read a villain protagonist or anti-hero.

I think also going on is that I consider end-of-series reversals to be, essentially, Deathbed Confession Cinema. (http://www.shakesville.com/2011/07/film-corner_13.html )

(Context) My guess is that this is another one of those films I call Deathbed Confession Cinema, in which you get to laugh at fat jokes and/or transmisogyny and/or ethnic jokes and/or other marginalizing humor for two hours before a heavy-handed dénouement in which a childish moral of the story—"X" are people who are deserving of love and respect, too!—is tacked on to hastily absolve both filmmakers and audience their production and enjoyment of the preceding onslaught of mockery.

So, essentially, the insistence that 39th Xanth book or the 12th SOIAF book or the 105th Dresden book will TURN EVERYTHING AROUND and fix any incidental sexism that came before just doesn't work in my world-view because the damage is already done. I'm not going to wade through 39 books to come to the final reversal that Misogyny Is Bad. If the author refused to drop strong enough (subjective! personal preference! ymmv!) hints to that effect along the way, then I'm outta here.

Isator Levi said...

I feel that another thing that contributed to the framing of the story was something as simple as the book jacket.

When I saw that thing, with its matte black and its horribly off colour close up spider picture and some of the word choices in its blurb (and opening line), I felt prepared for a horror story, and those generally aren't ones that I consider to hold their main characters up as particularly decent, unless very explicit in the form of them going out of their way to do decent things.

Like the protagonist of a Tales from the Crypt story, or something.

I feel that the finale grew out of a character already established, rather than retroactively justified how he had been portrayed.

I just never looked on Darren as somebody we were supposed to see fondly. I never saw his triumphs as things that were meant to be lauded, or seen as advancing a greater good.

Heck, I remember finding the whole series so dark that I deliberately went out of my way to only indulge in pleasant, happy, triumphant stuff for about a year afterwards.

That was before I read some Demonata books, which ramped the darkness up by several notches, and had characters who were even more unpleasant and a bit more explicitly doomed.

Thomas Keyton said...

As I recall*, the big, iconic representation of Darren's corruption was his abandoning the idea of a peaceful settlement with the vampaneze, and that came across to me as a natural side-effect of immersion in vampire culture, which is never really presented as problematic**.

Unless I'm forgetting something.

* After several years, so I might be missing some things, but the only other bad decisions I remember him making are factual mistakes rather than ethical ones.

** They're basically Klingons.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ah. Well, I think we're back to the same square, then: We both agree that Darren Shan is a terrible, terrible person, we just disagree on whether the author meant us to think so (at this stage).

For me, a big problem with the Evil All ALong narrative is that 70% of the narrative is the Mary Sueification of Darren Shan. He runs fast! He breaks world records! He's a good and caring friend! The BEST friend, really! He's super careful about drinking blood! He cares about solving murders! He wants to stop murders because he doesn't want to be responsible for letting them happen! He dresses nice! He has a girlfriend! He buys nice things for Evra! He is free from all bias and prejudice! He's blameless for his actions! He's a good person! He deserves cookies for being a decent person!

(OMG, the bit in Tunnels where Crepsley tells him he's the BEST PERSON EVAR and how Crespley CHOSE WELL by picking Darren and ALL HAIL HIS WONDERFULNESS for being Basically Decent is so boot-licking I literally cringed. I'll find and quote that bit later if I remember, but it was *very* overt.)

These aren't incidental characterization bits in my opinion; the above is pretty much 70% of this first trilogy. The first trilogy, as I read them, spends more time fleshing out the Awesome of Darren rather than plot-y things (which can be summed up in about a sentence each, as per Wikipedia). These are not action novels; they're about 150 pages long, with one very quick (and *highly* telegraphed-in-advance) plot, surrounded by a surfeit of details about how hella awesome Darren is as he goes about his daily life.

