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?

It's been said that perfection is the enemy of progress.

But 'good enough' can be just as dangerous. No artist ever took pride in what they created, and no audience ever loved it, because it was 'good enough'.

A while ago, I created a Farscape music video set to the Within Temptation song "Shot in the Dark". If you haven't already seen it, you can watch it here:

Would I say it's 'good enough'? Actually, most of it was more than that. It was great. But there were a couple parts where I wasn't completely satisfied with the clips I chose, and I felt that they muted the energy I was trying to build.

But I thought they were 'good enough'. So I let them be... only to realize later that there were other, far more fitting clips I had somehow forgotten about, which would have captured the mood I was trying to create far better.

And now those bits of the video bother me a little every time I watch it. I'm thinking about tweaking and reuploading it - it's a pity I can't do that without redoing everything I've done with it on YouTube and losing all my views.

For the moment, instead, I'm focusing on learning from that mistake, and applying that learning to everything I create from this point forward. Don't wait for perfection, but don't settle for something that doesn't feel right just because it's 'good enough'.

In my latest video, I encountered the same test. I was creating a Scorpius, John and Aeryn video set to Kalafina's "Magia", and with a song that awesome, there was NO way I was going to settle for something I wasn't satisfied with.

But, once again, some of the clips just didn't sit right. So this time, I looked over them, determined which clips were bothering me, and replaced them with ones that created the tone and energy I was going for instead of draining it.

I absolutely love the result.

​Because of this experience, I've decided that this dedication to quality, and the knowledge that "good enough never is", will carry through into my future videos and all my writing.

It's been quite a diverse few weeks in the area of Farscape music videos! While I've neglected to update you about them on this blog out of a desire to write about other things, I think it's high time to share the latest fruits of my favourite hobby.

I've got a humorous video, a soft and sad one, and a harsher and more energetic one, so no matter what mood you happen to be in, I'm sure you'll enjoy at least one of them. (Note: the description for the last of the 3 contains spoilers for Farscape's 4th season, so proceed with caution if you haven't watched that far.)

Here they are, in the order in which they were made:


The funny one: Still Alive

This was a triumph! I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS!

In this video, set to the awesome end-credits song of the even more awesome video game Portal, SCoRPIUS reports on his surprisingly nonfatal career as the head of the Aperture Science Gammak Project.

And, of course, he feels the need to rub in the fact that he's always still alive.


The soft, sad one: Leaves from the Vine

This song makes me cry. I don't know why, because songs usually don't. But it does. Adriana Figueroa made an absolutely gorgeous remix of the song that Iroh sings in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I wove it gently into Scorpius' quest to find answers and to protect his chosen race.


The harsh, energetic one: Strawberry Gashes

I went with an unusual premise for this one. Instead of depicting the Farscape series as it actually went, it's set in an Unrealized Reality, in which Scorpius is killed on Grayza's orders. After Braca's cycles of working with the half-Scarran, and despite John's suffering at his hands, both men are haunted by the grim result of their betrayal, and the video is an exploration of their shared guilt.


I hope you enjoy the music videos! I'd love to know which one you liked most, so please take a moment to tell me in the comments section.

Well. That was as deliberately nonsensical a title as I could possibly make it. So now I guess I should explain myself.

A little while ago, I read an article about candy bar scenes. You can see it here, and if you're a writer, you should definitely read it.

For the busy or uninquisitive, the gist of it is: every scene should be a candy bar scene.

No filler. No boring scenes. None. Every scene should be awesome.

Does it sound like an unreasonable challenge? Sure. So of course, now I have to do it.

That is my new challenge to myself. During the edit of Heroic Lies, I plan to make every scene into a candy bar scene. In every book I write in the future, everything will be candy bars.

Because let's face it, once you've got over a decade of experience in something like writing, there's really no reason not to accept a challenge that helps you to take your craft to the next level.

Speaking of challenges, I recently took one on in a different area of my art: music videos. I heard a beautiful song called "Wanderer's Lullaby", and it was so wonderful that I had to make a video of it... but which character to make it for?

I weighed several options, but in the end, I decided to focus the video on two characters: a badass sci-fi antagonist whom you wouldn't tend to associate with lullabies, and a one-shot character who only gets three brief scenes in the entire series. Not much footage to work with.

What can I say? Improbable but fitting song/character matches, and characters whose viewpoints tend not to be explored, are an interesting challenge, and one I'm happy to accept.

In most of my music videos, I try to tell a story. I put the clips in mostly chronological order, or if I can't do that, I batch them together so that each segment of the song tells the story of a specific arc or episode.

A lot of the time, it works very well. But in one of my recent videos, I felt that it caused some dissonance between the mood of some verses and the mood of the clips, and that bothered me. So I decided to try something different.

