Rating: This chapter is rated T for Teen, any following chapters may change in rating
Warnings: Dave gets his own warning, brief mentions of abuse, wounds, medical treatment, shady people, explosions, dead bodies, and illusions to the Equalizer 2
Summary: You have been picked up by some government agent and taken to a remote location. This place has been roped off by police and no one else has been permitted to enter. It was just a storm. What could’ve happened to warrant this kind of reaction?
A/N: Welcome to the first Meeting Him prompt! Your adventure begins here where it all ended for your chosen man. More choices will come as my mutuals write to this, and if we get more writers, then more choices will come!
Ahhh shit this is making me smile so much! Dave York’s character is so great, and you’ve written him extremely well too Naomi! The story you have created… Oh my! I want more already and I’m going to have the absolute pleasure of writing my own andreading other’s interpretations! Cannot wait to see all of this unfold.
Darling! Look at your wicked sorcery of smarty pants skills!! Choose Your Own Adventure Game is fucking awesome!
we’re all simps for women with swords, and I love a good female villain. but there are some ways that i think female villains can be really great and certain tropes that i think can be harmful.
this is just based on my personal opinion and amateur experience - i’m not a professional writer, so always do your own research! i’m also always open to friendly debate and constructive feedback :)
also, @/bluebxlle_writer on instagram also has an awesome post on writing female villains and their account is generally wonderful, so go and check that out too!
make them flawed
i have another entire post on this, but writing Strong Female Characters often means that your women are completely flawless - they win every fight, they don’t let themselves be tricked, they see every obstacle coming. not only is this unrealistic, it makes for an incredibly flat character.
making your female villains flawed proves that women can be strong and still fail, and gives your protagonist the opportunity to succeed sometimes as well.
make them emotional
i included this specifically for female villains, because once again, while creating strong women it’s very easy to make them emotionless and stoic. but when your villains feel love and despair and hope and excitement and sorrow, it makes them more human. it also again removes expectations that strong women need to have no emotion in order to be perceived as strong.
a three-dimensional backstory
just because your villain is a woman, her backstory doesn’t have to be losing a significant other. let them be driven by emotion, but don’t let that emotion be approval from men or love for another man. a female villain can have as complex stories and motivations as male villains, such as revenge, immortality, power, or even greed - not just love.
“femme fatale” characters
“femme fatale” is a character archetype of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman ensnares her lovers and leads them into traps. she essentially hypnotises them with her beauty and takes advantage of their attraction to her.
the hyper-sexualisation of female villains is something that really bothers me, and while i make many jokes about being attracted to women with swords, this once again comes under the idea of women being solely made for love and/or sex.
make your female villains diverse. let them be ugly and gory and ruthless and maybe aro/ace and let them have more skill than just seduction, because women do not exist for male pleasure.
make sure they’re not subservient to male villains
lastly, almost all female villains are subservient to male villains, which diminishes their agency and individual power. let your female villain be a villain in her own right, without serving men!
my search history ranges from “how much did a mango cost in mumbai in 1919” to “which damaged artery can threaten life” and honestly i feel bad for whichever FBI agent is spying on me
we’re all suckers for a good romance, but quite often the characters just don’t vibe together and there is nothing more disappointing than that. any good romance should be one in which the reader genuinely wants the characters to be together, and i hope this helps figure it out!
disclaimer: i am not a professional author and everything here is based on personal experience and preference. i also have literally no experience with romantic relationships; this is all based on fiction.
give them obstacles
“why can’t they be together now?” is the question that you must always be asking about your couples, and if there is no clear answer, then something is wrong.
there should be a legitimate conflict keeping them apart. the classic one is romeo and juliet, where they are rivals, and nina and matthias are the same. with kaz and inej, it was their trauma. cardan bullied jude in the cruel prince and jo saw laurie as a friend in little women. make sure that there is a conflict that makes sense for the characters so that tensions rise and there is relief when they finally overcome it!
give them chemistry
don’t force the romance, let it come naturally. chemistry can be any combination of banter, physical attraction, common interests, longing glances, arguments, bonding moments, and friendship or alliances.
obviously depending on what sort of tropes you’re using, the combination will be different. but there has to be some kind of attraction between your characters that makes them feel like more than friends. multiple times i’ve read books where it feels like the characters are being forced to kiss each other by the author, and i realise this is incredibly vague advice, but let them play out their narratives in your head! don’t force them to do things that don’t seem to be working.
and my number one romance rule is The Kiss Rule: if they have to kiss for the reader to know they’re in love, then they’re not really in love.
give them grief
this kind of comes along with the ‘obstacles’ point, but let the fact that they cannot be together offer some sort of grief to the characters. or let the fact that they are together tear the characters apart.
