Home Page › Forums › Fiction Writing › Characters › Writing Villains
- This topic has 52 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 3 weeks, 3 days ago by whaley.
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July 11, 2023 at 9:37 am #150380Anonymous
- Rank: Chosen One
- Total Posts: 8156
@whalekeeper Yep, balance is good 😀
Yep, lol, same! Some villains are just evil to be…evil. It’s not like they all have a tragic backstory 😂 And exactly, their past, whether tragic or not, doesn’t justify anything they do. Yep, I agree 100%
@smiley awww, love the outfits!!!! Yeahhh, I’m definitely getting Descendents vibes 😂😂 I actually have watched the first Descendents movie, lol…it was actually pretty good!! XXDJuly 11, 2023 at 10:09 am #150382@freedomwriter76
yeah I liked it, mostly because I like seeing where each character ended up from the movies,
And Ben was a favorite, mostly because his parents were Belle and the Beast
Do me a favor…. Tell Cress I meant it
-ThorneJuly 11, 2023 at 11:51 am #150400You’re welcome!! And haha, no I haven’t watched it either 😅
@whalekeeper @freedomwriter76Yeah, I agree, that’s a good way to think about it. Haha I mean of course it’s not good, but some people just don’t care about sin, y’know?
whalekeeper
Yeah, definitely! I try to make sure my characters are still good, but I think having antagonists or “villains” who have good reasons for what they’re doing, or even seem likeable, add more depth to the story, and then of course I get my theme 😂😂
Yep!!
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. ~ C.S. Lewis
July 11, 2023 at 12:37 pm #150404@mineralizedwritings @smiley @freedomwriter76
Ok… so this is totally unrelated to this topic but I saw it and I’m very curious.
What is all this beard stuff about??? Because I totally missed something while I was gone. 🤣
- This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Esther.
Write what should not be forgotten. — Isabel Allende
July 11, 2023 at 12:52 pm #150407Anonymous- Rank: Chosen One
- Total Posts: 8156
@esther-c 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
sorry, that just made me laugh XXD
OK, the beard stuff happened because me and Light said that Steve Rogers looks good with a beard, but Miley jumped in, said he looked better without one…and everyone had a small debate on whether or not Steve Rogers looked better with or without a beard…and I also think/said that Bucky looks better with a beard too, and we all talked about that too 😂
Me, Euodia, Light, Kylie (livingwoodchronicles), are all on the Beard Defenders side…Min is neutral, and Miley is against it 100% XXD
so yeahhhh, that’s the beard thing 🤣🤣
July 11, 2023 at 3:50 pm #150461Those are both really good! I like the green one, but the red one is also pretty cool. I’ve seen the 3 Descendant movies and personally don’t think your missing out 🙂
Well, I made it up so its probably not true. But she was three when it happened, they altered her brain, making so she wouldn’t look old. Since that kind of procedure is so new in 20xx it did not work.
"Would you kindly...?"
July 11, 2023 at 9:46 pm #150486@whalkeeper
I really like this topic.
One of my antagonists named Sairin is really interesting because her motivations are actually good but her methods are really evil. Sairin is the leader of this one group that is trying to free their country from the nation (which is where most of the MCs come from (the government there isn’t the best and their occupation of Sairin’s country is unjust) who basically controls them. The thing that makes Sairin a bad person is that she will stop at nothing to accomplish her goal.
In terms of general stuff I personally don’t actually think of any of my characters as really being heroes and villain’s (I like to think in terms of antagonists and protagonists). This is because I feel like hero and villain is to much about heroes being definitively good and villains being definitively evil (this doesn’t mean I don’t have characters who are more villains and heroes I just find that approach limiting) . I feel like as long as you make it clear what actions are good and what actions are bad your readers can be given the ability either:
1.) see how narrative changes your view
2.) choose if a character is worthy of being a hero (sometimes this is obvious (sometimes it’s not))
Through darkness,
light shines brightestJuly 21, 2023 at 5:13 pm #151782Both types of villains are interesting, in my opinion.
Evil-for-the-sake-of-evil is fine to me, as long as it’s done well.
And although I tend to like villains with sad backstories, there are times where one goes too far.
One of those is Mapleshade from the warrior cats books. She’s probably intended to be a sympathetic villain. She fell in love with a cat she wasn’t supposed to, but kept it a secret. When her clan found out, they exiled her and her children. The three kittens drowned when they tried to cross the river. Another cat from the clan was watching, but stood by and did nothing because she was still angry about the lie.
When Mapleshade reached the other side of the river, her mate and his clan rejected her too. She vowed revenge on him and everyone else, and killed like 3 other cats, including the one who’d stood by and watched while her kits drowned (who did deserve punishment, but not the horrible death that was given).
After all this, she’s mortally wounded somehow (I don’t remember how exactly) and a while after she dies, she (her ghost? idk) basically haunts and manipulates a descendant of her old mate, plus she tries to torture a bunch of other cats, because they all had better lives than she did.
While she has a sad backstory, she’s so revengeful and crazy, I hate her for ruining so many other characters’ lives more than feel sorry for her.
I’m trying to think of an evil-for-the-sheer-sake-of-it villain I actually think is interesting so I can use that as a contrast.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
July 21, 2023 at 5:17 pm #151786@otherworldlyhistorian Personally, I think villain characters who have good motives, but their actions are evil, are pretty interesting.
Especially since you might start liking them, but then they do something and you see they’re going somewhere they shouldn’t, and you can only watch horrified as they keep going down that path, and hope for their redemption.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
July 21, 2023 at 5:58 pm #151803I remember Mapleshade! I loved the warrior cats books!
Shes definitely a sympathetic villain 😉
And yeah, I think those are my favorite… Ones who are doing what they think is “right”, or are forced to do something that’s wrong
- This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by hybridlore.
Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. ~ C.S. Lewis
July 22, 2023 at 5:45 pm #151895Ahh!! How did I totally forget to comment on this topic?!
*ahem*
Anyway, I’ll probably get to it after I get home from vacay. 😉
Write what should not be forgotten. — Isabel Allende
July 24, 2023 at 4:20 pm #152079@hybridlore yep!
Mostly I hated how manipulative she was to Crookedjaw and others and how she tried to murder Sandstorm solely because she had a better life.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
July 24, 2023 at 4:32 pm #152081Oh yeah, I remember reading some of that book. I hadn’t finished it though.
#ProtectAdolinKholin
July 24, 2023 at 4:41 pm #152083@whalekeeper heh heh, yeah I think I only skimmed Mapleshade’s book once she started killing. The other books (Crookedjaw’s and the one where she tries to kill Sandstorm) I have read all the way through.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
July 24, 2023 at 4:49 pm #152085Right. If you can’t stomach it, you can’t.
I’ve read the original series and started the second one – as well as some of the side books – and they were enjoyable. I left them not long afterwards because I didn’t have the dedication XD But I still have some fondness for them.
#ProtectAdolinKholin
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