When Is An Anti-Hero TOO Anti? (Blog Post by Tara Maya)

I’m all in favored of the tortured, haunted, even monstrous, hero. Let him have a bloody past, terrible urges, even a streak of demon. But I do have a limit how dark I can tolerate my Dark Heroes.

Occasionally, I come across a hero or heroine that simply crosses the line from sexy wicked to ewww-yuck-wicked.

For example, I read a Paranormal Romance with the premise of a Romeo and Juliet story about a werewolf woman in love with a vampire hottie. Awesome. Right?!

Opening scene: she hunts and kills a human. No remorse, no particular effort to explain if this was normal for her or not, certainly no guilt or debate about, you know, killing and eating a person. The vampire then captures her and uses his vampire powers of “persuasion” to “seduce” her into bedding him. Excuse me, how is that not rape? A few chapters later, the vampire goes out and kills a couple, because this is how he makes a living. He doesn’t seem to know or care why his employer wants the couple dead… and guess what, neither does the author. We never learn. He also drains their blood, because, you know… vampire. At this point I was mostly skimming, but I gathered that the werewolf serial killer and the vampire rapist-assassin eventually realized that even though they come from different tribes of monster, they loved each other, and they lived happily ever after.

Uh… wtf?!

I couldn’t believe I was supposed to cheer that two monsters were now bonded through mind-rape and the power of a mutual appetite for amoral killing. I mean, sure, maybe if werewolves and vampires were real, and had the appetites that they are supposed to have, this is exactly how they would behave. But the dirty secret of the monsters in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance is they are not really supposed to be monsters. Not on the inside, not in their code of honor, in their moral conduct. They are actually supposed to be heroic.

I’ll be the first to confess that this is a matter of taste and maybe personal ethics. Some writers genuinely want to challenge our traditional ideals of good and evil. Some writers have different ideals of good and evil. Some writers simply want to explore a wide range of human existence and their protagonists are not even meant to be heroic. Some writers despise heroes, and let it show.

If you want to start a debate in a Fantasy fan group, bring up Lord Foul’s Bane. Some readers love it. Others hate it. I’m in the hated it group. Sorry, that rapist anti-hero crossed the line for me, and I wouldn’t read further. On the other hand, I was enthralled by the gorgeous strangeness of The Birthgrave, and devoured it in one sitting, unable to put it down. At the end, though, I felt a disquiet that billowed into dysphoria, because it struck me that the heroine had begun and ended the story completely amoral. The cruelty underlying her conduct and her entire world didn’t sit well with me. Tanith Lee is a fantastic author, but I approach her works with caution. My tastes simply run along clearer streams.

At least, however, it was clear that both Tanith Lee and Stephen R. Donaldson knew exactly what they were doing when they chose the anti-heroes they wrote about. They wrote the stories they set out to write. They weren’t under the illusion that they were writing about likable, honorable heroes in the traditional mold, but about twisted, tortured souls.

Too often, lately, I have read books (yes, usually by indie authors; let’s be honest) that exhibit no such self-control or self-awareness. It’s as if the writer expected you to react to her vampire hero as if he were Edward or Angel, a redeemable, even shining, hero, unaware that she had failed to give her hero any redeemable or shiny qualities whatsoever.

If you choose to write a truly amoral character or very dark protagonist, that’s one thing. But if you are striving to keep most readers on board and not create an anti-hero who is no better than a villain, you should keep in mind certain rules of thumb for Likable Anti-Heroes. Here’s a checklist:

Does he/she exhibit any awareness of being a terrible person/monster?

 

Does he/she feel any guilt for terrible actions?

Does he/she start out one way (more brutal) but gradually learn a different way (less so)?

Is the hero/heroine pitted against a villain whose actions are even more heinous?

Is the hero/heroine forced by some outside threat or master to do terrible things–and does he/she rebel eventually?

Is the hero/heroine driven by some internal curse/affliction/addiction to do terrible things–and does he/she overcome it eventually?