User blog comment:Echo 1/Elements You Should Not Give Your Characters/@comment-5989773-20130511163107/@comment-1221909-20130512081006

I generally understand what you are trying to say and you make some good points, but I find myself disagreeing with it nonetheless. Villain can be brutal, ruthless and downright monstrous, which can enhance their menace, but they can also be just as effective when they are portrayed as sympathetic. Too often in literature, I find myself uninterested in the typical ruthless bad guy because I've seen that type of character before and I simply can't care for him. I just can't connect with a villain who just has a single layer, because I've seen it all before. But sympathetic villains can add different levels to their character, which can explain how they evolved into villains. Because what is a villain, if not a reaction to a certain environment or series of unfortunate events? Those kinds of characters fascinate me, and make me want to see how they became what they are. And sympathetic villains are not really a new thing; you can find sympathetic villains in stories as far back as Shakespeare's time (Macbeth springs to mind here). And also, forgive me if I'm reading this wrong, but I don't think a villain torturing a hero instead of killing them is particularly sympathetic. XD

In regards for rooting for the villain, I think what you're saying is right... if the main character's own motivations seem worse than the villain's. If they both seem to have equally good intentions, but simply find themselves on the wrong side, it can make things very interesting. Take Magneto for example. He wants to establish the Mutants as the new dominant force of the world because he fears that humanity would otherwise destroy them. That in itself isn't an evil motive, simply misguided. Of course, while he does is very bad things, he is also a form of hero to others, namely the mutant community. Magneto also has a tragic backstory, whereby he is a survivor of the Holocaust of World War II, an event which greatly shaped his motives and psychology. However, that does not in any way make him less effective a villain.

Not all villains need sympathetic motives, however. As mentioned before, the Joker is an unsympathetic character who is super-effective (even though in most versions of the character, the events that led to his descent into madness are quite sad). However, it is often a good thing in literature if the villains have motives are logical and understandable; motives that you find yourself thinking, "Yes, that makes sense and I understand what they are trying to achieve, but I don't agree with the. In fact, I'd go so far to say that in some cases, sympathetic villains can be very effective literary tools, as they can allow character development. The protagonist of the story (and therefore the reader, who is many ways supposed to share the hero's views on the villain) can be forced to question their own motives, make them question their own beliefs. This in turn allows them to question what they are doing is actually the right thing to do. It's a very open-minded thing to do.

I'm not saying every villain needs to be sympathetic, far from it, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad choice for a writer to make their bad guy relatable either. Just my thoughts.