Behold, my latest music video: the busiest, least linear, and artsiest video I've created to date. In this one, I was careful to match the tones of the instruments, vocals and video clips, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Enjoy!

And, on the less artsy and more tongue-in-cheek side, I also created a video set to Jonathan Coulton's "Sucker Punch". No, it's not about Scorpius - this time, I decided to focus on John Crichton, and the crazy, madcap, ridiculous adventures that seem to entangle him everywhere he goes.

Third location and a second-string team and one awful plan: put it all together, and it's probably the funniest music video I've created yet.

I always loved the relationship between Zhaan and Stark. Two very spiritual, tormented souls, coming together into one of the most natural-feeling relationships in the whole Farscape series. Some of the other couples always seemed a bit thrown-together to me, but that one just fit.

Another thing I absolutely love is the song "Cosmic Love" by Florence + The Machine, which I discovered due to this wonderful AMV.

It's a hard song to make a music video for; while the tune and instrumentals of the chorus vary enough that it doesn't feel repetitive, the words of said chorus stay the same through all four of its appearances, so it was difficult to find fitting clips for all four repetitions. But it's a song I just can't get enough of; I've replayed the crap out of it, and it never gets old.

So when a person loves two things that much, and they fit together so well, of course one must find a way to put them together. Hence this music video.

Another couple I enjoy is Sikozu and Scorpius. Sure, I wasn't thrilled about the way she monopolized so much of his screentime, preventing the development of his other relationships, but if that had to be the case, at least the relationship that did develop was a very interesting one.

I liked the way she could look up to him but still completely hold her own, and I was happy that the relationship seemed to be largely based on genuine compatibility, rather than feeling like they were thrown together just because the series needed a romantic subplot.

When I saw this AMV, set to Katy Perry's "E.T.", I knew I just had to make a Scorpius/Sikozu MV out of it. It was such a perfect fit for their edgy, dangerous relationship - how could I not?

Well. That didn't take long. My latest Farscape music video, set to "Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton, is live on YouTube.

This epic saga stars Scorpius as Bob the Polite Zombie, whose one ambition is to eat the brain of his poor coworker Tom, played by John Crichton. This music video really has it all: courteous office dialogue, selfless advice from beyond the grave, and guest appearances by the ever-talented Scarran Mindfrell Music Band.

You can watch the video directly in this post, or see it on YouTube here.

Enjoy!

I think my favourite part of the video is the scene where Bob comments that "I'm glad to see you take constructive criticism well"... while Tom throws a screaming temper tantrum.

What's your favourite part?

Well. This is certainly the strangest character/song combination I've ever done. At first, I wasn't even sure it would work. I mean, Scorpius is Farscape's scary, badass antagonist , so how does one cast him as the star in a music video set to the song "Poisoned With Love"?

And, what's more, how does one do it without taking him out of character or making him look inappropriately sappy?

As it turns out, it was easier than I thought.

As the music video started coming together, I realized that the song was a surprisingly perfect fit. Because for all that he spends several seasons terrorizing our protagonists, Scorpius himself goes through an incredible amount of abuse, and mostly on behalf of people who hate him or look down on him, or who he will never meet.

"I wear these tears and pretend they're not there..."

"So I keep walking on broken glass for you..."

If you want to see just how strangely well the song and the character fit together, you can click here to see it on YouTube, or simply watch it directly in this post.

So, what do you think? Were the song and the character a good match? Feel free to comment - I'd love to hear your opinion!

Have you ever had one of those times when you started to create something that was going to be small, and it decided to grow out of control?

I was going to make a music video for Harvey from Farscape, centering around his perspective on the events of "Infinite Possibilities". I wrote out the outline, chose the music, started adding slides and clips...

...and then realized that what I was creating was turning into something more like a mini-episode.

At first, I wasn't sure how to feel about that. If the video gets too long, will people want to watch it?

But then, Harvey never does get an episode of his own. Which is very regrettable, because he's an interesting character in an unusual and rather tragic situation. So much missed potential there.

Sure, what I'm creating won't quite have the production values of a Farscape episode. I don't have a million bucks to throw at it, or Wayne Pygram to voice Harvey's musings. (Though, I know YouTube has someone who's gotten good at vocally impersonating Scorpius; maybe I should recruit him.)

All the same, I think it's turning out pretty well. It's kind of like a cross between a music video and a fanfic, and it pulls on all the right heartstrings. In some ways, creating it has been kind of a saddening experience; it's a deep dive into the mind of a very lonely neuroclone. So if you enjoy sympathetic fanfics about characters whose viewpoints aren't explored much in-series, I think you'll like this.

What do you think? Would you enjoy a fan-made Harvey mini-sode?