User blog:Chesha/Hello everybody!

So now my exams are all over and I have a big ol' summer in front of me, I'm going to be a bit more active on, well, everywhere. Also now I have spare time, I'm going to dedicate myself to a bit of writing, how exciting!!11 And actually, on these lines, there was something I wanted to get feedback and advice from you guys on.

Villains. We all know 'em, we love to hate 'em, but I'm in a bit of a rut writing them. I can't quite put my finger on what makes a villain engaging, infuriating, or heck, even just believable. I see a lot of villains now which are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts with no human characteristics, only existing to be some sort of hate-machine with no possibility for empathy of any kind. I understand that you don't want your readers to be too sympathetic to the villain, but it's a little ridiculous. It's why I don't understand the mean, popular girl trope - surely anyone who's that much of a dick wouldn't have any friends in the first place, let alone exert the influence to control them and ruin the main pretty snowflake's life? Yet they're everywhere, because we're able to hate them without feeling guilty. This is not, in my opinion, the best way to write a villain, but what is?

Also I have huge problems with a lot of protagonist-antagonist relationships now, especially again focused around the mean girl trope. It's usually based around jealousy and it often descends into catty spitefulness, which is really not very cool as far as I see it. Not only is it adding to the downright harmful cliche that girls are only capable of hating each other due to jealousy and that ~prettiness wins all~, but it's just so... boring. Yes, I get it, the cheerleader hates your character because she's such a natural flower and doesn't bend to popular girl rules. What else is new?

This is where I need help from you guys. How do you keep a villain antagonistic without turning them into some robot with no personality beyond "mean" to speak of? How do you write a believable hero-villain relationship without it descending into boring, repetitive tough-kid hatred or petty insults? I understand I've been sort of flip-flopping between talking about fanfiction and original fiction here, because hey, both are valid and both require good antagonists.

Disclaimer on the mean-girl trope thing - I'm not saying these can't be written well, they really can, but more often than not I see it done very, very badly. Which makes me sad like sad panda.

Please don't take any of this as any kind of attack, I just wanted to voice my opinions on the current situation in a lot of what I read and, pretty much, I don't know very much about writing a good villain. This is where you smart cookies come in, cause I need your help! So please comment if you have any thoughts or advice, it would be really very appreciated :>

Looking forward to getting talking to you guys! <3