Randomosity on Fridays

I started like 3 posts and couldn't quite manage to finish any of them so instead we're having good ol' Randomosity on Fridays, Friday Five style!

1. Saw the Avengers twice, once with Krispy and her sister, and then again with Krispy again and our mutual medical-student-who-is-graduating-today-congratulations!  It was very entertaining, humorous and action-packed and every hero has a chance to shine, and oh the villain Loki, how he shines too, with the brilliance of a supernova refracted a thousandfold by a million diamonds.  (Okay, okay, so Krispy and I have a thing for Loki/Tom Hiddleston.)  Even though the movie is a whopping ~2.5 hours long, it doesn't feel long.  Be sure to stay until the credits end for a second extra scene!

2. I've been playing this stupid iPad game called Lil Kingdom where I only just discovered today that it's possible to build a Unicorn Ranch and hatch a unicorn out of an egg.  It's a stubby li'l unicorn that wiggles when it prances and otherwise stands around literally shedding purple glitter everywhere.  It's like all of my dreams come true. Or one of them, anyway.

3. Coming soon! A post on why Escaflowne is one of the greatest anime series ever.



4. I've been learning how to do opaque enameling on copper. Provided you have a kiln heated to 1500°F, a long fork, a heat-protective glove, a trivet and tray, enamel powder, a sifter, a dust mask, and a properly cleaned piece of metal, it's not all that difficult. Unless, you know, you want to do something more interesting than one solid color. But what is life without challenge?


[I'd post a picture of my pieces except they're not done yet and also the lighting is bad right now and I'm lazy. Krispy's schneizeleffort is rubbing off on me for realz.]

5. Li'l Hawkeye came to me courtesy of Krispy and her sister, who, understanding that I am a Hawkeye hater for various reasons both reasonable and unreasonable, saw him at Target and knew that he belonged with me. He came with me to see the Avengers. While he was happy to see himself so large on the silver screen, he was immensely saddened by the fact that within the first five minutes of the film, my opinion of him as lame proved totally justified.

Someday, Li'l Hawkeye believes he will become a real superhero.
Until then, he's going to wear this pink cape and pretend.

That's what's been going on 'round hereabouts, folks. What've you been up to lately? Gaining new skills? Watched any movies? Seen any unicorns?

Randomosity on Fridays: Schneizeleffort

Happy Friday! Something a little different with our randomosity today, friends. There seemed to be a little more than passing interest last week about the definition of schneizeleffort, the funny term I used in one of my 2012 resolutions.

So I thought I'd fulfill at least part of that resolution and silence your curiosity about what this term is. It's so useful! It's like the motto of my life.

BUT before I get to that, I'd like to turn your attention to two things:

1. Our blogging/vlogging buddy Sophia Chang's One Year Blogoversary giveaway is still happening. You could win a signed copy of J.A. Yang's Exclusively Chloe OR a critique from Alz and myself (up to 25 pages). So if you're interested in either or both, I'd hop over there soon and enter on the rafflecopter form.

2. It's Lunar New Year weekend! The New Year falls on Jan. 23 this year, and thus begins the Year of the Dragon! This also means I will likely be rolling aboard the fatty train again, the next stop being Fattyville. Choo choo!


NOW, ONTO THE POST!


One of my resolutions for this year is to be more schneizeleffort.

The Urban Dictionary entry defines it as:

Putting forth the minimum amount of effort required to complete something.

This concept is named after a character in Code Geass, Schneizel el Britannia.

Here's the long-story-short version of the history of this word/concept. (I'm going to talk a bit about anime now. I used to be more into it...before I became so schneizeleffort.) It starts with an anime called CODE GEASS.

Swooshy! Dramatic! You look like a CLAMP creation!

In college, I got into this anime because I saw the above promo and thought, "PRETTY! Looks kinda like CLAMP...OMG CLAMP character designs?!" CLAMP, fyi, is the name of a mangaka group known for their beauteous artwork and angst-tastic stories. Some of my first series were by those ladies.

See, CLAMP draws pretty and epic-looking things.

