What makes a villain?

[LadyN]

I’m mainly making these to figure out my own story but let this be a thread of advice for anyone who happens to stop by. These are mainly questions that I feel need to be addressed for whatever reasons so just answer however you feel.

1. What is considered villainous?

The word villainous means both wicked and relating to evil or crime. But what makes something that someone says or do evil? Does starting a war for the sake of an agreed upon idea considered evil? Or is it more accurate to say that an evil to one is good in another’s?

1. Does the method of achieving those goals matter?

Sure we have the obvious violent actions but we also have peaceful protest. Can their goal be achieved peacefully but they choose not to or is there no other choice? I just want to know how much does that matters.

1. Should you sympathize with a villain?

Like near the end after they have fallen and lost to the protagonists, should they have a second chance if those ideals are good? Or is there no way things can be resorted peacefully?

If anyone has any questions they want to personally add and/or want an answer to them feel free to. I just wanted some outside feedback.

[Kuma]

I think you should never talk about villains. You should talk about antagonists.

Antagonists can be morally upright folk, but their goals are in opposition or conflict with the protagonist.

When you say villain you're automatically typecasting the poor sod into being evil, even if he or she has a good excuse for it.

An antagonist is an obstacle to the protagonist's goals and viceversa. Think about the antagonist as the protagonist of a counter-story to the one you want to tell. Consider both how he can win and lose each encounter with your protagonists.

An ideal antagonist isn't just an obstacle though. A great antagonist, to me, has two features.

The antagonist is opposed philosophically to the character and to the themes of the story. A story about freedom breeds an antagonist who opposes that concept. A protagonist who stands for justice will fight an unjust antagonist.

The second feature is being a dark mirror of the protagonist. Not literally, just thematically. (I mean you can make it literal too if you want) but the trope of "We aren't so different you and I" is a great starting point to develop good antagonist characters for your stories.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

1. I think 'evil' is generally considered 'causing harm to people who have done nothing to deserve it'...with the points of contention being the definitions of the words 'people', 'harm', and 'deserve'. ^^; It's a complex subject...but as long as you can realistically and understandably describe someone's behavior in that way, then they can be considered a villain.

2. I mean...yes, the method of achieving those goals obviously matters. You can have 'world peace' as an end goal, but when you decide kidnapping and torturing the innocent family members of world leaders is the best way to achieve that goal, you've crossed a line.
   Even actions that are technically 'peaceful' can still be evil. I mean, if you're 'peacefully protesting' the shutdown of a concentration camp, you're probably the badguy, and giving legitimacy and support to a harmful cause.

3. It depends on the villain. =/ And you know, people can sympathize with more than one character at a time...like, I'm sorry that your family got killed in [insert disaster] but I also feel sorry for the people YOU are murdering in the present day, and I can choose to sympathize more with them than I do with you.
   Whether they can have a second chance also depends on the villain...and on what they've done, and on what the usual consequences would be in that society, and on whether they plan on actually changing for the better...the list goes on and on.

Really, all these questions are just way too super vague...you'd probably have a much better discussion (and get better answers) if you narrowed them down to more specific instances...

[fleurravenbooks]

I think it's important to say that antagonist doesn't mean villain.
I'll use Death note for example, so

Light is protagonist and L would be antagonist since he is actively opposing our protagonist, does that mean L is villain? No.

So to answer you questions , this is just my opinion tho:

1) What is considered villainous?
-It depends on why did war start, for example if group A attacked group B, and because of that B attacked back, causing C to join on their side and D to be on A's side, B would be considered "evil" because they started said war, however they did it to defend themselves. Also, in most wars (not every) both sides believe they are in the right and that they are just defending themselves.

2) Does the method of achieving those goals matter?
-Yes, especially if they had peaceful option, for example in book Red Queen

SPOILERS FOR RED QUEEN DON'T OPEN UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE SPOILED

Maven killed people, literal infants, just to send a message to main character , while he is antagonist, he could of used different way to scare main character.

3)Should you sympathize with a villain?
-Yes and no. Your readers should be able to find something human in character, but that doesn't excuse their actions, also some people are just...well evil. I'll use Red Queen as an example again so spoilers will be hidden:

RED QUEEN SPOILERS

Maven IS antagonist, but he was pretty much brain washed by his mother ( this is book 1, i only read book one and two so if the rest said that he wasn't i apologize)

Hope this helps, keep in mind this is my opinion only

[FoxUnderFire]

Ah, villains. I love a good villain.

