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archvillain-fandom · 2 months

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response to barry lyga’s un/edited

Not sure what this is. A book review, maybe. A creative writing exercise. The ramblings of a madwoman. Whatever it is, it had to be written.

We’re sitting in the backyard of my childhood home, on our butts, on the grass, on top of the hill. It’s not the backyard as it is now, years after we sold the house and the new owners remodeled it, but it’s not the backyard from my first memories. The treehouse that my dad built for me at age 10 is in the avocado tree, and the giant eucalyptus has been cut down. I stare at the stump, big enough for a little girl to use as a table for her dolls.

“Who am I?” my indefinite companion asks.

“You’re Kyle Camden,” I reply.

“Oh.” Kyle looks at his body, which is suddenly a lot clearer. “From Archvillain?”

“Sort of,” I say. “You’re a version of Kyle that I extrapolated from Archvillain. You’re close to the character that was written, but not exactly the same. You’re a subversion of the real thing.”

“There is no ‘real’ Kyle Camden,” Kyle says.

“Touché.”

“So what’s different about me?” he asks.

I sigh. “Who knows? Maybe you’re less snarky. Maybe you have more empathy. Maybe you’re really me, when I was twelve. Who knows?”

“You said ‘who knows’ twice in the last paragraph,” he points out.

“I’ll get it when I edit,” I shrug. “Or maybe I won’t edit this. His book is called ‘Unedited,’ after all.”

“It’s called ‘Edited,’ too,” Kyle says. “Doesn’t that mean you should edit?”

I sigh. “Don’t be a smartass.”

His eyes widen. “Wait, we can curse in this?”

“Sure,” I say. “This isn’t a Scholastic book. This is a blog post on a blog with fewer than fifty followers. Nobody’s going to care.”

He laughs, long and loud. “FUCK!” he yells. And then, not as loud, but just as exuberant, “Fuck, that felt good! I’ve been wanting to fucking swear since I was fucking created.”

I laugh too. “I’m glad I can offer you that much, at least.”

“After all I’ve given you?” he says dryly.

“Well, fuck, Kyle, don’t act all self-important now.”

“That’s the character,” he says. “That’s the original character.”

“I guess,” I say.

He furrows his brow. “If what you say is true, though… I’m not the original character. I’m an approximation, based on your interpretation. Which means that I clearly mean a lot to you. Which means that I’m not being self-important. So there!”

“You’re being a smartass again,” I say.

He shrugs wordlessly. We both stare at the eucalyptus stump.

“You know,” I say, finally breaking the silence, “I don’t think I ever used that stump as a table for my dolls. I think I just said that in the first paragraph to evoke memories of a rosy childhood, playing in the backyard without a care in the world. In real life, I think I was too anxious about getting my dolls dirty to take them outside.”

Kyle turns to look at me, but doesn’t say anything.

“Or maybe,” I continue, “I didn’t make that up. My sister convinced me to bring our dolls outside, and I went along with it to make her happy. I don’t remember.”

“You have a sister?” Kyle says.

“Younger,” I say. “Three and a half years apart.” I nod in the direction of the stump, at the bottom of the hill. “When that was a tree… the lowest branch was level with the second story of the house. It looked like a hundred feet up– maybe it was. My dad hung a rope swing from that branch. No fucking clue how he got it up there. But he hung a rope swing with a hundred feet of rope– well, there were two ropes holding up the swing, so I guess it was two hundred… hmm…”

“Focus,” Kyle snaps.

“Anyway,” I say. “My sister was a climber. Climbed everything vertical. And so she decided to climb the rope swing. There were no knots or anything, just straight rope. But she took her shoes off, rubbed dirt on her hands, and started climbing. She was seven or eight. And she climbed up, almost to the top. And she made eye contact with my mom, through the second-story window.”

“And then your mom screamed, and your sister panicked, and lost her grip, and fell to her death,” said Kyle.

“No,” I say. “My mom kept her cool, and ordered her to come down. My sister made her way back down the rope, endured a lecture, and is now a student at the same college that I went to.”

“That’s a bad ending,” Kyle tells me. “There’s no payoff. We learn nothing.”

“I have a fear of heights,” I tell him, although that seems kind of redundant. “Now you’ve learned that.”

“I don’t have that fear,” he grins. “I can fly.”

“I know.”

“It’s kind of weird that you have a fear of heights, but love a story about falling,” he says.

“Falling?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Archvillain is about falling.”

“What do you mean by that?” I ask, but he only shrugs.

I wait a moment, before I say, “You don’t sound like the real Kyle.”

“I told you, there is no real Kyle.”

“Original Kyle, then. The non-bastardized Kyle.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re writing me,” he says.

“Probably,” I agree.

He says nothing, and so I add, “The tree story is my running-in-front-of-a-car-to-get-an-action-figure story.”

He throws his hands up. “Oh, now we’re talking about the book!”

I shrug. “If you want, we can.”

“If I’m Kyle Camden, then I must be, in some way, partly Barry Lyga. And if I’m partly Barry Lyga, then I must want to know what you thought of his– my– book.”

“I think the part of you that’s me is placing much more weight on my opinion than the part of you that’s Barry Lyga really would.”

