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comicaurora · 4 months

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Hey Red, sorry if this was asked already, but do you have any advice on writing a trickster hero? And do you have any favorites yourself?

Huh! This is something I've never really thought too hard about before, but I do have some loose and unformed thoughts!

So the trickster archetype is, broadly, a character who wins by being cunning and tricking the people around them. Typically this is because they are an underdog facing a powerful opponent, and if they face that opponent on the terms that opponent defines, they'll lose. For instance, a physically strong opponent might want to make everything into a contest of raw force; a politically powerful opponent might want to make things a legal battle; a commander of a large army might want to battle on a flat terrain-less battlefield and overpower the smaller enemy force through raw numbers; etc etc.

A trickster doesn't have the raw power to make a scenario happen. Instead, they achieve that scenario by making other characters make it happen, usually by misleading them into thinking it'll have some other outcome they want.

A classic example of this is found in a Brer Rabbit story where Brer Rabbit has been snatched by Brer Fox, and Brer Rabbit begs and pleads with him to not throw him into that briar patch, oh the torment he would experience in that briar patch would be unimaginable, drowning or burning would be bad but still better than that briar patch. Brer Fox naturally throws him into the briar patch, at which point Brer Rabbit vanishes into the underbrush and helpfully clarifies that he was born and bred in a briar patch. He was unable to escape through his own power, so instead he convinced Brer Fox that yeeting him into the briar patch would give Brer Fox something he wanted (Brer Rabbit's unimaginable torment) when in actuality it gave Brer Rabbit exactly the cover he needed to escape. It only worked because Brer Rabbit understood that Brer Fox was fundamentally not just hungry, he was cruel.

Tricksters usually achieve victory through lying, stealing, sneaking around and generally being dishonest. These are usually not seen as heroic traits, but the trickster hero is an archetype of character who is broadly heroic - and uses trickster tactics to win. It's an interesting suite of character traits to balance. In order to make a trickster heroic, them being the underdog usually needs to be played up. It's not really easy to root for someone with power to manipulate people for their own ends, but it's easy to root for someone scrappy and underleveled to manage to gumption their way to a victory over a broadly superior opponent.

A sympathetic trickster usually isn't someone who picks fights. Trouble comes to them, and then they need to find a way to escape or stop it. This is the paradigm that makes Bugs Bunny work as a trickster hero - he starts off basically every adventure minding his own business, and when someone comes around with a blunderbuss and a hankering for rabbit stew, their actions are what prompts him to unleash absolute hell on them by using toon physics and trapping them in ironclad social conventions to completely unbalance them until they're eventually defeated.

If we see a big, loud, powerful jerk try to stomp on someone small and innocuous, we're inclined to root for the small and innocuous person. This setup makes us very eager to see the small and innocuous person use tricks and shenanigans to make a fool of the powerful jerk, and it automatically makes us more okay with the sympathetic character doing on-paper unheroic things like lies and manipulation as long as they're doing them to someone we're primed to dislike.

So trickster heroes are usually fundamentally reactive characters. Something bad happens and they respond by unleashing hell. Another easy way to make a character instantly more heroic is to give them an even weaker, even more sympathetic character to protect or assist. Thus, many trickster heroes have a suite of supporting characters they're protecting who are not tricksters by nature, and are instead just there to be endangered or bullied by Nasty Mean Powerful People. Our trickster heroes stepping in to aid and protect other people thus gives their actions an even more heroic cast, because not only are they reactive to an outside threat, they're selflessly reactive.

This is the framing that's used in Leverage, where every episode has a victim of the week being cruelly taken advantage of by a jerkass of the week, at which point our team of liars, grifters and thieves roll up to ply their trade on the jerkass and award the spoils of war to the victim of the week. Because the person they're tricking is proven unequivocally to be truly awful and completely insulated from legal consequence a solid 98% of the time, we don't feel particularly bad seeing our team of heroes manipulate, gaslight and eventually absolutely destroy them over the course of a crisp 40 minutes. The vileness of the villain combos with the innocent powerlessness of the person they're advocating for, and thus their assorted unheroic qualities become reframed as absolutely heroic due to the circumstances under which they use them.

