Discussion Are the villain(ness) characters in new novels more detailed or is it just me?

Reading a variety of novels and manga/manhwa/manhua.

Have noticed recently that many of them have a villain(ness) that have a plausible reason for their actions and this makes it a bit difficult to not sympathise with their condition or situation. Even though I want to hate them, as I used to a 90's supervillain

These are not one of those characters who are evil for the sake of being evil but characters forced to take certain actions due to their situation or belief( often shown through back-stories/explanations). Basically they don't want to, but have to or just that taking those ill-advised choices earlier in life have landed them on a road with no other options.

Like a king who to protect his country had to partner up with an evil God or the father/uncle who started gambling just for some extra cash for his family during a rough time but got addicted to it.

Is it actually something already present or a new maturity in character writing which is spreading(meaning it was probably present before but not as widespread).

 

It's probably more a matter of whether you're reading different kinds of material than you do now. I've always read books with more complex villains so nothing has changed on that front. I don't see how it makes any sense to draw larger conclusions as to what's being written especially since we're talking about stories in different media and in different languages.

 

There are still plenty of novels filled with 2-D characters, villains included. Just as there have always been ones with more realistic and relatable villains. Heck, I once read an old Arthurian legend where the evil giant menacing the countryside turned out to basically have the mind of a child, it's just that with his strength his tantrums killed people.

However, it does seem to be easier to find those better written novels these days. I would credit the sheer number of webnovels being written these days, combined with better algorithms for searching through them.

 

Had just put up this thread as it felt like the characters were getting more developed since about 2 weeks now. Just wanted to know if it was just my feeling or something has actually changed as a whole.
Guess putting that last option in the poll was a good choice and thank you for your reply.

 

Guess it is just finding those gems more easily and the sheer amount of writer and translator is letting those gems shine.

 

This just show how difficult it is to write a well written antagonist that can be hated from the depth of your heart.

 

There have always been good villains. Literature is old, and autors wrote novels for art, social analysis, philosophy and stuff, so there was dept to it. Maybe in nowaday's thousands of entertainment stories we easely find dumb stuff with dumb villains, but that's never been a norm.
The best villain ever (#PersonalOpinion) is the protagonist of Das Parfum (Perfurme: story of a murderer). I recommend that story.

 

just you. i see a few post on other sites where people say they don't want their ideologies questioned and don't want to root for the villain. to them the story is bad or doesn't make sense. that's probably why cartoon villains are popular.

 

It has more to do with the fact that the mc has to be the most popular person in the novel in order make him seem poweful there have to be villains.

at the end of the day the choices of villains doing bad deeds stems from the fact that they had a bad childhood or have have negative opinion of the world as a whole due to there experiences they are not born evil.

So when the details of the reason why the villain is a bad person is mentioned people start sympathising with them so when the mc and the villain fight one is gonna lose which will always be the mc so due to villain dying on some level we stop liking the mc too so the ratio of people reading the novel might go down that is why the stories of villains are never mentioned.

if they are mentioned there is high possibility that author is trying to potray the mc as a saint, so the villain will turn into a good person in the novel as the mc and villain might become friends but there might still be villains around where the villains point of view is not mentioned so it comes a whole circle to the fact that what the author wants there mc to be like at the end of the day because there are going to be villains one way or another just the character performing the villains role might change. To make mc's character to be highlighted there is a need of villain coz if all people are shown as a good person the story might become boring as the mc might not seem more special than others.