Villain's ultimate goal

I think a good villain should have such solid motivations that he could be the MC of a different book (even the same story, just from his POV). He/she still might be greedy, hungry for power etcetera, but if you can find the means for him/her to justify those desires, then I think readers could actually end up rooting for that villain.

If anything, a good villain (in my opinion) has some relateable, human trait (left) in him/her. I can imagine a greedy villain would actually be trying to earn so much money to "fix" the world. Perhaps he/she is convinced that he/she needs to accumulate almost all the wealth in the world, so he/she can re-distribute it later. The (poor) hero however, does not know this and thinks of that character as the ultimate villain.

As long as one keeps in mind that no one person alive ever truly considers himself utterly evil, you should be good.

 

Not necessarily... In an anime I've watched recently. The remaining human population went through a traumatic event that heavily restricted the amount of territory and resources available to them. The population was much too large for their confined territory and there wasn't enough food to go around. As a solution, the government drafted 15% of the population - people to carry out difficult tasks that were near-suicidal. This culling of the population was essential for the remaining people to survive.

How is this insane? Although you can definitely say it is immoral in some ways, I would have a hard time agreeing with you that any logical plan such as the one I described is the result of insanity.

 

Even deeply selfish motivations like voracious greed or a lust for power can arise from something as accessible to readers as fear. This may be someone who grew up in poverty, or in a family that had known poverty. The obsession to acquire is often driven by fear of losing everything long past any rational basis for that fear. Lust for power is often driven by the same type of fear of not being in control of one's own life.

 

I have a different view on villains. In one of my series any AND everyone can be a villain. Their motivations much like human motivation can be their own and can be viewed as villainous depending on perspective.

 

Everyone speaks as though a bad guy out to do bad things just because he likes to is some sort of cliche or terrible character. However, one of the best bad guys I've seen in film is the Joker from The Dark Knight. In that movie he has absolutely no motivation for doing what he does other than that he likes it. Everyone who's seen the movie remembers the famous line "Some men just want to watch the world burn." In this movie they made the character beleivable. We know something horrible (though we don't know exactly what) happened to the villain as a child, resulting in his skewed morality. He was also believable in that there are real criminals out there in the real world that seem to do bad things simply because they want to (think sociopaths). I don't think this type of character is any worst than a character who is doing evil as a means to an end. What matters is how you do it. If anything, a villain who is doing bad things simply because he wants to is one of the scarier ones, think of the scene when The Joker burns all the money. A evil man who can't be bought off, can't be convinced, can't be placated.

And of course there's a million other motivations, be it greed, love, political, religious, or for safety. Although a villain doesn't have to be insane, many are. Gary Oldman's Russian terrorist character was insane ("I would turn my back on God himself for mother Russia"), Saleem from Body of Lies was insane ("Do not say that those killed in the name of God are dead, for they are alive, though you may not see them"). Howard Payne from Speed was one insane dude ("My Money!"). And then of course there are plenty of bad guys who wern't insane. Mondego in The Counte of Monte Cristo wasn't crazy, he was simply jealous and greedy and didn't care about selling his friend out. Hans in Die Hard wasn't crazy, he just wanted to rob the place and would kill anyone who got in his way.

When you make a villain you need to consider his motivations and who he is as a person, where he grew up, what he learned as a child, etc. Making a villain who kills just because he likes to isn't exactly a bad character.

 

There is a type of people who are not hopelessly deluded yet are able to kill many without remorse - sociopaths. Few of them are murderers, but most of them are quite capable in conducting said heinous activity. They just can't relate to others on an emotional level, and rarely feel the need to, either.

Sure, you can call them "insane", but are they really? Can't a villain be just like you and me, with the one exception that he kills for X reason. No heavy strings attached, no visions of grandeur, just this one simple reason. Could be from insecurity, like Patrick Bateman, could be to prove a point, like the Joker. I refuse to degrade this common antagonist to a mere lunatic.

 

I found this to be extremely interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/act-of-killing-joshua-oppenheimer_n_3625596.html
It's a documentary called 'Act of Killing', based on the 1965 Indonesian killings and the war criminal/hero named Anwar Congo. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but the bits and pieces that I have seen are a bit shocking and really go into the mind of a war criminal.

I don't think that someone has to be 'insane' to kill. I would kill to protect my family if they're threatened. Soldiers kill everyday, and it's their job.

 

I don't think this is what the OP was talking about. Of course, if you have to, you kill to protect your family. Soldiers kill enemy soldiers who are shooting at them and their buddies. There's a huge element of self-defense, and defense of what you love, in both cases, and I agree that that is not insane.