Crucial to the formula is the horrendous nastiness of the villain of the week, because if we were even kind of sympathetic to them, the schemes of the protagonists would be kinda scary. They are very good at quickly getting the bad guy to trust them and then taking apart everything they've built, and that's only fun to watch if the audience is 100% sure the villain deserves it and is not going to spend too much time thinking "wow, it would be terrifying if that happened to me." The fact that our heroes almost always take them down simply by leveraging (heh) the bad guy's badness is a big part of what makes the formula work. Almost every episode is functionally similar to a Briar Patch scenario - "oh gosh I sure hope no SOULLESS CAPITALIST VAMPIRES take advantage of how MANIPULABLE I am to try and get my MONEY and/or VALUABLES", and then the villain's own established cruelty cascades into their downfall when it runs into the dominos our heroes have set up to expose them. And that does a lot to make the audience sympathize with a crew of four self-admitted terrible people (and Hardison, who's an angel and we're delighted to have him)

Another way to get the audience to root for a potentially nonstandard protagonist is to set them up against a villain who is smug. Smugness is a very dangerous trait for any character to have, because it primes the audience to want to see them break. A villain who thinks they are too powerful or too strong or too smart to be defeated has the audience immediately rooting for them to be proven wrong just so they can watch the expression on their face. This is the strat they use in Columbo.

Every Columbo villain is rich and powerful and very insulated from legal consequences, and we start every episode seeing them arrange and execute an attempt at a perfect murder. We know from the start how they did it and usually why, and because they are smug - they are almost never regretful or reluctant - we become invested in seeing how Columbo figures out what they did, how they did it, and how he can prove it and get them arrested. Columbo is a nonstandard kind of trickster hero, because he is deeply and fundamentally a Lawful Good archetype, but he is also a very casual liar. The only time the audience sees Columbo almost certainly telling the truth is when he's dealing with background characters, his fellow policemen or his dog, or when he's by himself silently putting the pieces together; at all other points in the episode he will typically conceal how much he knows, how he knows what he knows and why he's asking specific probing questions. The audience has a tremendous amount of dramatic irony in terms of information about the perfect murder Columbo has to disassemble; we'll see Columbo zero in on exactly the one small detail that pokes a hole in the supposed airtight alibi, but instead of saying "I think you killed them and I am determined to prove it" he'll dance around why he's focusing on those details - just curiosity, just a desire for completeness, his superiors told him to continue the case and he doesn't know why, his wife is just such a big fan of their work, etc etc.

As a rule, the first time in any given episode that Columbo admits he's suspicious of the villain is the beginning of the last scene of the episode when he proves that they did it and they subsequently surrender. When Columbo is dealing with the villain, absolutely nothing he says can be trusted until that final scene - and it's a rare treat to get a glimpse of Columbo showing an honest emotion, especially something like genuine fury. Most of the time he maintains a very harmless and affable attitude, but sometimes when the villains are very smug and they know he's suspicious of them but can't prove anything yet, his righteous anger peeks through and we see why he does this.

He's a trickster hero because he can't unravel the case, the villain's motivation and the shape of the crime if the villain knows everything he knows and can correspondingly keep up with him. But he is 100% committed to exposing the truth of the situation and making the murderer face justice. Their perfect alibi is supposed to protect them from everything, but it's their confidence and certainty that they could never be caught that Columbo leverages to win. They never know entirely what to make of him, and he's never wholly honest with them - and with the audience - until the very end of the episode. It's good, cathartic payoff to an episode's worth of lies and manipulation from both main players, and it's always fun to see the non-smug party on the side of justice come out on top.

Some trickster heroes are more like standard heroes with trickster tendencies that occasionally surface. These guys are usually pretty straightforward, but in a pinch they can bust out a surprisingly cunning scheme or two - one such moment hits at the climax of Across the Spider-Verse, and it's a great moment of characterization for Miles, who has thus far been a pretty typically heroic guy who has unfortunately spent the entire movie thus far being lied to by people he trusted. It kicks off an enormously long and complicated chase sequence that takes the entire spider-community out of the home base chasing him through an absolutely massive complex and eventually onto a space elevator. It's such a fluid scene, you kind of just accept that it's a desperate chase sequence - Miles is just running. It doesn't occur to the other spider-people that Miles might have a plan beyond running until he basically tells Miguel that, hey, he did just get every other spider-person out of the facility that has the portal to get him home. He wasn't just running away, he was luring everybody away so he can leave.

