{"id":561,"date":"2014-08-29T15:08:02","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T20:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=561"},"modified":"2014-08-29T15:09:56","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T20:09:56","slug":"well-only-create-a-martyr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=561","title":{"rendered":"“We’ll only create a martyr!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really liked some of the things Fred Clark said in this Slacktivist post<\/a> about politics, martyrdom, and disgrace. I particularly wanted to highlight this part for my fellow fantasy writers:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this mistaken idea in a lot of heroic stories that the oppressive evil villains can\u2019t afford to kill the rebellious hero because they can\u2019t risk turning them into a martyr. But that\u2019s not how oppressive evil villains \u2014 or oppressive evil systems \u2014 work. They can kill without making martyrs because everyone they kill they also actively disgrace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We–fantasy writers–are addicted<\/em> to this trope. “We can’t kill him! We’ll only create a martyr!” says the villain. “Oh noes! Not a martyr! That’s way worse than, like, a live political operative wreaking havoc all over the land, and incidentally having crazy magical powers to boot! And also we are powerless against a martyr!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Often what we mean when we do this is, “We can’t kill him! Our author would really like to write five more books if this one is successful!” And, y’know, I feel you, characters. I like having my favorite characters still around–both as a writer and as a reader. But we need a better reason to do that–like not walking characters into those traps in the first place. A reason that isn’t stupid. A reason that doesn’t make the real-life people who are killed look worse because they’ve been treated as real people always are: as people who can be disgraced by those in power, whose flaws can be played up or even manufactured, rather than as the mythical all-powerful martyrs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really liked some of the things Fred Clark said in this Slacktivist post about politics, martyrdom, and disgrace. I particularly wanted to highlight this part for my fellow fantasy writers: There\u2019s this mistaken idea in a lot of heroic stories that the oppressive evil villains can\u2019t afford to kill the rebellious hero because they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,40],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-full-of-theories","tag-the-art-of-the-possible"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}