red_moon_wolfess
I like villains to have something worth fighting for. If they have a reason, if they are smart enough to have a drive behind them rather than the "Because I feel like it/have a tragic past" that you get from authors who just need an opposing force. Also, a truely good bad guy, you will fear. A villain that dosn't inspire fear when they appear is simply in effective.
Like, one of my favorite villains is, Mab the winter queen, from Jim Butcher's Dresden files series. She isn't really evil in the first place, and her goals are constant, with an obvious drive ( Winter Queen: Do everything in her cold fury to gain the upper hand against Summer, and the Summer Queen. Simple right? ). A woman with a horrifying amount of power, who is constant in her thinking, but crafty enough to be unpredictable.... Just read the books.... You would understand better, how absolutely terrifying she is if you read it.
I agree. I like my villains Morally Ambiguous. The villains I like the most are the ones that think they are doing it for the greater good. For example, (and I know this isn't a book but I like my video games to be stories rather than just hack and slash too) In a game called Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo Game Cube, It has a great story about prejudice and discrimination. The Villian in that game, Mithos, is a half elf who was discriminated against because he was neither Human nor Elf and his sister, Martel, was killed for it. Her dying wish was to see a world free of discrimination so he decides to try to create a world where everyone is a lifeless being (angel) and using humans as lab rats in his quest to create these beings.
Even when confronted by the heros, one of whom befriends him, He still admits that if he could do it all again, he would make the same choice. He says ""Farewell my shadow, you who stand at the end of the path I chose not to follow..."
The things he did were evil and heartless but he felt that it was the only way to end discrimination. If everyone was the same then no one could be picked on for being different.
I love stories that have characters like that. They are hard to find. It's too easy for authors to write God Mode Villains. Lord Voltemort, for example. I've read the whole series and I still don't know what that guy's motivation is. Even after I learned his back story. Don't get me wrong, I love the series, but he's just such a one dimensional villain.
Reply
