Rooting for the bad guy in fiction is one thing, but with anti-heroes I often can't figure out who the villain is.Russ Pitts said:Editor's Note: Anti/Villain
Russ Pitts roots for the bad guys. Don?t you?
Yup, it does - but a benevolent dictator who only takes away freedom to improve living quality is an exception, not a rule. Let's face it: even in our post-post-modernism age you've so appropriately mentioned, the bulk of villains (over 50%, i'd say) don't have any "higher idea" - they just want to conquer and then rule shit. Those who do have that sort of idea though are true anti-villains.The Random One said:The idea of a benevolent dictatorship exists, although only in theory.
I should probably quote George Orwell here and say: "man cannot live by hedonism alone". Well, i can't, at least.Or it could be Brave New World. Yeah, probably this one.
Well written and thought out antagonists are great, in fact here's a like to a couple of them. Some of the villains start out very poorly written, but become greater than their stories.kementari said:I've always preferred a well-written antagonist to any other variety of character archetype. Well thought, and well said.
It's this right here which makes me afraid of going insane. As a teen, it chilled me to think just how easily I could manipulate people to my own ends if I were to destroy my own "Bubba." Thankfully I realize to do that, though, would be to destroy a part of myself, and that's something I cannot do. Hopefully, that will never change.Remove just the right mental check and/or balance and suddenly it doesn't really matter what other people think of you. It doesn't matter who you hurt or what you destroy. Clear your mind of all existential angst and suddenly the difference between right and wrong recalibrates - what is right is what you want right to be, and what is wrong is anything that stands in the way of that.
Getting stuff done is considerably easier in fiction than in real life.Blue-State said:It is pretty impressive how villains manage to get shit done even when they lose. In the Bond films, the opening sequence is usually about them tying up some lose end. The only flaw is that they can't find a way to do it without getting MI6 involved. It occurs to me that if these people had put as much attention into "public relations" (bribery) as they did into super-lasers, Bond would be working for them. I see all these evil plans get developed so smoothly then I remember the healthcare debate and I feel like crying. Why can't the goodies get shit done?