I want villains I can respect

Originally, I wanted to phrase this as a question, something along the lines of "So we want to respect our villains or hate them?" but I quickly realised there's just no way in hell I can be objective on the matter, so doing this would have been disingenuous. In fact, the more I planned it out, the more it turned into a soliloquy, so take it for what it's worth.

I want a villain I can respect. This might seem like not much news, but it's a compilation of quite literally seven years of effort in trying to figure out what kind of villain I want to play as, fight against and watch movies about.

Some time ago, someone (I think it was the Uber Guy) exposited that he wanted a villain he could hate. In fact, a villain we loved to hate was what made a good villain. This concerned me, because I thought I agreed, yet I still disagreed about the "goodness" of the villain in question. A villain I hate - and I mean really, truly hate in the "kick the puppy" sense - is a villain I ultimately don't want to see. This is the villain I hate, this is the villain I want to see dead, this is the villain that, if I had my way, I'd end on the spot. But, of course, I can't or the story would be too short, so I have to sit and watch narrative about this villain I hate... And it bugs me. In real life, such villains do exist and there isn't much we can do about it, but in fiction that doesn't quite work. If I don't like a villain - if I hate him - then I don't like the story he's in. And while I can't just ignore real life and its horrors, I very much CAN just walk away from a story.

It occurs to me that a good story with a good villain should keep me coming back, it should make me want to see more. What this means is that villains, evil and everything associated with those should either be counter-balanced by something, or that those themselves should be somehow appealing, without at the same time catering to psychopathic tendencies in otherwise normal people. Hence the idea of the "villain with redeeming qualities."

Now, when I say "redeeming qualities," I'm not talking about aspects of the villain that make him less evil or less a villain. In fact, far from it. I don't mean "Oh, he kills people, but it's OK because they're mostly bad people." so much as "Oh, he kills people but DAMN he looks hot in tight leather pants!" or "Sure, he's an evil demon who steals souls but he has a really cool, really big sword." We hate villains for the evils they do, but the tick to having a villain we want to see come back from the dead and show up in the sequel, I've found, is making this villain such that we secretly want to like him. If the forbidden fruit is the sweetest, then a villain we're really not supposed to like, but is very cool nonetheless has to be a good villain, right?

But why don't utterly hateful villains work for me when it works for so many others? This question kept me up for a few nights, but I think I have an answer. It comes down to the fact that I approach this game less as a de facto player and more as a writer and storyteller. When you approach a game like a player, it's pretty easy to see the villains as unambiguous bad guys and gameplay itself as an obstacle. For a player competing for a game, it's easy to see the game's developers themselves as the enemy. They're the ones who impede your progress, their characters are the ones who attack you, their villains are the ones you have to defeat, they are the people who keep you from beating the game. It breeds an "us vs. them" (or rather, "me vs. game") mentality that makes it very easy to like your own characters and hate the game's villains.

When I approach the game as a storyteller, however, I find myself in the position of having to play both the heroes AND the villains. And when I say I play my villains, I don't mean I just create them and leave them to serve as antagonists - I actually play through their stories, guide them through their struggles shape them up through the events they experience. What this means is I spend a lot of time with these villains and a lot of effort on working them up to the prime time. If I DON'T like these villains that I make, it would be impossible to play them. Now, granted, it's easy to push through a tough spot or just run a story I don't like for the sake of the reward, but that's just once or twice. Eventually, I have to run into something I like, or I simply won't bother. I can do things I don't like, but only as an exception from the norm, where the norm is something I do like.

The fact of the matter is that while I want villains to be evil and detestable, I also need them to be likeable in some way, and it is this balancing act which, at least in my opinion, leads to a good villain. Because, to me, a good villain is one I want to fight against, but also one I secretly, when no-one is looking, kind of want to see win. In fact, the point in a story where the good guy becomes purely good and the bad guy purely bad, the point where I only like the good guy and only hate the bad guy... That should be the END. When all the cards are on the table, when all is said and done, when all morality has been explored, all we have left is a pure, genuine, final confrontation to put an end to it all. Because once all resolve has been steeled... There is simply very little else the story can deliver except padding.

But, hey, that's just me. Do YOU want to respect the villains you play and fight?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I created an archenemy for one of my main heroes and he was truly vile. He was thousands of years old and my hero was the latest in a line of secret defenders that had fought against him throughout the centuries. Back in ancient times, he had found a way to prolong his life by draining the souls of children. Before killing them, he would usually... have his way... with them. In modern nights, he needed to feed off of metahuman children, thus linking him in a way to several of my characters in one large soap opera. I made him as vile as I could so that there would be no redeeming qualities about him and no doubt as to whether or not he was simply a "misunderstood" character.

I used this villain in some of the stories I was writing and also created him in-game. As I continued to write about him and my hero's attempts to destroy him, I found that I just couldn't play him in the game. He was too evil and I couldn't find a way to feel comfortable assuming his identity. I had to delete him and then also promptly killed him in my stories. I was actually happy with the way I did it, as the one who killed him was a mortal, unpowered human police detective who had been investiagting the deaths of several children. He was confronted by her as he lay wounded from fighting a coalition of my heroes. He tried to drain her lifeforce to heal himself, but since he could now only drain metahumans, he couldn't affect her. He offered her anything she desired to help him, protesting "I am an god!" She shrugged and said "I am an atheist," and shot him between the eyes.

