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#how to write a protagonist

the-modern-typewriter · 30 days

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im so obsessed with the touchstarved hero thing that you did ive read it more than 20 times, a very normal amount yes, would you ever think of writing another touchstarved prompt or even a touchstarved villain one? thank you so much for your work

"I don't mind."

"Hm?" The protagonist looked up, brow furrowing.

"I don't mind when you touch me," the villain said. "That is - it's not horrific."

"Well, I'm glad I wasn't horrific. Life goals."

The villain shot them a look.

The protagonist smiled despite themselves. It was too easy to feel lulled, brain at ease for the first time in far too long, buzzing with all the good endorphins. Intimacy. Closeness. It was impossible to dwell on the danger, for as surely as there was attraction, there was danger.

They leaned in, slowly enough to clearly telegraph their intentions, and pressed a kiss to the villain's chest. Half teasing. Half something infinitely more dangerous, like genuine affection for the terrible idea sprawled beneath them.

The villain held their gaze. They almost even smiled back. They tangled their fingers into the protagonist's hair instead, but didn't tug them away. They let the protagonist settle even closer than before, head against their beating chest.

The protagonist was starting to understand that meant something too.

"It's merely that people don't do it very often," the villain said, voice clipped, carefully controlled. "Touch me, I mean. Or when they do, it's with the sort of casual presumption that makes me want to rip their hands off. You do not presume."

"Well, you did look ready to rip my hands off once or twice." They knew what the villain meant though. When the protagonist had touched suddenly, unexpectedly, it had been less about trying to control the villain and more just needing something to hold onto as the villain kissed them stupid. Instinct. Desire. Need. The villain had known that, hadn't they? "But you're welcome. I mean, any time."

The villain nodded. Once. Curt - uncomfortable, perhaps, with such an open and vulnerable emotion. They cleared their throat.

The protagonist felt another stupid swell of warmth. They could hear the villain's heartbeat slowing beneath their ear, trusting, and it felt like yet another giddy thrill for the day. A complicated and tentative privilege.

They lay together, in their stolen moment of illicit peace.

"Besides," the villain broke the silence after a while. "Next time, I can always ziptie your hands to the bed posts."

"Next time?" The protagonist's heart skipped.

The villain shrugged. "You like touching. You'd look adorable begging for it. I think I'd like to see that."

The protagonist was sure they'd gone all wide-eyed again, flushed and flustered, because that time the villain definitely smiled. They hesitated, then tugged the protagonist's hair.

"Come back here so I can kiss you again," the villain said.

The protagonist obliged, even as their brain whirled through all the villain had said.

How long had it been since someone touched the villain like this? Since the villain let themselves be touched? It was clearly something they craved, enjoyed, just as clearly as it was something more complicated than that too.

They stopped thinking as the kiss deepened. They drew themselves a little closer still, ever-mindful of where they put their hands, and only more conscious now because of that of the way the villain's body responded beneath them. The shiver of breath. The thud of their heart. The way the villain pressed in, only to pull back again, like a starved creature that could only sustain itself in small increments before it became too much.

It was intoxicating. It felt just a little like power. A good, perfect, brilliant sort of power.

As they broke apart, the villain studied them for another long moment, expression unreadable, but eyes almost soft.

"Come on," the villain murmured. "Play time's over. Let's go."

#to me this is Johnny and Finch #for anyone who knows those characters #hero x villain #villains and heroes #protagonist and antagonist #heroes and villains #villain x hero #writing #story #touch-starved #i like the thought of a more complicated touch-starvation where the villain is very much touch-starved #but also very much eager to be in control of how they are touched

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salty-an-disco · 2 months

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This is the story of a man named– wait… you’re not Stanley! And this isn’t–

Hmmm. Well, this is awkward. Wouldn’t you know about a man named Stanley? Works in an office, likes to push buttons– No?

