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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-10 03:29 am (UTC)I find your ideas on Itachi interesting. I also agree that he's not emotionless per se (I can't conceive of a way to be motivated to do the things he did the way he did without some fairly strong emotions involved).
The problem for writers becomes that Itachi is, at his core, psychosis aside, a Good Ninja. And, though many Naruto characters seem to forget, secrecy is essential to Good Ninja. Thus we are left without the standard villian response of blabbing all their plans, hopes, dreams, and life history to us. Actually, come to think of it, he may have slaughtered his entire family except for Sasuke partially for theatre and partially to obscure the exact nature of his plans. The sheer seeming senselessness of it leads to many assuming he just snapped and then he goes along his way unimpeded by people looking for a plan. I'm not certain I believe that one but the idea struck me as I was typing here.
Well, hopefully my feedback was interesting enough to overcome any rudeness.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-10 06:57 am (UTC)Hmm. Slaughter and insanity as misdirection? Interesting...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-10 09:36 am (UTC)Mind you, I'm not saying that he's sane. That would be silly. Killing dozens of people just to obfuscate one's trail is the act of some one either insane or so sane that it makes no difference as to how far he is removed from the average person. I'm merely saying that it may be an entirely different sort of madness then one might expect. I don't know how likely it is, but it's interesting, of course.