#villain tropes

[whumpfish]

I cannot stress enough the importance of transformations that are not necessarily redemptive.

- Cold and misanthropic villains who learn to care for the people close to them

- Coerced villains/minions running away–not to help the heroes, but to help themselves

- Villains who have dedicated their life and existence to The Cause who develop agency, who begin making their own decisions for their own reasons, whether or not they are GoodTM decisions 

- Bigoted villains who learn to stop being a dick in that specific area

- Villains otherwise driven by hate who reevaluate their motives if not their purpose

- Heroes so dedicated to The Cause that they stop caring for the people around them

- Heroes who stop caring in a healthy way, who become jealous or excessively competitive 

- Characters on all sides with trust issues who learn to trust, if only one or two individuals

- Selfish characters who learn self-sacrifice, even if it's only for fellow team members instead of a hero team or a Noble CauseTM 

- Characters who stand up to their abusers/refuse to be taken advantage of anymore in their interpersonal relationships outside the context of switching sides

There seems to be a growing expectation and even demand in fandom that villains be redeemed/redeemable, that heroes only become more GoodTM, and that anything else is somehow shortsighted or glorifying bad behavior. But people don't only grow in one direction, and personal progress doesn't have moral requirememts. Personal change doesn't have moral requirements. 

People can learn to love, to trust, to grow, to think for themselves without experiencing a major paradigm shift, and people don't always experience major paradigm shifts for the better. The fight for GoodTM and its necessity can actually be highlighted by a hero who goes bad and must then be defeated by former allies. Agency can actually be more profound if it doesn't conform to expectations or tropes within the story, because it becomes twofold: the character in question liberates themselves not only from the restrictions imposed on them by their circumstances/leaders but from those imposed by the reader/viewer as well.

#my fav character in the castlevania animation is literally isaac #i always wanted andromeda to acknowledge the villain that dylan was slowly becoming #but i wish there was more #writing #writebrl #writing advice #writing tips #whump #whump prompt #writing prompt #tropes #hero tropes #villain tropes #writer #fiction #fanfix #fanfic

[saintofdaggers]

so here are some slightly weird or underrated tropes that always make me go heart eyes

seemingly normal character suddenly reveals unexpectedly specific niche and/or disturbing knowledge

irredeemable female villains

when a person assumed to be a good guy and/or dead reveals themselves to be the villain hiding in plain sight

kissing/licking a blade, a bullet or some other kind of weapon (or casually gesturing with it)

seeing a character off duty in an outfit that's a completely different style from what they wear to work

villains wearing animal masks or having an animal motif associated with them (bonus points if it's symbolic)

tools for specific jobs being used as weapons in a fight (syringes, hammers, nail guns, power saws, chainsaws etc.)

Pyrrhic victories (victories that come at such a cost that they're practically equal to a defeat)

morally ambiguous characters recognizing themselves in an outright evil villain (seeing the villain as someone they could or could have become)

predictions, hints or clues getting misinterpreted (especially if the consequences are tragic!)

feel free to add your own!!

#storytelling #writing #tropes #character dynamics #villain tropes #writing stuff #favorite tropes #my posts

[thingsthatcometomymindwheniwrite]

I love you villains who try so hard to redeem themselves but no one lets them. I love you villains who never feel remorse, only the hurt that’s been done to them and the endless rage about it. I love you villains who are soft but clearly try to hold up their facade because they are afraid of being perceived as weak. I love you villains who bend and break the world for a (lost) lover/loved one. I love you villains who bend and break the world because they never experienced anything good in it. I love you villains who are so emotionally unstable everybody is constantly afraid they will lash out any second. I love you villains who are so so apathetic and cold inside, like their heart is made of ice. I love you villains who give the hero jealous looks because it could have been them, if life had been just a little less cruel. I love you villains who are insecure. I love you villains who turn pain into radical passion. I love you villains who are highschool bullies that just suffer through child abuse at home but no one knows. I love you villains who give their all for the one shred of love that is being handed to them by the narrative, knowing they will kill it with their rotten hands and yet proceed because h o p e infects even the darkest mind. I love you villains who were doomed from the beginning. I love you villains who have all the best intentions but a very fucked up way to go about their goals. I love you villains who don’t know what it feels like to not be in pain. I love you villains who are just some guy. I love you villains that are evil for the sake of being evil. I love you villains that are evil because someone said they couldn’t. I love you cliché villains. I love you villains who confusedly soften up a little when someone treats them like a human being for once. I love you queer-coded villains. I love you villains who were forced to eat cement when they were six. I love you dramatic villains. I love you villains that aren’t actually evil, the narrative just hates them. I love you villains that are just some teen girl with mental health issues. I love you villains that get the long awaited happy ending. I love you villains that never kill the hero because then they would feel really bored and lonely. I love you villains who know exactly they are turning into one but continue anyway. I love you villains who criticise societal norms and the flawed status quo. I love you villains who wake up from violent nightmares all the time. I love you villains who don’t have a single glimpse of light in their empty eyes. I love you villains who are children that were manipulated into doing awful things. I love you i love you i love you i love you villains.

