Episode 114: Transcript
Episode: 114: Damnation Arcs
Transcription by Keffy
Annalee: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, the podcast about science fiction and the destruction of democracy by demonic forces from another dimension. I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction and my forthcoming novel is The Terraformers and you can preorder it now. It's coming out in January.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:19] I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a science fiction writer who writes YA and comics and just everything and my latest book is Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak.
Annalee: [00:00:28] Whoo!
[00:00:30] So, you've heard about redemption arcs, where a villain becomes good and makes up for all the bad things they did by like saving the world or taking the nerdy girl to the prom, you know, depending on the stakes of the story. But what about damnation arcs, where a seemingly good character goes dark side. Today we're going to talk about the pleasures of damnation, arcs and what it's like to invest in a character who betrays our love.
[00:00:55] Later in the episode, we'll be joined by author Neon Yang whose new novel, The Genesis of Misery is flirting with damnation arcs and getting us incredibly excited.
[00:01:06] Also, on our audio extra next week, we'll be talking about infodumping. Essentially, we're gonna infodump about infodumps and explain why sometimes it's good to give audiences a ton of details about what's going on in a story.
[00:01:19] And finally, by the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent and funded by you, our listeners, through Patreon? That is correct. If you become a patron, you're just making this podcast happen. You're making us happy. You're helping us buy spaghetti, sometimes. You're supporting our audio engineer and producer. Plus, you get audio extras with every episode, and you get access to our Discord channel where we hang out pretty much all the time and talk about really important topics. So, think about it. All that could be yours for just a few bucks a month. Anything you give goes right back into making our opinions even more correct. Find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
[00:02:06] [OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.]
Annalee: [00:02:34] So, Charlie Jane, let's start out with a really important question, which is, tell me about one of your favorite villains in fiction.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:46] Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna go with Darth Vader. He really scared me when I was a kid. He's such a kind of imposing figure. He's big and kind of shiny and he has this permanent scowl. And he's just so relentless.
Annalee: [00:03:02] Well, you don’t even see his face.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:03] No, but he wears a helmet that has a permanent scowl on the face.
Annalee: [00:03:06] I guess yeah, true. That's true, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:08] He wears a helmet where it's just like he's always gambling. That’s his entire kind of vibe is like scowl, scowl scowl. And he goes around just like wrecking everything and killing people right and left. He's so relentless and ruthless. He's kind of still to this day, kind of my model for what a good villain should be like because you can't reason with Darth Vader. You can't get into a debate with him. He's just gonna come and like fuck you up with his lightsaber or with his force choke. He's just gonna force choke the shit out of you.
Annalee: [00:03:44] Yeah. Plus, James Earl Jones is voice is so—
Charlie Jane: [00:03:46] Oh my god.
Annalee: [00:03:48] Incredible and imposing and menacing.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:52] Yeah, it's really… he's got an incredible voice. And I also obviously love the Daleks, in Doctor Who. We were trying to introduce the Daleks to a teenager yesterday who didn't fully understand why they're so awesome. But I love the fact that they're basically these space fascists, who live inside tanks, who are just kind of, they've been reduced to like blobs of hate, and they live inside tanks and again, similar to Darth Vader, you don't reason with a Dalek. Daleks are just like we want to exterminate all life that's not us. And we're just completely single minded in our desire for ethnic cleansing. To ethnic cleanse the universe and they are they're really… they were created by people who'd lived through World War II and they very clearly are Nazis, but like, with cyborgs with death rays.
[00:04:42] How about you, Annalee?
Annalee: [00:04:44] Yeah, I was gonna say what's interesting about the two villains that you mentioned are also you can't see their faces. I'm a huge fan of villains like Katra in She-Ra, who's a person who starts out good, becomes evil, but then In rejoins the good guys and redeems herself, and it's a classic redemption arc. What I love about that kind of arc is that as we move through it, we see how easy it is to move from making pretty good decisions to pretty bad ones. And we realize also that evil isn't this monolithic thing, but it's a series of choices over time. And these are choices that can almost always be undone. So, I think of redemption arcs as moments in people's lives where they decide to make choices that are more prosocial. But they're also a reminder that goodness is contingent, because like, maybe Katra turns bad again, when she hits middle age, we just don't know.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:45] Part of what I love about Katra is that she starts out as Adora’s friend, but she and Adora are fighting for the Horde who are actually the bad guys and Katra and Adora don't realize it at first. But when they find out, Adora’s like, oh my gosh, we're fighting for the bad guys, we have to change sides. And Katra’s like, no, I'm good. I mean, I'm not good. No, I'm okay with this.. The Horde is the side I'm on and I enjoy being part of the Horde. And I don't want to change and screw you.
[00:06:16] And actually, it feels very believable. And her journey towards kind of becoming one of the good guys is handled so carefully that that also feels very believable.
[00:06:26] So, it's funny, we all have a pretty good idea of the shape of a redemption arc. But we don't often talk about the opposite. So, what happens in a damnation arc?
Annalee: [00:06:37] It's funny because redemption arcs are such a huge trope in fiction, but when I searched for damnation arcs online, I didn't find a ton of people talking about them as such. But you know, shout out to the Miraculous Ladybug fans who are obsessed with which characters in that show are on damnation arcs. So, you know, that was one of the main places I saw people talking about it. And sometimes people discuss things like downfall arcs, but I don't think those are really the same thing as damnation arcs.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:08] Right, so what is the difference between a downfall arc and a damnation arc?
