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dalekofchaos · 7 months ago

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Context

Hux. Short version, Hux reveals Kylo killing Snoke to the FIrst Order leadership. Hux ousts Ben and becomes Supreme Leader. Now Hux plans to exterminate The Jedi, force sensitives everywhere and lead to the death of the force. Long version read here.

Kylo as the villain. Adam Driver said the plan was never to redeem Ben Solo, that was a late change to appease everyone. So my big pitch for Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. To me Kylo Ren is what Vader could’ve been had he reached his full potential. A Vader who was never wounded on Mustafar, a Vader who killed a close family member and his master. He is the villain they were looking for, but no they had to course correct.As for what his motivation could be, exactly what he said. Finish what Vader started. Destroy the Light and reign over the galaxy as Supreme Leader. Long version. Other look at Kylo as the villain

Snoke's essence transferred into Kylo Ren the moment he killed Snoke.

Darth Plagueis was a powerful Sith Lord who could influence the midichlorians to create life and also save others from dying. He taught everything he knew to his apprentice, Sheev Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious), but he eventually lost his power and young Palpatine killed him in his sleep. How could Plagueis not foresee his own demise at the hands of his ambitious apprentice? Why did Plagueis suddenly “lose his power”? The truth is, he didn’t lose his power and he knew Sidious planned to kill him. It was part of the plan. By dying, I believe Darth Plagueis was able to transmit himself into Sheev and assume control of his body, almost like an infectious disease. Ever notice his name? Darth Plagueis. Plague, as in an infectious disease. Darth Plagueis unlocked the secret to immortality by moving from one body to the next, continuing his lifespan through multiple hosts over countless years. Ever wonder why Palpatine was so obsessed with training a powerful young apprentice? Surely he knew that one day the apprentice would want to overthrow him, so why train his own murderer? In Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine continually provokes Luke to strike him down. Why would Palpatine want to be killed if the goal is longevity? Because Emperor Palpatine was assumed by Darth Plagueis and, through his death, he would then be able to transmit himself into a new host body. He wasn’t just looking for an apprentice, he was looking for a new body since Palpatine’s body was growing old. Luke Skywalker was meant to be the next host body for Darth Plagueis. But unfortunately for Plagueis, Darth Vader had a change of heart and defeated the Emperor. Snoke was Plagueis. It’s the only way to make things work. StarWars.com describes Snoke as a seeker of arcane and ancient lore, and the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary shows that he is a collector of rare memorabilia. At some point, Snoke must have found the wreckage of the Death Star on the forest moon Endor, and was infected by Darth Plagueis when he came upon the corpse of Palpatine. Did you ever wonder why Snoke thought it was so important to complete Kylo Ren’s training? It’s because Snoke was Darth Plagueis and he was training his next host body. Plagueis didn’t have a choice but to infect a really old political influencer like Snoke. Kylo was being groomed to become the next host body. Remember the infamous scene in The Last Jedi where Snoke is “predicting” how Kylo Ren will kill Rey? Wasn’t it a little too obvious? Wouldn’t Snoke have been able to foresee Kylo’s treachery? See through his conflict? It’s because he wasn’t predicting Rey’s death, he predicted his own. He knew Kylo would kill him. He deliberately bullied and provoked Kylo in order to stir his anger into hatred to further fuel his dark side and lead him to completing his training.

So Darth Plagueis goal would be to transfer his essence into Rey and in failing in that. He will drain the life force from the Dyad to satiate his own life force.

Thrawn. Cardinal West's Sequel Trilogy rewrite has the best take of Thrawn as the villain

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Rae Sloane.

