Writing False Friends & False Enemies (Fiction Writing Advice)
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- Опубліковано 2 вер 2020
- Learn how to write characters that will surprise your audience...for better or worse.
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I like it when false friends becomes close to the protagonist that they derail to their mission, then when the protagonists finds out, the false friends apologizes but the protagonists becomes angry and the false friends explains why they changed their minds. In the end the false friends become true friends. It's a nice plot twist 😎🤘
Yep, and it works in a bunch of different genres. Seeing characters waver like that and question their allegiances is always fun
This reminds me of Beatrice from Over The Garden Wall. She might have wanted to betray the kids, but by staying with them, she feels bad for it and tries to sacrifice herself as a slave.
Bro... I've literally written a story where this happens.
Lando Calrissian! Perfect example! Starts out as a sketchy friend of Han. Then after he's turned over Han, Leia and Chewie to Darth Vader, he looks like a villain. But, what's so great about him is that he continuously apologizes to Han for what he did, and does everything he can to help them without upsetting Vader, so he was really left with no choice.
Snape is an excellent example of somehow both of these, he’s proactively malicious towards not just Harry but pretty much all students outside of Slytherin throughout the books to the point he becomes Neville’s greatest fear, but he shifted from Voldemort’s side in the first wizarding war to Dumbledoor’s side as a double double agent in the second wizarding war. Ultimately, not the kinda guy you’d wanna hang out with, not evil, just mean.
Yep, fantastic character all around.
My favorite character of this series.
Commander Lyle Rourke in Atlantis is a false friend I love. It was really surprising too since he is such a lighthearted jokester with a good neighbourly feel. I also love that he doesnt change character after he reveals he is evil, he continues being calm and joking, some false friends starts being more deranged after its revealed they are a villain
i love the length of your videos. You get right to the point, stick to the subject, and no padding.
Thanks!
Favourite False Enemy
Sirius Black in Harry Potter
The Winter Soldier in the MCU
Inspector Columbo sometimes turns this trope around, acting all meek and in league with the bad guy, all only to lure them into the trap that would reveal all evidence that THEY are the bad guy. I think this can work for police and private eye characters sometimes.
One false enemy that comes to mind is in Sarra Cannon's Shadow Demons Saga - actually, there's more than one - and also more than one false friend. It is done very well, but I can't go into details because they are major spoilers. Just know that it is worth reading these books for that and for all the secrets that are revealed as the series goes on, and the twists and turns. Just go read them. The first 3 books are free to read.
Jack Sparrow is one of my favorite characters that seems to bounce back and forth.
I was thinking about him!
It’s important not to have a character flip for no reason. One of the great things about Snape is that he has genuine reasons for his ambiguity towards Harry. Sometimes when he looks at Harry, Snape is reminded of his biggest rival amid that loathing and resentment comes through. But ultimately Harry reminds Snape of the woman he loved, and that love prevails.
Benny the cabby in Total Recall (and Sharon Stone's character, and the other construction guy) in Total Recall always cracks me up, and is a great false friend. That movie was great.
my most favorite false friend was griffith from berserk and skull knight.my reasons are is because in the beginning you meet characters that you care about later on as well as grithith.the main character gutts after the war that takes place in the story he wanted to leave to fulfill his own motivations griffith didn't want that so they had to deul for gutts to leave even his allies he met along the way didn't want him to leave especially the character causka who finally realised she was in love with gutts but obviously gutts won and griffith realised he was a pebble in the way of his dreams.causka decided she wants to follow along is guttses journey.while that was happening griffith was losing hope and did a crime which causes him to be tortured making him lose all hope gutts finds out about him in prison and saves him with the cast that builds up.somewhere along the line grffith wanted to kill himself he his attempts were under an eclipse and due to lore of the story there is a necklace that when a character has lost all hope and despair they will turn into a monster but griffith had a necklace that turns people with one into a god due to that a betrayal happens and conflict breaks loose.
I like it when a false friend betrays the protagonist and then later on the protagonist is pushed to where they have to work with the betrayer. Then as they work together, the two bond again and remember their friendship until it gets to the point where the hero trusts the false friend again and opens themself back up just for the false friend to betray them a second time and then later on the false friend truly does have a change of heart, but they've permanently damaged their relationship with the hero so they have to fight to earn back that trust and along the way they become this super cool anti hero who can banter with the heroes and the villains equally
Examples?