Annalee: [00:07:15] So, damnation arcs are where a character truly comes to sympathize with and work with the bad guys in a story, whether that means going to work for an evil corporation, or deciding that brutal fascist domination is the only way to save society or any number of other incredibly bad ideas. I think a downfall arc is more general. It just charts a character's fall from whatever height they were at. I mean, the movie A Star is Born is a classic downfall arc for the singer who was famous and is now bottoming out and kind of sucking up to this new singer.
[00:07:56] And it could be, I mean, a downfall art could be the 19th century Thomas Hardy novel Mayor of Casterbridge, which you know, I'm completely obsessed with, Charlie Jane. And that's a classic naturalist novel where the main character has been sober for 20 years and has become the mayor of this town, and then suddenly falls off the wagon and completely destroys himself.
[00:08:16] So, damnation arcs are a subcategory of downfall arcs, I guess. They're much more specifically about a person who joins the alleged bad guys, and oftentimes, it's bad guys they once fought against.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:30] Right and it's a trope that we see in a ton of places. I mean, The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. The Dark Phoenix Saga in the X-Men, where apparently, I was reading up on this, the writers were actually kind of debating internally, whether Jean Grey is possessed by an evil force or whether she just turns evil. And they finally had to admit to the editor at Marvel comics that there's no evidence in the text that she's possessed, she actually makes a series of choices that send her down a dark path. And obviously, different people have adapted it different ways.
Annalee: [00:09:02] Yeah, totally.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:04] It feels like she kind of chooses evil, after she kind of tangles with the Shi’ar. And not to toot my own horn, but my novel, The City in the Middle of the Night, features a character who starts out sympathetic, starts out kind of very idealistic, and one of the good guys, and slowly kind of turns kind of evil.
Annalee: [00:09:24] Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of ways that the damnation arc happens. You start with a seemingly ordinary person who's pretty good or basically somewhere between good or bad. And then something happens, like they're motivated by revenge, or they're tempted by power. And sometimes they're damned by social forces or really terrible experiences that they've had. But other times, they're just sort of fundamentally evil and haven't realized it yet.
[00:09:53] So, you see this idea a lot in cosmic horror stories, where you have a character like the guy in HP Lovecraft short story, “Shadow Over Innsmouth,” who comes to this town and they're full of Cthulhu’s spawn. They're these like froggy fish people and they freak him out. He's like, what the hell's going on here? This is terrible, these inhuman or half human creatures are engaging in all of this horrific worship of darkness. And then over the course of the story, this character realizes, actually, he's also Cthulhu spawn and didn't realize it, and it starts manifesting inside of him. And by the end, he's speaking prayers to Cthulhu and basically celebrating the coming destruction of humanity. Very relatable. So, he's kind of been dammed all along and now embraces it. And I think that kind of goes back to what you were saying about the Dark Phoenix plot, because sometimes, there's this idea that it comes from outside, and she's taken over. And other times, it's just something dark within her that eventually manifests itself.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:59] Right. So it’s like, there's kind of a villains journey that parallels the hero's journey. And if you're gonna break it down, what would you say? Is the villain’s journey in these damnation arcs?
Annalee: [00:11:10] Well, I'm glad you asked. Because as you know, I love to schematize these things. But before I go there, I just want to remind everybody what the hero's journey is. So, can you jog our memories, Charlie Jane?
Charlie Jane: [00:11:24] Sure. Okay, so I've kind of ranted against the hero's journey before, which means that I've actually spent some time paying attention to what it actually is. And it's this concept that was popularized by Joseph Campbell in 1949 book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and no butts. I just made that part up, [crosstalk] no butts.
Annalee: [00:11:43] I thought it was three butts.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:45] The hero with a thousand faces and three butts. Yeah, that's actually, that's what it was called. The hero’s journey, as Campbell kind of lays it out is very complicated. And, weirdly a rigid structure that he claims all stories fit into, and it doesn't really make sense. But there's a zillion stages. You can break them down into a few basic parts. There's the call to adventure. There's the initiation or trials, and then there's the return as a powerful figure. And so, you know, a few things that most descriptions of the hero's journey usually include are, you know, the hero is summoned on an adventure and usually refuses the call at first because they don't want to leave the ordinary world in their regular life and go off on an adventure. That's often a part that gets really annoying, where they're like, “No, I don't want to go do something awesome. I want to stay home and make beans or whatever.”
Annalee: [00:12:34] “I want to stay in Hobbiton.”
Charlie Jane: [00:12:35] Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, often there's a supernatural mentor or some kind of mentor who helps you out and teaches you. And then there's trials and temptations where you kind of have to prove yourself and resist evil. And then there's some kind of reward or boon which helps you to level up. And then there's a return to the ordinary world, but you now have some kind of new power or elixir. And so a textbook example is Frodo in Lord of the Rings, as you kind of alluded to, although he doesn't really return to the ordinary world at the end.
Annalee: [00:13:05] Yeah, that's right. I mean, his reward or his boon is that he now gets to go into the west with the elves.
