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scripttorture · 6 years

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So in my story, there's a torturer that tortured the main character enough to leave the protagonist with some decent mental and physical scarring. He had a plan and reasons for doing what he did, but the plan was formed out of anger for the organization she works for. The protag originally knew him well and did trust him, so it was surprising to everyone that he'd do something like this to her. It takes a lot of care to get the protag back to a point where she can so much as think about him. 1

But later on during a fight between the two, the victim and torturer get in a situation where the victim ends up saving her tormenter from a fate worse than death, not because she forgives him or anything like that, but ONLY because she's not a vengeful person and the terrible fate he would have met was not something she wanted for anybody at all, which happened to include him. My question is, how can I portray the villain well after this? I plan to have him quit scheming against the protag, 2and even help them in some ways from the shadows, not apologizing, but also not interacting with them, or anything redemptive like that. I'm not trying to "rehabilitate" and "reintegrate" him into society, but I want the fact that he was saved by someone who could've had free revenge on him instead saving him to leave a profound impact on him. How can I show this without making it look like a heel-to-face turn and not making it look like I'm trying to make him sympathetic or "good?" 3

That’s a very interesting question and scenario. It’s taken me quite awhile to think it through.

As a lot of you have probably gathered I occasionally struggle with the ‘writingadvice’ side of things here: I find it a lot easier to give people facts thantell them how to write. A lot of that comes from how unhelpful and hobbling I’vefound writing advice in the past. I think the truth is that differentapproaches work for different people with different styles: that there isn’t somuch a correct way to write as thereis a successful way to write.

And what’s successful varies a lot with style and individuals.

One of the main factors I can see affecting your scenario is the pointof view through which the story is told.

Done from the hero’s perspective I don’t think you’d have any problems with the former torturerlooking overly sympathetic or somehow redeemed. Because the audience would beseeing him through the hero’s eyes. They’d see all the horrible things he’ddone and the effect he’d had on the hero primarily. The problem then would behaving the audience understand why the former torturer is acting the way he is.

Because the hero probably wouldn’t understand. She might accept theactions she sees. But how she interprets them is another matter. And if theaudience is seeing the story through her eyes then that’s going to affect howthe former torturer comes across.

She might doubt every single action the former torturer takes. She mightsee everything he does as a cleverly masked threat or attack. She might seethem as a moral turn for the character even if she still hates him and can’t forgivehim. She might not bother trying to interpret why he’s acting the way he is andthink of him as completely unpredictable.

One of the things I quite like to do when writing from a particularpoint of view is try to show the difference between what happens and how thepoint of view character interprets what happens.

One of my characters has an assistant who helps her sporadically in herquest. He tells her repeatedly throughout the story how well she’s doing in herquest and he’s totally in awe of her. But he’s about seven and she’s mucholder. Her natural pessimism and her culture’s view of children means that sheconsistently dismisses and disbelieves his praise.

I used what the assistant character (and other characters around him)say to show the audience that my character was doing well even though she consistently thinks she isn’t.

From a singular point of view (especially the hero’s) I think that wouldbe the best way to approach the problem. Having the hero consistently see theformer torturer (and his actions) in a certain light, but use other charactersto show the audience that the situation might be more complex than the herothinks.

I don’t think that would risk showing him as sympathetic in any way, oras redeemed. But it would give room to show that at least in some ways he’strying to be better.

Basically- highlight the ways in which a point of view might be suspect.

If you switch between points of view I think the same advice applies to everyone.

Especially if you’re planning to include the former torturer’s point ofview- really highlighting how his take on events is suspect would go a long wayto keeping him unsympathetic I think.

I’ll come back to some typical torturer behaviours/traits that you coulduse in a moment.

Writing from the third person, as an all-seeing narrator would require adifferent approach.

Because having a particular point of view to fall behind can give ahelpful amount of remove from the former torturer. And in switching points ofview you get a contrast between the different characters, which forces thereader to think about differences between the various characters’ points ofview.