So I was eager to check out Code Geass because it was pretty, based on art by CLAMP, and I liked the premise. It's a show about a genius Britannian boy, who leads a revolution against Britannia. Oh and he's a Prince of Britannia. What's not to like?

Then I glimpsed this guy in the Season 1 opening, and I was like, WHO IS THAT SHADY BLOND?

Blond, poncy, shady-lookin': you must be evil!

That is SCHNEIZEL, the second prince and Prime Minister of Britannia, and half-brother to the main character.

He is quickly set up as an antagonist but doesn't actually show up in Season 1 until the last few episodes. Then, he's more or less the main antagonist in Season 2, which was a good thing because by then I was in love.

Being VERY PRETTY is, of course, an easy way to win fangirl favor, but he was also an interesting antagonist. He's set up like he might be evil, and he's a strategical genius like our MC. The MC spends much of the series dreading going up against him because of this. He's also ruthless with his tactics - a sort of ends-justify-the-means sort of guy and he's insidiously manipulative. But this is contrasted with his charisma and the fact that he seems like a decent guy in general. He cares about his siblings, about the welfare of the Empire, about peace and order. He has a sense of duty to his people, wants peace, and he's not snobbish. He hires people based on talent/merit.

He's incredibly good at his job/running the government/waging war, so why "schneizeleffort"?

As the series went, I had the dawning realization that Schneizel was just COASTING on his natural talents. It doesn't seem like he's ever TRYING. He puts the minimal amount of effort needed into achieving his goals, and since he's a genius and has tons of $, goals are generally achievable. For example, about to totally crush the enemy? Offer them a peace treaty because it requires less effort (and incidentally, makes him seem merciful)! And when the going gets tough, he just u-turns himself out of there.

Emotion? Too much effort!

In fact, I'm mostly convinced he just doesn't really care all that much about a lot of things. Or he does but in a clinical, detached kind of way. He rarely looks as evil/shady in the actual show as he does in the openings/promo pics. He doesn't show too much emotion either way. One of his siblings actually describes him as "having no desires."

Cheese-kun

His schneizeleffort is great on the show though because the MC is a drama queen king, who does put a lot of effort into staging this revolution, but Schneizel comes in and ruins everything without giving a flying Cheese-kun. It's awesome. And hilarious (for me).

The person who actually coined the term "schneizeleffort" is koda (or miasmacloud) from gg fansubs. They were one of the main fansubbers for Code Geass.


ANOTHER EXAMPLE of a "schneizeleffort" character from another fandom is Mycroft Holmes from the Sherlock Holmes stories. I haven't actually read the stories, but after watching BBC's TV series Sherlock, in which Mycroft plays a small role, the Sister and I looked him up. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about him:

"Possessing inductive powers exceeding even those of his younger brother, Mycroft is nevertheless incapable of performing detective work similar to that of Sherlock as he is unwilling to put in the physical effort necessary to bring cases to their conclusions.

...he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points...

—Sherlock Holmes, speaking of his brother in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"

After which, I said, "OMG, so he's just the schneizeleffort version of Sherlock!" I'm starting to wonder if this is a common characteristic of older brother types to geniuses, who are themselves also geniuses...

So you see the many applications there are for this word. I suppose a synonym for schneizeleffort could be "half-*ssing" something. Also, the application of schneizeleffort can only work to your advantage if you are already naturally talented enough to get away with coasting through life. Schneizel had that whole born-into-privilege-and-wealth thing going for him, on top of being a genius.

I don't have either of those things, so the schneizeleffort thing is an upward slope for me. The irony is that I need to expend effort to get to the point of being able to schneizeleffort my way through life...

ANYWAY, there you have it. The definition of schneizeleffort. I hope I have enriched your vocabulary. That aside, I wish you all an early Happy Lunar New Year!

Hah! 1/2 a resolution completed!

Have any fun/weird/in-joke terms to share?


*I didn't schneizeleffort my way through this post. I should've. Sorry sleep-deprived self!