In that framing, it's hard for me to see that the author wanted us to see Darren as a terrible person all along because it renders 70% of each novel ... kind of pointless. An action series where Bob turns out to also be evil has, at least, a plot behind it. A character novel about how GREAT Bob is, but where the series turns out with him Evil All Along is kind of ... pointless. A character novel about how great Bob started out as and became evil later is *not* pointless, because then you're tracking the Evolution of Bob.

So I can absolutely see that Darren maybe became evil later, but seeing him as Evil All Along at this stage just doesn't make sense to me from a writing perspective. And if this is meant to be foreshadowing, I think it's done very badly -- if Crepsly/Evra/Debbie/Someone had called Darren out on his shit, a reader like me would probably get the 4th book instead of giving up in disgust.

But that's my two cents. :)

Isator Levi said...

Actually, an interesting comparison has just occurred to me.

I Am Legend is a story told from the perspective of somebody who is, from an objective standpoint, is doing a horrible thing, but where the narration depicts his own prejudice and rationalization, up until the point he has a moment of realization about what he's doing that throws his perspective and actions from the rest of the book in an entirely new light.

Does that count as a "Deathbad Confession Narrative"?

(Oh dear, I feel I'm veering into the realm of becoming overly aggressive and indignant here. Please inform me if I'm ever toeing any lines, so I can know to take stock of myself, or possibly remove myself from the discussion entirely.)

Isator Levi said...

You know, at this point I'll admit that I might be kind of contriving defenses for the books, based on my own liking for them and some things that aren't remembered very well. I definitely know I'm approaching this from a perspective of trying to make sure they come out ahead, rather than objective critical analysis.

I'm definitely going to wind up liking them no matter what, because it just fits my character to do so, and they have a certain place in my formative, but I'll concede that from a more objective and critical perspective, they have probably have more than a few problems.

I guess I'll read more of the Demonata books; they seem to have a better handle on the not entirely pleasant characters in horrific scenarios bag.

(I'll also admit that, while I did like the books, there were times at the beginning that I felt they could be a bit wobbly in tone and structure. It was a thing I overlooked at the time, and always shall, but I'd say that Darren Shan the author got a better handle on his style by the time later books rolled around, and that informed his second book series much better.)

Will Wildman said...

I Am Legend has differences that I think make it a distinct case. The first two big ones that leap to mind:

1) Purely on the technical side, it's a single novel compared to a many-part series. Unless Darren Shan is only meant to be read as a single long story rather than as an episodic series (which doesn't seem accurate), I don't think the comparison works. Each episode is still supposed to be a complete story. A portion of a novel is not.

2) I Am Legend is very explicitly meant to mess with the reader's head - the 'objectively horrible' things that Neville does are actively disguised from the reader until the final revelation, and we are instead only presented with an incomplete and biased view that implies they may be, at worst, ruthless but perhaps necessary. Darren Shan pulls no such twist of 'and then it turned out that the people he had been mistreating and using for his own gains were actually people'.

Isator Levi said...

Yes, I'm coming more around to the idea that my perspective on the books is flawed.

I still like them, but I'm fairly willing to acknowledge that not doing so might be the more correct position. ;)

Ana Mardoll said...

It's been about four years since I read I Am Legend, but I remember the narrative being fairly explicit about the helplessness of his victims, the horror of their deaths, and his horrific carelessness of their fate and spiral into numbness. Though the novel does explore his reasons, there is not a lot of justification of how this makes him human/better, that I recall.

The final "twist" is not briefly tacked on, but is deeply explored through several pages of narrative and conversation. (And, as noted, is contained in the work in which the problems appear, not in a later book entirely.)

So, no, I don't really think it's comparable. But I'm not the biggest I Am Legend fan (too much masturbation for my tastes), and therefore not the best to ask.

Isator Levi said...

Ehh, it was a dumb comparison anyway, more interested in being a kind of "gotcha" curveball than a legitimate point for comparison and consideration.

No, there's not really much for me to stand on.

Hmm, now I kind of want you to read the Skulduggery Pleasant books...

Ana Mardoll said...

