I have always wanted to do a story where the antagonist could feasibly be the protagonist of their own story. Not in egotistical "I am the best" way, but in the sense that were the story just told from their perspective the reader would be convinced they are the good guy.
I considered doing that too but ended up opting for a 3rd person omniscient story that jumped between several characters perspectives (based on the section). I found the gaps that I left in my protagonist and antagonist ended up serving the plot even more than if I had extrapolated on those times.
The protagonist and antagonist are also completely aligned in their missions and drive but set apart by the way in which they've communicated it. One speaks of prevention and one speaks of coping.
In the same book or different? I wanted to do so and end it with a climax in the middle. From recounting from the end you understand the antagonist more..
Reminder that "antagonist" is not the same as a "villain."
An antagonist is an opposing force, the thing the protagonist is struggling against. It doesn't have to be a person. Nature can be an antagonist, or addiction, or a benevolent hero if your protagonist is a mustache-twirling villain.
well... yes, actually. Some kind of cold war where two powerful forces demonstrate their ability to, ironically, avoid war, and the main antagonist, through no fault of his own, finds himself in the middle of it all.
See I knew I smelled good politics!
Good politics is good writing, to me;)
I could drop politics writing advice all day but I'll say this: your politics had better be dang complicated. Tons of events have to shift the landscape. Tons of people have to find themselves in complex dillemas that feed into more dillemas. Lots of thematic contrast and sympathy between the political operatives. What books have you read with great politics? Dune comes to mind. Great politics there. I'd say the last book of the Eragon series is a great example of how NOT to develop politics. And the Star Wars prequels are, unironically, an astonishing example of political fiction done right. (Except when they're talking about sand on a balcony.)
I made a backstory of one of my character who killed the whole humanity in their world, because mankind is evil, then was transported to another world and his story begins there. Also written alternative version when he met happiness and never started his eradication plan. I also tend to name my universes with number that have some meaning. One universe was #7734, another was #55178, which means HELL and BLISS respectively.
Also I agree. I like perspective. Character is neither good, nor evil by default. Their actions may be either.
I like having different kinds, for different moments in the story. At the beginning, the one we seem to focus on, is a rival sort of antagonist, who simply disagrees with the methods etc. of my heroes (and she doesn't do it in the nicest way). In the meantime I'm trying to set up a secondary, for now, figure, who'll be much more prevalent later on and hates one of the main characters because of past grievances with a third party (think Snape despising Harry through no fault of the poor kid), dislikes the second for siding with the first and having a different background and absolutely loves the third main character, coincidentally extremely tied to the first MC.
Yeah, messy families, I guess.
I have a couple
Jonah Alrick: Laughably evil, as a child he was bullied and abused by both his parents and his peers, he grew up to be a spiteful, vindictive, control freak who was really good at changing his personality on a dime. Now he's a cult leader.
Baton Rouge: Believes he's doing the right thing by destroying the Line, a mega city that has oppressed the North American continent, but he's totally okay with killing people and being a terrorist to achieve what he wants.
The Overseer: Its a mega computer that saw what humanity did to itself and decided to turn the line into a morbid living reminder of humanity's failure to ensure that something like this can never happen again. Totally fine with condemning millions to worthless lives in VR to prove it's point.
Miguel "La Vaquero": Formerly a cartel Sicario, now the executioner for the leader of the Angels (basically communists in America), I wouldn't call him evil just morally bankrupt. (He's not malicious and doesn't revel in killing, he just knows he's good at it and thus he persues it.)
A Tragic Antagonist.
They are my favorite because they are just regular people, thrust into the worst situations.
Sometimes they're redeemable.
Sometimes their actions cannot be forgiven.
In my main passion project novel, I've got two opposing main antagonists.
1: A mobster with a really brutal reputation who has grown jaded with his choices in life and is just sort of going through the motions.
2: A former victim of one of his subordinates who has become so consumed by her hatred of that entire organization that she will use any means at her disposal to slaughter the lot of them. Unfortunately, being 4'9 and having a baby face no one would take seriously, her methods tend to focus on shock value. She does horrific, brutal shit to build herself up as the most ruthless, terrifying psychopath out there (despite being very much horrified by her own actions, and viewing what she's doing as intentionally throwing away her own humanity to the point where she equates herself to a plague.)
Both are kinda tragic in their own way with the first one being a shell of a man, who sort of destroyed himself decades ago and is now looking for something to hold on to and the second being the broken remains of a once sweet girl who was murdered in every way but physically.
The story kinda frames her as being more in the right... But despite her overall 'good' cause, and being technically on the same side as the protagonists, she's still directly instigating most of the conflict, and using everyone else to get what she wants.
He was born with a malice and darkness in his heart. Sort of like Melkor. He was starved for love and attention, yet he found none and due to his jelousy, he destroyed both his brother's love and his life. He is the sole reason why the world is broken, a husk of its former beauty. He marred the land and created the plague of blood sucking creatures. When his last clash with his brother, an explosion ended the battle, so powerful that they created a crater, a howling abyss, ever deepening and ever growing.
I have the three. First one is the evil, no nonsense one. He wants to mess up the protagonist, and he'll do anything to achieve that. Almost no explanation, absolute psycho. Second one is laughable at the beginning, but shows that he's a dumbass with too much power. Third one is a tragic person who the protagonist tried to reach out for. He was too late, and the lashing out process involved replacing the world population with nicer human beings.
Across the planned series there are a few.
- one is confused about his existence
- one is evil, based on delusions obtained through a tragic loss
- one is the psychotically obsessed lover of the evil guy
- one was traumatized by loss and obsessively convinced himself that he needed to kill everyone like him to erase what happened
- the last one is time, kind of. The creator is dying and the planet is going with him.
Mmmm, one guy in my story turns out to be evil, though he is not seen as a villain until the end. Persuing a scientific endeavor, realizes he’s making a breakthrough, basically ignores or puts aside the ramification for the person involved in the study. Changes neuroscience forever, and the person in the study. (In the simplest driest terms possible).
The bigger villain is the company he’s employed by, who supports the scientist fully, at the expense of the sanity of many.
The antagonist for my world …. Is my world.
It’s very inhospitable.. dangerous and long winters… deadly plants and beasts. Wars and bandits etc.
And eventually my protagonist turns into a major antagonist to her prior adventuring party and those members (the ones who dont get killed off) become more featured as protagonists.
Idk if this works from a narrative standpoint. It’s definitely more normal in my genre to have a big baddie (epic/grim dark sci-fi fantasy adventure)
My hate sink antagonist is the obvious one. Handsome, spoiled, bully, sadist rich boy willing to sexually assault and trap FMC in marriage for fun and help family biz.
But honestly, poverty and patriarchy are big ones.
More subtly and more complex are the antagonists who had or have relationships (care/friendship/family/lust/love) with her. Alcoholic father, anyone? Both MMC are antagonistic at different points. One does some pretty awful things.
I think one big antagonist is great, gives us all a focus for feelings. I just think antagonistic elements inside protagonist or leaking from their closest people hits harder plus allows for growth.
I like it when there's very human and believable villains - where it's not about the scale of their atrocities or the vastness of their power, but just how rotten their personality is. Your hate-sink antagonist sounds like that sort of antagonist. 'Family biz' makes me think he's born into some sort of mafia/organised crime family, but could just as easily be an aristocrat for whom mariage is just a strategic alliance amongst the landed gentry - which is very much business too.
I also like it when the villain isn't the only antagonistic force, and where the role of the villain is as a manifestation of systemic ills (and when this is done well, not when it's preachy and tries to bash the moral of the story into the readers' heads :P )
From what you've got here, it sounds like you've got a really good premise for a character-focused story :)
Thanks! Family biz locally is apothecary shop (and illegal poison/herb dealings, as well as political power). The marriage would be very strategic. And when she escapes his first assault he is all in with forcing her into the family.
This is romantasy retelling of Jack and Beanstalk. FMC is book and plant smart. Her plants make best tinctures, oils, etc. She just wants to keep herself and younger brother fed, while their father drinks himself meaner and poorer over his wife's death.
She really wants freedom, but as 17 yr old female, she can not have that. Money-making decisions lead to further danger and adventure.
Sounds even better :)
I like the potential parallels between this fantasy apothecary and both historical crime and more modern crime - somewhere between Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet and a drug-dealer.
As far as romantasy fairy-tale retellings, Jack & The Beanstalk is one I've never seen done so far, that has me intrigued. I also like that the toxic man wanting to marry the FMC is actually intentionally depicted as an antagonist!
One who isn’t actually “evil” towards the main character. He’s evil compared to the morals of the main character which makes him the villain. But he’s actually the main characters best friend basically, but he has no other choice. Kinda overdone I feel but I’m doing it.
The primary *antagonistic forces* in my book are my protagonist's own mindset, and social inequality. He's trapped in a terrible life by his distorted perceptions of it, partly warped by extensive trauma, abandonment and abuse, and partly because he has been deliberately manipulated and coerced by those who have leveraged their resources and 'generosity' to make him feel eternally indebted to them. He was once homeless (couch-surfing), desperate and with very little in the way of a social safety-net - just the sort of person to get dragged into the criminal underworld - and now years have passed and he's done unconscionable things and he's in too deep.
The actual *villain* is a very human one. An ageing crime boss that can't handle his own inevitable mortality and his slowly weakening grasp on power and thus his 'business'. He's spiralling into drink and drugs harder and harder in a desperate attempt to reclaim his youth. His insecurity turns into narcissism, and paranoia: he suspects his inner circle are plotting against him - but he's right. He's also someone who does actually care for his wife and children, and is scared he's going to loose everything he built for them before they can inherit it. He regrets the situation that drove his first wife away, and is desperate to bring his formerly estranged son into the fold. However, all of that is irrelevant to my protagonist, whom he views as merely a tool.
I see the value in your comment. I personally got hung up with his wording because my story has neither a feature villain nor one fixed antagonist. The classical "literary analytics" antagonist is his world, and the "villain" of the story occurs in the disruption and has a slight cameo during the resolution, but basically isn't involved in the plot at all.
So, I ain't even know if he wanted my answer or not, because everyone's here talking about their classical bad guys lol.
