30 Days Writing Meme -- Question Eighteen

18. Favorite antagonist and why!

The first thing that springs to mind here are the guys from "Hung Up". They're just so… weaselly. Their motives and actions just clicked into place so well with the development of Spence and Billy's relationship. Hell, almost everything clicked into place so well with that book, despite the fact I was tearing my hair out over it at the time. I don't think Billy and Spence's relationship would have proceeded the way it did at all if it wasn't for the actions of Reed and Cordell, so yeah, they're definitely the most satisfying antagonists even if they might not be the most dramatic.

Marcus from "Afterthought" comes close too — he's just so much the archetypal villain, the closest thing to an out'n'out bad guy I've written. It's a hard line to draw, between the 100% evil antagonist and still making them real. Even the most intensely unpleasant characters like Marcus have to have some vaguely human traits, and I'm not entirely sure I succeeded with him, really. It's hard to find anything redeeming in a guy like that, even if he is sociopathologically charming and he did take Ayan in, albeit for his own nefarious reasons. Maybe he's a bit too over-the-top. Granted he needed to be a little over-the-top to lure the boys into a false sense of security…

I've had a comment that the antagonists in Human Nature were a little nebulous and undetermined, which I guess on the level of actual `the bad guys` might be true. But the true antagonists in that book are the characters' own natures, the duality of humanity and other. The bad guys are nameless and faceless and anonymous — to each of the three main characters, the bad guys represent a concept, rather than a group of individuals. If they'd been more defined, more specific, it would have taken away from that, I think.