The bad boy character trope as antagonist?

You know those type of character. The brooding ones, usually sarcastic, often assholes to everyone... and yet they are a fan's favourite. Usually they have some tragic backstory that somehow makes them more sympathetic. They tend to have a soft side so that makes them more human.

But what about making such characters into the antagonist? To call out bad behaviour for being abusive or just making them irredeemable?

I have been toying with this idea, but I am unsure of how to execute it. What do you all think? Does anyone have any tips, ideas, advice?

 

I think it's definitely worth doing, but you'd need to be careful because readers, especially in some genres, are so conditioned to forgive the Bad Boy they may end up identifying with him and then resent you turning him into the antagonist. I think you'd need to figure out a way to telegraph it fairly quickly that readers shouldn't be thinking of this guy as a misunderstood, brooding hero... they need to realize he's a villain.

 

I think you just described Negan on The Walking Dead.

 

God yes, please do it.

I'm sick of asshole characters...

Making them cool makes idiots try to emulate them, and the last thing the world needs is another asshole who thinks he's cool.

 

Ok, first we need to be clear about what people like about bad boy types before we go any further.

It's easy to say they are cool, but why? Because they don't care what you think, they are going to do what they want to do. And that's something very core to being cool. This also gives them a very strong sense of agency. They are not characters stuck in their lives, they are strongly self-actualized. That doesn't mean they are successful in a traditional sense but they know what they want and they go get it. On top of that they have an air of danger, which is really sexy. They aren't psychopaths, they just give you the feeling that something could happen and as someone close to them you get a little frisson of excitement to be on the edge of that. And of course they are typically funny, or at least clever (in fiction anyway, most real bad boys don't quite fill all of this). As a viewer you can kinda appreciate the fact that they are a kinda flawed genius because you see them being sarcastic and engaging and fun too. And this is typically what holds them back from achieving everything they want; we see that the really could do this job amazingly, or run a business or do whatever they want; but the people standing between them and what they want to do don't know them like we the audience do. They just see some asshole and say no. And that does give them some real sympathy. Because the world often doesn't treat them the way that we the audience feel they deserve. We know they aren't bad guys, we know they could be a lot more and no-one gave them a chance. And oh look now the audience sounds like a 17 year old girl mooning over her first crush.

So there's a lot packed into this kind of character. And I agree that I don't like them that much. They aren't really written to be real characters, they are written for the audience to appreciate, especially the bitchy, funny, sarcastic ones. The audience laughs, but no-one in the scene does. So how do we handle this to make this kind of archetype into someone that the audience wants to see as villainous?

Well, first off you need to make him more like a real bad boy instead of like a trope. He can't be all of funny and clever and physically capable. He needs to lack one of them. He might still think that he is, say, the funniest guy around, but he needs not to be. Having one side of his character fall flat will make him a lot less likeable, especially if he then props up that side of his ego with threats or similar. If he get angry (and potentially violent) when people don't laugh at his jokes then he really won't be sympathetic. You'll be giving him a streak of personal inadequacy, a sense of frustration and a crack in his facade.

Secondly; you can't let him just give off the sense of danger. He needs to be legitimately dangerous, frequently and obviously so. The kind of guy who can't go out without getting into a fight, and extra points here if he really can't fight and always gets his ass kicked and spends forever complaining how he got sucker punched. But you need to make sure that the audience sees him as the bad kind of dangerous. As volatile and weird and hair triggered and he can't really control that. That makes him a thousand times less sexy. There's plenty of women in the world who like to see their man win a fight; that's the kind of dangerous that is sexy. But it's not sexy if it's not controlled, if that streak of danger can just as easily be pointed at you even though you're his partner.

And to draw this all together; I'd write him so that he starts out looking like a normal bad boy, and then he slips into being terrifying at a critical moment and you break the audiences heart. Make them start to like him, then have him hit his girlfriend in front of people; something like that. Something that's just totally unforgivable, that can't be excused by saying he's misunderstood or has a few issues. And, well, some readers will always like him anyway even seeing him as he is; but to be honest if your readers form a weird abusive relationship with your character then you can't have done too much wrong.

