Bitchin' Blog Posts
Villainy
by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | May 21, 2009 | Thursday at 8:29 pm | 53 CommentsOn IMDB, I read that screen testers who watched an early cut of Fatal Attraction hated the ending because the Glenn Close character didn’t die badly enough. They wanted her set on fire, drawn, quartered, and, if I remember the quote correctly, “blown away.” So in the version that was released to theatres, Close’s character’s ending was rewritten, because, as the trivia page for the movie says, “preview audiences felt that [Close’s character] was not brought to justice.” Her come-uppance had to match and even out as much as possible her crimes. The ending had to serve as some restitution for the damages she caused, if only in the viewer’s mind.
That rewritten ending came to mind when I was discussing villains in contemporary romances and romantic suspense novels with some of the members of the Washington Romance Writers this past weekend.
The WRW is a huge chapter - over 200 members - and after the meeting, some members of the Board went out for coffee and then dinner, and like any gathering of romance fans and writers in the genre, finding topics to chat about was way easy. At one point the discussion turned to villains and books the scared the crap out of us. I mentioned Blue Smoke, which to this day I can’t reread unless I know the doors and windows are locked and the dog is awake—and since my dog has cataracts and is about 9000 years old in human years, keeping the old man awake is mostly for my own comfort so I have something to hold onto while I scare the crap out of myself.
When I mentioned Blue Smoke, one of the women said that she didn’t like the book because she didn’t think the villain got served enough of the can of restitution whoop-ass in the end. His crimes were so evil and so awful that there was no making up for them, even in the end when the evil is vanquished and everyone else lives happily ever after. While she was explaining why the villain went too far down the road of no return, it made me wonder if there’s a Too Evil To Bear scale for villains, like there’s a Too Stupid to Live scale for heroines. Heroines who are Too Stupid Too Live, depending on the reader and where the heroine falls on the scale, aren’t likeable, and aren’t characters who keep us reading—I’ve definitely put down books because the heroine was a foolish twatnugget. And I’ve had problems with books where the hero’s actions were irredeemable to the point where I didn’t think he could make amends sufficiently enough to justify his happy ending. We debated that a few years ago in the thread on rape in romance with the hero from Whitney My Love, and it was one of the major reasons I didn’t like Claiming the Courtesan - I didn’t think the hero could redeem himself enough in my eyes for me to believe the happy ending. There were many other people who thought differently, for whom the hero’s actions in the end made up for the beginning.
With the number of serial killers in romantic suspense novels rivaling the number of dukes in historicals, there’s no shortage of vile crime. Have there been villains whose actions are so vile, so completely irredeemable that no matter what happened to the Baddy McBadston, it wasn’t enough to cleanse the palate sufficiently and make room for the fully-developed happy ending?
Heather said on 05.21.09 at 08:54 PM • [link]
I can’t think of a baddy who was so bad that s/he couldn’t be punished enough.
But this does remind me of the Princess Bride:
Boy: Who gets Humperdink?
Grandfather: I don’t understand.
Boy: Who kills Prince Humperdink? At the end, somebody’s got to do it. Is it Inigo? Who?
Grandfather: Nobody. Nobody kills him. He lives.
Boy: You mean he wins? Jesus, Grandpa! What did you read me this thing for?
Because, honestly, Humperdink should have died ...
Carrie Lofty said on 05.21.09 at 09:24 PM • [link]
I picked up Blue Smoke at the library because of your mention in BHB and had to skim the last 100 pages. I’m SO not cut out for rom susp. Iz wuss.
Randi said on 05.21.09 at 09:26 PM • [link]
Heather: Good one!!!! LOL.
Reacher Fan said on 05.21.09 at 09:26 PM • [link]
I have not read Claiming the Courtesan, but I did read Whitney My Love many years ago and the ending just made me mad as hell. Clayton should have been castrated. Slowly. He was utterly despicable and frankly beyond forgiveness much less his victims love. For someone that started out as a character of strength, Whitney turned into victim of abuse who excused her abuser. How often is that cycle repeated in real life with tragic results? How could someone - anyone - see love in this? His cold calculation in his acts of degradation, physical and emotional abuse were beyond redemption. Sorry, that was one Duke that well and truly deserved a life of hell on earth, not HEA.
There are characters for whom no suitable end can be found to balance the horror they have inflicted. In real life and in books, monsters exist and sane people cannot inflict a punishment that equals their crimes.
