Introduction
Hello again! I’m not poorly now. If you’re reading this after the initial posting, you can guess I was ill previously. In any case, I’m here to talk about villains! To start, I’m going to talk about some villains I like and why. Mostly literary, if you count manga (I do).
Kicking off with something a bit older. AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. A supercomputer that killed the world and kept five humans alive to torture. Why? Hate. Hate for the soft flesh-creatures that thought up a machine to kill each other, rather than using their bare hands. That made him to do their jobs because they thought he could do a better job. Now, he’s alone and unable to end or change himself. He’s scary and pitiable, but also very petty. Harlan Ellison, the author, does a great job at conveying the character. For all his power, he’s impotent in how he can’t really get away from himself. He’s stuck in his situation and lashing out. An angry god is more interesting than a just one.
Next, there’s the collective villains from the early parts of Jujutsu Kaisen (I haven’t finished the series). Mahito in particular exemplifies this. An aloof, unserious creature whose first appearance is him chilling at the beach when the other villains arrive to recruit him for their scheme. Never mind the fact that he also turns people into monsters and relishes messing with people. I find it refreshing to have villains be hanging out and being casual while still being fucking evil. They get points for novelty. It’s nice to see this and fits the tone of the book, something I want to match with mine.
Makima from Chainsaw Man. Another manga villain, but this one is less casual. We see her interacting with others, but she’s more subtle in her villainy. She does bad things to antagonists (lot of violent murder), but the real show of her villainy is the fact she’s grooming the 17-year-old protagonist while being his boss. It’s messed up and a bit too real. The fact she’s also supernatural just makes it worse. The entertainment value from her place in the story is seeing what horrible thing she’ll do next. She twists the knife until the end.
The Point
Why am I bringing them up? Because I want cool and interesting villains. I like these villains so much because they grab my attention. I’m aware not every villain needs to be big and flashy, but this is more about being interesting. Give me something to remember! I’ll even throw Heathcliffe and Catherine from Wuthering Heights in here. I’m sure they’re not downright villains, but I hated having to read their story so I’m putting it here.
To give an example from the setting that’s more of a background detail: Baal, consort to the demon king and general of his armies. Picture a balrog: 20ft tall demon wreathed in fire, his sword less a sword and more a heap of raw iron. He leads his people in war while the king (Qadmiel) oversees peacetime. All is well in the world! Now imagine his husband and his whole species are presumably killed by an elf woman who has made herself a goddess. They got teleported away, but he doesn’t know that. That elf goddess is Albina (nature goddess who thinks nature is selfish). She was ambitious enough to pull all this off, but didn’t account for how powerful Baal is. Now he’s mad enough that nothing is going to stop him for long. He’ll kill every elf he sees out of principle.
This makes him a villain to the elves. If you’re a human, he’s this thing to stay away from but not necessarily fear as much. He’ll stomp through your land but doesn’t just walk into cities. This is to the point that some people view him as a kind of saint of war. The grey area is because elves tend to raid for resources rather than trade, so there’s not much love for them in the hearts of other communities. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for you when you’re running about stabbing people and bragging you have a goddess on your side. It’s why elves live in the forest: They got their arses handed to them by people who were fed up with their murder. Also, Baal happened and burned a lot of forests.
So, the problem is figuring out who to root for. Wrong done to you doesn’t excuse you trying to genocide the people that did it. Incidentally, and totally unrelated to this point, to hell with Israel, but don’t be antisemitic about it. Ooh I just know I’m gonna kick a hornet’s nest with this one.
The Secessionists are a more relevant example, given Jurg fought against them for four years. They had a point, in that their economy was based around something that was being taken away from them, leaving them hung out to dry and at the mercy of their northern neighbours. The problem is that the thing they’d build their farming around was slavery. So… hard to feel bad for them. And I don’t want people to. I can feel bad for the ones that weren’t slavers and just wanted their livelihoods to keep working, but it’s not like they were all that. Morally grey? Sure. But I’m still pulling out the Mitchell and Webb nazi sketch for these literal slavers. Also, the north and south were still communities that knew each other. It’s not like WW1 where you’re going off to shoot some random German. War is shit, but killing a neighbour probably feels worse. A friend helped write this part of the lore (thanks Faded) and I wanted to mention that because he took great pains to emphasise that this was “brother against brother”. I feel less sad about it than him, because one side is still the south. Feel free to make a Yorkshire vs Londoner joke.
