Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The Myth of Balance

If anyone reading it didn't know, I've been pre-reading Jetfire's ongoing Dangerous Business sequel, Besides the Will of Evil.  Now, if you want to go look through the comments section over there, you'll see that there's been some debate in the comments for a while now over the direction the story's taken.  The short version, though, is that many of the commenters feel like the story's villain has been too successful, and the heroes too ineffectual.

Now, I'm not actually interested in talking about BtWoE itself, but the discussion there did get me thinking about the idea of over-effective antagonists--both how they can ruin a story, and how they can be used effectively.  And specifically, how a particular piece of advice that I've seen offered a lot (not just on Jetfire's story, but on plenty of other long dark stories, both fanfic and non) isn't necessarily a good one.  Some long-winded thoughts, below the break.



Conflict--at least, going by the broadest definition of the word--is the lifeblood of any story.  That conflict can take a lot of forms, but in many stories it (or at least, an aspect of it) comes from a villain of some sort: a character whose wants/needs/beliefs bring him/her/it into conflict with the protagonist(s).

In most literature featuring a villainous character, that villain starts the story in a much more powerful position ("powerful," in this case, can mean a lot of things; in Rocky IV, Drago is shown to be more physically powerful than Rocky; in Robin Hood tales, King John and his cronies have money and military might countered only by Robin's poor, lightly-armed insurgency; in the major battles in The Lord of the Rings, Sauron's forces invariably have numerical superiority; etc.).  Usually, this position is maintained at least until the climax of the story, since having a hero "triumph" over an obviously weaker foe is less dramatic.  A weak(er than the protagonist) villain makes the hero look more like a bully than, well, a hero, and it's harder to see a clearly overmatched antagonist as posing a legitimate threat to the protagonist's aims--and thus, as being a source of conflict in the first place.  That doesn't mean that villains can't have weaknesses, or even be portrayed as weaklings (the Emperor in Return of the Jedi is a wrinkly old guy who's clearly no physical threat to anyone), but they are almost always more powerful than their foes.

Of course, one can go too far when it comes to making a villain seem appropriately threatening; if one crafts a scenario where the villain is in such a position of relative strength that it would be impossible for the heroes to triumph against them, then has exactly that happen through some fancy handwaving unsubstantiated by the narrative to that point, the resolution comes off as unsatisfying and unbelievable.  When a villain can only be overcome by a bad deus ex machina (as opposed to a good one--divine-or-equivalent intervention occurring in a story where that's a reasonable and narratively satisfying outcome is still a deus ex machina, after all), readers will cry foul.  And when they do, there's one piece of advice I see, time and again: let the good guys win a round!  Give the heroes a few more meaningful victories prior to the story's conclusion, to show that they aren't so badly overmatched overall; give us a powerful enemy, but one who we know the heroes can, ultimately, defeat.

That's not necessarily bad advice; a story specifically about a hero's rise to physical/military/political greatness needs to show that hero making incremental improvements, at least to some degree, lest their ultimate demonstration of superiority against the villain seem like it's come completely out of left field.  But in many cases, I feel like that advice is missing the point: having identified a problem (the villain can't lose in any textually supported way, and yet does), it offers as a solution a change which doesn't meaningfully alter that part of the story's dynamic.

The problem, in such cases, usually isn't that the villain is too overwhelmingly powerful per se; one hardly needs to dig deep into literary and film history to find plenty of examples of absurd power differentials which nonetheless made for compelling stories (The Terminator gives us a couple of ordinary people against a humanoid killing machine that's essentially immune to conventional weaponry; The War of the Worlds pits 19th-century humanity against space invaders in a battle they literally cannot win; The Odyssey sees Odysseus and his crew confronted by a laundry list of impassable monsters and the wrath of Poseidon himself (you know, God of the sea, upon which Odysseus is sailing...)).  The problem, rather, is that there's no good reason why the villain shouldn't win/have won in the end.  And letting the hero score a few more points along the way does nothing to change that, by itself.  At best, it teaches the reader that the villain's might is an informed attribute, and that the power they were supposed to have (the power, remember, on which the conflict, and thus the story, is premised) has been misrepresented.