Oh, well, while this isn’t my usual script, it does seem that there is a story to be found here. Isn’t that nice? Oh, and would you look at that– It seems like you’re the hero of it! How fun!

OK, let’s see–

You’re on a path in the woods. And at the ending of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess.

You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it’ll be the end of the world.

Oooohh, concise, but immediately intriguing. With a nice twist of expected roles. I like it!

#slay the princess #the stanley parable #tsp Narrator #stp protagonist #Displaced Narrator AU #< how imma be tagging anything related to this AU #choose your own adventure #crossover au #stp fanfic #Sal Writes

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unexpectedgeese · 1 year

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Thinkin abt how ORV explores the power of stories as a tool of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Kimcom uses stories to inspire hope and break cycles, whereas the Star stream uses them to shift the narrative and keep the cycle going. KDJ loving a story enough to survive vs. the constellations consuming them as food, uncaring towards the suffering involved. HSY and crew writing a happy ending in the epilogue vs. the Star stream violently course correcting Shin Yoosung (the disaster one) into acting out a tragedy. the 73rd Demon realm dehumanizing people SO MUCH that they didn’t even have names or identities. Olympus creating Heracles AS A STORY WEAPON from old myths to convince incarnations to buy into the system and strive for the top. Gigantomachia in general tbh.

#orv #yeah I could write more but. too many thoughts in my head oof ouchie #I've thought a shit ton about reading ORV as abt trauma #but on my reread I've been looking more at what it has to say about capitalism/society/opressive cycles in general #and how the author/reader/protagonist roles play into that #omniscient reader's viewpoint #I don't usually tag my posts in both ORV tags but I like this one sooo.

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switch-kun · 1 year

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Poor baby, does it hurt so much? Not being able to move or speak for yourself? Having the vibe on your clit and those pretty ribbons wrapped around your wrists? Barely having my hands on you, which is what you waited so, so long for, all because you were so impatient? Touching your 'lil cunt as if you couldn't just wait for me to fuck you? I bet it hurts to be so overstimulated, so tortured— and aww, are you squirming? But isn't this what you wanted? To be fucked like the bitch you are? Oh, that's a shame. You brought this upon yourself, darling. If only you hadn't pushed my buttons all day then you wouldn't be here right now. If only you behaved, stayed patient, asked for it nicely, but no— you just had to be a little brat, with your tight-ass outfits and oh-so-innocent attitude. Acting all clumsy and bending over to tempt me, giving me that rogue look that I know all too well. I'm not that gullible, baby. So you fucked up big time, and now, you'll just have to endure your loss. Let's see how many orgasms it'll take for you to reach your breaking point.

#i'm sorry but overstimulation is just one of my favorite things #and honestly i was second-thinking of dropping this post because of how embarassing it sounds oml #i sound like a poorly written fanfic protagonist wNDIHBHIBP #but nonetheless it was an interesting thought to write down before bed #wlw nsft #lesbian nsft #sapphic nsft

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project-sekai-facts · 26 days

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sorry if this is a dumb question, but i just read the main stories and if the niigo sekai is mafuyu's, why is kanade the unit leader? /gen

Kanade is the actual founder and leader of the nightcord music group, but it was also probably to avoid giving away the (admittedly given away by marketing) twist of Mafuyu being OWN and the mystery girl that Miku needs Kanade to save being Mafuyu from the get go. If Mafuyu was the face of the group then there wouldn’t be any point in writing the ‘surprise’ reveal in because we would know the entire time, and the niigo story would probably be very different.

#asks #also it’s hard to explain quite why but it’s much harder to write mafuyu as the protagonist and main pov for the main story #bc of how she’s characterised during it #the vsinger main story shows her side of things and while interesting would be a bit of a slog to have several chapters of it and then have #kanade / mizuki / ena trying to get through to mafuyu in the background

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ganymedesclock · 9 months

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Any genre of game can have a disabled protagonist if you aren't a coward / willing to put the work in, but I'm currently batting around the concept of specifically point-and-click puzzle adventure games with a highly disabled protagonist.