Show them that everything they think is good about him is malevolent. He's not this confident self assured bad boy; he's some frustrated, inadequate poser.

A bad boy never says "One day I'll show them all!". And that's why you need to make him be the kind of guy who would say that. That's where he crosses into being a villain.

 

Yeah. You need to make him do something utterly unforgivable.

A hero wins in a fair fight. An anti-hero can shoot first, or even shoot someone in the back. A villain goes way further than that. They don't just start the shit, they do it for bad reasons too. And you need that moment when he does jump the fence to be a hard gut punch for the audience. When he reveals his true nature you can't leave some grey area there. You can't give the implication that there was a misunderstanding or he had a good reason.

Think back to Han Solo and Greebo in the bar in the first Star Wars. In the original cut Han shoots Greebo first; and that's actually how it should be. Because Han is a bad boy and an anti hero. But we know why Greebo is there. Greebo is an emissary of the real villain. And Han knows this guy is going to try to kill him, and he gets the first shot off. Because fair fights are for suckers, and we love him for that. But imagine if Greebo didn't work for Jabba The Hutt. Imagine if Greebo was just some dude that Han worked with before who happens to be in the same bar. Greebo says hi, hows it going, man I heard you had some trouble with Jabba... And then Han shoots him fucking dead. Just totally overreacts to the a situation where we didn't think he was in danger, this guy has nothing to do with what's happening.

The best example I can think of is in (I think; correct me if I'm wrong) Shane. The old cowboy movie. In that movie we see the antagonist do, well, properly antagonistic things. The scene I'm thinking of is when there's some guy who gave him some minor slight. And he throws a gun at the guys feet and tells him to pick it up. And the guys terrified and eventually he does pick it up. And the bad guy shoots him and says "You all saw it, he had a gun". That's pure fucking villainy. You can't misconstrue that. And it's that kind of thing that you need to make your bad boy do to make him into an irredeemable asshole. He needs to hurt (or kill) people just because he can. Because it makes him feel like a big man.

Alex in A Clockwork Orange is a good example of how blurry the line can be. Alex is a villain. But we kinda like his character. He's clever and charming and handsome. And even seeing him being a rapist and a violent bastard and even a murderer; that doesn't quite take away his charm. Because when he and his droogs are out for a bit of the old ultraviolence they are having fun. And that's maybe not a good reason to steal and rob and rape. But it makes sense to his character. He doesn't see himself as doing anything wrong. He is taking what he wants. And yes, he is villainous, but he never becomes just an outright villain because he has swagger and charm. When he kills that woman, she's not a nice woman and he smacks her with a giant porcelain cock. And that's all very Freudian, but it takes the sting out of it because, well, how can you not laugh? So you have to push really hard to make sure that the audience looses sympathy from him.

He needs, for want of a better phrase, the cold dead eyes of a killer. He doesn't even have fun hurting people. He hurts people because he can.

 

I'm thinking of a teen movie with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg that played with this idea. Mark Wahlberg was hot at the time, the start of the movie set it up like he was a standard "bad boy" and Reese Witherspoon was the good girl he was going to save from her boring world... but then it turned out he was well and truly BAD.

I can't remember what it was called or if it was well done, but I remember that much of the storyline, at least. Might be worth a look.

 

I think the movie you're talking about is just called Fear. I haven't seen it but the trailer is kinda useful for this discussion I think:

 

Do you watch Stranger Things? I think Billy's character is a good example of this. I think the others are right, to make him a villain his bad deeds have to outweigh the sympathy we have for his background.

 

Honestly I think you have to go further than that. Yes, to some degree it'd be possible to have the weight of his bad deeds be too much to really like him, but if the audience can still kinda paint him as "Really he didn't have a chance" then he won't be a villain. If you give him that sense that he's still a bit sympathetic then people will keep that. You need to snap that sympathy so the second we see him for real there's just no way you can sympathize with him.