Rae Sloane founded The First Order! Sloane was loyal to the Empire, so much so, rather than allowing it to cease to exist, she recruited other loyalists and they fled to the Unknown Territories beyond Jakku. She founded the First Order. Together with Hux, she could usurp control of the First Order and become Supreme Leader, which would start a civil war, those loyal to Sloane and those loyal to Kylo. We can have someone who could be a great antagonist to Leia. The founder of The First Order and the mother of the Resistance. What makes Rae a compelling character is the fact that she believes what the Empire is doing is right. In her eyes, the Empire is doing the right thing, purging lawlessness from a galaxy overrun by bureaucrats that care little for the common people. She’s wrong, but like great villains before her, audiences can see where she’s coming from even if they don’t agree with it. Throughout her many appearances in the supplemental Star Wars narratives, she is constantly pushing for the Empire to be “just.” When things start to fall apart after the Battle of Endor, Rae struggles to keep the remnants of the fleet playing by the unspoken rules of warfare and is frustrated to see the Empire careen into backstabbing and incompetence. You can see Rae’s influence in the First Order with its strict hierarchy and minute by-the-books stringency that makes Palpatine’s Empire look positively laissez-faire by comparison. Supreme Leader Rae Sloane would make The First Order a force to be reckoned with and what better way to end it than with the First Order’s founder?

The Grysks.

The Grysks were introduced in the new canon novel Thrawn:Alliances. They are what brings Thrawn to the Empire in hopes of co-existing to fight this threat in the Unknown Regions. Grysks are a species living somewhere in the Unknown Regions. Creatures half of myth, whom few have ever seen. It is said that they are nomads, with no fixed home, traveling in spacecraft so numerous they blot out the stars. They are said to be terrifying warriors, overwhelming their opponents by sheer numbers and ferocity. The fact that these intergalactic conquerors are not the main threat in the Sequel Trilogy is baffling. You could’ve had Ben Solo sense they were coming during his Jedi days and made the ultimate sacrifice to become Kylo Ren and join The First Order because he knew the New Republic was not ready to face such a threat. It wouldn’t make what he was doing the entire trilogy right, but it would make explain why he turned and what his motivations are.

I don't really have a explanation for Qi'Ra, but she was trained by Maul, took over the Crimson Dawn and you don't waste Emilia Clarke on one movie that never continued. So Qi'Ra as the villain could've worked.

A Mandalorian invasion lead by Fett writes itself.

I know it's technically Palpatine, but it works better because we don't stupidly retcon Anakin's sacrifice. This was planned, but the idiots that be decided it would be better if Ian played him. So instead this is the perfected clone. The Clone Wars were a test for Palpatine to perfect cloning. Throughout the reign as Emperor, he tinkered with cloning force sensitives, created a lot of failures(Snoke) but prior to Endor, he perfected it and kept it as a fail safe should he die. And after Kylo Ren killed Snoke, he awakened. Palpatine reborn. The movie opens at the end of the war. Finn successfully consurs up a Stormtrooper Rebellion and all the FO officers are executed, Hux is captured and Rey beats Kylo Ren for the umpteenth time. The First Order are on their last legs. Until a message is delivered to the galaxy.

“People of the galaxy. Your Emperor has returned after thirty long, lawless years. To the Sith and the Jedi; follow the Holocrons. We have much work to do. Those who remained loyal to me shall be rewarded. For those who relished in my demise, who celebrated what they thought the end of the Empire and believed their treachery had won them the galaxy…only death and suffering await. The great error shall be corrected. The day of victory is at hand. The restoration of the Empire! The Final Order! The Day of the Sith!”

And it's a race. Rey and the Resistance hoping to stop The Emperor, while Kylo Ren is hoping to kill Palpatine, obtain the power of the Sith Eternal and an infinite fleet that will win the galaxy, but in the end, Rey and Kylo are forced to work together. Matt Smith as Palpatine could've fixed the movie

The final contingency of the Emperor. Cloning Luke Skywalker. Palpatine had foreseen either Luke will kill him and Vader or Vader will betray him. So Palpatine orders that Luke's hand be brought to him. Luke is cloned, but imperfectly. He is just a husk of power, so Palpatine has the greatest minds of the Empire indoctrinate this malleable clone to being the heir and the eventual savior of the Empire. This clone. Let's refer to him as Luuke. Luuke learned everything there was from Palpatine. His Machiavellian cunning mechanisms. Mastery over the dark side and fully believed in his master's will and plans for him.

