Is The Assassin Romanticized In Modern Fiction?

[Jevran]

I recently tried to read the first book of the Throne of Glass series. This made me think about the role of Assassins in todays fiction. I've noticed it for a while, but modern fiction seems to romanticize the assassin. The Assassin's Creed games cast them as vigilante heroes saving the world, making it seem as if so long as they follow their creed then killing people is okay. An Throne of Glass? That book has the assassin play out the typical high school romance. I'm serious. She acts just like the usual highschool love triangle heroine, only instead of a cheerleader she's an assassin.

My point is....being an assassin seems to be cool. Fiction is giving them an almost respectable, romantic, noble demon image. It abstracts the fact that they are hired killers. If you look at the hit men caught in the real world, you'll find a very different story.

What do you guys think? Am I barking up trees needlessly or am i on to something.

 

[Hykal94]

A thread about assassins in media and not a mention of the world's best bald hitman? Tsk tsk.

Nah, that's definitely the case. I feel a good chunk of the "romantisation" of the assassin actually comes down from the romantisation of the spy. Particularly the archetype of the James Bond, who himself is a psychopathic murderer in the original books.

I'd say something about how the assassin in gaming came from tabletop roleplaying's thief, but I don't have much evidence to support that. Maybe someone else can pitch in. Preferably by saying something along the lines of "capes + hoods + daggers = assassin"

An Throne of Glass? That book has the assassin play out the typical high school romance. I'm serious. She acts just like the usual highschool love triangle heroine, only instead of a cheerleader she's an assassin.

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I actually own the second book lol and apparently it's a vast improvement to the first. Can't say it holds my attention long enough to get past the first arc though.

 

[Reveen]

It's pure rule of cool combined with the fact that a character being an assassin A. garuntees they're a badass. B. garuntees conflict because an assassin has to assassinate people and C. Allows for a more serialized format of story where the character hops from job to job.

Personally I'm not a fan of the archetype because I'm not a fan of works that treat killing people as this normal, morally neutral thing you just do. Societies traditionally fear and hate murderers unless they have some sort of reason like self-defence or being a soldier, and it breaks the believability for me when the others characters are just okay with it. Even when it's a thieves guild type situation, because criminals in real life tend to see murder as troublesome at best.

Man, maybe I should do that let's read of the Night Angel Trilogy one of these days.

I'd say something about how the assassin in gaming came from tabletop roleplaying's thief, but I don't have much evidence to support that.

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I imagine it goes something like "I want to be a cool sneaky sneak character"*beat*"But I also want to kill lots of people. What do?"

It's also the reasons that in a lot of cases of when the characters are straight up thieves, chances are they'll still end up killing people. That's why I really like Garret from Thief, he don't have time for that mission creep bullshit.

 

[vicky_molokh]

I recently tried to read the first book of the Throne of Glass series. This made me think about the role of Assassins in todays fiction. I've noticed it for a while, but modern fiction seems to romanticize the assassin. The Assassin's Creed games cast them as vigilante heroes saving the world, making it seem as if so long as they follow their creed then killing people is okay. An Throne of Glass? That book has the assassin play out the typical high school romance. I'm serious. She acts just like the usual highschool love triangle heroine, only instead of a cheerleader she's an assassin.

My point is....being an assassin seems to be cool. Fiction is giving them an almost respectable, romantic, noble demon image. It abstracts the fact that they are hired killers. If you look at the hit men caught in the real world, you'll find a very different story.

What do you guys think? Am I barking up trees needlessly or am i on to something.

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Yes, some types of fiction do, but to a lesser extent than military characters in fiction and reality overall. People are generally more okay with abstracting the killing as long as it's killing done to further *their* cause: whether it's killing enemy conspiring Templars, enemy conquerous Nazis, enemy capitalistic Americans, enemy hiveminded Commies, enemy monstrous bugs, enemy bloodsucking vampires or whatever.

 

[Renewal]

There's also the fact that most assassin stories embrace the typical strong man fantasy from both angles: that the assassin is a capable, empowered individual that can right the world by eliminating the right person, and that there is such a villain whose presence is the only reason the world is troubled (and thus who needs only be replaced with a just and proper strong man). It's a very easy and reassuring way to view the world, since you don't need to deal with any sort of complexity or nuance.

