It seems as though everywhere you look in contemporary fiction, whether in fantasy, science fiction, or even litfic, you see the same crisis of villainy.
We all know the shopworn tropes by now: Evil is a subjective point of view. Why, turn the story around to tell it from the villain’s perspective, and he becomes the hero! Besides, even if he commits the worst atrocities, his obligatory tragic back story justifies his misdeeds retroactively.
As live stream host extraordinaire Daddy Warpig explained during last night’s Geek Gab reunion episode, modern fiction’s villainyc crisis stems from writers’ failure to understand the nature of evil. In particular, they fail to grasp two elements of evil:
- Villains make the free choice to commit wicked deeds
- Villains persist in their vices because they like it, owing to evil’s corrupting influence.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg that was DW’s discussion with me on the subject of evil, occasioned by the release of my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book.
Listen to the full mini-debate, along with treatments of other subjects literary, on the replay of last night’s episode.
Watch it here [WARNING – Brief, mild NSFW content, and not from the dark fantasy book]:
One aspect of my conversation with DW and Dorrinal that can’t be overstated is the value of having smart, generous patrons to enrich my work.
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