Hello everyone! So I was wondering what your thoughts were on the concept of your main character becoming evil. In the context of my story, certain things to my mc that eventually drives him to the breaking point. In which all remorse for anyone in the world becomes almost non existent. My mc is the host of an evil spirit that gives him power beyond anything you can imagine. He uses this power to basically go on a killing spree. More events happen and he eventually becomes the exact opposite character of what he was established to be since the beginning of the story in that everything he does is cruel and soulless and not really what you'd want to root for. He also remains this way for a LONG period of time during the story. Do you guys think it would be unwise to make your main character basically the most unlikeable character for a significant amount of time during the course of the story. I feel people would somewhat lose interest and might not rally behind the character anymore. I don't know really. I feel like I'm taking a risk with this, but I feel that this chapter of his story NEEDS to happen in order for the rest of the story to have more meaning. What do you his think?
I see it all the time when I watch professional wrestling. It gets a huge reaction every now and again, depending on how well you build up the good guy, but if you do it too much, like anything else, it becomes stale. The other key is the moment. Make it sometime when the reader would absolutely not expect it. Say for example he is holding the hand of one of the other good guys trying to save his life from a long fall, and he just let's go but the other good guys didn't see it and he lies and says the guy just slipped. Similar to what the guy did in the Jack the Giant Slayer movie.
Evil is one thing, but unlikeable is another. Crowly, the replacement King of Hell in the Supernatural TV series is evil as all heck, but is quite cuddly in his own way. So it depends how you work his character. But I doubt if total bastard in every respect with no other MC to balance it off would be hard to keep going for a significant portion of the story.
I suppose it could work. Depends on the reader and how temporarily evil you want to make your hero. I remember watching Superman 3 and getting a kick at watching bad Superman do looney things like blow out the Olympic torch but if he got too evil, could you ever like him in the end? I don't know. What would be the point of making him so evil? Plus, anyone that fights against him would look like the 'villain' in his eyes and readers would either be rooting for him to be stopped or egging him on. Either way you could wind up pissing off a reader - one for making him evil in the first place - two for not keeping up the violent joyride.
It's quite interesting. I think the initial change could be very interesting and make the story exciting. But i also feel that if it dragged on too long it would get old, and you'd need him to have a believable motive to go back to being good if that was your plan is. Could be tricky, but could again be interesting to explore the remorse and guilt afterwards... I always enjoy stories with twists, and have read good books where the second protagonist turns evil.
It has been pulled off successfully, so it all depends on the execution. Also, it depends on the point of view as well. Two examples of villain protagonists, from two different medias, are Dorian Gray from the novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, and Light Yagami from the anime Death Note.
While I agree that Light Yagami is a villain he justifies it by only killing bad people or killers, or by "making the world a better place". The OP is planning on making his character totally evil with no remorse by the sounds of it. Still possible I am sure, just perhaps harder to pull off? Not disagreeing, I agree with you, just food for thought.
If it was from the perspective of the character himself? Yes, it would be very difficult, and would take a lot of work to make that transition.
