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Author Topic: killing in literature
Zero
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My setting involves a lot of violence. Much like in several Card books MC's kill often in kill or be killed scenarios. But I am wondering to what extent do readers allow their character to kill and still accept them as a hero? Assuming my MC is not evil. In Star Wars Luke and Han were blasting away storm troopers like there was no tomorrow, probably killed hundreds, but that's rated PG and nobody thinks twice about it. I guess killing during war and actual murder are quite different, but I'm still having a hard time broaching the tenderness of having my main characters wontonly killing people---even though it's necessary in this case.
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Christine
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Killing in self-defense is infinitely forgivable, although too much SHOWN blood and gore can be a problem. In Star Wars, for example, we never saw those storm troopers die, not even in the scenes where they were hit with blasters -- frankly, those getups they were in made them look unhuman anyway. All these things kept us at arms length.


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spcpthook
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Hmmm...hate to sound like a broken record but once again I think the answer is...It depends...

I'm in the middle of a fanatsy where my heroine is an assassin. She's proud of her success ratio...but the world she lives in has guilds for their assassins and while they are somewhat feared they are respected members of society. Just got done with a scene where she killed more than six and less than a dozen as a job went bad and grew into a big problem. She took joy in killing her enemies yet cried over a ten year old child who got swept up in the middle of the battle.
IS she a bad person because she enjoys her job even though its an accepted norm or is she a good person because she is able to care for the innocents.

If you want to have blood and spatter it can be done in an acceptable way (and no I don't know if I've managed since I'm only two thirds done and this ones not going to see the light of day anytime soon.) But I'm trying to balance her career with character and by making her acceptable within her society.


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Novice
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I have problems with stories that allow deaths to be meaningless, that allow characters to kill, or see someone killed, and feel nothing. I hate stories that depend on disposable characters, the ones with no names and no faces and no families--the ones that are only there in order to die. This is because I believe that everyone matters to someone.

That's not to say that no one should ever die in stories.

spcpthook says: "...she killed more than six and less than a dozen as a job went bad..." I can handle this, as long as the character understands that she just killed six sons or fathers or brothers (or daughters, wives, and sisters). If she acts like she just completed a series of easy assignments, I would not want to keep reading about her. Give her some depth by letting her respect death, and you've got a character I can stay interested in. "Is she a bad person because she enjoys her job even though it's an accepted norm or is she a good person because she is able to care for the innocents." I will admit that I'd be more interested in a slightly different approach, an assassin who enjoys being good at her job, rather than just enjoying the job. (However, I may not be the intended audience for this story, if I bring such expectations to the table.)

I'm with the "it depends" camp on this one, as you can see.


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wbriggs
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Voice of the Whirlwind, Walter Jon Williams. MC is trained as an assassin. But we see him surviving attempts on his own life, and that's what gets him motivatedto kill. Self-defense.

Hardwired, same author. Sara is an assassin. We believe that her victims deserve it, and she's desperate to outwit her employers.

I think someone who doesn't hate killing AND kills those who aren't clearly villains -- that would be too much for me.


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pooka
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True crime is a genre all in itself, but I'm not sure if people who read that are as interested in stories that haven't actually happened. Fiction has a different purpose, and while some people might go for that, I feel comfortable saying its reprehensible. I mean, even the Kill Bill movies involved some kind of revenge or something. But the consensus is that revenge is pursued at your own peril. That's what's wrong with the most recent filming of The Count of Monte Cristo. You can't have your vengeance, then click your heels and go back to Kansas.
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Grimslade
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It all comes down to POV.
Let's use Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy fights a horde of mooks in a market trying to rescue Marion. The big swordsman steps out for a big grandiose battle. Indy pulls out his gun and shoots him. The killing is justified in the audiences mind because:
There is a direct threat to the MC.
The task (saving Marion) is impeded and time is of the essence.
The killing was quick and unexpected.

Of course, all of this is told through the eyes of a sympathetic POV. Another point of view could have a rampaging tomb robber of an American tearing apart a market in Cairo. He assaults several local boys and then assassinates, Mufti, the market's constable, who came to stop the ruckus. The audience will be different.