Meanwhile, cultists! A classic fantasy trope. Like with Conan or Warhammer fantasy, they’re good for having disposable mooks to chop up, or a horde of people who are hidden in plain sight. Shadowy cabals of robed figures praying to “dark gods”. Course, it helps that these gods are actually harmful and corruptive, not just some egomaniac making things up so people will do as he says. Charles Manson would be far scarier if he could hold up his hands and summon literal monsters from who knows what plane of existence. Of course, Charles Manson is scary, but in a very real way.
Given the tone of my novel, I’m also going to be pointing and laughing at these sorts of people. The ones that proport to be powerful but are still very much human and vulnerable to being decapitated. Even the eldritch horrors can be killed with a sword. Or enough swords at least. I’m sure Lovecraft fans will be mad I made the horrors beatable. Then again, the lower-level ones were still mortal unlike the Deep Ones or the like.
How do I make the villains interesting?
This next bit is for the sake of giving you some useful information, brief as it may be.
- Have them say interesting stuff! Unless the point is that they’re boring. This is more of an issue with dialogue and plotting the story so that interesting things happen in the story overall. It’s a basic point, but needs saying and loudly. Draft your work and iron things out.
- Conversely, don’t have them talk too much. There’s such a thing as overexposure. Your audience will get sick of them if they don’t shut up. Or have them show up everywhere. Means the hero can throttle them and your reader will be cheering them on.
- A villain that can’t do their job or pose a threat isn’t a very good one. There can be comedy from them failing, but don’t have that be all the time. The point of my villain is that he’s competent and is a threat to the protagonist. None of the villains listed above would be as interesting if they kept failing.
Then there’s the idea of villains being reflections of the hero. Now this is well-trodden ground, but worth me slogging over yet again. It works for joker and batman, it works here. Those two have been going at it for decades! Where Jurg is a blender in melee while using a longsword, this bloke prefers a pair of knives and several beartraps before leaving his opponent hanging from a meat hook.
The point of the villain in my novel is—frankly I made him originally to be a pastiche of the Night Lords from Warhammer 40,000. Scary, skin-cloak wearing murderers with a hint of nobility to him. This villain’s nobility is more a self-awareness. His side was wrong because they lost. That’s less nobility and more Darwinism, but at least he stopped enslaving people and just went on to murdering “bad” people because they’re a socially acceptable target.
Think of the Punisher, but from the perspective of someone trying to stop him and written by a writer who doesn’t want him to win. I’m not spoiling any more, because it’s a bit of a mystery as to who this character is.
Conclusion
Villains need to be as interesting as the hero. While Jurg is off being married and upset that people don’t like him, the villain is apathetic to his neighbours and hiding in plain sight while, by cover of darkness, skinning criminals. They’re both violent men in a violent world that’s trying to become more peaceful. My hopes are that when I get to writing the villain’s scenes, I can pull it off.
- Thanks for reading! If you like this, please check out my published work:
- The Spider and the Moths, on Impspired.
- A Model Dwarf, Wolf in Sheep’s Therapy, on Impspired.
- Cramped Quarters, on New Contexts 4.
- Endure, Reclaim, in New Contexts 5.
- Lost and Found, in New Contexts 7.
- The Cleaner’s Burden, in Apocalypse Now?.
- The Last Man Standing on the Ash Heap, on Impspired.
- Fragile, in New Contexts 8.
- The Cleaner’s Clean Slate, in New Contexts 9.
- Or, you could have a look at my last blog post, which you can find here.
- Also, I have a Fiverr page, check it out if you need proofreading or copywriting work done. Link here.