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Path to Villainy

Miseo

Minstrel
Yep. I'm doing one of those protagonist journey to villainy stories. Sort of. Starts like this, protagonist is innocent, his journey brings him to the side of villainy, major plot point occurs and he tries to rectify his mistakes and redeem himself although he never quite stops being a villain.

So I'm wondering... anyone have any tips on developing a protagonist's character into that of a villain protagonist?

If it would help, I'll give some info on my character. He was chosen by Bel (God) to become a Saint (mortal incarnation of Bel). And has a mark on his body as proof. But before he can fully grow into a Saint he is killed by a powerful dark being and brought back to life as an undead creature. Normally such a curse would corrupt a person's soul and spirit entirely turning them into total demons, but because of the mark most of his humanity is left in tact. So there is the internal struggle of his innocent human nature and his darker, monstrous nature that desires to kill and feed.

As the months turn into years and centuries, he gets pulled more and more into events against his will and always ends up losing the people he's supposed to protect. So his humanity becomes sullied by bitterness.

But it needs more than this. People don't have to turn bad because bad things happen to them. And I don't want to rely on the whole "there's an evil curse on him making him evil" thing (although there is evil in him) because that's just lazy. It needs an extra kick. Loss of loved ones doesn't turn one evil. Loss of meaning doesn't turn one evil. These turn people bitter. And bitterness dulls people, immobilizes them.

What pushes a character to abandon all that is good?
 
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Ireth

Myth Weaver
Hmmm...

One of my villainous characters is a vampire -- the first of his kind, cursed by the goddess Morrigan. He starts out resisting the goddess' dark influence however he can, isolating himself to avoid the temptation to feed on human blood, and being horrified when he first loses control of his thirst and turns his best friend into a second vampire. Feeding on human blood for the first time makes resisting its temptation even harder, as well as beginning to slowly corrupt his body and soul as he comes under Morrigan's thrall. While he again successfully resists his thirst for many years, he ultimately succumbs to it again when, after falling in love with a human woman and marrying her, the combination of bloodthirst and his physical passions for his wife override his resistance, and he bites and turns his wife mid-coitus. She leaves him the moment she wakes up, and after his initial fury at Morrigan subsides, he reasons that since trying to resist his bloodthirst hasn't ended well at all, he should just stop trying. His sanity erodes along with his goodness and inhibitions over the ensuing centuries as he comes ever deeper under Morrigan's thrall, and leaves him nothing like the man he had once been, beyond redemption or pity.
 
I have found that what pushes a person to villainy is never just one thing. It is a host of things. Almost all of them require the person to make a moral compromise. I am doing something similar. The first big moral compromise my character makes is to take justice in his own hands and then kill a person. Next, he rips away parts of a person's soul to cover his tracks. Eventually he will becoem a tyrant because he "knows better." Each time he had significnant amounts of time to build his resolve to break his own moral code.
 

Miseo

Minstrel
Hm... there is a point of despair that happens later in the story that solidifies the changes in him, but at the same time those seeds need to be sown first. But what could motivate a man to go to such lengths? Maybe love, maybe obsession... I've determined not to use romance in my story so definitely not love...

And Ireth, it's a neat coincidence. My character is also of the vampiric sort. With some differences. Although my character doesn't have too much problem feeding, considering he will weaken and die if he doesn't. So he compartmentalizes it. But I suppose it might be a good idea to also include that as part of the struggle, even if it isn't as much a struggle for him as it is for your character.
 

Miseo

Minstrel
I have found that what pushes a person to villainy is never just one thing. It is a host of things. Almost all of them require the person to make a moral compromise. I am doing something similar. The first big moral compromise my character makes is to take justice in his own hands and then kill a person. Next, he rips away parts of a person's soul to cover his tracks. Eventually he will becoem a tyrant because he "knows better." Each time he had significnant amounts of time to build his resolve to break his own moral code.

Yes, this. A host of things. Gonna have to try to find ways to break my character by pushing him past his limits, but never too far to bear.
 
Remember that villains are the heroes of their own stories, they just have different perspectives about what constitutes heroism and goodness. He would not look at it as abandoning all that is good. He'd instead start to believe that he's been wrong about what is good. Find a way to make him think differently about death, that it's somehow a good thing, and then those people who don't believe death is good will think of him as evil. His accidental involvement in the death of a loved one might be a good catalyst to start modifying his belief structure.
 

