Let's talk about: Villains!!

I don't have themes. I just create characters and then destroy them :D

More seriously, it's not really about the questions you can raise, it's more like - if I have these antagonistic characters, and they're important to the story, I make them characters. So they become people, and because they're this important, they've got to have gotten there somehow. They've earned it, they've got virtues associated with getting where they are, and they've got reasons for trying. Every important antagonist gets this treatment - a Type III or IV Anti-Hero of Another Story is the closest to villainy they get, and that comes with justifications for doing what they do. If I don't bother, it's likely that it's worth looking into cutting the character, because the villain's probably not that interesting, or relegating the character into a minor role more deserving of a less-developed character.

The closest thing I get to straight villains are non-human forces whose greatest offence is not considering the humans hurt by their actions, or considering humans at all. They inadvertently kill a couple hundred people occasionally, and are more like forces of nature than anything. Treated that way in-story, too, so people are trying to work around them instead of destroying them all. Then I gave them speaking roles, and they abruptly became kind of adorable.

It intrigues me that suddenly everyone thinks seems to think that the type of villain-antagonist I mention is that which I enjoy most. Granted, you wouldn't actually be wrong, but in the end I'm just as keen on perfectly justified opponents as I am with utterly reprehensible bastards. It just so happens that I also love disturbing things, meaning that I felt vaguely qualified to give some basic advice on making an especially sinister character.

I hope that said advice helped, by the way.

edited 7th Nov '11 7:45:05 AM by JHM

In comedies, Affably Evil seems to be a fit. Sort of the villain who interacts on a personal level with the heroes yet still wants their heads on a silver platter.

While this can get old fast, it works if, later on, your villain is tired of trying to meet the heroes halfway and just switches to Card-Carrying Villain, who sort of brags that they're a villain to the heroes as if they're still friends.

edited 7th Nov '11 7:49:38 AM by Jawbone

I'm trying to run the gamut - so far I've got a Well-Intentioned Extremist and someone else whose motivation I won't spoil set up as fairly sympathetic Anti Villains (Type III and Type II, respectively), and a Smug Snake Big Bad Wannabe. The Big Bad is technically the Dragon-in-Chief, but he's also a Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard extrairdinaire and, as far as I know, one of the most utterly soulless monsters in webcomic history. My goal with him is to make him charismatic enough that he becomes a character people love to hate. I'm also working on writing a retired Torture Technician who hated the job even when he was doing it professionally and has since become The Atoner, but gets forced back into the role by the aforementioned Big Bad.

I like pragmatic Manipulative Bastard Chessmasters, especially if they're Affably Evil.

A good villain should be pragmatic and intelligent and should never come anywhere near a Villain Ball or it's cousin the Idiot Ball. For example, when a villain executes a minion on the spot because of one small failure or something the minion couldn't control...I tend to lose all respect for that villain. If he or she is pragmatic, he or she would also be open to the possibility of working with his/her enemies if there was a good reason for it, instead of just trying to horribly murder them every time they meet.

I also like it when the villains don't hate the hero, they just happen to be on different sides - for example, Ba'al actually seemed to like SG-1 or at least find them amusing. A situation like that tends to lead to awesome dialogue between the two sides.

Personally, the three things that make a good villain for me is: competence; you can identify him as a credible threat to the heroes, terror level, and morbid fascination

I also like to make my villains as horrifyingly evil as possible, even if they have a sympathetic past

I also like Laughably Evil Magnificent Monsters like Xykon who [Crosses the Line Twice cross the line about fifty seven times]]

A Villain that does not believe he/she is the Villain.

I am not talking about a Well-Intentioned Extremist, Knight Templar, Punch-Clock Villain or Joke Villain.

Not someone with Good Publicity or Freudian Excuse.

Not Complete Monster.

Just your ordinary person in extrordinary times. A totally normal, relatable person who believes they are (or at least, trying to be) Heroes.

edited 7th Feb '12 3:36:20 AM by Natasel

My favorite villains tend to be the ones who can really get inside the heroes' heads and psychoanalyze them, forcing the heroes to confront all the things they don't want to admit about themselves. It's a good way of using the villain to provide character growth, it makes the villain look clever, and it gives their evil a personal, intimate edge that makes it more sinsister than ordinary violence.