Luuke foresaw that there would be problems if he revealed himself. SO he created a puppet, Snoke. Through Snoke, he turned Kylo Ren to the dark side and puppeteered The First Order. Masterminding everything from the shadows and after Snoke and the real Luke Skywalker's deaths, it was time to reveal himself.

Luuke's motivations are to bring Kylo Ren to heel or cast him aside, turn Rey to the dark side or kill her and rule the galaxy as his master intended for him. This dark side Luke would unite both Rey and Ben against him and would give Mark Hamill the opportunity to play a dark side Luke Skywalker.

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suzannahnatters · 1 year ago

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Trope Talk: Villain Romance

So, I was watching a villain romance cdrama again lately (GOODBYE MY PRINCESS) and it has been forcing me to think about what makes some villain romances work for me so well, and others…not so much.

First of all, a lot of my comments on romance at large, and on enemies-to-lovers as the broader trope to villain romance, apply here. For me, GOODBYE MY PRINCESS failed on a few different levels. It failed as a romance because the male lead so rarely, if ever, allowed himself to be vulnerable to the female lead that I couldn't believe either of them could genuinely be falling for each other. It failed as an enemies-to-lovers story because the female lead didn't feel like a match for the male lead in terms either of power or of morals: he was irredeemably awful and held all the power in the relationship, while she was unquenchably pure and naive, holding no power at all. But then, it also failed for me as a villain romance, and because I eat up villain romance with a spoon (WUTHERING HEIGHTS? THE LAST JEDI? LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL? TILL THE END OF THE MOON? That ONE SCENE in RICHARD III? yess?) I've spent a lot of time thinking about different kinds of villain romance, how some are easier to "sell" to an audience than others - as a convincing HEA, I mean - and how each of them can and can't be made to work.

So far, I think a lot of it has to do with how the villain is built. First off, how does the villain present himself to the audience and other characters? Second, does the villain get a character arc, and is it for the better, or for the worse? Finally, does the villain have genuine feelings for the heroine, and does he achieve a happily ever after with her? Or, in other words: where does your villain come from, where is he going, and how does he get there?

There are a few different choices awaiting the author here, and some of them are, I believe, easier to sell an audience than others. Let's begin with the villain's character arc over the course of the story.

POSITIVE CHANGE VILLAIN This one is the classic: your villain love interest starts out bad, but gets better. See: Erik from THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in the STAR WARS sequels, Nux in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, Dongfang Qingcang in LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL, Thyme in F4: THAILAND.

Redemption arcs are honestly not easy to write, because they need to satisfy both justice and mercy; and authors, like everyone else, tend to want to prioritise one over the other. It's interesting that of the five examples of this trope I listed above, not one of the three the Western examples end in a HEA; two out of three equate redemption with death. Meanwhile, I could also note how the Asian examples pull their punches when it comes to facing the villain with the consequences of his actions, and these are some of the BEST examples.

Still, audiences can pull for a character who's clearly capable of learning from his mistakes, and we all want to inhabit a fantasy where a terrible man learns better and earns his happy ending. I've written this kind of villain romance a couple of times, notably with Vasily in my gaslamp books. Basically, if you plan to have a HEA as an endgame in your villain romance, a positive arc is the best way to make a longterm relationship convincing.

ANTIHERO WITH IMAGE PROBLEMS This one is a bit more complicated. The love interest starts out well and gets better, but along the way he struggles with a dark side and an unfortunate predilection for angry black clothing and eyeliner. He isn't so much as a villain, as a well-meaning antagonist desperately trying not to live up to his dark reputation. See: Tantai Jin from TILL THE END OF THE MOON, but also Galadriel Higgins from THE SCHOLOMANCE books by Naomi Novik, who is in a very similar predicament though not part of a villain romance.