And this moment is fantastic on a meta-level, because Spider-Man is traditionally a bit of a trickster hero. Most of his enemies are able to physically outpace him, and he needs to use mobility and strategy to take them down, often luring them into environments that work against them - like a fun moment in Spectacular Spider-Man where Spidey defeats the Rhino by luring him into a steam tunnel and basically giving him heatstroke through his armor plating. But because the entire core theme of this movie is "Miles isn't a real Spider-Man," it literally doesn't seem to occur to the other spider-people that Miles's seemingly panicked running might be him pulling a Spider-Man on them. We're so used to being in Miles's head and knowing when he's got a plan or a ploy that this is a very fun moment to watch. He's successfully deceived an entire army of spider-people, and the audience is just as blindsided as Miguel - and a little less electrocuted, so it's a lot more fun for us.

So yea, trickster heroes are a fun little space of character, but you gotta be careful to put them in the right kind of situation, lest their fundamental dishonesty come across as alarming rather than extremely rad.

#I also have a reboot example but I shan't inflict that on you guys without due cause #asks #writing stuff #not aurora

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starlightvld · 3 months

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Up in Smoke

(Also on AO3)

The first time Ghost rips the cigarette from Soap's mouth, drops it on the ground, and stomps on it as he passes by, Soap is too stunned to say anything for a full ten seconds. They've only been working together consistently for a couple of missions, and even as his superior officer, the audacity of the action floors him.

By the time his brain restarts, Ghost is long gone.

The second time Ghost steals Soap's cigarette, he bursts out in a string of Scottish curses and tackles Ghost from behind before the wanker can drop it on the ground. An impromptu sparring match ensues, fists and curses flying.

Afterward, he doesn't feel much like a cigarette anymore — not with the split lip, anyway. Besides, the buzzing under his skin that usually drives him to smoke is just... gone.

Price catches wind of the incident, of course, and calls them into his office a few hours later. By that time Soap has calmed down enough to be... maybe not okay with it, but at least able to see the humor.

"What's this about you muppets scuffling by the smoking area?"

"Just a little sparring to blow off steam," Soap says.

"Ghost?"

"Nothin' to worry about, Captain."

"No? I've got one soldier who looks like he just got back from a bar fight, and the other..." He squints at Ghost. "He get a hit in on you, too?"

"Yeah," Ghost replies in that deadpan tone of his. "Coupla black eyes."

It's a joke.

Ghost is telling a joke. And it's objectively not funny. It's not. But Soap bursts into hysterical laughter all the same.

The corners of Ghost's blacked-out eyes crinkle.

Price rubs his temples before dropping his hand on his desk. Soap presses his lips together to contain his laughter.

"Sparring happens in the gym. I'm sure you know the place. It's where we have things like mats and gloves. I catch you two bare-knuckle fighting again, and you will regret it."

And it's enough to sober Soap up. He avoids Ghost as he ducks away to catch dinner.

The third time... well, no. He supposes that's really the fourth time.

Because the actual third time, Soap had come back from a shit mission where everything went wrong. Intel was faulty, exfil was delayed, and people under his command died. It didn't happen as often in SAS as it had in the regulars — the soldiers here were well-trained and hard to kill — but that made it all the worse.

When Ghost tried to pluck the cigarette from his mouth, Soap growled.

"Back the fuck up, Lt. Or Price is gonna be disappointed in both of us."

Ghost paused, and their eyes met. Slowly, Ghost lowered his hand.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Fuck no."

"Thank God."

Soap didn't have it in him to even huff a laugh. He took a long drag and blew the smoke away from Ghost as a peace offering.

To his surprise, Ghost didn't leave. He spun around and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. They stood there together, utterly silent, as Soap let the heat and sting in his lungs soothe the beast inside that wanted to rip the world apart.

When he was done, though, he was surprised to find he didn't want another. Usually after shit missions, he'd stand there and smoke half a pack before his hands would stop shaking.

He finally met Ghost's eyes. The man quirked a barely visible brow.

"S'pose we should take it to the mats this time?"

Ghost pushed off the building and started walking. Soap followed like a lost child looking for a way home.

The fourth time is in Chicago. His hands are shaking not from losing soldiers but from almost losing his own life. The cigarette trembles in his grip as he stands outside the bar, the biting wind turning his fingers and probably his lips blue. He lifts it to his mouth, inhaling deep—

And then it's gone.

The whine that bubbles up from his gut and bursts from his throat is nothing short of humiliating. But God. God. He needs it.

"Not now. Please, Ghost."

"Why?"

Ghost hasn't thrown the cigarette down. Yet. He cocks his head to the side and gives Soap a long look. Soap can only tremble from the cold and a need that goes deeper than a simple hit of nicotine.

"I just... I need it."

