The Role Archetypes series is focused on presenting archetypal character roles in a way that focuses on their development throughout stories, with a particular eye to games (although most of the examples given will be taken from literature).
Today we're going to talk about the Trickster, the fifth of ten roles we'll explore.
The Trickster in Narrative
The Trickster exists as a sort of "alternative viewpoint", but not in the same sense that the Outsider does. The Trickster shows up to challenge the assertions that a Hero may mistakenly fall into, and generally deconstructs a character's actions.
The Trickster shows absurdities, things taken to their logical extremes in ways that don't make sense or even normal actions that are out of place in the context of the events of a story. They do not follow the rules of society (or sometimes even the rules of the universe), but they break these rules at a price to themselves, with the best of intentions, or as part of a process that leads to them repenting.
The Trickster is defined by having a clear motive, but taking esoteric actions (as opposed to the Shapeshifter, who will act predictably, but in line with esoteric motivations). They illustrate things that would not be acceptable to say out loud and often serve as a foil for other characters, giving an alternative to their more plain and straightforward expressions. By doing so, a Trickster may potentially expose more complex elements of the psyche in the characters they interact with: with a farce, they break a facade.
It is also common for a character to metamorphose into a Trickster as required; a good example of this can be found in Star Wars: An Empire Strikes Back when Yoda tests Luke prior to becoming the Mentor. This stint as a Trickster not only serves to heighten the effect of the lesson that Luke has to learn when Yoda reveals his true nature, but also provides the audience with a look into Luke's shadow: the poor lateral thinking and tendency to act on prejudice that will later cause him to destroy the Jedi in the interludes between Episode 6 and Episode 7 (an underdeveloped element of the sequel trilogy that is actually one of its highlights, narratively speaking).
Examples of the Trickster
Tricksters are very common in mythology; figures like Loki, Coyote, and Hermes all illustrate the ways that the Trickster can act.
Jesters and fools in Shakespeare also play this role. The commoners in the first scene of Julius Caesar, for instance, comically frustrate Flavius and Marullus, but in doing so they illustrate the will of the people. This is also the case in plays like The Merchant of Venice, where the fools play out a side-plot that echoes the main plot but puts a slight twist on it: they look at how one should value family where the main plot looks at how one should value standing. Likewise, the absence of a fool (the ill-fated Polonius notwithstanding) in Hamlet is significant: Hamlet muses over the remains of the jester Yorick, whose death represents an inability to see through the complicated events that the plot contains.
Derivative Forms
The Deconstruction
In some modern stories, the deconstruction provided by the Trickster occurs directly in the form of an address to the reader (e.g. breaking the fourth wall), either by the narrator of the story or even just an author's note (the latter form is not entirely absent in pre-20th century works, but tends not to fulfill the role of the Trickster).
This is easily seen in a lot of post-modern work, but it can also occur in other more "comedic" stories, where a character will act in a way that wouldn't be logical in reality. The Marvel Cinematic Universe does this really well; characters will go back and do little things that are nods to the universe or illustrate a part of their personality in a manner that's staged for film. As such, it's not necessarily correct to say that deconstruction is always a variant of the Trickster, but rather an alternative form, a sort of return to the cosmological forces that the Trickster acts upon; it is the return of the deity's drive to an abstract, universally distributed, state.
The Dreamer
The Dreamer is an alternative to the Trickster that removes many of the comic elements from their nature, though they may still have the potential to be funny in a comic sense. They act in an unexpected fashion and often create an element of tension due to the way that they work, evoking much the same responses from the characters around them that you would see in a traditional Trickster.
A good example of this is River Tam in Firefly, though her role throughout the story often shifts as needed (because of the episodic and character-driven nature of the story, she often goes through phases as an Underdog or even a Hero, as in the movie Serenity).
The Fool
The Fool is a counterpart to the Trickster who is a negative example of the rules-breaking and heterodoxy that the Trickster embodies. While a Trickster will violate norms because doing so suits their purposes, the Fool violates norms because they are too stubborn or stupid to realize the difference between right and wrong action. They are used to illustrate the consequences of this.
The Biblical example of a man who builds his house on sand, the two of the Three Little Pigs who build houses of straw and sticks, and the tragic figure driven to indulgent self-destruction is an example of a Fool.
It is not entirely coincidental that the Fool often destroys their own home; the home is a symbol of both the greater society and a person's role in the world, both psychologically and economically. The Fool's actions jeopardize their own social value and bring them to ruin.
The Trickster in Games
Tricksters are generally under-utilized in games. While there are many games that attempt to tell comedic stories, they often fall flat. An example of this can be found in the Borderlands series, where Claptrap, an attempt at the archetypal Trickster, can come off both well and poorly. While scenarios where Claptrap interacted with the player in dynamic ways tended to work well (e.g. him promising a glorious quest and his schemes immediately falling part around him), constant banter tended to cause issues, and the game was generally too packed with characters to give any one a strong role.
In other cases, Trickster characters lack the screen time and opportunities to interact with the player that they might otherwise need. Many players will not respond well to a Trickster that plies their trade on them, and having a large portion of the plot dedicated to a side-character whose main role is to stir up trouble can be irritating. One of the pitfalls that comes into play here is that many game writers create an archetypal Fool, rather than an archetypal Trickster.
A good alternative to this is to think of an archetypal Dreamer; create a character from the perspective of someone who thinks in a divergent manner, then add the humor over the top of that. Their actions, if limited enough in scope as to not disrupt the plot for the protagonist, give an opportunity to explore a different sort of conceptual understanding of the game world.
There are few good examples of the player taking on a Trickster protagonist; the Saints Row series has some examples in its zany open-world action, with the Boss taking on a series of increasingly outlandish events as the story rolls on, but even this has some limitations and the humor is often more reliant on unpredictability and obscenity than how the Trickster is used to illuminate the characters and setting.
Wrapping Up
The Trickster is an oft-overlooked archetype because it is often written off as comic relief, but the way in which it provides this comic relief is significant.
The Trickster's antics show an alternative to the path the Hero must walk, but also the consequences of it.
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