@@taewoods2034 I think of Naruto & Sasuke here
@@rachaelmcgill7653 yeah, they fit
To me, professor X and Magneto’s relationship is the most interesting. They grow apart, oppose each other directly, but still care for each other. They may betray each other but would never kill each other.
I love at the end of Casablanca where Rick shoots Major Strasser. Louis, who is Prefect of Police sends his men on a wild goose chase to give them both time to leave Casablanca. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
My favorite frienemy of all time is Ozymandias from Watchmen (2009 film - haven't read the comic). Not even sure how to classify him.
At first he's obviously a friend, then he becomes an obvious enemy, but at the very end (not gonna spoil it) it's a mindfuck trying to figure out which he really is.
I'm biased, of course, but to me that was the twist of all twists. And Matthew Goode's portrayal in the film was so captivating that it's gonna be hard to ever top it (to me at least).
Talia Al Ghul was a pretty good false friend/reluctant enemy (at least until Morrison got his hands on her and ruined her by making her a rapist and an abusive mother)
She used to have an interesting dynamic of being a born assassin who loves/is deeply loyal to her father and his vision while being side lined by his sexist attitude keeping him from seeing her as the prefect successor he wanted so badly. But also being deeply in love with Bruce Wayne, the man she loves but knows she can't be with since morally they're too different to ever really be together. And she's not even sure if his method would work for keeping peace But she wants to believe it so whenever she can she tries to help him out against her father to keep them from killing each other.
She had an interesting dynamic. You never knew for sure if she was going to help or harm, she'd take over LexCorp and sell all the shares to Bruce, or she'd fight him to keep him away from her father and his plans.
Although a lot of batman villains are kinda like that. They might help or they might take advantage of his weakness.
Your videos usually articulate things I sorta know intuitively. But this one explained things I never even thought about. Excellent.
I have a female character who befriends a man(historical fiction) who was a major criminal at a prison. He claims to be sorry and acts very affectionate to her, like a father she never had. He denies he knew about the atrocities committed by his regime, she, blinded by pride, and craving affection, believes him until someone testifies against the criminal and says that he carried out an cruel command issued from the woman's friend. He admits to her that he sees himself as a martyr, she calls him insane and, eventually, he is executed, dying in despair and agony. She does not miss him, but she is sad that he chose terrible path. In the end, she befriends the priest there and he consoles her.
(Sorry if it's stupid, she is a vent character I made up to work through my feelings)
Sure, the false friend and false enemy are great techniques as long as they're well implemented. In many stories, especially fanfictions, the issue is when the protagonist trust the enemy too quickly despite how irredeemable their action were or as if they forgot they had years of grudges toward each other. The same goes for false friends, when characters start to hate each other and want to bring each other down without hesitation or struggling in their heart to choose between years of friendship or doing the right thing, or not feeling pain while standing against each other.
My favourite false enemy is Goro Majima from the video games Yakuza and my favourite false friend is Tienbo from the movie Taichi Master. I will list the details about the false enemy first as it's not as spoiler heavy as the false friend.
Goro Majima started off as a high ranking Yakuza who stood in the way of the protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and kept fighting him. Despite his insanity and violent attitude (he's almost like Batman's Joker and even had Mark Hamill dub his English voice in the original Yakuza game on PS2), he has a sense of honour and wisdom. As the series goes on, we find out that his over the top attitude is just a facade and that he is more grounded and serious than we initially thought. They still fight each other to test their strength and resolve, or due to blackmail and following orders.
In Taichi Master, the protagonist Junbao is an obedient Shaolin monk student and is content living a quiet life, while his friend Tienbo is more bold, ambitious and power hungry new Shaolin monk student. Tienbo's antics constantly land them in trouble until they're eventually expelled from the Shaolin temple as young adults. They eventually split ways due to their nature, Junbao lived a quiet civilian life while helping an honourable band of thieves (with a Robin Hood-like justice), while Tienbo joined the ruthless army to reach a high status. Tienbo still seem to like the protagonist despite being on opposite sides, but eventually his lust for power make him betray his friend, sell out the band of honourable thieves and even killing his romantic interest (one sided as he love her while she doesn't reciprocate the feeling) to keep receiving military promotions. Despite trying to convince Junbao to join him, Junbao rejects him and Tienbo becomes even more ruthless and unforgiving than his army. Eventually he killed the corrupt governor who was held hostage, which made his army turn against him as it was an act of treason. He tried to manipulate Junbao's emotion to lower his guard to kill him, but it failed and it ended in his death.