#text post #book tropes #writing #bookblr #writerblr #writerscorner #books and reading #books #writer things #queer writers #tropes #villain #villain tropes #writer memes #writing memes #writerscommunity #book memes #lgbt representation #lgbtqia #villain romance #redemption arc #writing community #booklr #blorbo #tag your oc #tag your blorbos #they can only be my blorbo if they are insane #the scrunkly #fic writing #fictional characters

[deconstructthesoup]

The trope that will always, always gut me like a fucking fish is "Oh, you want a villain? I'LL SHOW YOU A VILLAIN" and it dates all the way back to seventh grade, when little me first pulled Nimona off of the graphic novel shelf because she thought the dragon girl on the cover looked cool

#it's the trying to be good and perfect and everything society wants you to be but still being looked on with scorn and derision #it's the desperate attempts to be seen and included and yet for all of your mistakes to be highlighted and shown as proof that you're bad #it's the anger and the fury and the anguish at constantly being mistreated that boils over in screams and destruction and making people hur #because at the end of the day it's you who's hurting the most #you made me your monster and now you'll suffer the consequences #writing tropes #villain tropes #nimona

[ohfugecannada]

Peak media trope is where the heroes have the same type of queer coding the villains do.

#tropes #media tropes #villain tropes #hero tropes #queer coding #lgbt #queer #oh your villian is an androgynous posing pretty boy #well so are the guys about to kick thier ass

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

One of my favourite things in fiction is when a type of character that so often turns out to be a twist villain that you expect it turns out to not be villainous at all.

The Celebrity Hero, dude who looks like Superman in shining armor and is adored by everybody, and everyone is telling incredible tales of his exploits? He’s every bit as heroic and capable as people say, even if some of the stories are a bit exaggerated.

The Popular Girl, conventionally beautiful, constantly partying and crushed on by all of her classmates? She’s beloved not just because of her looks, but also because she’s genuinely the nicest person around.

The Royal Spymaster, a shady, queercoded fellow in a black cloak who has their little birds everywhere and probably does some dark magic in their basement? They’re the most idealistic and loyal protector of the people in the capital.

The Village Priest, a severe old man with a posture of a scarecrow, who looks like he’s never told a joke in his whole life? His fancy, Church-assigned residence is empty because he sold all of his furniture to help the local peasants get through a famine.

Bonus points if they turn out to be completely useless to the driving conflict and/or profoundly self-destructive because they don’t have a villainous bone in their body.

The Celebrity Hero is such a pure-hearted himbo that he’s easily tricked into believing the protagonist is a villain.

The Popular Girl, behind a smiling facade, is an absolute dysfunctional mess because she keeps making everyone’s problems her own and never opens up because she doesn’t want people to worry.

The Royal Spymaster outright refuses to believe the evidence that the king, whom they’ve known since he was a baby, has been scheming for years to backstab them because they’re one of the last obstacles on his way to absolute power.

The Village Priest is completely sidelined and a laughing stock of his horrifically corrupt Church, because he seems to be the only guy around who actually treats its tenets seriously.

etc., etc.

#fiction #tropes #writing #creative writing #villain tropes

[3gremlins]

do you ever think about that villain trope of them sitting in a chair stroking a cat and wonder if maybe the cat is their emotional support animal and they're actually deeply anxious about the villainous monologue they're about to give (or possibly also, they weren't planning on giving the monologue sitting but the cat came and sat there and now they're stuck there)

#random thoughts #villains #like i sit around stroking my cat in my chair all the time and it does bring me comfort #text post #villain trope #villain tropes #emotional support animal

[superbeeny]

Okay, hear me out about this weird, specific type of villain.

Fabulous, are moms/maternal figures albeit really bad ones, and while ruthless and self-centered, they're too funny/likable to kill off.

