Making Villains Similar to the Most Popular Ones

[Reives]

Tell me something. In your fifth paragraph, the villain of which you speak. Is he SURE that he's doing this to fulfill his desires? Well, what gave him those desires? What drives that need? How did it begin?

Make something up, it's your villain.

You know how when you haven't ate for days and you are so hungry, that when you see a hamburger in front of you you cannot help but eat it?

Those hamburgers for the villain are innocent children. His brain is born in such a diseased way that his urge to slaughter innocent children cannot be humanly contained.

I don't have to have a medical document for how such a scenario occurred for the sake of a sample.

Now, to him, it is morally right to slaughter the children due to the diseased brain function. But to the masses, it is an unacceptable action. Sure, he might be somewhat sympathized as an individual, but that does not mean that he is suddenly not evil and his actions are of justice. He is naturally evil, and cannot help it.


P.S. You kinda skipped the rest of my post. :< It's been a reoccurring pattern now on this thread, using 2 sentence replies directing at numerous paragraphs and skipping a large amount of arguments that eventually get forgotten.

 

[KhaoticErase]

Darn it.

See, mental diseases are the only exception because they screw with your morality. It doesn't matter how heroic and good you think you are, if you have a mental disease that makes you think that children are hamburgers, it's not your fault at all. You're not evil, but whether or not your a villain is based on other's understanding of you.

1. People who don't know you have a mental disease think you're an evil villain.
2. People who do know you have a mental disease know you're not an evil villain.

 

[Reives]

Darn it.

See, mental diseases are the only exception because they screw with your morality. It doesn't matter how heroic and good you think you are, if you have a mental disease that makes you think that children are hamburgers, it's not your fault at all. You're not evil, but whether or not your a villain is based on other's understanding of you.

1. People who don't know you have a mental disease think you're an evil villain.
2. People who do know you have a mental disease know you're not an evil villain.

And there would be no reason to exclude the possibility of mental malfunction for villains. In fact, perhaps every single villain that has done something wrong were mentally ill - "mental illness" does not necessarily have to be run-with-your-pants-down crazy; it can be also be abnormal mental functioning e.g. lack of sympathy, etc. Again, it's quite a flexible term.

And if it's not his fault, who's is it? In a perfect world, everything is fair and square. But in the real world, it doesn't have to be something you specifically performed that makes something your fault. Humans have a nature to requiring a blaming target, which will inevitably be placed. As I said, it may be sympathized that he cannot help killing innocent children, but he is none the less killing innocent children. Do you think that it can be justified because he was born with it, and didn't press the button to go psychopath mode himself?

[Let's say that Joe is a lazy boy. It was in his genes. He failed math because he was too lazy to do his home work. But now, can he just say "I'm just genetically lazy! Give me free marks!"? No. That's how the real world works.]

What the said psychopath villain is doing is, ultimately, evil to the masses, and hence evil as defined by the masses. Whether the situation is a sympathetic one, which you were referring to, is on a separate block - and ultimately does not affect whether the resulting outcome, a.k.a. killing innocent children, is evil or not.

 

[KhaoticErase]

Ah, I know what you're saying.

I wasn't trying to justify the act. Obviously, the ACT of killing children is evil. But is the person performing that act evil? If he believes he hasn't done anything wrong, where is the darkness in his heart? If someone told him what he was actually doing, obviously he'd be shocked and ridden with guilt. He knows it's wrong, but didn't know he was doing it.

Like sleepwalking for example. Let's say you, yes YOU, killed people in your sleep, and had no recollection of it. Would that still make you evil? Of course not, but that doesn't mean the act wasn't evil.

 

[Reives]

Hm? But the villain knows what he is doing is wrong to the masses, yet he cannot help it. He is just born that way. Perhaps not evil to his own beliefs, but evil to the masses - who are the ones that define the term evil to begin with.

As the villain here is the cause of the act, they are connected. It is unfortunate that the villain cannot help it, but ultimately he is the bringer of evil, and hence evil himself. Again, whether he himself is someone to be sympathetic on one level or another about is a separate story.

 

[KhaoticErase]

Precisely. But if they knew that he had this mental disease, then they would NOT think he was evil, maybe even try to get him some help.

I gotta go. I'll talk to you wonderful debaters tomorrow. I feel like a professor. 8)

 

[Reives]

And they do know that he had this mental disease. They cannot do anything about it. By saying that just because he was born that way, it automatically means that it's not his fault that he does wrong things. That basically translates into "pure evil does not exist because when it does, I do not acknowledge it."

