Should villains be glamorous or disgusting?

Not to do a cop out, but put me in the 'both' camp as well, with an addendum: They must all have a real motivation. Why would a villain waste time stomping kittens? Why would a villain try to destroy the world? Why would a villain devote their lives to doing what society told them not to do?

"Because they're a villain" is to be frank, daft, creatively bankrupt, and intellectually lazy.

The 'glamorous' villain is the easier of the two, and perhaps most relatable. Any suffering they incur is a happenstance or in response to the other party's behavior. They don't go out to find ways to ruin someone's day, though they may well ruin the day of someone who tries to cross them as an example. The motivation is simply selfishness. They want power, money, to 'look good.' They are climbing the societal latter my by force, stepping on people and rules to achieve greater rewards for themselves.

The 'disgusting' villains are far harder to explain. Usually, to be blunt, because no explanation was conceived. These are often the by the book antagonists that are as deep as 'is evil, punch them.' The characters that will take your dear old granny and feed them to their sharks while cackling maniacally. What would motivate someone to do that? That said, when you CAN give motivation to these characters, they can be far more interesting. Joker is about as "this man is evil, punch him" as you can get, but he does the evil as a game. He simply can't even care less about causing death and suffering, he's showy about his evil because it's a provocation to his enemy, who he wishes to destroy out of revenge and frustration.

My villains are power. No one is above them and they'll fight anyone to prove their superiority.
Some enjoy walking in a rain of their enemies' blood. Some just want to crush everything in sight.

My brute who I turned hero in game I still consider very much a villain. He's not a rogue. He doesn't care about saving people. He's in it for himself and himself alone.

I very much play the Lex Luthor style of villain in that I am evil because it fulfills my goals. What those goals are can be seen as fairly shallow since they generally boil down to I'm the best.

Well our own AT names sort of break down the general concepts of the basic villain types found in comics, and it does it well even for thematic purposes, but to delve a little deeper into the concept of villainy being grouped into Desgusting or Glam, is interesting.

I think it depends purely on the story behind that character. Currently I am running a corrupter who is both glamerous and yet disgusting. She is looks great, and some woould say attractive. However she is a feeder of life essense. A soul sucking fiend who was driven crazy after being vanished to the nether realm.

Most of the time she is controlable unless she depeletes her energy by using many of her attacks...eventually she starts rotting, and her costume slots allow her to putrify to get that effect.

So I would say she is a combination of both. Young and beautiful, glamorous and calm and then driven to extremes whe she cannot control her hunger. Then she becomes depraved and vicious.

On another note, I have one villain who just became corrupted because of her power and back story. Villainy just came naturally, and sibling rivaly pushed her overboard. Now she works for hire, does bad things, and really does not care what gets in her way. But I would not considder her depraved or sick, nor disgusting. I would not say that her moral compas is facing south to the extreme, but perhaps east or west.

She is driven by power, secret arcane magic, and a lust for material gain. But I would not say she would be disgusting.

Depending on your concept of moral, disgusting can be anything really. Mugging an old blind woman in a wheel chair could be considdered disgusting, as could more depraved acts. It just depends.

I have met many heroes who use their charms, body and authority to do things that I would just deem as perfectly disgusting.

In the "both" camp --

I have a glamorous villain, Razor Blazer, who is a rising star in Praetoria -- the networks love him as much as he loves them. It's all about style, attention, and adulation for him. Do I need to have a back story of neglect or insecurities that coalesced into this db/fire "monster"? Nah.... But his actions are driven by his selfishness...

Arbiter Salazar seeks power -- using technology, magic, wit and the cult of personality, she has manipulated her way onto the destined one list because she sees the height of strength to be the top of the Arachnos organization. Ironically, she has taken a bit of a shine to masquerading as a hero in one particular mission.....A potentially glamorous villainess that may step away from villainy....

And there's "Wicked Jack", a pumpkin-headed, hatchet-wielding Brute who refers to himself in the 3rd person. Wicked Jack is the disgusting monstrosity running around every night in the Rogue Isles, motivation unknown. Can the RIPs talk Wicked Jack down, rationalize with him? Does Wicked Jack care or even respect the Arachnos organization? Maybe Wicked Jack is just looking for the next blood-letting party? I don't consider this to be a cop-out (since I'm the author ; ' ), but there's also the reality that some evil/villainy simply isn't knowable or rationale. I'm fairly sure I'm not a homicidal maniac and, as much as I enjoy immersing myself in story, I also feel no guilt about designing such a character that explores that seeming randomness of the chaotic evil alignment (in case some might wonder...although for the record, I have far more heroes than villains).

As a person who plays this game because it gives me enormous freedom to create interesting characters, I do both, because both ends of the villain spectrum can be equally interesting to me in a literary sense.

I have made villains at the "disgusting" end: my most notable in my opinion is actually my Darkside KotOR II character, who is pretty much exactly what you described in your first post. There's only so many ways to play that character though, and it gets a little boring after a while, so while I wouldn't say I have many of the glamorous Bond- and Batman-villain types you put at the other end (I do have one or two though), I don't have many of the exact character you describe either.

