good to be bad

[Grimmlore]

i love villans, they get away with so much and its ok because theyre the villan! my favorite of all time has to be dexter because he is also the hero. very complex i love him and at the same time i feel like a monster for supporting him. im trying to develope my own villan and want to know what everyone else thinks about them? whats your most loved or hated villan? why? if you could be a bad guy what would you do? assuming there was no hero to foil your plans how would you get what you long for?

 

[The Unseemly]

whats your most loved or hated villan?

Hehe... guess who's on my avatar picture? I've always loved the Joker, he add's a completely different new dimension to the word "evil". Many times, a villan is an ego-centric character who wishes to simply take over the <insert word: city, country, state, world>, or has already done so, and the story's hero is trying to remove him from his unrightful rule. Because the Joker doesn't do this makes him the reason why I love the him as a villan. He's the sort of true evil: not evil that wants to overtake the <insert word: city, country, state, world>, simply an evil that wished to destroy everything, for no particular reason, in anarchy. As the Joker says "It's not about the money - it's about sending the message." And the fact that he's portrayed in a mad way, just like the anarchy he causes, makes me all warm and fuzzy. If I could be a villan, I would be the Joker.

im trying to develope my own villan and want to know what everyone else thinks about them?

I suppose that most "classic" villans who are trying to oppress a person, get revenge, and/or overtake <insert word: city, country, state, world> always have some sort of pretext/reason as to why it is what they're doing. This can sometimes be a tricky part in developing a villan, as many times, I've read novels/watched films were the villan's pretext is either not very believable or, in some cases, not even there. Unless you can develop a Joker like character (who still, in some regard, has his own sort of pretext), usually, to make a story believable, your villan needs the pretext. No one ever would do something evil just cause.

Another thing to make your novel interesting would be to add originality. Very little people like cliches of old, Dark Lord Tolkien style villans, so what you should do is, as it was done with the Joker, add a new dimension, create something interesting. Or add twist, like with Dexter (and in some regard, Game of Thrones), were the central character(s) are good and bad in their own ways - much more realistic than a "good, brave, noble" protagonist, and an "evil, cowardly, scheming" antagonist.

Food for thought.

 

[Grimmlore]

ok im officially hiring you to follow me around and talk, ill even give you a bell you can chime before you speak. that was exactly on track with what im thinking. my main aim is to make sure that no matter how evil, my villian truely believes hes doing everything for a greater good.

 

[Chilari]

This doesn't belong in Research because it's a general writing question, not a question about a specific area of research into real world facts of mythology, so I'm moving it.

Please also try to write using appropraite grammar, including capitalisation, as per our posting guidelines:

3. Proper Spelling and Grammar

All posts have to follow basic spelling and grammar. We are a community of writers, and as such we demonstrate respect and care for the English language.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

i love villans, they get away with so much and its ok because theyre the villan! my favorite of all time has to be dexter because he is also the hero. very complex i love him and at the same time i feel like a monster for supporting him. im trying to develope my own villan and want to know what everyone else thinks about them? whats your most loved or hated villan? why? if you could be a bad guy what would you do? assuming there was no hero to foil your plans how would you get what you long for?

Dexter isn't a villain. He's an anti-hero.

 

[The Unseemly]

My main aim is to make sure that no matter how evil, my villain truly believes he's doing everything for a greater good.

My suggestion here is to use your insight into real life, and have a look at what "evil" people around the actual world think. As strange as it is, every time I listen(ed) to Osama-Bin Laden's speeches on the news, he seemed to believe what he was saying; the USA is just a big group of terrorists, they're killing our people and getting away with it, yadda yadda yadda. And the key word here is believe. The human (and in fantasy, I suppose other races') mind has this odd, illogical, but common, tenancy to convince itself that what it's doing is actually good - it believes it's achieve the "greater good". The human mind lies to itself a lot, and justifies its failures/"evil" doings through a variety of methods, such as comparison ("oh, but they're killing more people than me"), dry excuses ("I had to kill him, otherwise he'd screw up my greater good!"), and otherwise things that don't make sense ("All of them are traitors and liars, they deserve no better, but to die").

If you want a really good example, I suggest looking at A. Hilter and J. Stalin from World War 2. Why did Hilter kill Jews on a mass scale, and his people just went along with it? Propaganda. Lies. Especially the fact that Hilter believed Jews had "stabbed them in the back", meaning they lost World War 1. Then, how did Stalin get away with killing so many people that opposed him, and it was so well covered up, that people today still can't precisely estimate how much deaths due to "I'm Stalin, kill them" were caused. And both of them rationalised to themselves that what they were doing was good.

Anyway... It seems I know to much about this...
I should stop now...

Dexter isn't a villain. He's an anti-hero.

Doesn't that account for almost the same thing?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Doesn't that account for almost the same thing?

No, not exactly. Although there can be similarities between villains and anti-hero character types, an anti-hero is the protagonist.

Antiheroes may be brutal, ruthless, and cynical but with motivations that mirror more conventional or classic heroes. They might be your deeply flawed protagonists, with violent backgrounds and conflicting motivations. Often, conflicting traits & motivations can be the source of plots or subplots.

