You talk about liking characters suffering or tortured, so I'm curious, do you have any favorite types of suffering or favorite tropes?
Well, I suppose you either die a hero or live long enough to write your own callout post...
Yes, anon. Yes, many. This is going to be incredibly incomplete and also disorganised because where to even start. (This ended up being more about character mindsets and story shapes than like. Specific forms of suffering but listen thatβs where the good shit is.)
The first requirement is that I do have to have some interest in the character? Helps if theyβre my Type (though honestly we get into a chicken-and-egg situation there sometimes...), but they at least need to be compelling to me in some way. Beyond that...
Betrayal. Top of the list, easily, because for one Iβm just unbelievably about it and for another, thereβs so many options.Β
The straightforward back-stabbing: always good. A solid and reliable choice. Doesnβt let you down. Ironically.
The necessary betrayal, variant A: the Judas kiss, if you will. The betrayal that is necessary because both have a role to play, and their roles demand it, or because one is willing to be the betrayed, or for any other number of reasons, but I will eat this shit up with a spoon.
The necessary betrayal, variant B: the one-sided necessary betrayal. This is theΒ βI wish it could be otherwiseβ, or theΒ 'I set this in motion long ago, before I came to know you, back when I didnβt careβ or theΒ βItβs too late; I cannot change course nowβ. Can either entirely blindside the betrayed or leave room for one last agonised conversation. Here for it always.
The not-actually-a-betrayal-but-circumstances-make-it-appear-so betrayal: a tricky one to pull off well but the reward, reader, is me losing my shit. Because in order for this to work you have to have trust (without trust itβs not betrayal itβs just enmity), but you alsoΒ have to have that seed of doubt or suspicion or uncertainty that allows theΒ βbetrayedβ to believe itβs a betrayal. And thenΒ you get to play with the other character seeing that belief, and the wholeΒ βis this what you think of meβ and that pretty much guarantees a dynamic I will be incredibly into.
Self-betrayal. If youβve read The Traitor Baru Cormorant...that. If you havenβt... characters who go so far that the only choices they have involve betraying themselves one way or another. And the agony of that choice.
Sometimes you just want to see your favourite character breathing hard and covered in blood. Or, more accurately in my case, sometimes you just want to see your favourite character beaten and bloody and chained to a wall, or a whipping post, or...look, we could get into why, but thatβs a whole different post. Defiance is a good look here, but it can take many forms, all good.
Knives. Thereβs not a whole lot else to add here. Theyβre just so versatile, and thereβs the aesthetic, and also the intimacy of inflicting pain. Donβt look at me like that.
βYour logic destroyed you, didnβt it?β The character who sees themselves as almost an anti-Chosen One. Just as bound by prophecy, but the one fated to fight on the wrong side, and to lose. The one whose role is to be reviled. The eternal antagonist. The Lucifer figure, if you will: without them there can be no balance, but they must never know victory, and they must forever bear the righteous hatred of the world. (Do they believe in their cause? Do they in fact believe in the heroβs cause, and so take up their role because someone must, because their fall is the only way to ensure another morning? Do they come to embrace the role they must hold, because that is the only way to survive? Do they relish it from the start?)
βTormented into powerβ This is a line from The Riddle-Master trilogy that just hauntsΒ me because everything that is contained in that statement. Characters who claw power to themselves with bloody fingertips, against chains or darkness, who drag themselves out, who remake themselves into something to be feared, around the sharp edges of everything that tried to break them. Theyβre terrifying and theyβre wounded and theyβre furious and that moment of realising power in the depths of something awful is. A lot.
Characters pushed beyond the edge of their endurance but holding themselves together through sheer force of will. This is not even remotely an uncommon trope, but there are specific variants of it that hit me right where I live. I have a thing for characters who are too skilled for their own good at pretending to be untouchable or untouched, whether by laughing everything off or just refusing to show it (especially when they succeed, and either only the reader knows or itβs only revealed later); either way, when theyβre good enough at it, they reach this point where other characters seem almost to believe it, and to forget that they actually can be hurt (and they do everything to preserve the illusion). It is possible Iβm projecting.
βYou want a villain? So be it.β The whole... characters who are already perceived as villainous, as beyond redemption; damned by the world, often wrongly though not always, and hit this point of simultaneous capitulation to the illusion and a kind of self-destructive vengeance by embracing it. Thereβs a very specific kind of irony to it that just absolutely kills me. And itβs usually such an excellent moment of both pain and power, despair and an awful sharp-edged triumph. βIf I am damned regardless, why hold back?β. βYou demand a villain; very well, here I am.β βDirect your hatred at me; I can take it and I will take it and we will all burn.β Thereβs just a very, very specific kind of self-immolation here and itβs. Hard to beat. Variants include:
They were striving for something not villainous at all, and that is the saddest part: they need never have become this, but the world did not see, did not understand, and they could not explain (because they were protecting someone, or because this was the only way, or simply because they did not have the chance, or because the world refused to see)
They wanted something so badly they were willing to feed themselves to the fire to achieve it, and let the world damn them for it (it was the only way)
Theyβve suffered long enough, deserved or undeserved. Now this is what survived, this is what you have wrought
Looking at an impossible line to walk and sayingΒ βI can walk that lineβ.Β βI can strike that balanceβ.Β βI can hold on, and not be lostβ. Itβs never true, but oh, itβs good to watch them try. And even better to watch them almost, where no one else could even come close, succeed. And, of course, at last, to watch them fall. Often then leads to the above.
