Weirdly enough, in my original outline for a story I'm working on rn, the main character did join the villain. Now he doesn't because he's no longer a Textbook Fantasy Marty Stu because he's now a side character who's unfortunate enough to be dragged into a conspiracy by his mentor while he's training to be in the royal guard.
Good question, maybe a split perspective?
The hero could be making excuses in their head the whole time, maybe the villain is a defector from the hero's side?
Or you could have an anti villain who is not an evil person. Or you could have someone who is actually evil, but has a moral code they follow rigidly. To make it hard to see it could be a relationship between the hero and the villain. So the hero would have the POV, but the focus would be on the villain because they have such a strange connection that the villain is impossible to ignore for a moment. That in my opinion would be swell.
(Why 'swell'? No idea! But why not.)
Weirdly enough, in my original outline for a story I'm working on rn, the main character did join the villain. Now he doesn't
because he's no longer a Textbook Fantasy Marty Stubecause he's now a side character who's unfortunate enough to be dragged into a conspiracy by his mentor while he's training to be in the royal guard.
Jeez, poor dude. Do you play it as a 'fish out of water' or something else entirely?
Weirdly enough, in my original outline for a story I'm working on rn, the main character did join the villain. Now he doesn't
because he's no longer a Textbook Fantasy Marty Stubecause he's now a side character who's unfortunate enough to be dragged into a conspiracy by his mentor while he's training to be in the royal guard.Jeez, poor dude. Do you play it as a 'fish out of water' or something else entirely?
He's very much the 'overeager kinda dorky but sweet student' where he follows along to impress his mentor. He's kind of a fish out of water because he grew up in the northern part of his country and now lives in the southern part, and so it takes adjusting for him.
Good question, maybe a split perspective?
The hero could be making excuses in their head the whole time, maybe the villain is a defector from the hero's side?Or you could have an anti villain who is not an evil person. Or you could have someone who is actually evil, but has a moral code they follow rigidly. To make it hard to see it could be a relationship between the hero and the villain. So the hero would have the POV, but the focus would be on the villain because they have such a strange connection that the villain is impossible to ignore for a moment. That in my opinion would be swell.
(Why 'swell'? No idea! But why not.)
Oooh, good idea!
I think you meant to say 'groovy', not 'swell'
Swanky
More villainy villains
I want more people that are Evil because they want to be evil not because they 'turned evil because something tragic happened to them.'
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
Isn't that a hot dog?
My villain is evil because he's used to getting his way and doesn't know how to handle people telling him no. So when his court is disbanded (because there was shady shit going on), he freaks out and resolves to get revenge instead of doing the logical thing.
And since he's a prick, no one wants to marry him. He was in a political marriage, but neither he nor his wife like each other. Also they're both fae so they don't really view marriage the way we do, so it's not a big deal to either of them. He wants an heir so his court can always rule, but since fae women don't get The Big Pregnant easily, he kidnaps mortal women and turns them immortal because Immortal's genes are basically a blank slate and the kid will still have powers.
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
Isn't that a hot dog?
……………………………………………………………………………………. Your generation is doomed.
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
Isn't that a hot dog?
……………………………………………………………………………………. Your generation is doomed.
Tell me about it fake ditzy giggle and eye roll
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
Isn't that a hot dog?
……………………………………………………………………………………. Your generation is doomed.
I haven't even seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show and I understood that reference.
I think that New Adult needs to come back, but not as the sex-heavy-romance-only genre it was before. We need New Adult books about being in college, New Adult fantasy, New Adult sci-fi. So many books I've read blur between YA, be it the content or the age of the characters, and I think it would be really good!
I want a bad guy like Frank N Furter
Isn't that a hot dog?
……………………………………………………………………………………. Your generation is doomed.
I haven't even seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show and I understood that reference.
Darwinism will not come for you.
I think that New Adult needs to come back, but not as the sex-heavy-romance-only genre it was before. We need New Adult books about being in college, New Adult fantasy, New Adult sci-fi. So many books I've read blur between YA, be it the content or the age of the characters, and I think it would be really good!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
YA is too broad now.
There's such a big difference between something written for 13 year olds and 18 year olds, and books don't have content warnings. Unless I'm familiar with an author's writing from other books, I have no clue what content will be in it, and even then it's iffy as to if there will be the same stuff as in other books. A 13 year old could pick up ACOMAF or After and think it's just a fantasy or romance and not be prepared for the smut, especially since most books published as New Adult got mushed in with YA after NA flopped.
Also I just hate how YA is shelved as just YA, not YA Fantasy or YA Historical Fiction. Like, why are Matched and Code Name Verity on the same shelf?
Yeah, and a lot of times you can't even really tell based on other books by the same author. Like, so many authors are known for their YA but they write stuff for adults too
Actually, SJM said something similar at one of her events that I went to. As much as she loved being a YA writer, she felt her books should have been redefined as Adult Fiction. So it's not just readers that are upset by the classification, authors are too. It would just make more sense to properly code books. It would help for schools as well. There would be less banning, I feel like.
Its weird too, for adults to pick up YA novels that are recommended by amazon or whatever and then barely being able to get through the first chapter because it's written for really young teens.
So if someone did an NA catagory at a library and moved Maas's books there, along with some books with 18/19 year old protags, that would be a good start. Maybe put ADSOM there too?
10/10 good idea
Also for my stories (with the exception of the slice-of-life high school one), they have older teen/early 20s leads OR are generally dark books. And since some intertwine, it would be weird to have the Ehre book in YA, and then the Twyllo book in Adult (I'm assuming it would be catagorized as Adult because most of the leads are in their early twenties, but other than violence, there's not anything 'Adult', really. And even the violence isn't very intense.)
And God only knows where Creston will go because if I go all out with that it could maybe be Adult, because it's not a happy story and quite dark and intense.
The Fae stuff is another difficult one, because while nothing happens on screen, the plot is still about the kidnapping and potential sexual assault of a teenager.
And then the Detectives storyline is pretty tame, there's violence but nothing really bad, but the MCs are all in their 20s.
Idk why, but this reminds me of a thing I saw
So it was Rick Riordan, and he was at some talk or convention or something, and he was talking about being a teacher. So his students found out that he wrote books other than PJO etc, and asked if they could read them. Since they're adult books, he said absolutely not. One of the kids read it anyway, and went up to him and said, "did you know you used the f word x times in your book?!"
I think most of the time well-known YA/MG authors use different names when writing Adult (V.E. Schwab/Victoria Schwab, J.K. Rowling/Robert Galthry?? Idr.), especially if it's something like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.
The only one off the top of my head that doesn't is James Patterson.
He barely writes his own books anyway XD