“Fuck, that’s confusing,” says Kyle.

“I got confused writing that sentence,” I say.

“But seriously, what did you think of the book?”

“It was…” I try to think of some adjective, and fail. “It was. It existed.”

“Seriously?” Kyle says in disbelief. “That’s all you’ve got? Aren’t you supposed to be a writer?”

“I’m a writer,” I say. “I never said I was a good writer.”

“‘It existed,’” Kyle mocks. “Wow. Put that on the cover of the second edition. ‘It existed,’ signed Amanda P———, owner of one of the most obsessive Tumblr blogs in existence. That’ll sell more copies.”

“It–“ I sigh. “Isn’t that a compliment? In a work of metafiction, where the characters are grappling with their existence, under an author-god grappling with his own creations, under the real author grappling with his publisher, isn’t it enough to say it existed?”

“No,” says Kyle.

“You’re infuriating,” I say.

“It’s why you like me,” he replies.

I exhale. “The truth is that I don’t get this book. But this book gets me. You follow?”

“No,” he says again.

“It’s just–“ I take a breath, and try again. “It’s just that when I read it, something clicked. Details lined up. It was like it was written for only me.”

“It wasn’t, though,” he says.

“No, you’re not getting it. I had like, a God moment. It was the same feeling that I had when I first read your book.”

“Didn’t you read my section in Unedited?” Kyle says. “God isn’t real. It’s a coherent 13-dimensional waveform–“

“Alright, I don’t feel like typing the whole rant out,” I say. “I get it. I’m not special.”

“Whatever details you thought ‘lined up’ were just coincidences. Common human experiences.”

“You’re starting to sound like Lyga’s Kyle again,”

I say.

“If you’re to be believed, that’s who I really am,” he says. “Or maybe your bastardization has stuck. Maybe, in his mind, a part of you has embedded itself in his conception of me.”

“Or maybe that’s just my ego talking,” I say.

“Maybe,” he says. “I think you have a bigger ego than he does. Which is saying something, considering he wrote a book where he’s both God and the Devil.”

I put my head in my hands. “Fuck this shit. Can’t we just go back to sitting in the backyard?”

“Sure,” says Kyle. “It’s nice here.”

We both sit.

I say, finally, “I did like the book.”

“You only read it to see me,” he says.

“Well, yeah, at first,” I say. “But then I couldn’t stop. Screwed up my whole day at work because I couldn’t get my mind off of it.”

“You work?” Kyle says.

“I’m twenty-two,” I say. “A college graduate. Of course I work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a government drone,” I deadpan. Kyle chuckles. “I work for my city. For now, possibly forever.”

“It’s funny,” he says. “I never pictured you working.”

“You’re a fictional character,” I tell him. “You can’t picture anything.”

“I can picture as much as he can picture,” he says. “Or, well, as much as you can picture that he can picture.”

“Well, I was fourteen when I first read Archvillain,” I say. “I wasn’t even a babysitter back then. And now–“

“Now it’s been, like, eight years,” Kyle says.

“Nine, nearly.”

“Jesus. That’s a lot of time to be devoted to one book series.”

“I have other interests,” I say. “I have stories that are really mine.”

“But they’re not Archvillain,” says Kyle.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess it ties back into that ‘first love’ theme.”

“A book series is not a first love,” Kyle says. “Enough of me is you that I know Archvillain was not your first love.”

“I had Archvillain before I had her,” I say.

“Her?” Kyle says. “You’re gay?”

“Bi,” I say. “Maybe. Or ace. Or gay. Or straight. Does it matter? I loved her the way Mike loved Phil. The way you love Mairi.”

“That’s not healthy,” he says.

“No,” I agree. “That’s why it ended.”

“Do you regret it?” Kyle asks.

“I hate her some days,” I say. “Most days. I hate myself for blowing it up, too. It was really my fault that it ended. If I hadn’t freaked out when she set a boundary, we’d still be friends.”

“You weren’t together?” he asks.

“Nah.”

“Damn.”

We sit, until Kyle says, “I’m gay too. I think.”

I laugh. “I was never sure whether Barry Lyga always intended you to be gay, or whether he just did that to make my teenage self happy.”

“Guess you’ll never know,” says Kyle.

“Guess I’ll never know,” I say. “Although, you and the Mad Mask…”

He groans. “It doesn’t matter. When the series ends, the young Mad Mask is hell-bent on revenge, and the old Mad Mask is lost to time. It’s not happening.”

“Then, you and Mike…”

“It’s not happening,” he says again.

“If I were writing the series…” I start.

“But you’re not!” he interrupts. “It’s not your series. It’ll never be yours.”

“And yet you’re partly me,” I say.

He looks down at his blue-gloved hands. “Yeah, well. Sometimes stuff sticks.”

“Yeah.” I pause, and then I say what’s been on my mind since I read Edited. “Do you think the email is based on me?”

“Email?” He furrows his brow. “What email?”

“In his book. George writes an email to Gayl Rybar, or maybe Barry Lyga, telling him how important his work is. That he kept him from killing himself, because of his writing.”

“I liked George,” mused Kyle. “When I met him.”