 

[Jevran]

It's a very easy and reassuring way to view the world, since you don't need to deal with any sort of complexity or nuance.

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True. But modern fiction also white washes the fact that these people are murderers for hire. It covers up the fact till the reader almost doesn't notice the dead bodies that are piled up in the assassin's wake.

PS: A good portrayal of assassin's i can think of is the dark brotherhood in Skyrim. When you first enter their sanctuary they are casually having a laugh about the story about the killing of an old man. If you later listen to their dialogue you'll see that these people are monsters. They talk about murder the way office workers discuss work. Just routine, with a bit of humor. It's creepy if viewed from a certain angle.

 

[Reveen]

I think there's also this appeal of being an a compromise between competing vectors of geek appeal. We like characters who are total badasses, but we also like characters who are smarter, weedier, and more cool and collected about it compared to more meat headed characters. Assassin's balance out being able to fuck shit up with the appeal of not necessarily being the strongest guy in the room but winning anyway.

PS: A good portrayal of assassin's i can think of is the dark brotherhood in Skyrim. When you first enter their sanctuary they are casually having a laugh about the story about the killing of an old man. If you later listen to their dialogue you'll see that these people are monsters. They talk about murder the way office workers discuss work. Just routine, with a bit of humor. It's creepy if viewed from a certain angle.

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The Dark Brotherhood is nuts. Both in Skyrim and Oblivion. They're such gleefully fucked up people it's hard to even be that mad at them, but the game doesn't even try to lionize their killings with Pay Evil Unto Evil bullshit like you get with Overlord and shit. Like, the number of targets who actually deserve it is half at most. Maybe not even that much.

I mean, Vittoria Vici was just some lady looking forward to her wedding and you horribly crush her with a statue in front of her entire family. You kill some kid soldier specifically to bait his father and then kill his father after he tried to avenge him. The orc assassin in Oblivion openly brags about chopping a little girl apart with an axe. They're so over the top fucked up for no good reason that it doesn't even feel like grimdark or the animu edgelord bullshit a lot of other assassin crap comes off as because there's no barrier of protagonist bias or rule of cool or "that's just the way of the world maaaaan" whatsoever to protect you from how fucked up it is. You just have to accept it and enjoy playing as a total psycho pizza shit.

There's also this one dude in the Night Angel trilogy who's also like this. He's the bad assassin who is so totally sadistic and such a complete fucked up goofball about it that I can't help but kinda like him even while he does the vilest shit imaginable, whereas the protagonists have all this pathos and shit even though they've killed defenceless people because wrong place wrong time.

Enjoying your work in a disturbingly enthusiastic manner counts for a lot.

 

[Q99]

Yes.

The writer of a Vlad Taltos did Vlad's character arc in part because he thought he was romanticizing things a bit much.

 

[Fernandel]

Of course the paid killer is romanticised to a ridiculous degree, to the point where you have even different kinds of romanticisation going on.

You have the "working man" hired killer that is seen to be incresibly cool because he seems perfectly ordinary, only revealing his lethal skills when they need to and impressing the audience, melting back into the crowd with complete ease. Jason Bourne and other killers from that series, like the Professor, come to mind.

You have the classic "samurai" assassin, who is bound by a personal code of loyalty to his chosen master and/or works on the basis of his code of ethics that may be completely archaic for the modern world or alien to people of the modern era. People like Jean Reno's Léon, or Keanu Reeves's great portrayal of John Wick.

Then you have the "classic gangster" cleaners and gangsters, who often live the cool life of crime and are shown to be psychotic and/or quite simply stylish and cool or just ordinary dudes who fall into the criminal lifestyle, such as the Godfather, Goodfellas, or Tarantino's portrayal of the two hired killers in Pulp Fiction.

It's quite notable how much assassins and hired killers are romanticised in fiction, and in what different ways they are romanticised, often attempting to appeal to a different segment of the audience.

 

[Avernus]

I'd say something about how the assassin in gaming came from tabletop roleplaying's thief, but I don't have much evidence to support that. Maybe someone else can pitch in. Preferably by saying something along the lines of "capes + hoods + daggers = assassin"

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The Assassin in Dungeons and Dragons was originally just a specialized subclass of Thief.

 

[sgtbaker47]

Spy life.