I think what is insane is wanting to kill people who aren't a threat to you or someone you love. People who might not even be aware of your existence. When you develop in yourself a desire to kill the innocent for no good reason, you're insane. Especially when you want to kill large numbers of them. That's what I'm talking about, and that's what I think the OP meant. How do you motivate a villain like that? How do you bring the reader into an insane mind and make the reader understand that insanity?

 

Or evil. Insane means that somebody doesn't know what they're doing or can't stop themselves; knowing but not caring is not insane, it is evil.

 

But I think that the villain normally sees what they're doing as being for the betterment of 'X' or that they're protecting something or defending something. The villain always has their reasoning, even if it might seem 'insane' to the reader or to the hero, it makes sense to them. Even people who are deranged have a reason for killing people. Even if it's as simple as the wrong hair color or the victim being too loud. The villain's actions are normally always justified in their eyes.

I think that the villain's motivation depends on the storyline. You have to make the reader feel empathy for the villain, something which I don't think is easy done or normally done at all.

By the way... I now want to write from the view point of a villain. Not sure if I should thank you guys, or curse you guys. I suppose we'll see how it turns out first.

 

If you don't care either way, there's no reason to kill people. It's not "knowing but not caring," it's "knowing, caring so much you want to see them dead, and killing."

What is the motivation for evil? If someone is sane (meaning, among other things, that they can tell good from evil), what would make them want to kill large numbers of strangers?

"Evil" is an easy word to throw around because every hack writer in history has used it. Every pulp villain is "evil" and nobody ever tries to explain, exactly, what that means and how they got that way. As I said earlier in this thread, most villains in serious literature aren't really evil, they just have goals that conflict with the MC's goals. A Red Sox fan wants his team to win the World Series, but that doesn't mean the Yankees fans are "evil." They're just fans of a different team.

So what, exactly, is evil? How do you motivate an evil character?

 

The same way you motivate a good character, with a goal. They just take a different path, because of their philosophical standings. Before you ask "What drives you?", I think it would be more appropriate to ask "Why does it drive you?". More often than not, their view of life and everything else is key to solving the puzzle that is the "evil criminal".

Maybe they're extremely nihilistic and they don't care about the lives of others, because they don't believe their existence holds any meaning. Humans are just fodder to them; an expendable resource garnered for the sole purpose of advancing whatever the villain's desire turns out to be.

What is evil? Centuries of philosophy hasn't managed to give a satisfactory and conclusive answer to that, I doubt a single forum thread would do it. Although, you never know, just like penicillin, brilliance occasionally pops up in the most unusual of places.

But just for the sake of argument, here's a definition of evil from Wiki:

Evil is profound immorality.

 

Kind of reminds my of Ozymandias in DC's Watchmen. Yes, it is a graphic novel, but I find that they can have some pretty complex characters these days. The hero and villain simpy can't be the cardboard cut outs portrayed by Superman and Lex Luthor in the older comics. Ozy, pretty much wasted NY to make the planet believe we were under attack by aliens and rally together. His main goal was to stop war on Earth. Lex, himself, makes a pretty decent villain. His issue is pride and he doesn't care how many people are expendable as long as things go his way.

 

This from Some Answered Questions and interview with Abdul'baha, and seems fitting now that the conversation has taken a philosophical tone.

THE NONEXISTENCE OF EVIL

The true explanation of this subject is very difficult. Know that beings are of two kinds: material and spiritual, those perceptible to the senses and those intellectual.

Things which are sensible are those which are perceived by the five exterior senses; thus those outward existences which the eyes see are called sensible. Intellectual things are those which have no outward existence but are conceptions of the mind. For example, mind itself is an intellectual thing which has no outward existence. All man's characteristics and qualities form an intellectual existence and are not sensible.

Briefly, the intellectual realities, such as all the qualities and admirable perfections of man, are purely good, and exist. Evil is simply their nonexistence. So ignorance is the want of knowledge; error is the want of guidance; forgetfulness is the want of memory; stupidity is the want of good sense. All these things have no real existence.

In the same way, the sensible realities are absolutely good, and evil is due to their nonexistence -- that is to say, blindness is the want of sight, deafness is the want of hearing, poverty is the want of wealth, illness is the want of health, death is the want of life, and weakness is the want of strength.

Nevertheless a doubt occurs to the mind -- that is, scorpions and serpents are poisonous. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings? Yes, a scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves. But as the elements of their poison do not agree with our elements -- that is to say, as there is antagonism between these different elements, therefore, this antagonism is evil; but in reality as regards themselves they are good.

The epitome of this discourse is that it is possible that one thing in relation to another may be evil, and at the same time within the limits of its proper being it may not be evil. Then it is proved that there is no evil in existence; all that God created He created good. This evil is nothingness; so death is the absence of life. When man no longer receives life, he dies. Darkness is the absence of light: when there is no light, there is darkness. Light is an existing thing, but darkness is nonexistent. Wealth is an existing thing, but poverty is nonexisting.

