[Discussion] Antagonists and Villains

What kind of villains/antagonists do you like to write? What are the antagonists of your current story like?

To be honest, I don't have a preference when it comes to an antagonist because I killed all my antagonists off in my original novel. So, I don't have a specific lean. I'd say that my current fanfiction, which is almost finished, the main antagonist is the Tsaritsa but, she's not in the story a lot. I write her to be an extremely extra drama queen who acts like she owns her Fatui and they're her property.

& IL Dottore is another one in the story I would describe as an inhumane monster, I guess? It's hard to say.

It's kind of hard to pinpoint an antagonist or villain since my main character is with the antagonist organization against his will. So, most of the time, there really is none, just the main antagonist pulling the strings behind the scenes off page.

I honestly like writing any kind of villains. The deep complex motivated ones to the campy totes evil ones.

Currenlty, SC has a lot of "antagonists" and arguably a couple of key "villain" characters that are spaced around this range with a few outliers in some places.

A loose summary is:
A third are depressed idealists who want to shape the world to their own views, another third are insane people, and the last third are rather normal people just fighting for the causes they believe in.

I don't write villain characters often, but I'm trying to write a villain (ish) character for once. It was a bit of an afterthought since I drew the character first and then decided to slap on a personality. Honestly I don't really know what I'm doing? Usually for my characters I try to have a mix of good and bad traits but this character seems to be mostly bad traits. Also since he's just a character with no established universe, I don't really have any specific motives for him (other than he kills people because he likes to)

My favorite kind of villains/antagonists are ones that have complex personalities and good motivations. Also if they're good foils to the progatnist(s). As for any villians in my current works, Team Skull and the Ultra Beast for Foul Play can be considered one while in my other WIP there is a villain organization but they appear only in one chapter.

Honestly I write so few villains that I don't even know what I like. But I can say that I like at least planning for the kind of villain that does their thing because they know it benefits another party. Like, the kind of villain that aims to kill the heroes as a revenge in the name of their friends (Sasqūe in Blink, Slowly); or the villain that pursues behemoths of antiquity and ecological terrorism mostly to one-up their long-time rival who is doing the same (Archie, Maxie in Misaimed for Life).

I... have a hard time answering this I realise. Because the honest answer is that I like any villain who is compelling. Whether that's because they're complicated characters with a lot of depth or because they're so one-dimensionally evil that you get pulled in to the struggle against them. Both types of villain have their place. It gets even more complicated when I stretch this out to antagonist because there's just so many varieties of oppositional force in stories and I enjoy them all when they're done well.

The "major" villains in my novel - while I won't talk too much about it here - only appear in the prologue physically (and some never at all). The story isn't about overcoming them, it's entirely about surviving the results of their actions. The "secondary" villains end up feeling more like the "main" villains in some ways. All those villains though are of the "evil in a batshit crazy kind of way" variety. I can't really give much more context than that haha.

Similarly, because I do intend to keep writing it eventually, I can't really say too much about the villains in my Pokemon fic either. They've barely appeared in any capacity in the story - and it does depend on the member of the organisation. In general though, they are thoroughly evil. They are villains in the "seeking money and power" category for the most part and the things they've been doing with Pokerus are genuinely fucked up.

There's also other antagonists in the story though, of the non-villain variety (mostly). Technically, every gym leader is an antagonist although most of them won't/don't feature that heavily in the story. There's also four secondary characters that could be viewed as either deuteragonists or antagonists depending on the moment. Lauren has always had positive interactions with Eloy but is still a rival. Layla and Eloy are more frienemies, they started out entirely hostile but have hit more a "jokingly teasing each other" kind of deal and are also rivals. Gwen isn't a rival or really in opposition to Eloy, but she is aligned entirely with Layla and was briefly opposed to him more directly during the tournament. Then there's Niall... he's a rival antagonist that skirts the edge of being a villain at times lol.

Villains and antagonists in general are fun to write is the lesson here I guess lmao.