Often, the pace of such games tends sedate and contemplative. Your character is seldom in a hurry; they are mostly faced by trying to figure out how to accomplish a particular task, and if a deadline is imposed, it's an extra thing to juggle.

This could be an interesting presumption to incorporate from a watsonian lens, through the viewpoint of a protagonist who may have limited mobility, pain and/or fatigue that make hurrying punitively inaccessible. It'd let the player familiarize themselves with early puzzles if the first thing they have to figure out how to do is say, get their player character out of bed in an environment where they don't have their usual fallbacks.

(also if this is also a walking adventure, it'd let you dodge accusations of the insurmountable waist-high fence- your intrepid hero MIGHT be able to climb over those bricks if they didn't have two bad hips and a walker to worry about!)

#writing ruminations #speaking broadly I think there should be way more games that have disabled protagonists and directly incorporate the protagonist's conditio #into game mechanics and structure #like that game Endoparasitic that had the basic premise your character has only one remaining limb (right arm)#and how this affects the structure of everything you have to do #I recall also hearing about a game where you play a blind protagonist navigating a haunted house #where tapping your cane to identify your surroundings is both instrumental and risky as the hostile forces can hear it

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comradekatara · 5 months

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the thing about the adult gaang movie is even if it’s somehow done really well, i don’t wanna see aang and katara as adults, that will actually make me really sad. whereas if sokka is the protagonist that’s fine because i already think everyone should heal and find fulfillment after the war except for sokka. i think sokka should get worse. i think sokka should continue collecting mental illnesses like they’re pokemans creatures. a qing dynasty court intrigue film with sokka navigating ba sing se politics (and iroh can feature as he dispenses occasional wisdom. but sokka is just like “call your son”), or a xai bau spy thriller (except tbh this one would work better as a novel), or even just. a mai and sokka roadtrip movie in the style of an early 2000s stoner comedy (this one would have no artistic merit but it’s also probably the best idea ive ever had). these are but a few examples of the many ideas i have for movies that put my favorite guy through hours of suffering without having to depict my other favorite guys as anything other than the precious babies i know and love.

#‘pokemans creatures’ is what i call them to piss my brother off so much #aang and katara are BABIES #do not ROB ME OF THAT #everyone in the world must age or die #but katara and aang!!!! are immortalized forever in babydom!!!!!!#why would you ruin that!!!!!!!#(okay im actually just going thru a separate crisis here wrt my brothers but don’t. we’re not talking about that okay)#also i think if you wanna make a movie that’s ‘darker’ and ‘for older audiences’ just make sokka the protagonist and boom problem solved #last time sokka got to be the protagonist he attempted suicide at the human rights abuses volcano #his mind is a dark dark place ok!#but also mai & sokka stoner comedy. is anyone writing this down? u should be writing this down #idk how to tag this #sokka #i guess?#postwargaang #also #bc obv these all happen in my complex tapestry of post war developments #gene yang could never #ask me about any one of these points for elaboration (PLEASE)

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regicidal-defenestration · 5 months

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Does anyone else think about David Ward in Oh God Oh Fuck Oh No Where Am I This Time Why Does This Keep Happening To Me does anyone else remember when the TSV team did that anyway

When I arrive at the office, I am informed that, to thank me for all my hard work, I am being sent on an all expenses paid holiday abroad, leaving in ten minutes. It's odd, because I don't ever remember working here. Not in the sense that the place is unfamiliar, but that for the past five months I have been splitting my time between reading books and doing the crossword, and nobody seems to have noticed yet.

