So it seems that I got caught up in other things today; I'll just leave start it with the first part of the post and continue working on it when I get up tomorrow... or rather, later today.
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THE WRITER'S PERSPECTIVE
PART FIVE: ANTAGONISTS- HOW TO MAKE A GREAT VILLAIN
Stories often offer a variety of characters, fulfilling different roles and niches depending on the needs of the story. Though composition of the cast does vary from story to story, often times there are two key roles which come up more often than not.
The protagonist: The hero of our story. The viewpoint character, the one who we follow throughout the narrative most of the time. And opposing him is the antagonist: the villain, the one who's goals cause him to cross paths with our hero. Some villains become iconic and recognizable, while others are forgettable and weak... in some cases, even laughable.
So what is it that makes a great villain? In this entry we'll discuss what goes into making a great villain, briefly look at some classic villain archetypes (a more detailed post on that to come in the future), and see how this applies to 3WSR.
What makes a villain?There are many ingredients that go into writing a villain, but it should be noted that regardless of what is needed for a story, there are three key things always needed: memorability, threat and impact. Yes, the villain does need to oppose the antagonist, but that in and of itself is a given, not necessarily an "ingredient" to a great villain. So what is it about memorability, threat and impact that make a great villain? Breaking it down:
MEMORABILITY: The ability of a villain to be remembered for his/her actions and the role he/she played. Superman has Lex Luthor, Spider-man has Green Goblin, the Fantastic Four have Doctor Doom, Batman has The Joker, etc. Or, for more refined tastes, Romeo Montague has Tybalt, Othello has Iago, Abraham Van Helsing has Dracula, The Three Musketeers have Milady de Winter, etc. Many villains become iconic because they were so memorable in their stories. Maybe it was a specific action they performed, or a speech they gave, or just in general the role they played in the narrative was brilliant. A great villain is able to leave his mark on the story in more ways than one, which is what makes him so memorable.
THREAT: The villain need to present a substantial threat to the protagonist. True, there have been some memorable villains that haven't been a real threat to the hero (Condiment King from Batman: The Animated Series comes to mind), but ultimately if the hero was the ultimate force in the room, the story would feel very... not special. (A lesson I've learned over the years; more on that in another post). Yes, you can make the hero quite powerful, but something needs to offset it. The villain needs to present a threat that either equals the power of the hero, or presents his threat in a manner that it becomes a challenge to the hero, propelling the story forward and setting the narrative for what is to come. Yes, we want our hero to succeed, but to be a great story, it needs to be more than just "two men fight, one falls, hero wins." With that in mind, that does bring forward a critical question: is the villain allowed to win?
Strictly speaking that is a post in itself, but for now I will leave it at this: While villains could be allowed to have victories here and there, from my experience, what I feel is that in the end the hero must be the one who wins because:
1) In my personal experience, a story with the villain winning is usually a story without resolution- which is anti-climactic and unsatisfying (i.e. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines; they failed to stop Skynet and the world was destroyed by nuclear weapons, allowing the machines to rise anyway)
2) Allowing the villain to kill the hero effectively ends the story, with little to no chance of it continuing in a meaningful manner (i.e. Hamlet; once Hamlet died it was effectively the end of the play... given that it was towards the end of act Five, it makes sense that all that happened at the end of the story was some dialogue between the surviving characters)
3) The villain being thwarted and vowing to return is often the plot device that brings recurring villains back; if a villain succeeded in his goal, such as conquering the world, it would be pretty hard to continue a story where there is no one to oppose the villain. (i.e. if Doctor Doom were to succeed in his goal of conquering the world, according to Marvel Comics, apparently under his control mankind unites and enters an age of peace and prosperity, which would... not sell a lot of comics, to say the least)
So yes, a villain can win small victories and gains that make sense in context and help drive the plot... but in the end it must be the hero who wins the day, lest the story end. How does this pertain to the threat of a villain then? Simple- it is these points to keep in mind when writing a narrative because a great villain presents a great threat to the hero... but said threat must not be so impossibly challenging that the hero dies or is unable to proceed meaningfully, lest the story suffer.
