 Hello friends, since we're talking about villain protagonists today, I have to dress up like one. I am the protagonist of the world, obviously, and villains wear cool sunglasses, especially indoors. So villain protagonists are actually pretty rare when you stop to think about it, because most of the time people just use anti-heroes, you know, and anti-heroes are someone who, you know, has good motivation, like they're trying to do a good thing. They just are kind of unpleasant in one or two ways, and even then they don't do it that often. But a, okay, you know, I can't even read my notes with these. I should probably take them off now. Or anti-heroes will have, you know, good goals, they're trying to do something good, but they just use questionable methods to achieve it. And even then they're not that common really, because I don't know why precisely, but for some reason a lot of people just have serious difficulty dealing with a protagonist having any real negative aspects to them, so creators will just go out of their way to try and justify and explain everything they did. But villain protagonists are beyond even that. That's usually somebody who has both bad motivation, like they're trying to do bad things, and they do bad things, or excuse me, and they use brutal methods to achieve those results, but the story is also focused on them. So, you know, they're not the antagonists of the story, but they are very much the bad guy. Some pretty good examples of this would include Walter White from Breaking Bad, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, George Ancrath from Prince of Thorns, Light Yagami from Death Note, Artemis Fowle, at least from the first Artemis Fowle book, after that he becomes, you know, a good guy, Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, or The Gang from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Yes, I know that's a comedy, but they are the villains in pretty much every story they're involved in. But perhaps more importantly than the main characters, you know, being horrible people, is that their motives and actions are acknowledged as being horrible by the creators and in universe, you know, like other characters call them out on their bullshit, and you're not really supposed to think that they're good people, you know, that it's very explicitly said like, yeah, these are all terrible people. And, you know, I was thinking recently about how to do villain protagonists right, because it's way more common to see protagonists who are shitty people, but they're just kind of Mary Sue's, for lack of a better term, that that term is way overused. But in this instance, I'm going to use it because a lot of Mary Sue's fall into this trap where they are absolutely horrible people, but the story doesn't acknowledge it. And I found that's a lot more common than villain protagonists. And anti-heroes are also more common than villain protagonists. But I think a lot of this advice I'm going to bring up here could also apply to anti-heroes. So yeah, let's go. And there will be some spoilers for everything I mentioned, just be aware of that. So number one is probably the most important thing for a villain protagonist, and that's acknowledge that they're bad. Acknowledge that they're villains. Acknowledge that they're doing horrible things. You know, recently, I did a video on the Divided We Fall series, which if you haven't watched that, go ahead and check it out. And the heroes in that story are awful. Like, the story literally starts off with the protagonist getting people killed, and then refusing to submit to any sort of investigation or trial for it. And the law enforcement who come in and try to, you know, investigate and arrest him, and the journalists who try and say, hey, why did you kill all those people are treated like the villains. And then later, he murders a bunch of people, mostly soldiers, but he also is allies with people who murder literally millions of civilians and run slave camps. And just, you know, the heroes in this story are horrible fucking people. And yet the story never acknowledges that because in that case, it's because the author is trying to push certain political beliefs. But, you know, they're awful people and they're treated heroically. And that is not what you do with villain protagonists. Like, if you are doing villain protagonists, you got to be honest with yourself and with your audience that they're horrible people. And a good way to do this is to just make them act horrible, you know? Like, Light Yagami from Death Note is one of the best known villain protagonists in any medium, I think. And he looks insane. They're like, from the first episode of that show, and granted, the manga might be different, I haven't actually read it, but from the first episode of that show, he goes on these long rants about how he's God and he is justice, he's going to fix the world, and his eyes glow red just like the way he's animated, the way he talks. He looks like a freaking crazy person. And that's because he is a crazy person. He's a power-hungry psychopath. Like, by the end of the show, that is made very, very clear. And, like, if you don't get it by that point, you're never going to get it. But, like, even early on, it, again, shows him ranting like a crazy person, and seriously, seriously, I turn my phone on vibrate every freaking time, and every freaking time it doesn't want to go on vibrate. I swear to God. We see Light rants like a crazy psychopath, because he is a crazy psychopath, and