I'd like your opinion on a plot point, that could be used to explain the motivation behind one of my characters : Basically, my main character (MC for short) is somehow similar to a very powerful sorceress (she's not one, but it doesn't matter. What matter is that she's very powerful). The thing is that "her powers leak" in various places, and she's trying to recollect them and also do some damage control when needed. Also, at some point, she's going to use these powers to erase a whole city from the map, basically. Before that she meet with people whose leaders are using the leaks of this power to their personal benefit, without being aware of what this power really is, if it's dangerous or not, or where it comes from. They just don't care. In their experiments with it, they hurt the people around them, they manipulate other countries into sending them soldiers and/or humanitarian help in order to get more guinea pigs for the experiments. The MC realises all of this and she helps the common people to take their leaders down. She doesn't do it herself, in the hope that the common people will learn that their freedom and health has a lot of value, and that they won't reproduce the same mistakes as their leaders. But then, these common guys see an opportunity : now they have the power (at least the guys who leaded that rebellion) and they become new leaders who behave even worse than the previous ones. The MC sees that and basically begin to "lose faith in humanity", or at least become much more wary. She still don't want to hurt anyone, but decide that except for health urgencies, she won't provide any help. Moreover, if any of these "people" attempt anything that could disturb what she has to do to prevent more leakage of her powers, she would be much less comprehensive, and probably would not have too many moral issues killing someone if she considers that person goes too far. what do you think ?
When you say 'comprehensive' do you mean something like 'receptive' or 'understanding'? Does this person give a warning to anyone that approaches or does anything that might threaten her methods to contain her powers or does she 'shoot first ask questions later'? It sounds like something like Luke Skywalker in 'The Last Jedi' but he just told people to go away. But it's a common trope of the 'former master that becomes a hermit'. Lancelot is a similar one I guess.
If she's going to reach a sinister end where she's obliterating a city, then there needs to be some sort of moral decline. Your notes here just say that she wants to help and doesn't want to hurt anyone, and that's all pretty docile and generous, i.e., not a decline. You could still make that work if she accidentally destroys the city, but even that should have some sort of dramatic flaw in her character pushing her naivete. You want her to be the agent of her own decline. The catalyst is within her even if an outside influence pushes it to its extreme. If she's really going to strike out deliberately and cause such havoc, then you absolutely need to be shaping her flaw from the beginning. It could even be contained in the plot. Perhaps no one ever collects leaked power because it always ends badly (this is some sort of magical lore), but she is so confident in herself that she attempts it anyway. (Her pride is her flaw.) The result is a corruption arc that accentuates her worst characteristics, which would have been shown in the early chapters.
This ties in with the Marie-Louise von Franz quote I posted a while ago—let me see if I can find it (or just remember it). Something like "It's easy to be a naive idealist or a cynical realist, the real trick is to retain a balanced attitude between the two and not lose the flame." Many naive idealists when exposed to the cruelty of life just jump all the way to jaded cynical nihilism, and lose all empathy or humanity. At least that's the most extreme version. There are levels of it of course. A hero would be somone who has outgrown naive idealism (if they ever had it) without tipping over into hatred and cynicism. The ones who go that way become the villains or antiheroes, depending on their attitude toward other people I suppose.
Having not watched GoT, I will still use Daenerys as an example. In series, she went from recruiting an army of eunuchs, in order the spare the country she wished to rule the barbarity that would follow (i.e. rape from even the victorious army) to burning down half of the city that was to be her capitol. Though it was rushed in the series, there are events that start leading that way, such as the death of close friends, violently, and even the death of two of her dragons, whom she considered her children as she was not able to bear of her own. These people were her counsel and touch-stones on humanity, which had already treated her poorly from the start. "They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," and I would say it would be the failure of those good intentions, and the violence received in response. Your character, while trying to reclaim her power from those who do not want to give it up, may start suffering the same. Her friends and family being harmed and killed as retribution, which results in her pain and anger leading to revenge, and the destruction of an entire city because of it. And that city being destroyed does not even have to be intentional, but just a byproduct of her 'war' against those trying to keep her power for themselves. Whether or not she would feel justified with the outcome, or horrified at her own actions, is up to you.
Sounds like she has become disillusioned. This happens when our experiences don't meet up with our positive assumptions. Meaning is a powerful motivator, and when the meaning we put into things or people is shown to be an illusion, or a delusion, existential confusion results. I suggest you build a positive relationship between her and one of the leaders of the commoners. He/she gains her trust. Then have this person close to her let her down in a significant way. Have the leader betray her. Now, it's personal.
Regarding the villain vs antihero thing: in fact, I think it's both. At some point in the story, she's really benevolent and still naive in some sense, but due to her powers, some think she's some kind of dangerous witch. She always disagrees with that, because according to her "magic does not exist", and "her intentions are not malevolent", as in "she doesn't want to hurt / she wants to help" (at least to some extend). Later in the story, an event (or a succession of events) happens and make her completely lose her mind. I love a lot the idea with the "person close to her that let her down in a significant way". That would totally work, I think, especially if she slowly goes down a spiral. Anyway, when that happen, everyone who said "she's a dangerous witch" would then be able to say "I told you so", because at this point it's pretty much like the Awakening the Sleeping Giant trope or at least something similar. So she actually becomes an antagonist to the people she was trying to help or to those she was neutral towards before that event. Not sure if that completely qualify for a "villain" trope, because in that story, I think things can be quite blurred when it comes to "who is the good/bad guy". It depends on the point of view. I think this would be a really good character arc for her. I said earlier that she's seen as a powerful witch/sorceress but she actually isn't. And that according to her, magic doesn't exist. I'm playing with Arthur C. Clarke magic, in fact. She's not some magical behind, she's just from a very advanced civilisation/culture. Some kind of Precursors trope, basically. And in that culture, behavior she will have to face ceased to exist so long ago that she never experienced them in any way before. Hence, the naivety. In fact, it will happen twice. The first time, she's trying to do damage control, because the leaders of that particular city are ignorant and careless about the powers they try to use, and also stopped listening to her when she began to warn them and to ask them to stop. At the end of this part of the story, the damage is so important that she has no other solution than to bury the region under thick layers of ice, in order to avoid further "power leakage" and spreading the damage even more. The second time is when she goes mad.