It's like saying "Satan's son is not actually an evil being, because he was just born evil. He can't help it." (Just an example, I'm not really religious. :>)

Again, I refer to my post a few posts up - you cannot neglect the possibility that every one who has performed evil acts were mentally unbalanced (relatively) to some degree.

P.S. Yay for debates. Nothing more refreshing on a Saturday night. :> Just so you know, again, I do not intend for any personal offenses. In fact I am having fun.


Edit:

I'll talk to you wonderful debaters tomorrow. I feel like a professor. 8)

Heh, while this is fun, I have to say that your attitude or unintentionally poor choice of wording on this thread, as the above quote for an example, is one of the main sources of critical feedback on this thread. You speak as if you are the ultimate truth-teller, yet you are in the grey area as all of us. Of course you feel that you are right; everyone does due to human ego. But acknowledging that is a sign of maturity that your posts seem to be often lacking - not necessarily intentional, but just for your information.

You know how people get annoyed when someone ignorant keeps bragging on about something, thinking to themselves that they are the saying the best things since Elvis Presley, yet everyone else knows is not necessarily right? Not saying that this is the exact case here, but that's where part of the source of irritation from the general public comes from.

Again, you probably didn't intend it to be so, but just fyi that's how things come out as. Just trying to be helpful for your future posts.

 

[lunarea]

@ Sephiroth7734:

I do think you may have misunderstood my point.

Understanding why someone does something doesn't mean agreeing with it or condoning it. I can (on an abstract and logical level) understand why a certain serial killer murders women. That doesn't mean that I think murdering women is okay, nor that I'll go out tomorrow and murder women.

As such, while I understand the reason behind a villain's action, it doesn't make me think he's suddenly not evil or that what he's doing is okay. He's motivation doesn't excuse his actions.

Good and evil aren't distinguished just by motivation, but also in combination with a choice of action.

Say there's a village that has a rat problem. Joe and Jim want to help rid the village of the rats and make sure that the villagers don't need anything else.
-Joe goes into every house, defeats each rat one by one. He then completes several tasks for the villagers until they feel happy. After the thanks, he merrily goes his way.
-Jim sets fire to the village. This gets rid of all the rats, as well as the villagers needing anything else - they don't since they're dead.

They both had the same motivation, yet one of them would be called a hero, while the other an evil villain.

Morality kicks in here when their individual actions are judged and categorized. As human beings, we are constantly naming, identifying and categorizing the world we live in. And because we're capable of abstract thought, we can name, identify and categorize things that we can't perceive through the 5 senses. The principle of morality is just a way to categorize attitude, behavior, thought and action into two areas: good and bad.

I think everyone will agree that the morality of individual actions is a gray area. Whether things are considered morally acceptable depends on the society (i.e. culture) and the circumstances.

Cannibalism, for example, is considered morally wrong in North America, yet there are tribes in Africa where it's perfectly acceptable. Does that mean that one of them is wrong?
No. It simply means that the societal rules are different, and thus morality is different.

Murder is considered morally undesirable - as demonstrated by the fact that murderers are thrown in prison or executed (depending on the state). However, if you murder someone in self-defense, you walk free. You don't spend decades in jail because your actions were judged to be acceptable within the society.

Because of this, I can see how tempting it must be to say that any action with proper motivation can then be seen as morally acceptable (i.e. good). However, the key factor here is that society is the judge in what's moral and what isn't. It's not a matter of just individual opinion.

A evil villain is an evil villain not simply because of his/her motivations, but because the choices he/she makes are not wanted by the majority of the society they live in - even if their reasoning is understood. They're categorized as evil even if the villain him/herself doesn't think they're wrong. The opinion of the majority is the key.

Taken individually and in different circumstances, the motivation and the action of a villain might be morally acceptable. Wanting a pure world (for example) is an acceptable motivation for a priest to go and preach to the village. Even something as extreme as torching an entire village is acceptable if the villagers are mutant zombies bent on infecting and eating everyone around them.

However, if what the villain is doing or the reason they're doing it are not acceptable, they're quite simply evil - regardless of how they feel about it.

 

[Andy6000]

Let me sum up the counterpoints to sephiroth7734's 'definition' of evil... Majority Rules.

Say you've got 5 judges in a room, a test subject person, and a rabbit. Situation A: the man pets the rabbit (because it's cute), the 5 judges give a thumbs up. Situation B: the man stomps the rabbit(because a rabbit killed his father), the judges give a thumbs down. Situation C: the rabbit tries to bite the man and the man kills the rabbit in self-defense. Three judges thumbs down, two thumbs up.