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pantros
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And Harrison Ford had diaherea and wasn't up for filming the complex fight scene they had planned for the day.
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Zero
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Yeah that's what I heard. I think its funny. Anyway everyone thanks a lot. I guess the issue of the value of life is addressed in my particular story between the characters and their individual philosophies and respective interaction, however, it is still a question of how can I (as the writer) portray characters who kill [in questionable circumstances] and enjoy violence [because of the adrenaline rush, etc] ?
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pooka
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And it keeps coming back to why you want to. He who has a strong enough Why can bear almost any How. I'm just saying, is all.
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Survivor
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I suppose the corollary is that he who has a good enough How can find a sufficient Why.

I don't regard biological life as having any intrinsic value. Bacteria and fungal organisms are alive, after all. Osama Bin Laudin is (probably) alive. Maggots and mosquitoes are alive.

I would regard the man who would allow the Mona Lisa to be destroyed rather than kill a bull rampaging in it's vicinity as a moral idiot. I would regard the man who would kill a baby rather than scratching his car against a retaining wall as even more disgusting. It's not about whether something is alive or not.

If you show me a mess of brains and blood, my initial reaction will be mild disgust. If I find out that it came from a slaughtered pig or some such my reaction wouldn't be much affected (since I'd probably have assumed as much anyway). If I find out that it was the result of the brutal murder of an innocent bystander I'd be horrified. If I found out that it was the result of an innocent bystander's self-defense against a violent criminal I'd be delighted (still a bit nauseated, but delighted all the same).

If you convince me that the killer has good reason to believe that the world would be a better place without certain people breathing its air, then I'm okay with them having their breathing privileges suspended permanently. Even messily. And I'll expect a darn good reason for the killer to feel bad about it. Maybe the killer has bad memories of killing the wrong person once. That's practically cliche, but you can hardly become an experienced killer without messing up once or twice. But a guy who's never killed anyone who didn't richly deserve it? I'd have real trouble seeing why he'd ever feel bad about killing. I'd have no problem with him enjoying it every time, as long as he didn't act unprofessional.

It's the current intellectual fashion to try and pretend that life is inherently valuable. That each biological organism has an easily identifiable quantity of that value by virtue of its species, health, age, and so forth. But that's simply nonsense. It doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny. It isn't even internally consistent, because a significant number of those organisms are, by necessity or choice, killers of other organisms. If the staph living in a test tube that is helping me to find a better antibiotic has the same intrinsic value as the staph living in your bloodstream, then that value is necessarily insignificant relative to the nonintrinsic value that results from the use to which one might be put and the danger the other poses.

The same is therefore true of tigers, lemurs, and humans.


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Zero
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Well part of the trickiness for me is that my setting addresses and dismisses a lot of gnostic themes. My MC doesn't buy into this (almost mercenary) lifestyle though a prominent protagonist foil does, at least initially. So I am trying to cast my main character as a friend to this "killer" without shining the killer in a terrible immoral light, but at the same time rejecting his practices.

Sort of like this: pretend Luke Skywalker detested killing in any form, then pretend they are in the death star, or whatever, and there is a reasonable but risky chance they could sneak past some guards. There's a perfect chance they could kill them if they take the initiative. If they risk sneaking past and lose the initiative, they are at high risk but not grave peril. Luke sees them as humans and wants to sneak by, Han sees them as storm trooper robots (not trully full of life) so he kills them, knowing Luke would not. This must ultimately cause character tension between them, both characters must remain likable, and for the plot purposes the gaurds must be removed. Is this situation reasonable to you as a reader? I find it interesting, but I don't want to come across promoting violence although I happen to like both chracters involved.

What are your thoughts?


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Survivor
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It makes sense. Look at Kenobi's role in that movie. Why does he (along with the other Jedi) use a light saber? It isn't just because it requires Jedi abilities to construct them, but because the inherent nature of the weapon is so defensive. The enemy has to either shoot at you or close to melee range.

Luke is already starting to show his adherence to that path. He never is the one to shoot first. Whereas Han does (at least in the original version). When Han blasts away a room full of Imperials early on, Luke criticises him for "blasting everything in sight." It's extremely illogical if he were actually talking about the danger of raising an alarm, since leaving those guys alive would make that a near certainty. He's really appalled by the violence of Han's methods.

By contrasting Kenobi's methods with Han's methods in various settings, and showing Luke choosing Kenobi as a role model and eschewing Han's outlook even as they become friends, the (original) movie clearly promoted the Jedi way over the outlaw (or Imperial) way.