Kalen Hughes said on 05.21.09 at 09:57 PM • [link]
Hmmmmmmmm, I can’t think of one . . . oh great, now all I can think of is the old biddy in Waking Ned Divine who gets hit by the bus while attempting to rat out the village. Everyone in my theatre cheered. It was surreal.
Julie M said on 05.21.09 at 09:57 PM • [link]
This isn’t quite the same but I have to mention Sanctuary by Nora Roberts. Of course Nora is an amazing writer but the set up for the story was a heinious crime by the father of the hero perpetrated on the mother of the heroine twenty years before the book takes place. I won’t say more about the story but I hate hate hate that book. The story couldn’t happen without the step up but I so hate that the hero’s father got away with his crime and was only found out after his death. Even though I realize logically that this is a well plotted book with a happy ending I closed the book sick that the (fictional!) father got way with his crime. On one hand Ms. Roberts did an amazing job of depicting the characters and plotting the book (SOP for her imo), but I couldn’t get past the fact that a fictional character got way with such a heinous crime. I’m not sure I’m rational about this to this day. Man Nora can write and I love her books but that one…. left me unable to appreciate the happy ending… yet there would have been no book if the set-up had not happened….. see I’m not rational…
Keira said on 05.21.09 at 10:18 PM • [link]
That should be a SAT question:
Serial Killer : Romantic Suspense as ____ : ____
A) Kick-Ass Heroines : Paranormal Romance
B) Dukes : Historical Romance
C) Warriors : Highlander Romance
D) Virgin Mistresses : Category Romance
E) All of the above.
Elizabeth Wadsworth said on 05.21.09 at 10:33 PM • [link]
The only one I can think off offhand is in a movie: John Houston’s character in Chinatown. Of course, the ending wouldn’t have been so effectively noirish and creepy if he’d gotten his comeuppance.
Willa said on 05.21.09 at 10:33 PM • [link]
There’s a couple of entries about this sort of thing on TVTROPES.ORG. Such as, this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster
Then there’s this link:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon?from=Main.RapeTheDog
when a TV or movie villain commits an act so despicable that he or she cannot be redeemed, and if this villain was once charismatic or sexily evil, he is now only evil, and must be destroyed. Etc.
There’s also “Evil Has Standards:”
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards
and so forth. Man I love that site!
Sarah W said on 05.21.09 at 10:41 PM • [link]
Heather—-
I always thought that Westly’s “To the Pain” speech in hte movie outlined a fitting punishment for Humperdink.
Although I suppose surviving (so to speak) to win back Humperdink’s bride\pawn and leaving him as if he was less than nothing was probably a pretty good punishment in and of itself.
This is all for the movie, though. He definitely should have died in the book.
At least Inigo got his father’s murderer—-that scene, that final line: I want my father back, you son of a bitch, always gives me a frisson of pure righteous justice. And a couple of tears, too . . .
Becca said on 05.21.09 at 10:43 PM • [link]
There’s another of Nora’s that the ending really bothered me on.. can’t be bothered to run upstairs to go look for it, but it’s the one with the Satanist coven, where it’s implied that the Real Villain gets off scott-free to re-form the coven somewhere else. I hate that book so badly that I can never remember the title. (but I love Blue Smoke, and think it’s one of Nora’s best.)
Jenica said on 05.21.09 at 10:55 PM • [link]
Becca, I think that’s Divine Evil…I agree, very disconcerting. However, I usually forgive heroes who don’t deserve it - maybe it’s a super-suspension of belief. One that stands out for me is Johanna Lindsey’s So Speaks the Heart. He’s a complete asshat, but at the end when he’s walking away, defeated, and I think she’s going to let him go, I actually choke up!
Bev Stephans said on 05.21.09 at 11:21 PM • [link]
The book that comes to my mind is “The Bad Seed”. In the movie, Rhoda gets her comeuppance at the end, but the book has a completely different ending. Talk about the villain(ess) getting away with murder.
Sarah said on 05.21.09 at 11:37 PM • [link]
Severin from Rosehaven by Catherine Coulter didn’t deserve a happy ending. It was my first rape romance. A few chapters in I (literally) threw it against the wall. I kept picking it up and chucking it around until I finished it. At first I was waiting for the REAL hero to come into the story, and then for her to beat his head in. Sadly, this did not happen and he lived happily ever after when SHE apologized for making life difficult for him. It was my first Coulter book and I don’t think I can bring myself to read another one.
Melissandre said on 05.22.09 at 12:17 AM • [link]
I get annoyed with villains who are too stupid to live. You know… the ones with paper-thin motives for their villany (“The inheritance should be mine!!” “Your woman should be mine!!” “Etcetera!!”). This is usually when the author feels compelled to stick a sinister subplot into the book; sometimes it works, but is often just an annoying distraction from the nookie.