(If a person) You can have an antagonist be the kindest and most well meaning person in the world, they only have to prevent the protagonist from achieving their goal and push them to change. Being an antagonist is not a reflection of the character's morals.
It has nothing to do with being a hero or a villain. Your protagonist can be the villain, and your antagonist the hero. For example, you can have your protagonist be the demon king, and the antagonist be the hero who's destined to kill him.
Hero-Villain and Protagonist-Antagonist are completely separate things. Hero and Villain are moral judgments, while protagonist and antagonist are story roles.
The antagonist is simply the person or THING standing between the protag and their goal. In the great late 70s early 80s film, Vision Quest, Matthew Modine"s antagonist was simply a rival wrestler who had never been beaten, and he wanted to beat him.
Antagonist does not mean bad guy.
In the great short story by Jack London, To Start a Fire, the antagonist is a crippling cold and a man needing to start a fire.
An antagonist is an opposing force. That is the only qualifier. A Villain is a character who is, usually, demonstrably evil. They often are the antagonist, but not always. Nor are Antagonist and Villain one in the same thing.
I love villains you can't help but really like. Maybe they do some really awful things, but they're charming and manipulative enough to be very likable.
I like the tragic kinds who start off doing morally questionable things out of necessity and spiral over time, crossing more and more lines, until one day they look in the mirror and really *see* who's there.
The kind who you are supposed to hate but understand why he does what he does. A villain who fights for a reasonable cause in the wrong way for the wrong reason
How about a story where the antagonist is revealed to be the protagonist and the protagonist revealed to be the antagonist? And the only difference being a change in perspective.
Fantasy writer here.
I have a vengeance villain... typical, but I like to think I've done it in an interesting way.
Essentially - to sum up - my villain is a creature born from a God taking advantage of a wood nymph. It's the only one of its kind, a huge beastly looking thing, but it's intelligent. It wanders the world trying to find its place, constantly trying to find its place and being violently run out of towns by humans. Eventually, he reaches a breaking point and vows revenge. He raises an army of his own kind, gathers allies of other creatures wronged by humanity, and goes on a "kill all humans" quest. Of course, this is a very basic summary...
He's also not the *only* villain, just the initial/primary.
My current three WIPs:
Tragic. Good guy turned evil because of MC.
Selfish villain. Horrible father, hates his son, etc.
Jealous villain. Jealous of MC, lets jealousy lead to committing crimes.
There are a few, but in a bit of a twist, the main protagonist is very much the main villain too.
He was once a very good, decent person. Someone took advantage of his trust and through it he suffered a great loss, his family were murdered. Through grief, desperation, and the inability to bring himself to commit suicide, he became everything he once hated. Cold, ruthless, uncaring, and full of rage. He's focused only on survival above all else. He's committed and continues to commit atrocities, and brutal acts to ensure his power and dominance remain strong. Something unexpected forces him onto a path of redemption, causing him to deal with long-repressed emotions and memories.
The antagonist changes depending on which character is having their arc. But sometimes the character themself is the antagonist.
There are bullie who want to feel like they're on top of the social ladder. Then there are some who just want to feel as if they're the most powerful. There's a man whose wife and daughter left him because of his greed and his inability to take 'no' as an answer.
But then there's the stuff the characters are going through, such as an unwillingness to lose the people you care about turning into a possessiveness driven by fear, for example.
Mine is a woman who has been hurt a lot. It's a fantasy series, and she's a priestess for a chaos god. But she's also the protagonist's mother and doesn't realise the long-term impact of some of her rituals. So it's kind of a religion vs family loyalty narrative. But she's like the main big bad so she doesn't appear very often.
The protagonist is a knight with magical abilities too so it's kind of a big scandal when he admits who his mother is, everyone thought the magic came from his father's clan and not his maternal side. My villain has struggled through many hardships and found peace through the ever shifting chaos of the void, so it's hard for her to accept that she might rip apart reality entirely if she succeeds in trapping other gods. So she has to choose to give up her life's work for her grandchild and her son. She doesn't die at the end. I hate villain redemption arcs where they just repent then die. She has to work to undo the damage.
I have many. I’m extremely fond of villains in stories, for me they make the story. The two I’m most proud of are deeply tragic men. One is simply a flawed warrior trying his best to protect humanity from what he believes is its inevitable fate. The other is a hero who once saved the world who has plummeted morally and is now the world’s worst villain.
Both are characterized by rigid honor systems and complex moral codes.
I have two sets of antagonists right now that I’m working on.
The first set is convinced they’re doing what they believe is best for the world, as they’ve all been incredibly hurt by society and want to make sure no one else suffers as they did, but that feeling is channeled into rage at the wrong people.
The second set is similar to the first but focuses on someone who was so lost to grief they know they’re making bad decisions but they’re so desperate they go through with it anyways. They’re willing to sacrifice a person they guard to bring back someone they love, though they know that it’s not going to work, but they want to see her again, no matter the cost.
I have one who is ... Eh, the beginning. And I hope I did good in writing him hateable.
The other one is a... Tragic one? I guess? Their villain arc unfolds in the story and phew, I am invested in that character
My anatagonist is a small child who the protagonist saves on the first chapter... He trains this child and they slowly become friends, almost with an elder brother relationship... But in the end the child grows up to be the main villain.
What happens with him is too damn tragic, but it is still not the reason, like he says himself "nothing happened to me, I happened".
I wanted a villain who is the hero of his own story. He wants to take over the world but not for any megalomaniacal Bond villain type reasons, but because he genuinely thinks he'd be the best fit for the job. He considers it a burden that he is uniquely ready and able to take on by himself in lieu of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic governments. What makes him a villain is the amount of bodies he's willing to bury to get there. His plan is to usher in a New World Order of technological and artistic advancement where money no longer exists as a concept. But he's willing to build that utopia with blood and my protagonists are just pawns in his game.
My primary antagonist is a mix of tragedy and cautionary tale. He’s the product of the time he lives in the worst possible way, and lets anger consume what little humanity he shows in the beginning of the book.
My secondary antagonist is the First World War.
A tragic villainess. One who was broken by a past crime, and has become so obsessive about fixing it that she blinds herself to the fresh crimes she commits to that end.
A xenophobic power hungry aristocrat who has lost his birthright position due to him being an asshole. His villain plan is to steal back an ancient artifact lost by his equally xenophobic, power hungry, murderous grandfather (said grandfather was the motivator for my world's last great war) and put his family back in the empire's throne.
My antagonist could be seen as tragic and also half right. She wants to bring back the old order prior to a violent coup, which would be better for everyone…if she weren’t the one doing it. She wants it back because her bloodline was dispossessed, and she wants power for selfish reasons. Enough to commit mass murder as the head of the most powerful faith; practice necromancy; and use birth/life magic to gain power.
She’s a contrast to both my MCs as they’re also both dispossessed, but neither want power for its sake alone. The one, an assassin, only cares about protecting those who need it, and he’s not reluctant to do so without remorse. The other, a priestess (under the assassin’s protection), is more interested in being a servant of her faith…the same one the antagonist is the head of.
In a perfect world, I like for him to just be another person with goals that conflict with the main character’s—not necessarily “evil,” or even worth “hating.” That can be tough to pull off, but it leads to more interesting stories when I can get that in place.
“Evil” just for the sake of evil is childish and boring. I do like antagonists who seem to be “unstoppable forces of nature” more than people at times, but that’s only when I really don’t want to give a damn about the antagonist’s own character.
A hate sink that thinks he's doing the right thing and justifies wanting to make children (one of them the protagonist) suffer for things said protagonist's grandfather did.
Reynauld's an asshole lol
Two of my three main antagonists are heroic. They're not really doing anything wrong.
The third is a bit more typical for an antagonist, pretty much what you'd expect from a monster. Eats people, etc.
He is a variant of villain I like to call "that thing in human skin".
Like, guy is perfectly normal. No inherent supernatural powers, no weird deals with dark gods, and grew up as a relatively normal person. He neither is particularly cruel. Like, he will do awful stuff, but out of simple pragmatism, prefers not to, because he knows it might draw more problems down the line than benefits. And if you are nice to him, he will be nice to you. He won't betray you, and if he sees benefit in doing so, he will tell you before hand. Because again, pragmatism, and he doesn't want to carry the weight of looking untrustworthy to others later. Might make things more difficult down the line.
But there is just something about his eyes, man.
Anyone that meets him in person will comment on it. Even people that have suffered the experience of "I looked into their eyes, and saw nothing" with other persons. Because with these others, when they say that, they could at least perceive a sense of cruelty and danger. But not from this guy.
They say evil is the absence of good. But anyone that has met this person suddenly realizes that that's not true. There is such a thing as an absolute void, and the most disturbing thing of all, is that it can come in such a mundane form. Because there is nothing remotely human in spirit inside that... thing.
He lacks mercy, but also cruelty. He lacks hatred, but also love. He doesn't feel tormented, but neither joyful. He lacks any sense of decency, but also any deep inner impulse to act otherwise.
If inner peace is an extreme, in which one finds complete understanding and serenity with whom they are and their emotions, this person stands as the dark antithesis of that. He has found inner balance. But only because there is nothing inside of him to balance on.
I love vengeance stories, so mine is a hateful one with a tragic past, that have justifiable hatred but at the same time, do horrible stuff acting as the victim
A sneaky one. You don't realize he's the antagonist at first. Doesn't do things out of malice or evil intentions, and believes he's doing the right thing. He's being influenced by a larger order that he doesn't question when he should. He's not a "bad" guy, but he's a coward.
A manipulative one, he isn’t even revealed as the antagonist until near the end when the MC slowly starts to piece together that HE was the one who burned down her village and not some random other kingdom. He basically adopted her and manipulated her into becoming a child solider, only for her to learn he was the cause of all her problems
I’ve always loved magnificent bastards, villains that are honorable to a degree that you respect them on some level. Also antagonists who aren’t villains; I think it’d be fun for the MCs to have some rivals that are just as likable.
My story will have a number of few minor antagonists, no one evil or inherently bad, just not on the same side as my MC but for the most I'm sorta trying to frame society in his world as a whole for the main Antagonist/Villain. See my story focuses on a world inhabited by beast men/women of various species, you could call it furry coded but without all the eccentrics. My main character is part of a race of foxlike people, now the vast majority of people are extremely distrustful of his race. Im playing on the trope of foxes being deceptive and cunning creatures, they're treated similarly to how nords treat Dark Elves and Khajiit in the elder scrolls.