Also about the assassin what's also important to think about is the target. Like in games it's either, the player is the assassin or being targeted. In real life..... actually assassin are fucking hated. Like a lot on historical accounts. JFK, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, more names that aren't from America. Okay lost my train of thought......

 

[comradepitrovsky]

That's the reason Crime & Punishment is so good, tbh. Well, one of them. It's a deconstruction of that.

 

[Marla]

An Throne of Glass?

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Huh. My housemate has the first book on her bookshelf.

Tbh the summary made it look more like a YA romance type of book despite its complete ripoff of Assassin's Creed for the cover model's outfit. And apparently I was right, so thanks OP.

Though about the thread, isn't people always romanticized about these kind of profession? After all, assassination is a gritty kind of job where you can kill people and look good doing it. Supposedly.

Just look at Katekyo Hitman Reborn, and all other incarnation of this particular genre like the others had pointed out.

Of course, the real life isn't as pretty. Hired killers don't wear pretty suits, they rode a motorcycle, target their victims in their cars and shot through their windshield at a corner or the traffic light. Or shoot them at the parking lot, that's pretty common too.

 

[Sarissa]

Huh. My housemate has the first book on her bookshelf.

Tbh the summary made it look more like a YA romance type of book despite its complete ripoff of Assassin's Creed for the cover model's outfit. And apparently I was right, so thanks OP.

Though about the thread, isn't people always romanticized about these kind of profession? After all, assassination is a gritty kind of job where you can kill people and look good doing it. Supposedly.

Just look at Katekyo Hitman Reborn, and all other incarnation of this particular genre like the others had pointed out.

Of course, the real life isn't as pretty. Hired killers don't wear pretty suits, they rode a motorcycle, target their victims in their cars and shot through their windshield at a corner or the traffic light. Or shoot them at the parking lot, that's pretty common too.

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And I believe that a lot of hired killers aren't even professional, but random assholes who never even killed before. The exceptions are for organized crime, but even then the hitmen are just gangsters to whom killing is just a part of their job. There's no contract-like nature to it and the hitmen certainly aren't independent operators. The underground world of proffesional killers doesn't and has never existed, except for maybe ninjas.

 

[Jevran]

The underground world of proffesional killers doesn't and has never existed, except for maybe ninjas.

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Even ninja in real life were more mercenaries for hire than pure assassins.

 

[Fernandel]

Even ninja in real life were more mercenaries for hire than pure assassins.

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They weren't often even mercenaries, but merely samurai who happened to be willing to get their hands dirty for their masters.

Anyway, this is the part where I get to talk to you about the history of the real-life ninja!

Japan is an interesting place, you know. For the longest time, this was a society where it was entirely comon for feudal lords and warlords to be embroiled in constant warfare and games of dominionship against each other, their warriors egged on into fighting each other and starting new wars by a culture that had a huge need for glorious deeds being recorded for posterity because of their religion being dominated by ancestor worship, and having done glorious deeds in your life that would be later recorded was more important than anything else. This led to absurd cases of warriors fighting personal duels before battle with 'whistling arrows' on horseback and on foot with swords, breaking ranks to get glory and losing their side a battle, and a lot of betrayal, backstabbing, duelling, and honour killings in attempts to get glory and avenge some real or imagined slight to themselves or their ancestors and the honour they associated.

Ever wonder why we have these ridiculously ornate armours, demon masks, and flags mounted on the backs of samurai? That's because samurai were preeny peacocks that wanted everyone to see how big their... flagpole was, tell others about it, and thus spread their glory far and wide so they would be worshipped in the afterlife. Also, they painted their horses weird colours. No, I'm not joking. Purple, crimson, sky blue, and chartreuse. Total attention whore murderhobos with swag.

To quote two samurai commenting from the 13th century:

"If I were to advance alone, in midst of the enemy, and die in a place where none could witness my deeds, then my death would be as pointless as a dog's death."

"To go forth to the field of battle and miss death by an inch; to leave behind one's name for a myriad generations; all in all, this is the way."

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It's as ridiculously bonkers and both tragically and (yet also hilariously) fucked up as it sounds.

