A rant about the (mis)handling of villain backstories...
This article is something I came up with as a prelude to my next sporking job, which should be going up in due course.
Now, I'm not the kind of person who thinks villains should never have sympathetic backstories or relatable motivations. In fact, I'm actually kind of a sucker for previously-unsympathetic villains revealing facets of their pasts that force me to see them in a whole new way.
HOWEVER, it seems like most fans (and even, for that matter, many creators of villains) don't actually know or care what goes into making something like that work. So, for what it's worth...
First of all, just any backstory isn't going to make me like or sympathize with a villain any more than I already did. A lot of people I've encountered seem to think that the way to give villains depth is basically to make it so it isn't their fault they're evil, what TVTropes labels Cry for the Devil. But this isn't true. There's lots of other ways to keep a villain interesting. Tatsumi from "Shiki" has no sympathetic backstory we get to see (at least not in the anime) and is still one of the most compelling bad guys I've ever encountered. Furthermore, what a lot of people miss about Cry for the Devil is that to pull it off, you need to basically drop everything else you're doing with that villain (at least for the time being) to sell, sell, sell his sympathetic backstory. In effect, it has to be a backstory so convincing that THE AUDIENCE COULD SEE THEMSELVES being similarly broken by such an experience, WITHOUT having to reach for the cliche "I'm an emo" qualifier.
To cite an example, take Mao from "Code Geass," who was one of my favorite bad guys for quite some time. Now, Mao can read minds, and he uses this ability to do some pretty awful things, including convincing one of protagonist Lelouch's friends that she should kill him and herself (it makes sense in context). I had no sympathy for him at all, until I learned about his backstory: apparently he was given the mind-reading powers at the age of SIX, but he quickly lost the ability to control them, meaning he had to hear the thoughts of everyone who came near, constantly, whether he wanted to or not, with no way of stopping it except by avoiding human contact altogether. As a result, he spent most of his life sheltered from other people, and when he had to go among them again, the voices he constantly heard drove him insane. A bit more complicated than that, but that's basically the deal. It isn't Mao's fault he's a bad guy because just about anyone who had to go through what he did would likely either go insane or commit suicide, or both.
Now, this is not to say that EVERY bad guy HAS to have a backstory quite like this one. Some villains I honestly think are better off without them. But, if you're going to give your villain a backstory and have us really buy into it, you have to go all the way--you can't half-ass it. Don't just come up with some cliche "mother died and father disappeared, so I became evil," or "parents beat me every day, so I became evil" and think you've created a sympathetic villain with depth. Remember: you have to get the audience to sympathize with someone who's doing things they have every reason to think are horrible.
Here's the other thing which I think fandom has a hard time getting their heads around, and that's that even the most sympathetic backstory does not absolve a villain of blame. There's a difference--a BIG difference--between "it's not his fault he's evil" and "he shouldn't be blamed for the evil he does in fact commit." Even some professional storytellers have an issue with this, I think.
But this is really the central problem with the fanfic I'll be sporking next. Apparently we're supposed to think it's okay that Cyrus wants to rewrite the universe and rape Dawn on the side, because he had a crappy childhood. Oh, sure, he lets up on both of those ideas eventually, but the fact remains that we're supposed to think of him as less of a bad guy because he had a crappy childhood. No, really--the story at one point says this in particular. And that idea is deeply offensive and dangerous and stupid. Anime, for the record, has TONS of villains with Freudian excuses of one kind or another. Think of how nonsensical it would be if every villain with a Freudian excuse were let off the hook for his evil deeds.
You wanna argue that Rezo the Red Priest from "Slayers" shouldn't be blamed for releasing Demon Lord Shabranigdo because he was unhappy about being blind?
You wanna argue that Legato Bluesummers from "Trigun" shouldn't be blamed for being a mass-murderer and CANNIBAL who plans to wipe out humanity because he was sexually abused as a child (granted, by just about everyone he encountered, but STILL)?
Hell, the anime "Dragon-Half" even included a joke about this with Princess Vina, who argued that she "deserved" to win the heart of a sexy swordsman and pop star named Dick Saucer because she was part-slime creature and her mother was dead.Plus, this kind of behavior gives people who just want to enjoy the bad guys and the bits of them that make them more sympathetic and fleshed-out a bad name.