IMPACT: The villain is able to leave his mark on the story. It isn't just a simple matter of "he appeared, did his action, then left" for the villain; when the villain appears, he is able to leave his mark in any number of ways on the story as a whole. For example, the Antagonist of Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt, is the one who kills Mercutio in Act III. Given that until now Mercutio was the comic relief of the play, his death can be interpreted as the "tipping point" of the story; from there on it is all downhill for the protagonists. Indeed- Romeo is exiled, Juliet is nearly forced to marry someone she doesn't love, and it all culminates in the death of the two.
In a more general sense, a villain simply cannot be "there" in the story. He must take action, and it must be directed at the protagonist, for him to have any meaning. For him to have an impact, it is not enough to just confront the hero and share words or a fight. There must be something the villain leaves behind. A legacy, a memory... anything that serves as a impression to the hero that this villain existed, and even if said villain died there is a reason why he is still remembered.
There are other traits which arguably can be considered important to a villain, such as depth of character or importance to the overall narrative, but since these are general and apply to all characters as a whole, we will not talk about them in depth here. Since we've established the ingredients to a great villain, the next step becomes portraying the villain. And to do that usually requires considering...
The archetypesAlthough most of the iconic villains are unique in their own way, when you boil it down most villains can be sorted into one of the following categories:
(List is with thanks to screencraft.org:
screencraft.org/2015/08/26/15-types-of-villains-screenwriters-need-to-know/ )
1) Anti-villain: they have evil intentions, and they can be seen as the bad guys... but there is something about them that is also appealing and sympathetic. Refer to: Dr. Hannibal lecter in Silence of the Lambs and Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction
2) The Authority Figure: "evil" is subject to interpretation here. Usually existing to oppose a character's free will, the authority figure is usually seen as the bad guy because of some people's need to feel opposition towards authority. However, it should be noted that there is a reason these usually only work in comedies and dramas- they aren't really bad guys in the traditional sense; they're just doing there jobs. Refer to: Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day off and Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
3) The beast: a creature that, for whatever reason, is stalking and trying to kill the protagonist; usually in the horror and thriller genres. Refer to: the shark from Jaws and the bear from The Edge (1997 film)
4) The bully: We've heard of them, and we see them all to often. That mean guy who opposes our protagonist for little to no given reason. Usually, the guy is just a jerk or really mean... and for the comedies and dramas that it is usually seen in, that is usually satisfactory. Refer to: Biff Tannen from Back to the Future and Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid
5) The corrupted: Someone who should be good, but due to character flaws or outside circumstances, fell from grace and became corrupted due to flaws of their character... or a supernatural force that corrupts their soul. Refer to: Michael Corleone in The Godfather and Reagan MacNeil in The Exorcist
6) The criminal: Does this really need an explanation? Someone who is after money or power, and will do what it takes to get it. Refer to: Tom Powers in The Public Enemy and Frank Lucas in American Gangster
7) The disturbed: someone with psychological problems and clear inner personality struggles. Though a sympathetic side can sometimes be observed, because of their actions we don't usually find ourselves rooting for them. Refer to: Norman Bates from Psycho and Annie Wilkes from Misery
8) The Equal: someone who has the same knowledge and skills of the protagonist, but lies on the other end of the moral spectrum. Not a very common archetype explored, but it has been used in a variety of media. Refer to: General Zod from Man of Steel
9) Femme fatale: an attractive and seductive woman who usually means trouble for the protagonist if he gets involved with her. Usually seen in thrillers and film noir, this is one of the oldest and most established archetypes. Refer to: Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct and Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. (NOTE: Use of this one "as is" is rather discouraged; a detailed explanation will come in a future blog post)
10) The henchman- a staple of actions and spy thrillers, the henchman always clashes with the antagonist because he will always do the bidding of his boss, the mastermind (see below); despite sometimes being the most powerful or threatening foe the villains face. Refer to: Boba Fett from Star Wars and Agent Smith from The Matrix.
11) The Machine: almost always exclusive to science fiction, they are one of the most terrifying villains. Cold and calculating, they feel no pity or emotion, and can't feel pain or fear. Refer to: The Terminator from Terminator and Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron
12) The Mastermind: Again a staple of spy thrillers and action films, the mastermind is often the one who oversees the plan that is in opposition to the protagonist. Although the henchman is usually the muscle who fights the protagonist, it is the mastermind who is the brains of the operation and usually the one who the protagonist faces off with in the final confrontation. Refer to: Hans Gruber from Die Hard and Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.