A and B demonstrate... Reasoning is not important to the judge. The rabbit in situation B was a living being, and the man mercilessly killed it, just because he had been hurt by something similar. The judges think this is evil. They might not even know about the prior history. In situation A the man does the 'normal' thing, he pets the adorable rabbit, maybe gives it a treat, takes it home as a pet. Situation C is the gray area. The two judges that thumbs down say "the rabbit couldn't possibly of killed you, it bit you in the leg because it's scared" while the three others say "the rabbit WANTED to kill you". Who's right? The three judges. Votes go one way because debate will never end, ideally we could debate everything out until everyone agreed to a compromise, as Sephiroth's lovely definition is preaching, but that, I'm afraid, hardly works.

Again, pretty much everything seph keeps saying is basically 'EYE OF THE BEHOLDER'. He won't take a solid viewpoint because it's a leap into the gray, and who knows what's gonna happen there. There could be angry rabbits there! I'd like to just say... Take a side. And hopefully the side of the character perception. The villain is not evil to the man who understands everything, but he is evil to the people that you're writing the game about, and thus should be treated as 'evil'.

Oh also cut down on the pretension man, 'I feel like a professor' is no way to get people to actually respect you, it makes people think you're a pretentious asshole who thinks he knows more than he does.

 

[Zelphien]

Nice little guide, I'll remember this when I make my project. Thanks for the guide! Keep it up!

 

[Reives]

Oh, that reminds me. By the way guys, despite the clash of ideologies, Seph did put a lot of work to this tutorial as a contribution to the community. If I were to have put hours of work into getting something out to try to help others and then get a couple pages of criticisms (of course constructive criticisms are good, but there is always that 'ugh' feeling right? :p), my replies probably would not be in too good of a taste either. So we can cut a bit of slack on Seph's attitude imo. :>

So Seph, again, our criticisms are purely aimed at the mixed opinions on the materials at hand, and nothing personal against you or what so ever. And we indeed do appreciate the work you've put to it. (At least you got the mad bumps eh? 16 pages of posts on a tutorial topic, what the hell. ._.)

 

[Brandonn]

2 things:

If you called this "Sephiroth7734's Villain Guide" or more accurately "Guide to making Sephiroth7734 Style Villains" I think it'd be read with a different perspective. But it would also become a guide of YOUR opinions, and therefore be more generally accepted.

AND - on evil... This may or may not be popular opinion, but, evil is not defined by man, or by the major opinion of many men, but by the creator of the men. In the case of a story, the writer is the character's creator, and regardless of what they think is evil, it's only evil if you say it is. And, may I add, even if your characters don't believe in you, YOU still exist, and YOU still define everything in their world, right?

And if anyone wants to read teh Ultimatzz Guide ta Evils:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil

It's very long, I can't read it now, I'm going to bed...

 

[KhaoticErase]

Andy6000 said VERY VERY close to what I've been trying to say. The only flaw being that the three judges were right just because there were more of them, not because they may or may not have actually been right.

I do not believe that evil is an intangible matter that forms in our hearts when we do something bad. Good and Evil are absolutely nothing but combinations of opinions. And if we intentionally do something bad for no known reason, then it can only be possible one of two ways: a mental disease, or randomness (which according to philosophers and psychologists, doesn't actually exist outside the world of computers).

Here we have Miss Ima Goodlady, living happily in the woods, playing with animals, caring for the forest. How could anyone hate her?

a. Because someone thinks she's afraid of the public.
b. Because someone thinks that animals are evil (due to a past experience) and believes she's as evil as they are for being able to live with them.
c. Because she frolics nude through the woods (there are many people who strongly believe nudity is evil).

There are many reasons one might think even the kindest people are evil, and even though she's actually not, do those opposing beliefs make her evil?

The only people that can truly be classified as evil are fictional characters, even if it's later discovered that they actually are not. Take Golbez from FF4 and Edea from FF8. Even after you find out that they were only being controlled, and had no conscious thought over their actions, the company and fans still classify them as the games' main villains. That's messed up.

(By the way, I know the reasons behind a great deal of characters that a lot of people classify as being "evil-for-the-heck-of-it". If you want to know about a character, go ahead and ask.)

As for Brandonn's point, as long as the creator of the story wants someone to be evil, then they can be evil, cuz hey, it's fiction. Things don't have to make sense. Though if you have things make sense, then the story is more believable. Of course, that same "making sense" may even differ depending on the world you've created.