Sociology of Scars

Let's talk about scars. Most of us acquire at least one scar or other throughout the turbid frothing streams of our lives: a round white scar acquired from an overly large pox of the chicken persuasion, a thin white line from some form of surgery, a reddish mark or nick from a mishap with a pair of scissors or while carving a pumpkin for Halloween. Such marks fade with time and growth, becoming paler and thinner and perhaps eventually vanishing until the skin is more or less as unblemished as before. The marvels of modern medicine ensure that most serious wounds and surgeries leave the smallest and least noticeable scars possible.

Yet the modern mentality and mythos surrounding scars seems to view them as hip and sexy indications of a person's dark, angst-ridden, mysterious past. That is, of course, speaking of characters who possess strategically placed and not-too-disfiguring scars. Shall we take a look at a few of these?


There is the sullen hero of Final Fantasy VIII, Squall Leonheart, with a great huge brown scar slashed diagonally across his face. The source of this scar is a scene of drama and fighting and hacking and slashing with gunblades and in general, actually, since I never did play FFVIII, I'm probably not really qualified to go harping on about it. But from what I do know, I'm fairly sure that Squall gets this scar to 1) make him look badass and 2) form nice symmetry when the dude who gave it to him in the first place receives a similar scar going diagonally the other way across his face. Of course, that whole point #1 about looking badass goes back to my original intent in starting this post: What is it about having a huge scar slashed across a guy's face that makes him "badass"? Is it the implied macho-ness of having survived such a near-deadly wound and coming out without permanent damage to the eyes? The thrill of a near-miss? That he must be pretty damn manly to have been in a fight and earned such a scar in the first place?

Himura Kenshin of the anime Rurouni Kenshin is a prominently scarred character, and this is an example of a scar with a purpose, history, background, and effects upon the character's life. Kenshin used to be a political assassin during the war-torn Bakumatsu era and helped to bring about the transition into the Meiji Era, and was renowned as a highly-skilled and terrifying swordsman, the Hitokiri Battousai, identifiable by the cross-shaped scar on his left cheek. The back story of how he acquired this scar—and changed from being a feared assassin to a gentle wanderer—is very dramatic, very full of character-driven passion and belief, and very excellent. Naturally having a prominent scar in a difficult-to-hide place complicates Kenshin's life for there are those with grudges or glory on their minds who seek to best the legendary Battousai—particularly as he has taken an oath to never kill again.

Dilandau Albatou of the anime Vision of Escaflowne gets sliced along the left side of his face (what it is with the left side, anyway?) during a skirmish with Van Fanel, and because Dilandau is already an unstable narcissistic freak, this wound sends him over the edge and let the animators have a field day competing to see who could draw him with the most psychotic expression short of foaming at the mouth. For Dilandau, the scar that he so often strokes thereafter is an unsightly mar upon his beautiful face and is entirely Van's fault, and fuels his obsession for killing Van throughout the series.

In the anime series Death Note, the character Mello's face becomes scarred through spoilerific means. Here we seem him munching on chocolate, as usual. But it should be noted that after he becomes scarred—or perhaps more accurately because of the events that lead to his scarring—Mello becomes more obsessive and underhanded with regards to his goals. In this case, it is events that lead to his change in personality and the scar serves as a symbolic reminder.

In Bleach, Grimmjow is scarred by Ichigo. A lot. In this case, however, it's not just a single fine slice across his face, but massive owwiness. While I can't speak for all fan art, what fan art I've seen of Grimmjow is typically not of him crisped and burninated and mono-armed. Clearly his amount, type, and location of scarring goes beyond aesthetic appeal and perhaps becomes either grotesque or just simply not "sexy." Is this because there is something tragically attractive about near-perfection or perfection-now-marred, but not immense or intense amounts of disfigurement? And yet fan art of Mello in his scarred state is more prevalent than that of scarred!Grimmjow—is it because Mello isn't also missing an arm and is more femininely androgynous than machismo-manly Grimmjow?

