[Writing Discussion] Villains!

[Maeriberii Haan]

Of course, you know what they were like. From the most ancient story to even how some of us perceive real life now, the whole narrative of a hero overcoming the big, bad, villain has always been there, imprinted in our collective unconscious.

 

And, chances are, most of the stories you'll write will have them too. Sympathetic, completely irredeemable, insane, well-intentioned, not worse than the hero, there is a lot of shades to how a villain takes form in your story. And more often than not, they'll end up be the narrative force that drives the story forward, leading towards its conclusion with their defeat.

 

So with how them usually ends up being pretty important, let's talk about them! Minor or major, let's talk about your experiences in writing any sort of villain anywhere. Let's also talk about what do you think makes a good villain too here.

 

Do you think they should bring out certain emotions from the audience? How much depth do they need ideally? What kind of villains do you think are overdone?

[Catterjune]

A good villain thinks he's right.

The best type of villain is right.

It depends on the story though. SOmetimes you just want a silly mustache twirling sinister bad guy. Sometimes you want people who are just victims of circumstances and, given the challenges they've had in life, you can sorta see where they're coming from. Sometimes your story needs a Machiavellian Zanatos Gambit type of guy.


As for my own experience writing villains...

Spoilers for my own fanfic? e_e

[spoiler=spoiler] wrote a story called Arena: A Duel Academy Fanfic and am currently writing a sequel.

In the first fanfic, the main villain is a centuries old witch who has the power to absorb people's youth. Her victims turn into dried up old husks and die of old age while she stays young and beautiful.

It makes sense in context.

She is at first presented as a friend and explicitely stated to be the most beautiful woman in the world and the main characters are practically falling over themselves to please her literally every time she's mentioned. There's 'SUBTLE' implications here and there that she's much much older than she appears, but given the context of the story the reader can probably just shrug them off as just Rule of Funny.

Eventually things come to a head in Chapter 21 when someone is found dead, Chapter 24 when they find out the extent of the witch's power, and finally in Chapter 25 it begins to unwravel and they confront the final boss of the story.

On the surface she may just seem like a mustache twirling villain, but if you think about it you might realize that everyone is afraid of death, that she got a bum rap in life because she was also cursed to grow older at a much faster rate, and that she's from the Middle Ages so her feudalistic ideals sorta make sense. Then again, she was just a straight up murderer so your mileage may vary as to what you thought of her.

I think the best part of her though was that she was just about the second character (after the narrator) that we meet. There's lots of hints even at the very begin that she's more than she seems, and we finally find out why at the very very end. Was always planned to be that way.

The sequel, Arena 2: The Cursed Chain tries something similar but sort of backwards. The second character we meet is blatantly the mustache twirling villain (it makes sense in context why they're a weird mustache twirling villain) and the protagonists confront her about it in Chapter 3, but IF NOBODY MINDS SPOILERS, around Chapter 7-9 (it's not been written yet) the plan is she becomes kind of less of a threat. The new actual main villain shows up around chapters 9-18 and the final arc has the main villain enacting his main plan.

To make a long story short, in my first fanfic we had a cunning woman who had tricked the entire main cast and stayed mostly off the radar, until she enacted her terrible plan in the last 6 chapters.

In my second fanfic we had a kinda dumb weird girl who had no tricks but was just blatantly evil, however since she can control the entire academy she doesn't really need subterfuge to accomplish her goals. She can just bend people's memories to do it. She falls off the radar after Chapter 9-ish.

Unsure which people like more.

 

[Aix]

Villains just gotta be interesting because of their huge place in the story. Usually that translates to giving them relatable qualities and making them human, but your villain could well be a Lovecraftian incarnation of pure evil, though really what that does is transform them into a force of nature. Mustache twirling villains only exist in unrealistic, light hearted works or biblical fables... same thing amirite.

 

A good villain thinks he's right.

The best type of villain is right.

This is a decent heuristic. It adds moral quandary in your story which is almost universally enjoyable, but not every story has a place for it.