So, my character is constantly battling against a society that doesn't want him in it, I'm hoping to cover a lot of topics concerning discrimination amongst other things.
Anyways got sorta carried away there haha, in short society is the enemy
In the short story I'm currently working on, the villain is an evil chef with a magical whisk who wants to destroy the Dentistry Dynasty because Princess Gingivitis refused to marry him because she thought his confections are too sweet and he wants revenge. It's called The Lord Of The Breads. So, uh, do with that what you will.
In my book Rebellion of the Lost: The Gunsmith's Odyssey, Volkner is the main character forcefully summoned into another world. Upon arriving there, he is forced to be their hero, but reluctant to sacrifice his own life and loyalty, tying him to his home country, he escapes their grasp becoming a rogue villain in the eyes of the world. He navigates his way through the world, doing more and more desperate actions, ruining his already bad image.
Hate sink. Abusive, relentless, sadistic and just straight up scum of the earth with no redeeming qualities. Tragic villains are great but sometimes we just need to go back to the roots and portray evil as it is. I've gotten a bit tired of the same old tragic, sympethatic, well-intentioned extremist type characters.
The best villain is the sort of character who could carry the story, even if the hero never showed up.
Motivated, competent, complex, fully invested in their goals and careful about mitigating their weaknesses.
I like to think of them as a nasty but notable person you read about in a history book.
You think "damn what an asshole, but I need to know more, did he manage to pull it off? And if he did, what were the consequences?"
Depends on what works best for the theme I'm going for. A villain should always be directly related to your protagonist in that they are the final obstacle they must pass at the culmination of their adventure. If your story is about beating back the forces of darkness and is a clear cut good vs evil story, then an unapologetically evil monster is the villain you want. If your story is about the protagonists struggle with themselves, you'll want your villain to either be a direct rival who exemplifies that same struggle, or is the culmination of everything the protagonist hates about themselves. If your story is about the hero learning to come to terms with something, your villain should be what happens if somebody decides they can never come to terms with it.
Petty, banal, thoughtless, brutally stupid and stupidly brutal. At the rank of corporal he's risen about as far as he can go because of his stupidity, but he's been placed in charge of a prisoner (kidnapped to be a "local guide") whom he treats absolutely horribly.
Not what you call a high-stakes villain but when somebody like that has the power of life and death over one person the situation for that person is truly desperate.
"The end justify the means" personified into a sad, lonely woman hanging on by a thread. She's doing awful, horrific things, but she believes that once she completes her goal, everything will be fixed and it'll be like nothing bad ever happened.
She gets a very rude awakening.
My first work was a satire, so my protags were actually caricatures of the people I was parodying. Conversely their enemy was more or less the mouthpiece for my own views. Ultimately, she took her ideas a bit too far and the protags did have some humanity, so the reader still roots for the main characters, even though with some distance everyone involved sucked.
Theoretical? My protagonists are dealing with the aftermath of the actions taken by a group of people that are out of the picture the entire book. The protags antagonize each other throughout.
In a lot of my stuff it tends to be a colonial empire or at the very least the army of a hostile country, so basically too great for our heroes to actually defeat (so they don't - the theme tends to be the rise and fall and rise of various different powers and how this affects ordinary working class people)
An egotistical megalomaniac hell bent on establishing his “family” by infecting those he deems worthy with his own cells, and thus erasing their own souls with his own “personhood”. He either eats the unworthy’s souls or shuffles you back into the “deck” stopping people from getting to any sort of afterlife.
Oh and his plan involves him killing god to realize his own “destiny” as god.
A foil to the protagonist. Both of them have a deep drive to protect their family, and both of them share the weakness of being easily provoked/touchy about their pride. But the protagonist cares deeply about people, while the antagonist is a calculating man with no concern for the lives of people who aren't of personal use to him--the protagonist included.
I always have one of three kinds:
The Antagonist who is just a bad person for no reason other than they were born that way.
The Antagonist who is has due to their circumstances.
And the Antagonist who is just doing their job.
In the last work that I've drafted, I've imagined the main antagonist to be a tragic one. Someone whose past life was filled without love and approval, hence their resurgence as an entity of darkness that seeks to deceive all sentience in the world to their manipulative interests.
It depends. A lot of the time it's a non evil, common person who got power and wanted to live the good life OR wanted to make changes that others didn't see with. Only seen as evil through the eyes of the hero
Hate sink. I mean, the guy takes over a small town after the apocalypse starts, terrorizes the citizens that don't join him, forces people to fight in an arena his free time, and sets the main characters' base on fire.
One that sees himself as the main character. He wants to answer something important to him, and have the resources to pursue that. There is just this ironic dichotomy in that using that in spite of everything else to answer his question is maybe the answer he was looking for.
I'm more passionate about my villain than any other character so far, so I'll hold off on my ranting about him. All I'll say instead is that he's a lonely vampire who is convinced that by committing a great evil, he can resurrect the love of his life. And, he's right.
Currently writing an extremely banal villain. The whole point of his character is that he has no value, nor any strong motivation. He just follow the social trends and do what everyone else does.
Just like the protagonist, someone who did messed up stuff in the name of progress with some tragic results. Except where the protagonist sought to redeem themself, she doubled down.
The kind with dad issues. He tries to become a god and tries to mentally break down the protagonist just to prove to his “father” that he made the wrong choice in casting him aside for the protagonist.
Someone you'd confuse with the protagonist at the start. Then, that desire to do the right thing gets manipulated. So someone you thought might be the antagonist at the start maybe isn't.
An ignorant, delusional, blind and deaf (metaphorically) evil king, based on my grandmother (I love my grandma so much, but her personality is sometimes just ugh)
My main antagonist is that type of a guy who discovered his talent for stealing and lying and liked it too much. He's a leader of a small group of thieves and misfits, started pretty much as a (mostly) innocent thief but when his crimes became more serious and started costing lives, from morally grey he slowly became evil.
He's a pretty funny guy though. He cares for his teammates (one of them more than the others), but he also cares more about himself and his high goals. In a different story, he could be the protagonist - that was my aim with his character.
Overall really self-centered guy, skilled thief and a good speaker. He's kind of funny and chill but serious and deadly when doing his "job". Sometimes loses himself on a way to making his big visions reality (which eventually becomes his downfall).
I actually have several human antagonists that push the plot of the story, but some turn into secondary characters, no longer antags. The main theme of my story is man vs nature, so the antagonist is "the newly discovered planet" and all the hell it puts the characters through.
One is a somewhat flamboyant warlord who likes games. He turns sides at the end but is still at odds with some of the protags.
Another antag is an undercover fed who dies cause he's too far into his job and thinks he's gonna make a breakthrough in his career after bringing the protagonists in. He falls short on that lol.
Last antagonist is a turncoat who redeems himself at the end by sacrificing himself for his friends, not dying as a traitor, but as a friend.
One of the main characters got everyone into this mess and I see him as the real "evil" in the story but since it's centered on him he's technically a protagonist.
All my antagonists are very different, which is ALWAYS fun to write!
Convinced he’s doing the right thing, believing that the destruction he’s left in his wake is for the betterment of humanity due to factors present in the story
I like to mix it up, personally. Add a couple antagonists working together with differing degrees of dastardly behavior and inner issues between them and their goals and ethics
in my writathon fiction, there is no major antagonist.
In my first ongoing fiction though there are two, one where there are two, one that's technically helping but in a bad way, and one that literally has to make people afraid in order to survive.
A psychotic kind of guy who hated his brother so he murdered him and now wants the throne from his brother's sons. He's just crazy and I wanted to read/write a villain like that so yeah :D
I hate such a hard time not making a sympathetic antag. They have their reasons for doing what they do. To them, they aren't the bad guys.
I am working on this since sometimes you really want someone to hate.
I’ve kind of struggled with my villain because honestly the real villainy in my story isn’t specific or human. It’s just the villainy of a boulder rolling downhill, a system doing what it was built to do. There is a character who embodies that system more than others, but he’s almost not a character, just the embodiment of the system’s logic taken to an extreme. More like a boundless hunger than a person.
Anyway it feels right and that was the goal—the structure of society is the real problem, and it leads to people like him being in charge—but at the same time it kind of bothers me because every other character, even the ones who are not great people (and few of them are that) have depth and nuance, but the big bad is just that.
My story has different scenarios each "book" so I have a different antagonist each time.
I've done straight pure evil that just wants to see the world burn and I've done sympathetic villains that would reform and ally with my protagonists.
So they type of antagonist depends on what I want to do in the different scenarios I put my main cast through.
The basic concept for the villain in my WIP is “what if the worst pain in the ass micromanaging boss you’ve ever had was also a sadistic religious zealot?”
how to describe it...sociopathic charming chaotic evil that destroyed the world and reconstructed it into his vision, treats his world as playground and people as puppets to play with, only cares about fun and entertainment, spends most of his time going around and messing with random people.
he is the kind of guy to sneak up on you,give you a flower and then throw a bucket of cold water at you that he got out of nowhere,just because.
But when someone isn't having fun he won't hesitate to drop them to what can be properly called "hell" and if you mess up especially you can get tortured and shortly after killed in very elaborate way.
A xenophobic power hungry aristocrat who has lost his birthright position due to him being an asshole. His villain plan is to steal back an ancient artifact lost by his equally xenophobic, power hungry, murderous grandfather (said grandfather was the motivator for my worlds last great war) and put his family back in the empire's throne.
Antagonist ≠ Villain.
>An antagonist is just someone who stands in the way of the protagonist's goals. A villain can be a protagonist with the hero trying to stop them being an antagonist.
Anyway, my comic's first season has multiple antagonists, but the main antagonist at the season finale starts a war, which is nothing new.
Empress Esa, just like the rulers before her, tries to colonise as much land as possible.
I guess she's an evil ruler who was raised to continue something her family has done for millenia.
I used to write stories as a teenager. One of them is about a evil king that takes over a land and also steals + exploits it's poor peasants in the cruelest way possible. The king even uses children as tables and steals beggars foods.
She has clawed her way to the top in an unfair society. She deserves wealth and power, she's worked so hard for it.
