Have you ever watched or read a story where the protagonist was a villain? Or, if not a villain, at least morally ambiguous?

I've seen a few of them, and I always admire it when the writers can make me sympathize with both sides, understanding where both parties are coming from even if I prefer one or the other.

Some villains you love to hate. Others, you find yourself just staring at, either wondering if they're actually on the right track, or disagreeing with their methods while agreeing with their goals, or realizing with a start that if you were in their position, you might actually do the same thing.

I've actually been watching two series recently that inspired some of those reactions.

ne of them is Death Note, a really brilliant anime in which a high-school genius acquires a supernatural ability to kill, and uses it to try to rid the world of crime. In the course of his mental war against an eccentric and highly intelligent detective, he inspired a wide debate among fans regarding whether his goals, his motives, or both were evil, good, or somewhere in between.

The other is Farscape, in which an astronaut from Earth is flung through a wormhole and gets caught up in a jailbreak, ultimately ending up fleeing from the law on a ship full of escaped prisoners.

​To his friends, John Crichton one of the most reliable people you could hope to meet. To his enemies, he becomes increasingly dangerous and treacherous, and from some perspectives he could even be classified as a terrorist.

And I love both series for the fact that there are good and bad motives, and sincerely likeable characters, on both sides of the confrontation, and plenty of room for discussion as to which side is better or worse.

I actually ended up exploring that in my latest music video. In some ways, Farscape's John and his archnemesis Scorpius are surprisingly similar, in ways that you don't necessarily notice on the first watch-through.

In this video, I paint a picture of their unexpected similarities, their different backgrounds and shared quest, and the ways in which each of them could be seen as a villain in the other's eyes.

Have you ever seen a really good villain protagonist, or a story that made you wonder who the villain was?

Which story was your favorite, and what reaction did it get from you?

Some characters are hilarious. They're crazy, they're goofy, they make jokes all the time...

And then there are the ones to whom this blog post is dedicated. The ones who are serious enough that just putting them into a comedic situation automatically makes it funnier.

Something about their stony stare only heightens the absurdity of a situation that contrasts their stern demeanor, and if they're genuinely dangerous, so much the better.

In some cases, their intense seriousness can make even mundane and normal situations strangely hilarious.

Just imagine Batman in a maid outfit. Or Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer being surrounded by a food fight. Or the scariest and most serious villain you can think of going shopping for socks.

And now you know what I mean.

It's a dynamic I like to play with sometimes, and I used it a lot in Heroic Lies. Zorei is calm, suave and intelligent... and I stuck him in a room with Alexandra, who's an ongoing comedy act full of brash humor and playful sarcasm.

The resulting banter still makes me grin sometimes when I read it. If you haven't ordered your copy yet, you can do so by clicking the button below.

In the meantime, I've also been playing with this trope in my free materials, like my latest music video. In it, the protagonist of Farscape squares off against his formidable archnemesis... in a 3-minute musical pissing match set to "Anything You Can Do".

It's one of a very few among my music videos that doesn't need a knowledge of the series to enjoy, so if you've watched Farscape, or if you haven't but you don't mind spoilers, take a few minutes to enjoy the comedy of a serious sci-fi antagonist trying to establish his dominance through a goofy song.

Do you have a favorite example of a 'comically serious' character? If so, who is (s)he, and which story is the character from?

Happiness: finding the best anime series you've ever watched on Netflix, marathoning the whole darn thing, seeing that it's just as great as you remember it, and learning something from it that you can apply to your writing.

I was watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica last night, and I noticed that it uses a very interesting visual technique during certain parts of the dialogue. It focuses on the character who's talking, as a standard show would... but then it starts flashing to various parts of the surrounding scenery, in a rapid and somewhat disorienting way.

I don't often see shows do that, but it made for an intriguing effect.

It held my eye's attention more firmly than a long shot of a slightly-moving face would have, it showcased the gorgeous scenery that the series so proudly displays, and in the moments where the transitions were quick and the speaking character's mental state increasingly unhinged, it gave a tense, unbalanced feel to the scene.

It was as if the viewer's attention, mind and viewpoint were fragmenting from one focal point to another, like the psyche of a person going mad.

It's an unusual method, but one I think I'm going to employ in the future. I'll admit that I sometimes neglect the characters' surroundings in favor of the plotline and dialogue, but I'm going to start using this technique to paint more of a picture in the readers' minds, and when applicable, to create the same tense, unhinged, fragmented effect that Madoka Magica displayed.

Have you ever seen this technique in a movie or book?

Did you enjoy it?

Where did you see it?

I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Whoops! Ever have one of those moments when you're happily editing your work, things are going well, and then you suddenly realize that you've screwed up the timeline and a lot of the timeframes are wrong?

Last night, I was working on a flashback section of Heroic Lies, and I glanced at the time marker at the top of the paragraph and realized, Seven years? Wait a minute... that's not right. If that flashback had happened seven years ago, my adult protagonist would still be a teen. Crap.


Glad I caught that when I did!

There's been quite a bit of rearranging to do during this edit, more so than in my other two published books. The joys of writing in medias res - I've got two different timelines to juggle. The protagonist's knowledge in the 'present day' sections is affected by the flashback sections, and the timing in the flashback sections is affected by the need for them to fit realistically with the 'present day' parts.

Everything meshes together in ways that I haven't needed to deal with in past novels - those books had flashbacks and characters' memories, but not long segments of backstory like I have in Heroic Lies. It's all a lot less linear than I'm accustomed to, but as I gradually work out all these kinks, it's coming together well.

I do like experimenting with different writing styles like this. When you've been doing something your whole life, doing it the same way over and over gets so boring. :)

Have you ever read or written something in medias res?

Did you enjoy it?

I'd love to read your comments!