[00:13:10] So, the other thing I think it's really important to remember about Campbell's idea of the hero's journey is that he was coming up with this idea right at the end of World War II, right? The book comes out in 1949. So, at this point in history, a ton of people were just shattered by the horrors of fascism, by the awfulness of atomic weapons, and dropping them on innocent people in Japan. And we were all really, I mean, not that I was there, but people at the time, were really questioning whether there was even such a thing as heroism anymore. So, Campbell comes along and is like, actually, yeah, and I can codify it. And here's how it works.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:53] Yeah, so basically, you respond to the horrors of World War II in a couple of ways, either by like creating monsters like the Daleks, or Godzilla, to kind of encapsulate some of the horrors in something that you can externalize or by trying to come up with some kind of shiny candy-coated fantasy of heroism.
[00:14:13] So, okay. We're now back at a moment of being terrified of fascism and apocalyptic destruction once again, yay. So, what does the villain’s journey look like?
Annalee: [00:14:24] Yes, the time has come for the villain’s journey. You know, I think if we kind of bounce off the idea of the hero's journey, the villain’s journey has about five rough stages, and you can break it into as many parts as you want. But I'm just going to stick with really basic stages. And obviously, this doesn't apply to all villains, but it's a kind of a rough outline.
[00:14:50] So, in stage one, you start with a character who is often not having a very typical childhood, unlike the hero in the Campbellian idea. Sometimes they're really suffering horribly. They're dealing with crushing poverty. They're dealing with violence. Or sometimes it's the opposite, where they're raised in decadent opulence, but it's still kind of this weird childhood where they're exposed to lots of bizarre intensity.
[00:15:18] And in stage two, they join up with the supposed good guys and rise through the ranks. In stage three, they have a growing sense of impatience with the good guys. They feel like they're not being acknowledged as the awesome person they are. They're not getting enough power. People aren't paying attention to their contributions. So, they're starting to get pissed off at these alleged good guys.
[00:15:42] And then stage four is almost always a connection with some kind of seductive figure who teaches them about the power of evil. And finally, then in stage five, they transform into the villain. Usually they get a name change, they get a body change, they get a costume change, and then they have new powers that allow them to destroy things and to take this power over other people.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:06] Glorious wanton destruction. Although, don’t destroy wontons, they're too tasty.
Annalee: [00:16:12] I know.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:12] So, I'm getting a lot of I apologize. That's a terrible, terrible pun. Anyway, so I'm getting a lot of Star Wars vibes from your description of the villain’s journey.
Annalee: [00:16:22] Absolutely. So, the first Star Wars trilogy with Anakin is a classic damnation arc. I mean, you already brought up Darth Vader, so let's just go there. There's a really key scene illustrating how this damnation arc works in Revenge of the Sith. It's right before the climactic battle on the lava planet. I know a scene that all of us, you know, knew and did not love.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:48] I like the battle on the lava planet. Anyway, sorry.
Annalee: [00:16:52] Awesome. Okay, well, this is for you. So, the scene starts with Padme telling Anakin that she loves him and he has to turn away from this path. And he responds by saying, you're lying, and then he force chokes her. And I think it's really interesting that part of his downfall is partner abuse. And then she faints, of course, and Obi-Wan enters the scene. And here's what happens.
SW 3: [00:17:16] Obi-Wan: You have allowed this dark lord to twist your mind until now. Until now, you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.
[00:17:27] Anakin: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire.
[00:17:46] Obi-Wan: Your new empire?
[00:17:48] Anakin: Don't make me kill you.
[00:17:51] Obi-Wan: Anakin my allegiance is to the Republic. To democracy!
[00:17:56] Anakin: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:02] Yeah, the politics of this scene really stand out because suddenly we're going from these sort of vague descriptions of the light side and the dark side, which are sort of metaphysical to very specific discussions about democracy versus fascism.
Annalee: [00:18:17] Yeah, this is why I think damnation arcs are such an important storytelling device, because at their best, and I'm not saying this movie is the best. But at their best, they really allow us to see how socially destructive people and events don't come out of nowhere. They build over time. And I suspect that one of the reasons why we don't often talk about damnation arcs as such, is because many of us don't want to think about that process. It's just much easier to believe that people magically convert into bad guys than to consider the way that they were turned into bad guys, because actual horrible things happen to them. Like, you know, Anakin’s mom being enslaved. And the fact that the Jedi are totally corrupt and they're allowing all kinds of humanitarian disasters to take place while they hang out in their fancy school on Coruscant. I mean, Anakin isn't wrong that the Jedi kind of suck.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:13] Yeah, and it's really true. And that's one of the things that I actually really like about the prequels is that the prequels kind of do kind of start poking holes in this supposedly perfect Jedi Order. And in that stage three, you mentioned, when the villain starts to question the supposedly good people around them, often the villain is raising really good points. They can see all the stuff that everybody else is overlooking, because they're standing outside and often, that is how a person gets seduced into evil because the heroes don't want to confront their own privilege and question their own assumptions and it leaves people feeling left out.
Annalee: [00:19:46] There's often this moment in the damnation arc where character hasn't gone full evil, and they're just giving a really cogent critique of social norms, and nobody pays any attention to them. Nobody takes their completely legitimate critique seriously, and then they go dark side because at least the bad guys know that the good guys aren't as good as they say they are.
[00:20:09] So, this is why when I'm writing, I usually write characters who are kind of stuck in stage three, like they've got the critique, and they're trying to figure out how to fix things. And they're weighing their options. So like, in my novel, Future of Another Timeline, I have a time traveler who's trying to change the past named Tess, and she's trying to figure out if she should go back in time, and just murder some people who are terrible and whose decisions lead to a darker world, or if she should take a more peaceful path and try to change history by finding allies in the past and taking direct action, engaging in protest. And so that kind of battle is a very stage three in the villain’s arc. There's temptation to do something violent and murderous, and then the possibility of a better decision.
