Now that I'm back at Professor Awesome's house, I thought this would be a good way to kick off my current stay there. This is a continuation of the "My Thoughts On ______" journal series and an expansion to My Thoughts on Characters.
I've taken a liking to doing these journals, it's like a mental exercise to clear out the clutter and organize my mind on certain topics related to characters, world-building, and other stuff relevant to that. Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe boring, maybe stupid, or just meh. You might even become offended and/or confused somehow, much like with the last one.
The topic of Heroes and Villains can be particularly vague and ambiguous because it depends so much on one's own perspective BUT it is still a very important element of world-building and a sub-expansion on characters. This journal will probably be equally vague and ambiguous and prone to aimless rambling. Here we go!
So, where to begin? Most stories and tales have heroes and villains and they can come in many different shapes and sizes, personalities, and can be minor or major in how far they exemplify the good or the bad. They are rarely ever pure white or black, they often have all sorts of shades of grey about them with put under the microscope. To make things more frustrating in trying to classify who's who, they may even change their colors, sometimes by a lot or sometimes by a little. Perspective is most important with this topic.
Before I go down the two paths of morality, I should mention that heroes and villains when lined up right will often mirror each other, each being the same as the other just turned opposite.
I think I will start with the good, the noble, the heroes.
Heroes, almost every story has them. I will use the term "heroes" as more of morally righteous individuals than just as main character of a story (that distinction is important). Normally when the topic of heroes is brought up, images of nights in shining armor rescuing damsels in some form of distress or masked and/or caped tight-wearing folks with amazing powers pop up. There is no real rules as to how a hero should look, what matters most is what qualities they have on the inside AND the actions that they carry out based on those internal personality qualities.
If an old lady is getting mugged, a good guy may think to himself "that is wrong and I hope the police help her". While that can be considered "good", is it enough to really be labeled a hero? Probably not. Why? He didn't act. Heroes usually aren't people who are onlookers. In fact, one could consider them evil if they don't do anything at all to help. Say if instead of the old lady getting mugged, she got stabbed and lay bleeding on the ground and no one helps. That kind of indifference can easily be considered an act of villainous neutrality (lol, contradiction).
Having powers, abilities, and technology can help create a hero because it can reduce risk and increase reward. If you were bulletproof, would you be more willing to charge in to a criminal gang hideout and stop whatever nefarious plans they have than if you were not bulletproof? That bounty on the criminals would be a lot more within your reach as well if you bulletproof so there is even more incentive to do heroic deeds. But that same incentive, the same new opportunists that open up, can also lead to the creation of villains.
Most importantly, a character doesn't need powers to be a hero. Sure, that's what all superheroes say and it's true. People without the powers/abilities/technology often don't become considered as "career heroes" since the act that defined them as a hero is often a one time thing or something noble but not extremely dangerous. They usually have their own lives they lead, like being a shopkeeper of a farmer for example. In times of war, depending on perspective, soldiers are considered either heroes or villains depending on one's political beliefs because of the danger that they face daily but also of their deeds as well. But if you read a mainstream superhero comic book, most soldiers are the equivalent of redshirts/mooks whose sole purpose is mainly to die and show how badass and powerful a hero or villain is but that's going into a different topic.
Just like with heroes, villains don't need any special powers/abilities/technology to become a villain though it will often increase their potential to become an influential person of some sort, villain or hero.
Villains are pretty much heroes just turned upside down. They are usually considered bad people who do bad things (this is where that perspective stuff can come into play again, just like with heroes). Like heroes they can come in all sorts of forms and personalities.
One of the things that I see a lot of people have difficulty with when it comes to heroes and villains is simply crafting them and understanding them. In my previous My Thoughts On Characters journal, I discussed/rambled on about how the best characters are characters that are allowed to live their own lives and that heroes (villains included) often live ordinary lives as well and do a lot of ordinary things. With heroes, people often forget that heroes, even ones with powers and all the bells and whistles, still can and more likely will lead fairly ordinary lives that happen to include their heroic deeds. They pile on powers and ridiculously large amounts of heroic deeds that took little or no effort for the character to accomplish or even contemplate doing in the first place in what may be an attempt to have the hero more recognizable as such.
So sometimes that problem is band-aided with the more accurate and more probable scenario of "zero-to-hero" but then is hit with the problem, mainly in Japanese anime/manga, of ridiculously motivated heroes that only really exist to fight the bad guy out of an internal motivation to fight for their friends BUT even against the most powerful of foes, they show little to no fear or hesitation and seem to have very little in the line of emotion of any kind (though maybe some anger and a thirst for vengeance) or are a tad on the mentally defunct side of the spectrum as even ninjas can be susceptible to brain damage and color blindness.
