Not Every Character is Meant to be Loved

I find a great deal of inspiration in the programs and movies that I watch for my writing.  And I don't mean in the plots or the characters per se, but rather in the writing itself, and the development of the characters and the plots, and in the way they are utilized.  Lessons which can be translated and implemented in my own writing, lessons as valuable as any offered by a writing teaching, made more effective by the visual mode through which they are conveyed.

Point in case today - Rome.

Rome was a short-lived series which ran for two seasons on HBO, 2002 and 2003 I believe.  I only recently began to netflix it and am currently well into the second seasons.  This is a most excellent series, and it combines a number of my personal interests into one well-done and entertaining bundle: great stories, writing, acting, characters and - one of my favorites - history!  These are real people whom are often portrayed in our lackluster history classes as names and dates and deeds long dead and forgotten, but here they are given life and shown for what they really were - actual people.  This is the sin of which most history teachers, in my opinion, are guilty - not impressing that the people of today are tomorrow's historical figures; that the ones that lives before us were just like we are now, except they lived first.  But they were all human, with all the quirks and desires and foibles that people possess, and thus worthy of our interest, rather than our dismay at reading about them.

So are our characters, the ones we write about, real people - in our heads.  It's up to us to convey them as living people upon the printed page, as it is the job of historians and teachers to do the same thing with their charges, although sadly many fail to do so.  Rome does it well.  I can't possibly look at Julius Caesar the same way any more, and his murder, in the Senate of Rome by those he considered to be friends and wellwishers was never more vividly impressed in my mind, despite Shakespeare's dramatic portrayal.  Sorry, WS, but the series drove it home in a way in which the play never had.

The first season of Rome takes place during Julius Caesar's reign and ends with his assassination.  At the point where I'm at now, Octavian has become consul.  He now calls himself Caesar, having been adopted by JC before his death.  Things are a bit bleak, though.  Octavian has demanded that the Senate brand Brutus and Cassius as murderers for their actions in the death of Julius Caesar, a divisive act as many in the Senate are yet their friends (these two fled long ago, by the way, and are lurking outside of Rome, with their forces). Cicero sent word to them of what has happened, encouraging them to return with their forces to oust Octavian.  That put him in a pretty pickle - he was told they had 10 legions to his 4, and even if the numbers are exaggerated, Octavian knows his is the weaker force.  So, being the very shrewd and intelligent young man that he is, he does the only thing he can - he has to make nice with Marc Antony, who is still beloved by the common soldiers, who flock to join him.  Well played, young Octavian, well played!  For those who don't recognize him by that name, later he'll become the Emperor Caesar Augustus.  Ring a bell now?

Now, how he does this wooing of Antony is simple - he uses his mother, Atia, who is Antony's lover.  Today's episode ended with Octavian and Antony embracing like long lost friends.  If you'll remember your history, they will become co-consuls of Rome.  For a time, anyway.  My point here is not to give a history lesson, per se, but to talk about the characters involved.  On the surface, it would seem that Atia is a loving mother who only wishes to help her beloved son.

Wrong.  Atia is and has always been all about herself, which is evident from the beginning.  She's a very narcisstic selfish bitch who only wants what is best for herself, and to be on the winning side.  She is Julius Caesar's niece, and she does not hesitate to reap all the benefits of that relationship, nor to wield whatever power she can from the Julii name.  She treats everyone abominally.  Even Antony.  And yet  her character serves definite purpose in the plot, and that is my point.  Having people to hate is important.  So many books have villains we love to hate but actually love that having one we can unabashedly hate and despise is important.  You can't like everyone, and you shouldn't.

Then there are the other characters, the ones that different people will see differently because of their own perceptions.  Brutus - he was Caesar's friend, but he agreed to off him because he was too weak not to.  We see that he isn't a bad man, but a weak one, who has seen his own ideals for what Rome should be twisted and turned against him, until he is left with only one way to go, and so he went that way.  Marc Antony - another very selfish man, but he's more true to his own purpose, and he remained Caesar's friend to the end.  I can read  his most famous speech in Shakespeare's play now with a better understanding of what is actually happening, the cunning behind the lines which don't outwardly condemn Brutus for what he did, but there the truth is, just below the surface.  Such masterful writing, so incredibly dramatic.

There is just something about watching people we hate, getting ourselves and our emotions and our knickers all twisted as we curse them - silently or otherwise - and root for their destruction.  The important thing to carry away is that the writer, as well as the actors, have brought them to life for us and we feel.  This translates to our own writing.  Our goal is to make our readers feel for our characters - love them, hate them, everything in between.  To make our readers feel something.  If they aren't feeling, chances are they've nothing vested in the story, so why continue reading?

By creating hate for some, I think we enhance the love for our other characters, trigger a protective mantel, so to speak.  Without those villains, I don't think those feelings would run quite so deep.  In other words, there'd be no conflict, and what's a story without conflict of some sort?  True, conflict does not always have to be other people.  Remember the three basic types of conflict?  I still do, even after all these years, having learned them in grade school:

1) Man vs Man
2) Man vs Nature (or God)
3) Man vs Himself

Personally, I find that the last two only go so far to keep my interest; it's an exceptional story that can do that, especially when it's a man and some animals, such as Call of the Wild (sorry, it bored me), and while I like psychological dramas, there is just something more satisfying in pitting man against his fellow man.

It's natural to want your characters to be loved, but not all of them should be.  There will be people who don't even like the ones you'd think they would, because everyone has their own point of view, and one person's hero is another villain.  But it's all good, so don't be offended.  Hey, they read the story, didn't they?  They don't have to agree, as long as they took something away with them.  Isn't that the point?  If they care enough to feel something for your characters, then you've done something.

