Wiciran
Acolyte
How would you prefer a quality villain to look, dress, appear etc. What kind of looks are cliche? And how would you prefer they acted and how they interacted with others?
Men have this idea that we can fight with dignity, that there's a proper way to kill someone. It's absurd, it's an aesthetic we needed to endure the bloody horror of murder. You must destroy that idea, show him what a messy terrible thing it is to kill a man, and then show him that you relish in it. Shoot to wound, then execute the wounded. Burn them, take them in close combat. Destroy their preconceptions of what a man is and you become their personal monster. When they fear you, you become stronger, you become better. But let's never forget, it's a display. It's a posture like a lion's roar or a gorilla thumping at his chest. If you lose yourself in the display, if you succumb to the horror, then you become the monster. You become reduced. Not more than a man, but less. And it can be fatal.
Melkor created the Balrogs before he knew what the elves would look like; so he kind of made them with accidental overkill of size and power.
I want that for my villains too. I have one character I originally planned to keep alive, then it occurred to me that he really does deserve to die, and that needs to happen. If I do it right, the reader should be glad to see him go when he finally bites it.the reader longs to see them dead.
How would you prefer a quality villain to look, dress, appear etc. What kind of looks are cliche? And how would you prefer they acted and how they interacted with others?