forum Annoying tropes about villains?

Started June 26, 2020 by @aaloo_thinks

tune

Hey guys I am trying to write a villain/antagonist character for my story. So, I wanted to know what are the tropes about villains that you are bored of and how do you like your villains?

Villains who are supposed to have a sympathetic/tragic backstory but really it doesn't matter or effect(affect?) their character at all. Just because their mother died or something we're supposed to like them more, it doesn't work.

this is probably a pretty obvious one, but villains with no motive beyond causing harm to the protagonist(s) (which is a trap i sometimes struggle not to fall into myself). even villains have to be treated as characters, not just breathing amalgamations of whatever plot device is convenient. also, villains in positions of power who just seem wholly unlikable inside and out no matter which way you swing it. if he’s got no charisma or skill for deception, if his only personality trait is “evil and mean,” how on earth did he get there in the first place?

Not so much in writing, but on tv, villains who treat their henchmen as expendable or who have an incompetent mass army. Even if a villain is supposedly selfish, they would care that their workforce is being wiped out by the heroes. Maybe the villain escapes, but their efforts are slowed down by every lost worker. As the above comment said, a villain doesn't get tons of followers by being an obvious jerk, they had to do something to convince their followers that they were worth listening to. And to succeed, a villain would hire people who are skilled. Some exceptions would be having a slave labor force to obey them or having them magically conjure an infinite army.

Needlessly sexualized villains.
It’s one thing to be attractive, but another to equate evil with sexuality. I think it’s a more common trope with woman villains, and it’s not great.

Villains that are constantly acting cocky, sassy, too clever/smooth for their own good, smirking all the time, etc. Let's have more stone-faced, angry, sad, or cough cough emotionally complex villains please! XD

When you spend the whole story hearing about how evil and dangerous the villain is but when it's time for the final confrontation they get defeated very easily and the fight is super underwhelming… It can sometimes ruin the whole story because you realise the stakes were almost non-existent…

hot guy villains who commit reprehensible acts but are eventually excused and absolved of their sins because they have ~emotional problems~ and a ~sad backstory~. I can name like 30 of these dudes off the top of my head and a lot of the time they end up being beloved fan-favorite characters despite the fact that they've likely murdered many people and/or (trigger warning) sexually abused/been just absolute nightmares to female characters. It's gross, it's disturbing, and it sends the message that it's okay not to hold men accountable. (Character development is great of course, and people do change, but only to an appropriate extent.)

Any villain who is a being of pure [insert thing] will always ALWAYS be boring, they are basically the equivalent in threateningness and personality as "A Meteor is Heading for the Earth, Oh No!" A story without a villain is totally fine, but don't pretend like you do have a villain when you basically don't. It usually just results in a mixture of the worst aspects of both strategies(villain and no villain)