 

I have kinda been working on the presumption that we weren't talking about romance, because honestly it's hard to have a true antagonist in that sense. Yes, there are assholes and ex-boyfriends but at the same time what does it really mean to be a romantic antagonist? Someone that you aren't into who is still pressing the issue? I mean, yes, to some extent, but that's a different story strand IMHO; you have the actual romance that is going to work out and you have the other guy who is stalking you. The antagonist can't really stop you falling for the guy you really want unless he's going to kill or threaten or something that makes him a legit villain anyway. You could have a bad boy ex that the MC is still kinda into but knows is bad for her, you could have a bad boy who tempts her away from her true love when they go through a rough patch, and you could have a bad boy who starts out seeming like what she wants but later transpires not to be. But all those experiences aren't antagonistic, as such, they are the bad boy doing what is understandable for him to do. In a romance the MC can't really 'overcome' the guy they aren't destined to be with unless they are somehow abusive. Getting away from that guy might be good for the character, might help them grow and figure out what they want, but they still have to meet Mr Right anyway. Even in situations where the MC meets her soul mate while she is still married/attached/has someone in her life and the story is about the travails of her getting out of her present life to be with them her original bloke isn't an enemy to be fought and beaten and overcome, he's just someone who doesn't make her happy and it's sad that he can't and it's hard to just leave and break his heart but he's not an antagonist, he's just not in perfect alignment with the MC's goals and that's not the same thing.

So I assumed that we were talking about a different kind of story, maybe a romantic sub plot, but not just a straight romance, because it almost answers itself how to make the cool bad boy an antagonist; make him a controlling, abusive asshole. That's how he can be an antagonist, because he can somehow force her to stay (or whatever). But I definitely got the impression that we were talking about a non-romantic story where the bad boy type character will be the plot antagonist in a different kind of story.

 

I thought bad boys were the antagonists. I agree with @LostThePlot that you need to make this character do something truly awful near the beginning of your story. Being mean isn't as cool as it used to be. I think bad boys are losing their edge. You know what bad boys are doing now? Getting an MFA in poetry. No joke. Times have changed.

 

It depends how bad we are talking about and what kind of book.

Wrapped up in the bad boy concept is a sense of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism; they are rugged individualists who do what they want. These days they don't necessarily have to be wearing a leather jacket and aviators, but that kind of characters always straddled the line. The reason why anti-heroes as a whole exist is because it's a kind of wish fulfillment for a lot of people. They wish they had the stones to just tell people to fuck off so they can do their own stuff. And, for a lot of women, they wish that they could find a guy who was just a bit wild; exciting and passionate and interesting and doesn't follow the rules. And this type of character isn't just a romantic thing; it's one we see all over the place. Not quite as a whole, but shades of it. We see maverick detectives who don't take any shit and bend the rules to catch the bad guy, for example, a quintessential kind of anti-hero.

It really depends how the story is framed as to if this kind of behavior is seen as good or bad, but a lot of the time even if the main character is forever cleaning up the bad boys mess and hates that he's such a jerk, the reader will often sympathize with him over the main character. Not because he's doing the right thing all time; in fact because he's not doing the right thing all the time. Because he's stepping outside the lines that most people live their lives inside whether they want to or not. A bad boy is a risk taker, and is capable and driven and gets what he wants. What's not to like?

And seriously, times haven't changed that much. Schoolgirls will forever swoon over the older boy with a motorbike; the guy in a band; someone who can take them new places and be exciting and interesting. And of course it's very flattering if someone like that falls for little old you. The exact form of what constitutes a bad boy changes a bit over time. When I was a teenager the bad boys were long haired metal heads with guitars and booze and drugs who didn't give a shit. Today's bad boys don't look like that. But they are always out there.

