From a young age, I’ve been drawn to villainous characters in media. My husband often jokes that Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 is my boyfriend (and has been since the initial release of the game), and I do love that genocidal maniac. Yet, I’m also a person who can’t kick a chicken in a video game that calls for it, can’ t play an evil character in D&D, and who accidentally summoned three villagers in Minecraft (creative mode), and desperately spent the entire in-game night trying to keep them alive as I didn’t get their shelter built fast enough (and they’re about as dumb as a smashed brick).
You’d think those two things would be incompatible. But, weirdly, they may be oddly linked. If I were to sit down and be introspective (let’s admit it, I’ve done this about a hundred times. I’m almost self-reflective to a fault), I could tie my attraction to this character to admiring his confidence, self-assuredness, competency, intelligence, how cunning and sly he is, as well as physical characteristics such as appearance and the fluidity of his movements (in the movies). I am also a sucker for a good, complex backstory. But some of it is also just HOW he does stuff.
That’s kind of a summary of the reasons, because you’re not here for a fan-girl rant from on about my love of a fictional man. But, either way, it’s safe to say none of my friends will be surprised to see me talking about Sephiroth here.
There are a million reasons why people love villains. However, before we delve into them, I want you to keep a few things in mind:
- This world is diverse, and there will be some people who are legitimately drawn to others (fictional or not) that do bad things. Even evil things. It calls to a portion of them, and they may choose to emulate that, seek it out in real life, or simply may be attracted to it but understand that, in reality, evil people are a threat to their safety. Of course, some people don’t realize that our fantasies and hopes do not equate to reality until too late, unfortunately.
- Most people drawn to evil characters are only drawn to them in the realm of fiction. There is a strong boundary between a fictional world or personal fantasy, and what is liked in reality.
- While reading (or watching) the story, someone may put themselves into that villain’s place and live a fun fantasy they never would in real life, may put themselves into a place of being that villain’s friend, family, or lover, or may simply admire aspects of the villain, many of which are listed below.
That said, and without getting into deep psychological breakdowns of each, that leads us into…
The Reasons We Love Villains
They’re Often Designed For It
Not all villains, but a lot, are designed to draw a reader into their charm. They’re given superficial qualities or behaviours meant to attract certain types of people. How they’re designed may be related to who the author wants to draw in. For example:
If a villain is designed to be generally appealing, the author may give them a wide variety of traits that most people would like in themselves or otherwise value. They may be attractive, powerful leaders, highly intelligent, extremely successful, etc..
If a villain is designed to be sexually appealing, the author may incorporate the above, as well as lean into their physical appeal more than they would otherwise, but also may give them traits such as a high sex drive, an interest in certain sexual kinks, and may play up traits such as being highly protective and loyal to what they consider theirs.
If the villain is designed to be sympathetic as well, the author will play into a tragic back story, often incorporating traumas many can empathize with, such as being bullied, being an outcast, losing loved ones, and so forth. This helps the reader connect with the villain.
And, an authour may combine all of these things to create a well-developed villain.
That being said, sometimes, villains are simply designed to be horrible, or hated, and the author wants their readers to despise them as much as the hero does. Another time, we’ll get into how to create different types of villains, but that will need to wait for another D-Script. Keep an eye on the Foundational Knowledge section for that.
We Empathize with Their Trauma
The draw to a villain sometimes comes from empathy. You see the trauma or ostracization they’ve been through and feel for them. You may understand what made them this way, and while you may not agree with what they’re doing, you feel for them regardless. Or, it could be that their pain becomes a mirror of your own.
The brain is great at traipsing into the realms of “what ifs”. What if I was put in their shoes? What if this character had the support system they needed before they turned dark? What if all they really need now was for someone to love and understand them? Sure, they’ve done horrible things, but they could be redeemed if someone just reached out. I would want someone to do that for me. I wouldn’t want people to give up on me…
Additionally, the villain can play the role of the one who got vengeance on those who created that trauma, something we often don’t get to experience in real life.
And, the villain can serve as a safe way to process our unresolved traumas by either allowing for a power fantasy, vengeance arc, or making us reflect on our inner selves in a safe way.
THE PASSION! I’d Love Someone to Love Me Like That / I Can Fix Crazy!
Villains often become obsessed with a person, usually the main character. That may be romantically (think dark and toxic romances) or otherwise (Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 for example. The fanfics of these two are wild though). Either way, the villain shows intense dedication to their cause and purpose, and to those they become obsessed with. In the case of toxic/dark romances, and other genres, the villain can become incredibly protective, jealous, and passionately fixated on the person. To some people, this is attractive.
