listen i ADORE sympathetic and tragic villains, i love antagonists who were pushed to do evil through suffering and loss, i love the ones who genuinely believe they’re doing good whether it be because they’re actually a victim of a Bigger Bad or because their worldview has been twisted by their experiences or because they’re all but possessed with a power that’s far bigger than themself (which COULD all be the same thing, in some scenarios), i love villains who only became villains through a very short series of mistakes that anyone could have made, i love villain stories that highlight the complexity of morality and show Good and Evil as being false ideas or two side of the same coin and things like that…………………….
but you know what i actually love most of all? completely UNsympathetic villains. there’s no backstory, there’s no good reason for what they do, there’s barely even an Explanation other than that they’re just Pure Evil personified. if they have any motive at all it’s just to cause unconditional, unbiased suffering and chaos, and maybe also a lust for power/money. that’s it. that’s my FAVORITE shit.
and i think that it’s bc it’s just so…. Raw. it’s simple. it’s EASY. there’s no complexities to parse through – no one is ever gonna fault you for enjoying villains like that, because no one’s trying to argue that they’re redeemable in any way! we all know that they’re just plain entertaining! in 99% of all cases their very existence is objectively HILARIOUS because it’s like, man, they’re really doing ALL THIS just for the drama of it all? iconic.
it’s great because it literally never happens in real life, either. partially bc 9 times out of 10 these kinda villains are supernaturally powerful in some way or other (if they’re even human at all – the only examples i can think of are not), but mostly because in real life, everyone has motives. no one person could truly be an agent of raw chaos the way that villains like this are. it’s just cartoonish. it’s a caricature. and it’s SO fun.
there’s never any essays to write about those villains, but i think
we ALL enjoy them. in fact, they’re almost comforting? they’re what we WISH evil was. they rarely target specific groups of people. that is, they’re almost never actually misogynistic, or racist, or homophobic (aside from how they’re often queercoded) – they’re completely indiscriminate. they most often view EVERYONE other than themself as inferior. wastes of space, or tools, or playthings. there’s no Group that they aim to uplift while they push the rest down – they just want to be the ONE person above it all, and/or already believe themself to be so.
if that’s what evil was in real life, we wouldn’t ever really have to do any self-reflection of our own actions. and we obviously SHOULD do that, so that’s why complex villains are very important, but we also need an escape! we don’t WANT to believe that we could have the capacity to do evil things.
because IF that’s what evil was in real life, it would also be a lot rarer, and it would be easier to squash or at least keep at bay. and at the same time, it would be more respectable tbh? in-universe for virtually any story with a villain like this, it’s undoubtedly (and ironically) the reason that those villains almost never actually get destroyed entirely – the heroes, whether they say so or not, hold an attitude of “damn, you’re one sick son of a bitch, but i sure do love seeing every new terrible thing you come up with.”
and that’s…. that’s just it. that’s the trope. it’s a complete trope with no unsavory connections to real-life atrocities, because it’s just a caricaturized idea of a psychopath topped with a cool outfit, often some kind of niche theme, and USUALLY……. a lot of overtly gay energy, too, which i enjoy very much in spite of the homophobic implications of queercoding villains because i just CANNOT resist those dramatic gay bitches.
not to mention they’re VERY inherently sexy, thanks for coming to my ted talk
It’s seventh year and Dorcas notices Lily casting more than friendly looks at James Potter across the Gryffindor Common Room.
((OOC: Where do I even start when talking about my appreciation for Joanna! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this short thread with me, you sweet deer!))
write write write 