a deep dive into villain characters

I'm drinking my cup of tea super villainous Behavior Hello my name is Leoni and welcome to another episode of Leone gets way too excited over characters that you're supposed to hate I've made deep dives into specific tropes I've made guides to Niche genres and I felt like it was inevitable for me to make a video about my favorite problematic faves villains laughs [Music] this video is going to be an analysis of what I think makes a great villain and I'll talk about my favorite villains and why I think they're so amazing we'll discuss the question of how much backstory a villain needs to have and do you need to have one at all and we'll also go over some of my favorite villain tropes while I was doing research for this video I came across tropes I never even heard about that I was like oh my God yes so I'm excited to share them with you in this video you don't see the bottles that I use for the candles because honestly look at these candles they're so long like if I put them on the table like normally you wouldn't even see the candle so I have to put them on the ground so now you can't see the bottle this is my villain origin story but you can't see the bottles and the flames in frame at the same time first we need a little lesson in villainy if you're gonna practice your evil laughter you gotta make sure your ears are protected I'm happy to announce that this video is sponsored by Loop earplugs whether you're going to a concert or just want to create some quiet time in your life Loop earplugs are perfect and they have various different earplugs for different situations my favorite are their experience Pro ones which reduce noise in such a way that they still allow you to hear important things like talking or traffic I recently went on a trip to London and I would not leave the hotel with these ones because I'm pretty sensitive to noise I was very happy that I could just pop these in whenever the city sounds were getting a little bit too much for me The Underground in London is so loud there are other earplug options are the quiet ones which reduce noise even more and are great for studying sleeping or when you just want to create the ultimate quiet time while you're reading your book they're completely reusable and washable so you never have to wear those little disposable ones ever again which is really neat and I also think they look pretty cute me it's like a little earpiece so if you're still looking for a way to bring some peace and calm into your life I highly recommend Loop earplugs please click the link in the description to check out their website and thank you again to Loop for sponsoring this video back to Medical Laughing Now what is a villain exactly well most stories have a protagonist usually the main character the one that you're rooting for the one that you're following and then the antagonist which is a character that antagonizes our main character and tries to stop them from getting what they want now a lot of stories don't really have a clear villain in the classical sense you know like a lot of Romance Books may have an antagonizing fact or like an X that's throwing trouble into things or a lot of contemporary literary fiction it doesn't have like a clear villain but there's some kind of antagonizing for sometimes it's even the main character themselves like they're just being self-destructive I actually think that's very common in contemporary literature but in this video we'll be talking about villains in a very classic sense that is very prevalent in mostly speculative fiction [Music] let's talk about what makes a good villain now this is of course going to be very much just my opinion I think this is very subjective so I've also Incorporated a lot of your guys's thoughts uh because I asked you guys in a community post to tell me about your favorite villains what you love about villains what you don't like about villains and I've Incorporated that in this video to also kind of give you you know like a little bit of a different perspective other than just my own first thing that in my opinion makes a great villain is when they kind of fit into the Trope of being the arch enemy of the main character there is a very personal almost intimate dynamic between the main character and the villain that makes it very clear that whatever antagonizing forces are going on between them it's very personal and it's not just some kind of nameless random villain that's fighting against our random main character no it makes sense why these two specifically are each other's antagonists sprinkle in a little bit of psychological torture and I'm a very happy man now not all villains are like this I mean the arch enemy is a Trope specifically but I have personally found that the most interesting villains that have the most compelling story to them are these kind of arch enemies like you guys mentioned you like character foils not necessarily villains but in terms of antagonists someone who challenges the main character and brings out their internal turmoil a mirror that reflects back the protagonist flaws and shortcomings a villains that is both taxing and stimulating a villain with layers that we can peel back for hours exactly so what do I mean exactly with this Arch Enemy villain I basically mean a villain that is like the most personal primary opponent of our main character maybe they have similar abilities maybe they have a similar backstory but they might have completely opposing moral standards there's something in the villain that just triggers the main character's worst fear the most classic example of this is of course Janus to Regina George but yes of course the Batman versus The Joker um and I would also say Moriarty versus Sherlock let me give you some examples of my personal favorites uh one of my favorite villain Dynamics will always be the darkling and Alina from Shadow and Bone Alina our main character turns out to have Sun Powers which is