Friday, January 18, 2008

.....

The bad guys in books! they're all so stereotypical! Even in the good ones! (though lord of the rings gets creativity points for the floating eye dealy)

Most of them are men! just plain and simple! Look, sauron/saruman, Saint Dane, Cluny the Scourge, Voldemort, Samus, Dom Daniel, Count Olaf, James, Prince Humperdink, Count somebody from the Lioness Quartet, Makepeace/Nuada, Jon Spiro, King Galbatorix, Long John Silver, Adderhead, capricorn, . Just off the top of my head! And a few of these dominate whole series's with their evilness. I'm not even counting movies. BTW vampy books and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes books in general get a pat on the back because they do NOT have this typical evil bad guy. oh and in like most Alex Rider books they have these guys. i won't name them all.

and then theres the women evil people. Something they all have in common is they're young, beautiful and fashy or old and have like warts or something. Usually they're all like Julia Rothman from Scorpio, fashy and rich. tyyyppiiicall and they're carry out their plans in a sing-song voice, checking their nail polish as they order people's deaths. not cool. But they're definitely not as much of them as all of the stoopy men.

I ADMIT I AM EVEN GUILTY OF THE TYPICAL EVIL GUY STEREOTYPE. I have Methusalah, who is the leader of... well... the Assassins of Methusalah or whatnot. and I <3 him. Everybody needs an EXTREMELY manipulative, persuasive, old, cloaked, smart, sadistic guy leading their assassin cult-thing. I mean this guy is OLD, i think he has be carried to his little throne dealy every day by two people. anyway, i'm trying to break some stereotypes on this guy. I sort of think enough of my other bad guys are different enough.

and then theres the evil people in realistic fiction. two rules apply. they need to be the same gender as the main character/protagonist and the same age or older than them. noof seyad.

disclaimer: there are many exceptions, don't get me wrong.

anyway. guys have completely dom'd over politics, get them the heck out of being the only antagonists (the coolest people in books anyway) i'll ever get to read about.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i totally agree.

e2 said...

I do as well. Though, i have an evil woman person who is not very beautiful but orders peoples' deaths without a blink of an eye... she's somewhat flashy, i guess, though...

Anonymous said...

we're all guilty of some stereotyping. well all writers and artists and people. unless you try really hard not to.

Talyna said...

i agree. and even when you try really hard, alotta the time you can still find a stereotype buried in the character.
Tal

Elesar said...

that's because the world has waaay too many stereotypes :-p

Emily said...

you can't really blame tolkien for having the evil stereotypes, because he sort of created the fantasy world. it's all the uncreative writers after him that created the stereotypes.