The Dark Protagonist

[Down the well]

The hero of Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God" is a murderous, cross-dressing, necrophiliac.

I think you use the term "hero" loosely here. I read the plot summary for Child of God, and if Cormac McCarthy is able to turn that guy into a sympathetic character he's a freakin' sorcerer. That IS dark.

[steve]

It's also funny as hell. You're laughing at some deranged goings-on.

Short too; take ya about a day to read.

[polymath]

Oh, but I've known too many women who at least partially exemplify in overt ways the Electra Complex. I seem to attract them and run away screaming. There's one pushing toward my meaning space now. Anymore, if a woman takes an interest in me, I wonder what's wrong with her that she sees emotionally crippled, damaged-goods me as attractive in some way. Or she wants to use me and my special talents for her own ends at my emotional expense. Men too. Rare is the person who gets past my fortress of solitude's bastions.

Yes, both Freud and Jung had outdated attitudes toward women's roles, as did most authoritarian men from recent past and antiquity's times, Aristotle to name one, as did Freytag to name a not so recent literary figure. Of course they did, they drew on the times they lived in and the literature of their times for insight and direction and consequently shaped their times. No matter how gender biased it was, it was the way it was, and predicated on explaining, reinforcing, and appeasing the ways, values, mores, and needs of the times, as patriarchally dominated as they were. However, their gender attitudes have been co-opted and enlarged upon, and then denounced as biased, simplistic, outdated by modern-day psychonalytical theorists with equally self-biased theoretical suppositions.

The reality is, bias favoring or against women has largely been deinstituitionalized in the West, but persists nonetheless, as does emotionally causal fundamental psycho-social-sexual identity formation damage. Largely caused by emotional neglect in childhood, but also by childhood, if not lifelong, emotional and physical abuse from parental, other guardians and authority figures, peers, and cohort influences. If it takes a vilage to raise a child, it also takes a village to mess one up.
Though darkness is a writer's fodder, the frailties and failings of the human condition, it's also caused by emotional damage and causal of personality and identity and behavior.

Everyone's messed up. I'm the only one I'm unsure of. No, actually, I'm sure. I'm one of a fortunate few who knows how and how much I'm messed up, enough to cope anyway. One redeeming feature of some behaviors of messed up is they're encouraged by society for society's benefit. But not my avoidant, asocial way of messed up.

The darkest female protagonists I've met in real life are the ones who can see through me as well, if not better, as I see through them. One noteworthy woman, a professor emeritus of psychology. One noteworthy man, a dark protagonist man, a wizardly psychiatrist. The rest, adult entertainment trade artists, bartenders, cab drivers, an odd spy or two, you know, social outliers, fellow travelers meeting and greeting before passing on in the dark nights of coldly comforting solitude. We are among you. We're not vampires or werewolves or zombies or pod people or angels or demons or ghosts or mages or dragons or fey or fell. We are unseen, listening and all seeing. We are make believers who make believe it could be different for us. We are writers.

[Emily J]

After this discussion thread I certainly have a lot of books to add to my reading queue.

Larson (been meaning to, haven't found time yet)
Salvatore (have read other things but not Forgotten Realms)
McCarthy
Moning

I am an avid fantasy reader but it sounds like there are a lot of novels featuring dark protagonists out there. I say the darker the better :)

[Down the well]

The darkest female protagonists I've met in real life are the ones who can see through me as well, if not better, as I see through them. One noteworthy woman, a professor emeritus of psychology. One noteworthy man, a dark protagonist man, a wizardly psychiatrist. The rest, adult entertainment trade artists, bartenders, cab drivers, an odd spy or two, you know, social outliers, fellow travelers meeting and greeting before passing on in the dark nights of coldly comforting solitude. We are among you. We're not vampires or werewolves or zombies or pod people or angels or demons or ghosts or mages or dragons or fey or fell. We are unseen, listening and all seeing. We are make believers who make believe it could be different for us. We are writers.

True enough. Writers are opaque creatures. Often as troubled as their characters. That's good, though. It usually shows in the writing. You can't write a dark protagonist well if you don't know what it's like to sit in the dark, IMO.

[Bohemienne]

I love well-written villains; as a child I always found them so much more interesting in the Disney movies than the predictable heroes!

The main character of my fantasy series is an unapologetic villainess; she acknowledges it up front but tells you she wants to show you why she did what she did. I'd like to think that, much like a Dexter, people can see the method to her madness and at least find her entertaining and on occasion sympathetic, if not wholly relatable. I know it will make my book a hard sell, and sometimes I feel emotionally drained from writing it and have to turn to some of my happy kitty bunny pony protagonists in my other WiPs. But I love the story and want to do this villainess justice!