What I don't like are villains who are thoroughly unpleasant just so people will enjoy their inevitable defeat more. For me, someone being a really awful person doesn't make me enjoy their suffering any more, so a villain who's purely contemptible doesn't give me any payoff. Unless they're a bit character, villains need to be funny or cool or frightening or otherwise enjoyable to watch.

edited 7th Feb '12 3:42:32 AM by RavenWilder

Villains that have not read the back cover, or the script. This is surprisingly rare. One of the things I've worked with in my stories is that both sides are grappling with each other in the dark, with neither truly understanding the size, shape, capabilities and intentions of their foes. These are things they must learn and blunder through.

I've since figured out how I write villains.

The majority of them are, at worst, like this.

The minority are subtly different.

(Regrettably, I haven't found a tune for the handful of villains who just don't give a fuck. The closest I've come is this.)

My villains are mostly Cultured Badass types, like Queen Anathema, Dolph Gradich, even The Seer is extremely calm and charismatic.

They almost always have a long reaching goal and end up competing with each other and forming alliances and some even get romantically involved. Example being Dolph and Book 2 Big Bad Sharon Tate Roman.

edited 14th Feb '12 9:15:25 PM by NickTheSwing

I have trouble coming up with villains that don't decay into Anti Villains. The more I work on them, the less villainous they become.

With me it's the opposite. My villains get more ruthless every time I revise my story, and even my main characters risk ending up with a nasty evil streak.

Example: As it stands now, the main character in the fanfic I'm writing starts off being a worried dad having to trawl through a city full of mutated psychopaths looking for his daughter...

... and after the events of the story ends up as something that's probably worse, best described by a scene near the end when he mercilessly picks off a group of said mutants one by one, mocking and taunting them with each kill, then finishes the ringleader (whos completely broken down by this point and begging for mercy) by drowning him in a pool of motor oil, laughing widly as he does so.

edited 9th Feb '12 1:11:06 AM by Zanzibar

I'm definitely with ^^ more than ^. I can't hate someone just for trying to fight for a cause, and if you don't have a cause, it's generally more efficient to pretend to be good than to make yourself an enemy of many, so I almost always start to like my villains.

Villains are definitely my weak point.

I have one villain I see as good.

The problem is...he's less of a villain...and more of...just someone that everyone hates. For good reasons.

I had one villain start as a gleefully murderous Knight Templar before eventually mellowing him down into a Lawful Neutral Anti-Villain who eventually joins the good guys (even if he keeps slipping into Rossiu mode).

The villain I came up with to replace him as the villain started off playing hopscotch over the Moral Event Horizon to brew himself up a godlike entity he could use to fight his (and the protagonist's) father-figure and ended up merging with it to become a world-wrecking monstrosity. Now...well, he's still doing all that, except turning into a monster wasn't in the plan (the entity turns out to be Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth), and there's a strong implication the whole thing is just his twisted sense of justice at play rather than genuine For the Evulz.

And said father-figure? He was originally a straight-up God Is Evil/Neglectful Precursor, and now it turns out all the pain and misery he was indirectly responsible for (leaving a collection of all the world's stored-up psychic energy within reach of people who have some very dangerous ideas about what it would be best used for) turned out to have the express purpose of creating a hero who could punch out an Eldritch Abomination with designs on Earth.

Said Eldritch Abomination is one of the few exceptions to my Villain Decay issues. I originally came up with him for a sort of crossover fic idea, where he was a nod to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy: he was a pandimensional computer system put in charge of building planets who was unwisely asked about the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything and went nuts when he realized the answer he got made no sense. Basically, he decided he'd be able to figure it out if he had more information about the universe, and so he sent out probes to gather that information by disassembling everything in their path down to the very last molecule. They seek out new life and new civilizations for the sole purpose of breaking them down for upload and analysis, and when he takes personal interest in a world, he sends in an avatar - a consciousness or amalgamation thereof, implanted with a piece of his consciousness and utterly insane as a result. Those avatars are each obsessed with one aspect of mortal existence - time, death, heredity, identity, dogma, etc. - and godlike in their own right. But again, they're crazy, and they tend to wreak utter havoc as they try to unlock the secrets of the universe in their own way - through terror and torture.