the most powerful type of magic that you can have the only other person that has a magic this powerful is the villain the darkling who has Darkness Powers well you can kind of see where this is going they're on the same level they're on the same playing field but they're literally opposites of each other and the dark one kind of represents what Alina could become if she decided to use her powers for evil and that's what makes them so compelling like you guys said when the villain could just as easily have been the hero if their backstory had panned out differently when a story shows us that people aren't born evil and actually give them a good reason for what they do you making the hero and the readers questions themselves and the great thing about the darkening and Alina is that there's this constant back and forth of Alina finding her only equal in the darkling but that also causing the darkling to constantly kind of coax her into coming to his side and you know using her powers for the things that he wants which is you know Save the World by distracting it I've recently been doing a Legend of Korra Mar marathons with some of my friends and when I was re-watching Legend of Korra for the first time I realized that Amman from season one has to be one of my favorite vegans I haven't watched season three yet so I think Zahir might become one as well but basically what I love so much about Amman is that he is again the perfect villain for our main character Cora Cora is a character whose Powers all come from the fact that she has her bending abilities her Elemental bending abilities that's what she relies on it's what makes her powerful and then we have a villain that can literally just take that away he can make all of korra's worst fears come true and that's what makes him such an amazing villain another example of the mirror character would be Holland to Kell in the darker shades of Magic series where they are both both antari which are very special rare kind of magical people and the tragedy of the story is that Holland kind of works for the big evil bad guy whereas Kel is our main character but you can very clearly see how Holland could have been just like Cal if his backstory hadn't been so tragic another thing basically the reason that I was going to make this video is because recently and I know I'm like 10 000 years late to the party I watched Jessica Jones for the first time consider me obsessed and one of the main reasons that I loved season one so much is because of the perfect villain main character Dynamic we get in Jessica and kilgrave and their Dynamic is extremely personal Jessica is a main character who's very edgy she doesn't want to be controlled and then we have kilgrave whose power is to literally control people with his mind yeah Jessica is the only one that can stop kilgrave because of her super strength but more importantly because kilgrave um is like in love with her has a very weird crush on her and thinks that he can win her back by using his mind control so he won't kill her whereas he would definitely kill literally anyone else honestly the scariest villain if you haven't watched Jessica Jones and you like villain main character Dynamics with a lot of psychological torture you have you have to watch Jessica Jones and the Last example that I want to give of this character foil because there's so many is Eli and Victor from one of my favorite books vicious in which we follow two students um that you know they're best friends they're roommates they're both trying to find ways to give themselves superpowers but then you also follow them I think about 10 years in the future where they have superpowers and they are each other's Arch enemies like literally they are each other's Arch enemies because they both have super powers but they want to use it for different things and in vicious it's extra interesting because neither Eli nor Victor are true hero like yes Victor is the protagonist and Eli is the antagonist but they're both both pretty villainous you could say it's like a foil between two villains now like I said not every good villain has to be an arch enemy of the main character sometimes a really good villain is a good villain because they represent something bigger something bigger that is the true antagonizing Force against our main character a really great example of this would be Babel by RF Guang Babel is alternate history that takes place in the 19th century and we follow some University students that are all marginalized in some way and their struggles with the colonial system of 19th century Britain and all the racism that exist at universities and outside of that as well now how do you make a villain out of something as big of a system as colonialism and racism well first of all there aren't just there isn't just one villain there are many we have kind of like the annoying rich white University boys we have a character that is a representation of a privileged white woman and kind of represent the phenomenon of the white women's tears but if I had to point out like one main villain it would be the caretaker of our main character he's not a very compelling antagonist in his own rights but he represents the entire system of colonialism and racism that our main characters are fighting against another example that you guys mentioned is President Snow from The Hunger Games President Snow is one of my favorites because in the end he's a perfect mirror for Katniss he's not an evil mastermind who's solely responsible for all the problems but the symbol of a system I love the moment where she realized that just getting rid of him wouldn't solve anything and that's exactly what I'm talking about and the last thing that in my opinion makes a good feeling is when we are shown how terrifying and smart they are and not just told I love villains who constantly show you how smart and terrifying they are rather than have other characters mention it like Azula from after The