we also see, pretty early on, he is willing to murder innocent people if they get in his way. So, despite all his high-minded ideals about how he's only going to go after people who are making the world worse, he is perfectly fine killing innocents as long as it's to save his own skin. So it's made really clear from not the very beginning of the story, because at the very beginning it seems like he has a good point, but it's made clear early on that, yes, he is the bad guy here, you are not supposed to root for him. Number two is to make sure that the villain protagonist has some sympathy. You know, like, regular villains, regular antagonists don't necessarily need to have that, but if we're going to be following someone throughout the entire story, then we do. We just do. That's, that's important, because even if the audience hates the protagonist, because you know, they're a bad person that does bad things, they need to feel some connection to them, or they usually need to feel some connection to them, otherwise they're just not going to want to read. Like, it's better to have a protagonist that the audience hates than one that's boring, but nonetheless, it does help to get them invested and keep going with it if there is at least something likable in there and something that makes them more understandable on a deep level. Like Artemis Fowle, again in just the first book of the series, is a villain protagonist. Like, he kidnaps someone, he holds, and holds her against her will. He is a thief, he is a thug, although he doesn't do a lot of the thuggery himself. He mostly has Butler do that, but nonetheless, he is a quote unquote criminal mastermind, and yeah, he does a lot of criminal stuff. He's also 12 years old. You know, it's easy to forget that sometimes, because he's, you know, a genius, and he's the boss of a criminal organization, a very small criminal organization, but a criminal organization nonetheless. He's also a child, and he has no parents. His father died a couple of years before the story began, and his mother has not mentally recovered from that. Like, she's just gone now. Like, she's not dead, but she is completely mentally out of it, and Artemis, it breaks his heart. You know, we see him try to interact with her, and it is really bad. Like, we feel bad for him in those circumstances. So even when he does horrible things, we're thinking, okay, yeah, like, I get why he's doing it. And then at the end, he is willing to give up half of the gold that he won through his, you know, criminal scheming to save his mom. Like, he gives half the gold to Holly Short, and then she heals his mom. So it's clear that yes, he does love her, he does care about her, he does have a heart, he just is also willing to do some nasty stuff. And again, his dad was a criminal boss, so it seems like he really just wound up here because that's the environment he was raised in. It's always sunny in Philadelphia is a hilarious show, but if it were a drama, most people wouldn't want to watch it because it's really just a bunch of assholes going around being assholes to people. But because they're really funny, it endears us to them. And because they're bad people, it's also funny just to watch them suffer. You know, I don't really know how to explain this concisely because you could look at pretty much any random episode and see exactly what I mean, like the characters do nasty things to people and they do nasty things to each other and they wind up getting hurt for it. So it's simultaneously enjoyable to watch them get their comeuppance in unpleasant situations, but also like just watching them do nasty stuff is funny sometimes. I'm drunk. He's drunk. He's not drunk. I am drunk. You're not drunk. He sounds drunk. I am drunk. You're not drunk. Stop saying that. Okay. Hey, let's just all stay calm. Then bluff this. Ryan, stab somebody. Number 2.5. This kind of ties into making them sympathetic, but it's also kind of its own thing. So it's going to be 2.5. But that is, explain to the audience why the villain protagonist is the way they are. You know, Jorg Ancrath from Prince of Thorns is a nasty sociopath. Like, from the beginning of the story, he is a murderer. He is the leader of a group of bandits. So, you know, they steal and intimidate people. He does all kinds of horrible stuff. He tortures people more than once as well. And he also, when he doesn't hurt people himself, he does drag them along into dangerous situations, which gets them hurt. And he is willing to do all of this. In the first book, it's partially in the name of revenge, but also, like, he wants to take power because his goal throughout the whole course of the series is to become emperor. Like, he wants to be in charge of this entire empire so that no one can ever tell him what to do. And the reason for that is because he was horribly, horribly abused as a child. Like, you see in flashbacks the sorts of things that his father did to him. Like, there's one particularly harrowing flashback where his father puts his dog in a cart and fills it with flammable fluid and says, break your dog's leg or I'll set him on fire. So, George breaks one leg and then he says, break his other leg and I'll, and I'll, or I'll set him on fire and break, George breaks a second leg and then the third leg. And then George refuses to break his last leg. So, his dad throws in a torch and burns his dog alive. And you realize, you know what? Yeah, I can see how this guy would not only associate not being in complete control with