1) I would say a villain is someone who is doing something that we, the reader/audience, see as negative. Does this mean they aren’t doing something bad for a good cause, or that our perception is skewed because of some story elements? No, but in order for them to be a villain, they have to be someone we disagree with at least initially. And more than likely, that means they’re doing something morally wrong (or that we’re lead to perceive is morally wrong).

(On a note, your protagonist is not always going to be a good person. Your protagonist could easily be a villain, and your antagonist could easily be a hero. It all depends on the character themselves. They are either a) the main character (protagonist), or b) the character who opposes the main character (antagonist), but that doesn’t automatically give them the hero/villain role.)

2 ) Of course how they go about achieving their goals matters. They may choose to do the “bad thing” for any number of reasons—preference, ease, anger, feeling they have no other choice (whether this is true or perceived), etc. What makes a person (or character) is how they choose to act.

3 ) I think a good villain is sympathetic, whether you end up agreeing with their methods or not. People don’t (typically) choose to burn the world just because they’re bored. People have reasons for doing things, often because of hurts. Whether that justifies the means the villain uses to get what they want, you and the audience are left to decide. I think redemption is a good plot device, but I also think that some people just don’t want to be saved, and that can make a great plot device as well.

Happy writing to you!

[djourner]

1- This is largely debatable in the moral of the story and yours as an author... And there is really no way I think anyone could answer this.
Morality is subjective, what you think is right is not nescessarily what I think is right, and the same goes for every other person in the world, no two people think exactly alike on every subject.
Normally you can separate it by plot-focus vs character-focus,
The rule of thumb for me is, everyone is the hero of their own story, even the villains, so it becomes more of a matter of perspective than a matter of inherent good vs evil as such a thing does not exist in the real world.

2 - A picture is worth a thousand words.

There is most certainly a wrong way of doing a good thing, like sure killing all criminals in the world would end crime, and having no more crime is an objectively good thing, but then people would constantly live paranoid of what exactly constitutes as a crime and become inert, living in perpetual fear of whatever is killing people.
Funnily enough this a big theme across my whole story and even my villains were made to constrast with the hero in this exact point, both want the same thing, with widely different views and methods.

3 - Villains are meant to be human too,unlike monsters who are just 'evil by nature' a villain is making a conscient effort to be like that, and exploring those conflicts will naturally lead a reader or viewer to relate to the villain even if not agreein with them, they must be thinking, they must have a goal, and be an active enemy to protagonist.
So to answer your question, it is a REQUIREMENT that the reader or viewer be able to relate to the villain in some way, otherwise they will just feel inpersonal...
A force of nature that corrupts and kills anything it touches is not a villain, it is just a monster, mindless and uncaring, it has no desires, it does not plot anything, it is just there.
A villain has to have a motive and humanity to them, even if that humanity is corroded beyond belief and they are almost a mindless murdering machine, a husk of the person that once was... So long as they can still think, they are a villain.
For the secound point though, villains don't always need to be reedemed, it can be entirely satisfying to have them killed off in a blaze of glory and spectacle... To let the reader feel the catharsis of 'it's over' and move on, sure your protag might not be the killing type, but that is even better as you can write in how the villain offs themselves.
Similarly sparing them is great too as it opens up story possibilities, to explore their broken psyche learning to heal and becoming a better person than they ever gave themselves for is equally cathartic... So yeah, both are good ending for different reasons... Ops did I go back to point 2? xD

[thecrystalrook]

I'm not so sure I agree with the "never talk about villains" bit. There are certainly antagonists, but to say we should never talk about villains because that characterizes them as evil, then we're just ignoring those that are flat out evil.

Emperor Palpatine is a villain, he is flat out evil.
Frieza is a villain, he is flat out evil.

There is nothing redeeming about them. Palpatine will forever embrace the dark side of the force, and Frieza will never turn over a new leaf no matter how badly Goku wants it. They have no set of morals and will kill anyone who stands in their way, even those in their own ranks.

Ganondorf is an antagonist. As per Wind Waker, he did what he did to escape the life of the desert and he even had the moral sense to not a kill a 10 year old because he raised a sword to him.

There are problematic actions that have a sense of understandable reason behind them. Then there are those that no one can actually come to any good reason for unless they're as bad as the person committing those acts.

[Kuma]

I'm not saying there aren't villains, I'm saying that we should aspire to make antagonists. Palpatine is kinda meh as a villain. Vader is waaaaay more interesting. Frieza as well. They just represent a partial antagonist, serving more as an obstacle than anything else. They might have theme opposition, but not enough.

