There's generally a tennet about character building for a villain in a story or webcomic that urges the creator to humanize them by giving them a backstory that “fleshes them out”. Often, “humanization” of a villain is taken to mean that they come across as more sympathetic or appealing to the audience rather than just not-cardboard.
That might well be true. A villain with a tragic backstory gives us some sort of justification or reasoning about why they've become villainous, or even ‘explains away’ in a sense their villainy as a manifestation of trauma. We tend to root for and sympathize with someone who has suffered trauma so villains in this category can come across as sympathetic.
But that is the exception to the rule if the villain is designed right. I have to note here that by “villain” I mean a person whose actions are such that they are irredeemable or a person whose motivations are such that their actions are never constructive to their environment.
The fact of the matter is that everyone is born either good or a blank slate, depending on your school of thought and philosophy. There are some approaches that teach us humans are born evil and we need to curb the evilness in them (looking at you Freud and Aristotle) and some religious dogmas or (more often) interpretations of those dogmas lean towards the ‘humans evil’ idea, but that's been debunked. We can be monsters but we aren't born that way.
So yes, even Hitler was innocent in the beginning. But the corruption probably started pretty early. I have read various biographies on him but never from the perspective of ‘when did he start leaning towards evil’ so I can't really posit any theories. And I don't like to focus on monsters more than I have to so I'm not going to. That said, his baby photo that I posted above is where he's innocent. This photo may be where he isn't anymore.
Though you can't securely tell from a photo, he definitely isn't a happy camper here
So where am I going with all this for character design of a villain?
The point is that ALL villains have a backstory where they start off as innocent and end up as monsters. No exceptions. The issue is how that journey is done. What it is that damages them and what it is that gives them the model of villainy.
That's right- someone ALWAYS models villainry for a child. They don't just think it up. They watch and they immitate either to please or to survive or both. They are taught to be evil and then they embrace it. That's the difference between villains and antiheroes or heroes: the villains adopt the abusive MOs. The antiheroes and heroes struggle against them and reject them ultimately.
There doesn't need to be super stark dramatic tragedy in a child's life for this to happen. It could be something as banal and mundane as a narcissistic parent. Or it could be something a lot bigger and historical, like in the case of Fowler in Blue Eye Samurai, who was exposed to a famine and everything that came with it.
Villains were victims at some point. But that doesn't make them sympathetic. There is no excuse for committing evil acts. No justifications. Only explanations. Even people with severe antisocial personality disorders don't escape the “innocent once” rule: that's why not everyone with antisocial personality disorder or conduct disorder becomes evil. The environment is a far stronger factor in how a human develops than what they have preinstalled in their brain when they're born.
In a sense, all villains are victims, the result of a learning history that their environment provided that taught them to be the way they are.
But that doesn't exonerate them. It makes them warning tales, of what not to do when raising a person. So if you give your villain a background and fleshing out, keep this process in mind.
When were your villains in your stories innocent?
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Everyone Was Innocent Once
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 23, 2023
5 likes!
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PaulEberhardt at 3:03AM, Dec. 25, 2023
By the way, Merry Christmas, y'all! 🎄
PaulEberhardt at 3:02AM, Dec. 25, 2023
This said, I refuse to believe we are all "born sinners". Us Christians are not in agreement about this, but the way I see it a major point of Jesus bearing our sins was in fact remedying this. It's a matter of confession, so feel free to disagree with me, but in my book the story of Him dying on the cross so we can be born innocent as we should be is meant to install the then quite novel message (among others) that how and where and why someone was born is no excuse to label them as a sinner or as outright evil; you'll have to wait who they turn out to be before you may do anything like that and even then you have a moral obligation to ask what makes you think so and what made them the way they are. So from my point of view these attempts by writers to humanize their villains may sometimes be a bit exaggerated, but they do it for the right reasons.
PaulEberhardt at 2:47AM, Dec. 25, 2023
I agree. Evil people may have had an innocent childhood that got ruined for them, but that's kind of shifting the blame to external forces, like a world that's generally mean. Granted, it may sometimes feel that way, but it really isn't. One kid's trauma may be another kid's inspiration to turn the world into something better; it's how they react to those turning points in their lives that counts, and if there's something wrong with the brain in the first place - not "just" psychologically, I mean in a neurological sense like a predisposition to sociopathy which usually is quite hard to diagnose - you don't need much of a trauma to turn a child that may have had a future as a personnel manager or a military top brass into a scourge for mankind. Pair that with relatively low or one-sided intelligence, which is one of these unresolved speculations about Hitler for example, and you get a villain who is unpredictable on top and all the more dangerous for it.
usedbooks at 4:16AM, Dec. 24, 2023
I strongly research real life "villains" to inspire my characters. It's never a trauma or tragic backstory that make them who they are. It's a flawed personality. Raidon might be one of the more sympathetic villains because he has a protective attitude and can be emotional. He's a narcissist with a bit of a god complex and is inspired by the diaries of a plantation owner of the 19th century who saw himself as the benefactor of "inferior people" -- that he "owned." Valentine was inspired by the rantings of MRAs. His "tragic backstory" is that he learned a lot of his attitude modelling his chauvinist father. He wasn't mistreated per se but was exposed to a culture. Jack Talbott is just callous and self-centered. Greed and enjoyment at any expense run his life. He doesn't have a tragic backstory in any sense. He went to law school and got bored. Pursuing pleasure and taking risks was more fun. He's inspired by pirates.
