Samven's Writing Lectures

[kyonides]

Now that you mention Kefka from Final Fantasy VI I would like to center your attention at a fact of our real life that the story writers missed completely, whenever a real tyrant with a defective brain chemistry or point of view shows up in our world, there's always been people who want to get rid of that tyrant and it's not been because they really loved their people or their great nation but just because they grew tire of that maniac and because they had personal or political debts they couldn't be paid off if the tyrant was still alive. (Just take a look at Stalin's death...) If they had thought about that back then, a new villain could have arisen just after Kefka's death to take control of everything. This new villain, well, could have become a new Gestahl or even be a descendant of the Imperial branch family. Some townsfolk may believe that he's up to get things worse but he could calmly say that everything's Kefka's fault not his. Thus he would be capable of fooling the party to think everything's over when it's just taking a small break. I seriously think such series of events could be added to the main story in a remake. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that they would gladly accept to make one at all. (If that ever happens, I'd demand a compensation for letting them know about this special addition to the original story!)

[Taylor]

@Samven: I suppose you're right about Kuja. I had stopped playing FFIX before the final dungeon because it was suddenly difficult. Months later after a lot of Hot and Cold, and grinding; I get to the end where Kuja is I honestly thought "Wait... why were we trying to stop you again? What did you do?" He clearly wasn't a terribly good character later on (and completely lost the plot just before the end and wanted to kill everyone including himself.... right.)... so wasn't memorable enough to come back to mind when I picked the game up again.

Then again, I forgot what Garland's deal was too, so maybe it's just me.

As I have not played The Last Story, I am unfamiliar with what you speak of. I'm not sure the MC's rival/antagonist quite fits the same roll. ... in fact, as I think about it, his position in power should make him a real threat (i.e. have the party wanted by the police)... yet I find myself thinking he shouldn't realistically want to risk the world just to keep a bunch of young adults from being idolised. I'm not saying this in terms of the character I have in mind, but in terms of sensible human function. Unless some people are really that shallow.

[Samven]

Don't worry. My next storytelling entry is actually gonna cover him somewhat.

Because, while I am not an FF fan, I love IX's take on Garland a bit tooooo much. It kicked SO MUCH ASS.

[Samven]

3. Writing the Villain

Part Two - The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

World War I is, without doubt, one of my favourite wars. Well, okay, let me reiterate that. Saying that you have a “favourite” war is a bit like saying you have a most preferred way to have your toenails yanked off – but I digress. Perhaps I should instead say that I find it one of the most interesting wars because it wasn’t really about good and evil. At the end of the day it was some old men arguing over how much land they owned and where they should be allowed to expand their perceived territorial rights that caused all the world to descend into conflict. Yet that’s precisely what interests me so much about it. When the fighting stopped, everyone on both sides rejoiced. From what I read, a lot of the German soldiers didn’t even care that they’d lost. They’d fought the good fight and everyone had played their part and even though what was lost would never be returned at least everyone knew that there’d be peace. Or, at least, they hoped.

What eventually narked Germany off wasn’t simply the fact that they’d lost but the fact that they ended up being made to bare responsibility for the war. Try to see this from the German perspective. The Allies were trying to cut through their lands, mowing down their soldiers… This was not the Second World War, where even Hitler’s own officers began realising that he was a complete monster; it was far more morally grey than that. To the Germans, the Allies were the invaders. Germany was only protecting her realm and her soldiers fought long and hard for four long and painful years. So, you can imagine how miffed everyone got when the Allies waltzed in, slapped Germany with the war debt, called them the villains and swaggered out of the discussions wearing the 20th Century equivalent of trollfaces. Now, you may be wondering, “What does any of this have to do with storytelling? About writing villains?” Everything.

You see, the stories that stick with me are the ones where the enemy is just as justified in their actions as the heroes, or are trying to achieve a noble end but have very twisted means. I’ve already talked about how it’s possible to write a self-serving, truly evil bad guy while still making interesting but the kind of antagonists who resonate most strongly with me are the ones who aren’t that different from the heroes. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at a few. Those of us who owned a Gameboy Advance may remember a special little title called Golden Sun, which revolved around a band of youths from a hidden town of alchemists trying to stop a group of thieves from destroying the world with the magical artefacts that they’d stolen.

Except that wasn’t quite true.

