Benchmarks in Villainy: Action, Potentiality and Tolkien

I can blame The Silmarillion for many things, including my fascination with family trees, drool-worthy descriptions of armour and weaponry, and an irrational fear of giant spider-demons.

However, I think there is one aspect of this epic that doesn't get half as much attention as I think it should. Admittedly, in a story with a cast big enough to make the Song of Ice and Fire look like a pre-school rendition of the Nativity, it's a little hard to keep track of what's going on.

But I'll eat my left sock if the Dark Lord Morgoth isn't one of the best villains in the history of literature.

From the archetypal viewpoint, Morgoth is just about the most unoriginal concept out there - characters like him existed long before Tolkien wrote, and they continue to appear under a thousand different names and guises to this day. Essentially a fallen god, Morgoth - or Melkor, as he is known before a particularly cranky elven smith gifts him with the former title - is present right from the very beginning of the story as a bottomless pit of malice and wanton destruction. His motives are somewhat unclear - different interpretations by readers have boiled it down to jealousy, misguided creativity, megalomaniacal greed and even unrequited love.

Essentially, then, a being of boundless evil whose soul aim in life seems to be to instigate enough chaos to overthrow his fellow Valar and . . . wait for it . . . TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

Sound familiar? I bet it does. His minion Sauron has the exact same aim in mind in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But how does Morgoth succeed where his more famous lieutenant does not?

The answer lies in a single word: action.

Sauron spends all of the Ring saga as a giant flaming eye atop the towers of Barad-Dur. Admittedly he is very intimidating, and the sense of his constant malevolent vigilance makes for a great atmosphere in places, but he is inevitably overshadowed by his minions: Saruman, the Uruk-Hai, the Nazgul, even Shelob to some extent. Although Sauron's influence is behind the actions of all but one of the above, the indirect nature of his involvement means he rather falls into the background, and thus loses much of his effectiveness as a villain.

Not so with Morgoth. Right from our first interactions with him, in key early stages of the narrative, the reader knows this Vala is a nasty piece of work, and as the story goes on and the stakes rise higher and higher, so does the scale of Morgoth's evil. There's no sitting atop a tower and letting his minions do all the work here: Morgoth takes to the battlefield personally, recruiting allies, leading raids and battles, laying traps, orchestrating betrayals and kidnappings and lies, and caving in the chests of beloved characters left, right and centre. The battering ram at the gates of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers, Grond, gains its name from Morgoth's warhammer. If that legacy doesn't make a point, nothing does.

This is the key to Morgoth's brilliance as a villain - he is defined by his actions. And because of that, instead of being ridiculed as a straw villain who is easily overshadowed by more active minions, one only has to whisper his name in the proximity of a Silm fan to instigate a high-pitched meltdown that sounds suspiciously like a rendition of the Oath of Feanor.

Also, the scale of his actions perfectly compliments his power as a villain. One of the major issues with super-human sources of embodied evil is that their acts and intents often fall short of their potentiality. If he's so powerful, why doesn't Mr Evil just use all that power to march right into the enemy base an annihilate the source of his problem? And, if he is faced with a power that can rival and overcome his, why doesn't he use that infinitely connoving, cunning nature of his to work out a way around the problem rather than smashing his head into it repeatedly like a second-rate schoolground bully?

Morgoth exploits every inch of his potential, and the results are glorious; the more personal involvement of the villain provides much  stronger sources of conflict for many of the main characters, as well as providing more excitement and tension for the readers, as they are far more tangibly aware of what these characters are up against.

I'm not usually a one for one-dimensional Big Bad Villains in writing, even fantasy, but Tolkien's masterly construction and usage of Morgoth means that I still hold him as benchmark standard of comparison against all other villains today.

Any Silmarillion fans out there, do you agree with me? And non-Silm fans - what do you make of the issue on the whole? Do you believe it's possible to make use of such a raging cliche effectively, especially today? Leave me a comment, and let me know!

~ Charley R

"On Inspiration, Writing and Other Forms of Tickery" - The Director's Request Post!

Ack! Sorry, I've been swamped by illness and school and giant monsters..... o_O My most humble apologies.....

Why don't you do a post on what keeps you writing- what makes you tick, what you do when you're running dry on inspiration.... and your absolute favorite villains (from stories that aren't yours, I'm sure you love your villains, naturally)...
Sorry about the wait! *tips hat again*

Ah, the post that every writing blogger fears, but hey ho, let's go! (whoa .... that sounded so cheesy I could have melted it on my toast)

Anyway.