And as for poetry; think for a second about the sexy poets of yore. Brooding, intense, driven, passionate... And Byronic? Byron and Shelly were sex symbols! Because they were intense and weird and interesting and didn't give a shit what anyone thought of them. There's poets like that today, and painters and musicians, and business moguls too, and all kinds of people that fit that mold. You can totally be a bad boy with an MA in poetry today. But you always could be. The only thing that a bad boy really needs is something to be passionate about, and a casual disregard for the rules.

 

I thought the whole thing about being a 'Bad Boy' was to be an aloof asshole.
That in and of itself is not set to a specific type of man, but can be potentially
any man. Though it is pretty cliche in reality too. So I am failing to see
where you are reinventing the steel, so to say.

I am missing something here, and would like to better understand what it is
you are trying to convey out of this. Thanks.

 

My take was that they were annoyed to see audiences fawn over bad boy characters, even when they were definitely not the good guy in a work and wanted to think about ways to still have bad boy type characters but get a more negative result from the audience. The problem I think is that they see works where people are more interested in the villain than the hero, and wanted to create something where the villain would actually be villainous instead of stealing the show and having people root for him.

Think about Hannibal Lector as a perfect example of this. The audience love him so damn much that he totally took over the books that he was in. People don't even really remember the bad guy in Silence Of The Lambs, they just care about Hannibal. And that got to the point where Hannibal not only escapes but runs off with Clarice in the last book! Even tearing some dudes face off wasn't enough to make people not like him, even though he was just some poor schlub who got in Hannibal's way. And that is the power of the 'bad boy'. Because seriously, killing and eating people, and removing their faces and so forth really should make you the bad guy. And, ok in the Lector books it's not so bad because he's clearly the focus anyway, but in lots of other properties the bad boy is instantly the fan favorite to the point that it twists the story telling and stops you being able to tell the stories you want.

Say you're writing a book and the bad guy is literally Hitler. And when you're writing you think "Yeah, fuck this guy!" and make sure that the heroes get to mutilate him in the final confrontation. But then other people read the book and go "But Hitler was my favorite bit!" and "Hitler should have his own book". And that's a bit... If the audience for whatever reason just gloms onto a character in the wrong way then the emotion in your story is just going to fall flat. And so you need to make your bad boy actually bad, just to make sure that people react how you want them to.

 

I feel like a lot of "bad boy" characters have a lot going for them. A lot of the time they have clearly defined morals they believe in, they're attractive physically, they have some sort of skill that they are hyper competent with, they have friends that are loyal to them, which signals to the reader that they are deserving of loyalty. They clearly say what they are about, and when other people wish them to do something different or better, they stick to what they said, unless the change comes from inside.

Bad boy characters are practically role models.

When you take a bad boy and strip him of his redeeming qualities - make him ugly, unskilled, friendless, with wishy washy morals or craven desires - he's not really a "bad boy" any more - he's a "bad man."

 

Yeah, I think that's a fair point.

In a sense the 'bad boy' character isn't bad at all, he's just rebellious enough to be attractive. In a very real sense he's bad only to the parents of the girls he's trying to chat up. Even if he does get into real scrapes it's seldom for things that you would count against him on a personal level. Men and boys sometimes fight, and sometimes they win. And kicking the crap out of someone who was bullying your friend isn't something bad even if it gets you in trouble, even if it gets you arrested. Even the more extreme kinds of 'bad boys' who are gangsters or drug dealers or whatever, even then what we see of them is seldom really bad. They are tough and rugged and strong and break the rules to get what they want; not bad things per se. Even when they are involved in violence it tends to be couched in ways that are personally (if not legally) defensible. Their friends might be really terrible, but the bad boy of course has their back. The actual cause of a fight or a gang war might be something petty and stupid and awful but for this kind of character he's there out of loyalty. And one of the things that modern literature shows us is that, fundamentally, you can make any character sympathetic as long as they have a laudable reason in their own mind to do bad things (well, not quite, as some of my work proves but even so...).