The second game reveals that the thieves you killed were actually sent on behalf of a town called Prox, whose people discovered that the world was quite literally falling to pieces because the magical energy that sustained it had been locked away and that, in order to reverse the decay, they needed to restore said magic into the world. Unfortunately, the guardians of this power laughed them out; prompting them to attack in the first place. So, yeah. Turns out you weren’t quite the hero you thought you were. In fact, by killing them you more or less doomed a whole community to certain death because you didn’t even try to ask them about their side of the story. Whoops!

Of course, it’s not just the Japanese who employed this kind of enemy. Anyone who’s played TimeSplitters might remember the antagonist of Future Perfect: a scientist named Crow. Now, while TimeSplitters wouldn’t know how to take itself seriously if it tried, Crow was still a surprisingly interesting villain. Quite simply, he wanted to live forever and he wanted to help humanity as a whole escape the inevitability of death. Unfortunately, the only ways to do this were to either a) raise the dead as zombies through mad science, or b) turn himself and his test subjects into genetic mutants with the ability to manipulate time and space: mutants that would later devolve into the hideous creatures for which the series is named. Huh.

These kinds of villain are actually closer to the mould of heroes, or at least human beings, as far as their intentions go: which is why they’re so interesting. They represent what the heroes could be if they had fewer moral guidelines, or if they allowed their noble goal to consume their humanity. As such, when it comes to writing such characters, I find it helps to write them in a similar way as I would a protagonist because such villains aren’t guffawing genocide-generators on top of a big evil tower. They’re people and, as such, they need their writers to really think about who they are, what has made them so dedicated to “fixing” the world in their incredibly messed-up and who are they connected to as much as you would with a hero. A villain the hero – that the audience – can connect with and form a strange sort of bond with also makes the inevitable showdown all the worse, because we want to save them from themselves but we also know that it’s just not possible to do so.

It should be pointed out, however, that this doesn’t mean your villain has to be sympathetic. Feeling sorry for someone is not the same as empathising with them. Let me annotate another example to elaborate. In the first Mass Effect game, the villain is an alien named Saren. Like the protagonist, Commander Shepard, Saren is part of an intergalactic organisation of peacekeepers known as SPECTRES. Yet, while he’s dedicated to the cause of keeping order in the known galaxy, he’s also incredibly malicious and arrogant. He’s also got a burning resentment of humanity, due to having lost family in a war with them before the story’s events. From the very beginning, comparisons can be drawn with Shepard; who can, if the player so chooses, be the sole survivor of a terrible battle or have watched their whole family be murdered by alien slavers as a child. That similarity, however, isn’t what makes it tough to kill Saren. What makes it tough to deliver the final blow is learning that all his wicked acts were done to forge an alliance with the Reapers: a race of ancient machines who intend to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy for reasons incomprehensible to any but their own kind… and they have very persuasive methods of recruiting others to their cause. At the end of the day, Saren and Shepard are both trying to save the galaxy and both see the other’s plan as being flawed. Shepard wants to fight while Saren (misguidedly) believes that the Reapers can be reasoned with and that living as slaves to their every whim is better than not living at all. His plan doesn’t work – at all – but the fact that he was willing to try it opens up all sort of moral debate. Was he a coward for trying to get on the good side of the Reapers or did he genuinely believe that he could protect the galaxy? Saren raises questions; questions that few other villains do. Killing him isn’t difficult because he’s a sympathetic character. It’s difficult because he’s a pathetic one. It’s honestly hard to watch him descend from a confident opponent to a desperate pawn blinded by his own idealism.

In any case, however, once you’ve developed such a villain the one thing that you should never, ever, ever, ever, EVER do is betray them by killing them off in an inglorious fashion. Final Fantasy IX, despite my complaint with the series, has an incredibly good villain in Garland. This man is the last of his kind, a being from a dying world that he is desperately trying to revive. Unfortunately, the only way he can restore life to his planet is by consuming the souls of beings living on other worlds: specifically, yours. Since fighting him means the end of his world, there’s really no difference between him and the hero Zidane. Both of them want to protect their world and are willing to sacrifice another to do it. It means that neither side can really claim the moral high-ground and introduces an unexpected greyness into the moral spectrum. Unfortunately, he was too good to last and suffer the fate of having his “Ultimate Villain” status stolen away by a gender-confused monkey throwing a suicidal temper-tantrum that will blow up the world.

