Your Villain Won!

[alharingrey]

I want to know how your story/comic/novel would go if your villain won instead of the hero!

By whatever ludicrous means, how would your villain paint themselves as the hero? Would the world accept them as one (or have any other choice)? After all, few people realise they are the “bad guy” in a situation. Everyone thinks they are the hero, that they are right.

Would your villain be happy? Or would they realise too late that their actions have caused such damage around them?

[Alexandritea]

If the villain of my comic "United We Stand" would win, everything on the planet they live on would cease to exist. He has been tortured for billions of years and just wish to escape the planet by any means necessary. Even if that means that he, himself, will die.

[alharingrey]

Oh, that's so tragic. The poor fellow!

[kkaawmics]

What an interesting question! My villain hasn't appeared quite yet, but I think the villain would be supremely happy if they won everyone else would probably agree that the world is better in their vision...(very dubiously though).

[Azifri]

At this point in the story, if the "villain" wins the world(s) turns into a peaceful place but everyone loses their free will to some extent. Everyone's emotions would be controlled to prevent undesirable behaviors, and people would have no way to know this is happening.
The villain would now have time to focus on other plot-related things ^^

[HGohwell]

This thread has literally just made me realise I have no villains/they win anyways because damn that shades of grey morality world building.

• The Obsidian gets to do it's mind link thing.
• The evil queen might be an building an empire through violence and conquest and murdering her own kids, but we have bigger things to deal with and she's good at dealing with them.
• The ancient eldritch god gets children ritually sacrificed to it (but at least the child related to the main characters is saved?)
• The other evil queen continues to rule because the other people qualified don't want the job.
• Oh, 1 pair of stupid young and in love idiots will get to live roughly 6 months longer before their inevitable deaths because destiny says so.

... I think the only real difference would be there would be more hoards giant mindless monsters running around eating people. I need some lighter grey morality in some of these things. Or more obvious villainy.

[Freemints30]

Well my main villian's motive is still unclear currently but if he won, He would make sure humanity see's him as the hero for generations and my MC's as just a naïve idiots. And unfortunately everyone else would believe him and agree how bad the past was compared to now.

[ar-ninetysix]

My comic rewrites are still in progress, buuuut..

First things first, I'm gonna go with antagonist instead of villain bc my girl's not inherently evil~ But yeah, let's say she wins.

By whatever ludicrous means, how would your villain paint themselves as the hero? Would the world accept them as one (or have any other choice)?

Well, strictly speaking, my antagonist is a yokai, or more accurately, the spirit of a woman who was a victim of police brutality and classism. My characters are working with the police and they hunt down yokai since Japan's infested with 'em. The conflict the two get into is very much life-or-death on both ends. She'd most likely go the route of saying what she did was just even if the two weren't involved with her death when she was a human.. But my world isn't one that would even listen to her. She'd just be branded as a monster by default. Even if what she did was in self-defense, I don't think she'd be called a hero. There's just no way. My characters would become martyrs and then it'd be undeniable that she's a villain.

Would your villain be happy? Or would they realise too late that their actions have caused such damage around them?

Honestly, no. By the time that both sides get into the conflict, she's already lost her reason for living a second life in the form of a yokai. She'd be stuck on Earth without anyway to meet her daughter, she'd have killed someone she knew was a kind-hearted soul, and her soul wouldn't be at rest.. So like, yeah, she'd be aware of her actions and would most likely ask someone to take her life after she "wins".

However, if her daughter was still there.. She'd probably take their souls for consumption and feel guilty about it, but she'd still have her kid and that's really all that matters to her. Would probably move on and do the same thing in other regions of Japan for who knows how long lol

---

She was already a tragic character, but I'm surprised at how these questions really emphasize that lol

[alharingrey]

That's a very interesting concept! Sort of an understandable goal, but one that raises a thousand questions of freedom. Sounds like a good villain!

[alharingrey]

I mean, we all appreciate not being eaten by hoardes of giant, mindless monsters!

[alharingrey]

Your villain sounds like a wonderous asshole! And I mean that at a compliment, haha! He sounds like one of my favourite video game villains.

[Rhonder]

For TreasureHUNT!! the main implication of a villain victory would be the agricultural crisis that the Hero's hometown would face consequentially. Their whole community relies on a magical relic for artificial climate control to generate rain in an area that is otherwise very dry / doesn't have any water nearby in order to fuel their produce growth. If that was just suddenly removed from the picture then all of their current crops would likely wither and die, and the city would quickly have to try and re-prioritize their trade priorities to have foreign markets bringing produce into the city.

For the villain herself, the idea that I had was that she was basically wanting to just pawn the relic on the blackmarket for profit. She's a thief by trade so that's pretty much her whole schtick. Steal, sell far away, profit. So that would have been nice for her instead of a prison sentence~

[lilithfairenwrites]

If the villain of Glints Saga: Papillon won, then the budding relationship between the human and Outsider worlds would end up on thin ice, if not shattered completely, depending on how much humankind knew about what would cause said peace-shattering—or how much the Outsiders knew about those involved. The villain would very much be pleased about such circumstances.

If the main villain of Glints Saga: Dove won, then everyone in Garden City would be "freed" of dark emotions such as anger, hate, and the like. In such a state, few would even be able to object to what the villain has done. Though it would bring the villain some comfort to have "enlightened" at least a few humans and Outsiders, their attention would soon turn to the rest of both worlds. The secondary villain would have the one thing she's always wanted, as well as fulfilling a vision she herself believes in...but only the inability to even self-loathe would let her live with herself for all she had done in pursuit of those ambitions.

[Esoj]

Captain Ilerox would probably come back to his homeworld as the hero who stopped the Human and the pirate "threat" in sector 24. And if he, for some ludicrous reason, is victorious in a later point of the story, when, let's say, a lot of people end up in the same place at the same time, then he would even be prized as the hero of all the kaerys and be given honors like a legendary admiral.
In his situation he would not feel remorse or anything, he will be, plain and simple, a hero for the ones who matter, his species and his species only. He would be rewarded and his honor will be restored and secured for eternity.

Hope | Tapas

[IntoTheTempest]

One of my main characters is a villain so uhhhh.....

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I wish I could participate in this. Too many spoilers though. This is what happens when your villain has a multifaceted plan when you're not even halfway through the arc yet.

But I guess I could say...people would die, and Loki would have what he wanted. Vengeance.

[elyss]

Honestly, probably peace and prosperity. My 'villain' is just a guy who wants good things but doesn't do it well. I'd elaborate but then I'd spoil a lot.

[cleo_san]

I love this thread!
I'd love to talk all about it but too much spoilers for my comic ;_;

What might not come surprising to my readers is that my antagonist Aotaka is one of the three rulers of his world (or at least the continent the story takes place on). He would not be too unhappy about being the single ruler, so if he achieved that goal, he'd probably an even bigger pain in the a$$ for everyone, his best friends included. Since he's a Mage, he would care even less about humans - and he'd practically do anything to keep himself from boredom. Which is almost never a good thing for the people around him ^^"

[a.g.meade]

@alharingrey - Wow, what a fun thread! Always an interesting exercise to think about 'what ifs'. I can't speak for my main comics due to spoilers... but for my short story, it's less a situation of a 'villain winning' and more like 'protagonists not being able to figure out a solution' - in which case, they would have a giant talking spider living in their library for the rest of ever.

[cleo_san]

Sounds awesome! Where can I read that? XD