An omnipresent narrator levelsthe playing field between characters in a way that could easily make thischaracter too sympathetic for what you want. It gives every character’sactions, thoughts and feelings the same weight which can encourage the readerto think everyone’s reasons are equally valid.

That isn’t a style I tend to write in as often. I think using a narratorin this case would make- it tempting to just tell the audience that this is whythe former torturer is acting the way he is.

Now I’m not going to tell youthat you should never tell theaudience anything. ‘Showing’ isn’t always the best approach. I think in thiscase it would be about striking a balance and building up an overall picturefrom what the characters say, what they do and what the narrative states.

I think emphasising some of the more unpleasant but private aspects of the former torturer’s character could help keephim from becoming too sympathetic.

An omnipresent narrator has room to tell us a little about his emotionsand thoughts. A lot of those aregoing to be unpleasant.

He may, for instance, still think the bigger baddies ‘have a good point’because his disagreement with them and his helping the hero seems to come downentirely to the hero as an individual.

Without knowing more about the story or the bad guys I can’t suggestwhat that might be. I know with some of my own characters I’ve highlightedtheir prejudices or a general devaluation of other people’s lives. This isn’tnecessarily something that comes across in their actions, but it can comeacross in their words, emotional responses and thoughts.

Emotional responses generally can be used to highlight the fact that hehasn’t suddenly become a more pleasant person. Expressing disgust at- wellpeople being ordinary people and going about their lives while a member of xminority- is a realistic and effective way to show that.

Especially if you use the narrator to contrast that with what the peoplehe’s so disgusted by are feeling and thinking themselves.

There are a couple of things that show up regularly in torturers thatyou could probably use to your advantage.

The strong tendency to…avoid taking responsibility is one I’d definitelysuggest using. Popular approaches include victim blaming (‘well she was out atnight in the wrong part of town, she was clearlydoing something wrong’), insisting that they had no choice (’the situation wasterrible and we had to show them who’sboss-‘), and insisting despite any evidence that what they did was useful.

Torturers also tend to have a….very distorted view of torture in somerespects. For instance they tend to emphasise personal skill, as if torture issomething a person can be better or worse at doing.

This isn’t true. You can’t really be better or worse at hitting someonewith a stick. Torturers are just as crapas everyone else at judging when someone is telling the truth or how muchpain someone is in. They’re also not particularly good at telling when someoneis at risk of dying or permanent injury.

But they often claim they’resuperhumanly good at all these things and therefore ‘skilled’.

I think you could use that to highlight unpleasant aspects of thecharacter.

There’s also the question of regret. From what you’ve said my impressionis that this character very specificallyregrets what he did to the hero but not what he may have done to anyoneelse.

Finding a way to bring that up could help keep the character…unlikeable.Especially if you can include another victim that he has no strong emotionalconnection to- someone whose humanity you can show to the readers while alsoshowing that he doesn’t regrethurting them.

Ultimately I don’t think there’s an easy straightforward answer to thisquestion. I hope I’ve suggested traits and approaches that can help, but thereisn’t a one size solution when we’re writing complex characters and complexnarratives.

And that’s what this is. That’s actually what I love about yourscenario. It’s messy and ambiguous and very human.

This doesn’t quite feel like a full answer but I’m not sure what else toadd. If you feel like there’s anything I’ve missed please send in anotherquestion when the ask box reopens.

