The bad boy character trope as antagonist?

No, that's a fair point.

I can conceive of situations where you can properly balance it to be that he comes across as subtly the wrong way. Taking someone who starts out as being 'ladies man' and turning them into 'predator' is actually quite a clever way to subvert the bad boy trope that I didn't really consider. I will say; I am a bit of a bad boy, at least as far as most women are concerned. When I was younger.... Well, I could tell you stories. But I think you do touch on something quite clever about how you subvert the trope.

It would certainly take... Well, it'd take the courage of your convictions to do it. But... If you have the stomach for it then you could take the bad boy out past the edge of sympathy basically just by sticking by that one theme. He's successful with women. At first. And then slowly as we see more of him we see that he is successful with women whether they like it or not.

Maybe this is just me, who has a very black sense of, well, everything, but assuming that you can take the time in the plot to do it then showing him go from being ladies man to manipulative to borderline rapist then, well, you have my stamp of approval on that. Even if he is in every other way a perfect bad boy, sassy dialogue and all, if we eventually see that he's that guy then... Fuck man. How else can the reader respond except with revulsion? And, if you are a true devotee of the dark, then the plot forces the MC to just ignore it. Because he's too fucking magic to say anything. That'll put him in a position that is just... Revolting but necessary.

And isn't that really what you want? Seriously. Because when confronting the audience with the reality of who he is as a person against the reality of what he is as a force for good is... I like to leave my audience torn and uncertain. I like a grey ending. And, well, it's at least interesting literary ground.

 

I was not only talking about psychical abuse if that is what you were thinking of, people often seem to ignore emotional abuse and the effects of it... How one can seem like such a great friend when you don't know that they are just thinking of ways of getting what they want, so you will do what they want you to do without even asking you. But that is usually not how such characters in fiction behave, right? usually they are more introverted, have no friends, though I have seen an example of a "sarcastic asshole" who did have a best friend but he was not abusive... He was more fleshed out, but I still found him a irritating character with a bad attitude. and nobody in the books told him to grow up.

I am not even thinking of "the ladies’ man" thing, the kind of thing I am thinking are characters with bad attitudes and treat most other characters around him like crap but yet the readers must feel some sympathy for that character for some reasons..

That is an interesting point to consider as well.

 

In The hellbound heart, by Clive Barker, Frank Cotton is a 'bad boy', and the main antagonist; in fact, his boredom with having sex with women after women is what acts as the main drive of the story.

 

You can show through the rest of your cast how it's actually not cool that he's being an ass. He just doesn't get away with that shit even if he's hot. In the real world, we don't suffer jerks unless we have to (like they're our colleagues or class mates) and even then only for the duration we're forced to share the same space with them.

The reader feels sympathy for example when the asshole is given a tearjerker of a backstory. If you don't show that, all we get is a prick and it's easy to hate him. On the other hand, people are rarely assholes all the time. I guess we like those bad boys in fiction, even sympathize with them, because they tend to show vulnerability every now and then. Plus they do and say stuff we wish we could, and they often counterbalance the goody-two-shoes hero/heroine.

But if his main shtick is to emotionally abuse your other characters, it's going to be hard to see him in any other way but negative.

 

Well, the emotional abuse part was an example, but it's something that is bad that it shouldn't be forgivable.

That is true, in real life we don't hang out with jerks but still, even nice people can have friends who can be jerks. It just depends on how much you can tolerate their behaviour.

I am not sure in which direction I should take this now though.. Because yes, characters should not be perfect and it could be interesting to leave a character morally grey and not stick in a box of "good" or "bad", but at the same time I do believe there is a point I am trying to make with my WIP and this character idea. But I just am not sure how to really go about it because it is like the point is right there in my mind somewhere but I am just not seeing it clearly yet.

 

I don't know if this helps but maybe look to Tyler from fight club. I think, that it is fair to say, that he is the antagonist of the story and he is also the classic bad boy.
But him being an asshole is not the reason, why he is the antagonist. The reason is because of the things he does. In a way i think, we all like Tyler and that's okay. But we don't like the stuff he does and that is why he is the antagonist.