By the by, one villain that I think did not get a full comeuppance was my namesake, Melissandre Sharizai from Kushiel’s Dart and Kushiel’s Chosen. She plots two potential coups, and betrays her country to a horde of violent barbarians. What’s her punishment? Life in a convent. Not right…
Leslie H said on 05.22.09 at 12:41 AM • [link]
I can’t read Janet E’s Plum series because of the bad guy in the first book. I think there is a sort of agreement between reader and author and since I was expecting PG-13 and suddenly got NC-17 my trust in the author felt betrayed. I don’t care how clever the characters are if I can’t trust the author and her “Brand”.
If I am reading Hammet, I know it’s going to get very ugly and bitter. If I am reading JD Robb, I know upfront that there is a boatload more violence than in her Nora Roberts work.
Then again I know lots of folks who weren’t as bothered by ONE FOR THE MONEY. Taste figures in prominently and our own emotional hot keys.
On Villains: Dungeons and Dragons has a book called THE EXEMPLARS OF EVIL which says that a Bad Guy has to have a clearly defined Motive, Objective, and Plan of Action. I think a lot of fiction villains are a little shaky on more than one of these.
Security word result42 it makes my geek heart happy!
Jojo said on 05.22.09 at 01:12 AM • [link]
I’m so glad to hear someone else say this! I am a social worker working with foster kids, so I see a lot dark, evil things in my everyday life. I read romance as a means of escape knowing that there will be a HEA for the good people and the bad guys will pay for their crimes—something that I see far too seldom in my life. When I started One for the Money I assumed it would be a funny, carefree read but instead ended up having nightmares. I’ve been told that the later books in the series aren’t as dark but I have zero interest in reading them now as I have no trust in the author.
Jessica Scott said on 05.22.09 at 01:36 AM • [link]
Life is now full. I have learned of the twatnugget.
Anyway, I agree that some villians need a serious killing in a bad way. What I’ve discovered though, in my journey of reading things I don’t normally read this year in Iraq, however, is that romance tends to want to pull back. This guy can’t be tortured b/c they can’t see themselves doing just that b/c a sensible woman should forgive.
I’m all about vengence in my characters. In fact, if someone is allowed to live and it’s completely out of character for the wronged party, it feels like a betrayal of my expectations as a reader.
I just finished Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and it’s not a romance, HOWEVER, I never wanted a character to die a horrible death as badly as I wanted William Hamleigh to die.
SPOILER: he got the worst of it, though I would have liked to see him get it when he was younger, in the end, his death was satisfying b/c it wasn’t quick and he ended up with nothing.
Courtney Milan said on 05.22.09 at 02:12 AM • [link]
Well. I have to admit my taste for revenge and punishment isn’t very well-defined. I’ve found books ruined for me by killing villains at the end, especially when the hero or heroine does it and then walks off into the sunset, as if nothing is wrong.
Doesn’t matter how bad the dude is. If you kill another human, no matter how necessary, no matter how tiny your role in their demise, you’re going to be pretty screwed up. It’s just not a happy ending to me.
Lady T said on 05.22.09 at 03:18 AM • [link]
I’ve always been a fan of villains in literature and depending on the evil level,have either relished their downfall or rooted them on(particularly if they happened to go after people just as bad or worse than them-Dexter,for example).
Hannibal Lector is a classic “Too Evil To Live” guy,but he’s so smooth with his wickedness that you’re not totally disappointed about him getting away(even in the book version of Hannibal that Hollywood didn’t have the guts to truly adapt). Voldemort,on the other hand,is one TETL that you’re just about begging to see get what he deserves.
Sometimes,it makes a better point to the story to have the bad guy walk away,seemingly unscathed. The Usual Suspects is perfectly brilliant because of that bit of business-“poof! And then,he’s gone.”
Mary Stella said on 05.22.09 at 03:29 AM • [link]
Just like I enjoy a great romantic resolution where the hero and heroine achieve their happily ever after ending, I expect the villain to get what’s coming to him/her/them—in a glorious, technicolor ass-whipping. (Said ass-whipping can be literally or figuratively delivered as long as the villain knows his uppance hath come and is verily pissed off that he was defeated—at the hands of the hero and heroine.)
Lori said on 05.22.09 at 03:39 AM • [link]
I don’t normally focus that much on how the villain gets his/her comeuppance in romance novels. As long as there is some sort of punishment I’m usually OK with it. I know there have been times when I thought the villain deserved worse than he got, but it doesn’t ruin the book for me.
