CT scan came back! Apparently I’m clean. Which means… we still don’t know what’s wrong with my guts, I guess, but it’s not something fatal in there, so yay for that. Also! I finished The Tower of Nero, the last in the Trials of Apollo series.
I had this idea for a while, and I didn’t think I had time last week to develop it fully. But I was reading this post and I thought some more about it. So here we are!
[I realized while writing this that it sounds as if I am more worked up about this than I really am. I’m sorry.]
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Religious Fanaticism (By Itself) Is Not a Motivation
We do know this, right? I mean, it isn’t, by itself, a motivation. And yet in fiction all the time, we’re given a butt ton of antagonists that are religious zealots, and their motivation is nothing more than “this guy is a religious nut.” And that’s not really good character writing, is it? It’s exactly the same as saying, “This is a crazy person! I don’t need to invent a coherent motivation for his actions! He just does what he does for the story to work because he’s crazy!”
This is lazy writing.
I will admit that I am biased--I am a religious person, so I am a little tired of seeing organized religion demonized by popular media. That being said, I am not writing this to tell you that writers cannot write characters who are religious fanatics. I am saying that if that is all you can give as a motivation for an antagonist, then go back to the drawing board and try again. I am very, very tired of people acting like it’s clever, subversive writing to writing foaming-at-the-mouth religious fanatics.
This was in part inspired by my playing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and the recurring presence of the Church of the Eternal Fire in the city of Novigrad. Aside from two of them in one of the storylines (admittedly, one of the best storylines in the game), the Church of Eternal Fire exists to be angry douchebags that happily kill mages and nonhumans for funzies.
I will admit that having not read/played the majority of the Witcher series, there might be an explanation that I’m missing. But we’re not given much reason as to why these people believe what they do. Most of them explicitly seem to be in it for their own personal gain. Furthermore, they’re centered in a city that is run by criminal syndicates, all of which are led by people who think they’re an insane cult. And yet people are happy to go watch the Eternal Fire burninate mages and nonhumans in the public squares on a regular basis.
“Well that’s just like the witch hunts in real life!” No! No it’s not! Because (setting aside that historical inquisitions didn't work that way, no matter what pop culture told you) we don’t see people selling each other out for gain or to settle rivalries as much as the cult doing whatever it wants for its own gain. And this isn’t a once-a-month thing, this is apparently every few days, at least. It’s more comparable to the Holocaust, except the Holocaust very purposefully wasn’t done in public spaces.
The point I’m getting at is that the Church of Eternal Fire is a relatively new religious organization which commands the faith of the general public, letting them regularly kill people for little-explained-reasons other than ‘humans are bastards.’ Okay, fine! Humans are bastards! But that doesn’t mean they do things for no reason! Where is the propaganda about why mages are so bad other than because Eternal Fire said so? Propaganda can be a popular tool, but it has to be built on something, and as far as I can tell the seething hatred against mages isn’t built on anything other than… we need that in the story we’re trying to tell here. And it’s not a bad story, I just felt like this one aspect of it doesn’t hold up very well to scrutiny--it’s just another way to dial up the grimdark factor.
“But hey, aren’t 90% of history’s violent conflicts started over religion?” Says who? This is one of those statistics that gets repeated all the time, and yet no one bothers to cite a source. Which is odd, considering this is a statistic often quoted by people who are meant to believe in hard facts and not take things on faith. People believe that statistic because it fits a preconceived notion, not because there are facts behind it.
But sort of stepping back to what I meant to be the topic of this essay: I suppose a large part of my problem with religious fanatic villains in fiction is so often there’s the implication that if these antagonists just didn’t have religion, then they wouldn’t be antagonists. And I’m not going to stand here and tell you that there aren’t cases of religion of enabling or encouraging dangerous fanatical behavior--that would be a lie. But this happens quite often outside of explicit religious contexts as well.
For a fairly disturbing example I can think of that isn’t American-flavored politically-charged there is that time a mob lynched, quartered, and beheaded a referee after a soccer game in Brazil, putting his head on a spike on the field in 2013. To be fair (I guess??) and give full disclosure, the referee had stabbed a player.
I would personally argue that over-hyping a celebrity, politician, or sports event with that kind of fervor is a kind of religion, albeit one that doesn’t want to admit itself as such. Michael Crichton made a similar argument about UFO enthusiasm. Then again Michael Crichton also claims to have had an astral projected hugging session with his deceased father, so maybe that wasn’t the best famous person example for me to use.
The point is: fanaticism isn’t limited to religion. And when I think of terrifying fanatical mobs, religious people aren’t the ones that worry me.
One thing I really liked about the original Assassin’s Creed, and later Legend of Korra, is that while the villains were fanatics (though not of the religious sort), it’s explicitly said that their intentions aren’t bad, they’re just going about it in all the wrong ways. The Templars in Assassin’s Creed all want good things: the poor people off of the streets and taken care of, an end to prejudice and intolerance, the end of the Crusades. But they go about this by trying to burn books, force people to do what they want, and react violently when their plans meet the slightest resistance. Likewise, the villains of Legend of Korra (except for may Unalaq who makes no sense) have good motivations: equality, the unification of mortal and spiritual worlds, the end of the tyranny, and the strengthening of the Earth Kingdom. As Toph points out, they’re just out of balance, trying to accomplish those goals by force and violence.
I think you rarely see this kind of introspective character writing with religious fanatics. They’re just stupid mooks for the heroes to kill without feeling bad. For instance, the Whitecloaks in Wheel of Time. There’s a scene in Wheel of Time when the wolves that Perrin talks to describe the Whitecloaks as smelling as if they were rabid. And the heroes don’t ever have much problem mowing them down. Given everything that happens, it’s hard to blame them, and the series already has a bajillion Plot threads running so I don’t think it’s too egregious, but these are human beings that are trying to fight evil?
And that’s a bit weird, that the Whitecloaks in that series are just religious fanatics, and the narrative doesn’t really get into their motivations other than that. Because while yes, they see Darkfriends in just about everyone who disagrees with them, the fact is...there are an awful lot of Darkfriends running around in disguise, infiltrating every aspect and level of society. Obviously, they go way too far, but part of the reason for that is that they’re absolutely right to be terrified of the Satanic cult they’re fighting against. They themselves have been infiltrated by the Satanic cult they’re fighting against! I can’t exactly blame them for being paranoid douchebags when that paranoia is seemingly justified.
The books don’t really do that in any vaguely sympathetic way. Which is what I’m asking for here--like I said, I’m not against people using religious zealots as an antagonist, but I’m really tired of it just being treated as a form of madness that no one ever bothers to understand. Why are people pushed into fanatical feelings about religion? Probably the same reasons they are pushed into fanatical feelings about politics or sports or
If you decide to write an antagonist that’s a religious zealot in a heavily character-driven piece of fiction, then actually write a character. Even if you don’t give the reader all of the details, I shouldn’t look at any character and feel that they’re just filling a role because you felt you needed an antagonist and picked a stock character because you’re too lazy to write actual characters or create a developed backstory for the world they live in. I understand not every story is going to have the time or depth to get into all of that. But half the fantasy epics I read/watch definitely do, but they don’t because it’s a lot easier to just say “these people are insane, that’s all there is to them.”
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