TTD: Villains

[wallwalker]

yohjideranged asked me to talk about the villains I most enjoy writing. Here's a start. Feel free to ask me about specifics; I tried to keep this more general.

(I'm typing away at this while I do a Calculus worksheet. Green's Theorem confused the heck out of me when I was doing the homework for it; I need to figure it out now.)

I suppose that for me, now and for most of the past few years, I have more fun writing about the irredeemable villains than the ones with the tragic backstory or the ones who have the terrible monsters or leaders forcing them to do what they don't want to do. It's not that I would ever support such a villain in real life or that I aspire to be such a thing; this is definitely a fictional thing only. But it's more interesting to get into the head of someone who has decided out of their own free will. That might be why villains like Kefka (FFVI) and Lezard (VP series) have had such staying power for me.

The converse is also true, and might also be why I could never get into the Thor film fandom. I liked Loki well enough, and I thought that Tom Hiddleston did a fine job portraying him. Then the fandom really started playing up the tragic backstory and the fact that Odin was using him and never intended to allow him to ascend to the throne, to the point of attacking other characters for their justified anger towards him, especially after Avengers. It turned me off pretty quickly. Tragic backstories are fine; I just don't like it when they're used to erase a character's choices, especially when the character is a villain and those choices are pretty heinous.

I've probably written redemption arcs for villains before, but I can't remember many of them. I suppose they've lost their luster for me, for a lot of the reasons written above. The only redemption arcs I could really enjoy at this point are for the "minor" villains - the ones who do mildly bad things (sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for selfish reasons.) Either way, they quickly get in over their head, realize that what they've done is far distant from what they intended to do, and try to get their act together somehow. (Two fairly obscure examples come to mind - Harami from Quest for Glory 3 and Belleza from Skies of Arcadia.) But a major villain trying to do the same thing... meh. It just doesn't work as well for me. I suppose that once they pass the Moral Event Horizon in my head, they can't go back. Granted, this is subjective, so your mileage may vary.

tl;dr: I either like villains who do bad things by their own agency and not because of oh-so-tragic pasts, or minor villains who realize their mistakes and try to redeem themselves.

Comments

[thebaconfat]

This resonates with me a lot! I really like villains who are making their own choices, and -- I want to say "unsympathetic" villains, but it's not really what I mean at all, I love sympathizing with a well-written villain who is doing terrible things for their own reasons. And I especially love it when a villain and a hero with equally tough backstories are contrasted. If you wipe out all of a character's agency by trying to excuse them with circumstances, I think you wipe out a lot of their characterization, and what are you left with? I love, love, love it, though, when there's a horrible villain and then you learn something that gives you that moment of reluctant sympathy with them. I think it's a bit of what fiction is all about for me: getting to experience different perspectives and ideas and decisions and consequences.

Also, I love when characters do terrible things and then just have to live with it.

[escritoireazul]

The converse is also true, and might also be why I could never get into the Thor film fandom. I liked Loki well enough, and I thought that Tom Hiddleston did a fine job portraying him. Then the fandom really started playing up the tragic backstory and the fact that Odin was using him and never intended to allow him to ascend to the throne, to the point of attacking other characters for their justified anger towards him, especially after Avengers. It turned me off pretty quickly. Tragic backstories are fine; I just don't like it when they're used to erase a character's choices, especially when the character is a villain and those choices are pretty heinous.

So much this. I actually really empathised with Loki's character after Thor; his anger and pain didn't justify his actions, but was believable. But Loki redeemers after Avengers just -- you guys, he tried to fucking enslave the earth and had so many fucking people killed. Nope.