What does ruin a book is when the hero or heroine does something I find unforgivable. Like Sarah I sometimes feel that h/h has done something so rotten that I don’t want to see him/her get an HEA. It feels too much like rewarding someone for being rotten and I don’t enjoy that. I’m in the middle of a book right now where I’m so mad at the heroine that I have no interest in seeing her happy. If things don’t improve in a hurry this one is going to be a wall-banger.
Those with a preference for a more vengeance oriented approach to evil might want to consider the Reacher books by Lee Child. Reacher has no patience with the bad guys. (Note: There’s always a woman, but the books aren’t romances and most of them are pretty dark.)
Sycorax said on 05.22.09 at 04:29 AM • [link]
While I can’t actually remember how Steerpike from Gormenghast died, I remember it wasn’t bad enough. I hated him so much it spoiled my enjoyment of the book. That’s pretty rare for me. I generally enjoy villains and I like it when their fate doesn’t involve straightforward righteous punishment.
Lady T, I agree about the pleasure of occasionally watching a villain walk away. Hannibal Lector is a good example, another (very different) is Thenardier from Les Miserables. You rarely get that in a romance novel as the villain is only important as a force that keeps the lovers apart. A layered, complex villain is a distraction from the main relationship. Georgette Heyer did produce an awesome villain in The Black Moth but even he was something of a caricature.
GrowlyCub said on 05.22.09 at 04:56 AM • [link]
I’m probably in the minority on this, but I thought Jack really boring and thought Diana would have led a much more interesting life if she had ended up with the ‘villain’. Btw, did you know that Avon from These Old Shades is based on ‘The Black Moth’, so villain redeemed!
MaryK said on 05.22.09 at 05:05 AM • [link]
The Forest Lord by Susan Krinard. At the end, the heroine’s mother kills the heroine’s lover, the hero (he’s supernatural so he manages to find his way back from the afterworld). Then the heroine and her mother kiss and make up. I wanted to rip the book to pieces and burn it.
Suze said on 05.22.09 at 05:08 AM • [link]
I don’t seem to notice villains except as plot devices. I really don’t remember any in particular. Except Ward’s Lessers, and they’re just an irritant. I know I read Blue Smoke, but I honestly don’t remember the villain.
That said, I don’t read horror, because it scares me (and if I somehow read it anyway and like it, then I don’t understand why anybody would label it horror). I like my villains to have closure, by which I mean, it doesn’t matter how evil they are, as long as they don’t win, and as long as they’re not loose to commit more evil at the end of the story. Or, um, if they do, then the story for the h/h has changed such that the villain just isn’t relevant anymore. Which I hope makes more sense than I fear it does.
I had nightmares after watching the movie Big Trouble in Little China (yes, the silly one with Kurt Russell) solely because that big orange monster was loose at the end.
Anyway, since I’ve become more aware of business and political news over the last decade or so, evil has become fairly commonplace. Could you make a fictional villain more villainous than Dick Cheney? Joe Stalin? Idi Amin? The Enron guys? If you tried to write any of them up as fictional villains, your editor would tell you to tone it down and make it more realistic.
Venus Vaughn said on 05.22.09 at 08:56 AM • [link]
A villain that received a well-deserved comeuppance was Ty Winsloe in Stolen by Kelley Armstrong.
The author and heroine took their time messing with Winsloe’s mind, keeping him in pain physically and making him fear his inevitable demise. It was delicious. He was a bad guy who had no moral compass, and they stripped him of all dignity before sending him to meet his maker.
It was the sort of destruction of a villain that we rarely get to read. Usually in a romance, the H&H are so busy making puppy eyes at each other and enjoying the hope and healing they’ve just discovered that they’re not as invested in making the bad guy pay.
This book wasn’t a romance, though there was a strong love bond, so maybe that’s why there was room for letting the guy have a good killing.
Kaetrin said on 05.22.09 at 10:05 AM • [link]
It was my first rape romance. A few chapters in I (literally) threw it against the wall. I kept picking it up and chucking it around until I finished it.
Thanks for that Sarah - the mental picture of you “chucking it around” until you finished it made my day! *snort*
JenD said on 05.22.09 at 10:10 AM • [link]
I agree with Lori on this. I get much more upset if a h/h does something that, in my eyes, in so bad that there’s no coming back from it.
I think I expect evil to go unpunished (not punished enough perhaps) to an extent because that’s just been my experience. For some crimes there’s no redemption big enough anyway.