[mitchermitcher]

They should be captivating. Generally they should occupy your thoughts as much as they do the protagonists'. Regardless of what qualities you give said villain, they generally are the character(s) with the largest effects on the story so they should be engaging enough to do the same to your thoughts as you read. Their every action should evoke some thought, emotional response, or something of note from whoever is around and cause ripples. Much moreso than the hero, the villain cannot be static. They arguably are the drive of every single story that has a clear one.

 

That said, you don't need a good villain for a good story(although having a good one will almost never hurt). I'm personally fond of stories where there's no clear villain and the conflict comes  from something much more abstract and personal. They could be someone who'd qualify as a villain in that situation but their strength as a villainous character is not very necessary, I imagine.

[Just Crouton]

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. I like the idea of a hero or villain who could be presented as the opposite, unchanged, from another perspective (which is I don't think heroes should be held down by rules and morality but, that's another topic.)

 

Probably my favorite villain would be the insane MD Krauser from MD Geist: Death Force. While other villains of his type would be douchebag tyrants who oppress the weak for a laugh, Krauser's goal is to save humanity from the man-eating robots so they'll serve his kingdom, then literally does nothing to make them feel oppressed the whole movie (he does treat his scientists and a cyborg guy like crap.) Krauser does nothing but good to mankind all to feed his massive god complex. But, it's his ego and mental instability that leads to his downfall when he picks a fight with Geist who was just minding his business fighting the robots.

 

Now, flip Krauser into a hero, and we have a pretty interesting hero; a self-serving, mentally unstable super soldier fighting as the savior of mankind so they'll worship him as a god, and encourages them to work together to rebuild the future and fight Death Force. Krauser learns that his fellow MD, Geist, the one-man army who doomed humanity in the first place, is still alive, and his feelings of inferiority becomes obsession with destroying Geist for good. His descent into madness trying to rid himself of Geist leads to the downfall of his kingdom.

 

On sympathetic villains, I'd rather understand a villain and make my own decision than be pushed to feel bad for them.

[Fusion X. Denver]

My stance on good villains basically boils down to if they're interesting or not.

 

One of the most interesting villains I've come across is The Walking Dead's Negan. When I first read him in the comics, I became immediately captivated by the threat he posed and his dialogue. He had an entertaining, carefree attitude while simultaneously affirming how screwed the main group was. And then he rips the reader's heart out.

Amazing first impression and he's followed through for the rest of his time in the series. 

 

On another note, I always liked Majin Buu from Dragon Ball. The whole crew threw absolutely everything they had at him and still couldn't take him down. It took the entire world to unite and destroy him by series' end. And that came through after every fighter went through the ringer. He himself had little personality, but the challenges he made the entire rest of the cast go through were interesting and felt like the most dire foe they faced yet.

 

And if they're good at making you hate them. Umbridge from Harry Potter is a good example of designing a character you're supposed to hate, and not because they're just evil, trying to destroy the world, or whatever else.

 

I usually only appreciate one-note villains in a comedic setting, like the mwahaha demeanor is played off as a joke. 

 

One trope I don't care for is when the villain kills their comrades to show that they're heartless and to establish sympathy for the betrayed minion. Feels a little hackneyed at this point, and anime's super guilty about using that often.

[Night]

Interesting that I would happen upon this thread during a time in which I could actually utilize it. 

 

I've been writing this short story that's almost entirely platformed upon quick but interesting world building and how the protagonist deals with the classic trope of being the "chosen one" although not understanding why or what it entails and essentially the villain is the guide throughout the story who's coaxing the protagonist into doing nasty sheet for reasons unknown. Villains have always been an afterthought for me, probably why I struggle with them.

 

I've realize that in particular I struggle with villain's motives most of all. If anyone could just pitch some random ideas that would be coo.

[Catterjune]

Interesting that I would happen upon this thread during a time in which I could actually utilize it. 

 

I've been writing this short story that's almost entirely platformed upon quick but interesting world building and how the protagonist deals with the classic trope of being the "chosen one" although not understanding why or what it entails and essentially the villain is the guide throughout the story who's coaxing the protagonist into doing nasty sheet for reasons unknown. Villains have always been an afterthought for me, probably why I struggle with them.

 

I've realize that in particular I struggle with villain's motives most of all. If anyone could just pitch some random ideas that would be coo.

Sure...