There are other aspects & variances of anti-heroes besides what I've mentioned here.

 

[Grimmlore]

I was researching honest I want to know what people thought the best villains and types of villains were so that way because I need to create one for myself I could look back on this and say 'well the most popular villain is blah'
I always thought dexter more a villain because his code (being a serial killer) is what drives him, his job and family life are more disguises and only his need to kill is what causes him to kill other serial kilers,.. but he dosnt do it because he hates them,.. he loves them they are like him but his thirst makes him and harry taught him early on that no one really misses the bad guys so its easier to get away with....
but I could be wrong.

 

[Grimmlore]

well that's just confusing...

 

[wordwalker]

Dexter's very much an antihero, an "un-heroic 'hero.' " He isn't some other hero's Joker, he's the center of the story so we care about him not only because he might do some good (actually by cable standards, he's a saint) but because by seeing his view we understand that he has his own kind of reasons for things-- and we enjoy stretching our minds to somewhere that odd instead of following a more usual protagonist.

Agreed, this belongs on Writing Questions.

 

[Mindfire]

I think fiction may have gone too far with "humanize ALL the villains!" That's why the Joker is so great. He knows what he is and has no interest in humanity. There's a kind of refreshing honesty in that. Some people aren't "misguided" or "misunderstood". Some people are just bad people.

Just once I'd like to read about a villain who starts out with the usual justifications for their evil acts until someone comes along and wrecks their fantasy by showing them that deep down they're just a pathetic, despicable soul who simply likes to hurt people and that the rest of it is just gimmicks and excuses.

 

[Addison]

For the good vs bad thing, I believe Superman said it best with, "It seems that way {Being good isn't worth it} sometimes. But that's because good is hard, bad is always easy."

 

[Penpilot]

I always thought dexter more a villain because his code (being a serial killer) is what drives him, his job and family life are more disguises and only his need to kill is what causes him to kill other serial kilers,.. but he dosnt do it because he hates them,.. he loves them they are like him but his thirst makes him and harry taught him early on that no one really misses the bad guys so its easier to get away with....
but I could be wrong.

I think you're just a bit off the mark with Dexter. His code isn't what drives him. Dexter is different to say the least. Like most people that are different, what drives Dexter is his longing to find people to connect with, people who understand him. A part of him think he'll find this connection with other serial killers, but that's often not the case. And although it appears that Dexter is like the killers he hunts, he's not. There's a line he will not cross that goes beyond his code. And that line involves his family and innocents. From the way Dexter is portrayed, I think if he had to kill an innocent person to get away, I'm not sure he'd do it. Dexter feels guilt and remorse for the innocents that are harmed because of his lifestyle.

 

[Addison]

Good isn't born, it's created. It has to come from somewhere. And as there's no such thing as a person without ambition, feelings or passion, then they are human. Even if their motives are...questionable or crazy, or their means of achieving them is deadly, it makes the full. "One man's logic is another man's crazy."-David Rossi

 

[Ireth]

Just once I'd like to read about a villain who starts out with the usual justifications for their evil acts until someone comes along and wrecks their fantasy by showing them that deep down they're just a pathetic, despicable soul who simply likes to hurt people and that the rest of it is just gimmicks and excuses.

That's exactly what I tried to accomplish with Prince Fiachra, the villain of Winter's Queen. As a Fae, his moral code is already far askew from human morality, and he's just a really unpleasant person in general: abusive, manipulative, egotistical, murderously ambitious, and completely without shame or remorse. There's no wibbly excuse of "Father beat me as a child, so usurping his throne is my revenge" or "Mother never really loved me, she was never there for me, boo-hoo." The heroine he captures to make her his princess doesn't give a hoot about trying to "fix" him, she just wants to get out of Faerie alive and whole. But not before calling him out on his back-a$$-wards morals and doing her darndest to give him what's coming to him.

 

[Mindfire]

That's exactly what I tried to accomplish with Prince Fiachra, the villain of Winter's Queen. As a Fae, his moral code is already far askew from human morality, and he's just a really unpleasant person in general: abusive, manipulative, egotistical, murderously ambitious, and completely without shame or remorse. There's no wibbly excuse of "Father beat me as a child, so usurping his throne is my revenge" or "Mother never really loved me, she was never there for me, boo-hoo." The heroine he captures to make her his princess doesn't give a hoot about trying to "fix" him, she just wants to get out of Faerie alive and whole. But not before calling him out on his back-a$$-wards morals and doing her darndest to give him what's coming to him.

Wow that's really cool and- WAIT. How the flying fox did you become a Valar so quickly?

 

[Ireth]

Wow that's really cool and- WAIT. How the flying fox did you become a Valar so quickly?

I think participating in things like the Dragon's Egg RP is a large part of it. And posting rather a lot of questions all over the place.

 

[druidofwinter]

My favorite villain? the Lord ruler from Mistborn. why? well, at first you hate him. but by the end you start to understand why he did what he did, and then he *almost* become's good in your mind. for me that is a great villain.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

The thing to remember about good villains...

"The villain is always the hero of their own story." ~ Rachel Aaron