“When I was sixteen, I emailed Barry Lyga. I told him how important his work was. I didn’t say it kept me from killing myself, but that was what I was thinking. Do you think that part was based on me?”

Kyle frowns. “I doubt it. He probably gets a lot of teenage emails.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“I think it’s stupid to think that anything in that book is related to you. Maybe Barry Lyga put an Archvillain section in knowing that you’d enjoy it– maybe. But I think you’re just desperate for connection, as a new adult in a remote job, and are leaning back on your old favorite series for comfort.”

“Maybe,” I say again. “You sound like his Kyle.”

“I only sound like Lyga’s Kyle when I’m making you uncomfortable,” he says.

“Maybe,” I say, for the third time.

“You thought that email was written by George?” Kyle asks.

“When I read Edited, I did,” I say. “George is a fan of Gayl Rybar. It makes sense.”

“But he isn’t a fan in Unedited,” says Kyle. “So he can’t have written it, since Lyga wrote that book first.”

“Yeah, I guess I can’t really know,” I say. “It’s all fictional, anyway.”

“Never stopped you from wondering before.”

“You’re very aggravating,” I tell him.

He raises his hands in defense. “Hey, you’re the one writing me.”

I pick my legs up off the grass and hug my knees. “I can’t believe I’m twenty-two.”

“You’re young. Don’t complain about it,” Kyle says.

“You’re younger than me. You’re twelve.”

“I’ve been twelve since 2010. Technically, I’m older than you.”

“In Barry Lyga’s original outline of Archvillain–“

“Oh, shut up!” Kyle exclaims. “Nobody cares about that but you. There’s not going to be any more Archvillain– no books, no short stories, no cartoon. You need to get over it, and grow up.”

I glare at him. “Can I finish my fucking sentence?” He rolls his eyes, and I continue, “In the original outline, Kyle gets visited by his future self in Tomorrow Today. I was fifteen or sixteen when I learned that, and I thought, okay, how old is future Kyle? And I settled on twenty-two.”

“And now you’re twenty-two,” he finishes.

“Exactly. And I keep thinking of going back in time, of talking to my younger self. Of what I would say.”

“What would you say?”

“I don’t know. That it gets better? That I shouldn’t feel so guilty all the time? That I should keep writing? I doubt I’d listen. I doubt you’d listen to your older self, if that book had ever been written.”

“I think you’re thinking about this a little too much,” says Kyle.

“Okay, that definitely was the Lyga part of you.”

“You’re still writing me,” he says. “And I’m sure Barry Lyga, the real one, doesn’t see me as half him, half you. I’m all his, in his mind, and you’re a deranged fan who needs to find a hobby.”

I accept this. “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m a genius,” he says.

I smile. “I did kind of kidnap your series.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” he says.

“I’m writing a book about that now,” I say. “Kidnapping. Murder. Real dark shit.”

“That’s a departure from the middle grade stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” I shrug. “You gotta write what you gotta write.”

“Like this piece?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, for a book review, we didn’t talk about the book that much,” Kyle says.

“Yeah, well, if he wants an actual review, he can look on Goodreads. Anyway, I’m going to call this a response, not a review.”

“Very English major of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a compliment.”

“If I was a real English major, I would know how to end this,” I say.

“There we are, tying back into the book!” Kyle exclaims.

“It wasn’t intentional. I think that endings are hard for everyone.”

“Oh,” says Kyle. “But it has to end sometime.”

“I guess it does,” I say. “How would you end it?”

“I’m guessing that people hailing me as a true hero isn’t an option?” he says. I shake my head. “I don’t know. Sitting here is nice. We could just keep doing that.”

“That’s a bad ending,” I say. “There’s no payoff. We learn nothing.”

He shrugs, for the final time. And we sit.

#archvillain book #barry lyga #kyle camden #unedited #writing

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mssoapart · 18 days

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Day 7

Free-day (Out of order and late) Alenoah as Sherlock/Moriarty.

I like it when two characters play mind games and scheming against or with each other.

I didn`t plan to create an AU, but – my rant and bits of literature/character analysis (The Vision). Also, draw concept sketch.

Noah (Detective Sherlock Holmes). I mean, they're both geniuses, introverts who don't care about social opinion and some versions depicted him as being good with dogs. In Victorian England, I totally see Noah opening a detective agency, because you either go working on a plant or you might use your geniuses’ intelligence to solve crimes, like game puzzles, and make monies to pay bills and buy new books because in 1800 many books were expensive and produced in small quantities.

Plus! I might look at this too far, but I think the Sherlock and Watson analogy was implemented in London episode when they strip team Chris just to Noah and Owen for investigation.

Owen (Dr. Watson). Basically in the original books, Watson plays the role of the guy, your typical visual novel MC, well narrator, who has character, but his whole purpose is just to be a witness to detectives doing, asking questions for the audience. This leads to usually representing Watson as either annoyed with Sherlock's antics or (usually in kids' media) naïve but with good intentions because of this simplification, to show his kindhearted nature in cartoons and caricatures he is portrayed as chubby, which is what we need! But all of them did service in the Anglo-Afghan War, even Disney version mentioned it. (Also if you want to do Nowen version of Jhonlock I don`t mind, sure go for it)

Alejandro (professor Moriarty). Do I really need to explain? Both archvillains in their stories. Professor, respected in society for his talent and achievements, wealthy, but behind all of that façade he`s "Napoleon of crime". He doesn’t usually do crimes himself but rather, schemes, orchestrates the events, or provides the plans that will lead to a successful crime, like paying money to a court so that someone can be released from prison.