And I think you do have a good point here, which meshes in with what I was saying earlier. You don't quite have to make him some hunchbacked evildoer. But you do need to strip him of at least some of those things that make him seem so laudable. If he's the one that's causing these petty squabbles to turn violent then he won't be likable. If he lacks that sense of loyalty to him and lets his friends get whats coming to them; or if instead of breaking the rules to pursue what he believes to be right he does it just for selfish reasons; then he'll stop being quite so alluring.

I still like the idea of straddling the line between the two though. I think there's interesting things you can do there to show flashes of who he really is and challenging both the characters and the readers sense of attraction to him. That's the kind of thing I like doing in my work; asking the reader if they are ok with this still and pushing them to ask themselves what the problem is; after all they knew he was a bad boy so why do they care when he's bad?

But yes, you are right. A bad boy is, on the face of it, an anti-hero. Whatever his badness he'll always have 'diamond in the rough' to him. He's not even bad. And that's why we like him. Because while he might break laws or even break bones; these are things that we present to children as being just utterly bad. As adults (and even as older kids) we know that sometimes breaking the rules is the right thing to do. We know that sometimes it's the right thing to do to hit someone. And thus he's not bad and thus he's not a villain.

 

@LostThePlot great post

 

@LostThePlot You make a lot of good points! And also thanks for everyone else for the tips.

Well, yeah, I am pretty much tired of seeing that bad boy trope being glorified, so I would like to subvert that trope and have a character represent some aspects of that trope but it turns out he is not someone you should root for. How some behaviours are toxic or abusive and not justify that just because "everyone loves bad boys" (well, not everyone, but you get the point).

My current WIP is an urban fantasy story. So it is not a story where the romance is the main plot. I was thinking more in the lines of the character being someone who turns out to be a toxic friend but I do need more ideas for motives and conflicts and plots for this.

 

You are very welcome

I think if you want him to be that kind of toxic friend and truly subvert the trope (ie introduce him as a normal bad boy then show him to be an asshole) the best thing to do is make him a fairweather friend initially. So when things are going good for him then he always appears to just be cool, awesome bad boy. And then when things get tough he starts to become a real burden. As long as he gets his own way and he has money then he's a great friend to have, shares all his cash and and does what the fuck he likes. But when things aren't going his own way he's bitter and resentful and grouses at how it's not fair and it's bullshit and it's definitely not his fault. This kind of guy is someone who will take everything that life gives him (including abusing his friends hospitality) but who won't work to get anything more than that. He feels he's entitled to anything that people will give him but will never knuckle down and work hard. As long as it's easy for him then he'll be happy as larry, maybe convincing others who don't have it so easy to come have fun with him when that's a bad idea and doesn't care that he's screwing with other people's lives. And then the second it gets hard for him he flips over and either continues to have fun that he can't afford and actively sabotages his life, but he's suddenly a sullen, aggressive drunk instead of the life of the party.

That's what I'd do with him anyway. Obviously that depends on exactly the kind of story you are writing, whether he is part of the fantasy elements or not. If he is just a friend of the supernatural MC then that's fine, you just make him mundanely terrible. But if they work together (a la Night Watch) then that's different because the MC won't have a choice but to hang out with him even when he's an asshole. But of course working together means that the MC will have to cover for his mistakes and tolerate his tantrums and pouting and bitterness.

It strikes me that you can't really make him physically incapable in that kind of story; urban fantasy tends towards being gritty and violent and if he's one of the supernaturals then that won't come across well; if he can't fight then he'd be lunch. So probably not that. But you can make him go over the top with the violence (whether magic or physical) when he's having a hard time. Maybe that's something to play with; he's had a bad day at the office, as it were, and so tonight he melts some werewolfs face because "they aren't really people anyway".

Just some ideas obviously, but I do quite like gritty urban fantasy and I'm happy to brainstorm if you need a hand putting it all together

 

I think if you write him like a real person, you'd be able to shed the romanticized baggage this trope usually carries. If the reactions to his actions are honest and realistic instead of romanticized, he would come across as an antagonist instead of someone the reader would root for.

