• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

I Need Villain Help Please

FrostWind

New Member
I need villain help. He is a good man. Very much a "Well-Intentioned Extremist"/"Utopia Justifies the Means" on TV Tropes website. He sees what he's doing as the lesser of two evils. He doesn't like war, he doesn't like causing pain, but he know's it's the only way.

I've thought maybe he's trying to conquer the world to start a new one, an alliance, a one government, a (I hesitate to say it) "utopia." But what is the opposition? What exactly is he doing that he believes is right but that others don't? I want him to be sympathetic, and while he's not evil, he does evil things. I just don't entirely know what his goal is. I want the heroes to be in the right by opposing him.

This is a fantasy world, along the lines of LOTR or GOT/SOIAF. He has magic powers.

Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!! :( :D
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Morals or beliefs.
I have two characters in a story of mine: one believes in aristocracy, the other is an anarchist. The trick is that they're both smart enough to justify their "utopias". I looked-up actually political theories, philosophies and text that support those two viewpoints.

If you make a fascist character - one who believes that the world should be "one voice, one way" - you can't get modern, Western readers to sympathize with that viewpoint without some kind of logical argument.

The other route is that you make the character himself sympathetic but objectively wrong. But that's probably not what you're going for.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
I have a character like that in one of my novelettes. A priest in a nation under assault by a rival dominated by a demon summoning priesthood. After a devastating defeat, he decided to try conjuring 'angels' - something against the core tenants of his faith.

Basically, your character needs a problem so extreme, and a mindset so constrained, that draconian measures become a viable option.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The example that springs to mind is Verne's Captain Nemo, but there are others.

You don't need villain help--you already have his motivations. You need hero help. What are *their* motivations? It could be personal or it could be universal. Short-term or long-term.

You might consider having the heroic goals be admirable *and* having the villain goals be admirable. Or have both sides have a little bit to admire and a little bit to condemn. That could make for some difficult choices. Difficult choices are usually interesting choices.
 

Fyri

Inkling
If you are truly wondering what the opposition would be, then I think you are very much on the right track. If he wants to make a utopia, a new government, but he's going about it by starting a war, many people might be against it. He might be trying to make things better by destroying things that others considered good/fine/okay. As a further motivation for change with sympathetic idea, perhaps he was hurt by a corrupt government in the past and now, in hopes that this pain never occurs to someone else, he is trying to erase all corruption from the world.

Or something like that. His goal can be ultimately good and the heroes would still be in the right in opposing him if he was trying to achieve his goal by questionable means. This would make him misunderstood and the readers may have a tinge of compassion for him while still rooting for the heroes to stop what he's doing.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Without knowing specifics, I'd say first start with what your two sides are. On one side is the "hero" and the other the "villain". Anything one side believes, likes, or has attributed to them, have the other side be the opposite and/or oppose it. For each find a legitimate or warped reason for that side to be the way they are and why they're in opposition.

The Villain thinks they're doing right by doing X.
The Hero thinks doing x is wrong because Y.

The Villain doesn't like war or pain.
The Hero is some one who thrives on war and pain.

This hero who thrives on war may sound villainous, but it all depends on how you look at things. A noble warrior who's life is nothing but moving from one conflict to another and gets a thrill from beating on who they perceive as the bad guys would fit the bill.

Now make the conflict personal. Find a personal reason why the hero and villain don't want the other to succeed.

In a very broad scope that's one way to find the conflict between hero and villain.

As for the exact specifics to what the villain is doing and why, I'm not sure that's something I can give you, because that's very world and character specific. All of which I really know nothing about.

Another thing is remember to keep it simple. Why people do things is generally pretty simple and the reason behind them is too. I usually glance over Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and use that as a tool to give me ideas. Complexity comes in when two things a person wants/believes come into conflict with one another.
 

K.S. Crooks

Maester
What instantly came to my mind is Magneto from X-men comics. He started as a villain because of the methods he used to achieve mutant equality or even supremacy. Having lived through WWII in a Germany prison camp and watching so many, including his family, die simply for being who they are pushes him to a mental state of 'strike them before they strike us'. Perhaps your villain is using methods that are so drastic and harmful that it nullifies any good that bring about. Perhaps he is doing the same thing those before him have done only he doesn't see it for himself.
What if what the villain is doing will harm a different society and the heroes would rather sacrifice their own people than bring about the destruction of another society. Hope this helps.
 

Ronald T.

Troubadour
First, I would pose a question -- "Can the impossible exist?"

