[ SECRET POST #2283 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2283 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #326.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Couldn't disagree with this more. Humans are complex creatures. There's no way to have a well written villain who doesn't have some kind of complexity! Even the "just plain evil" ones are usually crazy. You can't be sane and "just plain evil." You have to have some kind of mental illness, because healthy humans have empathy. Crazy/mental illness is a kind of complexity, and it makes them sympathetic in a way, whether you like it or not. Look at the biggest villains in actual history. Hitler for instance. He thought he was doing the greater good for his people. That makes him "sympathetic" or, perhaps even "misunderstood" (he was wrong, but he didn't FEEL wrong) but this doesn't make him lame as a villain. He's still one of the most horribly evil villains ever.
When it comes to non-human villains, you can get away with excuses for them being less complex and it still working for their species. Their species might not be "naturally" empathetic like humans are. But as humans are the AUDIENCE taking them in, it's the relationship (or rather, lack thereof) to human empathy that makes them "evil" in the audience's perception in the first place, so it's still a very important factor.
Characters need depth! If they're villains because they're crazy/sociopathic/sadistic, that's still depth. They don't need a weepy sob story about how no one loved them to excuse it, they COULD just have a mental illness (sociopaths, delusions of grandeur/superiorism), but it's still a complexity!

[(Anonymous)]

I strongly disagree. I think that human beings as a species are complex, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every person within that species is necessarily complex; or at least doesn't mean that they're complex in the way you mean - human beings are layered, certainly.

I also think that you can have villains who don't necessarily have a mental illness or a weepy sob story - you can have villains who are just mean, vicious people. And I think that's accurate to reality. I think you can have villains who just don't have depth, who are just boring people, and I think that's accurate to reality.

In fact, looking at the Nazi analogy, Hannah Arendt argued at great length that the Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann was precisely that - that he was someone who was an evil man who was also, basically, a deeply boring person with no strongly evil will and no mental illness - that he was essentially a perfectly normal, boring, thoughtless, banal bureaucrat who happened to be partly responsible for one of the most evil things that has ever happened. And whether or not you agree with her account of Eichmann, I think the basic plausibility of her account indicates that this is at least something conceivable - and I think it's both interesting and frightening.

You might say that even such a boredom is a complexity, and you might be right. I don't think complexity in and of itself matters to me. What I'm trying to say is that I think you can have villains who do not have a sympathetic background or a mental illness or any conception that what they are doing is for the greater good, and that this is pretty realistic and an accurate reflection of human life.

[(Anonymous)]

(DA)
It's pretty much a fact that none of the IRL big "villains" actually SEE themselves as a villain. Hitler, Al-Qaida, etc. They are never like "I'm doing this because I'm so evil dur hur!"
The closest thing to resemble someone with a mindset like that (without mental illness) are bullies. Because as far as I know they just like to torment someone because it makes them feel bigger and better but they fully know they are being assholes.