It's not as grandiose as other villains in masterpieces, but a simple power hungry character who betrays their friend for their ambitions is realistic and relatable for me.
One false enemy I know of Is CJ from Dawn of The Dead (2004 remake)
He starts off as a guy who would betray anyone to survive but ends up being great in the end.
Haven’t seen the remake. That’s the Rob Zombie one right?
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty It was written and directed by James Gunn and Zac Snyder (Yep, that James Gunn and Zac Snyder)
For those familiar with the “Monogatari” anime franchise, Kaiki Deshuu is one of the most enigmatic characters, at times a villain, at times a hero, sometimes a liar (even to himself), other times hitting people with serious truths they need to hear. Every story arc he's in, you have to re-think what kind of character he is. And he'll TELL you that right up front, too!
The two characters that come to my mind are Grovyle and Dusknoir from the game Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (spoiler alert)
The former goes from false enemy, to an enemy of my enemy, to a true ally. The latter starts as a false ally, then a twist villain, then (in the extra episodes) an enemy of my enemy, a twist villain again, and finally a redeemed ally.
For an E-rated game, it had a pretty compelling Antihero and Antivillain.
Crowley from the "Supernatural" is too good to be omitted. Till the very end the story allows you to doubt his intentions balancing between remains of human nature and lust for power.
Isabella Thorpe for Northanger Abbey is the personification of a false friend.
Professor Quirell (sic!) from "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Brilliant, intense and lethal both as a friend and a foe.
what a great finish haha you stuck that landing
Boyd Crowder is an interesting character. You aren’t ever sure if he’s a redeemable person or not. Whenever he does something that seems good, you aren’t sure if it’s genuine or there’s a deeper motive.
SPOILERS for "Best Seller" (Movie 1987)
One of my favourite stories where bad guy becomes good....or does he, and becomes a false enemy....or is he really a false friend. James Woods starts off as a villain who shoots Brian Dennehy (cop who turns writer after he's shot) when robbing an evidence storage unit (if memory serves). Later on he becomes Dennehy's guardian angel...or does he? And I think he kidnaps Dennehy's daughter ... or does he?
It is also a story of redemption.
I recommended it to my mum decades ago, and she loved it too.
Note to self: must get it on DVD.
Lando Calrissian: false friend to false enemy with plausible motivation all the way through the arc. Moment of uplift was when Vader said he’d be taking Leia and Chewie too.
Jimbei from One Piece was a brilliant false enemy, in that we expected him to be bad just from what we knew before he appeared on screen-he had been on the same team as Arlong, a big bad guy from earlier, and he was one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, who not only worked for the corrupt World Government, but usually had their own evil schemes to boot.
Time after time, the Warlords were bad apples-Crocodile and Moria were major antagonists, Kuma seemed reasonable but still tried to kill Luffy once, and Doflamingo briefly appeared and controlled one soldier to kill another, merely for his enjoyment.
Then we meet Jimbei, and he's a great dude, who had beaten up Arlong because of his hatred of humans and who had refused to fight for the World Government when they wanted to kill one of his friends, leading to him being thrown into jail by the time we see him. After that, he's a great ally for the rest of the show so far, and even joined the Straw Hats recently.
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Thanks for the kind words!
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty You're welcome!
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Draco Malfoy is also a false enemy. Right at the end of book 7 is when we find out Draco turned out not AS bad as he'd been. I'd argue an enemy transforming into an anti-hero who can't quite commit to the enemy's side also counts as a false enemy.
Nice vid
SPOILER for Way of Kings:
Sadeas is the most despicable and influential Highprince, who uses slaves for running his bridges (and bait to keep enemy arrows off his actual soldiers). He antagonized Dalinar, a more honorable Highprince, at first, but slowly started working back into his good graces.
He then organized an elaborate betrayal. It only failed because Kaladin, one of his bridgemen, had been saved by Dalinar. Kaladin had also inspired enough loyalty from his bridge crew to convince them to go back and help. I loved it because Sadeas may have succeeded if he were just a bit less openly cruel and evil.
