>muh tragic past

>>49872998
Why in God's name would you post an image that's sideways.

>>49872998
Remember when bad guys were evil and you didn't have to worry about if they had a puppy they really liked when they were a kid so that absolves them of everything?

>>49873172
It absolves them of nothing; there's a difference between an explanation and a valid excuse.

>>49872998
>if the villain was a completely different person, they might not have been a villain
thanks for reminding me why I fucking hated literature classes

File: all it takes is just one man in the wrong place, at the right time, Mr. Freeman.jpg (285KB, 827x1483px) Image search: [Google]

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>>49872998
Are you seriously implying that for a villain to be, well, villainous, they must have "tragic" past?
That is simply not true.

The whole "a little twist of fate" thing - I can agree with, but that is not what separates an ordinary person or a hero from a villain, and I simply cannot see how you make this conclusion from the text on the image.

>>49873195
I agree wholeheartedly.

>>49872998
Most of the times, and unless you have a very good writer or a narrrative that support it, flawless heroes aren't really relatable and/or enjoyable.
Also, on a personnal note, villains that are stupidly evil (as in doing evil for the sake of it, even when it goes directly against their agenda) gives me the impression that the protagonists are up against complete retards completelty devoid of self-control, which isn't a good way to raise the stakes in 99% of the cases. Trisomic Satan is neither more evil nor more menacing than regular Satan.

>>49873156
Hey, I'm not the one that took the picture, I just downloaded this off the gooknet.
>>49873292
>Are you seriously implying that for a villain to be, well, villainous, they must have "tragic" past?
>That is simply not true.
Oh no, quite the opposite. I was just suprised to see this image saying that 'NO THIS IS THE TRUE WAY', and posted it here.

File: Easy.png (4MB, 1296x2304px) Image search: [Google]

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>>49873363
>I just downloaded this off the gooknet.

Why would you not take 30 seconds to open it up in MSPaint and rotate it.

>>49873195
This. The villain in a session I'm running is a polite aristocrat who had a rough youth and became a thanatophobe. That doesn't excuse him of any of his actions or make the fact that he's willing to throw hundreds and thousands of lives under the bus for his own sake any less awful.

You can empathize with what a villain wants, but that doesn't mean what they want is actually a good thing. If a supervillain wanted to sacrifice half the planet to create some sort of plot device that would give the other half a utopia, you can empathize with his desires but it doesn't mean you support them.

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>>49873789
That was fun for a little while, but these days villains with pathos and tragic pasts are just too damn cliché. They have become what they were originally trying to subvert.

Give me evil for the sake of evil any day of the week.

>>49873882
Not that anon, but I don't even think a sob-story past is needed. Just a motivation so I can say "okay this villain has a reason for what he's doing", even if it's not a very compelling reason.

Even if it's just the lure of power, something wrong with the villain's head, being a supernatural force of wickedness, a desire to have his name in the history-books, or a mistaken belief that the villain will somehow do good overall. I just need something to point at and say with a straight face "this is why the villain is doing what he's doing". It's no more than I'd demand for any other character.

>>49873768

Characters don't actually need to have a whole lot of depth for us to empathize with them. It certainly helps, and we would definitely prefer to like them for who they are and see more into their personalities, but our emotional connection from a story can come simply from the hero struggling against the villain(s) or opposing force(s) and overcoming that adversity.

There's a lot of villains who don't need fleshing out into whatever their backstory is, mostly because how they became evil is ultimately less interesting than how they were overcome by the hero. Some heros don't even have character arcs, and while they follow the story arc to its conclusion, they're still fundamentally the same as they were when the story started. Protagonists like James Bond and Indiana Jones don't change as people (at least in their older movies) at the end of their adventure, and their stories are practically formulaic, but this doesn't make their stories any less interesting to watch.

>>49874115

A villain's motives do need to be clear. We probably need, at some point in the story, some layout of what the villain plans to do. And if we like our heroes, and dislike what the villain is planning to do, we'll want the hero to beat the villain and stop it. Their motives should be clear but we don't really need their backstory, we just need to see where they're headed and have some understood reason for why they're going in that direction.

>>49872998
In other words, you're a pampered rich bitch who gets offended at the idea that people with more life experience than you could ever exist.

>>49873292
>Falling Down
Literally one of the best villains there is right there.

D-Fens isn't a moustache-twirling Big Bad Evil Guy.
D-Fens isn't someone who blames his past or his circumstances for what he had become, even if his circumstances are his reason for his villainy.
D-Fens isn't someone who does bad things for the sake of bad things.

He is simply lashing out at the world around him.
That's the only thing that separates him from being an ordinary man and him from being a villain.
His only fucking wish is to be treated with a modicum of fucking respect. He simply wants that others would treat him like he treats them.
And when they don't? He lashes out.

The whole movie is about him escalating the conflict and slowly becoming a villain.
And when he finally realizes - "I'm the bad guy?" - he goes out on his own terms.

And when you're done with the movie, you are left wondering - "Could I've been in his place? Could I've been D-Fens?".
And the point is, yes, you could've.
The line separating "a bad guy" and your average Joe is so fucking thin like you wouldn't believe. That's the point.

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>>49873882
how about evil for the sake of your country

>>49873882

Evil for the sake of evil only exists in horror stories and childhood novels. A sad story does not absolve a character of their sins, it only provides perspective on their reasons for evil.

Nobody is asking you to forgive or even spare the woman who slaughtered a village because one man in it put a bastard in her belly, or redeem the evil duke who commits genocide because he was the victim of a vicious assault by members of that race as a child.

>>49874815
look, valentine's scars were sick as fuck but he really wasn't doing it for his country. He wanted power, plain and simple. thats all the napkin metaphor was.

>>49874370
>The line separating "a bad guy" and your average Joe is so fucking thin like you wouldn't believe. That's the point.
>implying that evil isn't inborn and native to only certain groups
SJW detected

>>49875309
>implying that evil isn't inborn and native to only certain groups
Evil is inborn, though.
It is native to humans.