Let's Gripe about Villains

an unpleasant truth of history is that much of human advancement has been a product of atrocities the greatest nations were founded on unjustified conquest or slavery celebrated historical figures stole much of their work killed their opponents and rewrote events to their merit even modern medical science relies on the suffering of other species to improve upon our understanding of how to prevent suffering itself any form of life hinges existence upon the death of other life even plants rely on the destruction of competitors to survive and evolve it's a simple matter to judge yesterday for not being tomorrow the human propensity for self-righteous moralization is greater than it ever has been we live in a golden age of privilege languishing over moral quandaries we never have to face simply because our ancestors did that for us all the while inventing new things to be offended about evil and good arm rather limber concepts what was good a hundred years ago is evil today what's evil today can be effective life if times get tough it's a fantastic deal isn't it because as humans we made all of it up our evolution into social creatures driven by intelligence group thought and communal provision is what created the need for our species to imagine the invisible laws that can justify survival the desire to continue existing is why we're all here all here making up rules to explain it we're so obsessed with justifying why our little configurations of atoms should be allowed to persist why one existence is good and one is bad what is a good life anyway biological success hormones and loneliness propel us to have children but your own child is only 50% of you they may not even act like you or worse they may only inherit the part you hate most about yourself their child will be 25% of you their great grandchild barely even a related they have more in common with a stranger your grandchild married than they could ever have with you in a century you're just a meaningless genetic ripple and an ocean of history you may as well not have a child at all you'll just be a picture somewhere with a name written on the back and soon no one alive will remember a single thing about you that's why we're so concerned with how history remembers us even the most famous of dead humans did what they did because were scared scared of being forgotten often enough yet we don't really know anything about the real them just bullet points in a history textbook for a child to be bored by and big academic recollections for a scholar to guess about how could we really know them we spend a lifetime just trying to figure out who we are and only one or two people even really care about that if we're lucky enough to find them and most of us aren't you certainly don't care about the intricate dealings of a stranger's internal struggles do you not elicit reminds you of yourself of course yes we make it all luck all that meaning in the universe is what we made up so then imagine the power that fiction has over the universe we can explore any possibility we don't even need to commit a crime to condemn it and we don't even need to accomplish anything while feeling good that we imagined ourselves doing it I heard that that sounds familiar doesn't it the fact of the matter is when exploring the universe of meaning that we create every day we all need someone to embody change an antagonist a villain someone upon which to pile all of our insecurities fears and hatred into someone to take the blame a political party a race a parent yourself just as we make up good and evil we make up heroes and villains is it surprising that the people we call heroes often hate being called one is the surprising that the more you study a villain the more they appear to be a fractured child it's a surprising that we're all just damaged vessels searching for meaning and trying to understand ourselves all because that's what our evolution decided work the best those happy being alone may die alone if you aren't lonely you won't look for a mate if you aren't obsessed with using sex to prove your worth as a person you won't have children that's why you're so eaten up with those nasty insecurities that's what works history is driven by pain by evil by villains let's talk about some of those I have my favorites as anyone does you've probably seen a few villain tier images online at the top is usually villains whose motives are better than the heroes at the bottom villains who are just evil well I'm not really here to talk about that I generally agree with the sentiment when writing a story your characters usually should be walking explorations of your theme if you're writing about selfishness you might identify different kinds of selfishness and turn those ideas into characters or you could explore opposition and make a character who's a walking Paragon of altruism either way an antagonistic force who is evil only for the sake of being evil isn't going to embody too many themes without some careful construction so usually there are two dimensional and serve only to be background dressing even so I do love Darth Sidious what a rascal I feel like if you're going to make a villain who's just evil because they are then you really need to crank up just how much they love being evil it's a lesson that goes hand-in-hand with any form of character writing characters should embody concepts and help explore what your story is about after all a lot of people have problems with this despite it being the foundation for narrative construction young writers often want to write characters they think are cool or that remind them of things they enjoyed in the past then once they have a collection of things they enjoy they try to slam them together into a narrative so all their favorite toys are on display it doesn't work too well anything you focus the camera on should embody some element to the point you're trying to make in telling your story consider the shining who's the best character in the shining some people will simply pick their favorite character my favorite is Scatman