I ask this because for a utopian society to be possible, it must supply all its members with their particular desires. And I know this is just one man's POV, but I'm not willing to accept that unrealistic theory.

Here's why. I was head of a "special districts" road committee for two years. It involved making decisions for the work to be done in the coming year on approximately fifteen miles of public road. If we were lucky, we would have perhaps 30 to 40 people show up at the meetings (this out of perhaps 300 or 400 land owners), although our decisions affected many more than that who used the roads every day. And this is what I noticed. Even with those few people, we could never get a unanimous agreement on anything. It always seemed there were three or four factions wanting things that were contradictory to the desires of the others.

Now imagine the leader of any country, and suppose, instead of trying to satisfy 30 or 40 people, they had the chore of satisfying thirty million people, or three hundred million. How far do you think that leader would get?

The problem with most fanatical leaders in our world -- or those within the pages of a fantasy novel -- who believe they can create a utopian society, is that they are delusional. Anyone with the ability to be logical knows that no leader can please everyone. And that's the "monkey in the wrench". Look around at the various countries, both contemporary and historical. Can anyone sight anything that resembles a utopia. Any leader who thinks they can impose that theory on the masses, simply becomes a violent despot -- example: Kim Jong-un. Leaders who believe in the possibility of a utopian society suffer from a particular medical condition: they are afflicted with an extreme case of tunnel-vision. The small amount of good they do becomes magnified while they remain blind to the huge amount of damage they cause.

Ultimately, it's a result of human nature: people have strong and varying opinions. Because of this, a utopian society doesn't have the hope of existing anywhere, even in our own country, and even as we hold ourselves up as some sort of magically superior example to the rest of the world. It all comes down to this...people will never agree on what a utopian society is. Upon recognizing this, the logical mind must understand there can be no such thing as a utopia. There will always be people in denial of this, and this is where the delusional part comes in.

It's a sad situation and a sadder conclusion -- saddest due the fact that it's true.

If anyone can give me an example that proves me wrong, I will be the happiest of chipmunks.

But as I've said, this is just one man's POV.

As always, my best to you all,

-- The Hermit in the Woods --
 
Last edited:

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Just because Utopia has not existed does not mean it cannot. Plus, this is fantasy. That said, there is an odd sort of dialectic in trying to write a "realistic" Utopia.

In my own writing (oh great, there he goes again), I have a Utopia, or rather a Garden of Eden. That is, a time in the distant past when everything was perfect. It's part of the legends of the elves of Altearth. Dwarves have no such, nor do humans for the most part.

Chortle. I just wondered: would orcs have a Garden of Evil myth?
 

glutton

Inkling
First, I would pose a question -- "Can the impossible exist?"

I ask this because for a utopian society to be possible, it must supply all its members with their particular desires. And I know this is just one man's POV, but I'm not willing to accept that unrealistic theory.

Here's why. I was head of a "special districts" road committee for two years. It involved making decisions for the work to be done in the coming year on approximately fifteen miles of public road. If we were lucky, we would have perhaps 30 to 40 people show up at the meetings (this out of perhaps 300 or 400 land owners), although our decisions affected many more than that who used the roads every day. And this is what I noticed. Even with those few people, we could never get a unanimous agreement on anything. It always seemed there were three or four factions wanting things that were contradictory to the desires of the others.

Now imagine the leader of any country, and suppose, instead of trying to satisfy 30 or 40 people, they had the chore of satisfying thirty million people, or three hundred million. How far do you think that leader would get?

The problem with most fanatical leaders in our world -- or those within the pages of a fantasy novel -- who believe they can create a utopian society, is that they are delusional. Anyone with the ability to be logical knows that no leader can please everyone. And that's the "monkey in the wrench". Look around at the various countries, both contemporary and historical. Can anyone sight anything that resembles a utopia. Any leader who thinks they can impose that theory on the masses, simply becomes a violent despot -- example: Kim Jong-un. Leaders who believe in the possibility of a utopian society suffer from a particular medical condition: they are afflicted with an extreme case of tunnel-vision. The small amount of good they do becomes magnified while they remain blind to the huge amount of damage they cause.

Ultimately, it's a result of human nature: people have strong and varying opinions. Because of this, a utopian society doesn't have the hope of existing anywhere, even in our own country, and even as we hold ourselves up as some sort of magically superior example to the rest of the world. It all comes down to this...people will never agree on what a utopian society is. Upon recognizing this, the logical mind must understand there can be no such thing as a utopia. There will always be people in denial of this, and this is where the delusional part comes in.