 

Knowing nothing about your world, what the villain does, or how he's guiding the protagonist, I assume when you're saying "classic trope of being the chosen one" it takes place in a magicla Final Fantasy/Medieval sort of world?

 

The villain wants to take over the world because he thinks he'd do a better job of leading it then the current king and queen..

 

"Surely you've seen the town of Garbage Town? It lies in utter ruins yet Capital City is full of magic and wonderment. You've seen how the elves belittle and insult humans? It's because of a long standing feud between the High Council of Elves and the current royal blood line. I however, seek a better world! One in which all the races are united."

 

Or something like that. In the end they do unite, but against him...

 

Or he's uniting everyone for a bigger threat.

 

Or he's trying to unite everyone in order to trigger an end-of-the-world scenario.

 

Ultimately, as long as he can convince the protagonist he's doing the right thing you can probably get it done. But again, that's without knowing anything about your story.

[Aerion Brightflame]

Why would any character, villian or no, want to guide your protagonist to some end?

 

That that motivation, and then put the end goal or path of that motivation as being morally opposing to what your hero does. Because no one goes around thinking they are evil, they believe they are right (And often the best ones actually are right), and I think the best way to get that is to treat them as a character before you treat them as a villian. Villian can be as simple as them just being in your characters way, they don't have to be 'villanous'.

 

A good example of that is the Punisher arc at the start of Daredevil S2. Daredevil and Punisher do the same thing, they go outside the limitations of the law to deal with an excess of criminality because they feel it is in the best interests of the city (Kinda, Punisher's arc is a little more complex of course). So whilst they have the same end goal, they differ in methods. Daredevil thinking Punishers killing makes him as bad as those he kills, Punisher thinking that Daredevils methods are ultimately futile and that he is doing what has to be done.

 

But, obviously there's an awful lot of reasons as to why one may want to do this, and a lot of it would depend on the details (The most important probably being 'what is he the Chosen one for', is he stopping some force of nature, some ancient evil, invading armies, hero of the downtrodden?)

 

In effect, with the set-up you've picked (The mentor guiding him to evil ends thing), think about how you'd set up any mentor, and then just have the mentor's goal be in opposition to your heroes morals. It's a pretty common idea, but it works because often the most interesting bits of fiction are when you test a characters morals within the story and see how they react.

[Just Crouton]

"essentially the villain is the guide throughout the story who's coaxing the protagonist into doing nasty sheet for reasons unknown."

 

the villain lets the hero trash all the competition, then moves on with their master plan

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

To me the term villain and antagonist tend to be sort of blurred. As such....

There are many types of villains a story can have. I won't go through everything but some examples that come to mind include...

 

Forces of Nature: Literally some sort of doomsday event going to happen. This isn't a physical villain but instead just something the heroes need to overcome. It can often be brought on by specific living beings but it also can stand on its own. It's purely a driving force which gives the heroes a reason to do whatever they have to do.

 

Monsters: A beastie that needs to be slayed. This type of villain doesn't need to be super deep but it is important to make it interesting and exciting. Because without actual traits it relies on its physical presence or abilities to make it something interesting.

 

Evil Bastard: These don't need to be deep either. They are people who, for whatever reasons, want to do Bad Things and the heroes need to stop them. The things that help make these characters interesting are wit and evil plans, or incredible combat ability, or pure intimidation, or even interesting lackeys. They are not much different from the Forces of Nature. An obstacle that is a driving force for the heroes.

 

The Pariah: These are the sympathetic villains. They have had something happen to them that drove them to do the evil they do. It's important to give them goals and clear, if dark, morals. If you take even the smallest step out of Evil Bastard and towards Pariah you need to go the full way. If you don't your villain becomes just empty and no one can take it seriously. Usually these villains need a lot of backstory and/or screentime to really make a name for themselves. In the end you must leave the reader with the sense of "If only things could be different".

 

Gone Too Far: Similar to The Pariah. They are no different from a hero except that they've taken it to the extreme. They are the types who are trying to heal a sick loved one or fix an injustice. It's usually necessary to have someone close to the villain to reveal their goal because coming from the villain it comes off as heavy-handed. Much better to learn about their quest than to be told it. However a passionate speech from the villain can certainly be done.