being horribly abused. So, that explains that. But also, like, you can see how he would get this really warped sense of morality. So, even though George is a really terrible person, like, that's really just not even a debatable subject. He's, he's awful on just about every level. You do understand why he wound up that way. Number three is to contrast your villain protagonist with people who are even more awful than them or forces who are even more awful than them. Like, for example, Tony Soprano in The Sopranos is, he's an organized crime boss. And so, from the very beginning of the show, you see, he is a thug. He is a murderer. He is a thief. He cheats on his wife all the time. Like, he does awful, awful things to pretty much everyone around him. But, later on in the show, we're introduced to another high-ranking mobster that he works with, named Ralph. And Ralph is substantially worse than Tony. Like, one of the first episodes, after he's introduced, is almost entirely dedicated to Ralph murdering his pregnant girlfriend, because she mouthed off to him. And when he does that, even all of the other gangsters there are like, dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, they straight up say he crossed a line, but, you know, they have to protect each other. So they, they, well, I don't want to say they let it go, but they do help him get away with it. And then, much later in the show, Tony does kill Ralph. And it's partially because of something else Ralph did, like he killed a horse that Tony loved. But also, we as the audience know that it is partially because of Ralph murdering his girlfriend, because we see that really affected Tony in a negative way. And yeah, Tony is being a hypocrite here, because Tony also does a lot of really nasty stuff, but like, when we see him kill Ralph, we can't help but feel, yeah, Ralph was worse, so we don't really feel that bad for him. So even though Tony is an awful person, we uh, we're willing to go along with him murdering this guy. And just outside of that, Tony is generally a bit nicer than the other crooks he works with. Like, you know, he's willing to work with people and be, I don't really know how to describe it, but like he gives better deals and he doesn't immediately jump to violence most of the time, unless it's really necessary. And overall, after watching the Sopranos, you're left with the feeling that, okay, yeah, Tony was pretty nasty, but then you look around at the people he's associated with and you're like, it could be much, much worse. You know, he could be much, much worse. And it's probably good that he's in charge rather than some of the other people that he works with, because if they were in charge, things would be much worse. Number four is to make the villain protagonist good at stuff. Now this applies to protagonists in general, but it really does catch me off guard how many authors just completely forget about this. It's mostly authors, but it does apply in other places too. Like, your protagonist needs to be really good at one or two things. Otherwise, they're really just going to be relying on other people to do everything for them, excuse me, throughout the entire story. And that's just not satisfying to watch. Another really good villain protagonist that I love and that not enough people know about is Darth Bane from the Darth Bane trilogy, which I, I guess that's technically not canon anymore, but whatever, he's still great. And Darth Bane, again, he is a Sith Lord, so he murders a lot of people over the years, but he's very, very good at being a Sith Lord. Like, he's an amazing combatant. He has crazy force powers that can wipe out entire armies, well, maybe not entire armies, but large, large numbers of people just by himself. He's also a good teacher when he takes on an apprentice and turns her from a scared little girl into a Sith Lord in her own right. And on top of that, he's a master schemer. Like, he wipes out all of the other Sith in existence. Like, he tricks them into killing themselves, basically. And he also kills a whole bunch of Jedi. And he fakes his own death during that, but then some other Jedi come after him, and he is able to fight and defeat all of them as well. Like, he's very, very good at everything he does. Like, he's very good at being evil. And so, you can understand not only how he was able to become the last one standing, you know, the last Sith, but he also set up the Rule of Two, which eventually led to Palpatine and overthrowing the Republic and destroying the Jedi. So, like, you realize that this guy is just amazing at what he does, and so even though what he's doing is horrible, it's at least interesting to watch him do it. Number five, again, seems kind of obvious, but a lot of people don't seem to understand it. And that is, no when to quit. You know? Basically, just make the villain protagonist only as evil as the story requires. And if that story requires them to be really fucking evil, then go for it. If the story only requires them to be kind of evil, then do that instead. Even if you're writing something grim, dark, and edgy, it does get boring after a while to just see, I murdered an orphanage full of children, and then I murdered this orphanage full of children. You know, like, there has to be a reason behind what they're doing, you know? Like, if they're just murdering an orphanage full of children for shock value, then that's not really, you know, that's not really interesting. But if they set the orphanage on fire with all the orphans