Now, I'm not the kind of person who thinks villains should never have sympathetic backstories or relatable motivations. In fact, I'm actually kind of a sucker for previously-unsympathetic villains revealing facets of their pasts that force me to see them in a whole new way.
HOWEVER, it seems like most fans (and even, for that matter, many creators of villains) don't actually know or care what goes into making something like that work. So, for what it's worth...
First of all, just any backstory isn't going to make me like or sympathize with a villain any more than I already did. A lot of people I've encountered seem to think that the way to give villains depth is basically to make it so it isn't their fault they're evil, what TVTropes labels Cry for the Devil. But this isn't true. There's lots of other ways to keep a villain interesting. Tatsumi from "Shiki" has no sympathetic backstory we get to see (at least not in the anime) and is still one of the most compelling bad guys I've ever encountered. Furthermore, what a lot of people miss about Cry for the Devil is that to pull it off, you need to basically drop everything else you're doing with that villain (at least for the time being) to sell, sell, sell his sympathetic backstory. In effect, it has to be a backstory so convincing that THE AUDIENCE COULD SEE THEMSELVES being similarly broken by such an experience, WITHOUT having to reach for the cliche "I'm an emo" qualifier.
To cite an example, take Mao from "Code Geass," who was one of my favorite bad guys for quite some time. Now, Mao can read minds, and he uses this ability to do some pretty awful things, including convincing one of protagonist Lelouch's friends that she should kill him and herself (it makes sense in context). I had no sympathy for him at all, until I learned about his backstory: apparently he was given the mind-reading powers at the age of SIX, but he quickly lost the ability to control them, meaning he had to hear the thoughts of everyone who came near, constantly, whether he wanted to or not, with no way of stopping it except by avoiding human contact altogether. As a result, he spent most of his life sheltered from other people, and when he had to go among them again, the voices he constantly heard drove him insane. A bit more complicated than that, but that's basically the deal. It isn't Mao's fault he's a bad guy because just about anyone who had to go through what he did would likely either go insane or commit suicide, or both.
Now, this is not to say that EVERY bad guy HAS to have a backstory quite like this one. Some villains I honestly think are better off without them. But, if you're going to give your villain a backstory and have us really buy into it, you have to go all the way--you can't half-ass it. Don't just come up with some cliche "mother died and father disappeared, so I became evil," or "parents beat me every day, so I became evil" and think you've created a sympathetic villain with depth. Remember: you have to get the audience to sympathize with someone who's doing things they have every reason to think are horrible.
Here's the other thing which I think fandom has a hard time getting their heads around, and that's that even the most sympathetic backstory does not absolve a villain of blame. There's a difference--a BIG difference--between "it's not his fault he's evil" and "he shouldn't be blamed for the evil he does in fact commit." Even some professional storytellers have an issue with this, I think.
But this is really the central problem with the fanfic I'll be sporking next. Apparently we're supposed to think it's okay that Cyrus wants to rewrite the universe and rape Dawn on the side, because he had a crappy childhood. Oh, sure, he lets up on both of those ideas eventually, but the fact remains that we're supposed to think of him as less of a bad guy because he had a crappy childhood. No, really--the story at one point says this in particular. And that idea is deeply offensive and dangerous and stupid. Anime, for the record, has TONS of villains with Freudian excuses of one kind or another. Think of how nonsensical it would be if every villain with a Freudian excuse were let off the hook for his evil deeds.
You wanna argue that Rezo the Red Priest from "Slayers" shouldn't be blamed for releasing Demon Lord Shabranigdo because he was unhappy about being blind?
You wanna argue that Legato Bluesummers from "Trigun" shouldn't be blamed for being a mass-murderer and CANNIBAL who plans to wipe out humanity because he was sexually abused as a child (granted, by just about everyone he encountered, but STILL)?
Hell, the anime "Dragon-Half" even included a joke about this with Princess Vina, who argued that she "deserved" to win the heart of a sexy swordsman and pop star named Dick Saucer because she was part-slime creature and her mother was dead.Plus, this kind of behavior gives people who just want to enjoy the bad guys and the bits of them that make them more sympathetic and fleshed-out a bad name.