With my h/h’s I expect a level of ‘rightness’ I suppose. I know evil is evil and justice isn’t always served- yet I want my heroes to be, well.. heroes. Having worked with abused women and children, I simply have a low threshold for ‘forgiving’ an abuser, rapist or general asshat.
Life’s just too short to go around putting yourself into bad situations over and over. So when I see a heroine get right back in line for more beat-downs, she enters the TSTL catagory pretty quickly.
That or I want to give her a good therapist’s number.
Cat Marsters said on 05.22.09 at 01:45 PM • [link]
Hmm, tough question. Part of the problem with a villain getting his/her comeuppance is where it’s going to come from. Will it be a hideous trainwreck/suicide/accident, in which our stalwart but wronged protagonists have no part, but can mutter grimly, “It’s what he deserved,”? Yeah, but it feels like a damn cop-out.
Or on the other hand will our unjustly persecuted hero and heroine devise a just ending for the villain? Sure, they deserve their vengeance. But will it be enough to make up for the terrible things he’s done? Can it be?
This is most sadly true. However much you want your hero to get his vengeance, won’t murdering the villain put him on the same level? There are some acts of villainy that are too vile to be left unpunished, and certainly the punishment ought to fit the crime, but who’s going to carry it out? A quick merciful death isn’t good enough—or bad enough—for a heinous villain. He merits a slow, painful, torturous death. But do you really want your hero meting out said death? I’m not sure someone capable of that sort of act is all that heroic.
It’s a conundrum. Personally, there have been more heroes I’d like to flay alive, and heroines too—yes, Whitney, I’m looking at you. And your rapetastic, bizarrely named-husband (a duke called Clayton? What was she smoking?).
I’m trying to remember what I did to the child-rapist villain in one of my books. Oh yes. A giant cat ate his face.
Kathleen O'Reilly said on 05.22.09 at 02:34 PM • [link]
I love me some good villainy! I was on a thriller-fest for a long time, and those guys were almost always into body parts and staged killings and long, slow dripping deaths, but the ick factor never bothered me much, and the justice, or lack thereof, never moves me like this one episode of Law & Order. The comedy club wife killer, who got off in one episode, and then they bring him back for the murder of wife #2 and he finally gets his justice. That first episode made me scream.
Hannibal Lector is my fav villain ever, and I read this one book somewhere saying that if you surround a villain with people that are even worse, then it makes the villain more heroic. If you notice in SOTL, the doc was so much more vile than Lector, there were the ookie prisoners, and then Jamie. Hannibal was elevated in status, and a lot of people (including me) would have been upset if he had been caught trying to get the doc at the end of the movie, because the doc was the one who deserved the come-uppance, not Hannibal.
Suze talked about real-life villains, and there’s an article in the current Newsweek on Joseph Kony, a warlord from Uganda and they talk about what he’s done and I don’t think I’ve ever read or watched a villain that gave me shivers like this. I don’t know why rom-sus writers don’t use more of the stuff that’s going on in Africa instead of the Middle East for their plot works.
Elise Logan said on 05.22.09 at 02:44 PM • [link]
I am disappointed if I think the villain doesn’t get what he deserves. But - big but here - that is totally individual to the villain in question. Some villains are horrible, awful, nasty and just so much fun it’s okay for them to escape to wreak some more havoc (and, yes, I mean Hannibal here). Some villains - guilty of much less heinous crimes - need killing. In dire and heinous ways. And some crimes - no matter how otherwise interesting the villain - are auto-death. Kids top the list on that one for me. In my current WIP, I struggled a bit as to how to deal with the villain - did they need more smack down? Less? Who gives out the smackdown? It’s a fine balancing act, so I think authors who pull it off deserve a strong “atta boy/girl.”
and, your57 for the security word makes me think Heinz 57. so..i’m a mutt? or maybe a tasty sauce? (Sarah, don’t TOUCH that!)
Elizabeth Wadsworth said on 05.22.09 at 02:58 PM • [link]
Interestingly, Steerpike was one of the few villains (or antiheroes) I adored, and hoped would get off scot-free. Granted, I was nineteen or twenty at the time I read the book, and two decades later I might just want to brain him with an ax. The same goes for Stanley from Streetcar Named Desire and Jimmy from Look Back In Anger, both of whom I thought were pretty cool dudes as a teenager, but would probably make me grit my teeth now.
Simone said on 05.22.09 at 03:49 PM • [link]
I read a lot of historicals and the villain’s comeuppance is usually a letdown. I mean, having the hero/heroine tie up or knock the villain out, then “call the police/magistrate/Bow Street runners”, who show up and take the villain away to “justice”, makes me laugh every time. Um, London had no police in the 18th century. The court system was a joke. The legal system was a sieve, except for the poor of course.