(Plus, you know, he is actually killing people, which is usually likely to throw up red flags for many people. Even zombie apocalypse literature struggles with this, despite the fact that the genre readers are usually pretty chill about killing zombie infected, the hero still isn't supposed to feel gratification from it because, you know, murder is kind of considered a bad thing in our society.

Darren, on the other hand, is drugging people. Which is something our culture has more problems with acknowledging it is wrong. The more "grey area" something is culturally, the more the author needs to show WRONG if that is their intent. And if they don't show that and actually explicitly say RIGHT in text... well.

TW: Rape

To use a rape analogy, this is why there's a difference in showing violent rape in a work versus non-violent rape. Most audiences will understand without being told that a Violent Stranger Rapist is Bad. An author cannot make that assumption with Non-Violent Acquaintance Rapist characters.

Incidentally, this is one reason went the Millennium Trilogy remains controversial as a feminist ally text. The author groks that violent misogyny is bad, but there are very few cases of non-violent misogynists in the book to be called to the literary mat for exposure.

And now I've rambled away from my point. Shiny!)

Isator Levi said...

No, it's a good way of illustrating something I hadn't really been considering, vis a vis the matter of drugging people. The implications of that part are something I hadn't really been taking on board.

Ana Mardoll said...

In my opinion, liking/disliking literature is an amoral position. One isn't right/wrong to like/dislike a book.

Some books click with us, and some do not. Sometimes because of things OUTSIDE the book, as in "I will always love X because I read it on my honeymoon", etc.

So no worries about liking stuff and not liking other stuff. :)

Isator Levi said...

Meh, if nothing else, I suppose I've got a good handle now on how to portray dangerous extremists in my roleplaying games. :)

And a whole range of rationalizations for them! :D

Ana Mardoll said...

Ha, I love Belkar. He's my favorite character. :)

Ikkin said...

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't possible. Just a lot more difficult. In addition to the running interference for your protagonist problem, there's also the fact that first person puts the reader in the head of the narrator to a degree that can either get the reader to identify too much with them (which can be used to great effect, mind) or just get the reader to put the book down because they don't want to be in that person's head.

Well, what I started out thinking and then failed to say was that visual media have some disadvantages of their own as far as morally-questionable protagonists are concerned. If you want to avoid getting too close to the Villain Protagonist, first person certainly makes that a lot more difficult... but, on the flip side, if you want to put the audience in the head of some who's generally messed-up, it's a lot easier to make sure the audience doesn't misinterpret the character's motivations if thoughts can be stated outright rather than implied.

Not to mention, it's amazing how bad audiences can be at picking up on emotional nuance in visual media, if internet discussions are anything to go by. First person/limited third person writing can be a whole lot less ambiguous in some important ways.

depizan said...

I fear audiences are bad at picking up on emotional nuance period. I can think of quite a lot of internet discussions of various assorted books that could leave a person thinking that the posters were discussing entirely different books/characters. (Song of Ice and Fire discussions leap to mind. I haven't read the books, but I've seen people argue completely opposite interpretations of characters and events on a number of occasions.)

It may simply be that it's very hard to portray a messed up protagonist and be certain that people won't misinterpret them. (And/or be certain that you're not subverting your intent in some way. Authors are just as guilty as readers are of falling in love with their characters.)

Ikkin said...

I fear audiences are bad at picking up on emotional nuance period. I can think of quite a lot of internet discussions of various assorted books that could leave a person thinking that the posters were discussing entirely different books/characters. (Song of Ice and Fire discussions leap to mind. I haven't read the books, but I've seen people argue completely opposite interpretations of characters and events on a number of occasions.)

It may simply be that it's very hard to portray a messed up protagonist and be certain that people won't misinterpret them. (And/or be certain that you're not subverting your intent in some way. Authors are just as guilty as readers are of falling in love with their characters.)


Yeah, that's true.

I don't think it's possible portray any character well enough that certain people won't misinterpret them. There's a heavy tendency towards idealization and demonization within fandoms that inevitably leads to alternate character interpretations that seem completely detached from canon, and there's not much the author can do about that. The trick is figuring out how to convince the ones who are willing to engage with what's actually on the page/on screen, I would imagine.

