Villains: Behind the Evil Cackle

[queenie]

I was rereading the old thread on SQ (hence the eerily similar name) and felt inspired to provoke discussion here of what makes a good villain. Is it mystery? Is it ambiguous morals? Is it a tragic past? Or can it be as simple as a really good diabolical laugh?

On the SQ thread, the consensus seemed to be, a villain who has shades of gray to him or her, maybe even the chance of redemption, someone whose soul bears conflict and remorse, someone who cares about something, even while they casually slaughter thousands (not to mention realistic goals), makes for a really compelling main villain. In fact, you could develop them to the point where they're not a 'villain,' but an 'antagonist' - the one who opposes the protagonist, not someone who looks in the mirror every day with a smile and says "It's great to be evil! Now I'll go destroy the world."

And all this is true. Many stories are only as strong as their villain. It strengthens your world to have a magnificent fiend to threaten it, or perhaps to have a tyrant who knows he is doing the right thing even if he has to be a tyrant to do so. The more thought and care you put into crafting your villain, the richer becomes the world of your story.

And it strengthens your hero if he takes down a really worthy foe - or better yet, if he offers the hand of mercy to a really worthy foe. All this is true.

But, I'll be honest with you, the Card-Carrying Evil villains can be fun. Just look at Xykon from The Order of the Stick (a favorite webcomic). You tell him you're avenging your father, he'll look at you with dead seriousness and ask you to specify. He has no moral conflict at all, and in fact is most of the time an impatient jerk. But he works - partially because he's balanced off of the much more conflicted Redcloak, and partially because you almost have to admire his shamelessness.

Now, in writing villains, it's very important to have a well developed villain for your story to react against - especially if your story will be structured similarly to Harry Potter. In this case, I think it's essential for an author to be interested in a villain and in what the villain is doing - because, I don't know about you, but for me, "Insert vague espionage-y things here" never does it for me. But mad scientists? Sign me up.

What about you? What kind of villains do you prefer to write/read about? What depths do you like to find in Death Eaters? or do you prefer plumbing the banally evil depths of Umbridge? Do you like your villains to have started out good and then gone to the bad, or should they have a change of heart at the eleventh hour? And tragic childhoods, pro or con?

Discuss!

[vegablack]

Certainly having a sympathetic villain with a tragic past can be interesting, but it isn't necessary. Not every person who hurts other people was hurt himself. Not every real life villain has a tragic past. Some people act from self-interest and do so quite horribly simply because its nice to get your own way even at the cost of others.

Richard the third or Iago, or Edmond the illegitimate son in King Lear are interesting and fun because they are such shameless villains. There's a thrill in seeing someone so brazen.

An author has to have a clear idea of what all the characters are doing and why they do it. If you don't the character shouldn't be in the story. A villain's plot should be understood by the author, and should never be perfunctory. The plot should have a goal both a physical one (killing Harry Potter, assasinating Dumbledore) and a mental one, (I want the students to learn to enjoy intimidaing others so they will be prime fodder for the Death Eaters, I want to create havoc so people lose trust in the government and the ministry is more vulnerable) I used Carrow in a story. He is teaching the students to cruciate small animals. This is a step toward simply learning the curse, but it is really a step in teaching all the students how to think as members of the society he wants to create. He wants them implicated, part of the machine so rebelling against Death Eaters would be rebelling againsth themselves. If everyone takes part everyone is at fault and no one wants to change the system.

I think their has to be an underlying mental goal for a villain along with a physical one. That means their is more at stake.

I'm not sure all real life villains have all that deep an inner life or are all that smart. I had a friend who was a district Attorney. He explained to me that in the state I lived in you had to be caught stealing a car three times before you spent any time in jail. I asked why any one sold drugs since that had a stiff mandatory sentence, but car theft carried a very light sentence until the third offence. Car theft seemed the much better deal given the risk reward ratio. He laughed and said it was a rare criminal who thought that way.

I liked Umbridge as a villain. I've read about Umbridge types everywhere from Jim Jones's Jonestown to Stalin's Soviet Union. There are people who jump right in step happy to torture, mistreat and spy on other people for the support of their little dictator hero. Umbridge might have inner depths I'm not sure it makes sense for Harry to see them. I'm not sure Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police had inner depths. He was a villain though and would make a fine one for the right story.

[vegablack]

By the way this is a great thread.

[Author By Night]

I think sometimes, concrete bad villains are okay. Like Voldemort - he didn't have a good side. He wasn't supposed to; he was supposed to be a horrible, horrible human being.

But it's fun to have more complex characters who may or may not be considered villains. I like Snape for what he is - he did wretched things, and IMO, he never completely met his redemption. He still emotionally abused Neville and Harry... I'd call making a kid think his pet will die if he makes a mistake in his potion emotional abuse. But inside Snape is Severus, who knows who he could have been, who never stopped caring about a childhood friend, and who Harry named his second child after. That's character complexity right there, and it's the kind I prefer. Snape's not good, but he's not 100% evil either.

And tragic childhoods, pro or con?

I think that's a pretty realistic way to explain why someone would go evil myself, and honestly, I think a lot of the characters with major flaws were the result of that in HP canon - or at least that was implied. Bellatrix, Regulus and even Sirius were scarred by their family, which I doubt was cuddly and warm and fuzzy. Snape's father apparently abused his mother, at least verbally. Dumbledore lost his sister (in a sense) and nearly did evil things because of that.

That said, I do think it can get over the top. But it's less likely that someone raised by the Weasleys is going to go evil than someone raised in a disturbing and/or destructive home.