Arthur E Daigle, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Arthur E Daigle
Why Goblins 3/6/2014 12:51:21 PM
Why Goblins?
By Arthur Daigle
So I wrote a fantasy novel and my main characters are goblins. Not what you’d expect, I know. Fantasy novels mostly focus on the exploits of knights, rangers, wizards, thieves, bards, and to a lesser extent holy men. These are the men and women who cut down hordes of enemies to save the kingdom, and then walk away with a king’s ransom in loot that they never seem to pay taxes on. If there are any goblins in the story they’re sword fodder, a minor threat for the heroes to march over on their way to face the evil overlord or other powerful being who is the real challenge.
This is all well and good for the heroes. Not so much for the goblins.
Fact is that goblins have been pushovers in fantasy books and games for decades. The only way they pose any danger to the heroes is if there are dozens or even hundreds of them, and even then they lose. Kind of like the Chicago Cubs that way, or France. It makes you wonder why they charge headlong into those heavily armored knights and rangers armed with magic swords. As survival strategies go that ranks up there with lemmings jumping off a cliff.
So with some thought and a lot of inspiration I decided to let the goblins have their day in my novel, William Bradshaw, King of the Goblins. Yeah, Will ‘s human and he gets a lot of the limelight, but the goblins get their day too, and I think it’s well deserved.
In my opinion the best stories are about the little guys. Most of us are powerless against life’s big dangers like wars, natural disasters and IRS audits. We can empathize with the little guy who’s fighting to just keep his head above water. The great heroes of literature and movies face overwhelming challenges and suffer frequent injuries and defeats. We root for them because they see the odds against them and they keep on fighting. There’s little interest in a story when the hero is perfect and undefeatable. After all, if he can’t lose then what’s the point of fighting? No, we want to see the little guy win.
And you don’t get much smaller than goblins.
Put yourself in the goblins’ shoes. You’re smaller and weaker than all your enemies. You don’t live on good land with lots of resources, mainly because the knights and wizards I mentioned forced you into the wastelands years ago. This means you don’t have the materials to make magic weapons or impenetrable castles. You probably don’t have any money, either. There’s not much point to having gold when you aren’t allowed into stores to buy things, and if you do have some cash then it’s a cinch that someone’s going to take it from you at sword point, probably those knights. The same goes for having jewelry, silks, beautiful paintings and magic weapons. You can’t make most of them, and if by some minor miracle you do get one you won’t keep it for long
Life for goblins is going to be a struggle, but it doesn’t have to be a brutal one. I was inspired to make my goblins funny by other authors who gave their goblins a sense of humor. Goblins are small, and like a lot of small guys they can get even with their enemies by humiliating them. They glue knights to their horses. They set traps that fling cow manure at the rangers. They paint the wizards blue while they’re asleep. They can beat their enemies with style and humor, all the while leaving those WWI style infantry charges off the agenda.
