Only Moments Before The Rise Of Action

I know it has been a while since I last hopped on here to blog a little, but I actually have a really good excuse.

This past weekend, a new video game was being beta tested.  It is the second one in a series that I first played when it came out in 2005 and have been totally smitten ever since.  The story line is quite interesting and fun to participate in, except that it became a bit strange in the third game Nightfall where you and your team must kill a god and then ensconce a new god...yeah I had a small issue with that.

Concept art for Guild Wars 2

Anyway, the new game is called Guild Wars 2 (TM) and It was beta tested this past weekend and I have been anticipating it for a very long time.  For one key reason, this story has been boasting a player-dynamic event system to create the story line.  Basically, the players all create their own individualized (maybe mostly individualized) story as the game progresses.  Awesome!

*drool*

Okay, so we discussed the exposition and how much is tied up in the first few pages, chapters, minutes, etc.  but before we can go on our little adventure up the plot pyramid we need to stop and look at what creations have been identified in the past so that we may "borrow" these constructs to strengthen our projects.

Character Archetypes!

The Batman Live cast of characters

An archetype is simply a reoccurring type of character.  And a character is defined as the mental, physical, and emotional aspects of a person, or a toaster, or whatever we're writing about.

the first break down of character types are protagonists and antagonists.  Protagonists are the good guys, well not always, but for now we'll use that definition.  Antagonists are the bad guys, usually, but we'll use this definition for now.

Ideally, what truly makes a protagonist and the antagonists is how the audience identifies with these characters.  The protagonist is the character that we, the readers, want to see win.  We cry when they cry, we hurt when they're hurt.  We clench our seats and drop our tea cups when their world crashes down.  Then, of course, the antagonist is the character the audience has trouble identifying with.  We want to see this character fail and be defeated.  We want to see their efforts crumble at that hands of the protagonist.

The reason why I didn't want to completely brush all good guys as protagonists and all bad guys as antagonists is because of the concept of antiheroes and antivillains.

An antihero is a hero which utilizes socially unacceptable means to accomplish good goals, Batman for example is an antihero as a vigilante.  A more broad definition is that of a character who is an unlikely hero, or someone who doesn't fit the typical hero strata, the everyman, for example.  Keep in mind, heroes are the subject of all the good social memes of a culture, therefore they are a force of good within their given culture.  So a hero who ignores the social structure to accomplish goals which support that culture is the antihero.

Anti-villain is just like the anithero, except that they do socially acceptable things to accomplish bad goals, like a lawyer who uses the law to ensure that his drug dealing and pimping clients are found innocent of all charges.  In the US we pride ourselves on our legal system, which has been receiving a lot of criticism for being broken, so a wicked manipulation of tricks and schemes would create the antivillain because he is operating within acceptable social memes to achieve goals which are negative to the culture.

Now, here's the catch to this.  For both protagonists and antagonists there are tens of further archetypes to examine.  Something for us to discuss later, but something definitely worth researching.

Best of luck mi amigos.