Malik

Auror
In all seriousness, I'm going over my 20-year-old manuscript for my prequel right now. My villain used to be my hero, and vice versa. The villain as it stands now was once a boy from Earth who traveled to a magical land where he learned that he was a lost prince. He used his newfound magical skills (daddy was a sorcerer, natch) and his modern knowledge to win back his father's kingdom. Yay. Go, team.

As I kept writing him, though -- and it didn't really occur to me at the time, but I see it clearly now -- he was really a jerk about it. And when you look back at his story from the other side of things -- in particular, what he had to do to win back the kingdom -- he had to pull some real son-of-a-bitchery to make it happen. And once you start winning by outright bastardry, you pretty much have to keep it up or you lose your competitive edge. Because if you have a reputation for not playing nice, nobody else will, either.

(When I was boxing competitively, if I knew a guy had a rep for fighting dirty -- or if he started doing it and the ref was lenient -- I would give it right back: headbutts, pushing, spitting, hit-and-hold, wrist strikes, stepping on his feet, thumbing his eye. You can rend your garments about perceived transgressions, but nothing's stopping you from doing the same once the lid is off. If you thumb my eye I'll uppercut your balls through the roof of your mouth and tell the ref "Oops," with a choirboy's sincerity. Incidentally, if you still can't fight five minutes after an accidental low blow, it's considered a KO. Ask me how I learned that one.)

Fast forward ten years and every kingdom that borders his sees him as the Evil Sorcerer Who Killed That Other King And Took His Stuff. He's not necessarily a bad man. He just has a lot to lose and no intention of losing. Ever. Everything he does in Book I (not the prequel, but the book I just finished writing) isn't done out of jerkitude. In fact, he has the opportunity to make things much worse, and he doesn't. His country is just in a tight spot and the only way out of it is to start some very nasty gears turning that our heroes happen to get caught up in.

So. Villainy is relative.
 

Alyssa

Troubadour
A character will never abandon what they see as good altogether. Their perception of events, the world and their own actions are what change. The internal drivers, the desire to do good vs the desire to pursue one's own garden of delights to the detriment of all others, remain the same, and often the "villain" will see their pursuit of this as a sort of good in its own way, a sort of meritocracy in which they and their opinions have the most merit. No character will ever see themselves as the "villain", but some of the best "villains" can recognize that others might see their actions as villainous, when in fact the "villain" knows all along that it's all for the "greater good".

My current story has 3 main characters, they don't see themselves as villains (nor as heroes), but they see the other two main characters as such. No one will ever willingly be a villain. But if you create a situation in such a way that, no matter what you do, someone loses out, then you have set the stage for the creation of two flawed heroes (aka villains).

You could for example have two villains, one in Bel and the other in your MC. Bel could be a type of Abrahamic oxymoronic god (vengeful and loving at the same time), he needs a mortal avatar in order to do good in the world and threatens the MC with eternal torment if he fails. You could manufacture it so that part of the MC's quest line requires him to put himself in such a situation where his bestial demonic nature is left unchecked in order to do good. The MC being driven by the desire to "do good" might therefore start avoiding these opportunities to serve "the greater good" (according to Bel) because he doesn't want to accidentally kill innocent people, because that's what villains do, and he's a good guy. His return to the lighter side of the force could be something like the recognition of Bel as a flawed god and rejection of him. In such a way he is both accepting his version of the "greater good" and rejecting Bel's version of it.
 

Alyssa

Troubadour
Hmmm...
...snip...

Hi Ireth, I can't help but ask after hearing about your Morrigan character? Is she by any chance partly inspired by the Ulster Cycle? And you MC as a more heroic Abhartach?
 
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Ireth

Myth Weaver
Hi Ireth, I can't help but ask after hearing about your Morrigan character? Is she by any chance partly inspired by the Ulster Cycle? And you MC as a more heroic Abhartach?

I've never heard of Abhartach, so I can't say for sure on that; but my Morrigan is taken from the Celtic myths. She's the Goddess of death, also known as the Crone.
 
A character will never abandon what they see as good altogether. Their perception of events, the world and their own actions are what change. The internal drivers, the desire to do good vs the desire to pursue one's own garden of delights to the detriment of all others, remain the same, and often the "villain" will see their pursuit of this as a sort of good in its own way, a sort of meritocracy in which they and their opinions have the most merit. No character will ever see themselves as the "villain", but some of the best "villains" can recognize that others might see their actions as villainous, when in fact the "villain" knows all along that it's all for the "greater good".
I'm going to have to completely, but politely, disagree with you here. Reality shows many people who explicitly abandoned what they once saw as good. Hitler, Marx, Stalin. Each of these monsters originated on a very different path than they ended up on- a path that was diametrically opposed to the one they ended up on. (In the case of Marx, he was actually a seemingly devout Christian who nearly took holy orders before becoming what he became.
I agree that the complex villain who thinks he is actually the hero makes a brilliant villain. I agree that the antagonist who could be the protagonist if you told the story from an alternate perspective. But the simple truth is that a villain who absolutely betrays everything he once stood for and is now a vile, irredeemable, wretch can be done well, and can resonate, because these kind of people exist.