It's a sad situation and a sadder conclusion -- saddest due the fact that it's true.

If anyone can give me an example that proves me wrong, I will be the happiest of chipmunks.

But as I've said, this is just one man's POV.

As always, my best to you all,

-- The Hermit in the Woods --

My question would be, does a utopia needs to have everyone perfectly satisfied in all their desires to qualify or would a society that has nearly eliminated violence and crime through education and resource distribution be 'near perfect' enough to qualify? Not that that would necessarily be possible in real life but it would be a thousand times easier to imagine/write than a society where people don't even have disagreements.
 

Ronald T.

Troubadour
Hi, glutton. I suppose that becomes a matter of personal judgement. And of course, I might be completely wrong in what I assume "utopia" means. It's not an easy question... I agree. But I thank you for your thoughtful response.
 

glutton

Inkling
Hi, glutton. I suppose that becomes a matter of personal judgement. And of course, I might be completely wrong in what I assume "utopia" means. It's not an easy question... I agree. But I thank you for your thoughtful response.

I would think that if everyone's desires have to be completely satisfied then a utopia would be impossible since there would be some with desires that are impossible to satisfy, for the concept of a utopia to be relevant there has to be some point where things are considered 'good enough' short of every person being an omnipotent deity ruling over their own universe.
 

Velka

Sage
I need villain help. He is a good man. Very much a "Well-Intentioned Extremist"/"Utopia Justifies the Means" on TV Tropes website. He sees what he's doing as the lesser of two evils. He doesn't like war, he doesn't like causing pain, but he know's it's the only way.

I've thought maybe he's trying to conquer the world to start a new one, an alliance, a one government, a (I hesitate to say it) "utopia." But what is the opposition? What exactly is he doing that he believes is right but that others don't? I want him to be sympathetic, and while he's not evil, he does evil things. I just don't entirely know what his goal is. I want the heroes to be in the right by opposing him.

You face a common, but complicated problem. It's so easy to make the main antagonist more interesting than the hero, but it is important that the hero be the most interesting character in the story.

The most important relationship in many stories is the relationship between the hero and the opponent - it's this relationship that determines how all the drama builds.

Often this relationship is created by having a clearly defined hero, and then crafting a complementary opponent. Since you already have an opponent, you'll have to reverse engineer this. Structurally, the opponent is the key, as it's through him/her that the hero learns - opponent attacks the hero's greatest weakness and this forces the hero to learn and grow. The hero and opponent drive each other in a symbiotic relationship. In the end, the hero and the opponent should be competing for the same goal, this is what creates the heart of conflict in a story.

A hero and opponent should have strong similarities - this helps the hero from being seen as "good" and the opponent as "evil". If your opponent wants to create a better world, then your hero should want the same thing. Their respective visions of what the "better world" is where you create the conflict. Your opponent wants to create an utopia which will make everyone safe and healthy and happy but under a totalitarian rule, then your hero should have an opposing vision of creating the same thing (perhaps a world where there are many disparate societies, each with their own freedoms, religions, government, priorities that stay out of each other's business).

You already have a great idea that your opponent truly believes he is doing good and what is right. A strong, but flawed moral argument elevates an opponent from 'evil dude' to flawed, but interesting character. Find the flaw in his moral argument and then have your have a differing one that proves to be 'more right'.

The opponent should be the force that relentlessly attacks the weakness of the hero, forcing him into growth, change, and ultimately, success. Have your work show how the opponent's view of a better society does have it's advantages (e.g., everyone has food and medicine and peace) while the hero's view has it's own challenges (e.g., freedom leads to disagreement, war, strife, etc). This can cause the hero to doubt him/herself. Then throw in how the opponent's vision is short-term and that the immediate "good stuff" is superficial, as people find personal freedoms, liberties, and identities must be sacrificed in order for the good-stuff, causing them to question the price they are willing to pay. Rebellions start against the opponent, and the hero realizes their vision is the better way, and they emerge emboldened to stand up for the people and work towards realizing his/her vision.

Your initial post made me think you don't have the desire/goal of your opponent completely solidified. If this is the character you are starting with you need to get a clear vision of what these are. Then you have to decide on what his/her weakness(es) are. From there create a mirror version of the opponent to create your hero. They should want the same things, but have opposing views of what needs to be done to achieve it. The opponent's weakness should be something the hero can exploit, and conversely the hero's weakness needs to be something the opponent attacks. Never think of the hero/opponent relationship and extreme opposites, they should be seen as two possibilities within a range of infinite outcomes.
 
Top