I'm a little confused. It seems you're leaving out some important information. Does she destroy the city out of necessity, in order to save the rest of the civilization? If so, I guess that's like a 'lesser of two evils' situation, like the old familiar problem of switching the railroad tracks. If there's a car with 4 people stuck on the tracks and you can push the lever and switch the train to another track to save them, would you do it if there's one person trapped on that track, so your choice deliberately kills that person? It's a situation where there's no clear 'right' choice, both are bad situations, and the real point of it is will you take action to save the 4 if it means you deliberately chose to kill one. The real question would be how she reacts emotionally to what I assume is the need to destroy an entire city full of innocent people. If she does it casually as if their lives don't matter, or if she does it out of annoyance or something then she's a tyrannical mass muderer. If it's a lesser of two evils that she has to perform and it torments her profoundly then I suppose it's more of a Shakespearean tragedy where she's forced to do it to save everyone else. But that would be an emotionally devastating thing to go through, and if she has any decent morals she would be tormented by it for the rest of her life and always feel guilty.
Regarding this subplot, there are two cities involved. One of them is like the capital of a large empire, the other one should be under the control of the capital, but its leaders are trying to gain some kind of independence. When they discover the power leaks of the MC, they see that as an opportunity to declare independence, basically. Thing is, the capital is also aware of power leaks happening in some rare areas all over the world, and have tried more or less successfully to collect them. The capital knows what the other city is planning, and basically set a trap. None of these cities are really innocent. Of course, there are some innocent people in it, at least people who are not involved in what I just described. Regarding the MC, the first time, she obliterates the city trying to get independence, in order to avoid a much larger disaster. So, it's some kind of "lesser of two evils", even if leaders of that city, as well as a good portion of its inhabitants, pissed her off. At that point, she's still able to take rational, "emotionless", decisions. Still, she will do her best to avoid obliterating the city, as she absolutely do not want to do that. And after doing it, something happened to her that makes her lose memory temporarily. I did not planned that it would be caused by an emotional trauma, but why not afterall ? The second time, the original plan was that the people from the capital pissed her off so much that she would get so uncontrollably angry and dangerous that she would temporarily become the villain in the story. But I also like the idea of a person close to her betraying her, so it suddenly becomes much more personal at the same time. So, in summary... The 1st time : she obliterates a city in a lesser of two evils situation, killing a bunch of people, including people that pissed her a lot. But she never wanted to do that (even to the people that pissed her), and she may temporarily lose memory out of the trauma, as a consequence. The second time : in another time/city, something happens that pissed her so much that she becomes the villain... until the people who pissed her find a solution, or until some other event, that would force her to reconsider, happen.
This reminds me of something... Found it!! Click here to read The Dark Phoenix Tapes. It's a bunch of the guys who worked at Marvel in the 80's and were involved in the writing of the X Men stories (including Chris Claremont, the writer, John Byrne, co-writer and penciler, and the editor Jim Shooter). They're discussing the character called Dark Phoenix, who used to be just Phoenix but her power grew out of control and took her over and she destroyed an entire populated planet. After that they were going to just have her get over it and come back a hero, as if nothing happened. But when the editor found out he lost it, because once you destroy billions of innocent lives for selfish reasons there's no coming back. Even if you weren't entirely yourself at the time. Nobody will ever see her as a hero again. Most would consider her a monster. This is something you should consider carefully. They go into it in some depth and it's a fascinating conversation.
That's an interesting read. I was more thinking about something like what happens in the game Asura's Wrath (I don't know if you know that). Basically, the MC in Asura's Wrath at some point gets very angry and lose his mind. Then another character comes up and manage to calm him before he does something too unredeemable. In my case, I thought that something that might work is that, unlike Dark Phoenix, my MC is not some kind of magical entity with inherent super-powers. Instead, she's really more like a regular advanced civilization human. The extra "maybe over-the-top-for-a-single-person" powers comes from her technology that got scattered all over the place. So, anyone can really use that tech. It's just that most of the people wouldn't really know what they are doing and even more people would just see that as magic. For example, maybe at some point she's in the vicinity of an ancient starship. And she needs something to be done, so she starts talking to the ship (a bit like in Star Trek), and the people around her don't recognize that as a discussion between her and the ship, but instead think she's chanting some spell and stuff happen. And if the ship talks back, they'd think the MC was invoking spirits, maybe. So, there's no real situation where my MC can explode out of anger and instantly commit a genocide. It has to be a clearly premeditated plan. Which could sound much more worse, but maybe it's not. It also gives her a lot of time to reconsider. In fact, the only moment a single decision could lead to a genocide is the moment when she only has to "push the last red 'execute' button". If that ever happen, she'd probably immediately realize what she just had done, and would try to cancel her actions right away. Another difference between Dark Phoenix and her is that Dark Phoenix really seem to enjoy doing bad things.
My point was the discussion about the moral implications of the act, and how people would feel about her after she did something like that. Would readers see your character as a monster, and not be able to relate to her, or could she come through it and still be relatable and seem ethical? And I'm not saying you need to take exactly the same path they ended up taking. Obviously the situations are different, as close as they are in a strictly moral sense. But look at the way they thought it through, how they juggled the different possibilities. You should think through the moral situation in your story as much as they did. Try to see it the way readers will.