This one is tricky to write, because there aren't a lot of ways a genuinely well-meaning person is going to convincingly pose as an existential threat to the universe. Both TTEOTM and the SCHOLOMANCE books pull it off by invoking the future, either through time travel or through prophecy: the antihero is going to become the Dark Lord/Lady and destroy the world. This makes them a target in the present, and gives them a threatening dark side to struggle against. In TTEOTM, Tantai Jin is torn between his vindictive impulses to revenge himself on those who have wronged him, and his natural longing for the love of others. In this case, it's not so much that he's a villain intrinsically, as that he plays that role in the heroine's head.

I've never written one of these, except as a stage in a positive change arc, but it's a really fun character type that I'd genuinely love to see more of.

NEGATIVE CHANGE HERO This is another classic: the hero who lives long enough to see himself become the villain. See: Anakin Skywalker from the STAR WARS prequels, Heathcliff from WUTHERING HEIGHTS, or Wang So from SCARLET HEART RYEO. If the Antihero With Image Problems withstands the temptation to become a villain, then this character succumbs with more or less struggle. He ususally also doesn't get the girl. In face, the heroine often doesn't survive this sort of story at all.

Audiences have less trouble with this kind of story, because it can come across as properly cautionary. "If you fall in love with someone who gets a villain arc, you will die, and it is probably your fault." Everyone is happy, except the characters. Personally, I think this is realistic, because I don't think a thorough-going villain CAN be a stable longterm relationship; but just once, instead of dying, I really would like to see the heroine nope out and go to live her life in peace and quiet, as happens in the wonderful Daisy Ridley OPHELIA film.

I've actually never written one of these, either, mostly because I've never been able to bring myself to write a tragedy. But I do love reading them.

UNREPENTANT VILLAIN Or, Bad Man With a Crush. This is another really common iteration of the trope, but it's usually played from the point of view of the male hero, and the heroine usually doesn't reciprocate the villain's interest in any way. The great exception to this, of course, comes in Shakespeare's RICHARD III, where the unrepentant villain convinces the widow of one of his murder victims to marry him because he's THAT GOOD. Watching Laurence Olivier in this role at 13 may have been a formative moment of my life. Other examples are thick on the ground: Frollo from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, Scarpia from TOSCA, the Darkling in SHADOW & BONE. Heck, I've written at least one of these myself.

Again, audiences expect this kind of villain either not to have his feelings returned or, if they are, to see either the heroine or the villain die by the end. In fact, this villain is the sort most likely not to have genuinely romantic feelings for the heroine at all; it's usually simply lust. The only example I mentioned where the villain arguably does have more complicated feelings for the heroine than a mere appetite for sex and power, and where she is tempted to reciprocate, is the one written by a woman, SHADOW & BONE - because a female writer is going to treat her heroine as a more fully orbed person, and insist on male characters treating her the same way.

The second question to ask when writing a villain romance is: how does the villain present himself to others, including the audience? Again, there are a few options here, but in any case I think one of the most important ingredients, if you're going to make the audience care about the villain, is a sense that the villain COULD be a better person than he is.

SHEEP IN WOLF'S CLOTHING The villain projects a terrifying image, but deep down he has a heart of gold. Note that this is not about character arc (for instance, this describes both Tantai Jin, who is an antihero on a positive arc, and Wang So, who is a hero on a fall arc). Rather, it's about how other characters, and the audience, view the character throughout most of the story.

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing is easier to "redeem" because half the work is done when you show that after all, the character is better than we thought, and doesn't need as much work to be redeemed. For this reason, it's a really good choice in any sort of villain romance, because you get someone who LOOKS bad but is in fact plausible as someone who IS capable of changing and learning.

Vasily from my Miss Dark series is definitely a sheep in wolf's clothing, which is extremely fun to write. Vasily's had a traumatic change of heart which has taken away his taste for blood, treachery, and power. His habits haven't quite caught up with his heart, yet, and his determination to hold onto a semblance of power and terror makes him desperate to playact as a villainous vampire prince even though he's none of those things any longer.