No one will ever willingly be a villain.
I would argue, once again, that this is not, consistently and exclusively, truth. You can, with care and preparation, absolutely create a situation where someone willingly becomes the villain in the story. Where they embrace the dark path and deliberately, resolutely, oppose everything that is allegedly good and true.

a type of Abrahamic oxymoronic god (vengeful and loving at the same time)
Actually, that is not an oxymoronic concept. It is a part of your daily reality. You can absolutely love people and be vengeful at the same time.
 
He's, at least essentially, immortal? As in he has been alive for centuries, and can see more centuries stretching ahead of him?
I can actually see that being what turns him. He wouldn't need much more. He's seen humanity tearing itself apart. He's seen the same wars fought over the same ground by the same people for longer than he cares to remember. He's seen humanity come up with better and better ways of slaughtering each other.
The thing you have to understand is that, although time itself is very real our perception of it is nearly an illusion. For the very young, 3 months is an eternity. Because 3 months is a massive slice of their life. As you grow older, time seems to go by faster and faster as each period of time becomes less of a slice of life.
What's that mean for your character? If he's been alive long enough, days pass by in seconds. Years in days. He can pop off for a nap and miss a decade, if he's been alive long enough.
It would drive a man insane.


Loss of loved ones doesn't turn one evil.
Agreed. This would do no more than make one depressed.

Loss of meaning doesn't turn one evil.
Actually, this would definitely move him along the road- especially in connection with the previous. Loss of meaning leads to questioning the "important" things you've always taken for granted. It can also lead to a series of poor decisions that, one after another, definitely can move you down that path.

bitterness dulls people, immobilizes them.
Actually, from experience, not always. Bitterness also can create a burning, raging, hatred. And that can destroy worlds- in the right universe.

What pushes a character to abandon all that is good?
Can he abandon all that is good (or that he considers good)? Absolutely. But it takes a deft hand to make it happen. You have to begin by making him question all that he considers good, and the answers (or lack thereof) to those questions has to combine with the other things you bring in to gradually make him drop, one at a time, every aspect of what he thought he was.
 

Miseo

Minstrel
Thanks for the replies, everyone! Getting lots of good tips here. And Alyssa, those are some good ideas, but unfortunately most of the major plot points are already decided. The story is mostly a black vs black morality kind of story, and the only real good is Bel, and he's more or less absent. So Bel is more or less the good guy... relatively speaking... the true antagonist, Heylel, is manipulating the apparent-antagonist, Iah, into manipulating Sorin (protagonist) so that Heylel can ultimately be set free from his imprisonment. Despite being the good guy in the story, Bel is also a bit manipulative. He lets just about every tragic thing happen to Sorin and pushes him down a tragic path with no happy ending, because he knows that it's the only way to fix everything. So to Heylel, Sorin is a puppet to realize his goals. To Bel, Sorin is a sacrifice to stop Heylel.

It's not a happy story. And while it's true that people don't generally throw away what they see as good altogether, Sorin gives up much more than that. He gives up what little remains of his humanity in order to gain enough power to thwart Iah and save the world, only to he betrayed by the world that he sacrificed everything for (which was the final straw).

So, what are some moral beliefs that your character will not ever compromise on?

There aren't many. If I had to choose one, he will always try to protect those he is close to. This is because, before he became a total monster, he had tried to protect the people he loved, but to no avail. He was never able to protect the people important to him, and sometimes was indirectly responsible for what happened to them. But I wouldn't call this a moral belief so much as unresolved issues... more like an obligation, to make up for failing to protect the people he loved.

And of course even this he compromises on, even after he decides to redeem himself. Does a real dick move later in the story...
 
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Miseo

Minstrel
He's, at least essentially, immortal? As in he has been alive for centuries, and can see more centuries stretching ahead of him?
I can actually see that being what turns him. He wouldn't need much more. He's seen humanity tearing itself apart. He's seen the same wars fought over the same ground by the same people for longer than he cares to remember. He's seen humanity come up with better and better ways of slaughtering each other.
The thing you have to understand is that, although time itself is very real our perception of it is nearly an illusion. For the very young, 3 months is an eternity. Because 3 months is a massive slice of their life. As you grow older, time seems to go by faster and faster as each period of time becomes less of a slice of life.
What's that mean for your character? If he's been alive long enough, days pass by in seconds. Years in days. He can pop off for a nap and miss a decade, if he's been alive long enough.
It would drive a man insane.