Crothers character heller on hell Iran he's such a weirdo with his obsession over ice-cream psychic powers and posters of naked women all over his walls he's also a badass until well anyway we can probably axe the idea that he's the best character just because he's my favorite to explore this kind of question we have to identify what the story is exploring sometimes a theme isn't clear because it's more about cracking sensation The Shining is all about confusion lingering dread associating beauty and sex with madness and suspicion even the titular concept of psychic ability shining is a beautiful word to describe what is usually portrayed as being a doorway to horror the hotel itself is beautiful exotic and isolated it's also a secret playground for the wealthy who discard their sexual inhibitions and it's built on history of violence and chaos even its most amazing attraction is a hedge maze people know it's danger but intentionally wander in to explore and escape reality and inevitably become lost theming so which character berth serves to further the goals of this setting and story you can make an argument for Wendy she represents the opposition to the hotel she isn't beautiful or sexual she has a grounded rational personality and abstains from most of the hotel's luxuries her primary concern is the welfare and emotional state of her family all contrary to the hotel's purpose jack however would seem to be the most obvious choice he's the main character he bodies the isolation and madness the hotel brings on as well as having enough quirks of mannerisms to be fun to watch he's a good villain perhaps an even better candidate however is the hotel itself in the film and especially the book the hotel is portrayed as an entity that seeks to entrap people within it it is beautiful vast empty trackless epithet 'ok and a mirror for the insecurities that hidden desires others bring with them just like a hedge maze whether it is an actual entity or not it's easy to make a case for it being the actual villain of the story it embodies the concepts of the story and serves to all their characters into action and into exploration of the themes at had and it's just a big house but thankfully it's not just evil for the sake of being evil if it's evil at all it's trying to incite exploration about the story's ideas and that's one of the things I love most about a good villain well the hotel is a great example of embodying messages in your narrative you can't say it has much of an active personality for that we can take a look at someone else like Captain Ahab Herman Melville's moby-dick isn't exactly compelling reading throughout the whole book some chapters are just Melville regurgitating five years of nautical information from his time whaling out of New England it isn't even necessarily focused on a character a theme although you could turn it into a character study about Ahab himself the book touches on the subjects of God race and social castes my takeaway usually was that the book is about the rigidity perception and whether we have the ability to understand the world or ourselves they have is shown to be both a hero and a villain sane and insane he's a rigid dogmatic man who is consumed with monomania during one voyage near Japan a typin destroyed much of his ship Peleg and Ahab rather than accepting death juryrigg masks in an effort to save the entire crew he's described by elijah to have lay dead for three days and nights off Cape Horn for reviving despite the religious imagery he shows great contempt for God he's described as an ungodly godlike man larger than life he's a vessel for a countless number of interesting parallels and contradictions something I find very interesting about Ahab is something Malvo reiterates a lot that a has a constant rational alliance with his own insanity he worries that if even the Sun moves because God wills it how can he possibly not also be a puppet of God is a hem a hat is it I God or who that lifts this arm if it sounds like he's afraid he has no free will because it's endangering his life and his crew don't worry the opposite is true he's afraid he may doubt have free will because that would mean it's not his hand holding the harpoon getting revenge and that can't be allowed especially near the end of the book has made clear that despite being obsessed he's clear minded rational and intelligent it's even an applied that he's using his own madness like a weapon as he describes it he's leaking but he has no desire to find or patch the hole in his mind in fact he even recommends madness as a solution to human suffering the only thing partly curing this is PIP the cabin boy who is mad with weakness compared to a hab mad was strength eventually a hab has to lock him away in his cabin because according to ahab my melody becomes my most desired health all this comes down to hat being a victim of his own greatness his ability history and form are described in godly terms yet he also was always described as lacking a good spirits so when the whale took his leg you can probably imagine how that might destroy his whole identity but rather than let that happen he turned to revenge and if God opposed that he would oppose God they have has a complicated relationship with the divine as he says [Music] could the son do that then could I do the other basically if God has something to say about it let him talk but if he can talk I can knock him out because they have views himself on that level more importantly he's aware that what he's doing might be considered conventionally evil but he's above that and he'll make any pact with any pagan god to get his revenge the man forges the harpoon using human blood saying i baptize you not in the name of the Father but in the name of the devil at one point he points a loaded gun at a member of his crew saying there is one God that is lord over the earth and one captain that is lord over the Pequod yet when he's finally on top of the white whale baptized blood harpoon in hand the book famously says all that most mends and torments all that stirs up the Lisa things all