 

Inner Turmoil: The hardest villain to write is the one inside the heroes mind. Be it an addiction or someone struggling to not do bad (and becoming a Gone Too Far), this villain is entirely told through the hero themselves.

 

Actually Good: These villains are the types that are truly good people but forced to do bad deeds because of position (leading their people) blackmail, so on so forth. These are usually best to slowly build up to finding out the complete truth. Bits here and there. And, for me, it's important to kill these villains. And then revealing the full truth. Or putting them in a position where they will die for sure. Alternatively letting them do a Noble Sacrifice.

 

Overall the most important thing to do with villains is decide which one you want to use and then stick to it. Don't try and give an Evil Bastard a sad backstory unless you're willing to

1. Turn them into a Pariah or Gone Too Far

2. Make them so evil that it's impossible to forgive them despite the backstory.

 

That's not to say you can't mix multiple villains into the mix. In fact in my own opinion it's good to have at least two types of villains in your story.

---

Now as to some of the specific questions in the OP.

 

Do you think they should bring out certain emotions from the audience?

Yes. However the emotion varies. Especially depending on type. Fear, awe, disgust, sympathy, and regret are all good emotions for the various emotions.

How much depth do they need ideally?

Again it varies. Literally from no depth to more depth than anyone else. It all depends on what feels right for the story. It's hard to say for sure which villains fit which stories but a good indicator is how much action there is in the story, how dark/light the story is, and if you wish to say something in particular with the story. (People in positions of power have much responsibility could be a good one for the Actually Good villain type for instance.)

What kind of villains do you think are overdone?

Oddly enough I think the sympathetic ones are done more than they should be. To the point where people have become forced to believe a villain needs a sad backstory, a noble reasoning, etc to make them interesting. Which is sad because there are many good villains that are simply trying to take over the world.

 

Note: Quite tired while writing this forgive me if it doesn't make sense.

[Phantom Roxas]

DanganRonpa in particular has made me wonder about this, as Junko Enoshima is a rather poor villain. While she does have a presence in the beginning of the game, and acts through Monokuma, by the time that you truly see her as the main villain, she's really lackluster. Every last bit of her dialogue relies on filtering everything through a shallow binary of "hope vs despair", removing any sense of nuance, and making the story almost childishly simplistic, yet at the same time trying to pretend that it's "deep". A villain who is evil for the sake of being evil isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in the case of Junko, she literally drools from sexual pleasure over the very concept of despair. She's defeated literally by the heroes pressing a button, and she's done in by her own pretentiousness, where that hope/despair binary cycles in on itself and becomes a messy contradiction.

 

The villain I prefer to compare her to is Sliske from RuneScape, who I think succeeds on just about every aspect where Junko fails. Both of them set up a "survival game" of sorts, and Sliske's entire point is that he hates how people really don't want to play his game. Every single time he's confronted with questions about his motivations, he's frustrated at the idea that he has some elaborate reason for doing everything, and outright admits that he's just bored. He wants to give the players of his game a genuine sense of purpose, whereas Junko is just shallow. She talks about "despair" as if it's some overarching concept that is self-explanatory, yet at the same time too complex for the average person to understand. So comparing Sliske and Junko, I think I appreciate villains who at least have some self-awareness of their actions and motivations.

 

The best kind of villain is one who is personal to the protagonist. This could be as simple as the villain killed the hero's family, and so the hero wants revenge, but at the same time, having that personal connection goes both ways. For example, "For you, the day M. Bison graced as your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday." The hero has a score to settle, but the villain really doesn't give a damn who the hero is, so while we're rooting for the hero, there's a disconnect on the villain's side. Granted, you don't have to start with the villain having a grudge against the hero, and the hero doesn't need to know the villain either. You can make part of the story be about how these two enemies form a rather personal grudge against one another.