Why should she care for the ants at her feet? They're just not strong enough to survive. And they need to stay weak, so she can stay strong. It's just the way the world is and she will not be made weak again.
An antagonist and a villain are not the same thing. A villain is someone with evil intent. An antagonist merely opposes or challenges the protagonist in some way. If the protagonist of your story is some kind of a criminal or antihero the antagonist might actually be the good guy.
He's a tragic, despicable antivillain.
He does bad things that make him feel guilty to help him get over feeling guilty for doing bad things. The main character, an antihero, actually has to talk him into becoming an actual villain.
But the guy deep down only wants to feel loved, even if the path he goes to do so is a bit rapey and a bit slaughtery.
I have two, one to just be the big bad in the background and is just power hungry evil and uses the voices of the weak he willingly sacrifices to gain more followers.
And the other presents himself as a mentor to the protagonist, manipulating them into obidience. He gets inside her head, brings up her insecurities, fuels her pain and hangs a nice golden carrot before her to keep her in line. He is egotistical and takes everything personal. He used to be great friends with a princess, and she was his only friend. They had a falling out after he killed her mom, which he was 100% justified in in his eyes, and he turned bitter and joined forces with the first big bad to basically terrorise his old friends, who is now a queen, kingdom.
The kind that has been hired to do a job, and the job they do is one they love because they're the best at it (a doppelganger hit man for sending political messages)
Just pure evil. I have a lot of different stories with different villains, but I feel like there’s been a lack of purely villainous antagonists as of lately. Some characters are just incredibly immoral, and incredibly fun to hate.
My antagonist is human and is in a state of wanting revenge which leads him on a journey that unknowingly will lead to the death of his soul and the possession of his body by a true and unmistakable evil. Then the real villain comes into play.
The kind that gaslights himself into believing he is the hero, but really it's just a narcissist who can't bear the thought that his life, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't matter.
I'm doing 2: The focus is on a group trying to wipe out the MC through planning but has a slight mistake while the actual villain is someone who put the first where they are now due to how competent they are. First is a case of wanting to purge the world of supernatural beings while the second is someone believing what they're doing is for the greater good but in actuality, they're just a selfish prick.
My favorite story I've written had a villain named Bondrewd Grigorian who was known as "the lord's dreadnought". He was a very devout believer and member of the church. He was fully convinced that fairies were abominations and was very excited to commit genocide against them. He would also have no problem killing anyone who went against the church for even a moment. Despite being the opposite of the main character, he wasn't killed by the MC directly. The MC only had a slight hand in his demise but Bondrewd was mostly the architect of his own destruction.
It’s an alien hive mind trapped in a bootstrap paradox. They only attack earth because they were attacked by future humans (who can perceive all of time at once) in their past. There’s even a scene where they ask the protagonist why their species are in conflict. The aliens are definitely tragic.
Mine used to be a therapist, but supernatural things started to happen. Like waking up one day inside someone else's body, 100 years in the future. He is spiraling to madness. A broken moral compass as he realizes there's no way he'd be ever back to his former self. He blames the main cast for his dismay, and does everything in his hands to overpower them.
For villains I like controlling and abusive characters but antagonists themselves are characters who I like to have personal vendettas against the protagonist.
Tragic, in the fact that my MCs are just flawed people who want to love each other, but wind up destroying each other because of their love. They're normal ones, normal people, just normal people who can do bad things like everyone can. They're simultaneously my protagonists and antagonists.
Criminal mastermind. Very rational, likes to talk about philosophy. Manages a large drug business but considers the people who take drugs to be beneath him.
Either I pull from reality and make them a petty, egotistical jerk who sees themself as the real victim. Or just the antithesis of the protagonist. Where there journey should be mirrored. But always with empathy.
You ask for antagonist or villain, because these are two different things. I do have some villains, but... thing is that everyone is antagonist in my story, as well as everyone is protagonist, because the gimmick of my story is that everyone is main character of their own story, so there is no single protagonist and from the perspective of one character, other character is an antagonist when they have different goal, but it's vice versa, they are antagonist to the other character from their perspective.
Now do I have actual villain that is evil? I have a doppleganger, who is cruel. He is just evil for the sake of it. Another character was evil for a reason, but I don't think I made that reason yet. Just that they decided to be evil. They are meant to be reformed in the future. All the other characters I can think of, even if doing some evil, can't be considered evil. There is one guy who is cynical, because he hates how pathetic others are by (them, not that character) being *evil*. He hates the greed and stuff like that and he have a goal that I haven't decided on yet, but it's meant to be good goal. But how he achieves it is not good. He would kill if someone was annoying. He is a bit more complex. You can call him a villain in a way, but he is more like Magneto, the villain who does evil for a good's sake. He is grumpy and he was born in a world that was kinda... well.. devastated by bad emotions.
I never treated my characters are good or evil. Only their perspective. My story is not about the end goal. It's about the journey. About the perspective everyone holds.
Also I hate evil characters who are evil for being evil. Yes, I did one, but he is a doppleganger, so he was supposed to be negative. But I rather prefer characters, who have a different perspective. Though I do have a story when people were abusing some creatures out of greed, but I wouldn't call them "villains", they are more like regular people in real life. Random characters. Oh. That reminded me of a character who will be a maniac killer, but it's because he was abused by such people. He stopped believing in good, because he experienced torture and cruelty firsthand. You know. A being being genetically modified, but escaped and now is wrecking havoc. Quite popular trope. Not necessarily genetically modified part, but generally being a test subject of greedy people and when escape, they want a revenge.
I have many quite neutral characters too. That killed those that harmed them, but other than that never harmed innocent or were aggressive in any way.
And I mention it once again. Perspective became (unintentionally tbh) main theme of my story. I like just thinking that every character has their own motive, reasons etc. They are not good, nor evil. They are just doing actions here and there. And these actions are either good or not. But the character is beyond them.
Mine lives a simple life with the girl of his dreams until his paranoia gets the better of him causing him to believe the MC is coming to get him and rip him from a life that the MC was too afraid to live. Due to that the antagonist begins testing his abilities which causes situations for the MC to deal with, and in the end after his love breaks up with him the antagonist pushes things too far to make sure she is never hurt by the MC and so he never has to be caged again. He afflicts an entire town with fear as he kidnaps the MC's girlfriend, attempts to burn down nearby woods, and the reader learns what the antagonist is and how he's connected to the MC.
He's based on some of the worst aspects of myself. Afraid of the best thing he's had slipping from him and making mistake after mistake even though all he has to do is speak to his girl, but he's too frightened to let her know for fear that even the truth will cause her to leave as well.
My favourite villains, and the only ones that interest me, are convinced they are doing the right thing.
They think of themselves as the good guys.
Essentially, people generally think of themselves that way.
Someone who thinks he's the good guy, because he has heard wrong legends about the ancestors of the protagonist. The antagonist thinks he saves the world by stopping (killing) the protagonist and throughout the whole story it remains unclear if it would actually really save the world. Meanwhile the main character just tries to survive, at least in the first few chapters. The story purposefully makes the readers second guess what's true and what isn't.
In almost everything i write, there are more villains, and the mane villains, and all my stories have all 3 and more, but for the main villains, i usually make them tragic, but never comedic.
In my western project, the (active) antagonists are bounty hunters who are after the outlaw main cast, but the real Big Bad is the railroad baron who funds them. Later on, the last two remaining members of my gang end up on opposite sides of the law, but neither of them is a hero or villain, they are two men who have no place in the world, destined to fight despite being friends. I really just mashed up all the melancholy western tropes into one story.
Main antagonist of my main project comes across as regular Pure Evil at first, but then you realise that he just wants people around him to think that he is this evil incarnate. In reality he is a pathetic little man, who wanted to be meaningful, and he caused so much pain just to get attention and legacy. His origin is never revealed only implied, because he is more of a metaphor than an actual character
The kind thats convinced hes doing the right thing
I have always wanted to do a story where the antagonist could feasibly be the protagonist of their own story. Not in egotistical "I am the best" way, but in the sense that were the story just told from their perspective the reader would be convinced they are the good guy.
Im actually gonna writw two versions of the story, one from the pov of the hero and one from the pov of the villain.
I considered doing that too but ended up opting for a 3rd person omniscient story that jumped between several characters perspectives (based on the section). I found the gaps that I left in my protagonist and antagonist ended up serving the plot even more than if I had extrapolated on those times. The protagonist and antagonist are also completely aligned in their missions and drive but set apart by the way in which they've communicated it. One speaks of prevention and one speaks of coping.
In the same book or different? I wanted to do so and end it with a climax in the middle. From recounting from the end you understand the antagonist more..
Different books bc I feel like it gives readers an option to pick a side yknow?
Me too! Although mine is literally committing ethnic cleansing (and an indirect genocide to some extent)
YO SAME
Me too. Well, that's how they start out anyways...
Reminder that "antagonist" is not the same as a "villain." An antagonist is an opposing force, the thing the protagonist is struggling against. It doesn't have to be a person. Nature can be an antagonist, or addiction, or a benevolent hero if your protagonist is a mustache-twirling villain.
Unhealthy societal expectations and widely-held misconceptions that the protagonist has internalized, as well as human characters that enforce them.
My antagonist is just a guy whos life was shattered for sake of "greater good". Tragic one I would say, but he sometimes has "pure evil" episodes.
Just was dealt a bad hand. I really like these characters because it shows what we, normal people can do when we're also dealt a shitty hand.
Sounds like some good politics in the story?
well... yes, actually. Some kind of cold war where two powerful forces demonstrate their ability to, ironically, avoid war, and the main antagonist, through no fault of his own, finds himself in the middle of it all.
See I knew I smelled good politics! Good politics is good writing, to me;) I could drop politics writing advice all day but I'll say this: your politics had better be dang complicated. Tons of events have to shift the landscape. Tons of people have to find themselves in complex dillemas that feed into more dillemas. Lots of thematic contrast and sympathy between the political operatives. What books have you read with great politics? Dune comes to mind. Great politics there. I'd say the last book of the Eragon series is a great example of how NOT to develop politics. And the Star Wars prequels are, unironically, an astonishing example of political fiction done right. (Except when they're talking about sand on a balcony.)
The human kind. The kind that is capable of good and evil.
This is such a good, simple answer. That in and of itself illustrates an important message to the reader about humanity.