Heather (Irene Adler). OK, in the original books (all books written not by Arthur Conan Doyle are basically fanfics) her character and Sherlock don`t date (But if you like, it`s fine). She was more like “I know what you are” towards him. I want to base it more on Warner Bros Sherlock where Irene works with Moriarty, but they also try to get rid of each other. She is also famous for blackmailing royals, If it isn`t most Heather thing I don`t know what is.

Eva (Mrs. Hudson). The landlady. I think it would be funny, she yelling at them to pay their bills in time.

See you next week

#total drama #td noah #td alejandro #alenoah #td heather #td owen #td eva #alenoahweek2024 #english not my first language #write it at night #i probably should have made several posts #I just combined two things that I love #sorry Eva #Sorry about the rant I try to restrain myself

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total-drama-brainrot · 1 month

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TD World Tour AU, where Noah is Chris’s Assistant from the start of World Tour, instead of a contestant ... Alejandro tries to charm Noah, like Alejandro had charmed Chef, but Noah is immune to his charms... What if Assistant Noah still told Owen that Alejandro is like 'an eel dipped in grease' and Alejandro CAN'T get rid of Assistant Noah for saying that?... Would they have a weird frenemy relationship for the rest of the show?... With Alejandro sometimes teasingly flirting with Noah, like he does with Heather? 😘

In my take on an Assistant Noah AU, Noah would be entirely immune to Alejandro's charm, not because he's switched on to The Archvillain's true colours (which, he is, but I digress) but because Assistant Noah is The Saltiest Bitch.

Imagine with me, for a moment, that you've landed yourself a pretty sweet gig; you're the personal assistant of an A-list celebrity who's only real job at the moment is hosting and directing one (1) reality TV show. The pay is really good and the job itself comes with a tonne of benefits, plus it's the perfect position for you to develop networks within the business (Noah canonically mentions "working his way up this 'biz", implying he has a desire to continue in the field of showbusiness).

Now imagine with me that said celebrity is Chris McLean, renown sadist and all-around disaster of a man. This guy absolutely pawns off the majority of his work onto you, meaning it falls onto your shoulders to; corral the on-set interns into some semblance of competency, make sure that each challenge is properly set up and ready to go, make sure Chris himself is set up and ready to go, and put up with regular coffee run requests. That's a lot of work for one 16~17 year old, even if you are a certified genius.

You're overworked, sleep-deprived and two seconds away from snapping at the nearest intern at any given moment.

And then, during the filming of the latest season, the guy you hand picked to star in the non-existent "Total Drama Dirtbags" (mostly because he was better looking than his brother, who also applied) tries to charm and flirt his way into you giving him advantages in the competition- or at the very least, trick you into divulging information on their next challenge. It's as if he thinks you're somehow not aware of the fact that he's a total scumbag, despite knowing you work on the show and therefore have seen both his acts of sabotage and the confessions in which he plots them.

Suffice to say, you're kind of insulted. I mean, really? Flirting? You don't even have time for something as trivial as a relationship, or even a fling! There's challenges to set up, international negotiations to suffer through, and unpaid interns to boss around- your schedule's booked!

And yet he keeps flirting with you, even after you've snubbed him multiple times. At this point you're pretty sure it's become a point of wounded pride for him, instead of the game tactic it started as; after all, his charms have worked on pretty much everyone on the cast, what makes you so different?

Eventually, as the herd thins, you decide to warn your best friend (who's somehow miraculously remained in the competition, despite his 'team leader's' obvious dislike of him) about Alejandro's less-than-noble intentions. Owen misconstrues your selfless act of solidarity as a sign of jealousy, or god forbid 'denial of your feelings', towards Alejandro. Which, what? No, that's not it at all! The one time you try to be a good friend and this is how you're repaid?

Alejandro overhears this, unfortunately, and seems to take the fact that you're not fooled by his obviously fake mask as some sort of personal affront. Of course, as the person who's essentially running the show, there's not much he can do to you besides carry on being the nuisance he is- which is exactly what he does, but more.

Suddenly, his flirting from before seems like nothing, because now he's really trying to get under your skin with that same plastic charm; it's like he took the dial to his natural flirtatiousness and turned it to eleven. It's annoying. And worse, it's getting in the way of your work flow.

You'd love to stage his elimination, but you know the public outcry from his untimely departure from the show would outweigh the relief of being rid of him, so you resolve to do as you have been; ignoring Alejandro until he gets bored. (That's easier said than done- he's really good at getting under your skin, like the thorns on a rose bush.)

To make matters Even Worse, your elusive appearances on the show- as Chris' personal assistant it would be impossible to avoid the cameras entirely, but you'd bribed the editing team to cut as much of your unwitting footage from the final edit as they could- paired with your 'entertaining dynamic' with Alejandro has the viewers clambering for more, so now you're obligated to act as a de facto co-host alongside your boss.

