So in a project I'm still working out the kinks for (I don't have time to write it yet) I've decided that I want the villains to quite literally be the five stages of grief. You know, like literally how people make art of video game consoles (among other things) as humans. Now each stage of grief has it's quirks and how different people deal with them. which is why I'm curious as to how others might write them. Acceptance is the leader / dark lord Bargaining is the merchant being a personification of famine Denial I'm thinking some Nobleman/woman and the personification of death Depression I don't know, maybe a 'child' (physically) and probably the personification of war Anger is going to be an army general (undecided if male or female) and the personification of conquest.
Interesting concept. It reminds me of Greek gods, Anger being like Ares (god of war). It also reminds me of the seven deadly sins. You might think about those things to add a little feva to the flava.
Eh if I had enough baddies I'd use the seven deadly sins, I don't have enough 'big' baddies so I went with the four horsemen. I think personifying the stages of grief is halfway adding flavor to the flavor (without actually using any 'tropes' even!) I could always make sub baddies, though the trick would be deciding which sin would work well with each of the four horseman. I also want to avoid directly copying things, Persona 5 already handled the seven deadly sins (in a fashion that only Persona series can XD) in a way that I doubt I could top. I think the trickiest part will be maintaining a balance between the things that inspired them to begin with.
I'd make Acceptance really, really evil. Like the worst out of all of them. You don't have to because it's your story, but it would be interesting if Acceptance was just an awful person, making people accept their issues to the point where they do nothing about them, and live in pain. Out of the others, Denial seems a little more female, Anger male. Depression doesn't seem childlike to me (kids don't know enough to be pessimistic, most of the time), but could go either way in terms of gender. Your version of Bargaining sounds really good. I'd probably make that one the most humorous out of all of them.
The idea with depression being childlike is to disarm you. They're depressed cause they simply stopped aging at some point. (and some other stuff but that'd be a spoiler XD) They aged mentally, and also people misinterpret how they look and use the wrong pronoun. (I can see something like that getting to a kid and causing trauma later in life, especially if it persisted for centuries on end) I like the idea of Acceptance being the most Vile out of all of them. Maybe that's what makes him so evil, he/she accepts help with his goals regardless of the cost or consequences (both spiritual and physical hence them recruiting basically the four horseman) I'd be tempted to make Acceptance a religious figure or something, but I'm Christian and I'm kind of sick of that in JRPG's lol (Though to be fair it's rarely ever the actual 'Christian' god to blame, just a god in general) Half tempted to have Denial and Anger romantically involved, the pair of symptoms often appear with eachother so it makes sense.
Nah, don't make Acceptance religious. Religious baddies are rarely more than punching bags for atheists -- they're almost never real characters.
I might have him be like a king or nobelman or something. Even though that trope is almost as common, I kinda like it more than I like a religious figure being a baddie. Right now I'm trying to decide on the party members (I'm thinking four aside from the main two) I realize I'm cheating a little bit, but I might take a crack at portraying Sun Wu Kong. I don't know Jack about his actual legend, but I know enough from other media and a little bit from reading up on him that it might be fun. Plus since my world has Yokai in it it wouldn't be that strange to see a monkey man with weird martial arts powers.
