forum Tell me about your antagonist

Started July 03, 2020 by @stolenbrocoli group

tune

I want to hear about your antagonists and maybe we can compare notes :)

I dont have her uploaded to notebook, but one of my antagonists for a sort of lovecraft-cyberpunk story im still developing is a reaper. I'm still deciding if I want her to be redeemable or just completely awful, but the redeemable version is: she died while messing around with some ritual and now her soul is basically bound to the work forever. Since she's goth she thought it was actually pretty cool, but after a couple of decades of chasing around random souls trying to get them to move on she's realizing that it's not as exciting as she had hoped. So naturally, when she gets assigned to the first interesting case of her career (a ghost trying to hide by pretending to be a robot with advanced AI), she goes at it with prety much everything she's got. The closer she gets to capturing/catching/defeating said ghost, the more she starts to realize that she doesn't want the chase to end.

Ooooh this is super interesting ! Personally, i like sending my readers (if you're planning on writing all this out) on an emotional roller coaster ride by making the antagonist redeemable and and making them kinda throw it all away.
My antagonist isn't necessarily redeemable at all, but he does get pretty humanized toward the end. He's kind of a hate-able guy tho, nothing could ever change that. But I'd love to hear more about your story if you're willing !

thx! and i love the bait-and-switch idea for the redemption arc, i hadn't thought about that! tbh the plot is still in its super rough phase so i honestly don't know much about it myself other than the characters and a general "vibe". But ig for Arae's irredeemable form, instead of being goofy and eccentric and working for a vague reaper organization or something she works directly under the Queen General (placeholder name obv i know nothing about my plot lol) and is really smug about it. Instead of the routine cases that other reapers have to handle, she gets the special cases, and when she's not working she basically gets all the luxury of the queen minus the political stress. She's right where she wants to be and KNOWS it, basically. So when the same robot plot happens, she thinks it's gonna be an easy hit, and when its not, she gets stressed. and then she gets stressed about being stressed because she's not SUPPOSED to be stressed, she's like the best reaper in the world, which makes her even more angry at said robot-ghost.
im pretty indecisive between the two bc depending on her role in the story it changes from an adventure story (redeemable version) to more of a political drama (irredeemable). I do like her irredeemable version a little more though, so I'm sure there's a way i can make it more adventurey as well
_{also heres her th profile}

https://toyhou.se/7375845.arae

Clownface

Davis Jones

George Wintergrean

Oliver Jackson

William Wintergrean

@spoorbs ok i LOVE the way you described her personality. and i completely relate to the not-so-developed plot. also, i've never heard of toyhouse, would you recommend it ?

@stolenbrocoli thanks!! and toyhouse is like notebook in that it's for character storage and archiving. I think the main difference is that it's invite only, and that the character pages are completely customizable (you can use html to code it and stuff). Personally, I like the character archiving system better on toyhouse, but it's community is wayy more adoptable focused than writing focused so I like the community and forums here better. I think i still have an invite somewhere, i can PM you it if you want!

Yea that'd be great ! I'd love to try it out :D

also, @SupernaturalSyGuyEdt clownface sounds rlly cool! any info on how he came to work at Winchester high or why he thinks teens are annoying?

Not sure as to how he came to work at the school, which is something I know that I should probably work on. As for why he finds teenagers annoying, he finds them rude.

Ok so I too have a really rough plot but one of the antagonists in my story is simply abusive and sadistic (trigger warning). Though he isn't really connected to the main plot, he needs to be dealt with in order for one of the characters to move on. So basically he and one of the protagonists fall deeply in love at a young age, but it's too good to be true and he becomes possesive and won't let the girl leave him. Over time the girl completely changes from the experience and becomes numb. She ends up escaping and plans on killing the antagonist, but she realizes that part of her still loves him and he still loves her. This whole time, the antagonist just wants her back and obsesses over her. He just wants to redeem himself in her eyes but it's too little too late. I'm not sure what will end up happening, but the antagonists will probably die, whether it be at the hands of his ex lover or not.

(Also @spoorbs, the whole idea for Arae is super creative)

@spoorbs Try writing both versions. It might help you decide which version you want to use.

@Kylie_has_writers_block ty! and thats a really interesting concept for an antagonist, i like how /real/ the threat of him is, if that makes sense? As in abusive relationships are something that can happen to anyone, so it adds some of that fear factor to him.

@SupernaturalSyGuyEdt good advice! i'm leaning towards the irredeemable version personally because i have a problem with being able to write actually threatening villains and i think i finally "have it" with this version of her. Plus, i already have an eccentric minor antagonist i'm planning to use, and i think its good to vary the personalities of the antagonists.