nnozomi

Some rambling about writing to distract from RL worries.
Thinking a lot about antagonists and how they’re introduced, and also the flip side of, I don’t mean protagonists exactly, “good” characters? When I was reading Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light a little while ago I was disappointed by it on these grounds: I felt like all the characters were very clearly presented as “good, you should like this person” or “bad, you should dislike this person,” making them flat and uninteresting to read about, especially the bad ones. To be fair, I’ve only read book 1 of a trilogy, but I did not get the impression that she was setting up for more character development later on. I wonder if she did it deliberately that way, or just was not interested in focusing on this particular kind of character work? I feel bad about criticizing Marske’s book this way, but she’s obviously a very talented writer and—okay, speaking to my personal interests alone—I wish she had put her talent to work less for her sex scenes and more for her characterization.
I mean… to take three examples of media that I think do this right.

Waters of Time>

I was talking about Erica H. Smith’s Waters of Time series in my last post; the author has a (spoilery) post on her antagonists which makes it clear how few are of them are simple un-fleshed-out baddies, and how many of the others change over time from villain to comrade or from villain to terrible-person-who-is-also-complicated-and-relatable. She notes that “writing antagonists can be fun, but it’s more fun when they are complicated people and have at least a partial redemptive arc, or when they appear to be one thing and turn out to be another, or keep changing roles,” and I think this applies to reading (or watching) antagonists too.

Guardian

Guardian has an assortment of villains-of-the-week, but nearly all the “villains” who get notable amounts of time on screen are more complicated than they appear (Sang Zan in a way, Zheng Yi, Ye Huo, An Bai and friends, Ya Qing, Sha Ya, Zhao Xinci in a sense, not to speak of Ye Zun (and as for the evil administrators, Gao Jingfeng is clearly in over his head and failing to cope, while the Regent is skillfully never quite evil enough to be absolutely on the bad side)). Most of the straight-up “bad person because the narrative says so, the end” characters (Zheng Zhongyuan, the Rebel Chief, the fight-promoter guy) have very little screentime, so we’re not bored by them. (I could go on at length about this issue in cdramas in general…see also Chen Moqun and Wang Shi'an...).

Marlows

Antonia Forest kind of specializes in flawed characters who may be on the “bad” side of the narrative to various degrees, but who also come with complex internal lives and motivations—Lois Sanger, Marie Dobson, Lieutenant Foley, Ginty, Patrick, Jukie, Tim, Edwin. Which makes them stay with you (in contrast, I remember the name of exactly one of Marske’s “bad” characters, and very little else about him, because what is there?), and makes the narrative itself more complicated, and thus makes the “good” characters more complicated too. We feel growing sympathy and even admiration for Foley, blended with a growing awareness of his amorality and ruthlessness and just generally being a horrible human being, which makes it clear why he becomes an untouchable but ever-present part of Peter’s mind later on; the virtuoso scene describing Lower IVA’s reactions to Marie’s death comes off in part because Marie is unlikeable but also someone hard to feel good about disliking as it becomes clearer and clearer how hapless she is, particularly posthumously. Edwin Dodd is an antagonist who’s also someone placed in an impossible position and struggling on his own terms.

In part instinctively, I’ve been trying to do this in my own original thing. (There is one unambiguous antagonist who is just a straight-up bad guy, but he’s off-page.) I’m still struggling with the other two major ones; by trying to make my antagonists ambiguous and—not relatable exactly—imaginable as fellow human beings?, I feel like they keep slithering away from me qua antagonists, which makes it hard to hang on to the conflict., But just setting them up as the evil X or the would-be evil Y isn’t very helpful; one is very determined but also very alone and trying to work out whether she was right to cut off most of her private feelings (aagh, very little of this comes out on the page, not sure how to work it in) and the other is driven by selfish and self-centered motives but also believes he’s doing the right thing. (Plus one other newish potential antagonist whom I have modeled gleefully on a favorite cdrama character not to be revealed, who is deliberately ambiguous; I’m gonna keep him that way, it’s more fun.
In terms of the other side of the equation, I am so damn fond of my main characters at this point, I’m afraid of doing that thing where the author loves the characters but hasn’t put in the work to make the readers love them too. In a way I’m better off having my three distinct protagonists, since they can have a range of flaws and good points which compensate one for the next? I feel like “putting in the work” is the keyword here on all counts—taking the time and effort to make the three-dimensional framework where all the characters’ motivations seem like “yeah, that’s what they would do in this context” as opposed to “Because The Author Said So.” Sorry, I feel like I’m just restating extremely obvious tenets of writing fiction, but--? Any thoughts, advice, good or bad examples welcome.

Be safe and well.

Mostly because I find the congruence of these quotations funny, and also I'm curious about whether anyone on my f-list falls into the center of this particular Venn diagram.

"i love all yunmeng shuangjie reconciliation fics with the ugly sobbing and heart shattering conversations and the long journey of falling back into step with each other but also sometimes i just…… i have never apologized to my sister once and she has never apologized to me and sure, whatever we fight about isn’t the Magic equivalent of the ‘who do you think gave you the heart’ sob story but idk man, sometimes you fight with your sibling and don’t talk for a bit and then one of you will run into whatever room the other is in and shove their phone in the other’s face to share the shittiest meme you’ve ever seen, you know?
it’s about wei wuxian bursting through the gates of lotus pier some random day, rushing to jiang cheng and, idk, waving a jar of some New and Exciting alcohol that might just be better than emperor’s smile right in his face because he can’t trust his husband to be a good enough judge on this so, really, jiang cheng you need to try this right now, no time for cups just chug and jiang cheng just going ‘bold claim’ and drinking fucking immediately, no questions asked.”
(evakant, I think, via winepresswrath whose tumblr I tend to lurk near because I like her opinions)

“Lawrie contemplated this apparently absurd statement, said ‘Oh,’ sat down on Nicola’s bed, and looked at her twin speechlessly. And suddenly they were back to normal. There was Nicola, here was Lawrie, and whatever people might be doing to them outside and whatever they might from time to time think of one another’s clottishness, made no difference, really.”
(Antonia Forest, End of Term)

(While I'm at it, a Dreamwidth technical question: if I decide to be a responsible DW user and add tags to existing posts, does that cause them to be redated or send notifications to commenters or something, or can it be done inconspicuously?)

A couple of photos while I'm posting anyway: a very small cow, a very small lion, and some roses etc. ( I couldn't resist the extra roses )

Be safe and well.