(Fun tidbit: what modern pop culture calls "bushido" was a reaction to the excesses of these times, demanding personal loyalty and subservience to a lord's goals instead of the warrior's own personal glory. It was also born in a time where samurai where no longer doing great martial deeds, but where this more low-key philosophy allowed the state to function without constant bloodshedding and gaudy personal excesses of previous eras.)

Anyway, you will probably see the problem that presents itself: if you have a bunch of murder-happy maniacs, how will you make like Sun Tzi and get enough info to fight a successful war and to deceive your enemy?

Here's the fact where we learn that the Japanese are a very pragmatic people, and honour aside, try to be smart enough to fight to win. While also being justifiably paranoid about suddenly getting murder-stabbed and betrayed. Because if you can't trust peasants because they don't have samurai virtues, who do you turn to? Well...

Some samurai decide to learn enough skills to become their warlords' spies, saboteurs, and assassins, getting rewarded with glory, fame, and lands for it by their lords and comrades for their cunning, strength, and smarts. While also trying to downplay or whitewash the whole "dishonourable" bit.

A lot of the people we would today call "ninja" were members of the samurai (or bushi) who would decide to serve their masters by doing the dishonourable things other samurai wouldn't dare to do, but it was often also an attempt to earn personal glory and respect from peers in daring actions to try and take over entire fortresses or set things on fire for an invading force to come on, sneak into an enemy leader's room to kill him and then escape to brag about it, disguising themselves as peasants to get info and then return later in armour and weapons to murder dudes, and others such crazy things.

Ninja in some eras were part of the ruling class, allowed poorer non-samurai to join the ruling class by making a name for themselves, many had some basic skillset in ninja arts because it was just useful when fighting a war, and some samurai even specialised in the sort of subterfuge, sabotage, ambushing, and assassination we would today call "ninja arts".

It's a rarely talked-about facet of ninja history, but nonetheless quite interesting.

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[Jevran]

samurai who happened to be willing to get their hands dirty for their masters.

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This, right here. This is what most hitmen in real life criminal gangs seem to be. Not some super skilled mysterious highly paid death dealing machine. But a man who's ready to do absolutely anything, consequences be damed.

 

[The Laurent]

Plus, as far as it goes, I think people don't emphasize the 'group' element to most, say, criminal assassinations.

Mostly because there's not as much glamour in, "Me and my boys get together and gun someone down in cold blood, outnumbered and never with a chance of not dying" as there is, "The Lone Wolf Stalks His Dangerous Prey" or whatever.

 

[Fernandel]

This, right here. This is what most hitmen in real life criminal gangs seem to be. Not some super skilled mysterious highly paid death dealing machine. But a man who's ready to do absolutely anything, consequences be damed.

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Now, I forgot another kind of assassin archetype -- the "military/spy" assassin, who has been trained by a government in order to kill the state's enemies, whose past has been erased, and who generally has a military background and is trained well enough to actually have those superb skill that make the assassin who he is. They overlap a lot with other types, of course, but it's still a reasonably common archetyp -- Jason Bourne, John Wick, and so many others.

And I think you're summarising a bit far too easily. As @The Laurent pointed out, fiction that deals with assassins rarely talked about the group aspect that enables people to kill. Grossman had a fascinating chapter on this in his book On Killing that examined what allowed to bring themselves to kill, and simply saying "most hitmen in real life criminal gangs" are "men who're ready to do absolutely anything, consequences be damned" is a far too superficial and thus inaccurate summary as to makes people kill and allows them to keep doing it.

Just as an example, I would be very wary of simply declaring the samurai code of ethos, as brutal and unforgiving as it was, to simply be free of all restrictions and ethical guidelines.

 

[The Laurent]

Now, I forgot another kind of assassin archetype -- the "military/spy" assassin, who has been trained by a government in order to kill the state's enemies, whose past has been erased, and who generally has a military background and is trained well enough to actually have those superb skill that make the assassin who he is. They overlap a lot with other types, of course, but it's still a reasonably common archetyp -- Jason Bourne, John Wick, and so many others.

And I think you're summarising a bit far too easily. As @The Laurent pointed out, fiction that deals with assassins rarely talked about the group aspect that enables people to kill. Grossman had a fascinating chapter on this in his book On Killing that examined what allowed to bring themselves to kill, and simply saying "most hitmen in real life criminal gangs" are "men who're ready to do absolutely anything, consequences be damned" is a far too superficial summary and thus inaccurate summary as to makes people kill and allows them to keep doing it.