I hope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #torturers #behaviour of torturers #effects of torture on torturers #writing torturers #redemption arcs #subverting redemption arcs #Anonymous

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psyga315 · 7 years

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On Character Empathy (Or Why I View Atlas As An Icy Dorne)

So, I figured I’d do an essay on character empathy. RWBY has created dozens of characters that are all awesome, cool, cute, and very, very empathic. People literally cried in Volume 3 and the finale was filled with nothing but rage and grief towards the writers. It was perhaps the highest point RWBY has ever reached. But that’s what happens when you make a character likeable and then kill them off. What happens when you make a character unlikeable, but eventually have them try to be on the right side of a conflict? Well, you get the scene that this essay is based around: Jacques’ final scene in Volume 4 when he tries to tell Ironwood that locking up Atlas is a bad idea. To briefly recap, Ironwood gets a memo from Winter that shit might get real in Mistral. Because of what happened to Vale and Beacon, Ironwood had every right to try and prevent that from happening again. So, he does what anyone with a huge military authority would do: lock up the Kingdom of Atlas. From his standpoint, this makes sense. He’s worried that Atlas might be next (Sadly, it isn’t, but that’s dramatic irony for ya) so he decided to defend it before people sneak across disguised as students like what happened last time. Now, this definitely reeks of current time politics and I certainly agree that James is going about this the wrong way. It’s just too bad that, as far as we’re concerned, he’s in the right. I’m not saying in this current situation. No. I’m saying in the entire time we saw him in RWBY. Yes, he seems like a dick at times, but from all the moments we do see of him, he’s doing his best. Even CRWBY said that they wanted to make him look like a prick, but ultimately have him be this reasonable authority figure, which we do see in Volume 4. His opponent… not so lucky. And this is where character empathy comes into play. Jacques Schnee, for as much as we heard and seen of him, is literally the polar opposite of Ironwood. Whereas Ironwood comes off as a good character despite his shortcomings, Jacques is established to be a bad character despite his moments of clarity. Case in point: when we first see him talking Weiss into singing for the charity ball, it’s very clear that he’s manipulating her into singing to make him look good, even when the song she sings paints him in a negative light. Despite this, though, he had some method to the madness. Jacques wanted to hold a charity ball to help show Remnant that Atlas cared for when Vale was attacked… But I’ll get to how they really cared later. This could have been another Ironwood situation where, we’re meant to hate this man, but his reasoning is so sound that we can’t help but to like him. The problem is that the framing of the scene makes it so that we’re meant to feel threatened by Jacques. Especially since we’re going through the eyes of Weiss. Which is why most people outright voiced hatred for Jacques when he slaps her and then stripped her of her heritage, effectively making her a prisoner. Yes, Ironwood sold out Ozpin and moved so much military forces into Vale that it almost seemed like an occupation rather than a guard, but he never slapped someone and dragged them through the dirt because they spoke back to him, and when he did the latter in Volume 3 when telling RWBY they got disqualified, he made it clear that he wasn’t actually the one making the call. Jacques, however, was the one making the call. He was the one who slapped Weiss. And like that, our empathy for him went down the drain while empathy for Ironwood didn’t waver. Which brings me to the crux of why I made this essay: Forgive me when I side with the apparently crazy guy who, based off his past experiences, is locking up Atlas to better protect them from a possible threat over the blatant child abuser whose every line of dialogue has been nothing but trying to save his own skin. And the problem is that this falls entirely on character empathy. We’re told from the very first time we’re heard of him that Jacques is a jackass. Even the World of Remnant episode on the SDC paints him in a negative light, though that’s thanks in part to the narrator. When we see him in a talking role for the first time, he’s as much of a prick as we heard him to be. So thus, our empathy for him is already meant to be low, and after the charity ball, it only dropped from there. At his final appearance, all he has to offer to the debate is the long list of emotional baggage he left on Weiss and a clear message that he’s only in it for himself and that his children are just property to him. If CRWBY meant to have Jacques be concerned for Atlas’ well-being, they sadly screwed the pooch so hard, that the scene is actually karmic comeuppance for him. See, in-between the aforementioned slapping and disinheriting