Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Villains are so boring

Oaky, I'm going to be controversial again, and since I haven't got much time, I'm going to make this short. I find villains boring, and fics which are "villain-driven" or "A-plot-driven" very often bore me, or worse, frankly turn me off.

The way I see it, the villains that are really awfully scary in real life practically always have some sort of organisation behind them. They are just so extremely rarely lone wolves. The villains get strong, mighty and deadly because of the organisation backing them up. Usually, if they do act on their own, they have at least gotten their ideas from pre-existing organisations or movements. An example of the latter is the Army psychiatrist who carried out the Fort Hood massacre. He acted on his own, but he was inspired by Al Qaida, and in a world without extreme islamism this man may still have become a killer, but he wouldn't have killed in the same way, quite possibly not in the same place and not for the same reason.

The people behind 9/11 were organised. Their organisation was small, but it was backed up by Osama bin Laden and his enormous wealth, and it was backed up by an entire country, Afghanistan, which invited the killers to spend as much time as they wanted in Afghanistan to carry out whatever training and preparation that they needed.

The man at Fort Hood, who acted alone, killed 13 people. The 9/11 people killed about 3,000 people. But in order to create an even larger catastrophe you need an even bigger crowd of followers behind you. Personally, I'm often bored when people try to understand Adolf Hitler. My response is that Hitler would have been nothing if he had acted alone. The truth, however, is that he had millions and millions of super-enthusiastic followers, in Germany as well as in other countries. The fervent enthusiasm of his millions of followers is what made Hitler so absolutely formidable and so unbelievably deadly.

Too often, when a fic is A-plot-driven, too much focus is placed on the villain. He becomes larger than life, a sort of metaphysical evil. He becomes The Joker of the Batman movies. For reasons that are entirely unclear, he can wreak the most incredible havoc on his own.

Luthor, I must say, is a better villain than most. What makes him better is his suave persona, which makes people believe that he is a benevolent philantropist. People don't oppose him because he is so incredibly good at pulling the wool over their eyes. But in the long run people just have to see through him, and by that time they should try to stop him.

Of course, if Luthor is allowed to run around unchecked for too long, then he will use his enormous wealth to buy as many allies as he needs. Indeed, he will create a new Mob, the Mob of Luthor. And the mob is so difficult to stop precisely because it is made up of so many people. It is like the hydra - you cut off one head and it immediately grows two new heads. Now THAT is scary. But that means, too, that it is not enough to cut off the largest head to kill off the hydra. Stopping Luthor himself won't necessarily cripple the powerful criminal organisation he would probably have founded.

I'm just saying that in the end I can't get interested in the Luthor or Joker characters, the bearer of metaphysical evil. I find them deeply, deeply unattractive, and I don't believe that they could be real. The real world just isn't dominated by lone supervillains.

Ann

Heh, and after much, much pondering, I think that's exactly why I love those guys. The possibilities are endless in fiction. If I want to read about 2,000 years of hate, I can just catch up with al Queada on the nightly news. I don't need a novel for that. But with somebody like Luthor, I'll spend the entire novel trying to guess his next move or who's next on his hit list. It's all part of the whodunit obsession that my mother got me hooked on from the ye olde years of Agatha Christie. Screw the real world--Hand me a hit list and a candlestick, and I'll figure out who did it in the library. I think you're right that sooner or later people do catch on, and I love putting that puzzle together, or watching characters figure it out.

Great topic of discussion. I really had to sit here for a while and wonder why I have such a fetish for gore and treachery.
JD

Villains bore me too. I can't watch the Christopher Reeve Superman movies anymore because I can't stand the scenes with Lex Luthor, no matter how great an actor Gene Hackman is. The same thing with Lois & Clark--nothing against the acting, but I always want to fast-forward through all the Lex Luthor scenes, and get back to the real story.

For me the it's all about the interaction of the characters, and villains in Superman stories are never real people; they always come across as one-dimensional, so the interaction with them never seems real. I know there are genuinely evil people out there, but in my career as an investigator I did not end up dealing with them. The criminals I encountered were real people, sometimes likeable, mostly just stupid and greedy. Where I work now our cleaning crew is made up of nonviolent jail inmates and we actually chat a bit as they come through; when they express an interest in the museum that they are cleaning, I invite them to come back "on their own time." (I figure anyone who ends up in jail probably needs all the education they can get.)

Regarding the number of followers, I don't think it's necessary to have a large number of followers to do a lot of harm; I just think it's necessary to be in a culture with relaxed standards or where people are looking the other way. A culture where small lies or small crimes are overlooked eventually leads to large lies and large crimes. Keeping the discussion to superhero fiction, maybe that's why I don't mind the Joker villain in The Dark Knight. No matter how cartoonish the character, there is a sense that he could not exist without a pattern of corruption around him. In real life, you find the most harm taking place in cultures that accept violence, drugs, and/or financial fraud.