Moving beyond anime, there is Inigo Montoya of The Princess Bride by William Goldman, a Spanish man who has parallel scars on his cheeks—one on each cheek, vertically, scarred for life as a child, he was. For him, these are scars of remembrance of vengeance, for the six-fingered Count who gave them to him also killed his father.

We can take a look (once again) at Harry Potter, who bears a zigzag scar on his forehead that is the source of much pain (physical, mental, magical, etc.) in his life. What is this mystical scar? Why, it marks him as the Boy Who Lived, the only person ever to have survived the Killing Curse, and cast by the Dark Lord Voldemort no less. Later on it's revealed to have several sorts of magical properties linking him back to Voldemort (hurting when Voldemort is nearby, enabling Harry to catch glimpses of what Voldemort's doing, etc.), and is also a symbol of Harry's mother's love for him. It becomes a symbol and a plot device and an identifying mark all rolled into one lightning-shaped stamp on his forehead.

In the Asian ball-joint doll community, many doll-collectors have an obsession with painting their dolls to have scars, with or without a story behind them. The methods of accomplishing scarring range from the purely cosmetic (simply painting a scar onto a doll's face or body) to physical modification (actually carving a scar into the resin using a knife). Facial scars slashed across an eye, along the jaw, or over the bridge of the nose are a particular favorite.

The Volks company released two versions of an extremely limited and highly-sought-after scar-faced variant of their original Cecil doll, creatively named "Cecil the Scarface". How does Scarface differ from regular Cecil? His right eye is mostly closed and a great huge gash is carved into his face—literally. (He also has a scar carved into his right arm.) This scar is a deep, jagged-edged groove that is typically painted some form of orange-red-brown, as though this poor doll is doomed to have a perpetually unhealed wound sawed across his eye. (Incidentally, both versions of Cecil the Scarface were sold with a special "blind eye", gray with a white pupil, that could be used for the wounded eye.)

But as mentioned in Grimmjow's case, scars cannot be disfiguring or else they become too disturbing. Take a look at the Anakin Skywalker of Star Wars Episode III: According to Krispy, he acquired the scar over his right eye in battle during the Clone Wars in a light saber duel with Asajj Ventress, shown in the Clone Wars cartoon series. His scar doesn't play any kind of role in the third movie and I haven't watched enough of the Clone Wars series to determine if it has any affect there either, but fans seem to accept and like his scar as far as I can tell.

But once Anakin Skywalker gets toasted and he morphs into Darth Vader (as it were), well, he's totally covered in black so that not a speck of skin shows, from face to feet. It would be too disturbing for the audience and anyway he's not attractive anymore. In a way, he very much resembles V from the movie V for Vendetta, also a victim of full-body burns who also covers himself from head to toe so that none of his burns are visible—but V probably belongs to another post some other time. For now, it's enough to see Anakin's descent from his pedestal. I mean, come on, you find tons of pictures, fan art, screencaps, etc. of Anakin and Darth Vader, but not of Anakin-after-the-lava-pit or Darth-Vader-sans-mask-and-helmet. People want him either whole and handsome or dark, mysterious, and completely covered.

The physical scars of real-life can mean anything, including nothing. I don't think twice about this weird little scar I've had on my hand for several months now, originally attained from scraping my hand on a protruding bit of wire mesh. This event was hardly traumatizing or life-changing and it was just an owwy on my hand that healed pretty quickly and didn't even require a band-aid, and yet the tiny slightly discolored mark persists. But scars earned from bullets taken in warfare or in the line of duty are proverbial red badges of courage and honor and duty.

But in the world of fandom, at any rate, scars seem to be as cosmetic and varied as eye- and hair-color. They tend to be of mysterious origins rooted in angst and trauma. But not too much scarring, and not too intense a scar. They can be marks of honor or remembrance or vengeance or brotherhood, of ritual or tragedy, or maybe just incidental, accidental, and forgettable—except that if a scar is either shown or mentioned, chances are it's not the latter.

