{"id":16972,"date":"2013-01-23T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=16972"},"modified":"2013-01-23T07:00:49","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T12:00:49","slug":"rooting-for-the-bad-guy-by-myke-cole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/01\/23\/rooting-for-the-bad-guy-by-myke-cole\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rooting For The Bad Guy,” by Myke Cole"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Myke Cole is a writer you should be reading. He’s a damn nice guy. He’s intense as anything. He’s built like an M1 Abrams but he won’t use his might against you<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. He’s also a helluva writer, and his new book,\u00a0Shadow Ops: Fortress<\/strong> Frontier, is out on January 29th. (Amazon<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \/ BN<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \/ Indiebound<\/strong><\/span><\/a>). Follow him on Twitter @MykeCole<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of my first guest blog posts as a professional writer was on why Reality TV was worth watching<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. My point was that we humans aren\u2019t all that far removed from our monkey ancestors. There\u2019s still a chord in us that wants to sniff our neighbor\u2019s butt, eat the bugs out of their hair and fling a handful of poop when we get pissed. Which is why Reality TV is so popular \u2013 it taps that monkey gene. We\u2019re fascinated by ourselves.<\/p>\n

The more I read in genre, the more I think about that. In the blog post, I talk about Darth Vader. I talk about Gollum. I talk about Amman Jardir and Jaime Lannister. Since I wrote that post, the hits keep on coming. I met Caul Shivers in Joe Abercrombie\u2019s BEST SERVED COLD and RED COUNTRY. I met the Warden, lord of the seedy underbelly of Daniel Polansky\u2019s LOW TOWN. I met Jorg, the cruel child monarch of Mark Lawrence\u2019s KING OF THORNS.<\/p>\n

These are some bad dudes. We\u2019re not talking about a little temptation or some harsh language. One is a drug-addicted crime lord, whose scheming put innocent people under the dirt. Another is a true butcher, who delights in torturing his victims. Another is a murderer, plunderer and ravager.<\/p>\n

But I love them and I root for them in a way I never did for the good guys of my youth. When I wrote that guest post I thought it was just simple interest in the flaws of others, the literary equivalent of Reality TV Schadenfreude, but now I think it\u2019s more than that. When I was a kid, it was Frodo and Bink and Allanon (really, Terry Brooks? Seriously? You named your leading Druid after a 12-step program?) The biggest problem with these guys was an excess of earnestness. They were, to quote Motzart in Milos Forman\u2019s Amadeus, \u201cso lofty they shit marble.\u201d That was enough for a kid as yet untested by the world. I hadn\u2019t really failed at anything, not in the soul-deep ways that adults do. I could identify with the saints of the fantasy canon.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t anymore. Here\u2019s the thing: Deep down, everyone has that special failure, the one time in your life when you truly blew it: zigged when you should have zagged, let fear take the wheel and drive, done the crime but not done the time. Sure, it\u2019s usually not as extreme as Jamie Lannister pushing Bran out a window, but it feels that way to us. We carry it like an oyster carries a grain of sand. It rubs at us, digs grooves in us. It wears us down. It makes us feel unworthy of the childlike resolution of Samwise Gamgee.<\/p>\n

We need real heroes. We need protagonists who are as broken as we are. Because\u00a0nastiness is only one thing these leading roles have in common. Effort is the other. They\u2019re all striving, reaching, pushing to be better people, to make right what they\u2019ve done wrong. They want to put their mistakes behind them, scratch some good out of the landscape they\u2019ve scarred with their passage. And sometimes they succeed, maybe not always, maybe not in big ways. They build their legacy by inches. It\u2019s not just about Schadenfreude. It\u2019s about redemption. Because. Drama accentuates everything. Good stories raise the stakes. The flaws of the Jorgs and Jaimes and Wardens and Caul Shivers of the world far eclipse my own. But they\u2019re trying, and sometimes, succeeding. Every so often, that grain of sand inside the oyster\u2019s shell turns into a shining pearl.<\/p>\n

And if they can, well, then maybe so can I.<\/p>\n

Maybe we all can.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Myke Cole is a writer you should be reading. He’s a damn nice guy. He’s intense as anything. He’s built like an M1 Abrams but he won’t use his might against you. He’s also a helluva writer, and his new book,\u00a0Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier, is out on January 29th. (Amazon \/ BN \/ Indiebound). Follow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-4pK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16972"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16976,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16972\/revisions\/16976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}