of Weiss, Jacques grounded Weiss for talking back to him and would only end up going anywhere if she kisses up to him. Ironwood practically did the same thing to him. He grounded him and the entirety of Atlas and people can only get out with the Council’s approval, which, considering how he has two seats, means his approval. In short: Jacques has to kiss up to Ironwood. Sweet, sweet karma. The problem is that, in this scene, it seems that people believe Ironwood to be going off the deep end. That this is a scene where we should be concerned for his sanity. It’s where people say that the child abuser is in the right for once in his selfish life. And to that, I can see their point. Ironwood is essentially locking everyone up. There’s no beating around the bush. This is a man who is clearly abusing his authority for “the greater good”, even when he believes this is what’s right. The overall gist is that “when Jacques is telling you this is a bad move, it’s a bad move”. The problem I see, however, is that he’s had a scene prior to this where he tells Ironwood that what he’s doing is a bad move, and his dialogue and the conversation afterwards point out that it’s only a bad move because it affects him negatively. And now we get to the charity ball scene where CRWBY pretty much paints Atlas as a whole in a negative light. During this scene, Weiss encounters a guy who pretty much established that he had no idea why the charity’s even happening in the first place, even when the painting he’s looking at and hitting on Weiss over has the purpose stated right there. The camera even focuses on it right after to show just how easily he could have seen it and saved himself some face. It doesn’t help that, when he guesses what the charity is for, he asks if it’s for Mantle, Atlas’ former name before it became… well… Atlas. Showing that he only cares about what happens in Atlas. Then a trophy wife speaks up and says how Beacon deserved what it got. This, right here, is the clincher and shows us just how unsympathetic the people of Atlas are. Volume 3 showed us a lot of shit happening. To quote Blake: “People are dead.” And these are people we knew and cared for. Penny, Pyrrha, even Roman. People have died to this incident. And here’s this bitch saying how they “deserved it” for the lack of “proper defenses”. That comment would be such a slap in the face to anyone who has personally lost a loved one to such an incident only to hear someone in passing say “they deserved it for lacking the proper defenses”. It’s an even huger slap in the face if you tried to be that defense, only to fail and then hear this bitch laugh at your misfortune. Thanks to these two characters, CRWBY established what the civilians of Atlas are. Imagine for a moment, a man dying from his wounds. People all over are trying to help him, calling an ambulance, patching his wounds… and yet there’s this one woman passing by, just looking at her phone. Atlas is that one woman. Only caring for themselves when others are hurt, wounded, or dead. And this is probably a problem in of itself. Basing an entire kingdom off the behaviours of two minor characters, but the problem is that, with the dialogue made afterwards, it’s made very clear that two characters are meant to represent the civilians of Atlas as a whole. And thus, paints the entire kingdom as an unsympathetic lot. It doesn’t help that Atlas, or back then, Mantle, was said to be on a villainous side during the Great War. And while you can point out FNKI or Penny as the exceptions of this, they’re Huntsmen. They are not regular civilians. It would be like judging America as a whole based off the celebrities who were born there rather than the actual people who live in it. Thus, we have two unsympathetic characters (Jacques and Atlas as a whole) getting karmic retribution. This essay was made to prove why I view Ironwood’s decision to lock up Atlas as an awesome moment instead of a moment where I should be concerned. Actually, scratch that. I was concerned when Ironwood declared he’d lock up Atlas. Not because he was going off the deep end, but because I thought Weiss would never leave her abusive father’s prison because of it. And that’s basically what it boils down to. Jacques and Atlas get sweet karma dealt to them and I had to ask “and what Ironwood is doing is a bad thing why?” Because, as much as I see it, Jacques is going into the same situation he put Weiss in and Atlas’ social bubble is being a gilded cage. The problem lies in character empathy. CRWBY devoted so much of Weiss’ limited time to show us how evil Jacques and Atlas that when it came time to show that Ironwood is going off the deep end, I ended up scratching my head at why people are so concerned. Klein is their one exception, but he’s more or less tied to Weiss and is not some random civilian like Henry or the Trophy Wife were. So don’t be surprised when I say I cheered when Ironwood decided to lock up Atlas, because the person arguing against him spent all is screen time being a selfish irredeemable douchbag.

#RWBY #Atlas #Essay

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