 

One fun type is The Starscream. The supposed main villain has a lackey who is either loyal on plans to overthrow their master, and it is this lackey who becomes a major threat in their own right. In video games, it could easily be that the major villain you've fought for most of the game really just served a higher power, but you need to be careful with introducing that higher power. How do you raise the stakes without making everything else seem like it doesn't matter in the face of this higher power? If that higher power is introduced at the very last second, then you don't have much time to make us really get invested in them as a villain, so much as just an obstacle. Now, if you stick with that lackey, and they somehow succeed in overthrowing their master, then you manage to raise the stakes while turning a character we're already familiar with into the main villain.

[ShimoHkun1]

An interesting idea for a villain came to me when it was brought to my attention by a YouTube video (I think it was game theory). It explained that in essence, the main character is the antagonist, while the villain, from the perspective of the reader, is truly the protagonist. It is discovered at the very end when the villain is killed, and it isn't an issue for the other characters, because him/her was always seen as evil, but the reader begins to see and by the end of the story recognizes the true horror of the "hero".

 

I think that a villain needs a certain twist to them that no other entity in the book requires or has. Be it a monster with a secret weakness, or a villain with a good motive there has to be a special something to a "bad guy".

[BLASTERZ]

If you want to write a good villain really all you gotta do is give them some redeeming quality. If they are just evil for the sake of being evil truly then yeah its a sheet villain there's not much to it really.

 

I also hate light novels cause it seems like majority of villains are modeled after people in their real life, like girls the LN author asked out and probably got rejected, or people in their life who said they are failures or losers, which they truly are. 

Oh yeah I also forgot this applies to Webcomics and webnovels too. The lack of quality control AKA no editors means many authors proceed to release products which seems more like a whinefst and a reflection of their life, and if they tries to be political you often get strawman caricatures of that one racist uncle in their family or something.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

If you want to write a good villain really all you gotta do is give them some redeeming quality. If they are just evil for the sake of being evil truly then yeah its a sheet villain there's not much to it really.

What makes you think this?

[Maeriberii Haan]

Redeeming quality for the sake of redeeming quality is just obtuse however. It should make sense for the character to have it, and most importantly, it should never be something you would expect the characters in the story and the readers to look over all the villainous things they do. If someone murdered an entire village, even if they have a reasoning for it (for the greater good blablabla), or if they have a sob story behind it or their personality, or if they are really kind to people in general or something similarly admirable, that doesn't change the fact that they murdered a shitton of people.

 

Don't make excuses and treat it as redeeming qualities. Don't tack such thing into a villain to manipulate your readers to feel sorry about them. It's an issue permeating a lot of work of fiction at the moment. If you want to make your villain have redeeming quality, make everything integrated into the character to make everything sensible. They're still people, so treat and write these "sympathetic" villains like one - having actual motivations to do what they do. It might not be for a noble goal, it might be really petty, but write it as something that makes sense for them to pursue.

 

And a villain that has no redeeming qualities still honestly works tbh. They might lack depth yes, but they still pretty much work. Of course, having them actually feel iconic or meaningful is pretty hard because people doing this tend to make the villain be the cliche-y  nebulous and ever-distant big bad evil overlord or the stereotypical petty loser or other similar ideas. But much like most ideas, they can always work.

[Aix]

Redeemable is pretty subjective, but it can be obvious if the author is just trying to make you feel sorry for the villain. Rather than redeemable, make them human.

 

The last villain I saw that quite enjoyed was William Fisk from Daredevil. I don't think these qualities redeemed him or made him someone to sympathise with at all, but he had his own struggles and weaknesses. He had an abusive childhood, mood problems, and people he loved and wanted to protect at all costs.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Destiny has two sides.

 

If the hero is the chosen one, that means the villain is not. Surely, that can't be easy to cope with. Using the one destined for greatness to achieve your own goals seems like the next best thing behind being destined for such yourself.

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

I've never written an original villain before but I can think of some notable examples of different types of villains, both well done and not so well done. I'm going to use holy cow's villain type keywords here and there to make these shorter.

 

[spoiler=yugioh gx]In yugioh GX, Kagemaru was a very poor excuse for a villan you're supposed to feel sympathy for. He would have been better as a villain who wanted power or to rule the world because of a lust for power. I say this because he killed the last existing vampire and nearly got a group of innocent students buried alive among other things... just to be young again.