SHEEP IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING I was nearly not going to include this variant at all, because where's the villainy in that? But then I remembered Anakin Skywalker. Anakin has a dark side, like Tantai Jin, which he gives into on occasion, but the prophecy that he will bring balance to the Force seems to predict a bright future for him. And he genuinely is a well-meaning person, who only wants to protect the people he cares about. For most of the story, Anakin is a good person and an upstanding Jedi with a bright future. This only makes his eventual downfall more tragic.

While how the villain presents himself is not always linked to a particular arc, this one is, since it requires a genuine hero to begin with. As I mentioned above, this kind of fall usually spells death for the heroine. I think this particular villain romance tends to be underexplored, because the freaks who like villain romance aren't into the aesthetic of a genuinely good man being corrupted, while those who write the downfall arc usually aren't into the aesthetic of villain romance. Nobody has ever written a romance about the Macbeths, and this strikes me as a missed opportunity.

WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING This villain is exactly as bad as he appears on the outside, but if he's lucky, big changes are coming for him. In LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL, Dongfang Qingcang is about to have his cold dead heart magically melted. In FALLING FOR INNOCENCE, Kang Min-Ho is literally given a new one. As a Christian, I love seeing fantasy elements used to explain why the wolf in wolf's clothing is suddenly forced to trade a heart of stone for a heart of flesh, because in Christianity the only way this ever happens is through a literal miracle.

And I do think this kind of villain IS difficult to redeem for his HEA without some kind of miracle, because he's genuinely done some dreadful things, and he's determined not to repent for any of them. Kylo Ren from the STAR WARS sequels is a really excellent example of a Wolf in Wolf's Clothing: when Rey spits at him, "You're a monster!" he responds almost proudly, "Yes, I am." In a way, the Wolf in Wolf's Clothing's honesty is his one redeeming feature: he may be terrible in almost every way, but he never pretends to be a good man. This is something that the next option on the list lacks altogether.

WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING This villain looks like a good and upright person, but it's all a facade. In reality, he's conniving, ruthless, and manipulative, and whether he's a "hero" on a negative arc or a straight-up Unrepentant Villain, the story is about to unmask him as the bastard he is.

Western literature has a whole array of this type of character, and they're usually the smooth hypocrites of the canon: TOSCA's Scarpia, HUNCHBACK's Frollo, MEASURE FOR MEASURE's Angelo, KNIVES OUT's Ransom. There's just something particularly evil about someone who sees and experiences true goodness and sees it as his opportunity to mask his evil deeds, and that's why we recognise such people as irredeemable. This is why BLUEBEARD is one of the trickiest fairytales to retell, at least if you're interested in a HEA - because Bluebeard, unlike the Beast or Hades or any of the other dubious bridegrooms of fairytale literature, commits awful crimes while pretending to be an ordinary, upright businessman.

This is also where we find GOODBYE MY PRINCESS's Li Chengyin, who marries this with a corruption/fall arc. Very early on in the story, we see that although Chengyin has genuine feelings for the heroine, he's fully capable of betraying her and murdering her family for purely political motivations. At first, Chengyin is neither experienced nor hardened in evil, but he absolutely will betray anyone in his path if it will benefit his plans.

This sort of villain is particularly difficult to redeem, because he's someone who has approval and love already but chooses to destroy everyone around him anyway. He is also uniquely enraging, because we've all known people this terrible in real life - from high profile teachers and carers being caught in ongoing sexual predation, to that crumby ex-husband who traumatised your good friend. I don't think I've ever seen a character like this be convincingly redeemed, and while I think it COULD be done - I do have a Bluebeard retelling of my own up my sleeve - I do that, as with the Wolf in Wolf's Clothing, it would have to come with some kind of fantastical/miraculous explanation.

And in the end, let's face it, it's always most cathartic to see this sort of person get their comeuppance.