Or, the one where David wins a work trip to the Peninsula

#this is set slightly pre eskew 17 Reflection and at some point around tsv eps 35/36 #the silt verses #i am in eskew #had to de-lemony snicket this one after reading 9 SoUE books in maybe 2 weeks wreaked untold havoc on my writing style #not that theres anything wrong with that but david is not snicket-y protagonist; a phrase which here describes how - even though he has #suffered misfortune after misfortune - it was not at the hands of the villainous count olaf; unless olaf is able to disguise himself as a #city buildings and all #writing

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whetstonefires · 8 months

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The thing about the Shazam! (Captain Marvel but they don't have the rights to call him that) movie is that overall it's pretty good? Even if I question the pacing choices made in terms of screentime breakdown for '14yo boys making mortifying life choices and humorously failing judgment calls' vs. 'character development wrt to literally anything else about this fairly large cast.'

It's hokey; it should be. It's got some decent themes and fun character bits and set up good solid hero/villain parallels to subvert.

But.

But it massively clotheslined itself with a major storytelling fuckup connected to the opening hook mystery, whose resolution is meant to be the emotional inflection point of the whole film.

Because the thing is, this movie chose to be slightly interesting in how it approached its 'family' themes. In a variation on 'family of choice' (since your foster family are in fact assigned by the government and Billy not having a choice about living with them only about trusting them is a major story element) it went for the more nuanced and kind of interestingly grimy take that the people who are actually in your life giving a shit about you matter, if you let them, and that you need to stop giving the people who failed to love you power over your happiness.

Which is not a bad premise at all! As messages for a movie about a kid being sent to a group home go, that's the most upbeat you could possibly get and still be tied to reality.

The Vasquez couple are written and played well in these terms too because they really, genuinely care, and are making so much effort, but as system graduates themselves they never had competent parenting modeled for them and god does it show.

And the mental health problems of the kids who got enough characterization to have them were similarly...realistic in a best-case-scenario sort of way.

But! Still with the but! Even though they pulled off a lot of this fairly touchy premise rather well, there's a crack in the foundation that makes the whole movie kind of collapse on a thematic level.

Because the movie (following the prologue introducing the villain's backstory) opens with a juicy emotional hook where small Billy is separated from his mother at a Christmas fair and never sees her again.

Cut to some years later, establishing status quo scene, he's a Troubled Youth rebelling against the system in an endless quest to find his mother and go home. He is committing minor felonies to get access to police information about women surnamed Batson so he can go to their houses because eventually one of them has to be his mom.

His case worker after he's picked up again refers to his mother as 'someone who clearly didn't want you,' which Billy rejects as bullshit, and he's valid! Because that is not what you say when you have actual information. That's a surmise. That's a sentence that says Child Protective Services and the police couldn't find her either.

Especially because you don't immediately chuck a kid into foster care because he's found unattended. Maybe you do that later, after a lengthy period of oversight, depending on his mom's reaction to having him returned and her race and socioeconomic status and apparent mental health and so forth. But you don't just not contact her, and you definitely don't refuse to tell the kid about the result once you have.

The only normal situation where an accessible record exists of a kid's original parentage but it's denied to the kid is in sealed adoptions, which are a formal procedure that clearly didn't happen here. There is every indication in this opening sequence that his mom was never found.

Which means she's a missing person. Either because they located the correct Billy Batson and his adult never came back to their house (which would suggest foul play or some other drama) or because despite being old enough to be in school and knowing his own name, no one could find evidence that Billy existed prior to turning up at that street carnival.

Which would constitute a very mysterious situation! What is he, from a cult? Another dimension? Did someone (in the social worker's proposed scenario, Billy's mom) erase all record of her kid somehow? Was magic involved?

So: the way we're introduced to this scenario, there's a legitimate weird mystery here that none of the adults in Billy's life care enough about to do anything but tell him to write it off, the way they have. That his missing person clearly did it on purpose.

Billy's being ridiculous because if what he's trying would work then he wouldn't need to do it; his social worker could have arranged a meeting years ago. So it's a useless self-destructive behavior he needs to let go. But he's valid, in that he's being very obviously failed by the system and is doing the only thing he can think of to try to address his situation for himself.

