Bradley P. Beaulieu
I like antiheroes.
Why do I like antihoeroes?
Well, because they challenge my expectations. I grew up reading heroes and heroines that fell into a pretty nifty heroic box. It starts with fairy tales, of course, but moves on to guys like, well, Bilbo and Frodo. Natch. And Sturm Brightblade and King Aurthur and Rand al’Thor and Luke Skywalker.
But damned if they aren’t boring after a while. It’s not Luke we like, is it? It’s Han. It’s not Sturm, but Raistlin. Why? Because there was something about those characters. In Raistlin we knew early on that that was something not quite right about him. He didn’t act like Gandalf at all, did he? He had his own agenda and his own methods. And yet he wasn’t all bad. He certainly had a soft spot for his brother, Caramon. But at the same time he was singularly focused on his goals, and at times he did some pretty nasty things to get there. And in Han’s case… Well, there’s something about the rogue, isn’t there?
Corwin of Amber was an interesting study. Here was a guy who woke up with amnesia and had to piece together his past before his family managed to kill him. His quest wasn’t terribly heroic, at least in the beginning, and we saw him acting pretty ruthlessly to (a) stay alive and (b) figure out why someone was trying to kill him. That it was his family that was after him made it all the more interesting. Corwin wasn’t a bad guy, but neither did he evoke the typical traits of the hero. (more…)
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