This post is brought to you by the fact that one of our characters does have scars, acquired through traumatic means, and which definitely do drive him indeed along his thorny path of vengeance. But really it's not the scars that are important to him or about him: it's what happened to him in the past. (Incidentally his scars are not in a usually visible place, unlike most of the characters named above. I tried to think of characters who have hidden scars, but none readily came to mind. If I manage to think of a few, there may be forthcoming Scar Post Part II. Oooh, that rhymed.)

Ulterior Motives gets Krispy Weak in the Knees

Villains/Antagonist issues. We're having them. Maybe Alz isn't having them, but I am. To put it simply, I'm not too keen on our bad boys, and that is a problem. For me to get any real meat out of them, I need to feel something about them and I'm hovering around indifferent. So in an attempt to figure out what it is about our antags that is making me give them the brush off, I've been thinking about the antags that I do like and what it is that makes me go ga-ga over their shady, shady ways. Brace yourselves, this may be a long post.

First problem, I don't like a lot of villains. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the Good Fight, though I also do like inflicting pain... *Ahem* Most bad guys are just not that interesting to me (though there are always exceptions), and when I do like antagonists it's usually based, at least at first, on some quality that I suddenly and inexplicably latch on to and become wholly fangirlishly obsessed with. Usually this "random quality" is the shallow one of being drop dead gorgeous (this pertains mostly to the visual medium). Or shiny. Or BOTH. Another prerequisite is that they are usually quite capable somehow of pwning you dead. There's a sense of power there, a sort of lofty arrogance. I think the key, though, for the ones I'm really head-over-heels over is shadiness. Ulterior motives coupled with one or all of the aforementioned qualities and I'm enlisting in that Dark Army.

Let's take a look at a few of them. These are all going to be ani/manga references because I can't for the life of me think of a book antagonist/villain who does anything for me. I can't even think of one that I really hated, which means I should maybe read more? :/

*Um, SPOILERS up the wazzu--though I'll try to keep it vague/general--for Code Geass, Loveless, Death Note and Bleach to follow.*



Schneizel El Britannia (Series - Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, R2)

2nd Prince of Britannia, and all he's really guilty of is looking kinda evil. Early in the first season, he is set-up to be an antagonist when he is mentioned as knowing something about the MC's mother's assassination. Then for the rest of Season 1, he's not much more than someone who's connected to characters in play. He doesn't physically show up until the last third of the season, and when he does, he's, well, very princely. He's courteous, charming, and not only looks nice but actually IS nice to everyone, including his subordinates. He doesn't look smirky or otherwise nefarious the way he kind of does in his brief appearance in the opening. Yet, his actions, while not outright suspect, indicate much calculation and manipulation. More hints are also dropped about his dealings, and we're reminded that he is the only person from our MC's past who ever beat the MC in a game of strategy. This continues to build the expectation that he will eventually challenge the MC in some huge, plot-turning showdown of doom (though not Doom because Schneizel is NOT the main antagonist).

But see, everything is hearsay, speculation, and rumor. While he may have manipulated a few events, he manipulated them all towards the good of his country with minimal bloodshed, and did I mention he's ridiculously nice to like everyone? He's every bit the competent and dutiful prince, except with this undercurrent of his being up to something. It's this "what is he up to?" question that has me obsessed with this guy. His motivation and his true intentions/goals are as of yet still unclear.

Really though, his actions in the series wouldn't seem half as shady if he didn't also look kind of evil/shady to begin with. Thanks opening credit animation for preemptively biasing me! Alz has suggested that perhaps we're horrible people for expecting the worst of him simply because he looks it. Come on though, no one this good-looking is that nice without ulterior motives! Either way, I support the Rebellion, but Schneizel has me considering switching sides.

Seimei Aoyagi aka Beloved (Series - Loveless)

I actually wasn't interested in him much until recently--that is, until I reached a point in the series where it became very clear that he was one big Antagonist, if not The Big Bad of the series. The start of Loveless is focused on the MC (Ritsuka) and his introduction to the Sacrifice-Fighter dyad world Seimei belonged to. Character and plot developments all more or less tie into the mystery of Seimei's murder, and so for the first volumes, Seimei was little more than a plot and character development point for me (though a pretty one). Plus, all we learn of Seimei at first is that he was murdered, he was kind and deeply loved his little bro (the MC), and his dyad, Team Beloved, was reputedly unbeatable.

