July Content Update: Antagonists Who Aren't (Patreon)

Over the course of this series, I've mostly been talking about "open" villain-antagonists - which is to say characters which are introduced to the audience as antagonists, and which the protagonists are seen as being morally justified in opposing. In when talking about sympathetic antagonists, the basic assumption is that for all of that character's redeeming features, they are still introduced as an antagonist, and will eventually conclude their narrative arc with a thematically appropriate end - either a tragic death, a redemption, or both.

Yet there are two particular sorts of antagonists which don't really fit into this broad generalisation, and it's the first of those two types I'd like to talk about now.

The first of these types is the antagonist which doesn't get introduced as an antagonist. They may be first presented as an ally of the protagonist, perhaps even their superior within the hierarchy of an organisation or wider society. They gain the trust of the protagonist - and thus, that of the audience - until a point when their true motives and alignment are revealed and they become "outed" as an antagonist. This does three things. First of all, it serves as a shock to the protagonists and to the audience, a swerve that gets, and keeps their attention. Secondly, it builds the audience's antipathy towards this newly-revealed antagonist, because they have not only fooled the protagonist but the audience as well. By pulling the wool over the eyes of the audience, the antagonist has more or less challenged the audience's intelligence and judgement, and that means the audience is as invested in the protagonist in avenging this "betrayal".

Lastly, this creates a certain degree of internal conflict among the protagonist. After all, if the antagonist was someone who was seen as a valued ally, then their betrayal is going to lead to some serious soul-searching on the part of the betrayed. Likewise, while that antagonist might now be an enemy, that act of betrayal does not erase the memories of the previous times which the antagonist has aided or otherwise proved friendly to the protagonist. As a result, the protagonist - and by proxy, the audience which experiences the narrative through the protagonist - will harbour complex feelings towards the antagonist, and consider more deeply their motives, methods, and whether they really are an antagonist after all.

Of course, none of this works unless those three emotions land: shock, betrayal, and conflict. This is contingent primarily on one factor: how well you're able to sell your antagonist as an ally to the protagonists.

Personally, I'd suggest pulling out all the stops here to make sure the impression sticks. Give them an impactful introduction which tangibly helps the protagonists achieve their goals. Make them helpful, friendly, and otherwise useful to the protagonists. Develop them as you would as if they were one of the protagonists, but go just the little extra bit to make them a little more relatable, a little more sympathetic, a little more helpful. There's a risk of overdoing this, of making your future antagonist so helpful that your audience starts to get suspicious, or making them seem so much like a protagonist that they begin to take over the plot themselves, but to me, these are acceptable risks, mostly because they can be worked around: an antagonist which is already suspected in and out of narrative helps ground their eventual betrayal in emotional plausibility, while a resentment towards a character which is just a little bit too prominently helpful can be redirected once that betrayal hits home.

As for the betrayal itself, there's two ways to pull this off. The first is to make it unambiguous and drastic: the antagonist reveals their true colours by striking at the protagonists interests in a deeply harmful way. This sort of betrayal is the sort to make both the protagonists and the audience even angrier than they would have been otherwise. Not only has this antagonist fooled them, but they have done so in a way which seems intentionally calculated to hurt them, both character and audience. This sort of betrayal is for the sort of character that you intend for your audience to want to suffer. Attempting to redeem them or bring them back to the protagonists' side later on might be doable, but far from easy.

On the other hand, you might want to do the exact opposite, by making the antagonist's betrayal more ambiguous. Perhaps it's something which doesn't directly harm the protagonists, or something which even still ends up helping them. Perhaps the betrayal is one which is more perception than reality, and serves as more of a miscommunication than a genuine attack. This is the sort of "soft betrayal" you want when you want to maximise the degree of internal conflict which such an event might cause the protagonists and the audience, the kind which makes them wonder if the antagonist might be brought back to their side again, or even if they really are enemies in the first place. This is the sort of thing you want if you want your protagonist - and your audience to be able to forgive that betrayal easily.

There are two things to keep in mind with either of these approaches. The first is that as the audience is going to be interacting with the narrative mostly through the protagonist's point of view, they're going to be subject to the protagonist's justifications and reasoning. This means the protagonist's actions and attitudes will necessarily seem more justified and reasonable to the audience. Use this to your advantage. If you want to build sympathy for a character, have them help the protagonist. If you want to destroy it or suppress it, have them be hurtful to them. If you're feeling especially daring, you can even spend some time putting the audience in the perspective of a character you want the audience to build sympathy for - done right, this will work even on the most hated characters. Likewise, it's surprisingly easy to make even characters who are clearly on the side of right loathsome to the audience - simply have them hinder the protagonist and oppose their interests (but that's a discussion for next month).

The other thing to remember is that these antagonists have to be characters in their own right, not just collections of plot devices intended to make the audience feel a certain way at any given time. People grow attached to characters because those characters are in some way predictable in their actions, and that goes for antagonists too. That means it's important to make sure your antagonist maintains a consistent character arc and acts within that character arc whether it be before or after their moment of betrayal. It isn't always an easy thing to do, but if done right, it can give the audience a lot of insight into that character's motives, and make them feel more like a real person, and less like a collection of words on a page or pixels on a screen.

Next, we'll probably be talking about the other kind of unconventional antagonist, one which opposes the protagonist, but arguably possesses the moral high ground: the heroic antagonist.