truth with malice in it all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the subtle demon isms of life and thoughts all evil - crazy Ahab were visibly personified and made practically saleable and Moby Dick he piled upon the whales white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down and then as if his chest had been a mortar he burst his hot hearts shell upon it mmm slicing prose is a mouthful but a haba is a really interesting character there's so much to say about it he's great by human standards yet that's not really much of anything but that's all he really has so rather than accepting his weakness he tries to raise himself up to the same level as God he falls in lead with a Sun worshiper because he thinks prophecy will help him because on the devil to help him he leads all of his crew to their deaths yet he seems to see the whale as embodying every last bit of human suffering that has ever happened anyway throughout all of human history it's a white whale a living blank canvas that they have paints with whatever evil he had with him and he's intent on destroying it and possibly intent on destroying himself as he's part of that misery yet all of that is an excuse because he's just a small foolish man running away from his own insecurities Wow shaming get complicated canted maybe we should look at something simpler how about something more accessible how about Knox from a French cartoon called wakfu by the way the series isn't particularly good season 1 is mediocre up until Knox Kissin ball season 2 is just a mishmash of random nonsense in season 3 is just everywhere dofus which takes place in the same setting is a much better series overall if you don't mind it being a little bit more episodic but Knox knock says probably my favorite kind of villain motivation and payoff in the context of the setting Knox is a time age his bodies encased in armor but his flesh died a long time ago he's a ghost in a shell when he's introduced he's just a cartoon villain he says a couple of menacing things does some bad stuff establishes some information and is evil for the sake of being evil usually when you introduce any character you want their first appearance to sum up everything about them in a way in this crummy French weeaboo cartoon I spelled weeaboo with the yes by the way it actually works it'll be clear why later Knox is over 200 years old he's incredibly powerful mainly due to the plot MacGuffin of the series a magical artifact called the iliac you it's sort of like a Lovecraftian artifact it will give you vast knowledge inspiration and power but may also drive you insane Knox's plan is a simple one it's very cartoonish all life has energy for a very long time he's been siphoning the life out of anything he could gain enough power to cast a very very big spell that's all anyone knows about him he's a time mage who has already killed an entire nation of people in this goal of gaining enough power to do something so - the main cast he's just a flat two-dimensional villain that needs to be stopped a cartoon one of the first things NOx does is still part of the life force of the main characters adoptive father later midway through the season when he returns to destroy this surrounding countryside he gives up life force back he asks a question if you could fix an irredeemable mistake at the cost of a few lives would you and then he confesses that he has no idea why he chose to spare this one man but he does decide at least one person should know how much pain he's in over what he plans to do to the entire world thirteen episodes and we get our first hint of actual character for a villain NOx like Ahab has a moral imperative he has monomania and like Ahab it has become diseased even in this children's cartoon we have a Shakespearean styled character that is acting based on their own internal moral code yet twisted into self annihilation and tragedy more importantly he's aware that what he's doing is evil and he hates the necessity of doing it something interesting about Knox's use in the story is that no one ever really knows what his motivations are except the viewer from start to finish the main cast just thinks of him as being an evil madman the only character that ever comes close to figuring him out is not his main rival a jerk on ik man who used to own the Ely cube named give me a second grue grue Google ah grew galore a grand grew galore Agra grew galore a grand what a strange name big G g-unit wants the cute pet because he's aware of how much damage it could cause knocks on the other hand wants to kill Google Oregon because as a dragon he's chock-full of energy knocks wasn't even aware what the cubes name was which goes to show how little control he has over for the NMA fights [Music] [Applause] during the course of this fight good fight by the way NOx actually explains what his motivation is he's a time mage given enough energy he believes a heating cast a spell that will allow him to rewind all of history more importantly this will allow him to undo all the evil he's ever done in the world all the people that he's killed all the nations he's destroyed all the suffering that he and others like him have ever calls will be completely undone no one will remember his atrocities or be affected by them because they never will have happened according to him he got the idea from the cube itself for two centuries it's been talking to him after seducing him with knowledge this is alarming to big G for two main reasons one the cube as far as he's known in his thousands of years of being alive has no will of its own and cannot speak at all second going backwards in time is impossible there are gods that represents schools of magic in this universe for time magic that God it's seal or seal or doesn't have the ability to go backwards in time no one does knocks however is convinced that zeal or is wrong and that he can surpass his own God the fight ends in as much of a stalemate as their conversation the dragon dies but NOx is unable to harvest his energy this means falling back to plan B Plan B is the genocide