13) Mother Nature: arguably the greatest threat of them all, she is unforgiving and unstoppable. Usually restricted to the disaster genre, the forces of nature cannot be stopped by the protagonist; usually they only survive because mother nature "let them" survive, not because they "defeated" mother nature. Refer to: The tornadoes from Twister and the volcano from Dante's Peak.
14) Personification of Evil: A pure evil being whose purpose is little more than doing evil things. They often don't even have a backstory; they're just evil... just because. Refer to: The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and Count Dracula from Dracula
15) The Supernatural/extraterrestrial: Combined because they are extremely similar; the hauntings or alien abductions involved often make their presence known in the horror, science fiction and suspense genres. These inhuman entities create fear in their prey before going in for the kill. Refer to: Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street and the aliens from Independence Day.
A more detailed discussion of these archetypes will follow in another post. For now though the following can be said: This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but if you're thinking of creating a villain for a story and not sure where to start on how to characterize him or her... look no further than these archetypes to get started.
Now that all of this is clarified, let's see how all of this...
Applying the concepts to 3WSRSince our main game and canon is rather... convoluted and messy, we will use Literary Mosaic as our tool to discuss how to write villains, and what distinguishes great villains from weak villains. Refer to this list here for the basis of the discussion:
3wsr.proboards.com/thread/621/literary-mosaic-villains-rankedBefore I begin discussing the list, a quick disclaimer: although an argument could be made that this list is subjective because it is my opinion, bear a key fact in mind: as someone who understands the importance of objective thinking I kept my personal opinions in check by making them not part of the scoring matrix and ranking the villains based only on the three point matrix.
With that said, let's look at how these concepts apply to the LM villains:
In Literary Mosaic, there is an understanding that the original "Rogues' Gallery" consisted of four players: The Irish Mob, the Blade Syndicate, Elvira Revinev and Dr. Gunther Drugg. Throughout LM 5, Dr. Drugg was treated as the Big Bad, almost as if he was Gunnarson's "Moriarty" if you will. So here's a question: why? Because unlike the other criminals who were pretty "standard" for the context of the story (Mobsters, assassin and crime syndicate; with the big change-up for Blade not happening until LM 13), Dr Drugg represented a far greater threat: his cocktails were capable of influencing just about anyone to do his bidding. In fact, to date he is the one who has come closest to killing Gunnarson- by using a cocktail to hypnotize him into jumping off a bridge.
So with that in mind, why isn't Dr. Drugg the number one villain in Literary Mosaic, despite my personal preference? Simple: in the grand scheme of things he did not leave as big an impact compared to the Blade Syndicate; he did not even make moves against our hero in LM 8, and his death was at the hands of a supporting character. Although Gent and Drugg's interaction did shed some backstory for the two, Drugg's death should not be considered premature for a simple reason: Drugg was, in the end, a one-note villain with a single shtick: drugs. Reusing him would have meant essentially using the same plot formula over and over again. He was killed because it was better he be remembered for two great parts instead of constant reusing watering down and ruining his character.
With this in mind, it becomes understandable why Gunnarson's Moriarty is only number two. So now that this is out of the way, let's compare the strongest and weakest villains of Literary Mosaic: The Blade Syndicate and The Man
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First, let's look at the three point matrix:
Memorability- What made the Blade Syndicate so memorable is that Toz painted them as more than just criminals. This small band of 15 members started out with the appearance of a petty gang, with their initial goals being the theft of emeralds, but overtime they became a more fleshed out organization as they had interactions with Dr. Drugg, Elvira Revinev and the Irish Mob. LM 13 proved to be a turning point for them as toz explored Blade more in depth: showing that even though he was a criminal, there was more to his motives than just a simple desire of money or power. He sought to control the London underworld, but on his own terms, as influenced by the death of four of his comrades in the Syndicate.
Blade is a memorable villain in Literary Mosaic because he was more than just "there to cause harm." He is memorable because of his portrayal, his character development, and Toz's writing of exploring Blade's inner workings are some of the best on the forum.