So yeah. I suppose it helps that he was never technically evil, but really freaking scary all the same.

edited 9th Feb '12 11:12:11 PM by Ryusui

I've done all sorts of villains, and I don't really have a clear preference.

The strongest villain shown so far in my current story is a mercenary who's set on stirring up as much trouble as he can, and make money if he can while doing so.

A line he says that should give you an insight on his personality: "You believe in the strength of friendship and unity because that's what saved you. Me? The only thing that saved me was myself. I'm the only one I can trust to help me survive."

edited 10th Feb '12 6:50:43 AM by fillerdude

edited 21st Jun '17 5:15:33 AM by ArlaGrey

Most stories I've written don't even really have villains, so I haven't written enough of them to have any recurring things about them.

I like the villain to not be entirely obvious. If they're a card carrying villain from the start, they're terrible big bad material like Kefka or Exdeath. For the evulz antagonists are just boring and dumb to read and or watch, so I like to make them have a REAL MOTIVE for their actions. When this motive is revealed the protags actually feel bad for them, but defend what they must regardless. Unless they're an abomination, they should be people who normally wouldn't do evil crap but were forced to under the circumstances or what they believed was right.

I don't believe in villains. At the very least, I don't believe in Complete Monsters. Sure, there can be people who oppose the protagonist, and there can be people who do things considered evil by others but I think I would find it extremely difficult to write a character who was actually evil for the sake of being evil. The characters of my current Wi P are all, without exception, doing what they believe (not unjustifiably) to be right. Anti Villains and Well Intentioned Extremists abound. Even the sociopaths and Humanoid Abominations have good reasons for why they do what they do.

edited 15th Feb '12 8:19:32 AM by RiotousRascal

I simply couldn't picture a pure evil person that isn't insane. The ultimate end of evil is always having some benefit hence the reason I simply can't picture a Complete Monster or a Card-Carrying Villain being real.

That being said There is such thing as a bad person and therefore villains in a traditional sense.I don't agree with people that think that villains don't exist or that they should all be simply "misguided" people.

Not all real bad people are simply Well-Intentioned Extremist. Some are doing bad things and they know it but do it anyways for selfish reasons.

edited 15th Feb '12 12:49:07 PM by FallenLegend

I don't have many villains - I'm not good at them. They never seem as 'real' to me as the other people in the story.

Villains to me are as realistic as other characters. As such, the main (extraterrestrial) antagonist of my story is may be a evil maniac he is driven by the need to colonize and capture resources, thus the reasoning behind why he planned to dominate Earth.

As for Slender man,He just runs of Blue-and-Orange Morality.

I actually like writing villains. I mean, a lot of thought goes into trying to make them work. Just like the hero they are driven towards something, it's just that their something is at odds with the hero's.

Look at Tsubaki from Mirai Nikki - she wanted to destroy the world. Crazy, right? Her motive? She can only see as far as her hand and lived in confinement. People would come in from the world she could not see and hurt her, so eventually she "decided" that everything that brings her pain comes from "the unseen world" and wanted that world to not exist anymore.

I mean, someone just being evil for the sake of being evil is hard to believe, but if the evil acts can be given not just an appropriate motive but their perpetrator an appropriate mindset then you can get somewhere. The "Freudian Excuse" of abusive parents or bullying won't justify everything, but then you don't need the villain to have a shit childhood - they can get desperate, or addicted to something (easier in a fantasy setting), have a mental breakdown/illness, greedy, selfish, or just be raised differently.

However, for Complete Monsters they'd require a lot of work to be believable - I don't even try to write one of those! Far beyond my skills. XD (the only good one that comes to mind is Monster)

edited 16th Feb '12 12:53:18 AM by StolenByFaeries