 

Yubel in season 3 was a very complex villan that combined supernatural tainting with a very deep character design. Instead of saying "The light of destruction made yubel evil.The end." They had the complex relationship between Yubel and Judai where Yubel thought that sadism showed love.

 

Darkness [from Season 4, comically known as "the death goat"] was an decent force of nature/scary monster. He didn't have much of a backstory but didn't need one. The way he got inside people's heads by showing them the darkness in their hearts was very well done. The only way it could have been better was if Judai had to go through some character development by facing his internal darkness, if he had one

 

 

[spoiler=yugioh 5d's]Yugioh 5d's did an excellent job on what holy cow called "the pariah" with Yiliaster and Zone. They were mysterious at the beginning but quickly became a threat to be taken seriously. However you don't find out what drove them to act the way they did until the series is almost over.

 

 

[spoiler=yugioh arc-v]

Roger is a decent example of the power hungry control freak villain.

 

Akaba Leo however is another Kagemaru. He's shown as someone who you're supposed to feel sympathetic for but comes off as having no morals. He's willing to ransack an entire dimension just to get his daughter back. From the way his forces leveled buildings and shot down the military, he probably killed hundreds, without accounting for those who got turned into cards. He of all people should know what its like to lose family, and yet his forces bring tragedy to the xyz dimension at his command. From what I saw he didn't seem to be motivated by trying to prevent Zarc from returning. I don't even think he knew Zarc had been reincarnated until long after he'd launched his raid on the xyz dimension. Trying to prevent Zarc from reviving would have made his methods a lot more justified to the viewers.

 

Speaking of which Zarc seems very hard to believe once you see his backstory, unless he was mentally unstable before he fused himself with his dragons he didn't really make sense.

 

One good thing to say about Arc-v is that if you re-watch the first 20 or so episodes after seeing season 1 and 2, you can see why everyone is acting the way they were but when you first see those scenes its not obvious but is mysterious. Its too bad the writers dropped the ball later on.

 

 

 

[spoiler='Dark Knight [The Batman movie]']

The way this movie portrayed the joker is very well done: his sadistic love for discord and chaos speaks for itself.

 

 

[BLASTERZ]

 

How does a villain without redeeming quality still works? A character having one dimensional personality of always being evil is just annoying. They can have a bad example of redeeming qualities like they kill adults because their parents beat them and thats a terrible excuse and bad characterization, but in the end its still something there. One of my favorite villain ever is aku, and he's literally a giant dick. The thing is its the way he acts and how he deals with our heroes that is his redeeming quality, that is he makes goofy jokes and have nuance that doesnt make him an evil overlord that he is for the first 3 episodes. He of course never did a single trace of good thing, but how he acts is so ridiculously goofy that there's a reason why so many people loves him. 

 

Honestly, like, I thought you were going to provide a large amount of different examples of villains from various media but then you provided yugioh examples. Not to say theyre bad example but so many yugioh villains feel like cookie cuttery copycatz. They make psycho faces, they gleefully cheer as they drop the hero LP to 100, and they are corrupted by DARKNESS or something along that line. There are occasionally variation but still.

 

For me, the greatest villains in fiction IMO (as in my top lists) are:

 

FUNNY VALENTINE (JOJO)

GRIFFITH (BERSERK)

ABIGAIL (The Crucible)

INSPECTOR JAVERT (Le MISERABLES)

ROBBIE ROTTEN (Lazytown)

KURTZ (HEART OF DARKNESS)

AKU (Samurai Jack)

ALDEN PYLE (THE QUIET AMERICAN)

WILSON FISK (DAREDEVIL/JURASSIC WORLD)

[ChampionZero]

I play a technically neutral supervillain in another game. He's completely lost his mind, and only occasionally shows a flash of normal behavior for a 19-year-old kid. He's fun to write for, because you don't NEED to sympathize with him, and he's a murderous human hurricane with Deadpool levels of regeneration. He's just fun to see people interact with. Sure he's evil, but every story can't have perfect people on all sides. So he's the bad guy, the REAL bad guy that even the other villains hate. He's utterly alone, totally insane, and he loves EVERY minute of bloodshed and carnage he can stir up. Hell, he got himself put in jail so he could break out and steal the powers of the other villains still in the jail.