Do you always have a villain in your stories?

[LouisWinter]

Yes! I have a villain who just a weird person like everyone in a particular position.

making villain just another oppurtunity to make another interesting character

[bronte448]

Yes! Well, not always always, but an awful lot. I like surprise villains that floor you at the last minute mwaha

[XiuLyn_12]

Not always in my case. But MC can be the villain to themselves.
There has to be someone who's just different, haha.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I end up putting villains in my stories even when I explicitly don't want to. ^^;

Like, "I'm going to write a sweet slice-of-life type novel, where it's mostly about just living life and overcoming your emotional baggage-- ACTUALLY there's an evil guy in the story who not only stalks the cast from the shadows for half the plot, but gets violently killed in the end...!"

"...How about a coming-of-age type novel, where a little princess goes on adventures and discovers who she wants to be-- ACTUALLY her friends have deceived her, sending her into the clutches of the evil yet beautiful tyrant prince from a far-off land!!"

"...Okay, well, how about this basic slice-of-life manga concept about kids just having fun and being goofy-- ACTUALLY, evil jealous boyfriend! EVIL JEALOUS BOYFRIEND "

...The third one, I'm still on the fence about, but I guarantee it's gonna happen. ^^; I can't help myself...

Villains really are a lot of fun, though, so I don't mind. The visual aesthetic is definitely a big part of the appeal for me, but in all honesty it's not enough. I need a character who truly is villainous, not just one who looks the part.
I remember one concept in which I made up a non-evil character who was specifically and heavily villain-coded in appearance/personality, to try to satisfy the urge...only to later create an actually evil character to provide a dramatic final act to the plot. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Gotta have the whole package.

[simonitropunk]

Oooooh yeah! Villains make the world go round.

Monte... he is the MAJOR villain this story arc in my comic.

Kamy is currently fighting my main character, Lyza.

You can sure go crazy with the villain designs and their personality. Personally, I'm not that much of a fan of sympathetic villains. I love my villains to be frightening, crazy and EVIL.

For example, Monte is the kind of person that wouldn't hesitate killing anyone by crushing a person's skull by his bare hands. He has little to no remorse to those who fail him and has an entire town within his grasps. He bad mouths anyone and to him anyone below him is "trash" as he claims that they are.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Nope. I think most of my writing lacks an actual bad-guy type villain.

[darthmongoose]

Funnily enough, no. Which feels weird to say because Errant is my most prominent work right now and obviously has antagonists, but if you look at the wider body of my work, most of the comics I've made outside of Fan Dan Go, and then its very hard reboot, Errant, haven't had villains or antagonists at all. Even Urien, the villain of Errant, wasn't in Fan Dan Go, and was only added kind of late in the development process of Errant.

In most of my work, the protagonist wants or has to overcome a more internal or personal problem. They have an incorrect or skewed belief and it's represented or manifests as some kind of physical challenge they need to tackle. They often have some kind of breakdown where they confront their own feelings and have an epiphany. It's efficient in short comics because it reduces the number of cast members!

In Errant, I can spend more time with the characters, so Rekki's flawed belief that she isn't worthwhile if she isn't significant or powerful is kind of embodied as a person- Urien. Though he's kind of more than that, standing in for just toxic patriarchal structures generally, and representing this frustratingly powerful threat that can't just be beaten up. He also helps the story work so that Rekki is kind of responsible for bad things, but not to the extent that she's totally beyond redemption.
Honestly, before Errant, all my villains were pretty weaksauce. Whenever I had antagonists, people criticised how bumbling and unthreatening they were. I do have a love for weak cartoon villains who fail at everything. With Urien, I drew on personal experience dealing with egotistical tech bros and startup bosses. That feeling of dread that comes from this asshole guy who clearly thinks he's smarter than you and is keen to prove it, and has the power to take away your livelihood if you so much as question him and seems to have all of society backing him up and telling you he deserves that authority no matter how much more qualified and capable you might actually be than him... I wanted to explore that, and it seemed to really resonate with people.

