Show Notes

• Hero With a Thousand Faces 





• The Writer’s Journey (Note: It does have a shapeshifter chapter, Oren was looking in the wrong book)





• Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey





• Why the Term Mary Sue Should Be Retired 





• Teen Wolf Villains 





• Sylar





• Elsa Schneider





• Littlefinger 





• The Skull 





• Spike





• Redemption Arcs 





• Saw Gerrera

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Savannah. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris:  You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.

[Intro theme]

Oren:  Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren. 

Chris: And I’m Chris. 

Oren: Did you know that one of us is actually a shapeshifter? I tried to look up what the shapeshifter archetype actually is, because I only use it kind of casually, and I discovered that nobody knows. I found various definitions, and I always assumed that the Shapeshifter was a character whose loyalties we were uncertain of.

Like, maybe they were gonna betray us. Maybe not. That’s what I thought it meant. I have now seen it defined as first any character who ever does anything sneaky has become a shapeshifter. But also, you have to be an actual shapeshifter according to some definitions, which is very funny, and I tried to look up the original definition in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and I found it. I found the chapter labeled Shapeshifter, and I have no idea what the heck he was saying. I don’t know what any of this means, guys. I don’t know. 

Chris: No, Campbell does not write in a clear manner. He is very hard to understand, anything that he’s saying

Oren: And to my surprise, it doesn’t look like Vogler mentioned it.

Chris: He must. He must. 

Oren: I couldn’t find it. 

Chris: I’m pretty sure he’s who I got it from. 

Oren: I searched through his book, The Hero’s Journey, or whatever vastly specific title.

Chris: The shapeshifter is listed on my Hero’s Journey Archetype post. And that is largely inspired by Vogler. So if Vogler had not mentioned the Shapeshifter, I don’t think I would’ve put it in my post either.

Oren: Maybe he does somewhere, but I couldn’t find it either by searching the text with Ctrl+F or by looking in the table of contents or the index. So, if it’s in there, it’s very well hidden. Maybe he spelled it weird

Chris: Spelled with lots of hidden GHs. Some silent GHs. Several times.

Oren: S-H-A-E-P-E. The sheeAPEshifter.

Chris:  There isn’t a very good word. I don’t really like the word shapeshifter for this anyway, but there just doesn’t seem to be a great term. I looked it up on TV Tropes. And TV Tropes has like 20 different categories, which is not helpful. Depending on the exact shade of untrustworthiness or the pattern of behavior this character shows. For storytelling purposes, we just want to group together characters that are between team good and team evil. 

Oren: That’s just how I’ve always used it. I thought it was a pretty useful term for that. I thought it was easily the most applicable of the various Hero’s Journey terms that get thrown around, but now I have no idea.

Chris: We really just need one term for this kind of character. And Shapeshifter is what I got. I don’t got a better one. 

Oren: Specifically, we’re thinking about unreliable allies today, and shapeshifter is kind of the cool way of referring to that character type. They may or may not actually change shape. 

Chris: We have disagreements about a lot of terms, like TV Tropes, for instance, is very insistent that you can’t call something a MacGuffin if what it is matters to the plot at all. Its only purpose has to be for people to fight over it, and it doesn’t matter what it actually is. And it’s like, that’s not useful. Okay? That is too narrow. That’s like the original meaning of ironic. Yes, I know what the original meaning of ironic is, but that’s too specific, and it’s not a useful word if we use that definition.

Oren: LOL. We got our MacGuffin purists over here being like, “Don’t you call that a MacGuffin. They used it at some point! It does something.” Seriously got into an argument one time or watched other people be in an argument about whether or not you could call something a Mary Sue if you didn’t have proof that it was an author insert character.

Chris: Now we need proof! 

Oren: Okay, well, I don’t like Mary Sue as a term for other reasons, but that seems kind of unreasonable to me. 

Chris: So yeah, unreliable allies. These are generally good characters to have. First of all, they’re generally extremely helpful because they make it easy to add more tension and conflict, especially to down scenes that are not normally that exciting. These are the scenes where something exciting has already happened and now your characters are resting, recovering, planning their next move, that kind of thing. But you still want a little something. You still want a little light conflict, a little light problem-solving to happen in those scenes.

Maybe some emotional growth or some heated conversations, and so, these shapeshifters−now I’m thinking about it every time I say it−just make it really easy to add a little more drama. Because, do we want them around? Who invited them here? What should we tell them or not tell them? And then you can have them, “Oh, I could help you with that.” Make them very suspicious. 

Oren: It’s not my fault that it’s hot, okay? We were all thinking it. 

Chris: And then you can also have their help come at a cost more easily. Maybe they make demands, which are difficult to deal with, or maybe their advice isn’t actually trustworthy. It’s technically−at best−kind of correct, and then the heroes get into trouble that they have to deal with. Just opens up so many great opportunities for tension and conflict and makes those easy to add. That’s why they’re usually great characters to have around. 

Oren: Although I have discovered a fun little contradiction, or maybe it’s more of a conundrum of the unreliable ally, which is when you spend a lot of time asking, can we trust this guy? It’s really difficult for the answer to be no and have it not be disappointing. Most stories that I know of that have an unreliable ally where we make a big deal about it, that person ends up being on team good. And, on the rare instances where that’s not the case, it’s always disappointing. And I have a few theories about why, about why this is more difficult. 

The first one is that if someone’s trustworthiness is questionable enough that you have to ask, “no” is already the least surprising answer. It’s like, oh look, that guy’s acting hella suspicious. Can we trust him? Well, uh, probably not. He’s acting really suspicious. A trustworthy person wouldn’t do that. That’s the obvious answer. And then it can also make the heroes look really silly because why did you trust this person who was being really shady before? 

Chris: Or be frustrating in the same direction if they are deciding to trust a character that is clearly, obviously not trustworthy−which is not what you want for your unreliable ally; they need to at least be partially credible−and you see the character decide to trust them anyway, that’s just going to be frustrating.