Well, I'm going to speak in defence of villains and A plots - probably because that's the type of story I used to write, unless it was just a few pages long. And truth be told, I'm not much interested in reading long fics that don't have A plots.

Here's why. I enjoy the characters, Lois Lane and Clark Kent - I want to see how their characters will meet new challenges - how they will react both to the new situation and to each other. Also, I tihnk it has to do with who each is - he *is* Superman, and that means he deals with villains, whether it's a rogue individual or a force of nature - one of the best villains I've read in our L & C fanfic is Jenni D's volcano in Red Sky for example. Lois Lane is an investigative reporter - that's as much a part of her personna as chocolate addiction. Perhaps more (although I'm not sure ) To omit the A plot or the villain is to limit the story - it becomes merely a romance or a soap op. (mind you I do like the romance to be there too:)

So a long fic that is A plotless or villainless (bet you think there's no such words!) bores me - I stop reading it.

Okay now for the canon villains - Luthor, etc - nope I could never write Luthor - don't know why because L & C's Luthor was not boring or silly - he was magnifcently evil. But for some reason I like to see 'orginal villains' in fics - characters we haven't met before.

Maybe it's a yin and yang thing - Supeman-Clark Kent and Lois Lane are partly defined as fighters for truth and justice, and so I like to see them doing that.

Just my opinion, but you knew that, didn't you:)

btw, interesting topic

c.

Cool topic!

I have to agree with Carol on this one. Romance is fine, romance is great, and any longer L&C story without romance (or romance-driven conflict) would be hard to write while being true to the characters. However, dropping out all villain-driven conflict also usually shortens the story, because, as Carol points out, Lois and Clark are all about truth and justice. How can one fight injustice if there is no injustice to fight? It's that inherent need to "fix" the world and make it right that drives both Clark and Lois to do what they do. Without that drive - and the actions resulting from that drive - they would be two different people. Not necessarily worse, not necessarily better, just different.

For example, what if Superman accepted payment for his good deeds? Not like Resplendent Man, who sent Lois a bill for saving her life, but who took direct donations and contributions and owned real property under his own name. He would be a different person than the one we know from the series.

And what if Lois were driven not to reveal the truth but to make money? Even if she were as honest as the day is long, she'd be a different person, too, like Mindy Church with a conscience and social awareness. And any relationship between the two would be different. Would it be better? My instant response is 'no,' but maybe someone more talented than I could take these two characters and make us want to read about them.

I'm in favor of action plots, of villains and their nefarious schemes, of triumph of life over death and good over evil. And let's have some romance, too. Smoochies never hurt anyone.

I don't really have anything against A-plots, but I heavily dislike reading about the villains every couple of scenes. (Although even I have to admit that I enjoy reading Luthor plotting/issuing orders if it is done well, but that's because I like his way of using double entendres.)

@Ann: I don't completely agree with your statement that only large organisations can do tremendous amounts of evil. (Although, come to think of it, both Lex Luthor and the Churches do fit that description.)

I especially disagree with one statement of yours:
You're right insofar as that he would have been nothing if he had to act alone, but that's as far as it goes. You make it sound as if at least 99% of all Germans, and at leat 80% of all Europeans had been enthusiastic followers. And that is, quite frankly, not true.

Hitler was - in his own way - evil incarnate. Yet, like Luthor, he put up a respectable front. True, without backing, he wouldn't have been able to do much damage, but he didn't have quite the backing you imagine he had. Most Germans in the Third Reich were *not* Nazis, not backing him up. But Hitler had the SS, SA, Gestapo and, of course, his concnetration and extermination camps.

As early as in the 1920's, both the SA (some sort of paramilitary group meant to "keep order") and the SS (with the sole purpose of protecting Hitler) were active. And they were not to be trifled with, especially the SA was known for beating up socialists and communists. Often, there were battles raging within the SA and one of the other groups, and they were known to destroy each other's headquarters and who knows what else.

Then, when Hitler became Reichskanzler, one of the first orders of business was removing all civil servants that were either Jewish or from a competing party (meaning any party but the NSDAP), and the first arrests were taking place soon after - also on the basis of being affiliated with the wrong party or being Jewish.

Still, this does not reflect that most Germans backed Hitler up, in fact, most people didn't. Many just didn't consider him a threat until it was too late. Still, many didn't know about the concentration camps and other horrors put in place by Hitler. (That is not saying that nobody knew, but the majority really didn't.) So, given the situation, how would you expect people offer resistance?

