on villains -- Itachi vs. Tom Riddle
Nov. 9th, 2005 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingAm 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 11:59 pm (UTC)For example, I'm not sure his father ever said much by way of praise -- he struck me as more the type to say, "Oh, you did X. Congratulations for upholding the honor of the clan and not being a pathetic failure. Now go do Y and do it in less time." I don't get the feeling that Sasuke's nuclear family was particularly good at expressing emotion in helpful ways.
Also, death is powerful, but it's the end. No more influence, no more story, all done, game over, close the book. And you have to go to the trouble of finding a new subject. Maybe that's why he's left Sasuke alive...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-11 12:14 am (UTC)I'd go with that - I'm not saying that the death-god thing is his be-all and end-all, just that I think that that may have been part of what started him off.
How does Kyuubi fit in?
Well, as powerful as Itachi may be already, there are still some people who are more so, and a -lot- of Jounin who are close enough to get lucky. Which, if he's anywhere near as ego-focused as I think he is, must just stick in his craw sideways.
But, multiply scaryscary missing-nin by Kyuubi-chakra and you have something that can play god even to a kage.
Not that it really matters in the end - after all, you don't need to understand a scorpion to squash the loathsome little thing.
Ja, -n
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-11 12:44 am (UTC)It probably doesn't matter to his enemies, but it very much matters to me as a writer! Otherwise his actions will not have any sort of internal coherence, and I'm quite sure that's not the form his insanity takes. :-)
...I don't know that Itachi thought one way or the other about Naruto and the Kyuubi until he joined Akatsuki. The whole 'capture the jinchuuriki' thing is very much a group project, and Itachi is not the head honcho of the group. This raises the questions of when he learned about Akatsuki, when he joined the group, and when the group decided on their project. Also... did he join the group because he heard about the project and decided it might be interesting, or did that come later?
(This is relevant to my story. The other reason I'm not posting any chapters until December is because I want to know more about Kishimoto's conception of Akatsuki, etc. I've accepted that I'm already contradicting his canon in several places, but I like to break rules knowingly rather than inadvertently.)