#they also all have sons who grew up to be aggressively warped people. 2 out of 3 at least try to murder said sons. #the one who doesn't try to murder her kid arguably indirectly got him killed by raising him to be an idiot. #pearl is a scientist. Bandora is a witch. Yzma is a witchy-scientist. #(maybe mad woman scientist can be the more 'modern' take on the evil witch archetype?) #mystery science theater 3000 #emperor's new groove #Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger #pearl forrester #yzma #witch bandora #villains #villain tropes #archetypes #mst3k #disney

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

The older I get the funnier cartoon villains become to me. Like imagine having mortal enemy beef with a 12 year old

#villain tropes

[klarolinexluv]

I’m all for letting villains be villains but why the backstory erasure? Like why ignore the fact that maybe they were a good person once and something awful happened to them and they snapped. Or maybe they were manipulated and brain washed and now they are a killer… like let villains be villains but let’s also remember how they got there.

#villains #heros #backstory #villain tropes #good to evil #evil to good ?

[abbinurmel]

Just had a realization: Sid Phillips in the original "Toy Story" becomes eventually a garbage man as an adult. That means, he sees a LOT of broken and abandoned toys getting junked.

This could mean a lot of crazy things, if he has not told himself by now it was all a bad dream or something he repressed out of trauma.

It could mean: 1. He still enjoys brutalizing toys and gets his even sicker kicks knowing they are sentient and watching them be given up on and destroyed. He now resents what they did to him, and either collects from the garbage toy bits to continue his mutant creations and torture, or simply basks in smugness a their ultimate demise at being sent to the furnace and maybe even takes part in operating it at the city dump just for the evil pleasure of it.

2. He has gone the opposite path and developed a bigger moral compass. He instead maybe regrets all his blind sadism, and now rescues toys and comforts them/rehabs them, from the garbage. Maybe he even gives them to new kids to love and take care of.

Either one of these stories would be so compelling to explore!

EDIT: A new compelling take. What if neither evil or benevolent but Sid becomes wiser, more spiritual, in a sense, and just develops a deeper appreciation of life and almost takes on a grim reaper sense of himself? He is just the guy who must take toys to their final resting place, and he sees every toy, good or mean, go the same way. But he also knows and reassures them that while they will be melted down and smashed it will be quick and their recycled materials get to be reused into making all kinds of new things... and who knows, maybe become new toys for the next generation of kids to play with. Maybe he assures toys in transit on the curbside that their current broken body now has no more use for being loved or played with anymore, they must just accept as broken toys they pose a hazard or are just junk and perhaps this will be their release from harming their owner or at least never ending eternal plastic decaying loneliness in some attic.

What if Sid now has the belief /possible awareness that EVERY THING in his word is somewhat sentient, if the whole "Toy Story/Brave Little Toaster share a verse" fan conspiracy is true? (I enjoy this idea.) What if as a result of that level of unwanted /overstretching insight, Sid went mad in his teen years, or became so enlightened, he realized he didn't need aimless temporary illusions like accumulating wealth or other symbols of career and material status, he just wants a simple humble life, a life of contentment....bar going into a monastery or something esoteric like that, one could expect him to settle for a simple job, and a simple routine, with good enough benefits and wages just to get by, while doing whatever he wants on the side with his free time and many holidays off. Say.....being a garbage man??

#disney pixar #toy story #buzz lightyear of star command #woody #toys #3d animation #pixar #90s movies #cartoons #villain tropes

[that-gay-jedi]

Darth Vader as a femme fatale is this anything????

Like I know this kinda contradicts my usual interpretation of him as (among other things) a Gothic villain but like. Sit in the black hole at the center of your galaxy brain and think about it for a second.

#darth vader #anakin skywalker #stock characters #femme fatale #villain tropes #i'll probably have more to say on this later i just had to get it out of my head

[therealharbingerofdevastation]

Okay, okay, I love unhinged, chaotic evil female characters as much as the next lesbian, but, like...that’s not the only kind of evil ladies I want in fiction, y’know? Give me sleek, bitchy, lawful evil female characters please. Like, the kind that can’t take you in a fight but will passive aggressively roast you into oblivion without a change in their cool demeanor. The kind who make your blood run cold when you hear their heels click-clacking down the polished tile floor. The kind who hide vitriol in their perfect, plastered-on smiles. Give hinged evil ladies.

#media #books #bookblr #villains #female villains #lawful evil #villain tropes #character archetypes #tropes #writing

[thatonesongyouretryingtoremember]

#song spouts bullshit #villain tropes #tumblr #poll #tumblr polls #memes #fandom #writing #shitpost

[virovac]

I see people being upset at stupidity of villains betraying underlings for no good reason in stories and..

while I understand it can get old and be nonsensical for an established villain meant to be smart.

Such people do exist. At least one was president of the U.S.

#villain tropes

[lil-charmante]

Trope Idea:

Silly, dumb, childish villain who isn't ever taken seriously but is well known for having the power to destroy the entire world and being ruthlessly evil when a line is crossed.

#writing prompts #writing #writing ideas #writing inspiration #villain tropes #tropes