So now you're stuck having to at least acknowledge Alejandro, if only to give the editors something to work with. Great.

At least, that's what my take on an Assistant Noah AU would entail.🤷‍♀️

#imagine if you will-💥#yes i wrote this in second person. i'm trying something new. something more immersive.#the sudden influx of noah-centric AUs on this blog continues to astound me #you guys really love throwing ideas at me pertaining to one (1) cynical nerd #not that i'm complaining 🤭#this could be interpreted as alenoah but i'm gonna throw a curveball here and say--#it's one-sided alenoah on alejandro's part and noah is either--#heavily aspec (projecting) or crushing on owen (nowen supremacy) because there's already so much alenoah in my AUs #(...or alenowen perhaps?)#total drama #td noah #td alejandro #td owen #silly ideas #others' ideas #assistant noah #replies

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foe-paw · 1 month

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bro i just got knocked clean off my socks by a podcaster's description of a Stephen King character made in such a way that i finally, finally, understood the reference behind Uncle Wiley's character.

first, the stephen king wiki description on randall flagg:

Flagg is described as "an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark" with general supernatural abilities involving necromancy, prophecy, and unnatural influence over predatory animals and human behavior. His goals typically center on bringing down civilizations, usually through spreading destruction and sowing conflict.

huh! that sounds kind of familiar! alright, on with the podcast excerpt-

Randall Flagg, he's the dude we're all here for, in one way or another, right. Because… Just to let you know, if you're a listener who has not read a lot of Stephen King, if you're here because you like hearing us talk about it rather than reading it yourself, Randall Flagg is in some ways the lynchpin around which all of Stephen King's later work is going to be built upon. He's going to leave this novel and he's going to show up in other novels. Randall Flagg is the Walkin' Dude, and he walks a lot. He is, uh- in- in the way that I think that if you're not a Stephen King reader, you probably associate Stephen King's ultimate embodiment of evil as Pennywise, because I think Pennywise has a much sharper popular culture profile. But Randall Flagg is really Stephen King's archvillain. And he is… He is the Heath Ledger Joker. He's also, kind of the Jared Leto Joker. He is also kind of the Jack Nicholson Joker! He is every Joker. Right? He's an Ur-Joker. — It's very funny that you just said he's not Pennywise. — Yeah. But he is the Joker! — Yeah, yeah. He is an agent of chaos who is calculating. — We get introduced to him - and I actually, I think the rest of the books kind of ruin Randall Flagg for me. Because Randall Flagg is really intriguing when we meet him here. He, uh, he's a drifter- so, again, we have these parallels. Nick Andrews, who is a drifter, but he's like, the good drifter… Randall Flagg is the bad drifter, who doesn't go from town to town to work, we get the sense that he just - he doesn't even remember his own past, right? There's something really weird about him right off the jump, he doesn't have a good sense of who he is and he does not care. He just has, like, weird memories of, like- impossible memories, right? Hhe remembers going to school with Charles Starkweather. He remembers riding with the KKK. He remembers, like, helping the weather underground build bombs. It's suggested that he's hanging out with Donald deFreeze and the SLA when they come up with the plan to kidnap Patty Hearst. And he's just a guy, he wears cowboy boots, he wears jeans, he wears a denim jacket, he's got pockets that are filled with all sorts of extremist literature? And, this is important- it's not just, like, extreme right-wing, right? It's extremism of any type. Right? Randall Flagg is the nightmare embodiment of horseshoe theory in a lot of ways. —Yeah. We talked a lot about liberal centrist Stephen King, and I think it should be instructive to everyone that his ultimate villain is just extremism of any kind. Like, any political statement that- or any political belief that is, like, outside the Overton Window, that's Randall Flagg. — He just, he has no ideology other than the sowing of chaos, right? Making everything worse is his goal and he doesn't have a very clear memory of his own life, the events are kind of strange, but also, and he has in his first chapter, right? He's walking down the highway and he always has- the phrase that is always used to describe him is that he "looks like a man with great good humor", right? He's always smiling, he's always laughing, but it's a mean and evil laugh.

from the Just King Things episode about The Stand.

i just feel so relieved because i've been kind of turning wiley's bizarre fucking sartorial choice of double denim in my head like a dog with a very confusing bone, but that decision is way less inscrutable if the source for the double denim turns out to be the bad-guy imaginary of Stephen King in the 70s sdkjskdjskdjskdj.

#starkid #team starkid #hatchetfield #uncle wiley #black friday musical #wilbur cross #was everyone onto this reference and it was just me who missed it because i never read the dark tower??#i was just listening to the podcast going hm alright so the stand is about a dualistic fight of good vs evil #and the devil stand-in is a dimension-traveling smug joker type who- wait what do you mean he wears denim #then i look at the wiki and of course that's game over because wiley just wears a 1:1 recreation of a randall flagg outfit smdskdjskdj #stephen king readers come to my rescue. what is up with this guy and how does uncle wiley compare and contrast

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shittysawtraps · 7 months

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Hii you need artist ?

god, always. as soon as i have money i gotta commission art of characters from the hit 2013 middle grade book series “Archvillain” by Barry Lyga

#mod amanda #the quickest way to my heart is archvillain (2009-2013) content

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dailyadventureprompts · 2 years

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Monsters Reimagined: The Big Bad Evil Guy/The Archvillain

Enough people have written in to me asking for advice about the main “BBEG” villain of their campaigns that I’ve come to realize there is something deeply wrong about how this trope has proliferated through the fantasy and RPG hobbies. I’m not sure whether to blame the panoply of Tolkien knockoffs for flooding the market with bargainbin dark lords, or tvtropes for codifying a wide spectrum of villains down into one catchall baddie, but it seems like most apprentice DMs are under the assumption that most d&d campaigns are focused on disrupting the schemes of one central, likely undead bastard.