As a simple example, on TV or in romance novels, you might have the bad boy "steal" a kiss from the heroine. In the real world, if some guy forcefully kissed me, in the worst case I might elbow him in the face, and in the best case, he'd at the very least earn the creep stamp immediately (provided I was sober. Lines get blurred when everyone's drunk/high and assing around. You tend to laugh it off). If I told about this to my friends, it'd be unlikely they'd find him sympathetic or sexy. They'd go, eek, what a creep.

So yeah, I like your premise. This is not to say anti-heroes wouldn't make for interesting characters, but personally I've always been annoyed when writers make their heroes forgive and forget too easily.

 

"Stealing a kiss" is a fictive conceit. The audience know she actually wants him to kiss her. That's what makes it as a trope. And yes, you're right, if people do that in the real world where they can't magically know if this random woman wants to kiss him or not then that reads very differently. But then that's the real world. In fiction if we don't know why he decided to do it then it'll read like a non-sequitur. Why did he do that? Just to show us he's jerk?

If he believes that his attention was wanted even when it wasn't then he'll read as sympathetic. He was wrong and maybe he got himself slapped but if he genuinely believes she wants him to kiss her then the fact he just did it is not something that you really count against someone. If he doesn't think she wants to kiss him then why did he do it? And yes, sometimes people just do that anyway, but it kinda needs to be explained in a book what he was thinking. And if he is that kind of guy who doesn't even care if she wants to kiss him then you aren't really subverting anything, you're just writing an unlikable character. He's been set up as cool and sexy and attractive; if he's talking to a woman in a bar the audience is going to be confused why she isn't into him when they find him attractive. And fine she could be married or whatever, but our bad boy couldn't have known that and maybe he was a bit trigger happy but that's not something that makes him a creep really. Essentially if it's set up in any way that he could reasonably think he should kiss her, the audience will sympathize with him for trying and failing. And if he couldn't reasonably think that then we don't understand why he's trying to nevertheless.

That's why I think it needs to be attacked from another angle. Yes, bad boys are successful with women, but making him not so successful with women will make him more sympathetic not less. He'll go from being a bad boy to a normal guy who's trying too hard and that's someone else. I think it's better to make him someone who's all mouth and no trousers (so he can seem very cool for a long time and then run into a situation he can't talk his way out of and be shown to be a liar or at least to be cowardly or useless) or to make him a more bipolar character who can be cool but who typically is broke and bitterly muttering how it's so unfair. I think those better undermine his credibility and show him to be just an awful person underneath, someone without the agency and confidence that he puts on show.

No matter how it work in the real world; trying to kiss someone is showing agency and direction even if he is wrong. He might have been wrong but at least he's trying you know? He has the confidence to put himself out there, even if he is a creep. Taking an approach that strips him of his confidence is a much better way to make him feel like a fraud than showing him overstepping his bounds.

 

Yeah, it was just an example to make a point. Like there are things fictional bad boys do that seem cool and romantic and bad in a sexy way but when it happens in the real world, it's creepy and invasive. The operative word there was 'steal', so I'm not talking about some innocent misunderstanding.

I've been approached by guys who'd fit the bill, but I've not been into them. Some looks just don't do it for me. Like the clean cut business type or the athletic frat boy type while I have a friend who's absolutely turned off by the bad boy looks. So in that light, I wouldn't be all that confused if I read such a scene 'cause in my experience us girls -- especially if on the less hideous end of the spectrum where I'd place myself as well -- can pick and choose pretty freely.

As for the psychological side of things, I've no idea why guys decide to grab you and force their face on yours, be they strangers or semi-strangers.

I agree, so if that's not the writer's goal, then she shouldn't go there. I was just responding to where she said:

with an example of behavior that's at worst abusive and at "best" jerk-y.