See, that's what this story arc is actually. It's the journey of the mc rediscovering himself and figuring out who he really he is and what his role in the world is. A story of redemption where, in the end of the story arc, he becomes the person he was before. I guess I'll give you some back story so this can, hopefully, make things clearer. So the main character, who's name is Rush, is the host of an evil spirit who, before being sealed inside a human, almost succeeded in literally destroying the world. Of course until he was stopped by being sealed inside a human in order for it's power to be contained. The host is called the wielder. Rush is the wielder, but before he was the wielder thousands of people who lived before his birth were the wielder. There can only be one wielder alive at a time. So when one dies the host is instantaneously transferred , randomly, to another person. The seal didn't exactly work as planned and the evil spirit was able to take over the bodies of his host and use them to finish job the he started centuries ago. So every wielder before Rush, despite their best efforts, couldn't contain the power that lurked inside them and quickly became puppets to the spirit's will. The wielder was killed everytime he lost control. Some wielders used the power selfishly for their own personal gain. The world had become ravaged after centuries of the wielder laying waist to it. So the world and it's seven nations finally had enough and decided to join forces in order to prevent the world from being destroyed any further. They thought Rush would be the same as every wielder that came before him so their plan was to kill the next wielder before ever having a chance to be taken over. To kill the next wielder by ANY means necessary. Rush was that next wielder... Rush was the wielder since birth and had been targeted by the world since birth. However he was accompanied by his friend Jack, a descendant of the very first wielder who was the person who preformed the seal. Jack protected Rush from the world in hopes that he would be the first wielder to overcome the spirits will and use it's power for good. Jack had the ability to suppress the spirits will from overcoming Rush, should it ever attempt to. Thus, making Rush a normal 14 year old boy. Rush and Jack were the bestest of friends and had a bond that was unbreakable. Jack is all Rush ever had since birth and had never had any friends other than jack in his life. Rush was a fugitive since birth, always hiding and running everyday of his life in fear of being killed at any moment before ever having a chance to prove himself a hero to the world. That's what he was he always wanted be, what he dreamed of being ever since he was very little. A person people can look up to, a person who put others before himself who would never give up until the day was saved. But to be more clear, he just wanted a life where he didn't have to worry about being shot in the head every five minutes. He wanted people to see him as one of then instead of a monster who kills for pleasure, as the world believes him to be. He just wanted a normal life, an opportunity that was taken from him since birth. So fast forward waaay into the story and at this point Jack had been killed by the world's armies. This is what started his descent into darkness. He embarked on a road of vengeance and after many other events take place he slowly became the very person he tried prove he was not. He became a monster. He had nothing left. Jack was dead, his friends abandoned him, and his aunt becky was killed by the world's armies as well. Everything that happened to him since birth, after losing everything and everyone he ever loved by the people of the world, he finally lashed out in rage and let out all of the emotions he kept bottled up inside of him onto the world. After nearly destroying a city, and after battling his friends who tried to stop him and talk him out of his rage, the world had but one option in hopes of killing him. They decided to drop a nuke on him, and so they did and Rush simply watched the nuke fall from the sky as he contemplated about what he wanted to do. So his plan was to teleport away from the blast as soon as it hit the ground. He did, and the world thought they killed him. He was dead and the world rejoiced in their success. However Rush was still alive, but he decided to disappear from the world. To ”hang up the cape”. He knew the world wouldn't come after him anymore. They all thought he was dead and so did his friends. Now was his chance to live a life of his own, and took that chance. This is where the story arc begins. We see him 3 years later and from here we see his journey as he slowly but surely becomes the Rush he was before. At the end of this story arc he realizes that the person he always dreamt of being was the person he was from the very beginning. He just didn't see it until after this story arc. It's a story of redemption and something that I believe will develop his character greatly. Sorry for ENORMOUS reply, I geet lost when talking about this story.
It's not really related I guess, but I spot a plot-hole. Why does everyone want to kill Rush in order to kill the evil spirit as, if they do, the spirit gets transferred instantaneously to another person. Might want to fix that, maybe say they've found a way to kill the spirit (and its wielder) for good. I spot another potential issue too. Obviously, you want your readers to be rooting for Rush, and want him to survive and overcome his enemies, but, in this case, Rush's death is actually the thing that'll save the world. So, in a way, the readers may actually start rooting for the people trying to kill your MC.
