How do I write an evil doppelgänger?
Hey there! Sorry it took us so long to answer this - I wanted to answer it myself, since this particular topic is one I have personally put a lot of thought into due to its relevance to one of the stories I am presently in the process of writing. Unfortunately the last week ended up being pretty crazy and generally distracting, and I lost track of things. I am so sorry to have made it look as though I was neglecting you! We love our followers here at Writersfrost, and I want to apologize for taking as long as it has to get back to your question. I only hope that the answer ends up being worth the wait!When I got to working on this conundrum myself (and then prepping to use similar things in various tabletop RPGs I may or may not be running, I worked up a system of factors that I felt should be put into every evildoppelgänger character I intended to use. It’s a set of 5 things to keep in mind that I lovingly call MIMIC, because I am a geek who enjoys making unnecessary acronyms - a GWEMUA, if you will. I hope that MIMIC works as well for you as it has for me!1) MasterUnder most circumstances, most evildoppelgänger characters are created or otherwise controlled by an outside party. Be it an evil overlord who has magically created a copy of thedoppelgänger’s less evil counterpart (henceforth referred to as the doppelgängee), or a mad scientist who has created a robot in the doppelgängee’s image - most of the time the evildoppelgänger is not doing what they are doing because of their own wishes. These masters can and should have a tremendous impact on how thedoppelgänger acts to the rest of the world. How has the master’s relationship with the doppelgängee affected their relationship with thedoppelgänger? Vice versa? How much power does thedoppelgänger have to make their own choices? How has the doppelgänger’s relationship with their master affected their relationship with thedoppelgängee? Do they hate thedoppelgängee? Envy them? Want to destroy them to prove their superiority to the master’s eyes? In such siturations, be sure to blend a little bit of the Master’s traits into the evildoppelgänger. There should be some recognizable hints as to who thedoppelgänger answers/belongs to. Occasionally adoppelgänger will be an accidental thing (Tales of Earthsea comes to mind to a degree). Thesedoppelgängers have no master - they exist on their own looking for a purpose. How does that impact their personality? Their relationships? Their goals? How did they decide what they wanted? Did someone take them in and raise them, or are they going off of the instincts provided by the cosmic accident responsible for their existence? These are just a few things to keep in mind and think about.Â
2) InceptionAlso important is figuring out HOW your evildoppelgänger came into existance as well as WHY. This isn’t going to be as in depth as the above, but just be sure to keep in mind that the origin of any character is important. Are they a robot built to impersonate the leader of the precocious rebellion and destroy it from within by demoralizing the rebels through committing horrible atrocities? Is it a magically created clone intended to track down the doppelgängee by using its superior understanding of the target? Is it an evil version of thedoppelgängee accidentally dragged here from an alternate dimension? Think about how the doppelgänger’s origin impacts their day to day life, their understanding of the world around them, and their opinions and relationships with the other characters. 3) MethodsWhat makes an evildoppelgänger an evildoppelgänger? What makes evil evil? There are a ton of answers to these questions that I cannot even begin to fully address in this section. However, there’s an old saying that says that the methods make the man. How does your evildoppelgänger act? How do they react to the world around them? How do they accomplish their goals? A large part of this ties in to part 5 (read below), but a good deal is also impacted by the two aspects that we have already discussed. How do all of those factors influence the doppelgänger’s choices? Are they violent, diplomatic, stealthy? Are they more likely to use a direct path to their goal, or are they more inclined to make complex plans to keep their true agenda hidden? 4) IntentThis one is pretty quick as well, but really sit down and ask yourself - what does your evildoppelgänger WANT? Why are they doing what they are doing? What drives them? Are they doing these things just because of evil instinct? Because of what their master has ordered? Also, an important question - at any point, do the goals of thedoppelgänger and their master split? Does thedoppelgänger have its own agenda that it is trying to accomplish in spite of what the master desires? How much control does the master actually have over thedoppelgänger, and how much understanding does each party have of that level of control? In the end, all of these are profoundly important - but almost everything that has been discussed so far can be discerned by looking at what I see as the most important guide for what your evildoppelgänger is, wants, and needs - and that, my good readers, is the long awaited final part of this talk - 5) ComparisonOne of the most important things to keep in mind about making an evildoppelgänger, in my opinion, is to make sure that there are enough paralels between thedoppelgänger and thedoppelgängee that the connection between the two is clear to the reader based on characterization and interaction. You shouldn’t just make a random villain and then declare him to be an evildoppelgänger and then just expect the audience to take it on faith. There needs to be strong lines of similarity between the two to make it a clear and powerful connection.A wonderful example of a horribly failure to do this is Praetor Shinzon, from Star Trek Nemesis. Shinzon is the evil clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, created by the Romulans as a weapon to be used against Starfleet. Unfortunately, there are so few recognizable similarities between the two (both are pretty bald, I guess?) that it unfortunately doesn’t leave the kind of impact that needs to be made to make the character appropriately strong and memorable. It feels like with Shinzon they went so far to make him different than Picard that they lost everything that could have made Shinzon a truedoppelgänger, and instead they just got a pretty standard insane/vengeful villain. It was really disappointing to watch. When I make an evildoppelgänger of a character, either in my own writing or when making one of a PC in a game I am running, I put together a list of 5-10 distinguishing traits that the character holds (working with thedoppelgängee’s player when applicable). From these traits, I take about half to keep as they are and about half to reverse. This leaves enough traits of thedoppelgängee’s that the recognizable connection remains visible, but twisting it enough to make it clearly different in its own horrifying way. Also, don’t be tempted to just write down your character’s positive traits for reversal! Try taking some of your character’s less heroic aspects and reversing them instead. Maybe the doppelgängee is very boorish, loud and irritating - try making the doppelgänger polite, soft spoken, and eloquent. Lastly, don’t be tempted to pick all of your  doppelgängee’s character traits - just take a sampling, then take the final finished product and base what hasn’t already been defined about the doppelgänger and build from what you have in front of you.As an exercise, let’s take the character I am making an evildoppelgänger of in the story I am writing. I’ll list a bunch of character traits for her, and then you can make an evildoppelgänger by adding/reversing whatever traits you like - just keep it close to even! Experiment with it. Play with it. Work with it until you’ve found the sort of doppelgänger that really works for you as a villain. Then try doing it with one of your own OC’s! See what happens! ~Generous~Loud~Outgoing~Fun Loving~Computer Genius~Easily Distracted~Unsubtle~Impractical~Fair~Dislikes ViolenceHope that’s helped! Thank you so much for reading, and for your patience! And, as always, good luck!~Swordmaidenofavalon
