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.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 10:48 am (UTC)*spanks the Cam*
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Date: 2005-05-09 11:32 am (UTC)What bothers me the most is when one can't see the villian's motivation. I get suckered into playing the villians in RP pretty often, and there are some plotlines that the Suethor comes up with that I just cannot pull off, so help me. If he likes power, that does not mean that he gets his jollies raping Sues when killing them without fuss would make things so much easier. Human villians really do make a whole story more realistic.
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Date: 2005-05-09 02:19 pm (UTC)1) that evil!Ecklie thing annoys me in other fandoms, too. I mean, the general principle can be applied. Where the character is annoying or unpleasant as a personality trait and suddenly they're capable of all sorts of atrocities. Which is weird, because the REALLY messed up people are the ones where neighbors go, "well, he was so polite. And quiet. Who knew he killed 50 people and buried them in the woods?"
2) I want to start a PPC for Queer as Folk. My partner-in-asskicking would be
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Date: 2005-05-09 02:55 pm (UTC)Isn't there even an LJ community for the protection of canonical Denethor around somewhere? Maybe you should start something similar for CSI.
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Date: 2005-05-09 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 08:56 pm (UTC)I don't watch CSI, but I'd support the cause on general principles.
Not only does Denethor syndrome make 3D characters look bad, but the resulting wank also encourages Sauron-, Morgoth-, Saruman-, etc. fangirls to fluff the real baddies up. I don't mind somebody liking a villian for being a kick-ass evil villian, but these people who try to give Sauron or Voldemort a redeeming love interest deserve what they have coming.
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Date: 2005-05-09 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 12:00 am (UTC)*whimpers*
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Date: 2005-05-10 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 12:05 am (UTC)And yeah - people who are capable of atrocities don't always go around advertising it, since then they wouldn't get to committ anymore, y'know.
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Date: 2005-05-10 12:06 am (UTC)I think the Denethor syndrome is in almost any fandom, sadly.
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Date: 2005-05-10 12:07 am (UTC)*pats Sauron* Poor Dark Lord, so slandered.
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Date: 2005-05-10 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-10 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 03:58 pm (UTC)