[Report This]Date: 02 Oct 2021 23:47 Title: Part 1 - The Hard Hello: 1
He has seen the enemy... Pretty rude awakening (or ensleepening, I guess) for Bensu, finding out he's the monster in the middle of it all. Of course I don't recall if we've spent enough time inside the head of our Bensu to know whether he is an active participant or stunned spectator.
Now comes the real writing challenge - how to address motive. The easiest (and often best) course is simply to not address it - just no one knows why Bensu is doing it - quite possibly not even Bensu.
Far more challenging to expose a believable motive without the curse of villainous monologuing (the curse of every superhero movie - my favorite being in The Incredibles. Alas, a temptation that both Julian and Tung Mei succumbed to.)
I'm really looking forward to seeing how you reveal or obfuscate the madness in the worldtaker's method - that's going to be a fun bit of writing.
Thanks!! rbs
Author's Response: Thanks for the review. As will probably become pretty obvious in the next chapter, this vision was actual Michael's. No doubt this will put him into a really difficult position. And I agree that villains are among the hardest characters to write. After all, a good villain never sees themselves as the villain of their own story, and yet, somewhere they will have to had to have crossed some sort of line that makes them the antagonist of story and to the main characters. My Star Eagle villains have not always been as layered as I would have liked, but that's an issue that has plagued writers for generation. Look no further than Trek or the MCU.