Then it is evident that all evils return to nonexistence. Good exists; evil is nonexistent.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 261)

 

This is a conjecture. Arguments with shaky foundations are nothing but philosophical sophism, no substance, just a lot of spiel.

Really? Have you heard of Locke's blank slate? As far as anyone is concerned, the mind is shaped exactly by our outward experiences. Give me one example of something that exists only as a concept of the mind that has not been inspired by real experiences? Even God doesn't escape this confinement.

Blanket statements like these are often hard to defend. This is just another version of the fraudulent "Einstein's story", i.e. cold is the absence of heat. Nonsense. Both "cold" and "hot" are mankind's perception of the motion of particles. Such notions are foreign to the universe itself. The same goes for "good" and "evil", one is not the lack of the other but rather both are different perceptions of actions done by different people. Polarities are often subjective. One man's evil is another man's grace, if I can reformulate the old adage.

Same as above. Are you going to argue that anti-matter is just the lack of matter?

I don't see how it's evident. You have to do better than mere presumptions to argue evil into nonexistence.

 

Sorry, I should have specified, Abdul'baha was a religious scholar from Persia. The concepts of good and evil that he addresses here are the religiously defined ones. Starting from the standpoint that there is an absolute morality, and therefore absolute good and absolute evil.

Not at all, anti-matter is physical and existent, anti-matter is not negative matter. I can't have a negative cup, just a place where a cup once was. Matter is existent, negative matter does not exist.
(going bottom to top here, sorry)

Once again "hot" and "cold" have to due with the amount of energy existent in matter. It's not possible to generate negative energy, though we can cool through other means. Those means always use existent forms to cool, in the easy example of a refrigerate, by adding pressure. Not as we argue here by adding negative pressure.

This is a difference of philosophy and I'm not sure why you are bringing it up. My example, however, would be the concept of good and evil, hope or luck.

I'm not sure why you're arguing with the thesis, but go on ahead.

 

No worries, that was actually quite evident, but giving special labels to constrain a set of concepts does not stop them from being fair game in a philosophical discussion.

Really? Then explain to me how this happened?

No problem at all.

True, you can't create energy, your point?

How is the concept of good and evil/hope and luck only confined to the mind? Good is the subsequent perception of something that is beneficial, which is a direct consequence of beneficiary actions in reality, vice versa for evil. Hope is a coping mechanism in dire situations that is naturally innate, with or without a neo-cortex. Luck is a perception of serendipitous happenstance.

Ahead with what? The thesis is the main premise, if it can be argued without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's anti-matter which exists, but it's being cooled by other existent things. It's not being cooled with negative things.

That is exactly my point! You cannot generate negatives. Evil is a negative. Evil does not exist.

The original quote, "Intellectual things are those which have no outward existence but are conceptions of the mind." I'm not sure what your problem with this is. Luck has not outward existence. I cannot hold luck in my hand. That's what Abdul'baha is saying here.

Still not sure what you're going for here. You can argue with the statements supporting the thesis, but arguing with the thesis itself is puerile.

 

I think out of respect for the OP we should move this discussion, as our personal squabbles have no business in this thread.

Some help from a Mod here?

 

Sorry, I should've addressed the primary issue I had with your previous statement: "Antimatter is not negative matter."

Yes, it is, otherwise they won't annihilate each other upon contact.

Prove it.

"Outward existence" is not simply that, which you can hold in your hand. You can't hold light, either, but it does exist "outwardly". Events, such as serendipity, exist "outwardly", whether you can hold them in your hand or not. It is our perception of them that we call "luck".

How so? The thesis begins with an unjustified assertion, not just with a core premise. There is a difference.

 

Agreed.

 

You rang?

Is this request for a two way infraction for derailing a thread into a one-on-one debate or would you good folks like me to prune this thread into a scion and graft it elsewhere? Let me know.

 

Forget about it. We're done.

I apologize for my ranting and thread hijacking.

I've got nothing further to say.

 

Morality has a role in an ultimate goal as well. According to morality compass there are three evils lawful evil neutral evil and chaotic evil. Lawful evil holds a set of codes to live by but will take what he wants when he wants as long as it's within his code. Neutral evil do what they need to survive nothing more nothing less the don't care if they have to kill someone to get what they need and they care little for society and their laws. Chaotic evil do what ever their dark desires want they have no love for anyone and will kill remorselessly. they are also unpredictable and often brutal in their daily lives.

 

I'm pretty sure any philosophical text that also outlines how to roll a bard will not gain wide acceptance through the intelligentsia.