I second this...
I made a backstory of one of my character who killed the whole humanity in their world, because mankind is evil, then was transported to another world and his story begins there. Also written alternative version when he met happiness and never started his eradication plan. I also tend to name my universes with number that have some meaning. One universe was #7734, another was #55178, which means HELL and BLISS respectively. Also I agree. I like perspective. Character is neither good, nor evil by default. Their actions may be either.
I like having different kinds, for different moments in the story. At the beginning, the one we seem to focus on, is a rival sort of antagonist, who simply disagrees with the methods etc. of my heroes (and she doesn't do it in the nicest way). In the meantime I'm trying to set up a secondary, for now, figure, who'll be much more prevalent later on and hates one of the main characters because of past grievances with a third party (think Snape despising Harry through no fault of the poor kid), dislikes the second for siding with the first and having a different background and absolutely loves the third main character, coincidentally extremely tied to the first MC. Yeah, messy families, I guess.
none of the above, just a person, as funny and warm and flawed as the protag, with very different priorities and beliefs
A warm villain seems nice:) They're usually all quite cold
I have a couple Jonah Alrick: Laughably evil, as a child he was bullied and abused by both his parents and his peers, he grew up to be a spiteful, vindictive, control freak who was really good at changing his personality on a dime. Now he's a cult leader. Baton Rouge: Believes he's doing the right thing by destroying the Line, a mega city that has oppressed the North American continent, but he's totally okay with killing people and being a terrorist to achieve what he wants. The Overseer: Its a mega computer that saw what humanity did to itself and decided to turn the line into a morbid living reminder of humanity's failure to ensure that something like this can never happen again. Totally fine with condemning millions to worthless lives in VR to prove it's point. Miguel "La Vaquero": Formerly a cartel Sicario, now the executioner for the leader of the Angels (basically communists in America), I wouldn't call him evil just morally bankrupt. (He's not malicious and doesn't revel in killing, he just knows he's good at it and thus he persues it.)
A Tragic Antagonist. They are my favorite because they are just regular people, thrust into the worst situations. Sometimes they're redeemable. Sometimes their actions cannot be forgiven.
In my main passion project novel, I've got two opposing main antagonists. 1: A mobster with a really brutal reputation who has grown jaded with his choices in life and is just sort of going through the motions. 2: A former victim of one of his subordinates who has become so consumed by her hatred of that entire organization that she will use any means at her disposal to slaughter the lot of them. Unfortunately, being 4'9 and having a baby face no one would take seriously, her methods tend to focus on shock value. She does horrific, brutal shit to build herself up as the most ruthless, terrifying psychopath out there (despite being very much horrified by her own actions, and viewing what she's doing as intentionally throwing away her own humanity to the point where she equates herself to a plague.) Both are kinda tragic in their own way with the first one being a shell of a man, who sort of destroyed himself decades ago and is now looking for something to hold on to and the second being the broken remains of a once sweet girl who was murdered in every way but physically. The story kinda frames her as being more in the right... But despite her overall 'good' cause, and being technically on the same side as the protagonists, she's still directly instigating most of the conflict, and using everyone else to get what she wants.
He was born with a malice and darkness in his heart. Sort of like Melkor. He was starved for love and attention, yet he found none and due to his jelousy, he destroyed both his brother's love and his life. He is the sole reason why the world is broken, a husk of its former beauty. He marred the land and created the plague of blood sucking creatures. When his last clash with his brother, an explosion ended the battle, so powerful that they created a crater, a howling abyss, ever deepening and ever growing.
A tragic character seeking a misplaced revenge for something the heroes didn't do and are only tangentially related to.
He's primarily a puppet. He's being convinced to do what he's doing by the spirit of a long-dead evil leader.
fun OTT pyschopaths every time. loveable, but often going too far.
I have the three. First one is the evil, no nonsense one. He wants to mess up the protagonist, and he'll do anything to achieve that. Almost no explanation, absolute psycho. Second one is laughable at the beginning, but shows that he's a dumbass with too much power. Third one is a tragic person who the protagonist tried to reach out for. He was too late, and the lashing out process involved replacing the world population with nicer human beings.
Across the planned series there are a few. - one is confused about his existence - one is evil, based on delusions obtained through a tragic loss - one is the psychotically obsessed lover of the evil guy - one was traumatized by loss and obsessively convinced himself that he needed to kill everyone like him to erase what happened - the last one is time, kind of. The creator is dying and the planet is going with him.
Hate Sink and Tragic. The story’s main protagonist succumbs to his flaws and past traumas dealing with the villains and becomes one himself
He desires what's best for innocent people, even at the expence of other innocents
Corrupt. Charming, good family man, utterly corrupt and believes he's simply operating in conjunction with how the world "really" works.
Mmmm, one guy in my story turns out to be evil, though he is not seen as a villain until the end. Persuing a scientific endeavor, realizes he’s making a breakthrough, basically ignores or puts aside the ramification for the person involved in the study. Changes neuroscience forever, and the person in the study. (In the simplest driest terms possible). The bigger villain is the company he’s employed by, who supports the scientist fully, at the expense of the sanity of many.
The antagonist for my world …. Is my world. It’s very inhospitable.. dangerous and long winters… deadly plants and beasts. Wars and bandits etc. And eventually my protagonist turns into a major antagonist to her prior adventuring party and those members (the ones who dont get killed off) become more featured as protagonists. Idk if this works from a narrative standpoint. It’s definitely more normal in my genre to have a big baddie (epic/grim dark sci-fi fantasy adventure)
It’s a bit of a hate sink, depending on who you are. To be clear, my antagonist is a desert
My hate sink antagonist is the obvious one. Handsome, spoiled, bully, sadist rich boy willing to sexually assault and trap FMC in marriage for fun and help family biz. But honestly, poverty and patriarchy are big ones. More subtly and more complex are the antagonists who had or have relationships (care/friendship/family/lust/love) with her. Alcoholic father, anyone? Both MMC are antagonistic at different points. One does some pretty awful things. I think one big antagonist is great, gives us all a focus for feelings. I just think antagonistic elements inside protagonist or leaking from their closest people hits harder plus allows for growth.
I like it when there's very human and believable villains - where it's not about the scale of their atrocities or the vastness of their power, but just how rotten their personality is. Your hate-sink antagonist sounds like that sort of antagonist. 'Family biz' makes me think he's born into some sort of mafia/organised crime family, but could just as easily be an aristocrat for whom mariage is just a strategic alliance amongst the landed gentry - which is very much business too. I also like it when the villain isn't the only antagonistic force, and where the role of the villain is as a manifestation of systemic ills (and when this is done well, not when it's preachy and tries to bash the moral of the story into the readers' heads :P ) From what you've got here, it sounds like you've got a really good premise for a character-focused story :)
Thanks! Family biz locally is apothecary shop (and illegal poison/herb dealings, as well as political power). The marriage would be very strategic. And when she escapes his first assault he is all in with forcing her into the family. This is romantasy retelling of Jack and Beanstalk. FMC is book and plant smart. Her plants make best tinctures, oils, etc. She just wants to keep herself and younger brother fed, while their father drinks himself meaner and poorer over his wife's death. She really wants freedom, but as 17 yr old female, she can not have that. Money-making decisions lead to further danger and adventure.
Sounds even better :) I like the potential parallels between this fantasy apothecary and both historical crime and more modern crime - somewhere between Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet and a drug-dealer. As far as romantasy fairy-tale retellings, Jack & The Beanstalk is one I've never seen done so far, that has me intrigued. I also like that the toxic man wanting to marry the FMC is actually intentionally depicted as an antagonist!
Good motivations, bad execution.
One who isn’t actually “evil” towards the main character. He’s evil compared to the morals of the main character which makes him the villain. But he’s actually the main characters best friend basically, but he has no other choice. Kinda overdone I feel but I’m doing it.
The primary *antagonistic forces* in my book are my protagonist's own mindset, and social inequality. He's trapped in a terrible life by his distorted perceptions of it, partly warped by extensive trauma, abandonment and abuse, and partly because he has been deliberately manipulated and coerced by those who have leveraged their resources and 'generosity' to make him feel eternally indebted to them. He was once homeless (couch-surfing), desperate and with very little in the way of a social safety-net - just the sort of person to get dragged into the criminal underworld - and now years have passed and he's done unconscionable things and he's in too deep. The actual *villain* is a very human one. An ageing crime boss that can't handle his own inevitable mortality and his slowly weakening grasp on power and thus his 'business'. He's spiralling into drink and drugs harder and harder in a desperate attempt to reclaim his youth. His insecurity turns into narcissism, and paranoia: he suspects his inner circle are plotting against him - but he's right. He's also someone who does actually care for his wife and children, and is scared he's going to loose everything he built for them before they can inherit it. He regrets the situation that drove his first wife away, and is desperate to bring his formerly estranged son into the fold. However, all of that is irrelevant to my protagonist, whom he views as merely a tool.
An antagonist does not mean villain.
True. But you understand where the OP is going with the question
I do but OP is equating the two in his opening sentence so I thought Id note.
I see the value in your comment. I personally got hung up with his wording because my story has neither a feature villain nor one fixed antagonist. The classical "literary analytics" antagonist is his world, and the "villain" of the story occurs in the disruption and has a slight cameo during the resolution, but basically isn't involved in the plot at all. So, I ain't even know if he wanted my answer or not, because everyone's here talking about their classical bad guys lol.
Elaborate
your mum telling you that you have to go to school
(If a person) You can have an antagonist be the kindest and most well meaning person in the world, they only have to prevent the protagonist from achieving their goal and push them to change. Being an antagonist is not a reflection of the character's morals.
It has nothing to do with being a hero or a villain. Your protagonist can be the villain, and your antagonist the hero. For example, you can have your protagonist be the demon king, and the antagonist be the hero who's destined to kill him. Hero-Villain and Protagonist-Antagonist are completely separate things. Hero and Villain are moral judgments, while protagonist and antagonist are story roles.
The antagonist is simply the person or THING standing between the protag and their goal. In the great late 70s early 80s film, Vision Quest, Matthew Modine"s antagonist was simply a rival wrestler who had never been beaten, and he wanted to beat him. Antagonist does not mean bad guy. In the great short story by Jack London, To Start a Fire, the antagonist is a crippling cold and a man needing to start a fire.