Last Airbender from the moment she shows up on screen every word she says and every single thing she does just further cements how much of a threat she is not just to Ang but also to Zuko I love her because she wins now we usually understand that a villain is going to lose at the end right we kind of expect that that's going to happen so how do you still make them scary well they just have to win many other times during the book so that as a reader you just question like but how are the main characters going to win at the end if the villain is constantly winning all these smaller battles so those are all the things that I think make for a good feeling but what makes a bad villain um I initially really thought that I was going to have a section here about what makes a bad villain and it would be about like mustache twirling villains that are just evil for the sake of evil but as I went through your guys's responses on the community tab on what you liked in villains I actually realized that there's quite some discussion on the extent of backstory people want from their villains not everyone dislikes villains that are evil for the sake of being evil [Music] let me just read some of the things that you guys have said so you can kind of see the disagreement I hate it when a villain is evil for the sake of being evil I'm sure we all do that's what I thought as well I love villains who are evil for no reason no backstory whatsoever they're just terrible people I hate it when villains are just bad and that's it the best villains are those with fleshed out backgrounds and who have a motive behind their actions I hate when books try to redeem villains and it's just well they have a sad backstory so actually they aren't so bad I hate when all their motives are based only on childhood trauma no one has a perfect childhood we don't all go around being psycho because of it best villains are those that aren't bad by nature but have a story that explains why they are that way so sad backstory yes or no do we want a villain that has a sad backstory to explain their action or does this kind of send the wrong message should villains just be monsters without any kind of excuse that you just really love to hate or is that a little bit boring and lacking in depth I'm gonna be honest I've always been on the side of people who love villains that have a good backstory if there's villains that have absolutely no explanations for their behavior it can be fun to kind of just love to hate them I'm personally not a big fan of it because I think it's more interesting if the story has a little bit of moral ambiguity but I can also understand that sometimes it's just fun to unapologetically hate a character but I am very against the idea that giving your character a backstory or an explanation for their behavior means that it's okay what they're doing I think that it's very important to understand that an explanation is not the same as an excuse so let's explore this a little further I think that there are two ways that a villain can have their behavior be explained either through backstory things that happened in the past fast that make them how they are or through goals things that they want to achieve that make them do really bad things and sometimes it's a pretty good goal let's start with a sad backstory this is what most people mentioned when they talked about having a good reason for them being evil they had a rough childhood someone killed their one true love things like that I think a good example of how you can do this without making it seem like you're excusing the villain's character is again killgrave from Jessica Jones without spoiling he is given kind of a sad backstory of all the childhood trauma that he has experienced but it's very clear from The Narrative that this in no way accuses him of all the horrific killing and torture and psychological manipulation that he is doing it just poses as you know getting to know the villain a little bit more and making the story a little bit more interesting another way of explaining the villain's behavior and this is actually my personal favorite is through their goal maybe they're actually going after a very good goal that as the reader you can kind of sympathize with it's just the means by which they try to achieve that involves like a lot of violence and killing and wrongdoings that makes them a villain maybe they just want to change society maybe they genuinely believe that they're doing something good for the world but the ends just don't justify the means I personally love this because I love it when stories integrate some interesting ideas or societal critique into the story however I will say I do think it's sad that often it's just villains that are being used for this and rarely the main character there's another video essay on YouTube that really goes deep into this hope I can try to find it for you guys but basically I remember they mentioned that especially in like big mainstream stories like Marvel movies the villains are the only ones allowed to fight for change the main characters need to be the Defenders of the status quo so that anyone Mass audiences can relate and root for our main characters and only the villains are allowed to fight for something that is a little bit more politically charged or a little bit more ambiguous the villains have the freedom to fight against climate change or stand up against colonialism but it's only ever the villains doing this and of course they're always going way too far killing a lot of people in the process using too much violence and I'm not a huge fan of it because it does if used too much kind of give off this message of like oh people who fight for change always go way too far and I thought about this and I realized maybe this is why I am Joy villain characters so much because it's usually the villain characters that are given the slightly more interesting ideas that can make you think about things and the heroes