Heroes don't need to be profound, they don't need a giant label for people to realize they are heroes. Someone once said heroes aren't born, they are made. A good quote but a better one that another person said was that heroes aren't made by crisis, they are revealed in a time of crisis and they are make themselves, their decisions that they consciously make from birth to the time of crisis constantly shape and change who they are and it is the crisis that causes them to act, revealing just who they are deep down inside, and in the right circumstances, a hero is revealed!
The exact same can be said of villains.
The problem that I see most with villains is similar to the one I stated with heroes but it stems from a different source. Villains are often portrayed, a guy who only has one desire and it may be something like to destroy all life. An unrelenting villain is a villain who can't change or even second guess them self but is really hard to pull off as a character. Yes, they make a great challenge that heroes must overcome but at the same time are often created because people don't understand villains very well and because they are easy to make and don't require much thought. This is a little trickier problem to explain and solve but goes back to letting the character do what they want and not what you want.
The first thing to keep in mind with creating a villain (like any character) is that it doesn't matter what you think, only what the character thinks. My dad is a prison guard and converses and watches over murderers, thieves, rapists, and often gets stuck in the "hole" watching over those in solitary confinement. A lot of those people can be very ordinary in a lot of respects but the thing is the can be very different in others. A lot of times, if you try to understand a murderer for example, it may be difficult to understand why they kill from your perspective because that's not who YOU are. The square peg has a tough time fitting into a round hole and it's a lot easier to say "because they are evil" and leave it at that. When you break it down, people are different in a lot of ways and some of those ways can lead to particularly bad deeds. Combine that with motivations, ambition, and what falls within their interests or not can make things like murder or theft mentally possible and acceptable without a second thought in their minds. We as people, the same goes for characters of people, have our own likes and dislikes that affect what we do. What makes sense to one may not make sense to another.
Another example, is fandoms. You probably know where this is going just by reading "fandoms" and the fact that if you are reading this, you are probably on the internet and have seen some things on the internet. A Sonic fan may REALLY, REALLY like Sonic stuff but think anime/manga is stupid. A furry might REALLY, REALLY, like furry characters but hates bronies and anything associated with My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic. And then there is that Twilight book with the werewolves and vampires...Anyway, just like with those examples, different people have different likes and dislikes, different tendencies. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not or even whether you understand it or not, you're not everyone and you're probably not the characters you are creating.
People of all sorts exist but often times the villains are treated as near-emotionless or completely consumed by a single desire and will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. People tend to make them villains and do the evil deeds they do almost purely for the sake of being evil and then center that villain-to-be's whole existence on nothing but them just being evil.
I hate to say it but villains nowadays tend to be less of a character when they are on and more of a conflict generator plot device.
What really separates heroes and villains is ambition, motivation, and restraint. Say you have two characters, each has the ambition of becoming a successful leader of a company (a neutral ambition). One has the motivation of using the money they make to start a charity fund that will help the sick (a good motivation) but the other wants the money to fund their drug additions (a bad motivation). So who is the good character and who is the bad? I don't say heroes or villains yet because they haven't acted yet.
What if say the charity-oriented character shows no restraint in how their business is run and treats their workers like slaves, perhaps they are slaves (bad restraint). But then the drug addict, though their motivations are selfish, treats their workers with dignity, respect, and pays them an honest wage (good restraint). Who is the good and the bad character now?
There is no inherent wrong answer, it all depends on perspective and what YOU believe is right or wrong. You determine your own right or wrong answers to the question. So who is the hero and who is the villain? In a story, you can't have one without the other. They don't always take the form of a character and they are connected by conflict.
Like good characters, heroes and villains will probably be able to think, to feel, to experience, and to change to various extents. Very, very few people are truly pure good or pure evil, no matter what your perspective is and what you think is good and evil. The only time this ever happens is either with the divine (think religion-wise like Jesus) or Mary sue characters. Ultimately, any character can become a hero or a villain or change sides. Most people and characters (if you treat them like people) will be in that tumultuous ocean of shades of grey, some shifting to different greys, some getting more closer to white while others to black, some even turning around going back and forth.
It's the actions of a character that makes them a hero or a villain which is influenced by a variety of things, qualities, that are built over time and can change. But then there is the perception of whether they are truly a hero or not, or a villain or not, or even pure neutral but in the grand scheme of things, few things are rarely ever naturally pure one thing or another.
Heroes and their more villainous counterparts aren't always big, they aren't always powerful, they aren't always who you'd expect, they can be anyone. Sometimes a hero to one is a villain to another, sometimes heroes don't get along with each other and the same can be said with villains not getting along well with other villains. The actions of one, whether hero or villain, may be considered good to one person but yet evil to another and cause all sorts of friendships and feuds, making and breaking them.