Besides, Hitler managed to show himself as some sort of genius. Under his management, the unemployment rate dropped tremendously - at least on the paper, due to manipulations. He stopped the reparations for WW1 being paid, giving Germany a chance to develope some economic growth. (Let's just not talk about how he did that.) Shortly within his reign, the streets became safer. (Mostly because no socialists or communists were stupid enough to show their faces where the SA was marching.) He started building the autobahn (something like highways), something that was brand new back then - at least in Europe. (That he did so using unemployed people with minimal pay and thereby erased them from the stats is a different matter.) The Jews (that were hated or at least disliked by many people back then) were taken care off. (Although most people had no idea in which way.) Youngsters and children were organized in nazi-organisations (Hitler-Jugend), keeping them from prowling the streets. And, thanks to Hitler, even a very new and highly esteemed scientific idea was put into practice, something that made Germany the envy of many other nations, including the US. (Does it matter that it was eugenics, something we all know now to be bad?)

All in all, the visible effects of his regime were all good. (At least from a contemporary point of view.) So, why would people resist him? Like Luthor before his fall (in the series), Hitler seemed to be a good guy, at least to the average citizen.

Still, not everybody backed him. Many just didn't know what was going on. Others emigrated or kept their mouth shut because they knew exactly what would happen to them if they didn't. And, I'm afraid, many people just didn't care enough to stop him. Yet, some courageous individuals and groups did. There were many movements of resistance. But resistance was a dangerous business, and many people were killed after a show trial because of it.

I once read that less than 10% of the German population (which is still a lot) stood behind Hitler. But these 10% were well-organized and mostly military.
/rant

And villians do NOT need vast organizations to pull off their horrors. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, the Zodiac Killer, Jack the Ripper. Even Bernie Madoff - he didn't take lives but he ruined them.

Even serial bank robbers generally work alone or with less than a handful of cohorts.

Organized crime? - most lower level employees are involved because they have little choice economically. At the upper levels you are talking about a handful of people who may actually be 'in the know' and will do anything to stay in power.

AND, if you look closely, the places were those gangs get inroads are areas where the rule of law is already weak. Places where people already know that their police are impotent and where graft and corruption are considered normal.

Mellie, I did not try to imply that all or most Germans were Nazis. I agree that it probably came out that way, and I'm sorry about it. But consider what you yourself said:

10% of the German population is still a lot. Of course that's a tiny fraction of the entire German population. Please understand that I'm not implying that "Germans as a people" are inherently Nazi.

No, but the small percentage of Germans that really did back Hitler did so most vociferously. I'm sure they did, judging from the snippets of film from Germany of the 1930s that I have seen. The Nazis cheered, they marched, they shouted and they made the "Heil Hitler" sign. And they did it by the thousands, simultaneously, at least on a few choice occasions.

I think the Germans who were Nazis scared the Germans who weren't Nazis. The ones who weren't Nazis didn't want to make their disapproval known too clearly, because what would that loud and horribly "synchronized" crowd, moving as one thousand-headed monster, do if it/they found out that someone opposed it/them?

Earlier this year, there was a soccer match here in Malmö, and a crowd of Stockholm supporters came marching down one of the main streets of Malmö, singing threateningly as they did so. There were only a few hundred of them, but boy, were they scary.

That's my point, Mellie: crowds with a purpose are scarier than people acting alone.

Ann

But crowds, in and of themselves, are not 'villians' and are notoriously hard to control, either by the leaders or by whatever 'authority' exists. There are major studies on crowds and mobs - which is why the police in the U.S. get out riot gear when faced with unruly crowds and, assuming there is forewarning, will take preemptive steps to keep crowds from turning into mobs.

I still get a kick out out Seattle's reaction to the race riots in LA many moons ago - the (then) black mayor and white police chief announced they would not tolerate 'hooliganism'. And they didn't.

As a matter of fact, it was said to be less than 10%.

But you 're right insofar as that a crowd can be very dangerous. Deep down, we still want to go with the herd, act with it. Even if you, personally, wouldn't have wanted to perform the nazi greeting, if everybody around you did - would you be able to resist? Besides, this greeting was pretty much forced on people. Those who wouldn't perform it would be looked at sideways, and they had to fear to be investigated. Which could turn out lethal.

Especially the young generation was very much pro Hitler, though. Which is not too surprising as children had been indoctrinated with nazi propaganda from their earliest childhood. There were antisemitic texts and pictures in reading books for first graders (and older pupils, too), and even antisemitic fairy tales! Also, many young people were organized in the Hitler Jugend and its subdivisions. (Officially, every child of 6 years or older had to be a member, although (mainly) in the countryside, this rule couldn't always be enforced.) There, they were indoctrinated even worse, and, with "appropriate" games, the boys were prepared to become soldiers. The girls, though, were prepared to be mothers. (After all, the next generation of soldiers would have to come from somewhere, right?) And all in the name of the Füherer.