I'm not sure where this falls, but Jaqen H'Gar comes to mind as a false Night's Watch recruit who turns out to be a Faceless Man. I mean, the whole series is about people who are questionably either allies or enemies of one another, so it's hard to put that into a category, but the switch to "a potential honeyed threat" to "the greatest potential weapon in Arya's arsenal" was damn memorable.
in my d&d campain I have false enemy character, who is constatly ally or enemy depending on situation. This character is stricly against magic and wants to eradicate all of magic. So he is teaming up with my group when they fight other mages, but another time is enemy, because my group has mages too.
I don't even remember his name, but he was badass.
In Neverwinter nights 2, there is a warlock, who looks like a bad guy (black robes, bald head, creepy tattoos). He is shown in antagonist style in one of the first cutscenes, so you think about him as one.
He brutally murders seemingly honest men, summons dozens of demons at his service (and here is the first flag, telling that he is not our antagonist. The warlock possesses control over devils and demons, meanwhile we are pursued by grey dwarves and some kind of aliens)..
At some moment, we even have to oppose him to save his another victim, but fail, get mocked by him and attacked by some of his demons.
At some point, we break into a lair of a legendary, supposedly dead wizard, who once saved the world from the enemy, that we are dealing with and guess, whom do we find in there? That's right, our old buddy evil evilish warlock. That's his lai, he once stopped the bad guy already, and now is working towards doing it again.
Was he a jerk? Definitely.
Was he the bad guy of the story? No.
Were the people he murdered really innocent? Hell naw
Who is your all-time favorite false enemy and what is their moment of uplift? Let us know and be sure to MARK FOR SPOILERS if necessary.
Unpopular opinion
Jetfire from siege war for cybertron Netflix
He is pretty much the main villain's right hand man and leader of their air force. He starts off with a single glimmer of hope when he cuts off the arm of his 2nd in command starscream because jetfire didn't want to execute wheeljack and bee immediately. He plays this off as starscream "going out of line" when he speaks to megatron. He stays a decepticon until starscream tries to take his position, where he kills a fellow decepticon which gives starscream proof of betrayal, he runs away and surrenders to the autobots, and navigates a strike team with prime, moonracer and prowl who thinks he's going to betray the autobots until he gets sucked into a tornado and jetfire flies up trying to save him. He then gains the autobots trust and stays with elita one, red alert and chromia to keep the fight in on cybertron going
@@TFSMF2 Haven't seen this one, but it sounds like a pretty solid example. Do I have to be super familiar with Transformers to follow the show?
Not to follow the show, but you might not know some characters
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty watching the Michael bay films will NOT help you do that
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty actually the next chapter of war for cybertron comes out today EARTHRISE
So that's good timing
Griffith, from Berserk
in my series, the good guys are fighting a godlike being but in the beginning they do not know of it. later on, turns out that one of their allies was the godlike being all along, or at least, an incarnation of it. it just wanted to observe them up closely. There is a scene where the human incarnation of the being is being captured by rebels and when his "friends" are not around, he laughs at the rebels and just like that annihilates them, then goes back and everyone wonders how he escaped.
this is a topic not talked a lot about but an important one because I have a character that goes back and forth kind of friendly character to a more villain character so I'm not sure whether to make her a false friend or a false enemy all I know that she is like she is because of her separation anxiety
How does the story end? If the character ends up as a villain, you have a false friend
T-Rex?
The T-Rex is just like the shark from Jaws: it's not a villain, just an animal trying to survive.
@@lindildeev5721
Exactly the same can be legitimately said about human characters
In the book, Treasure Island, John Silver is one of those, keep you on your toes characters. He constantly shifts where he stands, and it's interesting, but also frustrating. I'm not talking about the series (Black Sails), even if that one was great too. :P
Holy cow, the comments are like, 100% major spoilers for movies and books I haven't read or watched.
False enemy - Jaime Lannister
The killing babies part reminded me of Anakin Skywalker. Though in that case it was a fall arc gone too far. A fantastic example of surprise characters is Riddick and Johns from Pitch Black.
It really did go to far, especially since they didn't build up any "good" reasons for him to do that at all. He kinda just switched, without proper build-up.
There is a killing babies part at the beginning of "Mahabharata" (read it, it's brilliant). If memory serves, it is the mother killing babies, she kills about 6 before her husband stops her killing the seventh. Is she evil for killing the babies? .... I wonder ...
@@SysterYster !00%. He basically was having a bad week at work and suddenly agrees to kill kids. Made no sense. I could see him turning his back on them while the Clone Troopers killed the kids. That would have been sufficient. He'd be the one taking on the Jedi themselves. Killing kids is for grunts. The whole process of him becoming a Sith really needed its own movie before any killing.