 

Hmm... You are right in a sense, that Tyler is both the antagonist and a bad boy but I also think he is a classic example of an asshole character that everyone likes too much. Even as the antagonist we kinda are rooting for him. We never see him as evil or as doing things just to exercise power over others. Even the object of his quest isn't really bad per se. Maybe we don't endorse his efforts but we do still like him, he has charm and charisma and confidence and he does speak to the primal 'go fuck yourselves' that lingers in our hearts. In fact he does one of the things that bad boys do so well; he does things that we maybe wish we could. He's kinda only the antagonist in a technical sense, the story is entirely about him. He has all the agency, he drives everything along. He absolutely steals every scene he's in. In fact I would say that he's a perfect example of what the OP was talking about; a bad boy who we like no matter what he does.

 

I'm curious.
Much has been said about the 'bad boy' trope. However, should we not write a 'bad boy' character because he is a trope? Or can we write the trope but do our damnedest to make him the best possible trope?

The fact is readers like the 'bad boy' character and authors often enjoy writing them. I've written one in a supporting role. He has all the rubber-stamp character traits you'd expect: sarcastic, regards himself as funny, very capable and smart and so on. What makes him 'bad' is he will kill bad guys with no reservation. But he only kills bad guys; never civilians or law enforcement or others he doesn't know for a fact are bad.

So, he does a bad thing that is arguably good.
Women, including my MC, swoon for him while telling themselves he is trouble. But he is never trouble f0r them. In fact, he is a protector.
Trope, or interesting character you'd want to read about?
(I personally find him delightful to write)

 

Every bad guy feels that he is doing good.
Though for some of us the 'good guy' doesn't have to know,
or even think he is good. Chances are he will do just as much
bad as those that he thinks are bad. But what are good and
bad really? Platitudes to draw lines in black and white, when
things are generally grey, and not so simple.

 

But that doesn't even really make him bad really. Most of the good guys will kill bad guys if they have to. The bad guys are bad guys and they get what's coming to the. Again, it's a very primary school idea of morality to cast killing as universally bad. Even if the bad boy relishes the chance to kill the people who pillaged his village, we wouldn't hold that against him. And this speaks to the disconnect between what we know to be true and what we know we are supposed to say. The bad boy is someone who taps into our id, who doesn't even pay attention to what he's supposed to say and I think that's why we like him. Because he's speaking truth about things without the social niceties. It's why he can get away with being a snarky asshole because he's mostly being truthful. And no you can't get away with that in the real world, you'd have to be sympathetic and nice if you want those people to talk to you tomorrow. But sometimes we do really wish we could say "You were terrible together" .

The bad boy is the part of us we wish we could be. And to subvert that doesn't mean making him be notionaly bad, it means to show us that his positive qualities aren't all they are cracked up to be.

 

Oddly enough that makes sense. But in the real world they are just jerks.
(Unless someone happens to know someone that is a jerk that kills only
the bad guys).

 

Right, exactly.

I am quite a lot of a jerk. But I don't do that kind of stuff. Because there's a time and place for that. You can laugh at your friends failings sometimes, and that's ok because it helps to laugh at things and finding the humor in hard situations is a good thing. But you have to play to your crowd. And if someone's genuinely upset I'll give them a hug and let them talk and then laugh at them once they've cheered up. I care about them, you know?

In a book the crowd he's playing to is the reader, and that's the important part. And that's why he can be a jerk all the time. We're ok with laughing with him at the others, because that peps up an otherwise po faced discussion about boyfriends or why we super need to stop the bad guys. But in reality there is no audience except the people who are there. And no matter how funny you find your own jokes if you're being a massive asshole then you aren't going to have friends to talk to for long.

Again, there's a disconnect between the reality of the scene and the way we experience it. We know the bad boy should in theory be a jerk, but since we're laughing with him the book has to acknowledge that. If you tried to make it be like a real world then the reader is going to be really frustrated because they laughed but everyone is acting like he broke wind at a funeral. You can't just tell the reader they felt the wrong thing and that they are supposed to hate this guy. You can subvert it after you build the expectation, make him push too far on something until the reader can't excuse him. But you can't just write him like a real bad boy because, well, he's not. he's a character in a book being read by someone else.

 

Yeah, I used to know quite a few of those.

 

Bad boys aren't always assholes. Assholes are always assholes. The two are distinctly different things. Being aloof in itself doesn't make someone an asshole.