Ana Mardoll said...

TW: Rape, Food Policing

There's also the tie in problem that a shocking number of people don't recognize abuse because our society is so chill about it.

Heck, this weekend on twitter I had to unfollow Neil Gaiman for retweeting a rape joke from his wife, and I responded to a follower whose mother was emotionally abusing her food choices.

This stuff is COMMON in our daily lives, so why should it stand out in our reading?

hf said...

Incidentally, this is one reason went the Millennium Trilogy remains controversial as a feminist ally text. The author groks that violent misogyny is bad, but there are very few cases of non-violent misogynists in the book to be called to the literary mat for exposure.

This seems true on one level, enough to pose a problem.

But I just started re-reading The girl who played with fire. Early on we learn that "the boys at TV4" first discouraged a certain woman reporter from running the story from the previous book, and then took the story away from her. This partly serves as a way for Blomkvist to show his feminism and/or loyalty, but it necessarily paints the "boys" as wrong. Salander's storyline at that point in the book shows that even a good character, like Ella Carmichael from the hotel bar, can ignore wife-beating. That whole storyline takes on the way our culture views rich women. The central plot of the book involves the media pillorying Lisbeth Salander (for not following her gender role). It also touches on men raping prostitutes, men who in most cases would not have considered themselves violent.

An example from the third book seems more spoiler-y: na rfgnoyvfurq nhgubevgl jub abzvanyyl jbexf sbe Oretre ng ure arj wbo fubjf na nyzbfg Ohpx Jvyyvnzf-yriry ynpx bs erfcrpg gbjneqf ure. Ur unf ab erny pbaarpgvba gb ure ivbyrag fgnyxre, ohg uvf ernpgvba fgvyy frrzf jebat va rirel jnl.

Ana Mardoll said...

I LOVE the Millennium Trilogy, but I still stand by what I said -- possibly because I didn't say it clearly?

The Newsgirl (does she ever get a name?) as I see her serves as another Competent Female Character. The series refreshingly has *many* of those and I love that so much and most of them have incidental sexism, true, but the non-violent misogynists aren't "called to the literary mat" for resolution via Violence or Justice (which is kind of the point of the series and) which was what I was speaking to.

I just think there's a difference in literary focus between saying "Alice suffered sexism" and "Bob is a Sexist because he does [low-level misogyny]".

(Are there any cases of rape in the book that are not violent or physically forced rape? A good example of low-level aggression towards sex workers would be a john repeatedly harassing a worker in an attempt to psychologically coerce her into not using condoms, for example. You never see that in books, though it is apparently a common problem.)

I'll give you Buck, but he's problematic in his own way in that he ends up being the good guy who does the right thing at the right time in the end. Not sure how that washes out. :/

I do love-love-love the books, but I don't think non-violent misogynists are called to the mat in the same way that the violent ones were. I was *so* disappointed when That One Guy (to avoid ROT13 at the moment since I have no access) ended up to conveniently also have You Know What on his laptop. I had hopes that he was going to be the (relatively) non-violent abuser example for the series.

hf said...

Well, but this is what I'm saying: he thought of himself as non-violent. The johns who get exposed were having sex with kidnap victims, but they seem to have thought of themselves as non-violent (especially the ones less actively involved in the trafficking part) because they didn't personally put a gun to anyone's head. I agree that the story spends more time on them to, basically, the extent they knew about the violence first-hand.

hf said...

but the non-violent misogynists aren't "called to the literary mat" for resolution via Violence or Justice

Forgot earlier: also in the second book, a real estate agent acts somewhat disrespectfully towards Lisbeth Salander and doesn't stop to find out that she can pay the money. She casually exposes his tax evasion.

vega said...

I kept reading that as "Vampanzee" for some reason... I wanted to know more about what happened with the vampire chimpanzee... now I am disappointed that the effects of vampirism on other members of the great ape family remains unexplored. :(

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