Ultimate Guide to Villains and Antagonists: Fanatic
The Bear-Cult
Vorbis the Exquisitor
Melisandre
Driven by a single mission or ideology, fanatics are often willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. In their minds, the end justifies the means.
Fanatics: The Origin
Wikipedia defines fanaticism as “is a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or with an obsessive enthusiasm”. That word “obsessive” is indicative of the true nature of fanaticism: belief to a dangerous, extreme extent. A fanatic becomes so involved in and consumed by something that everything else in their life is pushed out of the way. No matter how harmless that “something” is—from a hobby to the adoration of a celebrity figure—if it becomes so extreme, it becomes dangerous.
Psychology Today has a couple of articles that delve into the mindset of a fanatic, comparing it to addicts. Like with addiction, fanaticism “always entails a lack of balance in a person’s life and thoughts.”
One addiction expert defined it as, “An addict is likely to be a person who is adrift from their moorings in the values of their community and as a result they are desperate for self-definition. Thus, like the fanatic, the addict loses his or her balance and becomes focused on just one desire. And that desire can become like a cancer, spreading and taking over a person’s life.”
Another article makes it clear that fanatics come in all shapes and sizes. “The absolute truths that fanatics latch onto might be religious or political, right wing or left wing, Christian or Islamic, libertarian or communist, new age spiritual or old-time religious. It’s not what they believe that makes them fanatics but how they believe it, that they have final word, no need to consider further evidence, no need to ever wonder or doubt themselves again.”
Notice that common thread? It’s not just that fanatics believe in something to an extreme degree—it’s that they’re unable to believe that anything else could be the truth, and thus they never question or wonder again. By shutting themselves off, they create an addiction to their version of the truth. And, if they start to try to impose their truth upon those around them—through, in the case of fantasy stories, often violent means—they become a danger to those people.
Fanatics can be fairly easy to spot. They all thrive on:
A simple answer, black or white
To be protected against imagined ‘evil’
A sense of community
To feel important
To feel better than the ‘others’
To secure special rights and resources, in this life or in the next
Redemption
In stories
Fanatics are a common antagonist in fiction due to the simple fact that their inability to see beyond their own ideologies or beliefs often leads them to take drastic, violent actions against those they perceive as “wrongdoers” or “disbelievers”.
Melisandre in the Game of Thrones series burns crosses, poisons nonbelievers, uses blood magic, and sends demon assassins, all in the name of her “true religion” worshipping the Lord of Light. Eventually, she takes it to such a drastic degree that she burns Stannis Baratheon’s daughter alive.
The Bear-Cult in David Eddings’ Belgariad universe is a group of racist fanatics that want to convert everyone “by the sword”.
J. Jonah Jameson from the Marvel Universe cannot believe that Spiderman is anything but a menace, no matter how many times Spiderman saves the city, the world, or even Jameson himself.
The danger of fanatics lies in the extreme nature of their beliefs, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to protect and further their cause.
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