In the D-Script Portraying Consent in Writing Novels, we deep dive into this subject. In short though, the attraction to extreme or unhealthy levels of protectiveness or jealousy is novel at first. They often play to a person’s past traumas that made them feel unworthy of love, afraid of love, or various dysfunctional thoughts that impact their self esteem. At first, it can feel good, but as the allure of the power and control exerted over them wears down and/or that power and control grow, people become trapped. They often end up in abusive situations not knowing how to get out.
When people delve into a fantasy, it’s never to the worst-case scenario. It always plays to only going so far as we want it to, and we can stop it anytime, or slight discomfort associated with pushing boundaries can be framed as a little exciting (don’t try that at home, folks, not without consent).
For many, those fantasies may play into a redemption arc that a reader may entertain in the back of their minds. Whether that has a sexual bend to it or perhaps something such as “this villain reminds me of me/my brother/my sister/my parent”, doesn’t matter. They want to fix the problem often through love, empathy, connection, …sex.
The ‘They Picked Me’ Fantasy
This might be an exceptionally powerful one for readers of romance novels or other books with spicy content, but it’s not limited to those. The idea of being picked by someone who is highly attractive, successful, selective, or has a lot of options, can play into a fantasy of us being worthy or skilled enough to warrant it. Often, the main character is faulted and imperfect, but the other is passionate about them anyway. Now, in romance novels, it’s usually a heroic character that takes this role on, but the villain can also fill it, or be imagined to fill it despite no romantic or spicy content being introduced.
Confidence is Attractive / We Know What to Expect
The ugly truth is that people with psychopathy tend to be able to lure people in. They’re confident, highly intelligent, and have a lot of wit and charm. If fact, one of the next D-Scripts to come is about psychopathy, and we’ll deep dive into that disorder. Suffice to say, psychopaths tend to have a lot of very desirable qualities riding along with the negative ones. People tend to look for the best in others and, even with people with high levels of psychopathy, will do the same despite their tendency for high levels of control and manipulation, as well as their self-serving nature.
More than this though is that villains are often portrayed as people who know who they are. When it comes down to it, heroes are written with misgivings about themselves. They question their abilities, their worth, and often go through extreme growth arcs. We ride with them through these stages of instability. And while we empathize with them and this creates the best heroes, it’s unstable. We know they’ll overcome, but we’re in a constant state of knowing that they’ll suffer, fall, and climb out. It’s a lot of emotional investment.
Villains on the other hand are almost always extremely confident in their belief in themselves. They don’t question who they are except perhaps in superficial ways, are certain of their path forward. This means we generally know what to expect from them. If they do change, they’re likely to only get better (as in rise closer to being a good person) rather than have the potential of getting to be a worse person. There’s a certain stability that comes with that.
Although, Sometimes, Unpredictable Villains Can Be Fun
The opposite of the ‘we know what to expect’ from a villain, is the unpredictable nature of some villains. Because they have the power and wealth and so forth to do as they want, they can act on impulses. Sometimes, people just really love that unpredictability. This can be a rush, excitement in the face of the world’s mundanity.
High Intelligence, Resiliency, and Drive
Villains tend to be incredibly smart. They’ve thought of all the challenges they might encounter and know how to get around them. When life throws something at them, they figure out rapidly how to get passed it. On top of this, villains tend to have purpose and are highly motivated to achieve their goals.
Let’s face it, we all want to be highly intelligent and not held back by the weight of the world. In villains, we often see extreme success because of that, even if the way it’s achieved is horrendous. The weight of the world never grinds a villain down, and if it does, it doesn’t ultimately stop them.
Their Freedom Calls To Us
We start lives, generally, as terrible little shits driven by very self-centred thoughts. Evolutionarily speaking, it makes a lot of sense in most species. However, humans are social creatures that depend on society, and if we want the benefits of living in a society, we need to learn to not be that way. Sometimes, that can become a lot, especially if we feel vulnerable or unheard/unseen.
In our lives, we learn to balance our needs and wants with a greater good of some sort. But our day-to-day existence can be confining. There are laws we must abide by. We have to get up and go to work for other people, not being able to do what we want when we want. People hurt us constantly and the world often seems out of control…especially nowadays.
Like us, heroes are confined by rules, morality, the common good, the feelings of others, laws, and so forth. It’s part of the reason we connect with them as much as we do. Villains, on the other hand, aren’t confined by the needs or wants of others. They do what they want, when they want, with few real worries, often being shown to reap great reward from it. Which leads us to the next part.
The Power! Villains are Leaders
The hero is almost always an everyman. As mentioned before, in many ways they’re reflections of us and our lives. They often don’t have a huge amount of power and sway…at least at the beginning. That usually comes through hard work and suffering.
