Writing Villains and Evil!Ecklie
May. 9th, 2005 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamWriting can take on a life of its own. I was planning to do an angsty Sara and Grissom chapter, followed by a more fluffy Warrick and Catherine (ch. 16&17 for East of the Sun, West of the Moon), but as I started writing Grissom, he was actually being fairly nice (after his fashion) and resisted being as angsty and assy as I had planned. Then I moved on to Catherine's chapter, and she suddenly had a whole angstfest rather than fluff. I swear, my mind loves messing with me. It'll probably mess with me even more next chapter, which will probably be POV of a killer. Of course, that will reveal his identity, but that had to come sooner or later anyway. And it's time he came out of the shadows and took on a human form, not just being a cardboard villain.
Speaking of villains... What's with this trend of making slightly not-too-nice characters into the eeeeeeevilest thing since Vlad the Impaler? I've seen it in Lord of the Rings - Denethor turns from haunted, bitter man into something that would embarrass even Sauron in so many fanfics I've lost count. Evil!Denethor gets around. And now I'm noticing it in CSI too - with Ecklie.
Okay, Ecklie can be an utter git. But since when does that make someone also the spawn of Satan? As of today, I've seen Evil!Ecklie do the following in fanfic:
- Rape Catherine
- Rape Sara
- Commit murder
- Torture and attempt to murder the whole CSI team
- Turn into his eviler second cousin, 'Eckley'
- Force CSIs to go rafting
- Iniate the split of the shift to seperate Sara and Nick, being jealous
- Cover up a murder
- Take bribes
- Try to destroy the twuwub of Grissom and Sara
You'd think the guy has no time to even run the lab with all the debauchery he indulges in. What is with this unpleasant=evil link? Just acting like an ass is not an iniation into evilhood. In fact, then we'd all be evil. The world is full of unpleasant, gitty people who makes your day a sucky day, but nevertheless would never murder, rape or torture just for the heck of it. Ecklie's a bureaucratic, ambitious guy who doesn't mind stealing a little glory, but that doesn't mean he's hiding a tail in his pants. You need a villain, invent one, flesh one out. Don't just nick Ecklie's name and make it 'shocking that it's one of their own!!!' And it's getting unoriginal to boot, given how many times I've seen it now.
Writing villains or people who've committed bad acts is not easy. They were easily become just cardboard or way over the top. When I write them, I generally go for one of two ways. I either make them thread in shadow, leaving them a bit of a mystery - or I make them as human as I can. I've always found the latter more scary, in a way, realising how horrid crimes can be committed by people who otherwise seem like any other human. Of course, writing this well is very hard. But what strikes me about writing villains is how often we assume evil acts mean eeeeeeevil person, through and through.
But if Ecklie truly was as evil as fanfic would have us believe, you'd think someone would have noticed. The fact is, evil can be done by all too human everyday people, who seemed not gitty or unpleasant at all. And they can have good sides to them too. Humans like to think in black and white, good and evil, hero and villain, but we create illusions all the time. Sometimes, it's worth it to dispell them.
So Cam Says: Thou Shall Not Free Evil!Ecklie. Writeth Conrad the Git, for 'lo, he is at thy service to be the annoyance of other CSIs. But the only thing he shall ever slay is the realism of thy fic if thou ignorest his heeding.
Also, he dost implore thou to learn grammar and spelling before unleashing the 'bunnies, bunnies, fluffy bunnies under rainbows forever as Grissom and Sara have sex fifty times in a row!' fic of thine.
(I apologise for mutilating Olde Englishe. Spank me. I've been bad.)
Speaking of villains... What's with this trend of making slightly not-too-nice characters into the eeeeeeevilest thing since Vlad the Impaler? I've seen it in Lord of the Rings - Denethor turns from haunted, bitter man into something that would embarrass even Sauron in so many fanfics I've lost count. Evil!Denethor gets around. And now I'm noticing it in CSI too - with Ecklie.
Okay, Ecklie can be an utter git. But since when does that make someone also the spawn of Satan? As of today, I've seen Evil!Ecklie do the following in fanfic:
- Rape Catherine
- Rape Sara
- Commit murder
- Torture and attempt to murder the whole CSI team
- Turn into his eviler second cousin, 'Eckley'
- Force CSIs to go rafting
- Iniate the split of the shift to seperate Sara and Nick, being jealous
- Cover up a murder
- Take bribes
- Try to destroy the twuwub of Grissom and Sara
You'd think the guy has no time to even run the lab with all the debauchery he indulges in. What is with this unpleasant=evil link? Just acting like an ass is not an iniation into evilhood. In fact, then we'd all be evil. The world is full of unpleasant, gitty people who makes your day a sucky day, but nevertheless would never murder, rape or torture just for the heck of it. Ecklie's a bureaucratic, ambitious guy who doesn't mind stealing a little glory, but that doesn't mean he's hiding a tail in his pants. You need a villain, invent one, flesh one out. Don't just nick Ecklie's name and make it 'shocking that it's one of their own!!!' And it's getting unoriginal to boot, given how many times I've seen it now.
Writing villains or people who've committed bad acts is not easy. They were easily become just cardboard or way over the top. When I write them, I generally go for one of two ways. I either make them thread in shadow, leaving them a bit of a mystery - or I make them as human as I can. I've always found the latter more scary, in a way, realising how horrid crimes can be committed by people who otherwise seem like any other human. Of course, writing this well is very hard. But what strikes me about writing villains is how often we assume evil acts mean eeeeeeevil person, through and through.
But if Ecklie truly was as evil as fanfic would have us believe, you'd think someone would have noticed. The fact is, evil can be done by all too human everyday people, who seemed not gitty or unpleasant at all. And they can have good sides to them too. Humans like to think in black and white, good and evil, hero and villain, but we create illusions all the time. Sometimes, it's worth it to dispell them.
So Cam Says: Thou Shall Not Free Evil!Ecklie. Writeth Conrad the Git, for 'lo, he is at thy service to be the annoyance of other CSIs. But the only thing he shall ever slay is the realism of thy fic if thou ignorest his heeding.
Also, he dost implore thou to learn grammar and spelling before unleashing the 'bunnies, bunnies, fluffy bunnies under rainbows forever as Grissom and Sara have sex fifty times in a row!' fic of thine.
(I apologise for mutilating Olde Englishe. Spank me. I've been bad.)