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You know, as far as it goes, going in a group would seem to diffuse responsibility. If you and your boys do a drive by on the house of an enemy, you're not firing 'at' someone, or at least you're not the only one doing it. If someone happens to die, who knows who actually fired the fatal shot? You might not even see them die because they're hiding in their house when the bullet hits them.

Edit: Also, while one of the attempted hits falls into the 'lone wolf' thing, The Wire has a pretty chilling 'assassination' scene that actually emphasizes the group nature of the act.

 

[Fernandel]

You know, as far as it goes, going in a group would seem to diffuse responsibility. If you and your boys do a drive by on the house of an enemy, you're not firing 'at' someone, or at least you're not the only one doing it. If someone happens to die, who knows who actually fired the fatal shot? You might not even see them die because they're hiding in their house when the bullet hits them.

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That's the principle by which firing squads work if one of the rifle is loaded with a blank, as was commonly done, yes.

As for criminal gangs, it often is quite simply has to deal with group pressure and being egged on or being ordered to kill or the wish to be initiated or reach greater respect within a group, which is what Grossman mostly emphasised as a factor in his work.

 

[Jevran]

You know, as far as it goes, going in a group would seem to diffuse responsibility. If you and your boys do a drive by on the house of an enemy, you're not firing 'at' someone, or at least you're not the only one doing it. If someone happens to die, who knows who actually fired the fatal shot? You might not even see them die because they're hiding in their house when the bullet hits them.

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Yes, I overlooked that @The Laurent and @Fernandel People do many ridiculous things when they are in a group.

 

[The Laurent]

That's the principle by which firing squads work if one of the rifle is loaded with a bank, as was commonly done.

As for criminal gangs, it often quite simply has to deal with group pressure and being egged on or ordered to kill, which is what Grossman mostly emphasised as a factor in his work.

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Speaking of.

Okay, I'm going to issue a warning. The context of this video might make it really hard to sit through. It has far less blood than a lot of movies that show deaths, but that only makes it more realistic, and the context, of a young adult being murdered by two of his best friends, like he was, makes it very chilling, but since you gave me the opening, I have to post this video.

They removed the kids, and so Wallace begins this clip looking through the house for the younger kids he takes care of. But the order has been given: Wallace is a loose end.

Viewer discretion is advised.

 

[Burning Baron]

What do you guys think? Am I barking up trees needlessly or am i on to something.

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I think they are, kind of like pirates are lately. It seems a lot like a strange late onset Stockholm Syndrome, where we empathize with something that used to terrify us.

It's also a subconcious thing for some people. Here's someone who can stop the bad guys that John and Jane Q Public can't, and don't even want to consider.

 

[Fernandel]

Okay, I'm going to issue a warning. The context of this video might make it really hard to sit through. It has far less blood than a lot of movies that show deaths, but that only makes it more realistic, and the context, of a young adult being murdered by two of his best friends, like he was, makes it very chilling, but since you gave me the opening, I have to post this video.

They removed the kids, and so Wallace begins this clip looking through the house for the younger kids he takes care of. But the order has been given: Wallace is a loose end.

Click to shrink...

So here we have a scene where...

1. A group of people are ordered to kill another by an authority figure,
   
2. Where the first perpetrator tries to shift the blame to the victim for this situation occurring, seeking to demean him, but nonetheless refusing to pull the trigger,
   
3. The second perpetrator egging him on to pull the trigger, at which point the first one shoots,
   
4. The second perpetrator taking the gun from the first and shooting several more times, making it a group act. (Conspicuously, he's not the one to try to perform the killing first, having apparently left the task to the first).

This is a pretty fascinating and very much accurate exploration of how gang killings occur, as described by Grossman and many others.

The difference between what we see here and what we see of the assassin archetype in fiction is quite clear: the assassin generally works alone, his actions spurred on by his own moral decisions, and he generally kills with little hesitation and recrimination. People like this definitely do exist, mind, but they're not really reflective of how most criminals start out killing.

Hell, there's been rumours of US gangs trying to convince members to join the US military in order to gain weapons and combat experience, though how much of that is rumour and whether they actually succeed is another matter.