I agree with Courtney though, having the h/h murder the villain outright is also a bit disturbing. It’s a real challenge for the historical writer.
Alyssa Day said on 05.22.09 at 04:25 PM • [link]
>>I’ve definitely put down books because the heroine was a foolish twatnugget.<<
I just wanted to say that “foolish twatnugget” brought me a smile on a very crap-ass day. I heart you hugely.
Cat Marsters said on 05.22.09 at 04:35 PM • [link]
I beg to differ. Maybe not a modern police force as we know it, but the Bow Street Runners were founded in 1749 and answered to the magistrate’s court. Founded by an author, incidentally.
And, of course, the court system was only a joke to those on the wrong side of it. Our good hero and heroine will always be on the right side of it—in the end, anyway. In the world of the historical romance where the good have triumphed, they will of course be well represented in a legal sense, while the villain will be friendless and despised by the courts. He’ll rot in prison, and then hang.
I kinda liked him too, but then that may have been Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the BBC adaptation.
Madd said on 05.22.09 at 05:03 PM • [link]
Catherine Coulter is great if you love heroes who rape the heroine and then end up making with the happily. It makes me want to bang my head against a desk, something I haven’t done since my angsty tween days.
Sometimes I have a problem where I feel empathy for a villain and find it kind of sad when they get their comeuppance. It’s usually when the author has done a good job, maybe too good of a job, of writing the villain. The character has depth and you understand their motivations even though they’re flawed.
lustyreader said on 05.22.09 at 06:05 PM • [link]
i’m going to add my two cents to the already large pile of pennies regarding when the H/H kills the villain.
i just finished Lord of Ice by Gaelen Foley and the heroine kills her estranged uncle (of COURSE he was the villain, obvi) with a giant axe that she can barely hold it is so heavy by chopping him open in the stomach.
gah-ross. there were a couple of lines about “omg i can’t believe i killed someone, i’m so upset, what have i done? i’m traumatized” and then she goes off to fetch cleaning supplies to clear up the mess of him and the other 7 people the Hero just killed.
instead of being happy the villain was so completely destroyed i felt sick to my stomach for the heroine for “having” to do something so awful. and throughout the rest of the story (which goes on even after the villain is vanquished, i was very pleasantly surprised that it also covered the H/H in early marriage) the heroine didn’t have any internal or external dialogue about coming to terms with the fact she brutally murdered someone.
Jessa Slade said on 05.22.09 at 08:12 PM • [link]
Since I read MZB’s Mists of Avalon before I got into the original vision of Camelot, I never got how Morgan could ever be the bad guy. That mis/understanding permanently warped my view of villains, I think.
In writing, they always tell us “The villain is the hero of his own story.” And I can’t stop seeing his side of things. The more I read about mental illness, the harder it is to imagine a one punishment fits all comeuppance.
But for the sake of fiction, where sometimes the bad guy is just bad, my favorite punishment is when the villain faces his evil and is broken by his inability to change. Then, the only one at fault is him.
CD said on 05.22.09 at 08:58 PM • [link]
Me too me too!! That was a great adaptation - managed that difficult trick of both an original and a faithful adaptation of the books. Fantastic cast and an early leading role for Rhys Meyers where, unlike THE TUDORS, he was actually required to act. Although he is obviously far too beautiful a man to be ugly, he somehow managed to make his gorgeousness slightly repellant as well - sort of the way Jude Law used to do in his earlier roles.
As for FATAL ATTRACTION, I thought the original ending was that instead of going on some over the top murderous rampage, she committed suicide in their bathtub. If that’s the case, I much prefer the original ending than the one they ended up using which basically turned the Close character into some bunny boiling homicidal maniac while completely exonerating the Douglas character.
Simone said on 05.23.09 at 12:06 AM • [link]
An axe to the stomach! Gross!
Conceded, Cat :) But how many Runners were there? Like 10? In an age with no telephones? In Romancelandia they’re always fetching them in seconds, like there were an army of Runners just sitting around. It wasn’t exactly like calling the cops now, is all.
I kind of like it when the villain isn’t dispatched at all. But I’m a small minority that way.
Pippy said on 05.23.09 at 01:48 AM • [link]
First, I would like to preface this with a statement that i have never killed someone or even been in a fight, but ...