Flash forward some chapters/volumes and Seimei has me by the throat and wholly fascinated. He emerges out of background character status to Lead Villain. Hints get dropped about his having abusive, sadistic, and neurotic tendencies. Where the MC only knew him as a kind, protective, and affectionate older brother, others knew Seimei as cruel, merciless, and destructive. He was close to no one, and as Ritsuka (as well as the readers) begins trying to reconcile Seimei's two vastly different personalities (gentle and kind brother vs. sadistic and cold Sacrifice), surprise! Seimei turns out to be very much alive and up to no good.

His motivations and intentions are murky. He retains a strong attachment to the MC, saying that Ritsuka is the only person he truly loves and cares for. It makes for a pretty twisted relationship since Seimei is of the mind that "you hurt the ones you love most" and is bent on testing Ritsuka's love for him, but that appears to be only part of it. There's something bigger afoot that has yet to be revealed. Shady, right?

And he is still really pretty, and it was in fact a rather pretty panel of him that re-caught my attention. Then, he had me and it was over. With a name like Beloved, Seimei just commands and demands love and despair.

*
Still, this sort of thing isn't hard and fast. In a recent discussion with Alz while I was in the midst of writing this post, I considered a few other antagonists, who by the above mentioned qualities should totally float my fangirl boat but they don't. Here's one.
*

Light Yagami (Series - Death Note)

Actually, quite a fascinating "villain," Light is the boy genius MC of the series. The series is a psychological thriller (with a touch of the supernatural) where Light gets his hands on a Death Note (a notebook which kills the human whose name is written in it) and decides to use his newfound power to create a better world. What makes Light an interesting character is that his intentions are good, but power and his drive towards his goals makes him into the kind of murderer he's trying to rid the world of and corrupts his nature towards ruthlessness. He is aware of this inherent hypocrisy, but he justifies it as a necessary "sacrifice" for the betterment of society. Opposing him is the enigmatic L, the world's greatest detective, and what ensues is a cat-and-mouse chase based on intellect.

Given his qualities, Light seems like the type of bad guy (I can't call him an antag because he's actually the protag!) I would usually go for. He's attractive, charismatic, super smart/competent, and if his huge God complex says anything, he's got that air of confidence/arrogance that I generally like. But he doesn't do it for me. I don't even particularly like him much. I think it's because his intentions and motivations are pretty straightforward. It's also hard to have any attachment-like emotions to him beyond fascination or grudging respect because he becomes so cold. Everything he does is calculated; even when people he cares about are involved (i.e. his family), it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of the situation. He loses his humanity, and while he's fun to watch, he's hard to love.

I will say that I was rooting for him half the time, but with the series centered on him, I couldn't really help but cheer him on, at least a bit. In fact, there are a bunch of people who want him to win out along with the bunch of people who want him to fail. Even then, it's not so much that I want Light to fail, it was more that I want L (antagonist but probably who we would call the "good guy") to win. And L, by the way, is not at all typical of the kinds of ani/manga characters I adore. He's blunt, socially awkward, weird, and while not "ugly," he's kinda strange lookin. It's all these quirks, plus his considerable ability that make him lovable, even if he too is about as emotionally distant as Light is.

Aizen Sousuke (Series - Bleach)

I was always sort of ambivalent towards him, and he (like Seimei) became more interesting once he showed his true colors. While his fans will claim he got hotter after going to the Dark Side, I'm not fond of the new look (mostly the hair). In any case, he was always a good looking-ish guy, becoming more good looking as the series continued because the mangaka's style has changed some. In more recent chapters, in flashbacks when he has his pre-Dark Side appearance but is looking shady or outright evil, I have to say, I'm kinda starting to see the appeal.