At worst, it can completely undermine the moral of the story.  Stories which are based upon good deus ex machinas, or those in which a (or even the) plot point is that evil cannot be defeated on its own terms (often murder; other times "its own terms" means waging war, physical conflict, acting alone, as revenge, and so on) can actually be significantly weakened by an attempt to put the hero and villain on more level footing.  For example, let's look at Star Wars (i.e. "episode IV").  After the opening sequence, things go pretty damn poorly for the rebel alliance: Alderan is destroyed, Obi-wan is killed, and even seeming successes like Princess Leia's escape turn out to be all part of Tarkin and Vader's plan to locate the rebel base--a plan which succeeds perfectly.  Beyond the setup, the imperial forces suffer no meaningful setbacks during the movie... until the climax, when Luke makes an impossible shot to destroy the Death Star ("use the force," incidentally, is an example of a good deus ex machina; Luke suddenly is able to do something that's well into no-meaningful-chance-of-success territory, but the sudden change fits the world that's been established perfectly).  Beyond that, there's the simple fact that the Empire is clearly in a beyond-dominant position to begin with; the iconic first scene of that movie drives home the difference of scale as well as anything, and when the bad guys have a moon-sized battlestation that can blow up entire planets... well, that kind of speaks for itself.

And yet, however one feels about that movie, I think it's fair to say that it wouldn't have been improved by making the Empire weaker, the rebels stronger, or by giving the good guys some incidental victories (at least, victories that didn't ultimately turn out to have merely been ploys by the villains).  Balancing the heroes and villains wouldn't do anything to address the movie's weaknesses, nor would it reinforce its strengths.

To sum it up: an overpowered villain is definitely a bad thing.  But if that villain is "overpowered," the problem is rarely a severe mismatch in power with the hero, and the solution is equally rarely to try to balance that mismatch.  Most of the time, an "overpowered" villain isn't one who seemingly can't be defeated by the good guys, but one who can't be overcome in a manner consistent with the world the story takes place in.  It's an important distinction to make; there are few things more satisfying than seeing an impossibly mighty villain toppled in a satisfying way, after all!

27 comments:

  1. I think a lot of the time when people complain that a villain (or a hero) in a story is too powerful, it's not so much actually about the character, but more about the story getting repetitive. The power of the characters is all based on the author's imagination after all. If a villain keeps on winning it's not because they were made too strong, but because the author keeps deciding they'll win, and once that becomes a pattern the readers can predict, every time it happens it becomes more disappointing.

    I've never read Besides the Will of Evil, but if people are complaining that the villain is too successful, maybe the real problem is that they're losing faith in the conflict, itself. Maybe the battles between the villain and the hero just need to be more interesting.

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  2. Still waiting on Jetfire to finish that one before I start reading it. Is it looking anywhere close to done? It'd be perfect if it's finished in time for my four-week shutdown

    My takeaway from this is that I need to watch Star Wars again. Now that's a film I've not seen in a long time...

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  3. Every time I hear complains about badly written villains, I think of "Eragon". That series made both mistakes, actually -- overpowered hero, and overpowered villain. Paolini made the dragonriders so bloody powerful that it was absolute madness to think that one single guy defeated them all.

    And then he introduced the elves, which were just ridiculous. And we're led to believe that a single human defeated those too, and is ruling among them all.

    That, plus the fact that the villain never really appears (and is never really shown doing anything bad? The heroes start fighting against him way before he actually shows he's a villain, which always baffled me) makes it impossible for anybody to believe that Eragon will defeat the bad guy.

    And... Spoilers? He doesn't. He Care-Bear-stares that guy down, talks to him, and then he commits suicide or whatever.

    God, I hate Eragon so much. Even worse is the fact that his name is actually similar to my nick. Can't get a breath with that fucking book series.

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    1. Yeah, Eragon was pretty bad. Lots of awkward philosophy and borderline Mary Sue stuff. Everyone's always praising it because, "Oh! The author was only sixteen when he wrote it!" and whatnot, but if I've learned one thing from fanfiction it's that lots of tiny little baby people can write some pretty impressive stuff if they take it seriously. The age (or lack thereof) of an author doesn't make a story better.

      Also I can sympathize with the unfortunate name business. I had a similar thing happen to me, but with my real name... and with Twilight. Ooooh, it makes me so angry. Every time I go to book stores I always make sure to give those abominations a wide berth.

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  4. Honestly, I'm kinda glad to see that most of the issues in the comments directly relate to why I despise the original. 'Have faith' if near-enough one of the worst storytelling angles possible.

    I am shamelessly looking forward to the comments after the ending.

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    1. Now introducing One Man's Book Burning Club. Grab a lighter and have a seat. There's enough fuel for everybody!

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    2. Would Chris see *this* as a legitimate use of Fall of Equestria?

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    3. Don't burn 'em. There are lessons to be learned.

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    4. I'm pretty sure that Chris specifically said there were no lessons to be learned from Fall of Equestria.

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    5. 'Don't do this' always constitutes a lesson.