of an entire race of people again Knox isn't happy about needing to slaughter millions of evil but admits that once this plan succeeds the only person who will be suffering over them will be him Krueger Lauren's final words are born during the fight he's seen a better understanding of Knox the man under the mask what's left of him is putting on an act he isn't as evil as he's trying to appear the guise of an evil time mage out to destroy the world is a fiction that Knox chose just how a hab was in alliance with insanity and pagan gods Knox is not who he really is it's a mask he chose to wear to protect himself from the atrocities he chose to commit knocks rejects this claiming that even if he fails and his plan really is impossible the world can be damned let me ramble about something for a moment a lesson you should learn about people is that they don't really change so much as they adapt they accommodate they're flexible much like how a drug addict can go clean but do so by becoming a religious radical or how six criminals or Liars are often the most vocal about protecting others from their own secret actions humans remain as themselves we can certainly change but we are still flesh and flesh cannot replace itself overnight humans do not tear out sections of their psyche and cleanly replace them with flawless new pieces we have to take existing pieces and rearrange them into something new the core of who we are remains the same for a long time [Music] completely unintentional especially when reacting to a single event in our lives we aren't turning into different people the person we are is simply reacting and adapting for better or worse character should be written the same way they stay true to their own internal logic even if their logic is flawed this character Knox has over two centuries demonized himself he is still who he was but the character he's wearing is what allows his moral code to continue to work a hab was the same way he became the tyrant that he did because he refused to stop being himself as he once said a hat will forever be Ahab this is all kind of interesting but it isn't what I like about Knox the core to anyone's behavior is usually going to be either their childhood or a product of years of sustained experience to really come to a complete understanding of the character we have to look at the Knox special this is an episode animated traditionally in a completely different style by a different studio it doesn't take place within the series proper it's additional content some people recommend watching it after the season is over I recommend watching it before the final episode the special concerns the life of a relatively unimportant inventor named William he has a wife a dog two children they're poor but happy million worries constantly about failing to provide for his family but his children are healthy and his wife has absolute faith in him he's perhaps not that bright and not of strong will but he's a man of great moral character his landlord is a stereotype and is always angry about his rent money is the simple life in this little house on the beach while playing the family dog goes missing million while searching stumbles across the cube as inventor million begins to obsess over its function as a provider he obsesses over its profitability as a victim he starts to lose his grip on reality an eldritch artifact the cube changes whoever holds it it boosts million senses makes him more aware more focused and makes him smarter more prone to sudden bursts of genius and understanding his ability as an inventor increases dramatically however he loses himself so deeply in his craft that he stops providing entirely the family falls behind in rent as million loses track of time he becomes so lost in himself that when his wife tries to drag him out of his office he almost becomes violent he's begun to hear things the cube is speaking to him after this his wife is forced to take their children away to live with her sister on another island in their acapella go she invites him to come with them since they no longer had the rent to keep their home briefly he considers this but it won't take long the cube says just a few more days in how I have everything worked out there's no need to stop his work and so he returns to his office with no one to anchor him he completely loses track of time how much time we don't know but when his landlord finally shows up it's clear that time and space around an inn the home has been corrupted in some way it seems much older yet items are also frozen in motion or stuck in a constant cycle NOx Emilien himself still thinking it's been only a month since he discovered the cube emerges to disparagingly toss the landlord his money his body is in the same state as the house he's much older decrepit he looks mad decane his experiments have turned him into a completely different creature than he once was but money isn't why the landlord is here his wife apparently found a new career at some point and moved on with her life she had even paid for Knox Millions rent months in advance he owes nothing the landlord is here unfortunately to bring bad news there's been a natural disaster the entire island his wife and children started the new lives on has sunk back into the ocean no survivors have been found of course this sounds crazy especially two knocks Amelia it's barely been a month his perception of reality is fragmented he's been using the cube to become a god this is clearly some inane scheme by the landlord to steal his work to steal the cue using his new power as he peers across the world looking for his wife he finds where their home should be but there's nothing there only a vast open expanse of water he realizes at once what has happened he lost himself to his obsession and now his wife and children are dead this is not his motivation it's here that he truly loses his mind dives into monomania and commits his first murder rather than sink into a depression or except what he's done he chooses insanity he pulls down his mask and discards the name his wife called him and