[TheDoublekey]

I don't think I could write a story without a villain. I mean, I technically could but, I'd feel like something is missing. I'm a sucker for villains as well, I find them quite fascinating. I especially like diving into their motives. Why did they choose to be evil? Are they even evil at all? Who is the actual villain? I just love questioning the morals of the protagonist every time and, without a villain, I don't think I'd be able to write this kind of scenario well.

[Noorie]

I really like villains too, in stories where villains exist, they are often my favorite characters, but am not able to write them (or a setting in which they could be) myself, all my characters behave just like normal humans with flaws and good sides

[scottlincoln689]

Antagonists are really just villain lite. Almost like a petty villain differs from a super villain. Sometimes it's about power or scale of damage and sometimes it's about a villainy spectrum (the way a court would delineate a crime's degree).

I figured out that what made my protagonist different is that he's an anti-villain. I had long seen anti-heroes (good guys who can't help being bad), but I wanted Ralf to be the villain, who can't help being good.

He is the villain as far as Earth is concerned (even though there are human, and otherwise, petty and super villains). He is technically only an antagonist to those who antagonize him... He even seeks out an evil mentor to learn how to be a better antagonist, but his conscience just keeps getting in the way.

Read Ralf the Destroyer | Tapas Web Comics

[NickRowler]

I don't really have villains in my stories. I do have foils which can clash heads and fulfill an antagonist role, but they aren't really scheming or anything. But I also have morally questionable protagonists and I feel like it is hard to make an evil antagonist when the MC is already sort of twisted.

[CarltonIsaac]

Several, and in positions of power too.

[RobertBMarks]

I can count on one hand the number of times that I've done a story without an antagonist of some sort (aka person vs. environment).

The thing is that as far as a good villain that would stay with the reader long after the story is done goes, I think you need at least one of two things for best results:

1. They have to be successful. No villain is a real threat if they can't succeed in the first place. When the protagonist stops them, it has to be by the skin of their teeth.

2. If the villain's backstory is revealed, the reader/viewer should have a "there but for the grace of God go I" moment. The villain's path into villainy should be understandable, and something that anybody could have fallen into under similar circumstances.

For my current story, the villains' path to radicalization is a large part of the narrative. If I've done my job properly, the reader should come away feeling that if the heroes had been in similar circumstances, they would have gone the same way.

(That said, given the situation, if I've done my job properly at the very end of the story, the readers should be wondering if it was the protagonists who were on the right side in the first place...)

Read Re:Apotheosis | Tapas Web Novels

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

Often but not always! My current novel doesn't have any kind of villain or even antagonist, unless you count trauma as an antagonist.

[ilesarki]

As my comic series Karamador is action focused sword & sorcery fantasy with good versus evil theme, there's always some kind of villain / antagonist in each story, like the titular Iku-Turso in the current ongoing story "Iku-Turso Awakens".

And then there are some main villains of the whole series who have only been seen in shadows so far, but will be properly revealed when the time comes. Such example are the ancient vampire lord and the evil insectoid queen.

Read Karamador | Tapas Web Comics

[BoomerZ]

Everyone one in my stories are a little bad and a little good. No one are quite heroes and villains have a reason for acting like they do. My theory is villains don't know they are bad. Even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing for Germany.

[bulgariansumo]

I don't have any overarching villains, but I do have antagonists here and there, and some of them are outright evil. I'd count those as villains. But to answer the question, no.

[powerplantanimations]

I'm not exactly sure. That Stick Figure Isekai wasn't going to have a main villain, but then I realized one character wasn't getting attention. I think TSFI probably has my favorite villain out of my other stories just because their entire motivation is based on this song from one of my favorite anime movies of all time.

As for TSFI... it's full of villains lmao. Naota is a villain. Nikado is a villain.

But honestly, it depends on what I'm feeling atm with a certain arc.

[TheLemmaLlama]

I'm kind of the opposite; I don't tend to gravitate towards writing villains at all :'D My 'characters who do really bad things' tend to only do it occasionally and thus have more of an antihero kind of feel, and if I start out trying to write a proper villain, I either don't follow through on developing them and leave them as cardboard cutouts or if I do try to develop them, they also start feeling more like antiheroes XD Writing a believably human, 3D villain who is also uncontroversially a bad person is a skill I respect and envy

[system]

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