Does my villain sound original?

[KressKross]

I'm trying to make my fantasy story as original as I can think of. I know you can use things done before and make it look good as long as you do it right, but I have to make sure I actually am doing things right.

To begin, my villain is the ruler of an entire continent in my story's world. However, it isn't the evil side, but instead he rules the side that is good. He actually cares for the people that he rules over, and protects them as best as he can. He feels, however, that the amount of sinners and criminals outweighs the kind-hearted and caring people. He plans on commiting genocide on everyone except a select few people he feels truly deserves to help rebuild his visioned new world. These people include a set of 15 people (which some of them are my sub-villains), divided equally into 3 groups which have special tasks to aid in my villain's plans; one is in charge on preparing and leading the genocide, one is in charge of rebuilding the world into a place with no crimes or war after the genocide, and one is in charge in hiding and destroying any evidence of the planned genocide.

My villain has planned this ever since his crowning, since he had not realized the evils until he had a clear view of everyone he was in charge of, but he feels remorse and guilt for having to kill the people who arn't actually sinners. He knows that he can't save them all, since some people can disguise their crimes with kindness to others, so he has no choice but to wipe everyone out to be 100% sure he clears out all evil in his eyes. Even if the 15 people he picked fails in some way, he knows how to do it all himself, though it would take longer and it would be harder. He truly wishes that he could spare only those who are not criminals and such, but believes that if he is really determined in making a better world, he must go through with everything.

 

[ThinkerX]

Sounds biblical...almost like Gods reasoning leading up to the Flood in the Old Testament.

 

[JohnKPatterson]

That does sound very original, especially compared to most dark lords, and based off your description it sounds like he would be a compelling character. In moral philosophy and his conscience, he seems a lot like the main antagonist of my own books. He's driven by an honest desire to fulfill a moral ideal and make people better when it's possible.

I say take it and run with it. You're onto something, that's for sure.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm not sure if he's original or not, wasn't the bad guy from Moonraker planning to do something similar? But he does sound somewhat looney. At some point when you're planning on wiping out millions, the majority of people around in fact, surely any sane person would start thinking, maybe this is overkill (pun intended). I mean you can sort of mentally justify it on a small scale, wiping out the few really, truly bad eggs who destroy society - that's the premise behind Dexter after all, but when you're talking about genocide, and especially when you've already admitted that he knows he's going to be killing some innocents, surely reason has gone out of the window.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[shangrila]

I don't know if it's original as in it's never been done before, but it's definitely not the normal or cliched villain.

 

[Gurkhal]

Sounds pretty original to me at least and I like it as I like that kind of villains more than dark lords.

 

[wordwalker]

Definitely sounds good.

And, "original" is a matter of degree. (I like to compare it to water purity in cooking: mostly you just want to get past the stage of using tainted, distracting stuff and get down to assembling the right balance of things.) This is certainly an idea that's unusual enough to impress the reader, well done. At the same time, every concept has some things it resembles a bit (you've already seen the Old Testament references), and readers need some of that to appreciate the tale-- and sometimes you need it too, whenever you have to describe the story quickly.

 

[Frog]

Utopia Justifies the Means - Television Tropes & Idioms

Is it original? Not completely. But so what?

Originality of concept shouldn't be your goal. Writing a good book should be. In fact, if you write something that is absolutely original, there's a good chance that you have also written a crummy book.

I like to compare it to water purity in cooking: mostly you just want to get past the stage of using tainted, distracting stuff and get down to assembling the right balance of things.

Nailed it. The idea here isn't to shoot for totally original. Your goal should be not stale, and that's going to depend much more on how you write the book, and less about the initial concept.

 

[Leif Notae]

It sounds more like an antagonist instead of a villain since you are making him a bit too sympathetic (at least from what I am reading). While being "Black Hat" is too cliche, there needs to be some nefarious issues here, in my belief.

However, it is up to you what you want to do and how you want to portray him. Let's see him in action and see if it flies.

 

[KressKross]

Thanks for the comments everyone. It really helped. To point some things out, I didn't try to make the word "original" sound like I wanted to use things never used before, but more things that haven't been used a lot. I myself have not read any fantasy, thriller, or any other genre yet that had a sympathetic villain, or antagonist (as now I think it is more fitting to call him), so I thought I would add on such a person. That could also mean I should widen my variety of books, haha. Again, thanks for the comments, and I'll keep them all in mind. If there are anything else anyone would like to suggest, feel free.