My Hot Take on Sympathetic Villains

[Kureous]

This may be controversial, but I will air my opinion nonetheless. As someone who was on the sympathetic villain bandwagon, I can testify to the fact that I thought they were cool. I am a big fan of character depth, so I thought making villains complex was something to be admired, but I've realized that complexity doesn't necessarily equate to good writing. What am I trying to say? Sympathetic villains are a double-edged sword, and the reason for this is simple. They can only be so sympathetic until readers start wondering, 'Why are they the villains again?' And when this happens, I would go as far as to say that they aren't villains anymore. It would be better to call them antagonists. Why? Because fundamentally, a villain is a character that you root against. You may like them or think they are interesting, but you don't want to see them win in the end. So when a writer evokes that reaction from their audience, they have succeeded in creating a villain.

Some of you may think this is a wild claim, and not all stories stick to tradition like this. Sometimes, the protagonist is the villain, and the antagonist is the hero. Take Light from Death Note, for example. I don't know how it was for you, but I sure as hell didn't want him to win. I wanted L to kick his ass, but unfortunately... we all know what happened to L

In conclusion, we root for a hero and root against a villain. The moment you start to make your audience feel bad for your villain, they stop being villains. I rest my case.

 

[Deleted member 1244]

To me, heroes and villains are qualities of a character not functions.

Within a story the only important functions/role are protagonists and antagonists. Thus a protagonist in my story may have a villainous quality but the antagonist in that story may not have heroic disposition.

Qualites are just bells and whistles. at the end of the day, to me, it's no different from the colour of their hair.

The story has protagonists, the story is about them, so they are the protagonists.

Framing the narrative to think that if there is a hero then there is a villain or vice versa, I feel, is unnecessarily restrictive to the creative process.

 

[Paul__Michaels]

This may be controversial, but I will air my opinion nonetheless. As someone who was on the sympathetic villain bandwagon, I can testify to the fact that I thought they were cool. I am a big fan of character depth, so I thought making villains complex was something to be admired, but I've realized that complexity doesn't necessarily equate to good writing. What am I trying to say? Sympathetic villains are a double-edged sword, and the reason for this is simple. They can only be so sympathetic until readers start wondering, 'Why are they the villains again?' And when this happens, I would go as far as to say that they aren't villains anymore. It would be better to call them antagonists. Why? Because fundamentally, a villain is a character that you root against. You may like them or think they are interesting, but you don't want to see them win in the end. So when a writer evokes that reaction from their audience, they have succeeded in creating a villain.

Some of you may think this is a wild claim, and not all stories stick to tradition like this. Sometimes, the protagonist is the villain, and the antagonist is the hero. Take Light from Death Note, for example. I don't know how it was for you, but I sure as hell didn't want him to win. I wanted L to kick his ass, but unfortunately... we all know what happened to L

In conclusion, we root for a hero and root against a villain. The moment you start to make your audience feel bad for your villain, they stop being villains. I rest my case.

Yeah I agree with you there my friend.

Plus on Death Note, Light becomes such a idiot and a unredeemable piece of crap after defeating L that I skipped to the end of that series to see how Light dies. It was obvious that was going to happen. I have little patience for shitty characters that are the main focus.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

I love writing sympathetic villains...or villains due to circumstances, not by nature, since I observed that most (not all) do 'villanous' things out of their circumstances. Yes, there will be jackasses, but many are just doing 'jackassery' for something they faithfully believe, or are forced to do so.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Bruh.

 

[greyblob]

I think your opinion is wrong.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I think your opinion is wrong.

Why? Elaborate.

 

[greyblob]

Why? Elaborate.

I disagree with several key points. In my opinion the argument made here has little to no ground.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I disagree with several key points. In my opinion the argument made here has little to no ground.

 

[Kureous]

I disagree with several key points. In my opinion the argument made here has little to no ground.

This is getting... interesting

 

[forli]

You talk about sympathetic villains, but when it comes to web novels, most of the times I've ended up hating a 'hero' is because the author made the villains cartoonishly evil and believed that the protagonist now had an excuse to be as horrible as they want. The most common example is fantasy worlds where all humans are racist for no reason, but then the main characters are even more racist against humans and the author pretends that it doesn't count because they are the 'good guys'.

With sympathetic villains, the author will at least know that they need to make some effort to make the hero look like the good guy.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

So where's the hot take?

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

The most common example is fantasy worlds where all humans are racist for no reason.

I'll be honest, when it's done right humans being racist for no reason is pretty fun.

 

[forli]

View attachment 18382

I'll be honest, when it's done right humans being racist for no reason is pretty fun.

If that's the case, I've never seen it done right.

Well, I know almost nothing about Warhammer 40k, which seems to be what you are referencing.

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

If that's the case, I've never seen it done right.

Well, I know almost nothing about Warhammer 40k, which seems to be what you are referencing.

It's pretty fun In 40k but then 40k kinda balances it by there really being no good guys. Just people fighting for survival. I mean the humans are actively genociding other races but those races are trying to kill you at best or condemn your soul to endless torment at worse so of course you side with the humans.

 

[BearlyAlive]

They make the better villains, sure if most of the time only by virtue of needing to put more thought into them, but the current trend of making all villains sympathetic and all of them redeemable is taking it too far. Why even write the conflict if one big group therapy session could solve the plot two chapters before it even starts?

I'm personally a fan of cartoonishly evil people. They always laugh, they always seem to have fun, get to wear the cooler outfits, and more often than not keep the better (and actually competent) company.
Heroes and sympathetic villains are most of the time either alone or plagued by something dangerous or miserable or -god forbid- idiot sidekicks. They have to work harder than anyone else, have the odds stacked against them, and tend to be suicidal... I mean heroic with varying degrees of success.

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

Sympathetic villains are made to contrast the hero's journey and roadblock their progress, creating the problem where sometimes you can't force everyone to your will. There will be someone who will oppose your journey, whether they are good or not, mainly they are just someone who don't like your opinion. Whether they are right or wrong, you can see that they are just like living beings, forced into a path they don't like but for the sake of their happiness, they will oppose the other, even if it means death for them.

Not everyone is equal, the world is unfair to them, they suffer grief unlike others who can cope. Plus, one can understand that they aren't made protagonist, mainly because you only see it from the main perspective(I.E. The protagonist view) which the author can designate them to be either good or evil.

TL;DR: The author decides their lives because they are gods. Even if the villain is the kindness man you know, if the author decides he is a villain, he will be a villain.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

They make the better villains, sure if most of the time only by virtue of needing to put more thought into them, but the current trend of making all villains sympathetic and all of them redeemable is taking it too far. Why even write the conflict if one big group therapy session could solve the plot two chapters before it even starts?

So unrealistic. Unlike in real life where conflict of entirely valid but diametrically opposing interests could never happen and the only conflict to exist is between the obviously good and absolutely bad camps.

 

[BearlyAlive]

So unrealistic. Unlike in real life where conflict of entirely valid but diametrically opposing interests could never happen and the only conflict to exist is between the obviously good and absolutely bad camps.

I know, right?

 

[Sola-sama]

I'll be honest, when it's done right humans being racist for no reason is pretty fun.

Am writing my main character as an extreme fascist that commit eugenics, genocide, and ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. I gotta say, it was fun writing it. Geneva Convention is a Geneva Suggestion.