The cigarette drops to the ground, but Soap doesn't have time to lament the loss before that same hand is curling around Soap's neck and pulling him into a fucking massive chest. The other arm comes around Soap's shoulders and...

Ghost just stands there, holding him. And Soap can't help melting into the warmth and solidity of the man who saved his life just hours ago. He dares to curl in deeper. To raise his hands and clutch at Ghost's jacket. To let a few, silent tears escape his tight control.

Finally, his muscles relax. Ghost must feel it, because he turns and leads Soap back toward the bar.

"Why do ye even care?" Soap mumbles from his spot tucked into Ghost's side.

"Because those things'll kill ya."

Soap supposes the "I like you alive" is implied at this point.

Soap loses count after Chicago. He gets stretches of days when Ghost is on a solo op or out with one of the other operators when he can smoke in peace. So he does.

At first.

He's been hooked since he was a rebellious teen trying to make his mark on the world. He's tried to quit multiple times, but it never seems to stick. The first bad mission or adrenaline-filled near miss and he's back at whatever smoking spot he can find, puffing away.

He finds himself trying to cut back, though, even when Ghost is away.

Any time Ghost is on base, all bets are off. In addition to darting by and making a grab for it or sneaking up behind him and flicking it out of his hands, Ghost has gotten more creative. Sometimes Soap will pull out a cigarette only to find he's "lost" his lighter. Sometimes the cigarettes themselves go missing — he clutches his chest and mourns all that wasted money whenever a whole pack disappears.

He supposes it's all just going up in smoke anyway, though.

He should be angry. But in truth, it's almost a relief to hand over the reins to Ghost. To let the man help him by annoying the shit out of him until he wants to give up on it entirely.

Which is definitely the point. Ghost has made that perfectly clear.

So, whenever he gets the urge to calm his racing thoughts or overactive mind with a cigarette, he finds Ghost and annoys him instead. They talk, or spar, or simply sit in silence together, doing their own thing. Ghost doesn't often touch him — their moment in Chicago is still the closest Soap's ever gotten to the elusive Ghost — but he also doesn't push Soap away when he slumps into Ghost's side after a hard day or leans over his back when he's sitting at the table in the 141's common area on base.

The urge doesn't go away, of course. And sometimes, when things get really bad, Ghost will just sit or stand with him like he did the third time. Still, he finds himself smoking less and hanging out with Ghost more.

The last time Ghost steals a cigarette from Soap, he simply stands beside Soap and holds out his hand. Soap immediately knows something has gone terribly wrong. Still, he's too invested in the game now to not hand the cigarette over.

He nearly keels over when Ghost pulls up his mask and takes a long, hard drag. Soap watches in fascination as his cheeks hollow, his neck muscles strain, his lips curve around the paper. It's erotic in a way he really shouldn't be thinking about in regards to his emotionally unavailable superior officer, but the knowledge hasn't stopped him yet. Since that day in Chicago — probably before if he's honest — he's only ever wanted to be closer.

Ghost coughs a little and hands the cigarette back.

"Fuck. Just as disgusting as I remember."

"Ye used to smoke, then?"

"Before I joined up, yeah. Hated it, though."

"The smell? Or—"

"Everything. The taste, the smell, the heat..." Ghost trails off, his hand rubbing over his bicep in a strangely specific way. He shakes his head and looks back at Soap. "Not your problem, Johnny. Forget about it."

Soap's hand is darting out, fingers curling into Ghost's jacket, before he's properly thought through the action. Ghost pauses before turning back. They stare in silence for a moment until—

Soap stubs out the half-burned cigarette and drops the butt in the trash. He licks his lips. Glances up at Ghost. The mask is still sitting on his nose, and Soap stares at his lips for longer than he should before pulling the pack out of his pocket and throwing it in the trash, too.

"Cannae have ye thinking I stink, can I?"

"Too late."

But Ghost's throat bobs with a hard swallow. Soap wets his lips, takes a step closer, and uncurls his fingers to slide his hand up Ghost's chest until his fingertips are resting on Ghost's shirt collar.

"I dinnae think it is."

Ghost turns and walks away. Soap closes his eyes and drops his hand, internally cursing his impulsive behavior. The scuffing of boots walking away from him is like nails on a chalk board.

Until they stop, and a gruff voice calls out, "You comin'?"

A slow smile slides across Soap's mouth. "No' yet."

A huff — exasperation? laughter? a bit of both? — before, "Better get movin' then."

And Soap has never been more glad to follow an order.

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