Complaining: Generic Doomsday Villain

And a cleanup thread would probably be needed.

As for motives, one of the reasons that money and power are common villain motives is that they’re common in Real Life, too. How many times has someone gotten busted for doing bad things and screwing people over in the name of personal gain? People kill each other over money all the time. It is by no means unrealistic.

@themayorofsimpleton: Agree it can be valid. "Feral Doomsday Villain" is an attempt to isolate the one use of GDV that is unambiguously not a complaint.

Generic motives like money or Take Over the World for no reason should be a separate thing assuming it's even trope worthy. (Take Over the World or Greed + Flat Character I'm not seeing how it deserves its own trope especially given the complaining it attracts.)

If generic motives are used as a tool, that's Flat Character as detailed motives are irrelevant/detrimental to the works goal. The only times I know of generic motives used as a tool is as parody of the concept.

I believe we agreed the Generic part needs to be fixed as attracting complaining. So maybe generic motives should be a separate trope from GDV? (Also if generic it exists as a trope so it seems redundant to be it's own thing.)

How about Feral Animalistic Villain?

What about Plot-Device-Only Villain? Since the general idea of the trope is that the villain is merely a plot device to facilitate a big climax, I feel like that name would clarify it.

Also sounds good, fully breaking from the complaining of GDV, but maybe redundant.

Sounds like a better way to put it than Characterless. But how would it be meaningly different then Flat Character?

It's also possible to split GDV between these two uses.

Just saying that a Flat Character isn't necessarily badly written, and I guess "the Big Bad happens to be a Flat Character" really doesn't need to be its own separate trope.

I mean, true. A Flat Character is just one who doesn't have a lot of depth or development. IDK why people talk about it so negatively when, I mean, not every character needs to be rounded.

Well, people love rounded characters, especially rounded villains.

Sure, but that doesn't mean Flat Character is inherently bad. It also doesn't mean a Flat Character villain is inherently bad. Some of my favorite villains are flat characters, because when it comes to villains I care way more about their evilness and their impact on the work than their motives and backstory.

This trope does sort of feel inherently negative because when you specifically isolate the flat / motivationless villains, it implies that a "good" villain has motivation and depth. Especially when the "Generic" label. No wonder people use it to complain. And if the issue purely boils down to people believing that "flat" villains are badly written, that's not something we can fix by changing the title.

“Some of my favorite villains are flat characters, because when it comes to villains I care way more about their evilness and their impact on the work than their motives and backstory.”

And I thought I was the only one!

Not so say complex villains are bad- I love them too- but not every villain needs to be a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds or Well-Intentioned Extremist or whatever.

The issue is that Flat Character is an objective trope (character has few personality traits and little development) that has a negative connotation.

See, the "negative connotation" part is entirely subjective and based more about cultural perception rather than reality. I don't think anyone would complain that a background character doesn't have much personality (unless we're discussing, say, Warrior Cats), but those background characters are Flat Character by design (as there's no point in fleshing out bit characters). People also confuse it for Static Character, as a Flat Character can still develop over the course of the story, they're just not very deep.

So it's a completely objective trope. The negative part isn't actually related to it at all. It's just the way people happen to feel about these characters, because of the misconception that every character needs to be rounded and deep in order to be "good" characters.

I think Characterless Villain both encompasses the lack of motives and the lack of characterization past “this character is a threat”.

But it runs into the problem of Tropers calling a villain “characterless” because they don’t think the villain has sufficient character.

True

True. How do you quantify how much "character" a character has?

That’s the rub… I don’t know if such a thing is possible without going into YMMV territory. That’s why I’m focusing on Animalistic Villain, which is an objective thing.

I’d personally vote for the trope becoming YMMV. Animalistic Villain sounds more like a sub trope. There are villains that aren’t of animalistic intelligence that still lack motivation or much characterization beyond “evil person who does evil things because reasons”

How is the Animalistic Villain idea distinct from the Non-Malicious Monster I mentioned before? Also, the name sounds like a villain who happens to be animals or have strong Animal Motifs.

No Agenda / Cause / Backstory Villain? Enemy With No Excuse? Obligatory Threat?

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 22nd 2021 at 11:31:31 PM

Most of those could work, except for "no backstory". Not every well-rounded and interesting villain actually has a backstory. Some villains work best when they're completely mysterious.

Animalistic Villain is different then Non-Malicious Monster in that they are malicious. The key thing it that their maliciousness is not driven by high-functioning human motives like sadism, revenge, greed, or power-hungriness, but by what seems like some more basic instinct.

I can only see making villains with generic motivations YMMV as opening the floodgates to complaining. The only reason I can think of to distinguish them from Flat Character is to complain. We already have The Scrappy if they are wieldy hated for such. And villain without backstory might fit Diabolus ex Nihilo.

The characterless/motiveless/generic villain aspect of GDV seems like it can be split into the following:

• Flat Character: A basic character without substantive motivations/backstory.
• Dastardly Whiplash: A homage to the "Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain" archetype.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: A threat without explanation (like backstory or motives) to create the current conflict.

Any other aspects of GDV this is missing?

How much overlap is there between this trope and Diabolus ex Nihilo?

Presumably, the Diabolous can have a personality.

So can the GDV? Personality isn't motivation.