TLDR: The way you’ve been taught to use the BBEG trope is wrong, and trying to build stories around it is going to result in bad campaigns. The whole point of having a BBEG is not to have them act as a direct antagonist to your players, but to provide a looming threat/motivation for people and other factions in the world to react to. Putting your players on an immediate collision course with this arch-villian is going too big, too soon, in no small part because they’ve yet to become heroes WORTHY of challenging such a villain.

Below the cut, I’m going to discuss how some popular media franchises used the BBEG trope and the lessons that most imitators failed to pick up on. Then we’re going to discuss how to use these lessons to build better campaigns, and better villians to threaten them.

Why is the BBEG such a strong trope in tabletop RPGs?: To be completely upfront, I think it’s Sauron, the OG dark lord, against which all others are invariably measured. Because Sauron was so very essential to the seminal work of fantasy, everything that’s come after has felt the need to create an equally omnipresent baddie that has skeletal fingers in every pie despite how worn out and cliche it’s ended up being.

It’s also an easy stopgap from a writing perspective, no reason for an apprentice Dm to learn about threat escalation or how different antagonists can narratively reflect heroes at different parts of their journeys when you can just grab a comically overpowered Saturday morning cartoon villain and make them the source of all your party’s woes from level 1 onward.

To demonstrate my point, I’d like to highlight something that seems to have gotten lost in the 70 some years of broken inspiration telephone since LOTR was published: that Sauron wasn’t a GUY, he was an theme, a force that drove others into action and threatened to remake the world into his own image. Sure, once upon a time there’d been a Satan analog dude conspiring to rule the world, looking to ensnare people with magic rings, but by the time of the book trilogy that dude was long gone and what was left behind was the power and evil he’d embodied looking for a new vessel. That’s why every character who knows what they’re doing is terrified of the ring, because they ( or anyone who claimed the ring for themselves) could become the NEW Sauron and plunge the world into darkness, cruelty, and war in an attempt to make the world fit their goals. People move to conflict with Saruon ( battling his orcs, or fleeing from war) while at the same time being drawn to the ring, facilitating the drama of the series.

If I wanted to make a hot take, I’d go so far as to say that you CAN’T decide on the main villain of your campaign in advance because you have no idea what exactly your campaign is going to become in the log run, what choices party is going to make and what they’re going to decide to make their story ABOUT.

As another misattributed “big bad evil guy” example, lets look at Starwars. I’ve seen so many people model their archvillian after Darth Vader, featuring a fall from grace to a personal connection with the heroes, completely missing the fact that Darth Vader isn’t the BBEG, the Emperor is. Note especially that the emperor isn’t even a character in the first movie, because the stakes of Luke’s initial journey are solely about finding Leia/completing her mission of destroying the Deathstar. Darth Vader is just a heavy working for the empire, assigned the job of tracking down whoever it was that stole the deathstar plans, but largely insignificant in the greater scheme of galactic politics. The heroes can have interactions with and feelings about Darth Vader, even beating him in a fight, where as The Emperor, as a face for the empire itself only presents himself in the narrative once the heroes have established themselves. It’s only retroactively that the emperor becomes the one who’s been pulling the strings, ascending from a bit of background dialog thanks to a raising of stakes and to facilitate Vader’s redemption in the 3rd movie.

So how can you do the BBEG right?: When you’re planning your campaign, you should be putting the majority of your attention into the first arc, rather than trying to set up the ending before you even begin, perhaps thinking about the second arc of your game if you’ve got something really fun planned. Only once the campaign is true and fully underway do you start thinking about real a real archvillian, who’s defeat will signal the end of your campaign. Consider multiple options, then seed the best ones as background lore into the game’s ongoing story, the way you got the emperor mentioned as part of the worldbuilding, or Denethor introduced as part of Boromir’s backstory. Defining these arch-villians is best done once you’ve established some themes for your campaign, that way they can stand in direct threat/opposition to the sort of heroes your party have become.

Here’s some heroic archetypes and some final boss style badguys for them to face off against:

Kingdom builders would doubtlessly have faced numerous threats to the stability of their realm, but what happens when their hard work risks putting an authoritarian in charge?

A band of scrappy outlaws and tricksters have finally outwitted the law and gotten away with their grand prize: A destiny they never would have wanted and a pending doom they can’t evade.

The party finally reforged the artifact and used it to beat the civilization devouring monster, only to realize that the use of their ultimate weapon has damaged the world itself and started a slide towards collapse.