Flat out evil villains are really boring

[Swamp]

What is considered villainous?
I think it's more about how the author uses the character. Obviously, I don't mean antagonist, lots of people have gone over that, and there are 'villian protagonists'.
I'd say the core is that the author writes the character with the intent for the audience to root against them, or at least root for them in a 'I know it's bad, but it's fun' way. Like... I think (hot take) it's good that woman can vote, but if a guy in the 1920's wrote an evil suffragette trying to ruin our great nation with her feminine wiles, even though I personally might see her as a good person, I would understand by the way the author wrote that I'm intended to see what she's after as villainous.
I don't really see things in terms of 'evil people' so, for me, a villain is a lot about the point of view of my story. Maybe Cruella DeVille devotes her life to charity outside of the puppy murder, but when you watch the original 101 Dalmations, the part of her we're exploring is the puppy murder. A villain does not need to be a Bad Person, but they do need to be doing A Bad Thing, and have Doing Bad Things be their major function in the plot. Whether the reader agrees that is a bad thing will vary

Does the method of achieving those goals matter?
Obviously. Your actions are things that continue to happen, regardless of reasons.

Should you sympathize with a villain?
There is no should! People can feel the way they want about characters. I think it can be important not to excuse or justify certain actions, but if you want to be sad about them, or think they're irredeemable but hot, or whatever, you can feel the things you feel.
Should they get a redemption arc? Depends on what's right for the story, and I don't think there's an objective right answer for that. People tend to be harder on characters for things they have personal experience around (for example, fandom often seems to forgive a killer faster than a bully), but I don't think there's an objective answer to who 'deserves' redemption, or what redemption even means. That the audience is now intended to see them as sympathetic? That the other characters forgive them? That they get into The Christian Heaven?

So I guess... what makes a villain? The author. They bring their own morality, framing, and worldview to the piece. Even my belief that 'good person vs evil person' and 'redemption' aren't objective facts is a worldview, and it'll put some people off my work, and that's fine.

[RocketAxxonu]

This is an interesting question! I think a lot of it's going to come down to your own personal preferences and beliefs—flat out evil villains are not necessarily bad (and actually, I find they can be kind of refreshing in a creative world now saturated with super complex villains with sympathetic motives), but they're not to everyone's tastes. As a reader/fan, I think it can be helpful to just look at some of your own favorite series, and look at which villains you personally enjoyed most. (Was it the villains who were just evil that we love to hate? Or those you could identify with on some level? Those that are a reflection of the protagonist in some way?) Once you identify what you resonate with most, I think that helps narrow down what will help make the story what you would enjoy, because honestly a lot of people are going to have different opinions on what makes the best villains.

I honestly don't mind flat-out evil villains, but at the same time for me to be interested in them I still want them to feel like a real person, with a history that brought them to that point, even if it's not necessarily one that will make us sympathize with them. (This is the difference for me between, say, the Horned King from The Black Cauldron, and Voldemort. The Horned King in my mind is a nebulous evil entity who just exists to bring evil on the world, whereas we are actually taken to explore Voldemort's history in Harry Potter. It's not as simple as Voldemort having been good and then driven to evil by some event, rather he always seemed to have some drive to have power over others, and there's a sense of harsh reality in that that I like. He was never really sympathetic, and it takes deeper thought [as well as some of Dumbledore's commentary] to understand how his circumstances as a child did help shape him, even as he is ultimately responsible for his own decisions as he grew up.) On the other hand, there are stories out there with supreme evil entities as villains that a lot of people enjoy, for reasons just as valid.

Basically, I think there are no hard rules to what makes a villain people will like, whether they are heartless or sympathetic in some way, or they get a redemption or don't. It's just considering what you as the author often like, what best fits the story and/or themes you want to write, and what ends up feeling natural to the character as they are developed. (I like a variety of different kinds of villains for different reasons depending on the story, and by contrast there may be a kind of villain I like in one story that I find drab or too reliant on tropes in another, depending on the specific details of development. I'm also very much a fan of the 'we aren't so different you and I' villain/protagonist trope, but there's a lot of setup that has to go into it before it feels natural and organic to the story, and I also don't want every story to be the same.)

[indagold]

I think an antagonist or villain represents the antithesis of the protagonist. They don't need to be pure evil, all they need to do is represent conflict and be at odds with the main character's goals. They are a mirror image in a way of the mc where they do everything the mc does but at odds with them. I don't think every story needs a heartless psychopath, a villain could be as simple as an overbearing music teacher or even something as nebulous as a hurricane.