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thayerds
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I'm going to add my two cents, take it or leave it. But I think it will help with your story and the problem with your character. I'm not going to give Star Wars any more analysis either, I loved the movies but I think Survivor just put twice the thought into those characters and their actions than George Lucas or anyone else on the project.

I am a combat veteran, and would like to relate a few observations. I have killed enemy cobatants. I did this to survive, and get home to my wife and daughter. I did it so that my comrades would not get wounded or killed because I hesitated or failed in my duty. I wound up serving a long time in the Army, and I have two stars on my CIB. (if you don't know what that means it's OK, I'm just trying to say I have a lot of experience in this.

Here's the point; most veterans I know don't feel bad about killing anyone. When they do feel guilty (and sometimes I do, but its not like I think about it every day) IT IS NOT BECAUSE I KILLED ENEMY COMBATANTS. Its because somewhere in my bony little heart I think "How come you don't feel bad? You should, shouldn't you? Why were you soooo happy that day when you and the platoon took out those bad guys? (Because we thought we were going to get our butts handed to us, and instead we walked away without a scratch!) I feel guilty because at the time I became so callus to the whole thing. Blood and guts? I tell you in all honesty, after a very short while you don't even care how much of it is on you, as long as its not your own.

Sorry to be a downer, but take this away. Make the character callus, make him uneffected (if that's a word). Make him take the attitude "Hey, they decided to die when they took me on. I'm just tryin' to survive. That's what I have to do." It ain't pretty, but its the truth.

Oh, and have a great day!


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kings_falcon
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Thayerds,

Thank you. I'm glad you made it home.

Nancy


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Zero
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Thanks a lot survivor. That analysis is exactly along the lines of what I was working toward. And the parallel is to exactly like my situation it is uncanny. So, if George Lucas can pull it off then I should be able to right? Thanks.

Thayards,

I am glad to hear it from you because of your on-hand experience. The character in question is full of attitude, cockiness, and is even callus when it comes to fighting his enemies. A lot of that "they choose to get in my way" or "oppose me" situation. The trickiness is that it isn't as clearly defined as one trench against another with uniforms. What he's killing is police officers---which enforce bad laws in an unfair and bad society--but police officers none the less, and he's a rogue. So its a lot shadier, in my opinion, than armies at wartime. Any more thoughts?


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Survivor
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To be fair to Lucas, I think he did put a lot of thought into his original trilogy.

His portrayal of the Jedi makes it very clear that they need superhuman abilities to be able to practice their "superior morality", specifically by the way he contrasts them with "ordinary" people like Han Solo, Leia, Lando, and so forth.

Leia, like Han, does whatever it takes to survive. She totally shoots guys from ambush, kills guys that have forborne to kill her because she's a girl, kills from behind, plays innocent, and all that stuff.

I think that the prequel trilogy, at least as Lucas originally wrote it, clearly shows that it is the Jedi's arrogant sense of moral and personal superiority that is the primary weakness which dooms the Republic. Certainly it has a lot to do with their failure against the Sith. Mace Windu dies because of Anikin's misplaced sense of Jedi fairness as much as anything.

Anyway, thayerds, you have my thanks (though I'm a bit jealous too). It's because guys like you are out there killing guys that need to be killed that we all can enjoy life in a relatively civilized society. I only wish that I were able to be in the military myself.


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Survivor
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Ah, and about the police officers thing.

There's an ethic I like to apply to the idea of when it becomes just to fight against your own civilization. The general idea is that, as long as you enjoy the protection of your basic rights (like freedom of speech, the right to defend yourself, worship according to your conscience, and to associate with whom you choose), it is unbecoming for you to use violence against those who protect you.

If, on the other hand, these people are denying rather than protecting those rights, they are not your protectors and it's perfectly okay for you to kill them.


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Zero
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That's a fantastic answer. This idea "There's an ethic I like to apply to the idea of when it becomes just to fight against your own civilization." is EXACTLY what the central focus of the plot is about in my series.
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thayerds
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I don't have any more thoughts on armies or warfare. I guess all I was trying to say is a character like Han Solo is closer to reality than it might at first appear.

As far as anyone feeling thankful or jealous that (I assume) they cannot do more to preserve American liberty, look at it this way: My daughter got a free college education because of the money I earned (tax free) while serving in Afganistan and Iraq (both times!) Besides that, My wife and I will have free or nearly free health care for rest of our lives. That means major medical, prescriptions, ambulance, anything! All because American tax payers are contributing. I am the one who is grateful, so thanks to you all.


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