He's got more What Makes Krispy Like Antags qualities than Light has because not only is he pretty good looking, smart, competent, and with that air of arrogance, he's also friggin' SHADY. (Light isn't so much because like I said, his motivations are clear and his actions speak straight to his intentions.) Aizen gives this vague, God-complex-like answer as to his motivation. At face value, his answer is about obtaining power, becoming/surpassing the gods--that sort of run-of-the-mill Villain Reason for Being Evil--but Aizen comes across as more complex than that. Also, it's unclear what he wants to do once he's reached his goal (change the system? take over the world? destroy everything and start anew? build sandcastles in the sky?). The extent of his power/skill is also unknown. See, very shady. I don't understand him, much like how I don't really get why Seimei is so twisted.

Despite having the magic combo, Aizen does nothing for me. He does less for me than Light does. He's interesting but not much more. As with Light, I find Aizen distant. Light has the advantage of being the protag of his series, and thus I at least get the intimate details of his thought process and can see his logic; there's a kind of connection. Aizen, on the other hand, remains mysterious, and coupled with my tenuous grasp of his personality (a trait I share with most of the other Bleach characters it seems), he is bafflingly inscrutable rather than intriguingly shady.

*END spoilers*

In conclusion, Alz and I have no idea what we're talking about. When I started this post, I thought I'd figured out the qualities that help me like them. I realize now, at the end of this post and after discussion with Alz, that it's not that simple. We think there's just a certain ineffable characteristic that really gets me weak in the knees. Our current antagonists lack that spark, making it difficult for me to breathe life into them. I can talk motivation and pasts with Alz, but when I don't care, all those details come across as character stats. It's fine for describing the antags in a nutshell, but I have my doubts about how that will hold up written out in depth if I have no feelings for the characters themselves.

Still, this exercise was good for me because it made me realize that I have a thing for people with ulterior motives. This might not be easy to put into our antags here (since I need to actually know what our kiddies are up to in order to write it), but it's something to keep in mind.

On Plausible Villainy

Iago of Shakespeare's Othello is widely touted to be the epitome of villainy. Why? Because he's just so damn evil. The dude's got it down on Othello and wants him to suffer, suffer, suffer, and suffer some more for good measure, and manages to contrive Othello's downfall with a smiling face and everyone's full trust. Why does he do this? Because somebody else got promoted, not him, and Othello gets to take the brunt of the blame. There's not really much reason beyond that given for his absolute hatred of the Moor. Dim-witted Othello trusts Iago completely which fact of course Iago takes shameless advantage of in order to manipulate and betray his "friend", and this is supposed to be why Iago is the quintessential evil villain. And because Shakespeare is revered as such a noble figure within the realm of English literature, and he's been dead for centuries, and scholars say so, it seems to be one of those general "facts" of the academic world.

Iago's kind of one-dimensional if you just take him straight out of the play.

No, seriously. Think about it. Iago haaaaaates Othello and wants to nail his tender bits to the wall and to make him suspicious of and despise his wife so that he'll smother her with a pillow and then feel terribly, terribly guilty about it when she finally dies of it a half-dozen agonized soliloquies and dialogue exchanges or so later. Cassio got promoted instead of Iago, and this fills Iago with vitriolic rage and loathing for Othello's littlest skin particle, never mind the rest of him. Speculation as to why he hates Othello so damn much is all well and good, of course, and ripe pickings for fanfiction (leave the temptation to slash alone, please, oh gods please leave it alone), but within the bounds of the actual play itself—let's face it, there's no real concrete reason given why Iago loathes Othello so much. We're just supposed to concentrate on the fact that Iago feels betrayed, the loathing is there, and now he's acting on what he feels and doing what he does best: being a manipulative bastard. He can gain dimension for possible reasons, and this is where the analysis and interpretation takes place, but there are characters who come off to me as deep and full of inner conflict and motivations and twists and turns of psychology that form an elaborate pretzel-knot, and then there are those who just leave me going double-you-tee-eff. Needless to say, Iago's one of the latter.