aren't given that much freedom I guess to be a little provocative so yes I really actually love villains that are fighting for good goals goals that you can sympathize with but I am disappointed that this is often only given to villains and I don't really like what that what message that gives okay for the next bullet points for what makes a bad villain um I had mentally ill villains the only note that I took here was just No period having your villains explanation for their behavior being their mental illness is just always a no for me mentally ill people already have to deal with enough misconceptions we don't need to add to that by making our villains mentally ill sorry just had to organize some things actually right after this video I'm gonna have the next marathon of Avatar Legend of the chorus season three which has Zahir which is a very loved villain so I'm very excited for that and maybe I should have waited filming this video until after I've seen that see well ah oh well I'll put a little update here foreign next up let's talk about some good villainous evil tropes [Music] at first I thought about going over all of the philanthropes and ranking them but there are so many there's so many so instead I'm just gonna go over my favorite tropes and then also some tropes that I didn't know there was a name for it and then I read the description I was like oh my God yes I love that I didn't know that was a thing by far my favorite villain Trope that I've talked about a lot in my videos is the well we're not so different you and I when the hero and the villain are inextricably linked just by nature of being similar and unlike anyone else the darkling and Elena have this Kel and Holland have this and this Trope often leads to another Trope that I really love and that is villain is the only one that is willing to teach the main character to reach their true potential um this one needs a catch your name submissions are welcome I also didn't find this Trope on like the TV Tropes list so I guess I just just made it up but I need more people to talk about this it's when the main character has a certain set of powers that everyone in their home is either afraid of or it's so powerful that no one really knows how to teach them or maybe they're made out to kind of be a freak for having these powers only one that understands it is the villain and they are the only one willing to teach the main character how to use their powers or how to reach their true potential something like that basically when everyone else in the hero's life is Loki holding them back and the villain is the only one that's like I see your potential come to my side and I'll help you there's a tension between the main character is gonna grow into themselves and have their you know character growth Arc but at the same time is the main character maybe going to get a little bit too power hungry another one of my favorite tropes is the rivals turned evil where the villain is the former rival of the main character it's super common in anime and I need more of it in like western tv shows and books it's a very underused Trope get over Rivals to lovers we're doing Rivals to enemies here if you want to pain me if you want to make me sit in a puddle of my own tears for weeks you have to write a book with this Trope it might be examples that I can think of are subsequent Naruto from Naruto also Sora and Riku from Kingdom Hearts and they only book example that I can think of um is vicious with Victor and Eli then of course we have our classic Redemption Arc which so many of you guys mentioned my favorite Trope is the Redemption Arc granted Zuko from Everlast Airbender is the only character I know that went through an amazing journey from a hot-headed villain to the confused guy who begins to question his morality and struggles and achieves otter I've never seen a character like him I agree that I still don't have a better example than Zuko children with Blood and Bone tried to do the Redemption Arc but they failed at it because they try to do it within one book and that's just too fast like you need to First build them up as a True Villain and really make the reader understand that this is a villain and then you can start their Redemption Arc like one of my pet peeves is when you can tell that the author is going to give a villain a Redemption Arc and they're just writing them in as a villain just so they can give them a Redemption Arc later and it just kind of weakens it and now we're going on to the tropes that I wasn't aware of yet that I didn't know they had a name um but I love them the first one I I had kind of heard of a little bit it's the anti-villain I think we're all aware of with the concept of an anti-hero you know and hero that's actually a little not very heroic basically the hero being a little bit darker makes them morally gray instead of just good but you can also do the same thing to a villain where you make the villain a little bit more morally gray instead of just evil and that makes them an anti-villain these are often the villains where you think Hmm they kind of have a point the next rope that I love that is also extremely underused is Baddie flattery I didn't come up with these names okay it's when the villain complements the hero of how good they are becoming and their heroism or like complement their fighting style or something like that I just really appreciated when there's a kind of respect between the villain and the hero coming from the villain side like the hero obviously hates the villain but the villain is like Loki I kind of respect you Hades the game is full of this and it adds a kind of humorous tinge to the story it can also be used to show that our main character has a little bit of a dark streak you know that moment when the main character does something kind of bad like they're a bit violent or maybe they even kill someone and then the villain is like I thought I was the bad guy here but like less