Am I the only one sick of the 'villain with tragic backstory' shtick?

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Link the Writer, Dec 15, 2015.

  1. Acanthophis

    Acanthophis ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Contributor

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    Psychotick, do you by any chance happen to believe in a just world? Your views seems to fit that archetype quite snugly. A just world is the idea that people get what they have coming - bad things only happen to bad people, and good things only happen to good people. This is a view more commonly held by people who haven't had a lot of struggle (aristocratic, for example, as Lewdog said). If somebody ends up in prison, it's because they are ultimately a bad person, and their history is completely irrelevant. If a person wins the lottery, well they clearly deserved such a bounty. Kind of like cause and effect, although the cause in these cases is not quantifiable.

    Maybe you don't believe this, but everything your stating seems to point in that direction. I think you are either misreading or misinterpreting what Lewdog has been saying. Point is, bad shit happens to good people, and good stuff happens to shitty people. Our experiences define us, they define everything about us. Very, very few criminals actively seek the criminal lifestyle; I'd wager the majority of murderers either kill due to a mental disorder, or kill because of the life they were raised with. I'm kind of confusing myself now, as I find your train of thought sort of hard to follow.
     
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  2. psychotick

    psychotick Contributor Contributor

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    Hi Lewdog,

    First, sorry to hear about your situation. We all have shit in our lives that's hard to deal with. It's how we deal with it that makes us who we are.

    Nietzsche is far from my favourite philosopher as most people here will know. But his line - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger - has some relevance. Learn from the shit that happens. Don't let it kill you or cripple you.

    Second B was not my buddy. I've only ever seen him in the trials. And no, he wasn't mentally unstable. Not according to the evidence.

    D who was my form mate who was badly bullied has been broken by it from what I've heard. He let it beat him.

    Cheers, Greg.
     
  3. psychotick

    psychotick Contributor Contributor

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    Hi Acanthophis,

    Everyone believes in the just world hypothesis to some extent. It's almost a part of the human condition. I actually try actively to refute it in my life.

    I do not believe that bad people are born bad at all. Making bad choices leading to gross acts is typically a result of a variety of factors complexly interacting with one another. Poor parenting, poor education, poor social bonding, being taught unhelpful values. All of these leading to making bad choices, bad choices leading to unfavourable consequences and as usual more bad choices. A vicious spiral of bad choices and poor outcomes that ultimately lead to disaster.

    Heroic fantasy does often seem to follow this ethos, which was why it was so popular for so long.

    Grim Dark by contrast is almost purely based on a different ethos. That bad people are made bad by events. That they cannot help what they are or do. That they are really victims.

    Me, I favour the view that life is far too complex to pigeon hole into these arbitrary positions.

    If you want a villain who encapsulates my views well, look to Steerpike from the Gormenghast trilogy. A good read in my view. But when I first read the books I like so many others was torn with the questions about him. Was he a true villain or an antihero? Was he completely shaped by the traumatic events of his past, the horror of his present as he first escapes the kitchens. Or were his dark acts the consequence of the madness of the world in which he found himself and even his love for a woman he could not have? He is so deeply complex and so well written that there is no one answer to these questions. And that's like life.

    Cheers, Greg.
     
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  4. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    @psychotick It's been an interesting discussion, but I'm still wondering how you parse the predispositions of those who've experienced more early traumas from a general notion of 'decision making.' For simplicity, let's say population A have more adverse childhoods, and as a result, in general, have more difficulty with empathy, impulse control, conflict resolution skills, etc., whereas population B have a generally positive childhood. Should we not expect population A to be engaged in more criminality or anti-social behaviour, as an extension of their personalities and nature (as it is), or, as it seems as I read your view, that we can crystalize the idea of decision making and isolate it as the paramount factor? To me, population A might even know full well what is acceptable and ethical, yet it remains abstract, just as a healthy diet and exercise remain ideal to many, but they cannot accept them emotionally. The inability to make the ethical choices seems to go back to their predispositions. At bottom, I don't even know if you and Lewdog really disagree about anything.
     
