round table discussion: villains!

[sageness]

Several people seconded an off-handed mention of doing a post on writing villains -- and LOTS of us are doing either Due South Seekrit Santa and/or Yuletide this holiday season, so this is hopefully a very timely and relevant post. Feel free to pimp this far and wide because I'd love to get a good range of discussion going in the comments

Comments

[_scally]

>What characters still creep you out, months or years later? Why?

Well...Warfield. Sometimes I compare him with Frank Zuko. But Zuko is more like an evil spoilt child. Warfield reminds me of and old crocodile. I feel disqust when I see him. A real physical disgust. The way he treats everyone shows how cruel he is, but he accepts his cruelty as a perfectly normal thing. He enjoys seeing other people humiliated and distressed. And he is ready to kill or cripple anyone to satisfy his need for domination. Thtat's very scary, you know.

Part the first

[etcetera_cat]

I've hardly ever written about 'bad guys' and had them play a major role in the story-- mainly because of the difficulties that you've highlighted in this post. I think gender does play a very important part, quite apart from the memorable-villian gender bias you've noted occurs in dS, I think that gender also has an affect on the crimes themselves

Part the second

[etcetera_cat]

As much as I love the almost graphic bold style of villains such as Jack Nicholson's Joker (*takes a moment to draw demented sparkly hearts around that film*), I think that villains like that are very, well graphic. They're portrayed in pictures that are all black lines and blocks of colour, and they may be complex and fascinating as characters, but they are still, essentially two dimensional in certain ways. People that are bad, that have done (or are doing, during the course of a story) awful, awful things, and yet are recognisable as messy, confusing, imperfect and ordinary people are the villains that I personally find the most engaging and the most disturbing.

I also have a huge affinity for the ambiguous characters-- the anti-heroes and the characters that do awful things for 'good' reasons. The easiest one that I can think of for this is the title figure of J. O'Barr's The Crow. Eric is just the most fascinating and engaging person. He's callous and violent and has absolutely no compunction about causing terrible harm to

[janey_27]

I think the some of best villains are the ones that you actually quite like, no matter how dispicable what they are doing is. You know, those smooth ones that could charm their way out of anything. Iago from Othello (particularly Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of him), for example, Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, Spike in the earlier series of Buffy, or John Simm as the Master in new Dr Who, or the villains in American Gods (dont want to post spoilers). They are always fun to watch, and often there's an added degree of uncomfortableness for an audience or reader then as well, since you find yourself willing their evil plans to succeed. Also, I tend to like it when a former good guy becomes a villain for one reason or other - like Methos in Highlander the Series, or Angel and Willow in Buffy. It makes things much harder for the hero, and it can be both horrible and exciting to watch characters you love and care about being so mean. You can do things with that format in fanfic to great effect, I think

[akite]

My best villain to date in writing Due South has been a guy nicknamed, The Loon from Saskatoon. He counterfeited Canadian Tire discount coupons, trying to bring down the company because he was fired. The fact that he was doing this from Chicago for no apparent reason was a bit of weak writing on my part, I'll admit.

Memorable villains, that's one reason I won't watch certain CKR movies, I'm too scared it will color the way I feel about him as an actor. I hated Bruce Dern for years because he played characters that killed the hero in two movies, The Cowboys and the 1970s version of The Great Gatsby, the one with Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby. I wouldn't watch a movie if Bruce Dern was in it. Matt Fewer still creeps me out when I'm watching Eureka because of a character he played in the Cinderella episodes of Di Vinci's Inquest. I still shiver when I think about it. CKR playing Leoben doesn't creep me out, though because I have sympathy for the Cylons. Some of Leoben's methods bother me, but it doesn't color the way I see Callum.

[malnpudl]

I know what you mean about actors and their roles. I still can't watch -- whatshername, the woman who played Victoria -- in anything else without my guts immediately going into OMG HATE!!! mode. I'm sure she's a lovely person, but... it'll take a lot to get me past that.

[hurry_sundown]

Huh. I'm more affected by an actor's RL behavior than by the roles they play. I won't watch Mel Gibson in anything, ditto Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. And I'm having a hard time thinking of a villain who still creeps me out after the fact.

Whatshername? *g* Melina Kanakaredes - I met her a couple of times waaaay back in the day (I went to grad school with her sister), and she was remarkably lovely, both in appearance and in personality.

[malnpudl]

I can appreciate that. I used to love Mel Gibson's movies, but since his publicly poisonous debacle, the thought of him sort of turns my stomach and I haven't watched any of his stuff since.

But for the most part, characters are much more "real" to me than the actors are -- in that I've been given the opportunity through a movie or TV show to intimately know a character in a way that's rarely possible with the actor playing the part (nor, generally, do I want it to be). So unless an actor does something truly deplorable or mortifying in a very public way, I'm not likely to have nearly as strong feelings about him or her as I do about the characters s/he plays.

[malnpudl]

I don't think I've ever tried to write a villain. The closest I came was writing a really ugly crime scene in an NCIS fic where the details of the crime gradually revealed a few things about who might have committed the murders and why... but it was a character study rather than a plotty piece, so I never actually had to follow through on it. (To my considerable relief, because the thought intimidated the hell out of me.)

The villains I find most interesting are the ones who have a clear motive of their own that is not explicitly "evil" -- something they want to accomplish that will serve their purpose and help them reach some goal -- and who certainly don't perceive themselves as "evil". They have their own lives, they have dimension beyond just being "bad" and they don't revel in behaving badly or being cruel or vicious. They just want what they want, and are willing to do what it takes to get it... even when it's outside the law. To me, this sort of character is more believable and three-dimensional and therefore in some ways more

[keerawa]

They just want what they want, and are willing to do what it takes to get it... even when it's outside the law.
Agreed! That is the very best sort of villain. One who, in another context, could be admirable.