I frequently find myself resembling Dr. Evil’s son as played bt Seth Green. “Why not shot him, I’v got a gun up in my room, it will be fun” I don’t think killing the evil guy is frequently all that bad, and iit will make everyone’s life better, and just get over yourself for the angst, but I have been told that I am not sympathetic enough frequently
There are also very few cases where I think just killing the villain is not a good idea, cause while punishment is nice, it is even better not to have to deal with the ashat anymore
Qadesh said on 05.23.09 at 02:25 AM • [link]
I’m with Simone on this, villains rarely receive a just punishment in a Regency era historical. Maybe they are allowed to kill themselves if their crimes would bring to many problems to the crown or there is my personal favorite, let’s ship them across the pond and let the poor unknowning souls in the upstart colonies deal with them. As if settling in Boston is punishment enough, and maybe it is from one viewpoint, but it still irks me. It may be historically accurate but it is a cop-out.
I realize it isn’t romance per se, but I would say that a few of La Nora’s fiends in her In Death series don’t receive the punishment they deserve, jeez some of them are some seriously sick puppies, and that is even after Eve/Roarke and company get to them. There are two that come to mind as unsatisfying, both Origin in Death and Innocent in Death I found so disturbing that the endings left me horrified and unfulfilled. SPOILER!!!! But what can you do to a murdering 9 year-old?
dani said on 05.23.09 at 02:48 AM • [link]
I just finished reading Laura Kinsale’s Uncertain Magic and while I loved the the hero, the heroine and the story, I was pissed off that, IMO, the “villain” got off. When I think about everything that this person did…for years…to the hero and how badly it fucked him up…and then to have their punishment be a mystical “imprisonment” in a mental/emotional condition that to me they’d already been living in for decades, I felt the urge to imagine them bitchslapped, stampeded, drawn and quartered, and then burned at the stake to satisfy my bloodlust and allow me to lay the story to rest and move on.
Other than that, I have no further examples.
Mary Stella said on 05.23.09 at 04:42 AM • [link]
Something in the comments made me think of the villainous twins (Perry and Kate) from Laurie McBain’s Moonstruck Madness and its sequels. They were nasty pieces who conspired against their cousin/nemesis the hero, the Duke of Camereigh (Lucien). Not only did they hire people to try to kill him more than once, they later tried to kill Lucien and Sabrina aka the heroine.
The plots all failed and they got their original comeuppance in glorious fashion. I think Perry tried to shoot Lucien and ended up shooting his twin. The bullet unhinged Kate’s jaw, marring one half of her face and wrecking her beauty forever. They were banished from England. Perry died years later while they were in exile.
Kate returned to England in a later book and kidnapped Lucien and Sabrina’s eldest daughter. Of course she was rescued, in another book. I forget exactly what happened to Kate, but seem to remember it was another fitting end.
sandra said on 05.23.09 at 04:41 PM • [link]
I get annoyed when a villain doesn’t get his comeuppance. In Jo Beverley’s CHRISTMAS ANGEL, the villain robs the heroine and her children of 30,000 pounds and then tries to murder her son, and he is not punished. He’s already spent the money, so they decided to just leave him alone. A quick trip to Australia in chains would have been a more appropriate end. Likewise, in the same author’s FORBIDDEN, the heroine’s loutish brothers treat her abominably, selling her to a sexual sadist, stealing her inheritance when the man finaly dies etc etc and ... nothing. I would have given them a bottle of gin laced with laudenum, then stripped them, bound them and handed them over to a navy press gang. A few years of rum, sodomy and the lash would have done them a world of good. Spamword but23. But 23 lashing with the cat-o-nine-tails wouldn’t have made an impression on their thick hides. No, but it would have been fun to watch.
Miriam Staples said on 05.24.09 at 08:39 AM • [link]
The modern woman has a very strong sense of natural justice. I have never liked the Old Skool romances with rape. I have always felt that if you love someone (or are falling for them) then you don’t hurt them. You just don’t hurt who you care for.
Reading those romances always leaves me feeling dirty because by reading the scene, I feel that you also participate in them…
Overquoted said on 05.24.09 at 04:45 PM • [link]
Ooooh, Severin. I still remember that name to this day. Doesn’t help that a gay friend of mine shares the name. :P Who here remembers Graelam from Fire Song? I read that book twice (who knows why) and wanted to set in on fire each time. That was one nasty mofo of a hero-rapist. Huge, hulking brute raping the teeny-tiny heroine. REPEATEDLY. Seriously. >:| The only “nice” thing he did was use some sort of lube. Seems like she passed out at least once! May he rot.