[00:21:00] And that's the moment in a character's journey or in characters generally, that I find super interesting when they're kind of moving back and forth on the journey. They're arcing toward damnation, and then back toward redemption. And I think that's also something that we don't think about a lot when we when we kind of dissect either a redemption arc or a damnation arc is that these are actually not linear. They don't go in one direction. People slide back and forth all the time in these arcs. And that doesn't mean the arc is incomplete, it just means that these arcs are a series of decisions.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:37] Fiction obviously, is full of anti-heroes and characters who are kind of chaotic neutral, and characters who are morally gray. And we often do treat those as kind of static. As like, okay, this character has found a spot on the alignment chart and is going to stay there.
Annalee: [00:21:53] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:54] It’s like, this character is just a little bit good, a little bit bad and is just gonna kind of, you know, that's where they live. But often, I think it is more dynamic. I think you're right, that a lot of morally gray characters are sometimes sloshing a little bit towards the good side and sometimes, kind of leaning over towards the bad side, and kind of going back and forth, or kind of listing one way or the other. And they’re on arcs that kind of don't have a clear through-line, or a clear, now I'm going to become super, perfectly good, or super, perfectly evil.
[00:22:32] I think it's also interesting that both the damnation arc as we're describing it, and the hero's journey, have the temptation stage. And that's kind of the midpoint is where somebody is tempted. One of the things that is interesting about this, too, is that I often struggle with, on those occasions when I have somebody who's a straight up capital V villain, how much I want people to sympathize with this character who's going around doing horrible things. And this is sort of a political and philosophical question for me, like how much do we want to sympathize with someone who is committing atrocities?
[00:23:01] So, this is a thing I thought about with Marrant in my young adult trilogy, where we kind of glimpse his past and how he became evil. And it’s like, do we want people to actually be on this person's side a little bit? And I think that's… different stories take a different approach to that. But you know, if we see that a villain had a rough childhood, or that they're underappreciated, does that make them less villainous? Or just make their villainy more understandable? Or what?
Annalee: [00:23:28] Yeah, it's such a great question. And one of my favorite damnation arcs lately was the transformation of the character Nate in the show, Ted Lasso. I realize this is not a fantasy show but it is very heightened. It has definitely elements of unrealism, shall we say? And Nate starts out as this downtrodden guy who works in a pretty lowly position with the team and he has tons of insecurities. But he's a strategic genius. And when he's promoted to coach, he starts to get really angry and resentful, because he knows he's actually a smarter strategist than Ted. I mean, pretty much everybody is smarter than Ted. And at the end of the last season, he joins the rival team as head coach and just goes super evil. It's like all the classic signs of a villain’s journey. His hair color changes. He wears a new outfit. He’s almost cackling and rubbing his hands. And the reason that this is a good damnation arc to me, or a successful one, is that we see him having choices, and always picking cruelty and self-destructiveness over teamwork and self-acceptance.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:49] Yeah, and as you said, Nate's critiques are completely spot on. Like he's 100% right about Ted. But what makes this such a good damnation arc though?
Annalee: [00:24:57] So, we see that Nate is sabotaging himself. Like there's a number of scenes where we see that he's undermining himself. And we see that self-destruction in his life is what precedes his social destructiveness. So, he's having all of these weird… like, he has this weird date. He has these weird attempts to become more famous that end up being self-defeating. And then he does this terrible thing to Ted and it's so painfully obvious that Nate just really needs some therapy to put him on a slightly different path.
[00:25:35] In other stories, I think… stories that aren't Ted Lasso, I think there's an effort to excuse the villain and say, well, he was abused as a kid or suffered some great loss, so it's okay that he's abusing his coworkers or building a surveillance empire. And I feel like those are stories with failed damnation, arcs.
[00:25:54] This is something that actually happens in The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice's novel, where Lestat is this terrible person. And then we discover that he had a rough time when he was a person, before he was a vampire, and so we're supposed to, like somehow excuse all of his abusiveness. And that's not really showing us that the character always has a choice. The point, I think, isn't to feel sorry for the bad guys. It should be to understand what made them bad. And ultimately, hopefully, it helps us start to consider ways to intervene in a real-life damnation arc before the person really wrecks things.
[00:26:32] I mean, to the extent that stories help us think through our real lives and help us think through problems that we're encountering outside the realm of fantasy, a good damnation arc, like the one we see with Nate, shows us, look, there's many branching possibilities. He didn't have to make these choices. He clearly is tempted by goodness and there's ways that there could have been interventions. Like I said, he could have gotten some therapy. Or his ideas could have been taken more seriously by the other coaches.
[00:27:02] So, in real life, I think this might translate into us thinking about, hey, if someone sort of seems like they're on a damnation arc, because they're constantly critiquing the institutions, they're part of, maybe we should take those critiques seriously, and acknowledge that the good guys aren't always perfect, and stop trying to claim that they are. And then maybe we could derail some damnation arcs in the making.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:30] Yeah, and I've been Nate. I mean, I think we've all been Nate, where you're like, the one person who is like, “This is fucked up. My coworkers have this little club. They have like their little cozy club where they're kind of all patting each other on the back. And I'm being left out. And they're taking my ideas and not giving me enough credit.” I feel like we've all been there. That's like a very relatable… You could tell the story of Ted Lasso from Nate’s point of view, and you'd be 100% on Nate’s side.