Like most RPGs. I've said this before, but doesn't anyone but me think it's really weird that the heroes end up murdering even more people than all the villains combined do? Even if it doesn't make sense, it's up to your story's world whether or not it makes sense to the characters in it.

 

[Reives]

I recommend you reading lunarea's post again. About the categorization of evil.

 

[KhaoticErase]

I did read it. Basically, she's saying that making the choice to do something bad is what makes us evil, but only if a lot of other people agree on it.

I don't disagree with the fact that certain actions are commonly considered to be evil. However, look at this scenario:

Boy A meets Boy B.
Boy A finds out that Boy B eats animals.
Boy A tells everyone in the world.
Everyone in the world says that Boy B is evil.
Is Boy B evil? With what you guys have been saying, yes he is.
Boy B's doctor explains to the world that unless he eats animals, he will die.
Everyone in the world understands.
Boy B is "no longer" evil.

You guys are trying to say that if everyone in the world thought that someone was evil, then they are officially and factually evil. Well, if everyone in the world thought that unicorns existed, would that make it true?

Then there's the bit on whether or not the person chooses to do that evil action. A Standard Villain has childhood dreams of ridding the world of crime and death. He meets an old wizard who can grant his wish, but not for free. He's told that if he wishes to make the world a better place, then he must murder a newborn child.

He's got two choices:
A. He kills the baby, officially becomes a "villain", and the world is cleansed of pain and suffering.
B. He doesn't kill the baby, and potentially lets the world suffer by giving up his only chance to make it better.

Think about that. How many times throughout history have people needed to commit heinous acts in order to make the world a better place? Our troops are over in Iraq murdering hundreds of people in order to make their country safe again. I suppose you think that makes them villains, too, eh?

 

[Andy6000]

Boy A meets Boy B.
Boy A finds out that Boy B eats animals.
Boy A tells everyone in the world.
Everyone in the world says that Boy B is evil.
Is Boy B evil? With what you guys have been saying, yes he is.
Boy B's doctor explains to the world that unless he eats animals, he will die.
Everyone in the world understands.
Boy B is "no longer" evil.

You guys are trying to say that if everyone in the world thought that someone was evil, then they are officially and factually evil. Well, if everyone in the world thought that unicorns existed, would that make it true?

Think about that. How many times throughout history have people needed to commit heinous acts in order to make the world a better place? Our troops are over in Iraq murdering hundreds of people in order to make their country safe again. I suppose you think that makes them villains, too, eh?

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING. Does the tree in the forest make a sound when no one is around? Of fucking course it does, it would make no sense if it didn't. But does anyone hear it? Is it recorded? Does it make any effect on anything at all? No, for all intensive purposes, the tree fell silently. The boy eating the animals is the same, the boy eats the animals, the people kill him for being a monster, he's evil. The people may not know, or may not choose to know that the boy had an excuse, so he's forever evil, no matter what God sees, or what the boy sees. Shifting perceptions is a common thing to think about, and I suggest you think about it indeed! What you know, and what you don't know in turn affects what you think you know about anything everywhere.

Oh also about the people in Iraq thing, a lot of people feel the ends don't justify the means. The soldier himself isn't the villain, the people orchestrating the soldiers are the villains. To some people at least.

 

[KhaoticErase]

The people orchestrating the soldiers? So basically, it's Bush that's evil, right? He's not evil, he's just an idiot.

But my scenario was, indeed, based on perception, despite what you may have thought. You may not realize it, but you seem to have come the furthest in understanding my theory.

 

[Reives]

Heheh, to be honest I know why you think of your theory as you do; in fact I think most of us do understand where you are coming from, which is why we are having strong opinions on it. I used to think like you too a year or two back, actually. It's just that mere vocabulary created by humans themselves is such a versatile thing, you cannot stamp it as you've been trying to do. Pure does not necessarily need to be proven pure in every aspect in order to be categorized as so in terms of terminology. Anyhow, this thread is kind of going in a loop now, so it's rather pointless. I suggest we just all let it slide; after all the thread name is now appropriate anyway.

 

[lunarea]

I did read it. Basically, she's saying that making the choice to do something bad is what makes us evil, but only if a lot of other people agree on it.

That's not what I'm saying

I'll post the cliffnotes version if my post is confusing and you're having trouble with it.

 

[KhaoticErase]

Please. And no expressions, metaphors, etc.