I've gone out with plenty of bad boys. Even at my stupidest, crossing over the line into asshole was a dealbreaker for me.

Guy in Band = bad boy.
Athletic Guy who makes snide comments to Guy in Band and smashes Guy in Band's guitar because he's physically stronger than Guy in Band =asshole.

Bad boys are cool. Assholes are never cool. They only think they are.

ETA: A bad boy can have a heart of gold. Assholes never do, because they're only interested in themselves.

See the difference?

 

An antagonist is simply a person who hinders or opposes the protagonist. This doesn't make this person a 'villain.' I'm not a fan of the concept of 'villain,' to tell the truth. I think it's far too simplistic and cartoonish to sustain a novel. I believe if you think of your characters in this way (good/evil, hero/villain) you may be tempted to create a stock character, rather than a 'real' human being.

Opposition between protagonist/antagonist can be direct, in that the protagonist recognises their rivalry or discord, and attempts to deal with it. Or it can be indirect, in that the antagonist makes things difficult for the protagonist, but the protagonist doesn't recognise this fact.

How it resolves, is up to you, the author. The two may reconcile or come to an understanding. Or they may not. The bad boy antagonist can turn out to be not so bad after all. Or he can turn out to be really bad. Both scenarios can work well. And if you really want to take chances, you can have the antagonist turn out to be a fine person, while it's the protagonist who turns out to be flawed.

I'd say construct your character and build his relationships with others in the story. Don't worry about putting a label on him. Just make your bad-boy character, and his relationship with the protagonist, a believable one.

 

I agree with jannert. A straight villain is too simple and two dimensional.
To me the bad boy is the hardest character to develop. I have tried and failed in several stories.
My interpretation of a bad boy would be John Wick.

 

Please explain this to me then, because I'm really not getting it. In real life, no one wants to be around an asshole long enough to get to know him enough to see him as a "well-rounded" person. In real life, everyone avoids them.

So if I'm creating true to life characters, why in God's name would any of my characters want to be around an asshole? Wouldn't that make them stupid? To me that would be more unbelievable.

Accidentally allowing a two-faced asshole into your life is a whole other thing, of course.

 

Yes I do see the difference.

We all define things around us based on exp. So we will have a varied opinion
on topics like this, but neither of us is right nor wrong, it is subjective and
not so easily defined. I understand your version, and it is an interesting one.

 

In Stephen King’s book It, you get a much deeper understanding of Henry Bowers. He’s in no way redeemable, but his psychosis we at least get to understand due to his abusive, alcoholic, ptsd crippled father.

 

I'm not sure we're arguing the same thing here. An asshole is an asshole ...at least in the minds of those who think he's an asshole. I'm not arguing for presenting an asshole or 'bad boy' or even 'villain' as a regular person underneath (although that can also be done.) If you want your asshole to have no redeeming features whatsoever, that's fine. (Might be a bit simplistic, though. At least make him unique! )

However, this has nothing to do with 'antagonist.'

'Antagonist' is a writer's term—like setting, plot, protagonist, etc. The antagonist is simply the person (or social force) who opposes the protagonist—your story's main character. Your story's main character can actually be an asshole, by the way. Antagonist is not a judgment on a person's character. It's a word to describe their position in the story.

 

Thank you for clarifying. I was indeed reading your post and some others in this thread as arguing for presenting the asshole / villain as a regular person underneath, which is something I've seen argued a lot since the popularity of Walter White. In rereading your post, I see that now, and I do agree that the asshole / villain should be unique.

Thank you also for the broader definition of Antagonist. I was taught a much, much narrower definition (literally, "Who is antagonizing your Protag?"), in which the Antag is always bad, as opposed to simply being an opposing force. Your definiton (not to say that it's yours exclusively) is much less limiting. Thank you.

 

Everyone has varied opinions on "good" and "bad." To me, a "bad boy" is rebellious, but never a psychopath. I think of it as a spectrum. Others clearly see it as more black and white.

 

Yeah. I mean, your story's main character might be somebody engaged in whaling, because it's part of his culture. And the antagonist might be Greenpeace and/or Save The Whale folks! So it's just a matter of figuring out the relative positions in the story.

 

I'd have a hard time seeing Save-The-Whale activists as antagonists.