  5. psychotick

    psychotick Contributor Contributor

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    Hi Brainiff,

    As I see your question you're asking about the differences between individuals and populations. Speaking with my epidemiological hat on, I deal with the concept of populations every day. And so getting away from evilness for a moment, lets talk disease. So I see populations every day and look at risk factors and can say with incredble accuracy that a person from population A with these predisposing factors and environmental factors has an increased chance by this amount of developing this illness. It doesn't even matter what the illness is. You look at the factors and work out the rates.

    I also deal with epidemics and talk to people. Individuals. And it's at that level that everything changes utterly. Sure eighty percent of a population might have a likelihood of developing whatever. But I'm not dealing with eighty percent. I'm dealing with one person. Eighty percent of one person cannot do anything. So all you can really say is that that one person is at higher risk than another of developing said illness.

    I use this as an example with my students. Twenty years ago I was dealing with a major salmonella outbreak. Talking to individual sufferers as I tried to identify the source. As it turned out it was a chicken farm providing farm eggs to the city. Problem was that we didn't know that. And we had two distinct populations coming down with the illness.

    One population were urban, poor, low socioeconomic etc and given knowledge of the disease it seemed likely that they were exposed to a substandard food source.

    A second population was rural and of much higher socioeconomic status with little connection with the first population. They shouldn't have been exposed to the same foods.

    And then a third pair of cases turned up who were urban and of extremely high socioeconomic status. They were actually the ones who revealed the source. Turned out the two kids were working on their weekends on a chicken farm, handling eggs, and not practicing proper food hygiene etc.

    They gave us the farm, the farm gave us the rural delivery and saturday markets which hit the other two populations.

    Now the point is that these last two girls if we looked at population risk factors, had none. They should not have picked up the illnesses. The fact that they did was down to an individual choice that they made to expose themselves to the illness. And that's the key to disease spread in populations and to evil acts.

    Usually when you pick up an illness or when you commit an evil act the actual thing that incites either is choice. People are individual and they make choices. Some make good choices, some make bad ones. Most make both at various times. Predisposing factors like genetics or socioeconomics might mean they are more likely to make bad choices. But there is absolutely no certainty about these things.

    So it is absolutely wrong to go back to a person who's done something bad and say either:

    a) It's your background - you were raised badly and always destined because of that to commit x crimes (Grim Dark fantasy)

    or

    b) It's your genetics - you were born bad (Heroic fantasy)

    Both of these options leave your characters as little more than automatons. Victims of their past or their genetics. Neither of them paint them as actual human beings able to live and choose and learn from their mistakes.

    What you have to do if you want to establish your character / villain as real, is go through everything in their lives. Every factor that predisposes them. Every choice that they made that led them down that path to evil.

    Paint a complete picture. Don't paint a two dimensional strawman who can either be happily killed because he was born bad (Sauron from LOTR), or else can't be blamed because his tragic backstory meant he was doomed and so his death is a tragedy (Adam - Frankenstein's Monster). (Unless of course that's the villain you want.)

    That's why Steerpike is so good as villains go.

    Cheers, Greg.
     
  6. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Yes, I don't see things as hard determinism or absolute free will, especially at the individual level, but I didn't think either of you were taking those positions. I agree about individual exception too. However, complications arise when we look at incorrigible psychopaths, those with fetal-alcohol syndrome, or battered-wife syndrome, as more obvious examples. It still seems like you're holding tight to the idea of choice, yet agree on going through all the factors. Why aren't they learning? We can certainly agree that a complete picture is called for, as opposed to single-variable causality, especially when presented as having universal deterministic potential.
     
  7. psychotick

    psychotick Contributor Contributor

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    Hi Brainiff,

    Well lets look at the three examples you give.

    First incorrigible pasychopaths - or sociopathy. Studies show that roughly 3% of people are sociopaths though numbers vary widely. Many studies show a lot of prisoners have sociopathic traits. However studies also show that most people who are sociopaths do not commit serious crimes. How do you explain this?

    The answer is that its a mix of environmental factors and personal choice that mediate, such that most sociopaths actually learn not to commit gross acts.

