Build-A-Villain Workshop! - Villain Survey :D

Hello! This is my first thread/post outside of the RP fora so... please be a little easy on me, kay?

Alright now that we got that straightened out, I am gonna cut right to the chase. I am terrible at creating villains. No, really, I am. I am good at creating villains for roleplay... but story wise? I can't do it. So I am calling upon the help of you, the mighty Tropers, to help me construct the most evil villain imaginable. By evil I mean the most unlikable monster ever, so when (s)he gets vented in the head by a Browning Hi-Power, it would be more satisfying than that crunch. Or maybe that crunch is actually his/her skull being crunched apart by bullets. Oh well!

Please list all of the unlikeable traits that make your blood boil. Draco in leather pants? Long hair? Hannibal lectures? Neonazism? Racist? Sexist? An arrogant prick? List 'em all! :D Links to tropes would be much appreciated as well!

No one? Okay. XD I already have a good idea of what he is gonna be plotwise... I just need some unlikable traits to help flesh this guy out. Gimme something, TV Tropes! :D

There are villains that you love to hate, and there are villains you just loathe. My go-to example for both of these are Darth Vader vs. the Emperor in the Star Wars Original Trilogy. (For this example, I'm focusing squarely on the OT and ignoring the prequels, which give too much unneeded backstory.)

Sure Vader is ruthless, and kills his underlings at the drop of a hat. But even so, you can't help but admire the guy. He's a cool villain — he's evil, but he's not over-the-top evil. (Which, in my opinion, just makes a villain look corny. But hey, if that's your thing...)

The Emperor, on the other hand, is just creepy and slimy and disgusting. I can't imagine why anybody would willingly follow him. If you want to make an utterly loathsome villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, start with the Emperor and then take it Up To Eleven.

edited 31st Dec '15 11:01:58 PM by pwiegle

While there may be traits that are commonly disliked, I imagine that reviled traits are likely to be highly subjective, and thus may vary significantly from one person to another. One person might loathe "long-haired pretty-boy" villains, while another might be ready to fit them for leather pants; one person might find slimy villains eminently punchable, while another might sympathise with the potential social stigma attached to their appearance; and so on.

As a result, I'm not sure that a survey-based design is likely to be a good idea here.

I believe that we do have a (rather long) list of villain tropes, if you'd like to browse.

edited 1st Jan '16 3:36:31 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Normally, the most successful villains out there aren't the most evil beings on the planet. People gravitate towards the most complex, you get what I'm saying? That's why you remember guys like Magneto, The Joker, Bill, or Norman Bates. Even if they're monsters, there's something at the root of it all that makes you adore them, or at least understand them on some level.

I would reccomend going for that, and avoid the baby-raping cliché.

Too outrageous and they stop being repulsive and start being laughable. If you want people to actually emotionally react to this character in a meaningful way, downplaying the more extravagant stuff and slowly, subtly emphasising the more casually reprehensible or unsettling aspects of the character is probably your best course of action. Just show little flashes of what kind of person they really are and make sure that each glimpse underlines something that the audience already knows, so that there's this slow burn of escalating fear and hatred.

Now, if you mean to ask in what way they should be vile to maximise this, I wouldn't suggest just piling on the traits. Something simple, from which all of the other nastiness stems, is to my mind the most effective. Aggressive pettiness, for example, or a pleasure in seeing others suffer. Little things that serve as the underlying basis for other, bigger, more complex things. Comprehensible qualities made monstrous by the fact that they are so driven by them, so dominated, that they are willing to cause unspeakable suffering to satisfy what is ultimately an immature crotchet.

On the other hand, if you want to aim for a kind of grotesque camp, while this principle may still apply as a basis, feel free to go as far as you please. Just keep in mind that, after a certain point, it can be very hard to take such a character at all seriously—or, depending on how well or poorly such a character is executed, very hard to take the writer seriously, if they are so bold as to try to force the audience to take such a mound of tropes seriously.

Good villains, in my opinion, are likeable in some way even if you hate them for their dirty deeds. Evil Is Cool, after all, and to try and get around that is a pretty bad idea. Sure, make your villain morally hideous, but give him or her endearing aesthetic traits. Make 'em mysterious, badass, classy, some combination thereof or something else.

I know it might seem irrelevant, but I felt it needed to be said nonetheless.

I should also point out that a villain is a character, not some walking, talking force of nature that makes plot happen. It can be easy to forget that sometimes, but try to handle one as a thinking, feeling human being as you would anyone else.

edited 3rd Jan '16 11:20:22 PM by Inceptiond

Give reasons to the evil actions.

As a partial counterpoint to some of the above—but by no means contradicting all of it—I'd like to note that some of the villains that I find most memorable and enjoyable seem to be some of the more powerful and outright villainous members of the field.

To give a few examples: Sauron, Lord Foul the Despiser, Ruin, SHODAN, and The Guardian.

edited 4th Jan '16 5:55:02 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

A 450lb man who inherited all of his money, smells like old brie, dips his chips in white vinegar, listens to White Chapel and has an assistant that does all his business and villain related shit is because the guy pays him oodles of money to stick around.