on villains -- Itachi vs. Tom Riddle

Am attempting to come up with plausible motivations for Itachi.

Oh, my head.

Tom is so much easier, you know? I know what he wants -- to get out of the diary, and to figure out how the fucking hell Harry survived Voldemort -- and I know that he has no moral qualms, and from there his actions are quite straightforward. He's probably the easiest character in "Secrets" to write... to the point where I occasionally get freaked out and cannot write him for a while because I'm having a quiet panic attack over my ability to think like a sociopath.

I don't have a clue what Itachi is really after, particularly before he joined Akatsuki. Gaining Mangekyou Sharingan, okay. But he'd already done that. Keeping others from being able to do that themselves? Maybe. But then what about Sasuke?

I think people go slightly wrong by considering Itachi emotionless, despite his portrayal in his occasional manga appearances. I think his emotional responses are limited, yes, but he strikes me as having a fair sense of melodrama and a taste for theatrics -- witness his nice shaming of his father while Sasuke was listening. Witness the way he (whether he admits it or not) shows off to Sasuke while practicing his knife-throwing skills. Witness his use of ravens in that strange genjutsu he threw Naruto into. Witness the way he declaims about the workings of Mangekyou whenever he gets someone into that strange half-world.

He may have started killing relatives for one reason -- I think he might have genuinely hated his father, for various reasons -- and kept going because it made good theater. He may have left Sasuke alive because there has to be a single heir to avenge the slaughtered clan; narrative tradition demands it. Itachi is a thwarted artist as much as he is an assassin. His primary weapon is genjutsu, and he creates whole worlds. He's playing storyteller-as-god, except instead of doing it with words, he does it with real people.

...I think I need to go do something else for a little while.

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In other news, Ranna and Shae are currently doing a little verbal dance prior to cutting a tentative deal. I like Shae. She's visually based on a girl I used to run into in the library computer lab, with an expression of fierce concentration and perpetually wide eyes (not innocent-wide, but painfully wide, as though she'd nailed her eyelids to her brows to keep herself from falling asleep) who always gave me the impression that her eyeballs might pop out of her face without warning. Shae's personality, though, is entirely my own creation.

on villains -- Itachi vs. Tom Riddle

Am attempting to come up with plausible motivations for Itachi.

Oh, my head.

Tom is so much easier, you know? I know what he wants -- to get out of the diary, and to figure out how the fucking hell Harry survived Voldemort -- and I know that he has no moral qualms, and from there his actions are quite straightforward. He's probably the easiest character in "Secrets" to write... to the point where I occasionally get freaked out and cannot write him for a while because I'm having a quiet panic attack over my ability to think like a sociopath.

I don't have a clue what Itachi is really after, particularly before he joined Akatsuki. Gaining Mangekyou Sharingan, okay. But he'd already done that. Keeping others from being able to do that themselves? Maybe. But then what about Sasuke?

I think people go slightly wrong by considering Itachi emotionless, despite his portrayal in his occasional manga appearances. I think his emotional responses are limited, yes, but he strikes me as having a fair sense of melodrama and a taste for theatrics -- witness his nice shaming of his father while Sasuke was listening. Witness the way he (whether he admits it or not) shows off to Sasuke while practicing his knife-throwing skills. Witness his use of ravens in that strange genjutsu he threw Naruto into. Witness the way he declaims about the workings of Mangekyou whenever he gets someone into that strange half-world.

He may have started killing relatives for one reason -- I think he might have genuinely hated his father, for various reasons -- and kept going because it made good theater. He may have left Sasuke alive because there has to be a single heir to avenge the slaughtered clan; narrative tradition demands it. Itachi is a thwarted artist as much as he is an assassin. His primary weapon is genjutsu, and he creates whole worlds. He's playing storyteller-as-god, except instead of doing it with words, he does it with real people.

...I think I need to go do something else for a little while.

------------------------------

In other news, Ranna and Shae are currently doing a little verbal dance prior to cutting a tentative deal. I like Shae. She's visually based on a girl I used to run into in the library computer lab, with an expression of fierce concentration and perpetually wide eyes (not innocent-wide, but painfully wide, as though she'd nailed her eyelids to her brows to keep herself from falling asleep) who always gave me the impression that her eyeballs might pop out of her face without warning. Shae's personality, though, is entirely my own creation.