Actually, I don't think that the glamorous/disgusting continuum is a good way to describe it. The glamorous and disgusting categories you describe don't leave room for villains who have big, world-changing goals, powerful PR departments, the uncanny ability to keep coming back, and all the stuff you call glamorous but also have zero regard for human life, dignity, or beauty, and may be using all that power to shore up the empty, evil, depressing shell that you describe the "disgusting" villain as being. Characters like that are everywhere: Lord Voldemort, for instance, is a genocidal maniac and self-styled demigod with a cadre of minions and an obsession with grandeur, who tried to murder a baby because he'd heard that maybe the kid would grow up to be a threat, who thinks love, honor, remorse, and pretty much all concepts associated with good are delusions held by the weak, and who is driven by his own fear of death. I can't think which category to put a character like that in, but I'd lean towards the "disgusting" side. Others like this include the Jack Nicholson Joker (as opposed to Heath Ledger on the disgusting end and Mark Hamill/Bruce Timm on the glamorous end), Doctor Vazhilok (who's not far from what Voldemort would be if he were a mad scientist instead of a wizard), and Jabba the Hutt (you think he commits crime to help him sleep at night? Not unless it's smothering, or eating, a crying baby that's keeping him awake).

But really, what I like to play when I go for "disgusting" is what you call the easy way out: villains that do disgusting, revolting, horrifying things because their minds are not human, so they simply think nothing of it. Ancient undead creatures, infectious sentient mind-control fungus, predatory beasts, and sea demons all do plenty of the despicable, dark, villainous stuff people ask for, and they feel wimpy if they don't. I do have some "glamorous" villains as well, because mad science is so much more fun that way.

TV tropes might be a good source for something like that.

However, villains can be whatever they want. People will taken notice once that person rounded up enough people into the hospital/causes chaos/sabotages longbow operations/etc.

I do think villains are more interesting, as they are far more different from eachother than heroes are.

It actually depends on the villain concept.

Some will be suave, smiling bastards.

Others with be unadulterated brutes of the "Hulk eat Freddie Prinz Jr.'s head and **** Betty bowlegged!" variety.

Some will be complete whack-jobs who simply want to blow up the world, just because they can, or because they're deeply, scientifically curious to see EXACTLY how loud the Earth Shattering Kaboom will actually be.

Some will merely be former heroes who made one teensy little mistake...that just happened to happen in a grotesquely public venue. Now public opinion has gotten them tossed in with the baby killers, whackoids, thugs, and general unsavories because they'd wind up lynched or burnt at the stake (sometimes literally) in more polite society.

I have villains who fit into most of these categories and a few more I haven't mentioned.

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I personally like villains that are villains, but see themselves as being the good guys for whatever reason. Neither "glamorous" nor "disgusting", though they'd likely drift through both categories on occasion.

Of the villains I currently have, one's a near mindless monster, acting on animal instinct (albeit with a malicious bent). Another is an alien supersoldier, basically a one-man invasion force, who is only doing his duty to remove complications from this planet (though he does have a cruel streak and thoroughly enjoys his job). A third is control personified, someone who cannot stand when things go differently to his plan, he's fairly disgusting for purposes of this conversation though (but he's got the class of any Bond villain). My fourth (and currently only residing in an AE arc) is a lowlife thief with next to zero imagination, misdirected ambition (meaning he could be shooting higher, but doesn't see it) and near limitless power. He's neither glamorous nor disgusting because he's a fool.

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There's no "Or" there. Each villain is an individual - just like my heroes aren't 100% Stand By The Flag, Breeze Blowing, Cape Waving, Shiny Goody Two Shoes types, my villains aren't all, or even mostly, one thing or another.

For instance, I've got:
- Egotistical, basically "Rich Spoiled Daddy's Girl" who thinks it should all be hers.

- Spirit that formed from the accumulated wars and hatred in a region of Africa and feeds from misery, creating his warriors from the spirits of the fallen.

- Would-be ex-thief who tried to change and go straight, but had that taken away from her by Wyvern when they killed her fiance (who was a regular civilian,) and is more in a "Fine, if that's who I'm supposed to be, that's who I'll be" - she's resigned to it even if she doesn't like it.

- A poorly programmed battlefield AI who's out for conquest and maintenance. Because those were the two things programmed into him most strongly.

- Undercover hero

- A version of my 50 elec/elec blaster (but an elec/elec brute in this case) that had lost someone thanks to yet another government project gone awry - and decided her world would not deal with that again, essentially conquering and ruling as empress until her world's version of the COT and some resistance managed to trick and forcibly exile her here. Furious, but her whole goal is to get back so her world doesn't fall apart again. (as she sees it.)


Basically, it's the character. Some would run Phipps arc happily. Some would run it and call him a wuss. Others would execute Phipps on the spot, or expose him to the world.

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