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    6. InquisitorM's comments remind me of a poem I heard once:

      What sins will be remembered,
      when the books have all been burned?
      Every page reduced to cinders.
      Mankind's recklessness unhindered.
      What will they have really learned?

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  5. A corollary that always drives me up the wall is the hero who can't win. This is a major thorn in my side about the Dresden Files series; Harry Potter did it too, albeit to a lesser degree. Victories that aren't victories for the hero, or that are followed up or gained only by intense personal loss can be really compelling, when you have an ongoing series where the hero is never allowed to win-win, never allowed to find happiness despite all they've sacrificed, it starts to wear on the reader. Sure, it's a question not of, will the good guys win, but what will they lose in the process, and that's a good way to tell stories with believable conflicts, but at some point, your heroes need to be thrown a bone. It's depressing otherwise; the heroes are what the reader should be sympathizing with, after all, and if they can't win, what's that say about your readers?

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    1. You really shouldn't read Project Horizons then. It is the epitome of "the hero can't win".

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    2. Today's word of the day is ANGST.

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    3. TV Tropes call it "Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy".

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  6. Now I wanna see a story with a really weak villain. One who continuously tries to sow chaos and destruction for whatever reason but is constantly thwarted. But the on day the hero gets careless, no longer perceiving this villain as much of a threat, when suddenly, BAM! WORLD DOMINATION!

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    1. I've seen it done, but think it tends to work better as comedy

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    2. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, anyone?

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  7. Both Star Wars and LOTR, I believe, did well with the setup of their dei ex machina by weaving them into an established flaw of the villains. LOTR, more than A New Hope, did include significant victories for the good guys along the way (as opposed to the much more minor victories Team Harmony have seen in Besides the Will of Evil), and it's possible that is part of why there's the reaction.

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    1. I think there's a lot of wish-fulfillment involved in the popularity of LotR and Star Wars IV. When people face overwhelming/inescapable villainy in their own lives, the thought that there might be a self-destruct button that would instantly resolve the conflict in their favor is a wonderful fantasy.

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    2. Sure, true enough. But the setup I was thinking of was more in what eventually enabled the deus ex machina to come in to play: the belief that only great concentrations of power could be a threat to them. Tarkin's refusal to take the threat of a few squadrons of small fighters seriously leading to the defense pretty much being Darth Vader's personal escort (to say nothing of the whole immediate rejection of the Force), Sauron's distraction with the return of the King of Gondor and Arnor and the army he raised.

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    3. Very good points there. I suppose a deus ex machina can either be good or bad as a literary device; it (like so many other things in life) just depends totally on HOW it's done.

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  8. For me, the problem with an overwhelmingly powerful antagonist is that the resolution must needs be via a deus ex machina, pure luck, or a magic self-destruct button, and those sorts of endings aren't very satisfying for me.

    With that said, it doesn't necessarily mean such a story is bad or unpopular; both Star Wars IV and The Lord of the Rings are exactly that, and exceptions to the rule, IMHO.

    I haven't started reading Besides the Will of Evil, and did not intend to do so until it was complete, but considering the complaints in the comments, I think I'll also wait until it's reviewed.

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  9. I've played with the overwhelmingly powerful antagonist in Diplomacy, matched against skill and luck. It didn't work out too bad, but I'm still tempted to do one with a protagonist who *loses* and in the process, wins.

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  10. I think you are incorrectly discounting the victories in A New Hope. The most major one being getting the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. Rescuing Leia is also not at all negated by the fact that Vader planned on it and was tracking them, in fact Leia reveals that she knows it's a trap but proceeds to Yavin anyway because with the plans the Rebellion has as good a shot at the Death Star now as they ever will. Vader's trap thus is flipped to a trap for the Death Star.

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  11. I think a large part of the problem has to do with how the conflict is represented in a scenario with unbalanced protagonists and antagonists. This may be an oversimplification, but a Mary Sue is reviled not only because a flawless, overpowered character is shallow and boring, but because there is often little meaningful conflict in a story when there is never any doubt that the Mary Sue will succeed; in the unlikely incident where there are losses, they are probably minor and not that significant to the plot. All conflict is predictably a win for the protagonist, and at worst, results in a temporary setback.

    On the other side of the spectrum, an overpowered villain resembles a Mary Sue in that they make the situation so hopeless that conflict is *still* meaningless. Beyond reasonable doubt, the protagonists will lose, therefore suspense and drama are absent from interactions with the antagonist. All conflict is predictably defined as a string of losses, with the best case scenario being a partial loss rather than a complete one.

    In both scenarios, I feel that it isn't really the balance of power that causes the downfall of a story, but the apathy that the constant reinforcement of that imbalance produces.

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