[00:27:57] I mean, I think that one thing that's interesting about a lot of damnation arcs, too, is the notion that power corrupts. There are a lot of issues with the Dark Phoenix Saga. There are are legitimate critiques of the notion that if women become too powerful, it's dangerous. But I think that a good version of that story kind of acknowledges that for anybody to have too much power, is dangerous. When one person wields an excessive amount of power of life and death and of destruction on a grand scale, that's kind of automatically not okay. And that power does corrupt and that people who are becoming too powerful who are OP are kind of inherently going to slide towards evil because there's nobody to check them or nobody to stop them.
[00:28:41] So, thinking back to stage four of the damnation arc where the villain meets someone who's evil who kind of brings them over to darkness, it's funny. Evil is often represented as being seductive. Like in The Matrix, where evil feeds you tasty steak, and the good guys are feeding you nasty gruel? Like, why doesn’t good ever get to be seductive?
Annalee: [00:29:02] I ask that question all the time. I mean, obviously, Palpatine is seducing Anakin with power. But other bad guys are literally sexy. Like, especially in cosmic horror, where people are always like sleeping with evil gods or hooking up with vampires and stuff like that.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:19] Evil gods are hot.
Annalee: [00:29:23] I mean, but this is my point is I really wish we'd see more redemption arcs were good is represented as sexy or seductive. One way to stop a damnation arc might be to seduce the bad guy with goodness. But also, another thing about that seductiveness trope is that part of what often makes evil seductive in these stories is that being bad is supposedly easier than being good. Like, the idea that villains are just lazy. And I mean, do you buy that? It just seems like one of those tropes we never question but is actually quite questionable.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:57] I think I kind of half buy it. I buy the notion that oftentimes in a story and in real life, there are things that the good guys won't do. There's lines they won't cross. And it's like, well, it would be so much easier if we could just kill this person. Or it'd be so much easier if we could just steal some stuff. And often the good guys are living in poverty because they won’t accept any financial reward, or they won't use their power to get things for themselves.
[00:30:26] It's like, why can't we occasionally do something for ourselves when in between saving the world and there's often like the heroes have some kind of code that's often excessively self-abrogating. But at the same time, I want to stick up for the industriousness of villains.
Annalee: [00:30:40] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:42] I mean, villains work hard. Like building a fucking death machine, building a death ray, building a Death Star, pretty much any kind of giant project with death in the title is going to be a huge infrastructure.
Annalee: [00:30:57] Yeah. Or coming up with an army of a million clones or like a billion robots.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:00] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:31:03] That is really hard. And also, being a villain, you have to work outside the system. So, you have to figure out all these… you have to build your own social structures and sneak around.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:15] You don’t get to work with the man.
Annalee: [00:31:17] That's why I was sort of like, What the hell is this idea that somehow when things are easy, they're bad. And also that bad things are easy. Like, I just I think it is true, like you said, that good is often represented as like, not very pleasurable or fun because of the gruel and the rules and not maybe not getting to make any money. But that's different from being hard, I think.
[00:31:43] So, I think that's another trope that I would like to see kind of flipped. I think we need to see more ideas of how good can be seductive and pleasurable and fun, and also more representations of how actually evil is a giant fucking pain in the ass. And that if you really wanted to take the easy way, you might not want to commit crimes. And that maybe cheating on a test is easier than studying for tests, but cheating on your taxes may end up being a lot harder.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:16] Right. I think if I wanted to take the easy way out in like a superhero universe, or in a lot of heroic stories, I'd be a mediocre good guy. I'd be like a good guy who nobody counts on to save the day, who's just kind of there? Who is just like, yeah, I'm one of the good guys. I don't really do much. You know?
Annalee: [00:32:35] So you want to be like Ant Man.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:39] I mean, yes. I think that actually—
Annalee: [00:32:41] Like, because he’s a mid-level good guy. He’s kind of around to do some good stuff. But he's like, nobody's like, oh, Ant Man is gonna save the day. It's like, okay, a bunch of us are gonna save the day and like, Ant Man will come along, or like—
Charlie Jane: [00:32:51] Or The Wasp.
Annalee: [00:32:53] I mean, The Wasp. I mean, that's sexism, that's the reason why the Wasp doesn't get to have a big role. But like, Ant Man is just like, I mean, he's cool. But he’s not Superman. He's not Spider-Man.
[00:33:07] To kind of sum up, I think what makes a really good damnation arc is a story that allows us to understand that villainy is a process. And it's a complicated process. And it's a process that can be diverted at any stage. It's a series of choices. And the other thing is that once we start to think about evil as a process, once we start to think of damnation as an arc, as opposed to something essential inside of people, we realize that evil is coming from the institutions around us and the world around us. And to stop it, maybe we need to think more about fixing the world rather than blaming individuals for their own damnation. And I think that's where that role of critique comes in. Like maybe listen to the critique of the guy who is seeing the truth of the alleged good guys, instead of just shutting them up and letting them go on to build a Death Star.
[00:34:08] All right, so after the break, I'll be talking to author Neon Yang, who has just written a book with a character who's definitely on a damnation arc.