I wish I was joking.

Sam Rowett
Pywritechnics

[millarso]

I have a hard time with sympathetic enemies because I tend to be a very sympathetic person. It almost literally pains me to engage in combat with them. One of the people I had the hardest time fighting was Raven in Tales of Vesperia because you learn to love the guy, but he is just following his duty and is forced to follow Alexei in order to live.

[Samven]

I have a hard time with sympathetic enemies because I tend to be a very sympathetic person. It almost literally pains me to engage in combat with them. One of the people I had the hardest time fighting was Raven in Tales of Vesperia because you learn to love the guy, but he is just following his duty and is forced to follow Alexei in order to live.

That's how you know the writers have done their job well.

[millarso]

*sigh* I know, but sometimes I would just like a bad guy I can hate.
I find that that is almost harder to do. It is difficult writing a character that you legitimately loathe for what he has done rather than who he is. I find that when you have characters that do something completely unforgivable, they often are also very stereotypical, making it hard to take them seriously. Maybe this role would best be fit by your description of Saren, pathetic but not sympathetic.

[Samven]

Apologies for my absence lately, folks. I've just been really busy around these parts lately. Regular storytelling lectures will resume about next week. :3

[Samven]

We're back, baby! Merry Belated Christmas! 8D

3. Writing the Villain

Part Three - Why Evil is Sexy

Evil is sexy. No doubt about that. Whether it's the fact that villainy tends to employ underlings with accents from Sexysville, Europe, the "black leather only" dress codes, or just the very fact that evil is a lot more tolerant about how much leg gets shown than the forces of righteousness, there's no denying that bad girls (and boys) have a lot of appeal.

Yet such figures often run the risk of being there for little more than sex appeal and, quite frankly, that annoys me. I know the dark side has an obligatory fanservice quota that all the pretty people have to fulfil but that doesn't mean you can make their character as skimpy as their outfits.

The idea that evil and sexiness are inherently combined is one that a lot of bad writers and fanficcers seem to have developed over the years and it's one that needs to be unlearned. The Dark Side is alluring because it's a Forbidden Fruit. Evil is the tempting serpent to good's naive young Eve. Sexuality can factor into this - especially when the main character is a pure knight or maiden - but anything that plays on a character's repressed desires can work. If a hero feels that their efforts aren't appreciated, the offer of wealth or power can be enough to tempt them. If they feel envious of another's ability or accomplishments, then the chance to become stronger or more famous than them could cause them to slip from the path of righteousness. If they don't feel that they're loved, then the feeling of being desired may seem like the next best thing.

So, now we re-understand that sex is simply one of the Dark Side's many, many weapons to use in its war to corrupt good. And why would evil not want to corrupt good? After all, good guys have things called "bravery", "determination" and "heroic spirit"... These are all qualities that villains often lack. It's not at all unheard of for a baddie to discard their mooks in favour of making an escape and living to threaten the world another day. A particularly genre savvy villain might even be aware that these qualities exists and recognise that, no matter what they do, a hero is always going to win in the end. So, why not try to win them over or - even better - build their entire plan around the knowledge that good is going to win?

Let's say, for example, that Lady d'Eville is trying to take over the kingdom. She only needs to get rid of that pesky Overlord von Kaiser and she'll be unopposed in her bid for rulership. Unfortunately, Mr. Kaiser is the kind of badass who wrestles sharks as a hobby and shoots lasers from his eyes. Ms. d'Eville is... not so physically impressive. So, what does she do to make sure she wins this little battle? Why, enlist the aid of that strapping young Chosen One, of course! Oh, he's been so down in the dumps ever since his childhood friend started eyeing up his rival. If she lends an ear here, makes up a sob story to make it seem like she understands his problems, and asks him to help her with her dress just before that big formal party, why he'll trust her with his life! And then, when the time comes to overthrow Mr. Kaiser, one of two things will happen. Since the Chosen One's destiny is specifically to triumph over the evil Overlord, he'll either off the baddie - thereby allowing her to seize the country - or find that he's not strong enough and has to pull back, in which case she still has a powerful minion under her control. And, with his confidence even more shattered from his defeat, he's even more vulnerable to her manipulative charms. Either way, she gets something.