inside, because they know that the heroes will come out of hiding to try and stop them, and then they can ambush the heroes, then there is a reason for it. I'll bring up Jorg and Krath again, but Darth Bane works for this as well, and Jorg tortures and murders people throughout that entire series, but he doesn't do it for fun. You know, he's not doing it just because he wants to do it. He's doing it because he feels he needs to do it to reach his goal. It's the quickest, most efficient way to whatever he's trying to do. Usually. He also does sexually assault someone at one point, but I mean, again, he's a bad person. So while it is unpleasant to watch him murder and torture people, we understand, again, we understand why he is doing what he's doing. He's not killing the orphan, and he's not killing the orphans for fun. He's trying to lure the hero out of hiding. Number six is the last one, and this one is just to make us enjoy time we spend with them. You know, we don't necessarily have to have villain protagonists to be likable. Again, they're villains. It's fine if they're unlikable, but we do have to, they do have to be enjoyable to spend time around. You know, I mentioned the gang from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia earlier, and they, they are hilarious. All of them. All the time. They're really funny. Like, even when they're stealing, lying, or doing anything else bad, we want to watch. There's a movie called Vampire's Kiss with Nicholas Cage, and brief aside, if you are at all into bad movies, like movies that are so bad, they're funny, check out Vampire's Kiss right now, because that movie's hilarious. But it is a movie about a guy who is a horrible boss, and then later turns into a It's also hilarious. Like, the movie's a dark comedy, but it is a comedy, and mostly because of Nicholas Cage's bizarre over-the-top performance. If that movie was just a drama, and Nicholas Cage acted like, you know, a regular human being throughout it, then it probably wouldn't be a very good movie, because it would just be a movie about a crazy guy doing horrible things, and thinking that he's a vampire. But in reality, it's really funny, because we see, okay, this is a crazy guy doing horrible things, but he's not acting like a person. He's acting like a crazy guy, so it works. And that applies in a lot of other scenarios. You don't have to necessarily make the protagonist funny, but we have to enjoy watching them do something. You know, we, we enjoy watching Light Yagami come up with these weird intricate plans and then adjust them on the fly to, you know, work with whatever situation is going on. We enjoy watching Godzilla wreck cities, even though we know that thousands, if not millions of people are dying. We enjoy watching Darth Bane destroy the Sith, because yeah, the other Sith are kind of terrible too, but just watching him come up with these plans and go from being like just this regular minor who didn't really have anything going for him to the Lord of the Sith is really satisfying. We love watching Hades from the Disney animated Hercules movie. Well, we will, we love watching him do everything, because he's, he's just great. These are all villains, but they're all very, very entertaining. Like some of them are entertaining because they're funny. Some of them are entertaining because they're really smart. Some of them are just entertaining because they're good at what they do. Again, all of these tie together in very important ways. The only real crime that a protagonist can commit is to bore the audience. You know, you can have protagonists who are horrible, horrible people or even just in a gray area, but you can't have them be boring. You know, I would rather have a protagonist that I actively hate than one who just bores me. And I think this is the reason why myself and a lot of others just can't really get into romance novels at all. And especially Romanticy, which is really just romance pretending to be fantasy. Like it's not romance with fantasy elements. It's just pretending to be fantasy. But I think that's why a lot of us can't really get into it because the protagonists never have anything to them. Like they never have any personality. They never have any real goals or ambitions or at least very, very simple ones. Like the plot is just too hot people meet and then have sex. And that's just, that's not really entertaining unless you're looking for, you know, wish fulfillment or something. And this applies to all genres, obviously, but that's just something that I came up with. Villain protagonists, I think the reason a lot of people like them and myself included is because they're always a very deliberate choice. You know, that's why it often works. It's not just that they wound up being terrible by accident and the author didn't mean for that to happen because if that was the case, then they would be hateable protagonists. Once again, I draw your attention to divided we fall. Like it's done deliberately. And so the author is purposely trying to make you dislike this person, but also be fascinated by them. And I don't know, I don't really have anything else to add. But yeah, those are the six things I came up with for how to do a proper villain protagonist. Let me know down below if you actually disagree with me on anything or if you have anything else to add. And you know, I'm being serious because I'm asking people to comment. That's about all. See you later. Goodbye. 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