Ozoneocean at 10:44PM, Dec. 23, 2023
With a character like Hitler, a backstory to explain how he was in WW2 is utterly meaningless and silly. There no possible way to explain away or show some timeline or logical path to the events that we all agree are evil because those weren't based on anything to do with his childhood or him specifically as a person. Our simplified way of looking at WW2 and the Nazis has made him the main villain and scapegoat for all that evil but in reality anyone in that hierarchy would have been "the Hitler" because that evil wasn't the result of any one person, it was the cumulative effect of the society, culture, and country at that time and for decades previously. It was all leading up to that point! This is way the fantasy of killing Hitler as a baby is so dumb, it just wouldn't matter, history would still end up the same.
Ozoneocean at 10:36PM, Dec. 23, 2023
Very true Tantz. A few years ago a movie about serial killer Eline Wurnos came out, giving her a sympathetic take and justification for her evil acts and - which was simply moronic, but it made me see that there is a sexist paternalistic view of criminal acts in the media: The tendency is that any female criminal like a murderer only became that way because she was a victim and really deserves protection and sympathy, whereas any male who did the same crime did it because they're innately evil and they deserve only punishment- This is the predominant center and center left view. It defies all logic and reality- gender is irrelevant, if one is deserving of sympathy and redemption then both are. It's the common view though.
KAM at 1:46PM, Dec. 23, 2023
I remember writing a story where I tired to explain why the villainess was so evil and it seemed like the more I fleshed out her backstory the more two-dimensional she became. Weird. As for Hitler, well, based on what I've heard/read he was not a person who got along well with others, so probably had little empathy for others, and he was selfish and did what it took to help himself. Kind of a banal reason to be considered the most evil person in history, but maybe it shows it doesn't take as much as people think it should?
memo333 at 8:30AM, Dec. 23, 2023
The past and a tragic story is not always the reason for someone to be bad. theres also illnesses, mental problems, where you were born that way. the mom was alcoholic or/and smoke da lot...premature born...less oxygen in the brain, theres tons of ways/reason for someone to be born with a flaw. Nature is not perfect. also...some people are bad/evil because THEY ARE JUST LIKE THAT. No explanation. have meet some of them in real life. tons of people are sociopaths and they dont know what. Im going to make a villian where he is simply evil.....no tragic story..he is just evil for some reason and thats it.
bravo1102 at 1:29AM, Dec. 23, 2023
The consensus is Hitler had an abusive father (who modeled all those negative behaviors for little Adolf) and an overly indulgent mother. He also developed a huge chip on his shoulder because the world didn't treat him very well and he wanted someone to blame for how unfairly he was treated. There were a few other people who heavily influenced him after the war, feeding his ego and grooming him for political leadership because they saw a spark of natural charisma and a hunger for power and payback. It's said that if he had gotten into art school in Vienna he might have ended up a moderately successful painter of saccharine scenes middle class families hang in their living room. Instead he was a dejected wanderer caught up in WW1 and its aftermath.
InkyMoondrop at 1:13AM, Dec. 23, 2023
My villains aren't exactly evil so I wouldn't try to use innocent as a contrast. They're motivated by revenge, love, devotion, one went mad at some point, etc, so they're doing bad things, but most of them not out of malice. I think my point is that given the right circumstances any one of my characters can be cruel or awful to others as well as kind. My most recent villain was a miserable nobody his entire life, never knew his father, was bullied, failed in his career, escaped to drugs and alcohol... he developed a split personality, a "protector" who killed for him. His entire life revolved around the struggle to gain control enough and his failure to trust people, despite yearning for relationships. But he only becomes a true villain when he doesn't need his alter anymore, when he refuses to live in fear and takes control by burning the bridges with those he used to depend on: by betraying them. Could such a person change for the better? What would inspire such change? We'll see.
marcorossi at 12:46AM, Dec. 23, 2023
IMHO the question "are people naturally good or naturally evil?" doesn't make sense, the answer must be "a bit of both" or "those are cultural categories". What happens IMHO is that people have a personal psychological approach of believing that others are either friendly or unfriendly, and this is then rationalised in various philosophical/scientific theory.