And then! The Big Reveal is that his mom has been living under her maiden name in the same city as him this whole time.

Which the Gamer Kid Who Turns Out In This Scene To Be A Hacker (he's about 10) learned by. Breaking into a federal database.

So he goes to her house and it turns out. She'd been a teen mother and her babydaddy walked out after marrying her, and her parents cut her off, and she was depressed and felt like a bad mother so. When she saw the cops had her kid, she just walked away. And she wants to believe he's been happy and better off without her.

And the emotional arc of the film rests on how Billy comes to terms with this. With the fact that his past will never take him back and he has to learn to find joy in himself and his present situation and his future.

Having let go of that idea, he's able to emotionally commit to his gaggle of foster siblings and realize that unlike the villain, who was obsessed with punishing the people who never loved or accepted him, or the wizard who was focused on finding The Perfectly Worthy Champion, what you needed to be good and not lost was to be part of a mutually supportive group, like the wizard Shazam was before he and his siblings were betrayed. And then they can be a superhero team, woo!

And that part is actually depicted fairly well, all things considered!

But the problem is that the audience, to vibe with this properly, has to roll with the revelation that Billy was wrong to cling to the mystery of his vanished, beloved mother and the fantasy of going home again.

We have to be willing to participate in the idea that the Resistant Child Subjected To Foster Care was in the wrong.

And he wasn't! He wasn't wrong! His understanding of the situation was flawed but it should not have been flawed in this manner.

Because this scenario as it's depicted doesn't make any sense. The cops do not just keep your kid without following up if you fail to collect him from the baggage claim. CPS does not fail to provide a kid with the readily available evidence that he's been voluntarily surrendered to them, when he keeps running off trying to go home.

Why would they do that, after all? Billy's misbehavior was a huge hassle for them. They gained nothing by denying him access to his mother and the information about her that was, you recall, sitting totally available in a government database that could be hacked by a random 10 year old asian-american orphan. They just...made their own lives harder for no reason, while extending the suffering of a child in their care.

If the cops tried to return him back when and she said 'no i left him with you on purpose please keep him' maybe she gets prosecuted for child abandonment and maybe not, but either way, billy would know about it.

But if the screenwriters had made it clear early on that this information had been offered to him and he'd chosen not to believe it, they couldn't get a proper Reveal at the end because it would just be Billy being unable to continue pretending something the audience had known not to believe all along.

And they couldn't cram a good reason for the scenario they'd set up into the space they'd accorded it.

So they were just like, it's fine, if we cram enough cliches into this space people will react to the familiarity and go 'ah yes i know this one' and go along with it, and not notice that this isn't an actual coherent reply to the question that was set up an hour ago and therefore is emotionally unsatisfying somehow.

Anyway this is an important storytelling guideline: if you put in a mystery to control either the actual plot or, even worse, the emotional storyline, that mystery and its resolution have to make internal sense.

If you pull the Real Situation out of your ass, and it's not a matter of red herrings or That One Fact you didn't have that makes all the rest fit together differently, but in fact no one involved could have figured this out and especially if the people who did say this in the first place had no good basis for it, but still get narratively awarded the Correct trophy in a way that contributes to the thematic climax so the audience has to care. Then that will not get good results. It will make it hard to deliver on your intended themes.

Some people will not notice or care! This is true! But a lot of people will, and you'll get enough of a better punch even with the other folks, if the setup and denouement fit together properly and don't require reaching, to matter.

And when people do notice at all, rather than their naturally flowing along with the climax you're steering toward and experiencing A Story, there will be a tendency to notice you standing there placing roadsigns toward the Intended Emotional Response, and call you a hack.

People call out plotholes way too vigorously sometimes, so I want to be clear: it's not the lack of supporting logic I mind. It's that the active presence of illogic, of what's presented as a chain but is broken along its length, means the central character arc intersects with the core theme in a noticeably forced way. Which is bad craftsmanship on a meaningful level.