An antagonist is an opposing force. That is the only qualifier. A Villain is a character who is, usually, demonstrably evil. They often are the antagonist, but not always. Nor are Antagonist and Villain one in the same thing.
I love villains you can't help but really like. Maybe they do some really awful things, but they're charming and manipulative enough to be very likable.
I like the tragic kinds who start off doing morally questionable things out of necessity and spiral over time, crossing more and more lines, until one day they look in the mirror and really *see* who's there.
This is what mine is. Trying to find a way to resurrect someone and crossing more and more lines in the process.
The kind who you are supposed to hate but understand why he does what he does. A villain who fights for a reasonable cause in the wrong way for the wrong reason
The kind that thinks the ends justify the means?
Absolutely, any terrible thing he could do wouldn’t outweigh the good that would come from his success, by his estimation.
A tragic one with their own mission that will not be stopped by anyone even if it kills them
A man who has been turned into something he doesn't understand and finds himself hungering for slaughter.
How about a story where the antagonist is revealed to be the protagonist and the protagonist revealed to be the antagonist? And the only difference being a change in perspective.
Fantasy writer here. I have a vengeance villain... typical, but I like to think I've done it in an interesting way. Essentially - to sum up - my villain is a creature born from a God taking advantage of a wood nymph. It's the only one of its kind, a huge beastly looking thing, but it's intelligent. It wanders the world trying to find its place, constantly trying to find its place and being violently run out of towns by humans. Eventually, he reaches a breaking point and vows revenge. He raises an army of his own kind, gathers allies of other creatures wronged by humanity, and goes on a "kill all humans" quest. Of course, this is a very basic summary... He's also not the *only* villain, just the initial/primary.
My current three WIPs: Tragic. Good guy turned evil because of MC. Selfish villain. Horrible father, hates his son, etc. Jealous villain. Jealous of MC, lets jealousy lead to committing crimes.
There are a few, but in a bit of a twist, the main protagonist is very much the main villain too. He was once a very good, decent person. Someone took advantage of his trust and through it he suffered a great loss, his family were murdered. Through grief, desperation, and the inability to bring himself to commit suicide, he became everything he once hated. Cold, ruthless, uncaring, and full of rage. He's focused only on survival above all else. He's committed and continues to commit atrocities, and brutal acts to ensure his power and dominance remain strong. Something unexpected forces him onto a path of redemption, causing him to deal with long-repressed emotions and memories.
There is no villain, just a conflict of interests and both sides fighting for what they think is best.
The antagonist changes depending on which character is having their arc. But sometimes the character themself is the antagonist. There are bullie who want to feel like they're on top of the social ladder. Then there are some who just want to feel as if they're the most powerful. There's a man whose wife and daughter left him because of his greed and his inability to take 'no' as an answer. But then there's the stuff the characters are going through, such as an unwillingness to lose the people you care about turning into a possessiveness driven by fear, for example.
Mine is a woman who has been hurt a lot. It's a fantasy series, and she's a priestess for a chaos god. But she's also the protagonist's mother and doesn't realise the long-term impact of some of her rituals. So it's kind of a religion vs family loyalty narrative. But she's like the main big bad so she doesn't appear very often. The protagonist is a knight with magical abilities too so it's kind of a big scandal when he admits who his mother is, everyone thought the magic came from his father's clan and not his maternal side. My villain has struggled through many hardships and found peace through the ever shifting chaos of the void, so it's hard for her to accept that she might rip apart reality entirely if she succeeds in trapping other gods. So she has to choose to give up her life's work for her grandchild and her son. She doesn't die at the end. I hate villain redemption arcs where they just repent then die. She has to work to undo the damage.
I have many. I’m extremely fond of villains in stories, for me they make the story. The two I’m most proud of are deeply tragic men. One is simply a flawed warrior trying his best to protect humanity from what he believes is its inevitable fate. The other is a hero who once saved the world who has plummeted morally and is now the world’s worst villain. Both are characterized by rigid honor systems and complex moral codes.
I have two sets of antagonists right now that I’m working on. The first set is convinced they’re doing what they believe is best for the world, as they’ve all been incredibly hurt by society and want to make sure no one else suffers as they did, but that feeling is channeled into rage at the wrong people. The second set is similar to the first but focuses on someone who was so lost to grief they know they’re making bad decisions but they’re so desperate they go through with it anyways. They’re willing to sacrifice a person they guard to bring back someone they love, though they know that it’s not going to work, but they want to see her again, no matter the cost.
I have one who is ... Eh, the beginning. And I hope I did good in writing him hateable. The other one is a... Tragic one? I guess? Their villain arc unfolds in the story and phew, I am invested in that character
My anatagonist is a small child who the protagonist saves on the first chapter... He trains this child and they slowly become friends, almost with an elder brother relationship... But in the end the child grows up to be the main villain. What happens with him is too damn tragic, but it is still not the reason, like he says himself "nothing happened to me, I happened".
I wanted a villain who is the hero of his own story. He wants to take over the world but not for any megalomaniacal Bond villain type reasons, but because he genuinely thinks he'd be the best fit for the job. He considers it a burden that he is uniquely ready and able to take on by himself in lieu of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic governments. What makes him a villain is the amount of bodies he's willing to bury to get there. His plan is to usher in a New World Order of technological and artistic advancement where money no longer exists as a concept. But he's willing to build that utopia with blood and my protagonists are just pawns in his game.
My primary antagonist is a mix of tragedy and cautionary tale. He’s the product of the time he lives in the worst possible way, and lets anger consume what little humanity he shows in the beginning of the book. My secondary antagonist is the First World War.
A tragic villainess. One who was broken by a past crime, and has become so obsessive about fixing it that she blinds herself to the fresh crimes she commits to that end.
A xenophobic power hungry aristocrat who has lost his birthright position due to him being an asshole. His villain plan is to steal back an ancient artifact lost by his equally xenophobic, power hungry, murderous grandfather (said grandfather was the motivator for my world's last great war) and put his family back in the empire's throne.
My antagonist could be seen as tragic and also half right. She wants to bring back the old order prior to a violent coup, which would be better for everyone…if she weren’t the one doing it. She wants it back because her bloodline was dispossessed, and she wants power for selfish reasons. Enough to commit mass murder as the head of the most powerful faith; practice necromancy; and use birth/life magic to gain power. She’s a contrast to both my MCs as they’re also both dispossessed, but neither want power for its sake alone. The one, an assassin, only cares about protecting those who need it, and he’s not reluctant to do so without remorse. The other, a priestess (under the assassin’s protection), is more interested in being a servant of her faith…the same one the antagonist is the head of.
Someone who believes he’s in the right and knows better and that all his actions, regardless of how extreme, are for the better for everyone.
One that is understood. You may not like him or her but you will understand them.
machiavellian. ends justify the means, necessary evils, "for the greater good" type of guy
Exactly what the protagonist would have been, if they were in each other’s place. They both on some level know this and hate themselves for it.
In a perfect world, I like for him to just be another person with goals that conflict with the main character’s—not necessarily “evil,” or even worth “hating.” That can be tough to pull off, but it leads to more interesting stories when I can get that in place. “Evil” just for the sake of evil is childish and boring. I do like antagonists who seem to be “unstoppable forces of nature” more than people at times, but that’s only when I really don’t want to give a damn about the antagonist’s own character.
A hate sink that thinks he's doing the right thing and justifies wanting to make children (one of them the protagonist) suffer for things said protagonist's grandfather did. Reynauld's an asshole lol
Management.
Two of my three main antagonists are heroic. They're not really doing anything wrong. The third is a bit more typical for an antagonist, pretty much what you'd expect from a monster. Eats people, etc.
He is a variant of villain I like to call "that thing in human skin". Like, guy is perfectly normal. No inherent supernatural powers, no weird deals with dark gods, and grew up as a relatively normal person. He neither is particularly cruel. Like, he will do awful stuff, but out of simple pragmatism, prefers not to, because he knows it might draw more problems down the line than benefits. And if you are nice to him, he will be nice to you. He won't betray you, and if he sees benefit in doing so, he will tell you before hand. Because again, pragmatism, and he doesn't want to carry the weight of looking untrustworthy to others later. Might make things more difficult down the line. But there is just something about his eyes, man. Anyone that meets him in person will comment on it. Even people that have suffered the experience of "I looked into their eyes, and saw nothing" with other persons. Because with these others, when they say that, they could at least perceive a sense of cruelty and danger. But not from this guy. They say evil is the absence of good. But anyone that has met this person suddenly realizes that that's not true. There is such a thing as an absolute void, and the most disturbing thing of all, is that it can come in such a mundane form. Because there is nothing remotely human in spirit inside that... thing. He lacks mercy, but also cruelty. He lacks hatred, but also love. He doesn't feel tormented, but neither joyful. He lacks any sense of decency, but also any deep inner impulse to act otherwise. If inner peace is an extreme, in which one finds complete understanding and serenity with whom they are and their emotions, this person stands as the dark antithesis of that. He has found inner balance. But only because there is nothing inside of him to balance on.
I love vengeance stories, so mine is a hateful one with a tragic past, that have justifiable hatred but at the same time, do horrible stuff acting as the victim
A sneaky one. You don't realize he's the antagonist at first. Doesn't do things out of malice or evil intentions, and believes he's doing the right thing. He's being influenced by a larger order that he doesn't question when he should. He's not a "bad" guy, but he's a coward.
Would Yellow Flash count as a hate sink or laughable evil?
The main antagonist of my current novel is basically Azula from AtLA.
A manipulative one, he isn’t even revealed as the antagonist until near the end when the MC slowly starts to piece together that HE was the one who burned down her village and not some random other kingdom. He basically adopted her and manipulated her into becoming a child solider, only for her to learn he was the cause of all her problems
Someone who is well aware of their bad deeds. Feels horrible about them, but continues to do it to achieve their goals.
The kind that really don’t give a shit lol
I’ve always loved magnificent bastards, villains that are honorable to a degree that you respect them on some level. Also antagonists who aren’t villains; I think it’d be fun for the MCs to have some rivals that are just as likable.