After a certain length of time, I made an alternate-reality version of him, which I attempted to make at least slightly more palatable, but he still just felt too evil. I wound up killing him "across all times, all dimensions, so that no trace of him existed in the mutiverse", so that I wouldn't be tempted to recreate him yet again and further dilute the effect of his original death.

Now, I have a couple of villain characters, but most of them have made the transition to Rogue. I do have one character who is pretty much a pure villain, but even he thinks he is doing what he was ordained by fate to do, so he feels that he is in the right.

I really don't see any other way that I would be comfortable with a villain at the moment.

The thing about stories, movies, books, etc, is that if the villain sucks then the story sucks.

Check your experience and you'll see it holds true.

Think of movies that you liked. They had a good villain / antagonist even if the antagonist was the environment. They captured you imagination some how. You took the time to imagined them. And that was the key. You were pulled into the storyline because you wanted to imagine the existence of the villain.

Think of a show that was lame. The villain / antagonist sucked.

So to me, it's not so much that I need to hate or respect the villain as it is that the concept of the villain needs to be interesting enough to engage my imagination.

In the vastness of stories, there is room in my heart for all kinds of villains, from the kitten-eating puppy kicker to the type of guy who is truly surprised and dismayed that anyone thinks of him as a bad guy (Ever see the movie Falling Down?).


Many stories have throwaway villains, someone who is just there to provide the hero with car chases and damsels to rescue. These can still be good stories if the hero is strong enough to 'carry' them.


However, in a vacuum, I think most people are going to prefer a good Darth Vader or even Hans Gruber over 'generic crimelord #357'...both to watch and to play as.

If you are creating villains for your own stories, I find that my biggest thing is understandability, even if it doesn't carry over into the story itself. In many ways, the villain is usually the lynchpin and impetus of the story. Sarah Conner would have lived a perfectly ordinary life if the Terminator had not shown up. Therefore my villains have to have motivations and methods I can respect and understand, even many times over and above those of the protagonists (who often simply want to go back to a normal existence that did not have this evil wierdo messing with them).

In many ways, it is actually more difficult to come up with interesting and deep heroes than villains. Almost anyone can understand and beleive a character wanting to protect loved ones or even help strangers. With villains, you have to walk something of a thin line, often beginning with the musical question, "why doesn't he just shoot the hero in the head?"

Here is what you want Sam, a Villain who makes all the wrong choices but for all the right reasons.

Very few people (unless they are insane) veiw themselves as evil - even if they make evil seeming choices at times. Let's do the old nut - what if you went back before Hitler had done anything evil and shot him - would this act of being a vigilante be evil?

Yes, in one aspect because you murdered an innocent man. He did not make the choices yet that made him evil. What if instead you could take this charisimatic guy and keep him away from the influences that drove him make those choices?

Justifying yourself to yourself is very important. You can say if I don't steal that item - someone else will because it isn't secured well. You can go the way of the Occupy Wall Street and say well it isn't mine but we should take other peoples money because they have more than I do - hence the Robin Hood Syndrome without the underlying morals.

Self interest can be warped into excusing almost anything.

The clever cat burgler who only steals from bad guys and leads the police on a wild chase would be fun. Perhaps I will break out the old AE and see what can be done

I want all of it.

I recognize that every villain, or character for that matter, I make can't be everything, so I figure out what types/niches I'm interested in playing and might work well with the people that I'm playing with and find a way to make a character that fills that spot.

Granted, that's a small portion of it, but then I go into a partial history in my head, leaving swaths of it blank in case I need room to add in something else down the line. But, primarily so that I can see if I like the idea of who the character is.

The trick for me, is to look at the bigger picture. If I know that this character is going to be running with group x, he doesn't necessarily have to shine all the time, as much as make an impression. I don't mind the idea of my character being background filler in a multitude of other personalities. For me, a lot of my characters are supposed to be a part of a greater whole. It helps that I don't need, or want for that matter, to have all my characters be front and center all the time as well.

Or if they are a big idea/concept character, I find a way to either make that work in my head and most of the world around them, which means, that they might not work as a part of a group.

While I see the point of building a big self-image for a character, I don't necessarily have to like or respect the characters that I play. I just make sure I know who they are, what lines they're willing to cross and what sorts of things that they believe and what they say that they believe but are just lying to themselves about.

Bad people just aren't likable

Many villains are charismatic. They ARE liked and in some cases worshipped. The ability to be charming and yet absolutely cold-blooded is fun to imagine.

Think of Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Very amoral and brutally honest. Yet charming and completely engaging. Instead of the evil Queen in Snow White more villains are quiet and seemingly innocent. Dexter is a good one to mention.

Dexter is evil and yet because he has a code people give him a pass. In fact Dexter modifies his code to fit his world view. Justifies his actions by having a code to excuse it - I can kill this guy because he is bad.

You can see how attractive it gets when you can make yourelf the good guy in your own mind.

I think this is a situation that just like any other, requires balance. If all your villains are vile, there's nobody to keep people interested in watching them. If all of them are likeable, they tend to meld into the story too much and just become another member of the group. Granted a member that's trying to do bad things.

You need characters to act as a sharp contrast, one to say "You've stepped in it now, you're in the bad there's no way you can be right" to contrast the ever-present grey of "that may have been bad, but you're so cool we like you anyway".

Sort of like Westin Phipps vs D-mac

However, that being said I like to think I only have one of the Westin Phipps villain types in my roster, and that was entirely intentional.