cringy than that the next Trope that I newly learned about that I apparently love is something called blue and orange morality it's when a character or a species operate on a completely different set of moral rules than normal humans do I mean we're all aware of like black and white morality right like the good guys are like white and good and then black is like evil and then morally gray is when it's a little in the middle black and white morality it's not even morally great it's just operating on a completely different set of rules and if a villain has this it makes them very unpredictable and very erratic and I love that for example Hannibal Lecter killing cannibalism that's fine but don't you dare be rude you gotta have good manners and a good style of fashion it makes them scary because you never know what he's gonna do the good place is full of this and I think it's why it's one of my favorite TV shows and I also think that a lot of Ghibli movies especially house moving castle and Spirited Away basically give me movies that have a lot of spirits you can see that these Spirits have a kind of blue and orange morality and it's what makes them feel so Whimsical and Fantastical I'm gonna close the curtains I'm a villain I don't want lights because of course I couldn't make a video without showing how much of a fan girl I've become of Holly black Holly black uses this too for her fairies and I think this this explains why I like her Series so much Holly black uses black and white morality to other her fairy creatures she makes a really big point out of showing us fairies are completely different from humans you can see that partially because like the love interest has a tail but also because they have these completely different set of moral rules killing is completely normal to them treating humans like ants under their boots completely normal and I think this is why Cardin who is initially the antagonist in the story so easily transitioned to being the love interest to our main character despite all the horrible things that he did to her in the first book because that's just kind of normal to Fey the fair folk just operate under this completely different set of rules it's also how the villains like madok Jude's father feel morally gray despite being like objectively horrible and like abusive to his children because in the Fey world and under their rules it's all just a little bit different okay we have two to go this is a Trope called for me it was Tuesday it's basically where the villain is completely unaware of the effect that they have on our main character because to them you know it was like Tuesday it's very normal for them to kill and at first I didn't really understand this Trope until I read that an example of this is actually happening in six of crows and it's happening between Kaz one of our main characters and Pekka Rollins this is what it says on a TV Tropes website as its entire life has been shaped by the kangan boss Pekka Rollins flashback reveals that less than a month after spoilery really bad thing that he did to Kaz Rollins didn't even recognize Kaz when he tried to confront him after that Kaz is motivated not only by his desire for Revenge but to make sure that when he teaches Rollins a lesson it's one that Rollins will never forget and he's very motivated by the fact that Romans didn't even recognize him and I like that I like this Trope and then the last rope is a little silly but I also think it should be used more often and it's called No Mr Bond I expect you to dine it's when the villain captures the main character for some reason they are together somewhere and the villain treats the main character like a guest they're like here dine with me I don't know why I love this so much I think it's because it adds this tension of like oh they're behaving in a kind of unpredictable manner they're being nice but when will they switch and I just really love ridiculous dinner scenes where like two characters sit opposite of like a way too long table and have like a little conversation over a long buffet that stretches out between them over the table I just think that's really nice now you may have noticed that in this video I didn't really focus on any of the specific female villain tropes because there's a whole array of villain tropes that are very specific to women that all basically come down to evil woman is sexy or your mom I love it when women are like I'm in my villain era right now and it's basically just them deciding that they're gonna speak up for themselves now but I could honestly make it completely separate video about female villain tropes I'm sure there's already a video on that on YouTube Somewhere That's why I didn't want to go into it in this video because I feel like this video is already long enough but if you have any thoughts on specifically female villains and the tropes that are often associated with female villains leave them in the comments down below I hope that with this video I have summoned all the villain fans so if you have any good book recommendations or TV show or movie recommendations with a fantastic villain please please I'm begging you to recommend them to me the sad thing about this video is because it's so dark and I decided to wear dark clothes because villains you can't even see my outfits you can't even see that I'm wearing a cute sweater vest that is my fit on the origin story anyway if you would like to see me ramble about stories and books more often make sure you subscribe and you can follow me on my social media I really hope you have a wonderful rest of your day I'm going right now to watch season three of Legend of Korra and I will see you soon next week with another video goodbye thank you [Music]

Channel: The Book Leo

Views: 172,627

Keywords: book, books, booktube, reading, booktuber, peruseproject, paperbackdreams, review

Id: Kz82f06pvVY

Length: 32min 14sec (1934 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023