[00:34:19] [OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.]
Charlie Jane: [00:34:25] We've got another podcast that we think you'll love. It's called Subtitle and it tells stories about languages and the people who speak them.
Annalee: [00:34:34] If you've ever wondered why some people are so good at learning languages, or thought about how different pronouns are represented in Swedish or Japanese, then Subtitle is the podcast for you.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:45] One episode profiles a woman who forgot her mother tongue and then set out to rediscover it. Another is about words that's seem programmed to make us laugh.
Annalee: [00:35:03] Yeah, this is an amazing podcast if you're a language lover, so be sure to check out Subtitle with award winning journalists Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay. Listen at Apple podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts.
[00:35:19] [OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.]
Annalee: [00:35:24] Joining me now is Neon Yang. They're the author of The amazing Tensorate series, as well as the new novel The Genesis of Misery, which is about a young woman named Misery, whose mysterious powers propelled them from a life of petty crime into palace intrigue, and from there toward a dark destiny in space where her downfall truly begins. It's the first book in a trilogy, and I cannot wait to read more. Thanks for joining me, Neon.
Neon Yang: [00:35:53] Hi, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me on.
Annalee: [00:35:55] Yeah, so, in this episode, we've been talking about damnation, arcs, which are in some sense, character studies. So, let's talk about creating characters because I am super excited about your new novel Genesis of Misery, which is in many ways, kind of a character study of how the main character, Misery Nomaki dances on the edge of damnation. So, I wonder if you can just tell us about how this character developed?
Neon Yang: [00:36:23] It's a very interesting question, particularly for this book, because I rewrote this novel about four times and part of what was driving these rewrites, and also shaping the rewrites was the character of Misery because she was very different in the first iteration of the book where she was like a goody two shoes, who was very earnest and fully believed in what she was doing. And there was no lying, there was no murder. All of the things that were central to what eventually became the final product of the book. And every time I rewrote the novel, because some part of it wasn't working, or you actually all of it wasn't working, Misery just got worse. Every iteration, like their name was originally Honey. You won’t believe it.
Annalee: [00:37:28] Wow. So they went from Honey to Misery.
Neon Yang: [00:37:31] Yeah, yeah. And, and I think part of it was because I felt like the story that I was doing, which started off as a retelling of Joan of Arc’s story, but playing it straight, made for not very interesting story, because people already know the story, right? I wanted to do something that was a little more interesting. And as the state of the world deteriorated around us, I began to get increasingly fascinated, I should say, by ideas of truth and belief, and how they interact with each other given the state of the world. The prominence of truth, or untruth or false truth in the media and in every level of society.
[00:38:27] And so that was the thing that I wanted to explore. And as this process went on, I realized that I needed a character who was basically lying about everything, right. So, we could work at the nature of truth through the way that they lied. And so that's how like the character Misery eventually came to be the Misery that we see in the book that's been published.
Annalee: [00:38:52] Wow. So, when you first started thinking about Misery’s character arc, or as they evolved over time, do you think of them as being torn between good and evil? Or is it more an issue of whether they're sane or as the characters put it in the book, void mad? So, I guess what I'm saying is, is this character struggling with evil or madness, or kind of both?
Neon Yang: [00:39:19] I think this character is struggling with themself. And it's a little bit of both. Like, I don't think that the idea of evil is something that is particularly relevant to this novel, not in a way that we generally think about things as good or evil, right? They definitely think that they're good, right? Or they start off thinking that they're not good and as their convictions solidify, they suddenly start thinking that they are actually doing the moral thing, where, in reality, from our perspective, our detached perspective, we realize that this is not exactly true.
[00:40:08] And the thing about the madness, I think it's actually more or less like a crutch because the more you read of the book, the more you realize that it doesn't actually really play into Misery’s motivations and what is actually happening. And I was actually very careful to sort of not imply that madness, and you know, mental health issues will make you a bad person. Because that is one thing that I was very cautious about from even at the start.
In earlier books, the whole madness thing is like, am I crazy? Or is this real real thing was more of more of the central crux than it ended up being. I was very clear that I did not want the takeaway from the book to be like, yeah, going mad makes you a bad person and do bad things. No, that was never my intention. So I was very cautious around writing those things.
Annalee: [00:41:09] Yeah. Because this character, Misery, is getting tangled up in political events. And it's not about… I mean, it is about their interiority, but I feel like it's also, as you said, it's about how people lie to themselves. And I guess that's a kind of madness. But it's actually more like double consciousness. It’s sort of holding contradictory beliefs, which can make you feel a little bonkers.
Neon Yang: [00:41:35] Yes. Yeah. I think part of it also stems from my own perspective of being someone who was kind of neurodivergent, but never diagnosed or even addressed in childhood, and just instead of being told that you're a bad, lazy person who's good for nothing, and whatever. And it's something that you internalize, and you think that it’s true of you, but it’s not true.
[00:42:03] So, Misery thinks that they are crazy and that's because it's something that has been drilled into them from a young age till they actually genuinely believe that this is true, even though it's not true. You know?
Annalee: [00:42:18] Yeah, that's one of the things about the book that's so… it feels very real. And it's also extremely upsetting to see Misery buying into what people are saying to them about their mental health. And it's like, no! Okay, so obviously, I'm a little invested in Misery. I'm wondering, you’ve given Misery this, what we're calling a damnation arc. And I wonder, can you still love or care about a character and give them this kind of arc? And how does that work?