I have a character who starts out as a friend, then becomes a traitor because he's been lied to, and then later, when he finds out about that, he regrets his actions and becomes a friend again. Back and forth. :P
One of my favorite false enemies is Storm Shadow from the GI Joe comics. At first glance he seems to be just another evil member of the terrorist organization Cobra, but when you learn his backstory he turns out to be much more of an antihero who actually joined Cobra in order to get close to the man who framed him for the murder of his uncle. He's no saint but he's also far from the evil villain he initially seems to be.
Professor Snape!
Does Westley in the princess bride count?
Algus from Final Fantasy Tactics. Marquis Elmdor. All the characters are believable in an epic story.
I love Elsa, she's easily my favourite female character out of all Indiana Jones movies. I even gave her a tribute in my Zirkulum-series. Where I did write a false enemy by chance *lol* He was planned as the best friend of my main character and a helper in the story. But somehow he turned out to be just a little bit too shady, so all readers expected him to be the bad guy. I loved it, so I kept it.
My favourite false enemy? It's a pretty hard question. I tend to like this type of character a lot, but it's hard to pin down a good example. Actually I think my favourite would be Dino Golzine from Banana Fish, but it's debatable if he really is a false enemy or not. SPOILER!
He definitly is the villain in Ash's life for as long as he's in contact with him. But in the end he holds true to what he said earlier "I am the one who made you and I will be the one to end you!" and dies protecting Ash from another bad guy, he himself has hired. Point is, that Dino is clearly a bad guy. He's abusive, he's a pedophile and he's a mob boss, using Ash throughout for both his business and personal fun. He also helped Ash become what he is and definitly wants him to be his heir. But as you said, he is a little to bad to be redeemable and he dies in his most uplifting moment.
Banana Fish also has it's fair share of unclear characters in Yut Lun and Blanka, how definitly falls into the trope of "secret good guy".
I was waiting to hear Vegeta's name 😢
One word. Zuko.
Pretty solid video and advice, BUT it would've been remarkable with a casual exploration of only EVERY "Femme Fatale" through the Film Noire Genre... You know going into Film Noire that there's likely to be a Femme Fatale, and the she's going to be betraying someone (or everyone) sooner or later. They're almost always involved in the pivotal point and they're NEVER EVER to be trusted... BUT they can be loyal. They can even be heroic... You're (at least the audience) just NEVER allowed to see it coming. ;o)
Prince Zuko
A good example of a badly-done false-villain is the first season of 'Resident Alien.' [spoilers]
The alien comes to Earth as a villain intent on destroying the planet but his ship is struck by lightning and he crashes in a lake. He swims ashore and finds a human living alone in a cabin, kills the human, and assumes his physical form. That's morally unambiguously bad.
The rest of the season relies on the city-mouse-country-mouse trope as the alien tries to take his place in human society, still with the stated goal of destroying humanity but over the course of the season and his narrative inner monologues becoming more sympathetic.
At the end of the season it is revealed in a flashback that the human he killed was in fact a murderer, leaving the alien in the position of being accused of being that murderer.
The problem is, the alien IS a murderer. It doesn't redeem the alien's initial action to point out that the human he killed was a bad guy. The entire series (for me at least) is weighed down with the reality that the first thing this creature did on Earth was commit cold-blooded murder, and he hasn't paid any price for that.
The alien protagonist is a false villain, but he does something bad enough at the outset that, unless he pays the price for so doing, he remains an unredeemed character, at least in my view.
Little finger is the false friend. Lord varys is the ultimate false enemy
Spoilers for Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works:
Archer seems to be one of the good guys from the start, and is a big help to the protagonist and his friends for maybe a good half of the show. Then he becomes a false enemy when he seemingly betrays Rin to side with Caster, before seeming to join the good guys again.
Then he reveals that his sole motive was, in fact, to kill the protagonist, because he was the protagonist's future self and had gone through so much suffering trying to fight for the good of others that he wanted to change the past and never go through any of that.
Tales of Xilia has the greatest false Friend ever xD
🤣🤣🤣 you betrayed us!
BUT I WARNED YOU!!
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Aren't you the false enemy then?! ;)
I’m actually having a false friend in my current story. He is a water magician and uses his powers to makes waves stronger in a certain scene. It’s not revealed in that scene, but will be later