    Foetal Alcohol Syndrome is a tragedy and a crime against unborn children in my view. In it's case those born with cognitive defects associated with it may have problems regulating their impulses, which is the one that lands these people in jail most often. The other that sometimes arises is that these people are often easily led by others. The danger of it is that the cognitive impairment prevents them from learning.

    But again most people with FAS do not end up comitting serious crimes. The difference / the mediating factors again are the emvironment and the unfortunately decreased ability for sufferers to learn.

    Last battered wife syndrome. Here the environment - namely the partner - is almost entirely to blame for the sufferer's plight. But very very few battered wives go on to chop bits off their partners etc.

    Because though the environment is bad, the underlying genetic etc nature of the battered spouse starts off as typical with respect to the rest of the population and thus they have the normal ability to learn. The question that transforms them from battered spuses into free people or criminals is primarily what do they learn?

    Do they learn low self esteem and thoughts of deserving their treatment? If so they internalise their suffering and by and large end up suffering long. Do they learn that they can't take this any more? In which case they use this lesson to find ways to escape their situation normally. Do they learn anger? Here's where the Bobbits arise! But even if they learn anger, have they discovered restraint, fear of consequences? Because these things will usually stop them from committing serious crimes. Or do they learn other things like forgiveness? Self respect? Courage? Because even being battered they can learn these things. They can take their pain and use it.

    The point is, that you can never go up to an individual and say this is your background, this is your genetic heritage - so this is your future. It simply doesn't work that way. And so in the same way you can never go up to Hannibal or Lorraine Bobbit etc and say well this was your past, this was your genetic heritage - so you were always destined to end up here.

    What you can do is go up to them and say well this was your past, this was your genetic heritage, and these were the choices you made and these were the lessons you learned from them - so this is how you ended up here. And over time in most cases the choices made and lessons learned far outstrip the importance in determining the course of a person's life than the rest.

    Cheers, Greg.
     
  8. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    No, sorry, maybe I left things unclear in my last post. I'm already aware of the examples I mentioned but only did so to draw attention to how they are viewed by the justice system as legitimate excuses, or at least how they cast doubt on the question of culpability. From there, seeing things as a matter of degrees, a lot of crime could be summed up as being strongly influenced by personal background or psychology. The big question that looms is why recidivists don't learn. At the same time, I hope for their rehabilitation even though I see imprisonment -- in its common form -- as more a matter of isolating dangerous people than trying to teach them a lesson. Just the same way as some people have to have a heart attack to change their lifestyle, these people's nature does not compute prison as something to be absolutely avoided without something drastic to drive them to change. The topic is huge, lots of variables, different kinds of crime, etc., so I'm not sure where we can go from here....
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2015
  9. Ben414

    Ben414 Contributor Contributor

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    EDIT: Nevermind. My previous post had a lot of condescension in return for the ample condescension I perceived from your post, but it's not worth it to stir things up this time. To the point, I'll just say I think you and Lewdog are much more in agreement than you think.
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2015
  10. Mordred85

    Mordred85 Active Member

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    I love it.
     
  11. psychotick

    psychotick Contributor Contributor

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    Hi Brainiff,

    Why don't people learn? Now there's a question and a half! And I don't think I have a complete answer for you.

    I think most people do learn. It's what they learn that's the problem. In large part whatever you do learn from any event will depend on your world view, which is something you build over time. Some people for example may learn from an arrest / sentence that crime doesn't pay. Others that it's all a game between them and the cops. Still more may learn how to beat the cops next time and to curse themselves for being so stupid as to get caught.

    As I say, one of the main problems I see with the penal system is that those incarcerated may speak to one another, thus reinforcing negative concepts and strengthening poor world views. I would prevent this so that prisoners can speak freely to loved ones and guards etc, people who will hopefully have a positive world view, but not to one another. I suspect that this would drastically reduce recidivism and even allow shorter prison terms to be effective.

    Cheers, Greg.
     
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  12. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    Ideally, yes. But as social beings, that might backfire. Many prisoners testify that solitary is worse than being assaulted. Also depends on the availability of loved ones and the interest of the guards, but I totally agree that the environment is not generally conducive to rehabilitation.
     
