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I’m stuck at a point in my Rapunzel story and have got really good help here before, so I decided to see if anyone had any ideas today.
Basically, I’m trying to figure out what is motivating my villain. The main bad guy is a rebel against the Prince and wants power. The secondary bad guy of this story, who is the main bad guy in relation to my MC (if that makes any sense) also wants some sort of power. A war is currently raging, but their plans have been in the works for years.
You see, there’s this family which is connected to birds somehow. The eldest in the family can speak with messenger falcons and they can communicate or control the birds in some way, probably through singing. The bad guys want something, so they tried to take the oldest child when it was born. Only twins were born and they got the second one (only they don’t realize it). So both kids have this power, though the girl (who they got) might not have enough on her own to do what they want. This power might come to full strength when the child reaches full age, which will account for the bad guys not realizing their mistake until the time of the story. Their secondary plan is that they hope they can trap and kill most of the messenger falcons, which are a main source of information for the Prince. But that’s just a plus to their main plan…which I’ve yet to figure out. And that’s where I’m asking for help.
Do you have any suggestions as to the exact power the twins should have and how the bad guys want to use this power to their own advantage (remembering that this had been planned long beforehand and that a war is coming to an end).
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Wow, that’s quite the plot. There are so many possibilities for what power the twins could have, like telepathy, mind control, ice or fire powers, superstrength, turning inanimate objects into living tools/weapons… what kind of thing are you looking for?
Maybe you could connect the powers to the family’s association with birds in some way and give them a power like superspeed or flying. Another thing would be to take the villain’s major flaw or limitation and make the power fill that gap (ie, the inability to walm with the power to travel quickly). I don’t know; magic and powers are nearly limitless.
The theme of this story is joy, which works well with singing. The twins don’t have any superpowers (besides being able to talk to animals) but their song probably has some sort of power in it. Either to control birds or summon birds. But what is one supposed to do with a bunch of birds? I have the idea of birds stuck in my mind, but I don’t know why the bad guys would want them unless it would be for spies. And that doesn’t seem like a properly evil enough goal to wait and plan for 18 years to get.
Hmm, but what if the bad guy thought he could take the power of the twins for himself in some way? That could work, though I still need to figure out what he wants it for.
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
As far as birds go, would it work to have them be symbolic of angels? Now that sounds really wacky, but angels are pretty much messengers, aren’t they? And maybe the bad guy wants to bring down all the servants of the Prince so he can get more directly at the Prince Himself. ?????
Ooh, @kate-flournoy, I think you’re onto something. If there is a way to turn the birds against the good guys and take away their powers from singing, then the king is obviously weakened. What about the rest of the kingdom- do they have anything to do with birds, and would the fall of the birds (ha, that would make a creepy title) directly cause trouble for them too?
Hmm, that’s something I’ll have to consider. So far I’d only thought about birds in the terms of being used for spies, kind of like the Crublin or whatever in LOTR. Messenger Falcons are the only birds with personalities, the others just do as they’re told. But maybe I could weave the birds into normal life somehow, giving them something to do which would cause something bad if they stopped…
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Here’s my idea. It’s all based off of the theme of joy. First, how about the birds have a special role in this society for nurturing and fostering joy? Secondly, it would make sense if this villain were not only a physical bad guy but an opponent of the theme. He would literally be an opponent of joy. Naturally, the enemy of joy is hate. Therefore, while he will probably not be consciously doing so, the villain could be trying to get the protagonists to hate. This does not mean he himself will have to be a vicious red hot furry type of person. His evil work could be more subtle and deceptive – trying to plant hate secretly. Because the birds would be working directly against him, he would naturally and without really thinking about it want to destroy or ruin the birds. This of course would mean that he would have to first corrupt the twin(s). We must now ask the question of how the villain came to this state. There are many options, but obviously, something must have happened which will have ingrained hate into his nature. Likely, it would be some ill fate which convinced him that light is a fraud and the only true honesty is darkness. We could then view his actions as a sort of vengeance against an ideology.
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That is so cool @Daeus. You may be on to something there.
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