The Great Villains

Villains and heroes are easy to write. One of the first things you realize with any story is that heroes and villains are easy to write. You start by choosing the perspective of the story. That perspective becomes that of the hero almost by default. Whomever that side is fighting, whoever gets in their way, is the villain.

That’s the truth of virtually all stories. Heroes and villains are a matter of perspective. It doesn’t matter if that story is in real life or a pure construct of fiction; it’s all about perspective.

Occasionally you will see attempts to overturn this format. You will see attempts at telling the story from the villain’s perspective. One of the most classic examples is the story of the Big Bad Wolf, which was a retelling of the story of the Three Little Pigs with the wolf as just being a meek neighbor with a cold trying to get some sugar from his neighbors the pigs. Even there, however, you have a situation not where you are necessarily telling the story from the villain’s side and keeping them as the villain; you’re telling the story from the villain’s side and reframing the villain as a misunderstood, misrepresented, hero.

But the main point of my post today is about the ability to write GOOD villains. Not “good” in the sense of good versus evil, but “good” as in “well written”.

Let’s face it; most villains suck. Now, that is my opinion obviously, but I do think most would agree with me. Most villains are fairly poorly conceived and constructed. In part I feel that’s because it’s hard to write a viable villain.

The basic precept of most stories is that the hero will win. You know it going in, despite any delusions otherwise. Why will the hero win? Because they’re the hero. Again, there are some exceptions, but in general that’s the way things work. The hero will win, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense or they probably shouldn’t based on strengths versus strengths, either physical or mental, the hero will defeat the villain in the end.

This is colloquially called story armor; the idea that no matter what is happening in the story itself, the hero will either never die, never stay dead, and/or never lose. Every story basically has it. It becomes a problem when it’s done too obviously. Dragon Ball Z became infamous for it. No matter whom the enemy, even if Goku died, no matter how horribly he was losing, he’d come back and somehow have more power than before and beat his opponent.

The writing of the villain is usually the facilitator of this, and the extent to which the story armor needs to be reinforced often frames the extent to how poorly written the villains are – not always, but much of the time.

Villains are rarely rational. Even if presented as rational, they are usually anything but. Villains often are also presented as the strongest, most ruthless, and most intelligent; or at least significantly more so than the hero. Again, this is only marginally true at best. Usually the villains are only a bit stronger, hardly ruthless, and only play at being smarter.

But there are good villains out there. One of my favorites would be Aizen from Bleach. Why? Aizen is smart, legitimately so. Even if it is only that everyone else in the story is an idiot, he presents himself as smarter than all of them, and is. He’s also strong. He is definitely stronger than just about all of them, both mentally and physically. Heck, he literally can’t be killed. The story of Bleach will end with him still being alive, just locked up somewhere, because he can’t be killed. I wouldn’t go so far as the say he’s that ruthless, however. Sure, he did do some supremely ruthless stuff (lots of screwing around with peoples’ lives and messing with their heads), but there were a lot of other more ruthless things he could easily have done if he wanted to for which there is no reasonable explanation or excuse as to why he didn’t.

A very different but also well written villain is Diva from Blood+. She is different in that she is not really personally all that strong. She isn’t a fighter. She isn’t presented as being particularly being a genius or anything of the sort. In fact, her intelligence isn’t really downplayed, but is not trumpeted either. And she is ruthless, in so far as she is not empathetic towards others. What makes Diva one of the better villains is the fact that she is not presented as these hallmarks of a villain, but instead as the antagonist who really couldn’t be bothered. She’s off doing her own thing, her underlings doing their own thing, yet she’s acting like a complete spoiled princess and ruining everyone else’s lives – not to mention the way she kills her sister’s adopted brother.

Then you have Izaya from Durarara. He is definitely smart, enough so to be able to manipulate tons of people from the shadows. He’s not really strong, but it’s like the “stealth” of the SR-71 Blackbird – it doesn’t matter if it’s not that great, but you can’t land a hit so it doesn’t matter. And he is ruthless in his own way. Because he lacks the physical power to just crush anyone who gets in his way, he can’t be coldly heartless, but he instead focuses on manipulating people as if playing a great big chess game.

The greatest villains all have two of these three markers, and usually very strongly have the third; they are smart, they are strong, and they are ruthless. You will hate them. You are supposed to hate them. They are not supposed to be really likeable as individuals. They are supposed to make you want to throw your screen through the window because they are so frustratingly horrible living beings.

The extent to which they are likable at all is supposed to be a reflection of their potential to be other than they are. I believe it was Gin who said of Aizen that if Aizen wanted he could have been the greatest Soul Reaper ever. And as the viewer you understand this. You see his intelligence, his strength, and the idea that he has the potential to be the greatest hero ever, and that frustrates you in watching him be such an abhorrent villainous figure. Diva is beautiful and has an extraordinarily tragic past. You can easily empathize with the idea that she was warped and driven mad by her past. Yet she appears lucid enough often enough that you can only conceive her as a horrid monster. Izaya is cool. He has the sort of effervescent and carefree attitude that makes him seem like a great guy to hang out with… if only he didn’t seem to be solely intent on making the lives of others miserable just for the hell of it.

It is not my contention that any of these are perfect examples of villains, and there may well be better ones out there. But I do believe they represent a better breed of villain than we are often given presented with. They are not the bumbling clods who can’t help tripping over their own feet. They aren’t the self-described geniuses who fail to account for the most simple and basic fallacies in their plans. They are, within their stories, as smart as they need to be, as strong as they need to be, and as ruthless as they need to be, to be perceived as a credible and rational threat to the hero for as long as the story pits the two sides at odds. If you doubt at any point that the hero lacks plot armor, then the writer likely did a good job of creating a good villain.