Agreed. This would do no more than make one depressed.


Actually, this would definitely move him along the road- especially in connection with the previous. Loss of meaning leads to questioning the "important" things you've always taken for granted. It can also lead to a series of poor decisions that, one after another, definitely can move you down that path.


Actually, from experience, not always. Bitterness also can create a burning, raging, hatred. And that can destroy worlds- in the right universe.


Can he abandon all that is good (or that he considers good)? Absolutely. But it takes a deft hand to make it happen. You have to begin by making him question all that he considers good, and the answers (or lack thereof) to those questions has to combine with the other things you bring in to gradually make him drop, one at a time, every aspect of what he thought he was.

You make some good and insightful points. As for how does he come to abandon all that he thinks is good, I would have to say it's because he gave up everything - literally everything - to pursue a certain goal. And when he finally attains that goal, the people he did that for betrayed him. So he gave up everything to accomplish his quest, and in doing so everything he has left is stripped from him and he is left with nothing. So when it comes to the final step to villainy, I have mine all decided. But I know it is a long road to villainy, with many steps and turns.
 
Miseo;258742I would have to say it's because he gave up everything - literally everything - to pursue a certain goal. And when he finally attains that goal said:
Brutal. I like it.
I can see that being the absolute final step. The ultimate betrayal. But it only works as the final step, the "straw that broke the camel's back." Personally, if I were writing this (and the only way I can give advice is if I, at least temporarily, imagine myself writing it), I would show every step of the journey. Show every time he had to betray an ideal "for the greater good." Show every situation where those he relied on failed him. Show every torturous step.
 

Alyssa

Troubadour
explicitly abandoned what they once saw as good. Hitler, Marx, Stalin.
You prove my point. If someone's paradigm of good and evil shifts, even to polar opposites as such with these individuals you will find that they would say that they were the heroes of their own stories. Hitler, a monster (not the greatest, but one of them), killed himself, a romanticised notion of death before dishonour, very villainous indeed. We judge him as a villain. I guarantee you, he did not. I'm not talking about objective good and evil, I'm talking about subjective.
wwii propaganda - Google Search
If Hitler hadn't been so inept with his use, deployment and allocation of funds for new military technologies, two things would have happened: 1) Hitler would have died in a mental asylum 2) He would be viewed as a figure second only to Jesus (now that's a scary thought)

a villain who absolutely betrays everything he once stood for and is now a vile, irredeemable, wretch can be done well, and can resonate, because these kind of people exist.
And yet, can they not be vile and irredeemable while still perceiving themselves as good? These are self-absorbed sadists, what is good to them is the only good. If they enjoy the torture of innocents, then that is what good is to them. And the people who try to stop it, by definition evil/wrong. Morality is horrendously relative. More so than the various doctrines alleging absolute truth, infallibility and morality would have you believe. Read 'Paradise Lost' by John Milton, and then tell me whether the devil is the one with the horns or the halo.

You can, with care and preparation, absolutely create a situation where someone willingly becomes the villain in the story. Where they embrace the dark path and deliberately, resolutely, oppose everything that is allegedly good and true.
Because their desires become the only good to them, to them it is good because it feels good. But Milton says it better:
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.


Actually, that is not an oxymoronic concept. It is a part of your daily reality. You can absolutely love people and be vengeful at the same time.
I was perhaps a little vague. The Abrahamic God, whether that of the Torah, the New Testament or the Quran, is described in vacillating terms of absolute mercy and absolute wrath. These are diametrically opposed. There is no graceful syzygy that allows these concepts to mutually exist in their pure forms simultaneously.
 
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The Abrahamic God, whether that of the Torah, the New Testament or the Quran, is described in vacillating terms of absolute mercy and absolute wrath. These are diametrically opposed. There is no graceful syzygy that allows these concepts to mutually exist in their pure forms simultaneously.

You're speaking with a former atheist who spent years studying this issue. lol I'm well verse in both the question you raise and the fairly simple, if oft overlooked, response to it. It's also not likely a topic we should continue to discuss here. I've found religious discussion doesn't promote much other than fighting on forums like this. (Note: The Abrahamic God is only the God in the Q'ran by name, not by any other factor of His personality.)
 
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