An Iago-type villain holds thin water nowadays, having become a stereotype: "You passed me up, so I'm-a kill you, you son of a bitch." I mean, most villains seem to be ambitious and aspiring towards power (for either destructive I'll-show-them-all-and-destroy-the-world or constructive I-can-make-the-world-a-better-place purposes), or because they've got vengeance cooking hot on their brains (this is Iago, who takes it to an extreme), or they lust after fame/infamy, or they're lusting for somebody that they can't have or want to impress, or they're just insane (which though it can be done well is more often used as a cop-out, like the typical oh-it-was-all-just-a-dream trope), or sundry other reasons. But it's a rare villain indeed who exists simply as a plot device of Sheer and Absolute Evil for the Sake of Hating So-and-So For a Reason of Some Kind. I mean, check out the Wikipedia section talking about Iago's possible motives—about the only clear and text-citable reason for hatred is that he was passed up for promotion. (Granted, it's been a while since I've read Othello, but I'm pretty sure I remember Iago having not very many clear reasons for his absolute hatred of Othello.)

Thus there are "evil" villains. But there are also villains who are not so much villains as antagonists, opposing the protagonist without necessarily being what you'd nominally call "evil". Look at the works of Hayao Miyazaki. His films are notorious for having villains who turn out to be not quite so villainous after all—they may not exactly be paragons of pure goodwill and altruism, but they tend to have a decidedly human air of reasonability about them. Check out the invading force in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Lady Eboshi of Princess Mononoke, or Yubaba of Spirited Away. I'll not post spoilers here, but they are human (or have humanizing qualities) as much as they are villains, and they're not pointlessly evil—or even exactly evil at all, since "evil" becomes a matter of perspective. As characters, they come off more multi-dimensional than Iago right off the bat without a great deal of analytical or interpretive work—and to my mind, if you need to work really hard to even identify (much less deconstruct) a villain's motivations and mental workings, then that means you're probably stretching things.

Want an example of a more one-dimensional "evil" villain? Check out Baron Von Rothbart of Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan. He's a magician with a vendetta against unfaithful women—but why? The blurb on the back of the book says it's because he considers his wife's death some years previously to be the ultimate betrayal, but this isn't mentioned anywhere within the pages of the actual book, and it's a sad, sad day in literary heaven with the analytic angels of fiction weeping tears of blood when we have to turn to the summary on the back of a book in order to figure out character motivations within the story. (I mean, come on—I'm pretty sure the authors frequently have very little or nothing to do with the blurbs on back covers and on the insides of dust jackets, and there's been more than one occasion where the back blurb actually got facts about the story inside wrong.)

But back to Von Rothbart. The only hint we have of this wife's death = ultimate betrayal thing is a brief passage from Von Rothbart's daughter's perspective concerning violets. Yes, violets. Apparently Lady Von Rothbart loved violets (which the daughter Odile vaguely remembers) but there are no longer any violets growing on Von Rothbart's land because he has every patch of flowers found rooted ruthlessly out. (The poor woman doesn't even get a name—by calling her "Lady Von Rothbart" I've already given her more name than she gets in the story.) As far as I recall, that's the sole mention of any kind of wife-related angst, and the only possible hint of motivation for his going out and stalking young women to see if they're unfaithful, transforming them into swans when he finds them cheating on their men, and then kidnapping them away to his estate where they spend their days as swans and their nights as women clad in thin silk dresses. (Personally, I think Von Rothbart is a power-mad pervert with a major fetish for swans and cheating wives and way too much time on his hands, but I sadly have the feeling that my interpretation right there is giving him more character than is really there.)

So what of Krispy and I? We've been working on the "villains" lately. Motivation, background, and personal history, ambitions and deceptions and relationships with other characters. Several times we've had to back up and rethink character structure and motivation, and we're probably going to be zigzagging back and forth for a good while longer yet. Developing a plausible villain is tough work, particularly when there is a surfeit of villainous clichés lurking like potholes to trip up unwary feet. We want more dimension than simply single-minded ambition or a single life-changing tragic incident in the past, and I don't think either of us has brought up madness as a suggested motivational force or excuse for a character's actions. These elements can be present, but they have to be well-done and they can't be reason enough alone—not without turning said characters one-dimensional, or two-dimensional if they're lucky.