What makes me tick? Well, if you really want to know it's a system of small cogs and wheels installed below my frontal cortex which, when overloaded, can cause a somewhat suspicious noise that tends to convince everyone in the area that I'm mad.

But in the writing sense? It's this:

Yep, that's how I get started on my stories. A bunch of strange-looking oddballs wander into my head and demand that I pay attention to them. they want their stories written down, and they want it NOW! And, trust me, some of them you just don't want to say no to. Like the seven-foot-tall, sociopathic, mentally-disturbed, I-will-kill-you-for-my-own-amusmement, tea-and-scone-addict assassin character who is currently glaring at me from a particularly dark corner of my mind.
Don't ask me where he came from. Seriously.

So then, on pain of having a multitude of painful sharp things stuck into various parts of my personage, I have to build a world, make a plot, and get them going. Then I get my revenge.

Fun fact: Killing off characters is a great way to beat writer's block. Especially when you play epic music in the background.

And I'm not the only one! Sorry JK, I'm with Mr Martin on this one.

Yep, that's it: music and murder. They tend to unstick me quite nicely. Along with sugary drinks, jelly beans and watching particularly hilarious spoofs of my favourite films on YouTube. And sporking. I do love me a good spork.
Warning: Brain bleach is adviseable as a precaution. You will see things in there that you will never be able to un-see....

And now for the final part of the question: my favourite villains (who don't belong to me).

... Where shall I begin?

I've always been very fond of Shakespeare's Iago (Othello) and Edmund (King Lear). Iago is such a delightfully disgusting, plotting, chaos-causing git, it's impossible not to go head over heels for him. That, and the way he pokes fun at foppish Cassio just makes me laugh so hard. I may also sympathise with him because I've ended up playing his part in the play about three times. Edmund is a slightly different kettle of fish - he's justified in being a bit peeved off at life for treating him like doggie poo on their shoe because he's illegitimate, but the carnage he causes is simply delightful. I bet he was taking notes from Iago the whole time.

I've always had some respect for Cardinal Richleieu from Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers as well. He's an incredibly shrewd and intelligent villain and, unlike most, doesn't seem to want to kill things just for the sake of it. That, and watching him nearly explode when our favourite troublesome trio rub the victory none-too-subtly into his face has to be one of my favourite scenes in the book.

And one last thing. The Master, from Doctor Who. Technically he's not from a book, but when you can be hilarious, tragic and evil at the same time, all other arguments are irrelevant.

.... MWUA HA HA HA HA HA HA! *swishes cape villainously and vanishes in a poof of smelly black smoke*

Top 10 Reasons to be a Villain

For the past eight or nine years, regardless of the country, school or genre, I have played villains in every single play. In my solo LAMDA qualifications my roles have gone from Satan to inmates of a mental institute and even ranging so far as twisted imaginary friends. On the grand set, so to speak, I've plotted, stabbed, connived, lied and evil-laughed myself to death. Iago, Shylock, the White Witch, Mr Sowerberry the Undertaker, Hansel and Gretel's stepmother ... you get the idea.

But I wouldn't trade these roles for anything else in the world. It's not that I'm an evil person (though that is open to some debate...), I just love villains. And these are my top ten reasons why.

1) You always get the best costume. No daft brightly-coloured hats or stupidly curled hair for you - just sleek, mean and dangerous. If you're lucky, you might get a swishy cape or two.

2) You get the best lines. Sarcastic snarks, heartfelt lies, sneaky manipulation of completely innocent situations to meet your own ends ... you get the idea. Who needs those soppy declarations of love!

3) Within seconds of walking on stage, most of the audience will probably already love you. Playing Iago in Shakespeare's Othello several years ago, I actually had people cheering for me when I came on!

4) You don't have to bother trying to keep your character sympathetic to the audience. While the hero has to be careful to stay a hero, you can do whatever the heck you want, and never give a flying donut what the pesky listeners have to say.

5) You aren't (usually) expected to break into song and dance to express your joy at a situation.

6) You never have to bother rescuing your love interest. Actually, you don't even have to bother with a love interest at all.

7) Stabbing people and running away is so much more fun than trying to talk the matter out "like gentlemen".

8) No angst sessions. You've got too much plotting to do.

9) If you die, you are pretty much guaranteed a pretty epic death scene. Usually with some ironic twist in it whereby your oh-so-cunning plan blows up in your face. Either that, or one last snark at the hero - you have to keep up appearances after all.

10) You don't have to put up with an annoying sidekick. It's minion or cannon fodder for you.