Evil Counterparts

Currently my book, 7th Moon, is under review from a blogger and troper who tweeted this week that he got to a part about a "Face your Evil Counterpart Battle" and I knew exactly what he was talking about as I wrote that particular part consciously aware that I was doing that. I followed up by looking up the trope on TVTropes and found some interesting information about the evil counterpart trope. I would like to follow up by discussing this particular trope and it's role not only in my book, but in general.

Before I talk about how it fits in my book, I would like to point out a completely unrelated example of how it was used by another author, Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri in the novels by R. A. Salvatore. These two characters are absolute opposites, photonegatives even. Drizzt is a Drow, a dark elf with dark skin and white hair from a world of evil where he has prevailed against the odds to escape to the surface world and live among the good people of Faerun and follow ideals of compassion. Artemis is a human with light skin and dark hair, comes from the decent human world and has become an amoral assassin who shows mercy only when he has a use for them alive or if they are simply not worth the trouble of killing. They only have two things in common, they both mastered using the two blade fighting style, and they have a common acquaintance in Regis the Halfling. Regis stole a valuable, magical gem from his former employer who still employed Artemis when he tasked him with getting the gem back. Drizzt protects his friend and ends up fighting Artemis and they find that they share a unique fighting style that makes them immediate archrivals and mortal nemeses. Drizzt has fought a number of worthy opponents revealing his prowess as a fighter, dragons, demons, yetis, hordes of goblins, and yet there is no enemy as significant as Artemis Entreri. Why? Because by fighting an enemy that is the same shows off his skill set in a way that nobody else can. Defeating a dragon shows he's strong, defeating a demon shows he's cunning, and cutting through goblins like hedges shows he has endurance. But in all those cases, Drizzt is cutting down his foes with two scimitars, so we know he's powerful because he wields two blades at once, but couldn't anybody be just as tough if they could use two swords at once? Artemis tests that when he draws his vampiric dagger and pairs it with his other sword. Now we see two equals duel, in a way, he's fighting against himself. His victory against Artemis is not merely defeating a powerful opponent, it's proving he is the better of two differing only by morality, and apparently, by a very narrow margin, skill.

Evil counterparts serve this function in just about any case where they are used. Fighting entirely unique and different enemies always has a margin of different strengths between the combatants, the true measure is when they are similar enough to test the hero on an even level. That is part of what is going on with Hidariude and Seichei. Honestly Seichei was inspired by the Zeta Project a spinoff of Batman Beyond in which a robot was created to destroy but refuses to kill an innocent target and goes rogue, leading those who sent him into the world to try to recapture him. I assumed 7th Moon would go in that direction, but I wanted to eliminate the possibility that Hidariude would ever go back, so I decided to create a replacement, an upgraded version who has more of everything to counter the relatively minimalist cybernetics Hidariude has. The point of the two is, Seichei is bigger, badder, better in every way that should matter, but Hidariude still defeats him because he fights for what's right and draws some undefinable power from within his soul that Seichei lacks. I love using this trope and I also love seeing it used by others, no matter how overused it ma ever seem, the truth is no hero will ever truly know his worth until he has faced his ultimate enemy, himself, his Evil Counterpart.