  13. JEH

    JEH New Member

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    I'm not sick of such characters existing, but I do tire of critics putting down one dimensional simple villains. Both have a place and simple characters be they good or bad can still be interesting and fun without having to be complex or deep. I remember when the amazing spiderman came out and my flatmate complained that the villain was the lizard, because dr connors doesn't have a personal connection to peter. that doesn't mean it can't work? it also means that when heroes like spiderman do face villains whom know their identity or have a personal connection, then it makes them stand out and puts a contrast on things and i think that applies to any genre than just the superhero genre too
     
  14. Dagolas

    Dagolas Banned

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    No one is "just evil".
     
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  15. aj*colher

    aj*colher New Member

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    I like to write stories without any 'villains', just a set of characters with different degrees of damage trying to further their own goals and hurting or helping others in the process. You know ... like life.
     
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  16. Fighting Kentuckian

    Fighting Kentuckian New Member

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    When I think of villains being evil for evil's sake I think back to the villains of Saturday morning cartoons, your Dr. Claws & Cobra Commanders. They are kinda bland. The sob story is an attempt to shoe in characteristics for a villain, but there are other ways to make villains interesting besides the 'sob story' cliche.
    When it comes to my favorite type of villains, it's the ones that fall into that line of thought, "Every man is the hero of his own story" I prefer. The kind that thinks they are doing the right thing, that they're the good guy.
     
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  17. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Personally?

    I despise the popular idea that "if the person has a clear motivation for doing something that he considers reasonable, then it can't be an evil thing for him to do and he can't be an evil person for doing it. Evil means that you didn't have a motivation for doing something."

    I've read too much about real life sadists and murderers to believe that evil isn't real.
     
  18. D-Doc

    D-Doc Active Member

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    They even hinted at a tragic backstory for the Joker in The Dark Knight. His old alcoholic pops...
     
  19. aj*colher

    aj*colher New Member

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    And I've read too much about real life sadists to believe there's any such thing as evil. We're animals, human nature can be just as cold and brutal as all the rest of nature; it's got nothing to do with the weird, religious concept of 'evil', in my opinion. I'm not after a debate or anything, but that's my point of view, and I find it's very helpful in stepping into the minds of so called 'evil' people.
    I don't try to justify a villain's every wrongdoing, but I don't pretend their acts are unrelatable. People are repulsed by sadists, in my opinion, not because they see an evil person, but because they see themselves.
     
  20. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    No offense, but speak for yourself. I know I could never become a sadist. At the worst, maybe an angry asshole, but never a sadist.
     
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  21. aj*colher

    aj*colher New Member

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    I wrote 'in my opinion' twice. And that's not what I meant; I'm not a sadist either. I've said my bit anyway, take from it what you will.
     
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  22. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    So you define "evil" in terms of magic (a supernatural force that replaces natural human psychology) instead of in terms of immorality (unjustly harming others for one's own benefit)?
     
  23. Matt E

    Matt E Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 Contributor

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    Characters have to have motivations for everything they do, and villains are characters too. If a character does something drastic, they have to have a powerful reason for doing it. Most stories have scenarios that are a lot more extreme than real life usually is. While there may only be one or two people as evil and powerful as Lord Voldemort who lived in the past century, people want to read stories about characters like that because they're more thrilling than everyday life. Why read a book if it doesn't have something in it that isn't in normal everyday life?

    Different villains have different motivations. Some have traumatic pasts, some have evil as a core part of their nature. There's a good variety of these in published fiction, and many of the broader-scoped stories I've read have a little bit of both. An example is Star Wars. The Emperor is all about evil for evil's sake, but Darth Vader not so much. This adds a good amount of variety to the story, in my opinion.
     
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  24. aj*colher

    aj*colher New Member

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    SIGH. I really don't. In fact, it sounds to me like you do.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2016
  25. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Then how do you define it? I've been talking about evil in terms of cruelty, but then you said "Cruelty is natural, therefor it isn't evil."

    EDIT:
    How so?
     

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