Villains are no longer allowed to just be evil because they just are

villains are no longer allowed to just be evil because they just are

villains have to have 'le tragic backstory' that justifies their behavior

I hate this gay shit.

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Tons of villains are still just cardboard cutouts
Many villains have always had sad backstories
You’re just a bitch

My ex, who is a terrible writer, and I once had a discussion about how one if the things we liked most about Walking Dead was that the zombies weren't explained they just were. That's it. As Keats says in Lamia, explaining shit often reduces them to a "dull catalogue of things."
I prefer, to quote Anon Babble, "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit."
Same with villains. Let villains be villains.
Jordan on Scrubs subverted this trope about 20 years ago, before it was even as established as it currently is. She's just the worst. An awful person. And when called out on her shit she whines "but my parents were mean to me!" and people let her get away with her shit. In one scene, she whispers

not really, I just like being a bitch

What's wrong with that?
It's fun and funny.

Tons of villains are still just cardboard cutouts

Name 5 female ones after zootopia

Jordan on Scrubs subverted this trope about 20 years ago, before it was even as established as it currently is. She's just the worst. An awful person. And when called out on her shit she whines "but my parents were mean to me!" and people let her get away with her shit. In one scene, she whispers

>not really, I just like being a bitch

Best quote from her:

sometimes I fake /not/ having an orgasm just to make my husband feel inadequate

I can't think of any from cartoons but if we didn't consider The Testaments, Aunt Lydia from Handmaid's Tale is a just awful for awful's sake. The Testaments gives her a backstory and how her awfulness is actually a front.

Doesn't them having a sob story that they could've gotten over and bettered themselves but didn't make you hate them even more?

Some time ago I read about "conflict theory" vs "mistake theory". In other words, are people against you because they are mistaken about something or because your goals are at odds but valid.

The average modern liberal can't really accept the latter option, so they can't really write a villain who has valid, but disagreeable goals.

LIBERALLIBERALLIBERAL

Go outside.

This is why The Penguin is doing well. They let a villain be an absolute bastard.

Don’t be disingenuous, he has a sad backstory in that too. Sofia as well. Viktor too. There’s a lot more nuance to writing than “waaah layered characters bad”

people form societies through an intractable argument between moral systems: good, bad, and evil. These are just stories, of course, there is no 'good' , 'bad' or 'evil', but it's hard to not believe in these essential concepts and endlessly argue about them, ruminate on them, put forth our own regurgitated takes on what is or isn't any of these things. Society is always a mixture, though, a constant wrestle between 'masters' and 'slaves': people who think nothing is really evil and the bad should be ignored, all that matters is that they are gods in flesh doing whatever they please and accomplishing 'great things', 'big things', 'the best things'. People crave that master dominated society --for a while-- but it always happens that the slave mentality begins to gain traction: there is good (in heaven, far, far away) and there is majestic, powerful, important, absolute evil (everything human beings even attempt to do for any reason). We must all condemn everyone all the time and demand they repent for existing. Then we must masturbate in glee at the idea that our personal enemies will suffer forever in hell.
Neither point of view is sane, or sustainable, but the argument between them forever is how human beings barely stand existing together.

Go fuck yourself

Of course, but by the end of it you think of Oswalt as a monster. It's no Sony's Carnage where the sympathetic angle comes off as forced and only defangs him.

A villain can still be an irredeemable pure evil bastard but have a tragic backstory. A tragic backstory doesn't take away from a villain's grit in any way. I mean shit, Joker has a tragic backstory, but it's never been used as an excuse for his behavior.

Cletus was the fucking worst, and he was basically what OP wanted: evil just because he's a dumb retard born that way who liked to murder just because

Jack Horner

Lol

Except he had the "le tragic backstory" bit with the "I'm not a psycho, I am vengeful" shit, the focus on reuniting with his childhood sweetheart and the whole thing with wanting to be Eddie's friend part.
The underdeveloped Carnage (also in the movie) is the extreme of what OP wants.

I blame this book for starting the "what if the villain was just a misunderstood loner" trend.

sometimes I fake /not/ having an orgasm just to make my husband feel inadequate

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GOOUTSIDEGOOUTSIDEGOOUTSIDE

Go back inside.

Anon, I...

Jordan on Scrubs subverted this trope about 20 years ago, before it was even as established as it currently is.

I watched it 20 years ago, and I can tell you the concept of bad people simply being victims of their upbringing was nothing new.

Jim Carrey's Eggman. Ofc that's about to change since they are going to delve into his past, but he has carried two movies without a sad backstory so far.
Cardboard villains work as long as they have good presentation + good acting behind them, while tragic villains need that plus good writing to be believable enough and not come off as sappy.

Can any of you retards read?

I don't care about female-bashing, just wanted to prove that there are still simple villains going around.

Jacqui Horner is a trans woman, BIGOT

It's funny because a lot of IRL morally reprehensible people often had completely normal and comfortable lives and still went on to commit heinous shit purely because they felt like it. Writers pushing the sad backstory on villains to make them more "believable" is ironically LESS realistic than if they were just assholes who have no excuse to be assholes.

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Either that or they do the things they do out of ideological or theoretical drive, which *sometimes* gets portrayed but writers are generally incapable of empathising with a worldview that isn't their own without making it very hackneyed.

finally get a pure evil irredeemable bitch villain

Anon Babble hates it and wants to justify her actions

Clearly Anon Babble does not support your views

I was just pretending to be retarded

dull catalogue of things

That's a really good quote, and I wish more fantasy authors read that one. Maybe then we'd get fantasy books that didn't need huge zillion-page exposition dumps before the plot got started.

gaslighting propoganda to make you think jews aren't satan's dingleberries incarnate

meds

what about vilians that are just insane like not evil their brain just is so fucked they blow up buildings n shit

Sexo

What about Frankenstein?

A good tragedy should EXPLAIN the villain's behavior, not justify it

a lot of IRL morally reprehensible people often had completely normal and comfortable lives and still went on to commit heinous shit purely because they felt like it.

Like who? Most dictators and serial killers were abused as kids. The only "irl piece of shit archetype" I can think of where they had a cushy upbringing are sociopathic business execs like... well, like Patrick Bateman.

Except for this guy! I'm pleasantly surprised with the leaks so far in that it seems like Alastor doesn't have some dumb tragic uwu cinnamonroll backstory, he's just an evil guy that murdered innocent people because he felt like it. We really don't have enough straight-up evil bastards these days.

villain is evil because he just fucking loves it and has the time of his life doing villain shit