You did a really great job getting us to see Jim being unforgivable. One of the hardest things for me writing him has always been ‘how could he do that to Seb, how much does he regret it, is he capable of wanting to change?’ And a lot of the time I AU myself out of this problem, but it’s always novel trying to write him changing for the better on purpose. Really can’t wait to see your take. CAN this villain make good??
The funny thing is that right now it looks like the challenge has become stop the reader from wanting to kill Jim.
He's definitely a challenge to write, that's for sure. I'm not interested in writing some caricature of evil but I also don't want to suddenly make him too nice, so it's a delicate balance between giving him moments of humanity while never forgetting he's an absolute bastard. I've got the whole mass of backstory for him that does help with knowing how to approach it, but even so I'm often having to stop and go is this too nice or is this too heartless.
There's also the whole genius aspect, like I've got to write someone who's a lot smarter than I am and somehow make it believable, that's tricky too. And then on top of that there's the whole trauma thing going on and the fact that for a lot of things he doesn't allow himself to think/isn't even able to think about his feelings because it's such a goddamn hornets' nest.
So yeah, that's definitely going to be an interesting experience once we get there, especially because we start TToD from Jim's pov. But it is fun. And honestly, I assume you won't believe this atm but I think I've managed so far to create an actual compelling and engaging pov you can sort of feel sympathy for while still wanting to kill him with hammers.
