Three things I read this week
The enemy of mankind, disappointment, conformity
Sir Arthur sought the Holy Grail, Walter White wanted all the money and power, and I’m just over here in South East Asia (for a bit longer) concocting devious schemes to become a better writer. To that end I recently watched this video about bad characters. Special attention was lavished on Galadriel from The Rings of Power series, who has all of the charm of a $300 speeding ticket.
The video lists several reasons for her charismatic flatulence, but there’s one explanation to rule them all! A lack of motivation… Henry, the video’s creator, explains that an audience only relates to a character if we understand what’s pushing them through the story. Think about these great characters…
Sarah Connor wants to stop the human race from being annihilated.
The Hobbits want to save the Shire from being destroyed.
The Godfather wants to maintain his power and eventually hand it down to one of his sons.
John Kerry wants you to eat bugs so that the catering bills for his private jet rides don’t get too high.
Rocky wanted to prove to himself and the world that he isn’t washed up.
Those fuckwits killed John Wick’s dog, the only surviving connection he had to his dead wife. They had to pay.
And so forth. A hero or villain must be given motivation so that we can understand their actions. If you think back to a time when you read a lousy book but didn’t understand why it was so drek, maybe the characters didn’t have fully developed motivations. For example, take this choice quote from a hellishly bad word dump: Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. Jonas is about to risk his life to save his cheating whore of an ex-wife, and his friend wants to know why.
Mac passed him the transmitter rifle. “For the record, are you doing this outta love, greed, or some bizarre sense of guilt?”
“Does it really matter?”
Yes it fucking matters! Jonas has never expressed a tender sentiment about his wife apart from saying she has a hot ass. The woman broke her marital vows and then left Jonas in a house with an underwater mortgage. She even took the fucking plates. Jonas has no discernible motivation to risk his life for this adulterous female, so we’re left scoffing at this unbelievable scene.
Motivation matters, my friends, motivation matters.
1 - The enemy of mankind
I read Enemy of All Mankind last week, it’s a winner. If you frequent my newsletter you probably hear me sing the praises of many books, and maybe you think I’m an undiscerning slug who can’t tell divine from diarrhea?
Well… There’s an old Family Guy episode where the fam is sprayed with radioactive goo and everyone gets a superpower. Brian can move at the speed of light, Peter can transform into any shape, and Meg… The poor wench gets the power to grow her finger nails at superhuman speeds. Sorry Meg.
I think I got hit by the same goo because I also have a pointless superpower: I’m unusually skilled at selecting good books. I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but the Justice League keeps me on retainer so I can tell them what to read when they’re not saving the world.
That’s why I recommended Enemy of All Mankind to Batman recently. It’s the story of a pirate you’ve almost certainly never heard of, Henry Every. A real everyman…
What did Henry do to justify someone writing a book about him three centuries later? He hijacked a ship, got himself a crew of sea dogs and sailed over to India for a bit of plundering pillaging and possibly even some pilfering. The Indians at the time being extraordinarily wealthy on account of their robust spice and fabrics trade. I don’t want to ruin the story because it’s a fun read, so I won’t tell you how the escapade resolves itself.
This is a story about a charismatic captain, but also about the developing social norms involving piracy, the division of power between state and corporation, and the role of government in protecting private interests. For better or worse the echos of Every’s exploits reverberate in our modern laws, and Enemy of All Mankind is an interesting opportunity to spend some time with a rapscallion of the first order, a man of the high seas and vassal of no crown.
Every lacked a letter of marque, but his actions at sea, and his public letter to the British authorities promising not to attack British ships, suggested a man trying to define a space for himself and his crew at the very edge of legitimacy.
All of which meant that the key English participants in the crisis—Every, Annesley, Gayer, the directors of the company back in London, even King William himself—were all probing the limits of their respective roles, because those roles had not been entirely defined yet. They were, effectively, helping to define these new institutions by exploring their boundary conditions. There were three distinct categories: pirates, corporations, nations. No one was quite sure where one began and the other ended.
2 - Disappointing
My favorite Instagram account: Disappointing Affirmations.
3 - Asexual?
Freya India (what an amazing name!) comes in with a hard hitting piece about SSRIs causing asexuality (an absence of sex drive) in a small minority of people. She explains that even though tens of thousands have been affected, it’s taboo to talk about what’s happening. Because of course it is…
The way the modern world works is that a bunch of cockroach-for-cortex codpieces do something unethical, and then instead of being held accountable they proclaim that anyone who talks about what they’ve done is a racist bigot. Or in this case, a-phobic? You see, the problem isn’t that pharmaceutical companies are creating products that castrate a small subset of people. That’s within tolerances. The evil bastards who have the gall to talk about it are the real evil.
Anyways!
Great article. And if you’d like to explore the topic further, I posted a review of Johann Hari’s book Lost Connections a few months ago. Johann argues that SSRIs are not very effective, the “science” justifying their use is largely bogus, and the side effects are too often downplayed.
4 - Conformity
"Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"
"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded--they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."
Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. This is a fantastic story that I might dedicate a full review to one day. There are interesting parallels between ChatGPT and the book Nell (the protagonist) uses to educate herself. Also, a comparison between the ability to manipulate and produce physical matter (hence “diamond age”) and the proliferation of digital content in our world.
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