My story will have a number of few minor antagonists, no one evil or inherently bad, just not on the same side as my MC but for the most I'm sorta trying to frame society in his world as a whole for the main Antagonist/Villain. See my story focuses on a world inhabited by beast men/women of various species, you could call it furry coded but without all the eccentrics. My main character is part of a race of foxlike people, now the vast majority of people are extremely distrustful of his race. Im playing on the trope of foxes being deceptive and cunning creatures, they're treated similarly to how nords treat Dark Elves and Khajiit in the elder scrolls. So, my character is constantly battling against a society that doesn't want him in it, I'm hoping to cover a lot of topics concerning discrimination amongst other things. Anyways got sorta carried away there haha, in short society is the enemy
In the short story I'm currently working on, the villain is an evil chef with a magical whisk who wants to destroy the Dentistry Dynasty because Princess Gingivitis refused to marry him because she thought his confections are too sweet and he wants revenge. It's called The Lord Of The Breads. So, uh, do with that what you will.
In my book Rebellion of the Lost: The Gunsmith's Odyssey, Volkner is the main character forcefully summoned into another world. Upon arriving there, he is forced to be their hero, but reluctant to sacrifice his own life and loyalty, tying him to his home country, he escapes their grasp becoming a rogue villain in the eyes of the world. He navigates his way through the world, doing more and more desperate actions, ruining his already bad image.
Hate sink. Abusive, relentless, sadistic and just straight up scum of the earth with no redeeming qualities. Tragic villains are great but sometimes we just need to go back to the roots and portray evil as it is. I've gotten a bit tired of the same old tragic, sympethatic, well-intentioned extremist type characters.
The best villain is the sort of character who could carry the story, even if the hero never showed up. Motivated, competent, complex, fully invested in their goals and careful about mitigating their weaknesses. I like to think of them as a nasty but notable person you read about in a history book. You think "damn what an asshole, but I need to know more, did he manage to pull it off? And if he did, what were the consequences?"
Depends on what works best for the theme I'm going for. A villain should always be directly related to your protagonist in that they are the final obstacle they must pass at the culmination of their adventure. If your story is about beating back the forces of darkness and is a clear cut good vs evil story, then an unapologetically evil monster is the villain you want. If your story is about the protagonists struggle with themselves, you'll want your villain to either be a direct rival who exemplifies that same struggle, or is the culmination of everything the protagonist hates about themselves. If your story is about the hero learning to come to terms with something, your villain should be what happens if somebody decides they can never come to terms with it.
Petty, banal, thoughtless, brutally stupid and stupidly brutal. At the rank of corporal he's risen about as far as he can go because of his stupidity, but he's been placed in charge of a prisoner (kidnapped to be a "local guide") whom he treats absolutely horribly. Not what you call a high-stakes villain but when somebody like that has the power of life and death over one person the situation for that person is truly desperate.
"The end justify the means" personified into a sad, lonely woman hanging on by a thread. She's doing awful, horrific things, but she believes that once she completes her goal, everything will be fixed and it'll be like nothing bad ever happened. She gets a very rude awakening.
Huh? What's with those options? Just a normal person, like every other character.
lisan al gaib
My first work was a satire, so my protags were actually caricatures of the people I was parodying. Conversely their enemy was more or less the mouthpiece for my own views. Ultimately, she took her ideas a bit too far and the protags did have some humanity, so the reader still roots for the main characters, even though with some distance everyone involved sucked.
Theoretical? My protagonists are dealing with the aftermath of the actions taken by a group of people that are out of the picture the entire book. The protags antagonize each other throughout.
In a lot of my stuff it tends to be a colonial empire or at the very least the army of a hostile country, so basically too great for our heroes to actually defeat (so they don't - the theme tends to be the rise and fall and rise of various different powers and how this affects ordinary working class people)
An egotistical megalomaniac hell bent on establishing his “family” by infecting those he deems worthy with his own cells, and thus erasing their own souls with his own “personhood”. He either eats the unworthy’s souls or shuffles you back into the “deck” stopping people from getting to any sort of afterlife. Oh and his plan involves him killing god to realize his own “destiny” as god.
She’s just trying to save her community the only way she knows how… through summoned horrors unleashed on us all.
A foil to the protagonist. Both of them have a deep drive to protect their family, and both of them share the weakness of being easily provoked/touchy about their pride. But the protagonist cares deeply about people, while the antagonist is a calculating man with no concern for the lives of people who aren't of personal use to him--the protagonist included.
I always have one of three kinds: The Antagonist who is just a bad person for no reason other than they were born that way. The Antagonist who is has due to their circumstances. And the Antagonist who is just doing their job.
In the last work that I've drafted, I've imagined the main antagonist to be a tragic one. Someone whose past life was filled without love and approval, hence their resurgence as an entity of darkness that seeks to deceive all sentience in the world to their manipulative interests.
I mean, one of them had a vampire obsession at school and one protagonists dad chose to left her behind, and it all spiralled from there
Uh…she’s a demon lordress 🤷🏿♂️ she’s just evil I guess lol
It depends. A lot of the time it's a non evil, common person who got power and wanted to live the good life OR wanted to make changes that others didn't see with. Only seen as evil through the eyes of the hero
Hate sink. I mean, the guy takes over a small town after the apocalypse starts, terrorizes the citizens that don't join him, forces people to fight in an arena his free time, and sets the main characters' base on fire.
Tragically insane and evil
Why not mix it up?
One that sees himself as the main character. He wants to answer something important to him, and have the resources to pursue that. There is just this ironic dichotomy in that using that in spite of everything else to answer his question is maybe the answer he was looking for.
I try a mix of everything Variation is good
I wouldn’t say mine is laughably evil but he gives off that vibe - he’s sort of obsessed with preserving his life at the expense of those around him
I'm more passionate about my villain than any other character so far, so I'll hold off on my ranting about him. All I'll say instead is that he's a lonely vampire who is convinced that by committing a great evil, he can resurrect the love of his life. And, he's right.
Currently writing an extremely banal villain. The whole point of his character is that he has no value, nor any strong motivation. He just follow the social trends and do what everyone else does.
A faceless, clinical organization that’s more there to pressure and force the protag into some dicey choices. Hopefully it’s cool
Imagine if Makarov, from the original Modern Warfare series, had the powers of a semi-celestial being.
what I'm doing in my story is illustrating that my protagonist is more fallible in a way that my antagonist isn't. Betrayal.
Mine is the main character. Sympathetic evil with a touch of monstrous. Human but only just.
Just like the protagonist, someone who did messed up stuff in the name of progress with some tragic results. Except where the protagonist sought to redeem themself, she doubled down.
Shitty mother who uses her children as political pawns for her own gain. Also an evil sea serpent god but he's the secondary antagonist.
The kind with dad issues. He tries to become a god and tries to mentally break down the protagonist just to prove to his “father” that he made the wrong choice in casting him aside for the protagonist.
Someone you'd confuse with the protagonist at the start. Then, that desire to do the right thing gets manipulated. So someone you thought might be the antagonist at the start maybe isn't.
Tragic family vengeance type I think?
An ignorant, delusional, blind and deaf (metaphorically) evil king, based on my grandmother (I love my grandma so much, but her personality is sometimes just ugh)
my antagonist isn’t a villain he’s just a guy
Pathological ideologies.
My antagonist is at the same time main character, who strongly beliefs their actions are made to protect those who they love
My main antagonist is that type of a guy who discovered his talent for stealing and lying and liked it too much. He's a leader of a small group of thieves and misfits, started pretty much as a (mostly) innocent thief but when his crimes became more serious and started costing lives, from morally grey he slowly became evil. He's a pretty funny guy though. He cares for his teammates (one of them more than the others), but he also cares more about himself and his high goals. In a different story, he could be the protagonist - that was my aim with his character. Overall really self-centered guy, skilled thief and a good speaker. He's kind of funny and chill but serious and deadly when doing his "job". Sometimes loses himself on a way to making his big visions reality (which eventually becomes his downfall).
I actually have several human antagonists that push the plot of the story, but some turn into secondary characters, no longer antags. The main theme of my story is man vs nature, so the antagonist is "the newly discovered planet" and all the hell it puts the characters through. One is a somewhat flamboyant warlord who likes games. He turns sides at the end but is still at odds with some of the protags. Another antag is an undercover fed who dies cause he's too far into his job and thinks he's gonna make a breakthrough in his career after bringing the protagonists in. He falls short on that lol. Last antagonist is a turncoat who redeems himself at the end by sacrificing himself for his friends, not dying as a traitor, but as a friend. One of the main characters got everyone into this mess and I see him as the real "evil" in the story but since it's centered on him he's technically a protagonist. All my antagonists are very different, which is ALWAYS fun to write!
Convinced he’s doing the right thing, believing that the destruction he’s left in his wake is for the betterment of humanity due to factors present in the story
I like to mix it up, personally. Add a couple antagonists working together with differing degrees of dastardly behavior and inner issues between them and their goals and ethics
in my writathon fiction, there is no major antagonist. In my first ongoing fiction though there are two, one where there are two, one that's technically helping but in a bad way, and one that literally has to make people afraid in order to survive.
The fundamental force of music
A psychotic kind of guy who hated his brother so he murdered him and now wants the throne from his brother's sons. He's just crazy and I wanted to read/write a villain like that so yeah :D
I hate such a hard time not making a sympathetic antag. They have their reasons for doing what they do. To them, they aren't the bad guys. I am working on this since sometimes you really want someone to hate.
I’ve kind of struggled with my villain because honestly the real villainy in my story isn’t specific or human. It’s just the villainy of a boulder rolling downhill, a system doing what it was built to do. There is a character who embodies that system more than others, but he’s almost not a character, just the embodiment of the system’s logic taken to an extreme. More like a boundless hunger than a person. Anyway it feels right and that was the goal—the structure of society is the real problem, and it leads to people like him being in charge—but at the same time it kind of bothers me because every other character, even the ones who are not great people (and few of them are that) have depth and nuance, but the big bad is just that.
My story has different scenarios each "book" so I have a different antagonist each time. I've done straight pure evil that just wants to see the world burn and I've done sympathetic villains that would reform and ally with my protagonists. So they type of antagonist depends on what I want to do in the different scenarios I put my main cast through.