Now let's contrast that to The Man. Why is he so unmemorable? Simple: his only complete appearance to date, LM 8, was very forgettable. He contributed nothing to plot development, with his only actions being:
Musing on killing Hartley (more than once) and stalking him
A conversation with Cricket
Buying a book
Being shot 4 times by Gunnarson and limping away
And perhaps the biggest reason he was forgettable: his role was vastly and completely overshadowed by the usual Rogues' Gallery; the mob, Blade, Elvira and Drugg had more meaningful actions and more substantial plot contributions than The Man.
Threat- Blade was the biggest threat to Gunnarson following the death of Dr. Drugg. Despite not having any interactions with the Swede in LM 5 or 8, Blade was still able to leave his mark. Blade, with the mob, were the ones who annihilated the Black Scorpion during the prison infiltration in LM 8 and lead the charge to infiltrate the Ripper's compound. He even betrayed the mob and had much of their leadership turned over to the police. Blade was a threat not just because he was willing to attack innocents to get what he wanted... he was also one who was willing to attack other criminals who stood in his way of his goals. Heck, in LM 13 it was the Blade Syndicate, with Elvira's help, that took down, in one night mind you, the entire assassination "business" in London. He wasn't killing his enemies by LM 13, but the fate he made them suffer was a fate worse than death, and he was really effective at it... even managing to recruit grunts under his command to look over his "prisoners"
Which brings us to The Man: why was he not a threat? The phrase "his bark is worse than his bite" comes to mind. He kept talking about taking action and killing Hartley... but it amounted to little more than brief monologues musing on his revenge and "Playing" with Hartley. And what did it all amount to in the end? His big climax was confronting Hartley and the moment he was about to charge him... Gunnarson shot him four times and he retreated. For me, this calls to question how committed he is to his goals, but that is not the point: he wasn't a threat because he didn't even succeed in wounding Hartley, let alone killing him.
Impact- Although the Blade Syndicate was effectively dismantled by the end of LM 13, they had left their mark on the LM series. In universe they succeeded in:
Stealing the Gadfrey Emeralds (though an LM 5 epilogue suggests they were recovered; some dialogue in LM 13 may suggest otherwise- so we apologize and will have this straightened out soon)
Surviving a late-night confrontation with the Irish Mob
Survived a confrontation with Elvira and Dr. Drugg
Broke out the members of the syndicate which had been arrested in LM 3
Teamed up with the Irish Mob to take Revenge against Dr. Drugg; annihilating the Black Scorpion leadership in prison and causing substantial damage to the Ripper Underground in their raid
Betrayed the Irish Mob- having several high ranking members arrested in exchange for Gunnarson letting them go for now
Took down several high profile criminals in the London Underworld and having them work in his mine
Recruited Elvira to his cause
Took down the Assassination "business" in London overnight
convinced a Scotland Yard Detective to betray Gunnarson and crew and join his syndicate
Held off a combined assault from the Irish Mob, Blade Syndicate and police long enough to escape for his final bow in LM 18
Becoming such a substantial threat to his operation that Lord Bury offered generous bounties for his capture
And this is just what I can remember off the top of my head. As for The Man, what was his impact?
Leaving Gunnarson and Hartley confused as to why he broke into the apartment and tried to kill Harley
In fact, he's left such little impact on the two, that Gunnarson, now a chef, doesn't even think about The Man anymore, and Hartley considers him little more than a nutcase who he met for but a moment and as such doesn't take him seriously.
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By comparing the strongest and weakest villains (in terms of scoring matrix) of LM, we see how the importance of Memorability, threat and impact to making a great villain.
I know what some of you may be thinking, "Frank- you're being awfully harsh on The Man; isn't his story not complete?" While that is technically true, that is not the point- we're only looking at completed stories, and specifically looking at the ingredients of what makes a great villain.
As a side note- any criticism I give is constructive criticism, but since this isn't a character critique focused post, I cannot properly review The Man here. That is a subject for another post.
In conclusion, although the hero may be the focus of a story, remember that he is only as great as the villain he opposes. You can give him a rich character, but without a great villain to oppose him the hero's story can come across as weak and nothing special. Remember that it may be the intention to hate a villain, but that does not mean that he can't be great character.
With that said; I hope I've given you some inspiration, and look forward to seeing what kinds of antagonists you come up with. Best of luck, fellow writers.