After innumerable trials our heroes finally got revenge against the villain that so deeply wronged them, now they must stand on trial in the celestial courts to prove that their ends justified their means.

As the explorers finally pencil in the last corner of their maps, they come to realize they’ve become responsible for all this territory they once only visited as tourists, facing an enemy that will sweep over the land and leave them nowhere to escape.

#drafting an adventure #DM advice #dm tips #writing advice #villain #dnd #dungeons and dragons #adventure #5e homebrew #homebrew adventure #bbeg #high level #monsters reimagined

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snurtle · 11 days

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Nine people you'd like to get to know better! Weheheh.

Tagged by @criminal-sen I haven't done tag games in a while.

Last song i listened to: (squints) Uh. Dark ambient fantasy music for writers 10 hrs-- Fantasy tavern music for writers 3 hrs--- uh, uh, oh- shit- (i fumble the playlist and a bunch of videogame osts wearing tiny .mp3 trenchcoats go spinning out all over the floor. fuck. i'm not normally like this i swear. (i'm lying. i am. i love ambient music. and ska. shhh)

Favorite color: pink. there is no contest i'm sorry to say, pink is my shit. I would live in a cotton candy cave if I could. I am constantly one good decision away from animorphing into a fat, hot pink ceramic garden gnome in a wizard robe.

Currently watching: nothing atm, though I did recently start talking to a fanfiction author that I loved the work of. Turns out he's a writer too, and he gave me free copies of like ten????? of his sci-fi books?? full ass e-books??? damn. god damn. so nothing to watch, but E V E R Y T H I N G to read. I'll leave reviews as I finish them.

Sweet/savory/spicy: no. salty. sour. where are the real options!!! inquiring minds need to know!

Relationship status: uhhhhh idk ask @archvillain

Current obsession: sad evil men who are convinced they're doing the right thing at a high cost, not committing atrocities and burning the world. also DRAGON AGE. This fucking franchise. It's eating my life. I started systematically combing The Masked Empire for every instance where Felassan is mentioned or has dialogue for fanfiction research purposes. Truly the actions of a mentally well man. I'm hyped-against-all-hope for the release of the fourth game in the series, Dreadwolf. Apparently it's slated for this summer? I won't hold my breath... and yet.

I also enjoy chewing violently on mad scientists, though that interest has been dormant as of late (<3 Mayuri Kurotsuchi <3) .

I'll tag...

@accidental-hero obligatory tag in ask games. I KNOW you but shhh. Just tell me what you're up to.

@archvillain do i know you? yeah i want to know you better wawawaa @recurring-polynya I've missed your houseplant updates as of late! I started gardening in earnest again this spring and thought about you. @whipplefilter I was torn on whether or not to tag B3 here!! :D Either way your presence is always a fun bright spot on tungle dot hell. @kurjakani Your haunted-eyed old men and love of vast lonely spaces is deeply compelling. That's pretty cool!

And... whoever would like to play!

#as soon as i start thinking about who to tag my brain goes blank #if i didn't tag you by url just know that. <3 you are invited <3 #i just have a brain made of rotten cantaloupe <3 #tag games #text it

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tobiasdrake · 6 months

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Unnecessary lies aside, the other issue with Monaca is one the confrontation handles... Well, tries to handle, but results may vary from person to person.

The thing about Monaca is that after making her the most evilest villain ever, you can't then get any sort of catharsis out of killing her. This is the problem with making a child character into a 100% despicable archvillain. We talked a bit about catharsis with the 2-6 conclusion; The most fun you can have with a totally reprehensible villain is to see them get theirs.

That doesn't work so well with a tyke villain. Usami taking down Junko 2.0 in a big God of War magical girl fight was awesome. But it's hard to write a scene that feels triumpant where our protagonist beats the everloving shit out of a small child. That just doesn't work.

Further complicating the matter is that "Just fucking kill these kids" is explicitly laid out as the wrong choice in the big moral conflict itself. You can't do that and then turn around and kick Monaca's teeth in. The main hill that your story is choosing to die on rarely has room for that kind of nuance. If this is your big moral statement, you can't compromise it for catharsis or else you're shooting down your own message.

So you've created a villain who is utterly despicable beyond any hope of redemption, for whom only catharsis can be the story's end. And you've also created a villain for whom there can be no catharsis. Question. How exactly are you supposed to resolve this character?

Well. The answer that UDG lands on is to kick the can down the road. Monaca gets replaced at the 11th hour by a different, more punchable villain that we can fight, while she slips away to show up as the next game's big archvillain or something.

We get a bit of philosophical catharsis when everyone leaves Monaca under a pile of rubble and stops listening to her. But that's just part of the can-kicking. It purposely ends on a promise of more to come. Nothing is resolved, war between adults and children is still on the horizon, Komaru vows to remain in town until she can solve this, and Monaca goes full Junko Successor to gear up for her next appearance.

Which. Wound up fizzling out in DR3's rush to sweep everything under the rug and slam the book shut on this franchise forever. We're gonna talk about that in a moment, but that's the risk you take when you decide to push out the resolution to a future product. Sometimes it simply doesn't materialize at all.