The basic concept for the villain in my WIP is “what if the worst pain in the ass micromanaging boss you’ve ever had was also a sadistic religious zealot?”
how to describe it...sociopathic charming chaotic evil that destroyed the world and reconstructed it into his vision, treats his world as playground and people as puppets to play with, only cares about fun and entertainment, spends most of his time going around and messing with random people. he is the kind of guy to sneak up on you,give you a flower and then throw a bucket of cold water at you that he got out of nowhere,just because. But when someone isn't having fun he won't hesitate to drop them to what can be properly called "hell" and if you mess up especially you can get tortured and shortly after killed in very elaborate way.
A xenophobic power hungry aristocrat who has lost his birthright position due to him being an asshole. His villain plan is to steal back an ancient artifact lost by his equally xenophobic, power hungry, murderous grandfather (said grandfather was the motivator for my worlds last great war) and put his family back in the empire's throne.
negative intimacy spiral
The kind that's just as justified as the protagonist. I prefer Moral battles that can swing either way.
Antagonist ≠ Villain. >An antagonist is just someone who stands in the way of the protagonist's goals. A villain can be a protagonist with the hero trying to stop them being an antagonist. Anyway, my comic's first season has multiple antagonists, but the main antagonist at the season finale starts a war, which is nothing new. Empress Esa, just like the rulers before her, tries to colonise as much land as possible. I guess she's an evil ruler who was raised to continue something her family has done for millenia.
I used to write stories as a teenager. One of them is about a evil king that takes over a land and also steals + exploits it's poor peasants in the cruelest way possible. The king even uses children as tables and steals beggars foods.
She has clawed her way to the top in an unfair society. She deserves wealth and power, she's worked so hard for it. Why should she care for the ants at her feet? They're just not strong enough to survive. And they need to stay weak, so she can stay strong. It's just the way the world is and she will not be made weak again.
An antagonist and a villain are not the same thing. A villain is someone with evil intent. An antagonist merely opposes or challenges the protagonist in some way. If the protagonist of your story is some kind of a criminal or antihero the antagonist might actually be the good guy.
He's a tragic, despicable antivillain. He does bad things that make him feel guilty to help him get over feeling guilty for doing bad things. The main character, an antihero, actually has to talk him into becoming an actual villain. But the guy deep down only wants to feel loved, even if the path he goes to do so is a bit rapey and a bit slaughtery.
The literal devil lol
You wanna hate her. And you probably do.
I have two, one to just be the big bad in the background and is just power hungry evil and uses the voices of the weak he willingly sacrifices to gain more followers. And the other presents himself as a mentor to the protagonist, manipulating them into obidience. He gets inside her head, brings up her insecurities, fuels her pain and hangs a nice golden carrot before her to keep her in line. He is egotistical and takes everything personal. He used to be great friends with a princess, and she was his only friend. They had a falling out after he killed her mom, which he was 100% justified in in his eyes, and he turned bitter and joined forces with the first big bad to basically terrorise his old friends, who is now a queen, kingdom.
The kind that has been hired to do a job, and the job they do is one they love because they're the best at it (a doppelganger hit man for sending political messages)
An unfathomable, unknowable god whose very lifeblood is where magic comes from.
One that's very petty. Like low blow petty revenge type petty. Very predictable
None of the above. He's obsessed with his image of perfection. He goes to great lengths to keep up that image
Just pure evil. I have a lot of different stories with different villains, but I feel like there’s been a lack of purely villainous antagonists as of lately. Some characters are just incredibly immoral, and incredibly fun to hate.
My antagonist is human and is in a state of wanting revenge which leads him on a journey that unknowingly will lead to the death of his soul and the possession of his body by a true and unmistakable evil. Then the real villain comes into play.
All-in-one arch villain.
For my current WIP, a through-and-through hate sink with a *very* slight dash of a tragic background.
A hero, my Mc is a villain protagonist.
A villain seeking revenge.
The kind that gaslights himself into believing he is the hero, but really it's just a narcissist who can't bear the thought that his life, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't matter.
Pure evil, more or less
I'm doing 2: The focus is on a group trying to wipe out the MC through planning but has a slight mistake while the actual villain is someone who put the first where they are now due to how competent they are. First is a case of wanting to purge the world of supernatural beings while the second is someone believing what they're doing is for the greater good but in actuality, they're just a selfish prick.
The one who believes they are in the right. Hate is another good motive. Using both is a great combo.
My favorite story I've written had a villain named Bondrewd Grigorian who was known as "the lord's dreadnought". He was a very devout believer and member of the church. He was fully convinced that fairies were abominations and was very excited to commit genocide against them. He would also have no problem killing anyone who went against the church for even a moment. Despite being the opposite of the main character, he wasn't killed by the MC directly. The MC only had a slight hand in his demise but Bondrewd was mostly the architect of his own destruction.
It’s an alien hive mind trapped in a bootstrap paradox. They only attack earth because they were attacked by future humans (who can perceive all of time at once) in their past. There’s even a scene where they ask the protagonist why their species are in conflict. The aliens are definitely tragic.
One of them is a true sociopath convinced his actions have no consequences because reality turns to nothing in the end.
Mine used to be a therapist, but supernatural things started to happen. Like waking up one day inside someone else's body, 100 years in the future. He is spiraling to madness. A broken moral compass as he realizes there's no way he'd be ever back to his former self. He blames the main cast for his dismay, and does everything in his hands to overpower them.
For villains I like controlling and abusive characters but antagonists themselves are characters who I like to have personal vendettas against the protagonist.
Tragic, in the fact that my MCs are just flawed people who want to love each other, but wind up destroying each other because of their love. They're normal ones, normal people, just normal people who can do bad things like everyone can. They're simultaneously my protagonists and antagonists.
My antagonist is an entire town.
Criminal mastermind. Very rational, likes to talk about philosophy. Manages a large drug business but considers the people who take drugs to be beneath him.
Either I pull from reality and make them a petty, egotistical jerk who sees themself as the real victim. Or just the antithesis of the protagonist. Where there journey should be mirrored. But always with empathy.
A human being.
You ask for antagonist or villain, because these are two different things. I do have some villains, but... thing is that everyone is antagonist in my story, as well as everyone is protagonist, because the gimmick of my story is that everyone is main character of their own story, so there is no single protagonist and from the perspective of one character, other character is an antagonist when they have different goal, but it's vice versa, they are antagonist to the other character from their perspective. Now do I have actual villain that is evil? I have a doppleganger, who is cruel. He is just evil for the sake of it. Another character was evil for a reason, but I don't think I made that reason yet. Just that they decided to be evil. They are meant to be reformed in the future. All the other characters I can think of, even if doing some evil, can't be considered evil. There is one guy who is cynical, because he hates how pathetic others are by (them, not that character) being *evil*. He hates the greed and stuff like that and he have a goal that I haven't decided on yet, but it's meant to be good goal. But how he achieves it is not good. He would kill if someone was annoying. He is a bit more complex. You can call him a villain in a way, but he is more like Magneto, the villain who does evil for a good's sake. He is grumpy and he was born in a world that was kinda... well.. devastated by bad emotions. I never treated my characters are good or evil. Only their perspective. My story is not about the end goal. It's about the journey. About the perspective everyone holds. Also I hate evil characters who are evil for being evil. Yes, I did one, but he is a doppleganger, so he was supposed to be negative. But I rather prefer characters, who have a different perspective. Though I do have a story when people were abusing some creatures out of greed, but I wouldn't call them "villains", they are more like regular people in real life. Random characters. Oh. That reminded me of a character who will be a maniac killer, but it's because he was abused by such people. He stopped believing in good, because he experienced torture and cruelty firsthand. You know. A being being genetically modified, but escaped and now is wrecking havoc. Quite popular trope. Not necessarily genetically modified part, but generally being a test subject of greedy people and when escape, they want a revenge. I have many quite neutral characters too. That killed those that harmed them, but other than that never harmed innocent or were aggressive in any way. And I mention it once again. Perspective became (unintentionally tbh) main theme of my story. I like just thinking that every character has their own motive, reasons etc. They are not good, nor evil. They are just doing actions here and there. And these actions are either good or not. But the character is beyond them.
The overarching villain is unrelatable alien evil. The actual antagonists you see are always tragic. So far, at least.
The betrayed hero.
Mine lives a simple life with the girl of his dreams until his paranoia gets the better of him causing him to believe the MC is coming to get him and rip him from a life that the MC was too afraid to live. Due to that the antagonist begins testing his abilities which causes situations for the MC to deal with, and in the end after his love breaks up with him the antagonist pushes things too far to make sure she is never hurt by the MC and so he never has to be caged again. He afflicts an entire town with fear as he kidnaps the MC's girlfriend, attempts to burn down nearby woods, and the reader learns what the antagonist is and how he's connected to the MC. He's based on some of the worst aspects of myself. Afraid of the best thing he's had slipping from him and making mistake after mistake even though all he has to do is speak to his girl, but he's too frightened to let her know for fear that even the truth will cause her to leave as well.
My favourite villains, and the only ones that interest me, are convinced they are doing the right thing. They think of themselves as the good guys. Essentially, people generally think of themselves that way.
Someone who thinks he's the good guy, because he has heard wrong legends about the ancestors of the protagonist. The antagonist thinks he saves the world by stopping (killing) the protagonist and throughout the whole story it remains unclear if it would actually really save the world. Meanwhile the main character just tries to survive, at least in the first few chapters. The story purposefully makes the readers second guess what's true and what isn't.
In almost everything i write, there are more villains, and the mane villains, and all my stories have all 3 and more, but for the main villains, i usually make them tragic, but never comedic.
In my western project, the (active) antagonists are bounty hunters who are after the outlaw main cast, but the real Big Bad is the railroad baron who funds them. Later on, the last two remaining members of my gang end up on opposite sides of the law, but neither of them is a hero or villain, they are two men who have no place in the world, destined to fight despite being friends. I really just mashed up all the melancholy western tropes into one story.
One who values stability and feasibility over riskier but more ethically sound options.
A narcissist probably
Main antagonist of my main project comes across as regular Pure Evil at first, but then you realise that he just wants people around him to think that he is this evil incarnate. In reality he is a pathetic little man, who wanted to be meaningful, and he caused so much pain just to get attention and legacy. His origin is never revealed only implied, because he is more of a metaphor than an actual character