Third and finally, is your villain romance going to get a happily ever after? I'm one of those people who will get a lot of fun out of a romance that ends badly, like SCARLET HEART RYEO, or even something that isn't a romance at all, like RICHARD III and the ill-fated Anne Neville. But whatever you pick, I'm begging you, be very clear about whether the villain has genuine feelings for the heroine or not, and don't reward some horrible person who's never convincingly expressed care for another, with any kind of romantic validation.

HEA VARIATIONS Maybe your villain and heroine make a match of it. Most of the time this is because the villain undergoes a positive character arc to earn his happy ending, and I've got to say, this is a very sensible choice. I personally do not need to see an unrepentantly terrible person get any kind of longterm romantic relationship, either because he's trapped/deceived the heroine or because he's corrupted her to become as bad as himself; I honestly don't think that terrible people CAN have a successful longterm relationship. That said, I've written a relationship where the villain DOES make the love interest worse, but where ultimately the genuine love, empathy, and trust between them ultimately does drag both of them back to the light.

TRAGIC VARIATIONS There are a great many more options available here. The main thing I would say is that you have to give an ending that is justified by what comes before.

A common choice is to give the villain a positive arc culminating in a heroic death. I've seen this done well (FURY ROAD). I've seen it done terribly (RISE OF SKYWALKER). Personally I feel that unless the themes absolutely demand this, you should avoid it, because too often it comes across as the writers arbitrarily ridding themselves of a character they don't know what to do with.

Another common choice is to give the villain a negative arc culminating in the heroine/love interest's death. I've seen this done in ways I don't hate. In RICHARD III, Richard kills literally everyone he touches. In SCARLET HEART RYEO, death is a realistic result of the heroine's trauma and closes the door definitively on the villain's hopes for reconciliation; but it also returns her to her far better life in the future, so it becomes a glimmer of hope for her (though not quite enough). Too often, however, this choice carries with it sexist overtones. Death becomes the heroine's punishment for the crime of loving a bad man (or something else equally fatuous), while the villain is "punished" only by having to live without her.

What about a negative arc culminating in the villain's death? Well, I strongly disliked the choice made in SHADOW AND BONE, in which the heroine guts the villain while hissing "there is no redemption"; to me it was lacking in either tragic catharsis OR eucatastrophe. I think you CAN have a satisfying ending in which the heroine or somebody else kills the villain, but it needs to be an expression of catharsis or eucatastrophe, and we definitely need to feel that the villain is beyond saving - which, if you've made him a genuine romantic possibility, is often hard to feel.

I love the ending of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, in which the villain dies frustrated after realising that after all, cruelty and abuse DIDN'T have to turn him into a villain; he then reunites with the ghost of his equally terrible love interest. I also love the ending of OPHELIA, in which Ophelia, realising that Hamlet cannot be redeemed from his quest for vengeance, quietly nopes out and goes to live a happy life on her own. And then, there's the gold standard for bittersweet endings, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, in which the villain doesn't get the girl, but neither of them have to die, and her compassion for him causes him to go off and live a better life on his own. I think the thing all these have in common is that even though none of them end with the couple together, they afford the whole story a sense of hope: cycles of abuse are broken, some people get better than they deserve, and even those that don't are doomed by their own actions, rather than being killed off in a way that feels punitive or vindictive. And I feel that this is an essential ingredient of tragedy: that justice arises naturally out of the villain's own actions rather than being imposed by some righteous warrior.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER Some of these options are easier to sell the audience than others. For instance, a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing on an Unrepentant Villain arc is absolutely not good material for a HEA romance, while a Sheep in Wolf's Clothing on a Positive arc is probably your best bet (it's a classic for a reason). Others, like a Wolf in Wolf's Clothing on a positive arc, may require careful handling to ensure that the audience is happy to come along for the ride. Whatever you choose, however, it pays to be conscious of which tropes you're using, where the audience has seen them before, and what they expect to see happen to the characters that enact them. This doesn't mean that you can't defy audience expectations, of course; just that it might take a little more work to bring the audience along with you on the journey that you've planned, and that it might not be wise to pick all the worst possible options and expect the audience to embrace the character in question. (cough Li Chengyin cough).

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