But it ties into the other issue, the one of twisting things solely for the sake of having a twist. For the sake of making Monaca the most evilest character ever they wound up unwriting the interesting yet sinister villain they had and instead creating an archvillain of such magnitude that they left themselves no possible avenue to actually resolve the story satisfactorily. Sometimes, more is less.

#danganronpa #ultra despair girls #revisiting udg #monaca towa

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twiststreet · 9 months

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I finished a book I bought on an impulse and started reading last sunday-- Percival Everett's Dr. No. It was a recommended book over at Chevalier's Books, and it's an afro-surrealist James Bond spoof except the lead character is an autistic black mathematician facing off against a black archvillain who wants to achieve a sort of metaphysical revenge against the United States.

Everett's been shortlisted for a Pulitizer Prize and short listed for a Booker, but his prose is pretty clean and readable-- the underlying material is so bordering on surreal, and wordplay-heavy that he doesn't clutter up the prose. It reads fast-- I could've read it in a weekend if I had any focus to me. Boy, a lot of very odd choices, though-- near the end, the book swerves into a different kind of "movie" altogether briefly, or a character shows up who is from a different genre at least-- it's a very very odd choice. I don't know that it builds to the most satisfying conclusion either-- the last chapter isn't exactly what I wanted, either from the plot or thematically. A little underwhelming in its very last moments.

But I found it often very funny, and it's... Everett seems like a very clever guy, so it's fun seeing a writer like that just having fun. He seemed like he was having fun. I liked that it was playful...? And my time is so limited and my attention span so terrible-- I'm always "at work", even when I'm at home, lately-- so it being ... a very straightforward read in its prose (without being mindless), I appreciated that. I wouldn't recommend it to people who need a sort of realism to their storytelling though-- it's not like a Richard Condon or a Chuck Palahniuk or anything like that, totally genre berserk, but it's ... You know, it was helpful that I'd read the Afro-surrealist Manifesto before I read the book and had at least some understanding of that as a concept, say. (Though there's this math riddle near the end that's really going to bug me, if I can't google a solution...)

Anyways, I just like James Bond spy craze stuff, even if it's the spoof-y kind. I've lived through more than one Matt Helm movie. Those... those weren't so good. I've already gazed into the abyss.

#i never learned how to read

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roy-dcm2 · 1 year

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Circe should be Diana's Arch

Like every comic book fan, I have my own ideas on how to change a character, and, for me, one of the biggest oversights is that The Cheetah is often depicted as Wonder Woman's archvillain.

I am convinced that the only reason Cheetah gets the spotlight is because she was on the Superfiends cartoon half a century ago. But it doesn't make any sense. An archvillain should be the hero's opposite, look at the other members of the DC Trinity -

Batman / Joker = Order vs Chaos

Superman / Luthor = Brawn vs Brains (or Altruism vs Selfishness)

Wonder Woman / Cheetah = Truth vs FURRY?

(Or you could make the stretch and say Peace vs Violence, or Humility vs ... doing things the easy way, which is what WW1984 went with.)

It feels so forced.

If I was in charge of DC Comics, I would put more emphasis on Circe, the Sorceress, as Wonder Woman's true archvillain. Think about it... what is Circe most famous for? She's a mythological character that transformed Odysseus' men into pigs during the Odyssey.

These transformations are lies. They're not a person's true self.

And Diana is the Spirit of Truth. She was even the Goddess of Truth, for a bit.

See how it makes for a better dynamic?

Not only that, but being an all powerful sorceress, Circe has access to more resources than the Cheetah. If Circe can't conjure something with her Magic, she can enchant people to do her steal it for her. She can turn men into beast warriors to serve as an army, or impart powers on women. (Like, I would change Silver Swan to be one of her minions.)

Finally, and the most controversial change, I would make Circe every bad idea about Wonder Woman.

Ignorant people have a skewed perception of what Wonder Woman is - a man-hating, lesbian that thinks women should be in charge, preaching peace through violence. (That's fascism.)

(You could also maker her a TERF)

Expanding on that, Circe thinks men are worthless, but regular women are still beneath her, and she can be vain and shallow. She mainly appreciates beautiful women, as long as they don't displease her. She likes to turn men into animals, but women she'll turn to stone, so she can still appreciate their beauty without having to put up with their personalities.

They say the opposite of love isn't hate, it's control. Circe wants to control everyone, make them bend to her will.

Diana's philosophy is "loving submission." Both partners need to out their trust in each other to look out for one another.

It would be a controversial change, since Diana's arch would come off like an obsessed, jilted lover, but here's always been homoerotic tones underneath Joker and Luthor's obsessions with their archrivals. In this modern era, we can get away being more upfront about it. You just got to tread lightly.

DC has played with it a little bit, using Circe as Diana's rival in the DC Trinity comic, but her appearances are still few and far between. Plus, we had Cheetah in the WW1984 movie, giving the audiences more exposure to that dead end.

Oh well, now that I said it, it'll never happen, but I like Tumblr as a place to post my fanfiction ideas.

What do you think? Who should be Diana's archrival? Are you a fan of the Cheetah. Feel free to leave a comment.

#dccomics #dc comics #dc universe #wonder woman #cheetah #the cheetah #Circe #Justice League #Villains #fanfiction #dc trinity #Roy-DCM2

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