I have a character in a novel which I am about to submit to Silver of whom I am very fond, not surprisingly, but my daughter Sarah delights in referring to him as a douche-canoe.  But at least she remembers him.  I may complain at her characterization of him, but secretly I am delighted to know she cares that much.

There is a lot that can be done with these characters, to make them multi-layered and unexpected, at least to a degree.  At the end of today's Rome, as Atia led the reconciliation between the lover she'd not seen since he fled Rome without her and the son whom she had allowed that same lover to mistreat and abuse,as she had never been a good mother to him, I couldn't help but think that she hadn't changed - still the same selfish creature she'd always been.  Characters can and do change and evolve, and I love when that happens, but there does have to be logic involved, not just wishful thinking as in I want Character A who's always been evil to be good now - you have to know why, and show it, so we can embrace it.  But it's okay to have a serpent remain a serpent, and that's what I think Atia is and always will be, and I'll continue to despise and hate her (I'm waiting for the fallout when her daughter Octavia marries Antony, though I'm not sure if that comes out in the series or not)

In conclusion, although we love to love our villains, despite how dark we paint them, we need to have characters we'll never love, because they serve purposes too. That is a lesson we can take away from watching well-done series, which allow us to watch the character development, the interactions, and the growth.  All things we can carry back to our writing, so that we can make it come alive as much as possible upon the printed page and in the minds of our readers.

Do you know of characters you hate and could never love?  Your own or those you've seen?  Share them here!  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Our Gay Heroes - they come in all sorts of shapes and we love them all

Although many current m/m romance novels were inspired by both by fanfiction and yaoi manga, many of the novelists who write them have taken the often basic idea of the uke and seme and run with it, with the result that there are a large variety of gay heroes for our delectation and edification and great enjoyment, although the stereotypes still exist, of course.

Many young women adore the idea of the uke and seme.  If you are unfamiliar with these terms, simply put the uke bottoms and the seme tops.  In most mangas, at least the ones I've seen and I've seen quite a few, these truisms are more or less written in stone - while the characters of the uke/seme change, their positions seldom do.  Once a uke, always a uke, and also with the seme.  Also in many of these stylized pairings, the uke is a rather waif faced youthful-looking almost feminine boy, even though he and the seme may be the same age, or not very much difference between them.  Almost like taking a girl and removing her breasts, and calling her a boy.  Some are worse than others.  Even though the mangakas take great pains to let you know everyone involved is of legal age (except when they're not, but I'm not going to get into shota, at least not here and now), they look like children, and sometimes what they do has the appearance, if not the reality, of pedophilia.  A problem which, of course, does not appear in m/m romance novels, as you aren't bombarded with images of the legal-age feminine looking child-toy.

There are m/m romance novels that do feed the stereotype, and if that's what you like, that's fine, but if you like your men more manly, there is no dearth of that either.  And they come in all shapes, sizes, and supernatural abilities.  There is a growing trend toward gay men who are vampires, werewolves, and shifters, and there must be a huge audience for it.  Vampires were first, I think followed by werewolves, and then shifters who could change themselves into anything from a cat to a tiger, and a lot of stuff in between.  I remember reading an excerpt from a novel involving tree-shifters.  I kid you not!  And from what I read recently, the shifter trend is changing too, and dragons are becoming the new shifters.  That should be interesting to watch.

If you like your gay men with powers, there are a lot of series out there.  One that comes to mind is Mimi Riser's Sylver and Steele.  From the little I've read of them, they are most excellent reads, filled with humor and heat.  I have a friend who is writing a gargoyle series - don't count them out, cause I'm telling you, they can be pretty hot.  Whodathunkit?  Vampires have been erotic ever since Bram Stoker took pen in hand and gave us Dracula, but today's writers have given the genre a decided homoerotic slant.  And if  you like your men with a little fur, Andrew Grey has a satyr series you might like to check out.

On the other hand, if you like your men a little more down to earth, there are a lot of those out there to choose from, and they run the gamut from unbelievably hunky to incredibly twinky and everything in between. One series that comes to mind is Marie Sexton's Coda series - her men are men, not stereotypes.  Even her fabulously gay Cole Fenton, who is way out there and truly shines in Strawberries for Dessert, has depth to his character which removes him from the realm of cookie-cutter gay men.  Matt, whom we meet in her first book, Promises, isn't gay, he just happens to fall in love with someone, Jared, who just happens to be a guy, a gay for you situation which is being seen more and more.  Her men are good-looking gay men, without a doubt, but they are also guys we could really meet and know.

A recent novel I read which certainly tore apart the mythos of the typical gay male, was Bernard: Diary of a 46 Year Old Bellhop, by S.L.Danielson.  The hero here is 46, very overweight, and very much unhappy with his life and himself, not your usual choice for a hero of a romance novel.  But Bernard is undoubtedly the hero,  as we watch him grow and develop through the course of the novel, taking his shot at finding true love with a handsome doctor.

If you like your men living in the past, there are writers who are glad to provide them.  Some ignore the mores of the times their men live in, and perhaps present slightly unrealistic views of their lives, especially in relation to the society they live in.  On the other hand, in Counterpoint, by Ruth Sims, there is no doubt that her young hero Dylan is aware that such behavior is frowned upon by not only society but his family, and that does not prevent his falling in love with Laurence, in a very well-written moving novel of a time when two men were far from free to be together.  Other historical authors that come to mind include Erases, Christie Gordon and Alex Beecroft.

Our gay men definitely come in all shapes and sizes and personalities - with or without powers, contemporary or historical.  They all have one thing in common - they are gay and we love them.  Do you have a favorite type of gay man?  If so, tell me what it is, and what book you think best typifies him?