I was reading romances by 14 (barely 2000), but mostly from a small town library and small town used bookstore. So you can imagine how many rape-romances I ingested at about 1-3 books/day (go speed-reading; thanks for screwing with my psyche!). Just about every Catherine Coulter, Jude Devereaux, Johanna Lindsey, Julie Garwood, Judith McNaught and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss book printed by then. *facepalms* Heroes otherwise known as fuckheads. Though I do give props to the authors who eventually began writing pretty cool heroes (I think I recall Johanna Lindsey doing it in the 2nd or 3rd sci-fi romance she wrote - the first hardback I ever bought off the shelf). Julie Garwood maybe shouldn’t be included in the group. Can’t recall. :P
As for villains…I gotta diverge from the group here. I absolutely adore it when well thought-out villains get away, or they become far too complicated for you to feel comfortable torturing and killing them off at the end. Kinda like The Joker from The Dark Knight. Totally stole the show, beloved by most. Offhand, I can’t think of any villains in romances to fit the bill, but the moral ambiguity I love so much can be found in Kit Whitfield’s Benighted and maybe in Faith Hunter’s series to a degree.
Stupid villains, however, should die every single time.
Gerd Duerner said on 05.24.09 at 07:32 PM • [link]
Interesting topic, personally I think there should be a law made that requires sexually abusive characters to die a painful death at least at the end of the book.
Lector is a great villain because he follows a stringent moral codex, much like Dexter does, that has him preferrably kill people that deserve to to die. Which throws up the question, can we really justly put him in the villain section only because he’s killing a few people?
The only villain for which I, for a moment, hoped for a redemption was Dollarhyde in Harris’s “Red Dragon” when he almost falls in love and for the first time starts to be a human being.
That had something touching, pityful, but then again Dollarhyde is a villain that didn’t have full control over his actions he is after all driven by madness.
I guess ‘good’ villains are more difficult to write than heroes, a hero/heroine has only to be good, but a villain must be evil, vile, we must be able to hate him with a fervor and not have a bad conscience over it, and yet not so much as to have us turn away from the book completly because we can’t stomach witnessing his deprived acts anymore.
Throwmearope said on 05.24.09 at 10:25 PM • [link]
I love the Fate Takes a Hand and punishes the villains type of endings. Mary Stewart in Touch Not the Cat ***SPOILER*** has the evil twin cousins punished by a flood they unleashed. One is injured so badly that the hero is certain he won’t survive and the other is too incompetent to manage without his brother. Absolves the H/H from karma, punishes the guilty, and no boring trial scenes to imagine.
Jeanette said on 05.26.09 at 04:21 AM • [link]
This is EXACTLY what I thought of when I read this post. There have been several of the “in Death” books that the ending just pissed me off. I’m from the school of “an eye for an eye.” Those psychotic killers deserve to be tortured, mutilated and much more before flat out killing them. They don’t deserve an easy death after what they’ve done in some of those books. Committing suicide or a quick bullet to the head isn’t enough. LOL
And I don’t understand these TV shows when the good guy/girl corner the villain yelling, “Drop the weapon or I’ll shot.” Dangit! Just SHOOT! You know they’re either gonna shoot you or their partner will come up behind you and put a gun to your head. Call me evil, but I"m shooting first. I might not kill them, but I’m gonna disarm them. No warning.
Catootes said on 05.26.09 at 08:17 PM • [link]
Great topic! For some reason I can’t come up with a villian that didn’t get the just desserts, and shoud not be commenting, but the Too Stupid To Live mention sparked my memory.
The last book I tossed across the room was Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning. The main female, MacKayla, was so damn annoying and such a twatnugget. *ZOMG! I love that word* She was so annoyingly whiney, I don’t think I have every been so annoyed by a character before. Not to mention wimpy, irritating and STUPID. Really too stupid to live and should have been put out of her misery as quickly as possible.
Lynn M said on 05.27.09 at 05:00 PM • [link]
This weekend, my husband and I watched the movie “Taken”. For those not in the know, it stars Liam Neeson as a former CIA agent whose daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers. Many scenes in the show depict the horror that such kidnap victims are subject to - the forced drug addiction and prostitution and even death. It made me sick. And one by one, Liam picked the evil bastards responsible for his daughter’s abduction off. However, with each gun shot that got rid of a baddie, I said to my husband that it wasn’t enough. I wanted these guys to suffer a lot of pain and anguish before their eventual deaths because of the evil that they perpetrated. I’m not a violent person, and the idea of torture horrifies me. But I wanted these villains to beg for death. There is no level of hell too horrible for people who would do such a thing.
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