intentionally takes on the role of villain he will challenge God and destroy time itself to undo this injustice this evil the world has created that snogs for 200 years he rampages through the world killing nations worth of innocent people knocks the villain million created will take on the burden of evil together what he needs to undo that evil all the while the cube directs him still whispering still the core of all his problems now for my favorite part in all this Knox wins Knox's plan works Bruegel or grande was wrong zeal or the god of time was wrong when Knox arrives at the nation of Soddy da and genocides the entire population to give him the last bit of energy he needed he does the impossible and travels backwards in time [Music] [Applause] [Music] you by 20 minutes not 200 years 20 minutes he's killed millions uprooted all of history and transformed himself into the devil but it wasn't enough to rewind the entire universe any more than a few minutes the failure is so colossal that million regains his senses the cube has never spoken to him that was him there is no character of Knox that was him he cannot undo his errors he's created more tragedy in the world than anyone he chose to lose himself in his work and chose to run away from his mistakes he chose to be the villain because he was a villain at this point Knox's body is nothing more than sand being held together with bandages yet he shed some tears [Music] gives a simple apology to his victims and vanishes no one ever hears from him again ever again the last the viewer sees of him is a pile of sand blowing away on top of the 200 year old graves of his family I love knocks it's just a kids cartoon but it's a perfect motivation for a villain like this remember that tear list Knox has motivations that are in concept better than the heroes the heroes don't want to find out what he's doing even when he mentions the general goal of his plan they don't listen they're just mindlessly fighting for the status quo even after he's beaten they still have no idea who he was and why exactly he was trying to rewind time he's only remembered as a villain if Knox's plan had worked it would have completely healed the world and undone everything one of the more interesting parts of this to me is that no Liam was a victim in all this yet at the same time he had his own faults remember what I said about characters not changing the traits that created Knox were always present a million his lack of competence and willpower his obsession over fixing things his desire to protect his family at any cost even at the cost of his relationship with them as a plot device that's how the Aliki works it amplifies existing traits it did nothing other than amplify who million was and this was the result even though this is just a cartoon it's written with the same structure as a classical tragedy which just so happens to be my favorite kind of character arc a character has established traits that are innocuous but are also the founding imperatives for that character mistakenly causing their own downfall when it could in theory have been avoided Knox created his own destruction but maybe given his circumstances it was inevitable ultimately again to Greek and Shakespearean tragedies the only ones to blame our gods even if million had to turn himself into one I think the most compelling kinds of stories aren't ones that have a solid message necessarily if a message is to a parent or a ham-fisted it's boring and lacks in gage Minh the most compelling kinds of stories are ones that warrant an insight participation with them you have to ask questions once it's over not questions about details but questions about what you would have done why did they do what they did were there are other options is what they did wrong if circumstances were different would it have been right the best kinds of stories are ones that stay with you because of the meaning you can find while considering them after all that's all we've got going for us 200 years Knox's family would have been in their graves by then either way he would have been dust either way saving them would have ultimately changed nothing a hab for being as powerful and great a man as he was would have died all the same way lor Noel leg or no leg the pain of every member of his race from Adam on down or nots what motivates all people all heroes and all villains is the value and meaning we choose to place on the world around us it's a villains we create more importantly it's the villains who create themselves this is a long video I realized as I type this this is a rewrite of blood scribe I couldn't finish from 2016 the original had a third section about Michael Corleone from The Godfather if you know anything about that story you can understand why I'd include him he's also a self-made villain who's established traits as a hero eventually transformed him from the chosen son who wanted to save his family that he caused to ultimately destroying his family similarly if you know anything about the story you can understand why I wouldn't include him it was by far the longest section perhaps I'll leave that one out this time instead I'll simply thank you for watching my video so how'd you guys like that mr. Greg gray mine did all the frankly superior editing in production in this video way better than my editing I just write words and draw buff animal women doing fiends you can find him at debt gray mind on Twitter he spelled gray with an e totally wrong I like to keep outsourcing super talented people like Greg which I was only able to do only thanks to my patrons seriously this is way better than what I would have done on my own and I always get really intense migraines when I do editing for too long I was only able to make my last cartoon because Greg was hard at work doing this and more support I get the more I can write off on my taxes and the more outsourcing I can do as a result this was my first real attempt at it and I really like the results check out the description for all our stuff thank you all for keeping me alive until I am no longer farewell