Neon Yang: [00:42:49] Oh my God, like, absolutely, yes Sometimes. Especially in fiction, the thing you want to do to the character that you care about the most is to make their lives horrible, right? It’s terrible. So, I think it’s absolutely, sometimes you just look at a character that you've created and like, I can make them worse, and then you make them worse. It’s cathartic, in a sense, right? It’s misery you can control. Sometimes you just want to, you have a character that you've created. And then the most interesting thing you can do with them is to think about, okay, what do I have to do in order to bring about their downfall? And that's, you know, sometimes it's the best way to explore who their character is depending on what you've created. Right?
Annalee: [00:43:42] Yeah.
Neon Yang: [00:43:46] Yeah, sometimes we just want to see a character suffer, we just like that. Hmm.
Annalee: [00:43:52] So, in the first part of the episode, we talked about how there's a trope in the damnation arc that we're calling the villain’s journey, which is kind of like a mirror of the hero's journey, where the person, the character will start out good. And then they'll get really dissatisfied with the supposedly good institutions that they're part of, and then they get tempted or seduced by an evil character. And that's kind of the arc. And I wonder if you tried to play with any of those tropes in this book, or like flip them on their heads?
Neon Yang: [00:44:24] See, I think, in terms of villain arcs, um, damnation arcs. What's more interesting to me is if they don't have an evil person from the outside try to tempt them into being evil, or to go against what they should stand for as their principles. I think it's more fascinating if that comes from within themselves, right? They self-radicalize. They channel their frustrations into something, or even better if they have pure intentions to start, but they don't know how to deal with those intentions. Or, rather, their pure intentions, turn it to corrupt consequences. So, they don't… maybe they lack empathy or something. And then it turns out even though they have good intentions, they end up making everything worse, which I think is such an interesting way to do character and is a tragedy, right? Like, someone has the loftiest ambitions, the greatest goals to help people. But in the pursuit of that lofty goal, they kind of lose sight of what’s actually really important in terms of helping people. That’s deliciously horrible, and it's just good. It's just good to read.
Annalee: [00:45:58] Do you think though, that… so, I like this idea that it's coming from within the character. It's not some evil, sexy person comes up, and it's like, hey, want some apple or whatever. But I feel like with Misery, they are influenced by kind of outside forces, but they're more like, I don't know, systemic forces, maybe. It's not like one individual, bad guy.
Neon Yang: [00:46:23] Yeah, I think for Misery, definitely, they do respond to external forces. This is part of what the core of the book is about, I suppose is that sometimes bad actors, especially, bad actors, when they come from historically disadvantaged minorities, that their actions are shaped by the oppression that’s in the wider society. And so you can kind of see why they do what they do, but it also doesn't excuse them from what they have done. And I think that's kind of the thing that I really wanted to play with in this book, in terms of how Misery sort of like turns all her intense traumas into something beautiful and terrible.
Annalee: [00:47:15] Yeah, paying the trauma forward.
Neon Yang: [00:47:18] Yeah, yeah.
Annalee: [00:47:20] Yeah. So going back to character creation, I wanted to ask you about the characters you created in your novellas, Black Tides of Destiny and Red Threads of Fortune. That's the siblings Akeha and Mokoya. And I just remember being completely blown away when these novellas came out on the same day, and you said they could be read in any order. I just love that. And I wonder if you could just tell us about your decision to tell the same story from two perspectives simultaneously in two separate books.
Neon Yang: [00:47:52] Well, that's the interesting thing that was that I wrote Red Threads first. And it was Mokoya’s story. And Mokoya, she always had a twin Akeha, right. And when we were sort of pitching the book to, to Tor.com Publishing, and they were like, do you have a second novella, and I was just like, yeah, I would love to tell Akeha’s story as well. But the way I kind of saw it was as sort of like a prequel because events in Black Tides happen before Red Threads, and it spans the entirety of their childhood and Akeha growing up.
[00:48:34] So, it was the books were released together as sort of like, I think, a publishing experiment, to be honest, but, and they can be read in any order, because they are completely separate stories that are linked. And so you can read get them in chronological order or you can read the one I wrote first, and then read the second on as a prequel, which will give more context to the first book and enrich it as you read it. And that was basically it. It was like I was telling two stories that could be read together. And we would have liked them to be read together. So, they came out together, and then you could read them in any order that you liked.
Annalee: [00:49:15] Yeah. And they kind of converge. I feel like they're two lines that are heading toward convergence. And so yeah, I mean, I read them in the order you wrote them, I guess, which was good for me. I liked it a lot.
[00:49:29] So, I feel like in, at least in those two books Akeha and Mokoya are on redemption arcs to a certain extent. I mean, maybe that's a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it, but they're not on damnation arcs, and I wonder how—
Neon Yang: [00:49:46] They're on the way to the good ending. [Crosstalk]
Annalee: [00:49:49] I mean, yeah, they're doing pro social things. They're having like awesome gay sex in certain cases, which is, to me, always redemption, although, actually… no…
Neon Yang: [00:50:01] Well, Misery is having awesome gay sex on her way to the bottom of the barrel, so…
Annalee: [00:50:07] I know… I just, as I said that I was like, God dammit. I just okay, I wonder how it was different writing Akeha and Makoya’s stories from writing Misery’s, like did you have different feelings about those characters? Did you feel more tenderly toward them than you did toward Misery? What was that emotional journey as a writer?