<mark of athena spoilers> percy literally fell into hell for annabeth (yes my standards for men are too high) and honestly, that seems like a pretty important obstacle. but also percy’s fatal flaw is loyalty, which means that he will go way too far to stick by his friends’ side.
make it slow burn
even if your characters are attracted to each other at ford sight, don’t let them get together immediately. this comes hand in hand with my point about obstacles. make sure there is a reason the two aren’t together, and make it a g o n i s i n g.
add in a few *almost* kisses, build the tension, and let it drag out enough that the reader feels genuine satisfaction when they finally get together!
hi everyone! today’s post is about creating sympathetic villains, because let’s be honest, the antagonist is the best part of any story /hj. a sympathetic villain is essentially one whose intentions are understandable, but whose actions are not. i hope this post helps!
disclaimer: i am not a professional writer and everything here is based on personal experience and opinion. i am always open to respectful discourse and constructive criticism!
give them reasons
and i don’t necessarily mean a tragic past. give them genuinely sympathetic reasons. maybe they want to save the world by burning it down. maybe they want to wage war on the politicians that have denied them life. maybe they want to secure peace for the people in their country, if they’re a ruler. or maybe they’ve been denied and ignored their entire life and just want to be recognised.
whatever your character’s motivation, it should be something that the reader can sympathise with.
give them a past
yes, we all love characters with a tragic backstory, but don’t stop at ‘their parents were killed when they were young’ or 'their girlfriend betrayed them and now they’re a bad person’ (yes this is me attacking the shadow and bone tv show no im not sorry). any character’s backstory should have depth and reason to it.
take loki from the first avengers movie, for example. he’s a sympathetic villain because we have seen him before in thor movies and we know his relationship with his adoptive father and brother. he was constantly pushed aside and watched his mother die in front of him, neither of which could have been fun. and his relationship with thor is a really strong dynamic that makes the viewer want him to get something out of the conflict.
his past gives him context and reason and the depth of it makes him seem like a character rather than a symbol, which made it easier for the viewer to sympathise.
give them humanity
make your antagonists funny. make them awkward. make them bad at flirting. make them walk into a grocery store and not understand how the self check-out works. i understand the appeal of having an all-powerful fantastical being be the villain, but if your aim is to create a sympathetic one, it’s important that they are shown to be human because that’s what allows the reader to relate to them.
i know i’m using all marvel examples, but if you take hela from thor: ragnarok - she is undoubtedly the evil antagonist, but she’s funny, for goodness sake. also cate blanchett is gorgeous but that’s unrelated, i just had to point it out.
they are not morally gray
there is a very important difference between a morally gray character and a sympathetic villain. a sympathetic villain is one who is, undoubtedly, a Bad Character - they just have understandable motives. they do the wrong things for the (arguably) right reasons - or their reasons have been corrupted by events and/or people, causing the reader to sympathise with them.
a morally gray character, on the other hand, often has the wrong reasons and justifies them anyway. they do a combination and Good and Bad things, unlike the villain who does solely Bad things.
helene aquila from an ember in the ashes is morally gray because she makes hard decisions in the face of crises and is often on the opposite side from laia and elias. she’s arguably a good person with hard luck, and circumstance drives her to make questionable decisions that play on her mind.
the darkling, however, is a sympathetic villain, and i’m going to elaborate on this much more now.
case study: the darkling
okay before we get started: i am NOT a darkling apologist and i do not think any of his actions are excusable. but the fact that so many people on this hellsite think he’s a good person just proves how well leigh bardugo created a sympathetic villain, and i’m going to explain how i think it worked. and yes, this has shadow and bone spoilers.
the darkling is grisha, and through his lifetime he was hunted and therefore hiding and living in perpetual fear (his past). he wanted to create a safe place for the grisha to live and thought the only way they could be safe was if they were feared (his reasons). he also supposedly fell in love with alina (although his is arguable) and that could be seen as his humanity.
rule of wolves spoilers: the end of the rule of wolves where he agrees to make a sacrifice for the good of ravka also gives him some amount of humanity.
all of the above make the reader sympathise with his intentions and are probably smitten with ben barnes’ face which makes it easier. however, literally none of his actions are excusable. he manipulated teenage girls, kissed alina pretending to be mal, literally bound her to his power with an amplifier that completely eliminated her agency, created creatures that blinded his own mother and cut off one of his students’ arms, and attempted to expand a physical darkness to take over the entire world. excusable? i think not.
his initial desire for safety is what the reader sympathises with. but the darkling uses that as a jumping-off point to go completely off the rails and essentially lose any sense of boundaries or limits on even his own power, which undoubtedly makes him the villain. not a single one of his actions are excusable.