I've been told that when it comes to writing, there are two different types of people. One type writes more profusely with heroes and nice, good things and the other writes more profusely with villains and dark, grim things. If I was asked what I prefer to deal with, I'd answer more with villains than heroes though for the most part with Demordicai Diamonds you might think the opposite of me. Then again, the point of view of DD generally follows the "good" characters if you'd call them that.
Since both me and Professor Awesome work together with the writing, one of the weird things that just sort of happened, like oil separating from water, was that I dealt more with things from the villainous side and Professor Awesome dealt more with things from the more heroic side. I throw problems and he throws solutions in a way.
Often times with Demordicai Diamonds I encounter all sorts of usually small villainy. Most may be on a personal level, like say a love triangle that fuels jealously and anger (and more importantly story-wise: conflict) between those involved or a someone stole from someone else or insulted someone else. But when circumstances line up just right, a lot worse things can happen and like a pendulum, equally good things can happen but that doesn't mean they will and the pendulum may swing too far, bust, and won't swing back. But when it does swing back, it may start swinging with more and more force with each pass or perhaps dwindling force instead. Needless to say, little evils can be fun to work with sometimes but big evils can present some really interesting challenges to work with and even more so when you get into the rare, exotic big evils.
Normally I would share my thoughts on some things straight from Demordicai Diamonds but I find it hard to do so without completely spoiling what the future holds for anyone that reads it. When you start getting a good feel for both villainy and heroics, they both "click" together and balance each other out like dual gyros (if that makes any sense) and work in chaotic tandem with each other, not doing always what I expect it to do but what the characters intend for it to do but things rarely ever go as planned for them as well, they aren't prescient and they certainly aren't omnipotent.
My favorite types of heroes to work with are the "Reluctant Hero" and the "Lone Ranger Hero" types. I think an element of selflessness makes for some the best heroes but that is hard to achieve and even harder to truly want since it often goes against the natural grain of characters. Those that attempt to put themselves before others, especially on a large scale, can often become crushed by the weight of responsibility while suffering the lashings of whatever perils and dangers they may face. I love it when being a hero, whether you know you really are one or not, becomes a lot tougher than it looks and the strain really gets to the characters. The Reluctant Hero may end up taking up too much responsibility that may not even be theirs and struggles but the Lone Ranger leaves after his job is done and moves on so that responsibility and emotional attachments don't weigh so heavily upon his shoulders that he is rendered immobile by it and eventually crushed.
My favorite types of villains to work with are the "Meticulous Schemer Villain" and the "Chaotic Villain" types. I think with villains, like I've been saying how they are just like heroes in except mirrored, an element of selfishness makes for some of the best villains. That element isn't always on the surface of their ambitions and motivations but sometimes several layers deep, a sort of subtle strength that lends more to survival (and not just physical survival). I really like working with the Schemer villains that can anticipate things 5 steps ahead of their foes, it's a quality that I wish I had and could use effectively and reliably where physical force is often used as a secondary tool than a primary. The best, and worst, part with them is pitting up a Schemer Villain with a Schemer Hero and sitting back and watching the mental frustration sparks fly, like watching two Deep Blues play chess against each other but they are people and will eventually falter but not after going through plots within plots within plots within plots within a floating fat man high on cinnamon. The Chaotic Villains are just fun all around and are always full of surprises, sometimes the surprise is that they choose not to always be what they are and do things that don't always make logical sense causing brain aneurisms
In the end, heroes and villains are really up to your perspective and up the perspective of those who encounter them. They can come in all shapes and sizes and types and aren't always pure good or pure evil and may change in their shade of grey to a different grey, sometimes subtly and sometimes significantly. They are characters (my previous Thoughts journal sums that up best) first and foremost, heroes or villains second. Good people don't always do good for the sake of being good and evil people don't always do evil for the sake of being evil (but they still can if the character decides to make that choice).
So by now, you've done either one of two things. You've either read all of this or scrolled down to the bottom. If you did the first, hopefully you don't have any brain aneurisms at the moment. Sorry if I rambled on so long and got vague and aimless with things. So those are my thoughts on heroes and villains and I think I gave myself a brain aneurism. I don't think I did as good of a job with this journal than last one but it's a small and vague sub-topic that can be difficult to address as a whole accurately and not have elements of vagueness due to numerous possible perspectives. Lol, I made myself an example, being pure neutral is hard.
If you got any questions or any topics you'd like me to make a "My Thoughts On _____" journal about, feel free to let me know.