Ok so, with the first one, the world's plan is to kill the next wielders before they ever have a chance to be taken over. When they kill Rush, they won't stop there, they will continue to do this for all of the wielders that are still to come. They've made a special team who's sole mission is to kill the wielders. Like you said there's no way to kill the spirit. For the second one, the thing with that is, the wielder doesn't actually have any power until he or she themselves fuse their spirit with that of the spirit inside them. However the spirit is still able to break the seal slightly in order to take over the spirit and the body of his host. Which has happened with every wielder who'd ever existed, the world's reasoning as to why they want to kill Rush is, who's to say this won't happen with Rush. So they'll kill him before he gets taken over. Now you say they might root for the world instead of Rush. That's not really the case in that Rush is not at all a bad person. With the help of Jack, he is incapable of being taken over, so the world really has nothing to worry about so long as Jack is still alive. But the world doesn't know that and they will never get a chance to know considering they will shoot both Rush and Jack on sight, without giving them a chance to explain. That's the orders they were given. What I didn't mention in my previous post is after the decision to take on the mission of finding the wielder and killing him; the world underwent martial law and most of the cities in the world are in martial law. The world now is in a dictatorship and the dictators ate the higher-ups in the worlds government. Innocent people are being killed, executed, imprisoned, and being separated from their families because the world tries so desperately to uncover any information possible on the whereabouts of the wielder. And if that means nuking an entire city with high amount of population, they will gladly do that. The world became corrupted, filled with government officials who only want power to rule as a superior who makes the rules, army soldiers who don't care about the lives of other people, and some underground bosses of organized crime who smuggle goods to and from cities who are sanctioned off from the outside world. The world is just a bunch of corrupt assholes, and in the context of the story I make that very clear and give you reason to not want to root for the assholes. Rush wants to stop this madness and essentially save the world from itself. Also a GIANT plot point in the story is that the world isn't the only ”villain” in the story, and there are other villains who's target IS the world. The only person with enough power to stop these guys is Rush. One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post is that before any of this happened and before the evil spirit every showed it's face to the world, he was only a legend, and legend foretold the spirit to be a being of peace who would come to save the world if it ever went into chaos. Rush wants to be the first wielder who stays true to that legend since he basically IS the spirit. I guess another villain would be the spirit itself for trying to break the seal and destroy all of mankind for reasons I won't say because it world this too long... There is SOOOO much more things that would the few subjects I tried to explain in this reply. The little explanations I gave you in this reply give no justice to what's actually going on in the story and what's actually the reasoning and motives for some of the characters. Telling you the ins and outs of the story and giving you all the nooks and crannies and villains and motives and ALL of the other things would take WAY too long to explain lol.... Sorry for the long reply...
But, unless I'm misinterpreting this and it is the case, there's no set "path" the spirit will take, you don't know who the next wielder will be until the spirit is transferred randomly (key word there) once its previous host has been slain. Therefore, the spirit is still going to keep hopping from one host to the next, which means the world's plan will actually result in them killing everyone in the world, which isn't a very good plan. Perhaps you could say the spirit can only live inside a certain type of person and, if there are none left in the world, it simply dies. People have discovered what this type is and so set out to kill everyone who fits the bill. That would work.
Exactly! Which is why Rush wants to stop this. What you said is almost exactly what Rush has said to Jack at one point. ALSO I would like to add that when a wielder dies the spirit isn't transferred from one person to the next instantaneously. It takes a few years. Sometimes it might take longer than 10 years. Something the world will fight so desperately to have. A few years to rebuild, a few years to live without a constant threat looming over them. So once the spirit goes into the other host, it's time for the world's forces to mobilize once again. I would like to add that the very first wielder sealed the spirit inside a human in the hopes that someone would be able to figure out why the spirit is so angry and control it's power. That is one of Rush's missions as the wielder. Look at it this way, if the spirit is no longer evil, there is no reason for the world to kill the wielder anymore. Therefore people won't have to be scared anymore, the world's martial law won't be needed and the world can dually live in peace.
Well see, there is this mode that the wielder is able to go into. His or her eyes will go blue, which signifies that part of the seal has been broken and the spirit's will and power is leaking out. When the eyes glow blue it means the wielder's body is being taken over by the spirit and will eventually BECOME the spirit if left in that mode for too long. Sooo what I'm saying is, when the wielder goes into this mode there is no prison in this world or any other that can contain him.
Everything is cliched in the end. There is no original thought. Someone somewhere has already thought of your idea. Also I like this idea. Infact that is what I am doing in my story I am writing. Making a hero into a villian is a great! Just imagine all the great heroes that became exceptional villians, I think the best known is Two-Face from the batman cartoons.
How has no-one mentioned Breaking Bad yet? IMO the most successful application of hero-villain in a good long time.
Completely True. But I myself have not watched Breaking Bad, as I am not inclined to watch television. I like books and Computer Games more.
True. Hence why I am avoiding it. Last show I got into was Full Metal Alchemist and Firefly. And I binged on that for two weeks.
I was going to mention breaking bad, but then he wasn't really a hero in the first place, in fact he was already going towards villain.
Perhaps not 'hero' as such, but he certainly transforms from the character the audience is rooting for, to one that they almost despise.