Channel: PlagueOfGripes

Views: 252,028

Rating: 4.9080896 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: wCA7sGZKFIY

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Bullseye62]

Wakfu is an alright series but man is Nox one of the best villains in media

[u/Mrkancode]

This was an incredible video. Just wanted to say that bluntly. If plague is switching to this as his main format, I'm super excited. His past edited videos were great but hiring someone to focus on the video so he can focus on the writing turned out to be magic.

[u/Neilfallon]

Holy shit that's a good villain. Fuck that's tragic.

[u/RetroCop]

You can tell during the "evil because they love evil" bit that Plague is purposefully dancing around mentioning Frieza, because shut up, it's totally not a Dragon Ball channel, no but shut up.

[u/Coypop]

What the fuck I bounced off Wakfu hard years ago when it looked like it was just delicious mild fanservice. That's not fair you can't hide a good villain behind flash porn bait, that's like a restaurant plating a filet mignon in a McDonald's bag.

[u/exejpgwmv]

I thought Plague was making a parody of pretentious, anime villain monologues at first.

Seriously:

Moral quandaries we don't have to deal with because our ancestors did.

...

Making up things to be offended about.

This must be hyperbole for the sake of... something.

[u/Kormael]

Nox is such a great villain

[u/LeMasterofSwords]

I’m guessing Nox was who Woolie talked about?

[u/gundam_warlock]

So I was right. He was talking about Wakfu and not Voyager.