There is a loss of cohesion where you cannot satisfactorily resolve how the scenario we were initially shown came to be superimposed over the revealed truth, because that relationship between elements is very important to making a 'revelation' storyline land, you know?

In this case it's particularly vexing to me because the last-minute asspull and its thematic weight reaches back around and at the last minute moves the whole movie thematically to the other side of the line wrt whether it's approaching Billy, our protagonist, as a subject with whom we're supposed to identify or an object whom we're supposed to observe.

It makes all the high-school-freshman-posing-as-adult gags retroactively less funny because we were now more explicitly laughing at him, and takes a lot of the depth out of the emotionally sincere moments.

Up to that point I had really appreciated how, despite wavering that way, Shazam! hadn't actually fallen to the MCU Spiderman temptation to dehumanize its protagonist. Which seems to arise out of this weird tendency I've noticed to assume the natural sentiment of adults toward adolescents is bemused contempt, and that therefore if they ask their audience of paying grownups to empathize too closely with a teen hero instead of setting him and his Immaturity up as a clown for our amusement, they'll get themselves banished to the Children's Fiction ghetto.

And, of course, if they'd been fully committed to one side or the other of 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to closely' or 'Billy is a protagonist the viewer relates to distantly,' they wouldn't have gotten snarled up about how much information to hand over when.

Committing to either option (giving us only as much information as Billy had and constructing a story that was solid from a being-Billy angle or giving us more information than Billy and operating confidently in the realm of dramatic irony) could have worked quite well. But because of the mixed signals and unstable narrative distance, they wound up with a distinctly weakened finale.

#hoc est meum #in real life things happen that you have no good reason to expect all the time #but in real life we know they happened for some kind of reason as in #causality exists and even in situations where we can't dig into the chain #we have cause to understand that it's there #in fiction they happened because they'd be convenient #so the rules of what information can be available and how you frame new information being revealed exist #to keep the audience from feeling jerked around #you have to earn people's trust and if you lose it #that limits the kind of results you can get #when writing fiction one of your tools is the reader's mind #if you give them reason not to allow you free use of it your composition contracts #screenwriting #shazam #and like in this case there's a profound betrayal of the protagonist and thus of the audience who connected with him wrapped up in it

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salty-an-disco · 2 months

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[Enter the basement]

Seems like you decided to ignore the only weapon offered to you for the purpose of slaying a princess, the main reason you were sent here.

Voice of the Hero: We weighed our options, and decided the best course of action was to not assume the worst and go in already guarded. No need to sound so judgy.

I’m not. I was simply restating your decision so that it’s clear to everyone what exactly you decided. And how that decision decisively seems to go against the very nature of the single task put on you.

You know. As a narrator should.

Voice of the Hero: Sure.

The door to the basement creaks open, revealing a staircase faintly illuminated by a flickering light that seems to be coming from the room below. You can’t make out much of the room downstairs from here but faint shadows. There’s an eeriness in the air that doesn’t seem quite like the standard basement eeriness. The smell of ink seems stronger here.

Voice of the Hero: Is… this where the princess lives?

It would seem– ah. Here’s our answer.

Her voice carries up the stairs.

“Is someone there?”

Voice of the Hero: She sounds… calm. Somewhat robotic, though; like reading something out of a script. Definitely not how I expected a world-ending threat to sound like.

Yes, you’d think she’d at least try to make her lines sound more emotive. Guess her time in this basement might’ve drained the life out of her, the poor thing. Cooping yourself up in a basement for days on end will do that to you.

Voice of the Hero: She didn’t choose to be here, though.

My point still stands.

#it’s embarrassing how long it took me to get this done. but here it is!#can’t say how frequent updates will be from here on out. as we’re now on a fairly complicated part of the route #slay the princess #Displaced Narrator AU #tsp narrator #voice of the hero #stp princess #stp protagonist #choose your own adventure #crossover au #the stanley parable #stp fanart #tsp fanfic #sal writes

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