Neon Yang: [00:50:31] That's interesting, because I think Misery is actually the first time I have tried writing a character who gets worse. Like my, my goal for the character is for them to become absolutely terrible. Whereas usually when I write stories, I try not to have my characters become worse than they were at the start of the story. Or, if they do dubiously become worse or better, but at least they got something out of it. Whereas with Misery, it's just, they were a decent person-ish. They were kind of a bit of a bastard, but still like a decent bastard, and then they just sort of fall off the cliff and become this megalomaniac who does mass murders and stuff.
[00:51:20] So, that I think is the first time I've actually sort of… Oh, that's actually not true. Because one of the novellas, I did sort of like write about, the twins’ mother. Terrible person. How she became a terrible person. But I think Misery was the one I spent the longest with and spent so much time in her actual head and how they justified all the actions they were taking and how they felt good about the justifications and good about the actions they’re taking. Which is a very fascinating way of writing. I'm fond of all my children. I think they're all great. Even Misery, they’re great. Terrible, but they're great.
Annalee: [00:52:02] So it sounds like you found Misery more engrossing somehow. Maybe you didn't love her more, but you just spent a lot more time with her or you felt you had more intense feelings or something?
Neon Yang: [00:52:13] Yeah, because in a sense I spent more time in Misery’s head and the crux of the story had to be the way that they felt about things and how they changed and drove their motivations. So yeah, and obviously a novel is a much larger and heftier undertaking then like a couple of novellas, right. So, I spent so long with Misery. So definitely, I do have more emotional attachment to this character that I have. [Crosstalk] but shaped over a long period of time, like years.
Annalee: [00:52:51] Yeah, that's so interesting.
Neon Yang: [00:52:54] And their story continues in the next books in the series, they're not done yet. They’re not through.
Annalee: [00:53:00] I was about to ask you that. So, are we going to stick with Misery for the entire trilogy or are we going to get some other perspectives, do you think?
Neon Yang: [00:53:06] We will be meeting new characters. I am currently working on book two. I mean, I've outlined it. I haven't started drafting. The outline’s with my editor but it was more or less decided who the protagonist of the second book will be. And it's someone you've never met before, but I'm very excited for you to meet her and see how she interacts with Misery. Misery will still be there. Don't worry about it. But now you will be able to see Misery through somebody else's point of view, which is going to be fun to write.
Annalee: [00:53:38] Yeah, so are all of the characters in this trilogy going to be on damnation arcs? Or are we going to get some characters who find a scrap of goodness or are you not sure yet?
Neon Yang: [00:53:51] Well, I would say as a sense, no, but that may change. Third book, I could make all of it terrible.
Annalee: [00:54:02] So with just have to basically, keep clinging to the shred of hope that one day, someone will find a little bit of goodness.
[00:54:12] So, okay, we've been talking a lot about how you've built these characters. And I wonder if you have any advice for people who are creating characters as they write. What's your process? What's your thoughts on best practices on creating a character?
Neon Yang: [00:54:29] Oh, that is such a difficult question. But I think for me, when characters really work is when I find that the vein of juice in them that feeds my desire to know more about them and how they are as a person and what drives them and what they will do if I drop them into terrible situations, right? I want to know about like all their childhood traumas. I want to know about what they want out of life and what has hurt them and what would hurt them if they didn't get. And I think those, basically, my principles for creating a character, you have to find, you just have to stumble upon something that makes a certain character tick, and you're like, ah ha, that's interesting. I want to know more about that, and then start from there and sort of work a story around that. That's really vague, I know. But like, that's how it works me.
Annalee: [00:55:34] Yeah. Do you ever, when you're coming up with a character, like, say, Misery or one of your other characters, do you ever come up with backstories for them that just never make it onto the page? And you're like, well, I know that, but I don't need to tell the reader that.
Neon Yang: [00:55:49] You know, it's going to sound terrible. I absolutely do. But then I also forget. If I don't write it down, I will absolutely forget, because I will come upon notes that I've written ages ago, and I'll be like, oh, I forgot I thought of this and wrote it down. Like, in my character books or my plotting books. I’ll be like, oh, yeah, that was a thing. I didn’t put in the book. And then I forgot that it existed, but yay.
Annalee: [00:56:19] I love that because it's kind of like you're building a real unconscious mind for your character. The character has also forgotten that trauma, but it's still shaping them.
Neon Yang: [00:56:30] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:56:32] Awesome. So where can people find out more about you online? Where can they find your books, all that good stuff?
Neon Yang: [00:56:40] You can find the book at the major retailers. I think you should be able to find them. Basically anywhere you can find books, I think, and I’m mostly on Instagram these days as Itsneonyang, that’s one word.
[00:56:51] [OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.]
Annalee: [00:56:52] Thank you so much for joining us.
Neon Yang: [00:56:54] Thank you for having me.
Annalee: [00:56:56] It was so great to talk to you and I know folks are gonna love this novel. So, it's glad it's out in the world.
[00:57:01] You've been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you especially to our producer Veronica Simonetti. And thanks to Chris Palmer for the music. Remember that you can find us on Patreon and hopefully support us. We're at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. We're also on Twitter at @OOACpod. And we will talk to you later. If you're a patron, we'll see you on Discord in like five minutes. So bye!
Charlie Jane: [00:57:32] Bye!