I'd Give Up The World For You

Juliet Gallagher was fairly certain she was losing her mind. Maybe it was because her editor was breathing down her neck again. She always got stressed when that happened.

But she had also been reading online reviews of her book lately and that was stressing her out too. Readers could be absolutely brutal and yet she couldn't stop herself. They weren't all bad???the good ones boosted her self-esteem. The problem was that the bad ones destroyed it so she suffered from extreme demotivation.

She only read the reviews because she was suffering from writer's block and had nothing else to do but that only made it worse. What was she doing as an author, anyway? She had only written one book that somehow skyrocketed its way into the number one slot on the New York Times bestseller list for a solid six months.

The concept for Down in Flames had originally started out as fanfiction where she wrote how she wanted a fantasy series she had liked to go. It became so popular that she reworked it into something original with the intention of trying to get it published, which happened after three years of emotional labor and rewrites.

Now her editor wanted her to write a sequel but she was completely drawing a blank. She had never intended for there to be a sequel and wrapped up the ending in a neat little bow.

Juliet sighed and drummed her fingers idly against her keyboard. What should she do? Her options were fairly limited as far as she could tell. All she could think of doing was potentially writing a prequel but there was only one character she could do that about and he was problematic.

Her villain. The one that fans complained about on a regular basis.

Many of them thought that he was far too cliched. They dismissed his motivations, called him "too evil for no real reason", and overall thought he fell flat while the other characters were well-rounded.

Then there were the stans who thought he was hot or that what little backstory she had given him was too pitiful and wrote endless fanfictions or headcanons about him online. This sort of behavior had only gotten worse after the movie cast was announced because of their deep, abiding love for the actor who would be playing him.

That movie had given Juliet a lot of grief too, though obviously she was honored that something she had written had sparked enough attention to warrant that. She had to fight the screenwriters every step of the way on what to include and not include, wanting it to be as book accurate as possible.

On top of that, the movie was what got her editor on the 'you have to write a sequel' train. It wasn't originally in her contract but the commercial success of the story had to be capitalized on according to her editor.

Juliet sighed. Would reading fanfiction and headcanons about Rukelion Blaze help motivate her to write his story or would it only make things worse?

She had needed a villain so she created one that was power hungry and bloodthirsty. Somebody had to oppose her heroes and they were the ones who mattered. The villain wasn't even mentioned for the first third of the book because she was too busy introducing the more important characters and worldbuilding.

In her mind he was fairly simple. A prince from a fallen kingdom who goes mad with grief, rage, and the pursuit of revenge who ends up conquering the entire continent and becoming a tyrant. He was overpowered too, requiring the heroes to push themselves, their magic, and their friendship to the limits in order to defeat him and live happily ever after.

What more motivation did a villain need to destroy the world? The book was written solely in her main character's perspective so didn't it make sense that not much was known about the villain's background?

Juliet didn't care about him. He was a throwaway character who had always been meant to die. So why did everyone have to make such a fuss?

She sighed. Why did people get so attached to villains, anyway? There literally was not any deeper meaning to his actions! He wasn't secretly a softy desperate for someone to save him. He was exactly as she had written him!

The stupidest part of all of this was that she had a Tumblr blog unconnected to her main author one and people would argue with her about the interpretations of her own characters without realizing who she was. She couldn't out herself either because if people knew the truth about Rukelion Blaze they would be upset.

As a somewhat public figure she had to be mindful of what she said to keep the readers happy. Otherwise her editor might kill her.

Knowing she would regret this, Juliet clicked on her Tumblr app and looked up the hashtag 'Rukelion Blaze'. If she couldn't figure out what to do with this ridiculously popular character on her own she may as well see what other people had come up with.

Who knows? Maybe she would see something that she could actually use. Inspiration was a fickle beast but sometimes all it took was one spark for an idea to take off. At this point she was desperate.

Most of what she saw at first were edits people made with the actor who would be playing him in the movie and lines he had said in the book. Then came the criticisms of him as a character. Incorrect quotes using other books, movies, or TV shows as sources where he happened to be one of the people involved in the exchange. Fanart of scenes he happened to be in.

The most ridiculous one she saw was of all the main characters plus the villain drawn wearing flower crowns. His expression was far too tranquil and he didn't have the madness in his mismatched eyes depicted in almost every scene he was in.

Whose bright idea was it to put a bunch of daisies on his head?! Admittedly, the stark white petals stood out against his red hair but it was ridiculous. Daisies symbolized innocence and purity. Who decided to do that for an indiscriminate killer? Were they being ironic on purpose?

Juliet scrolled down further and discovered that the artist actually did have a reason for giving the specific flowers they did to each character. Their logic for the daisies made her snort.

'Rukelion gets daisies to represent his lost innocence. He was only a child when he lost everything and if his kingdom hadn't been destroyed he would have been a completely different person.'

Obviously. But he wasn't. That was the point.

As a former fanfiction writer herself Juliet understood the desire to twist things into the way you wanted them to be. She had done it herself countless times. Now that she was on the other side of things she could understand why some authors hated fanfiction so much though.

People assigned their own meaning to things that truly didn't have anything else to it. Sometimes it could be frustrating to see, especially when the readers got all up in arms and hotly declared that the author was wrong despite being the one to create the characters and world in the first place.

Rukelion Blaze was a villain and no amount of fanfiction, fanart, or headcanons could change that. He was created as a foil to the main character since they had both lost their kingdoms but had opposite powers and personalities.

He was not misunderstood. He did not secretly have a heart of gold. He did not yearn for love. Sometimes bloodthirsty, power hungry maniacs didn't have anything more to them.

That was probably why people complained that he was two-dimensional but so what? He was a fictional character! He didn't have to be three-dimensional! Couldn't people enjoy things as they were without picking them apart?

Don't get her wrong; plenty of people loved her protagonist and his ragtag group of friends as well. That made sense though. She had written them to be likeable. They were supposed to be relatable and the sort of characters people identified with.

Juliet truly didn't understand why people were so obsessed with villains. She had never been into them herself.

She didn't get the appeal of morally gray characters either but Rukelion wasn't morally gray. He was straight up evil. He had taken his revenge way too far before the story even began and didn't care who he hurt in the process.

What sort of backstory would she even write for him? How would she delve into a twisted head and make him find a way to justify all the atrocities he was committing? She didn't think she would be able to pull that sort of thing off. Her writing historically wasn't that dark.

How would one person manage to take over an entire kingdom, anyway? Juliet wasn't sure she could put that much detail into coming up with something like that. Especially not to the point of making it long enough to be a full novel.. Maybe a novella at best.