: Re: What makes a complete monster fun? My metaverse is really short on villains. That's a problem as there are many characters whose heroism is defined by the enemy they fight. A noble savage can't

@Phylliss352

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The best villains, for my money, are fully-fleshed out individuals who have a clear logic behind their actions. Nastiness for the sake of nastiness wears thin quite quickly.

Say I have a villain who has killed dozens or hundreds of innocent people. That is bad. But let the villain have a turn on the stage where he justifies those deaths by claiming that the dead are better off not living in the vile corruption of the modern world and we shudder at the evil. Or let the villain say that he, the villain, is the chosen one and that the harvested vitality of the victims makes the villain more powerful and we respond with disgust. Or let the readers get to know some of the victims and then have them watch as the villain takes their lives for trivial reasons.

The best villains have a reason for what they are doing. It might be greed. It might be power over others. It might be glory. It might be religious. And if that reason leads them to destroy others in novel ways, all the better. It is not enough that they die, they must die in abject terror in order to extract the maximum vital essence. A seven-year-old child is best because they can understand what is happening to them and are powerless to stop it.

What you want is for your readers to wake up next week and scream in terror. Perverted motives of clever villains are the way to go.

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