Now, in some cases, villains come from the ground up. They build their empires in which they rule, and everyone listens. When someone doesn’t listen, they’ll not have need for listening for very much longer…being dead and all. But whether they have power due to inheritance of it or hard work, they’re mostly the leaders of the lives and sometimes great armies who are willing to die to do their bidding. They’re surrounded by people willing to risk everything for their cause.
This can call to our desire for a reprieve from the feeling of helplessness and persecution, letting us rationalize their actions, no matter how despicable. I mean, most of us can’t imagine a life in which we get everything we want. It’s fun to think of the possibilities with that or watch someone who gets their way. To be in charge of our own lives without worry or care? Saying what’s on our minds without repercussions? Well, wouldn’t that be nice?
The Call of a Being Led … as a Second in Command
For readers who don’t enjoy leadership and all its responsibility and work, they may put themselves into the headspace of thinking about what it would be like to be the one who is the second in command, be that as a kind of military general, a close friend, or an even closer friend…if you catch my drift. After all, heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?
This may let people entertain what it would be like when someone else takes all the responsibility but still reap the benefits of that person’s efforts/dedication/loyalty. It can be a fun fantasy to imagine yourself as the one who has unlimited power while letting another person bear the burden of it.
Another aspect of this could be the call of a leader, of someone in command, someone who is…well, the dominant one while we are submissive. We get into the definitions and complexities of dom/sub relationships in the D-Script Portraying Consent When Writing Novels.
Villains are Almost Always Wealthy
Almost no villains are scraping to get by. As they built their empire, they built their wealth. They never have to worry about making rent or the mortgage or where their next meal is coming from. Whatever problem they have, they have the resources to throw money at it and make it go away. Better yet, in fictional media, its source is often enigmatic and effortless. A lot of people wish they had this capability and privilege.
This wealth, and often its mysterious source, is played up in a lot of romance novels with the romantic interest being the wealthy one and the main character having the chance to rise from poverty or another have-not situation. In many cases, these wealthy characters are men with a lot of villainous qualities that are romanticized. I could go on about that, but we’ll stick to this: the wealth and what they do with it often is used as a counterbalance to their negative behaviours. Such is the allure of not having to scrape by anymore, sometimes with the added benefit of not having to do any work for it.
This said, the desire for wealth — let alone effortless wealth — is not confined to any one gender. I could, and almost did, get into rundown on the complexities of this issue and perceptions about the roles of men and women, but no one came here to hear me go off about social constructs that squished everyone into tiny boxes depending on what our genitalia looks like.
Villains are Highly Successful People
I’ll keep this one short as it’s basically already been talked about it without saying it. Power, wealth, freedom…these are markers of success. Villains tend to be phenomenally successful people. They achieve most of their goals. The only goal they usually don’t achieve is actually winning in the end. No matter what they do, they always manage to find success…until they don’t. We can admire those attributes, which make us like the villain more.
It’s Taboo
Love of darkness, evil, and toxic characters can also be the result of a draw to things that are taboo. You’re not supposed to like it, it feels a little wrong, it feels a little exciting. It’s a rebellion against what people say you have to be like, or be, or do. This is a whole other subject, but if you want to delve into this, here are a couple articles on the matter:
The cognitive origin and cultural evolution of taboos in human societies
3 Reasons Why Disgust Can Become a Sexual Turn-On
Ultimately, It’s Not Reality and Exploring the Unfamiliar is a Break From Mundanity
Most us have a routine that drives us from sunup to sundown. We get up, have breakfast, get ready, go to work, do the same things we always do to make a paycheque, go home, eat dinner, maybe do stuff with the kids and pets, go to bed. And reset. Even the weekends follow a droning routine. Most of us don’t have the money or freedom to go explore the world. Living in a world that allows for that, let alone the world of freedom villains live in, is a fun fantasy to imagine ourselves in. Being the villain or at the side of the villain is something so far away from what we’d ever do, it’s a complete break from reality, and that’s fun to imagine.
Interesting Articles on Why People are Drawn to Villains
Villains, Victims, and Heroes in Character Theory and Affect Control Theory
- The Allure of Villains: Reflections of a Person with Questionable Tastes
- Describe It: Silence
- Describe It: Being Watched
- Describe It: Hate
- Describe It: Earthquakes
- Character Voice: How to Make Sure Characters Don’t All Sound the Same
- Describe It: Writing a Character Who Stutters
- Describe It: Cold Weather, Snow, and Ice
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very interesting I have never seen it that way but it makes sense ! Thank you as always
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