Should villains win more often in fiction?

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
Considering how overly common it is for the good guys to win in fiction, it's made watching/consuming fiction kind of bland because it is unrealistic.

It would be a very satisfying thing to see more movies and series where the villain outright wins.

Like imagine watching a several season long series where the protagonist surprisingly loses to the villain. Would be a nice change. The series would make you root for the good guys and then at finale pull out the rug from under you and good guys lose and villain triumphs.
 
Well that depends on the villain because most villain victories I've seen go to the most horrible excuses for what passes as human (or whatever species)

Like in Re:Creators, Altair after all the evil she committed just to spite the world including killing a preteen girl who tired to redeem her, is the only one who gets a happy ending living in a void with her resurrected Creator Setsuna (against HER will mind you) while the surviving Creations go back not accomplishing anything and are freely manipulated. Oh the only Creation who can't go back as she killed her Creator, Magne a supernatural serial killer still wanders the earth freely expressing herself in the worst ways possible.

Look, just make the villain and the goal likable for the audience to want to root for like in the book Pawns of Chaos (and I'm unclear to who the villain is) has the Chaos Sorcerer Gavlon who is all for the people not being exterminated by the stranded Imperium and is philosophical and insightful to the universe. The Governor is a native of the planet who wants to be rid of Chaos so he can focus on building his own Imperium as his planet is cut off from the rest of the universe and he does his actual job while coming up with great schemes. The High Inquisitor is the shadow of what remains of the original Imperial settlers and he is dead set on returning while knowing the threat of Chaos and the Governor's plans. All of them have personalities that play off and clash and I don't know who to root for,



The Bad Guy Wins - TV Tropes
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
It depends on whether or not their victory is still a moral triumph for the defeated hero.
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
I sort of like the kind of victory where even if the villain does die or get arrested, he still has accomplished what he set out to do

Sometimes in ways he didn’t expect or intend

Like that Greyjoy Alla Breve fic where Jaime realised how The Lannister name would really go down in history for possibly forever, by being remembered like the Casterly’s who were beaten by Lann as the Lannisters are to be replaced or married into The Martells who married in but decided to keep the name Martell and NOT imitate previous Lords who kept the Lannister name in spite of only marrying into the family themselves
 

Vargas Fan

Head over heels in love :)
Some victories for the 'good guys' in fiction are so bloody costly which isn't so bad. Raymond E Feist's Serpentwar Saga for example has a major toll on major and minor characters alike in the Midkemia universe. So much so that the series is pretty much changed forever. Granted, some characters like Duke James AKA Jimmy the Hand were older, but still.
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
it comes down to stakes.

Would you actually enjoy a story where the Villains goal was the extermination of "Insert Nice People Here"?

On the other hand, there's a book I read a LOOOOOONG time ago... like, a decade ago, called "Xenocides", it involved multiple species but the race that got set up to be the bad guys(due to being the titular Xenocides) turned out to not be bad guys.

Basically, Humanity meets Space Doggos(an artificial race genetically required to have... masters isn't quite the right word... partners they listen to alot? I dunno, the relationship is pretty hard to pin down), Space Doggos have been looking for ...partners... for a long ass time and for a bit thought about maybe the Xenocides but then they got nukes and at the first opportunity blew up the neighboring, sapient life-bearing, planet. This, understandably, turned them off.

Then a human crew and some Xenocides wind up on said neighboring planet after we've seen a bunch from both sides. AAAAND it turns out there was a heck of a lot more to the story than what Space Doggos saw. Xenocides you see, had these cyclic wars, they weren't over resources or personal disagreements, or frankly, as far as they could tell, anything at all. The entire planet would break into absurdly destructive wars periodically. As it turns out, precisely when said neighbouring planet got closest. So, since if that happens while they have nukes that's a PROBLEM, they nuke the planet "causing" the problems. If it doesn't work, hey, no nukes on world while we kill each other with all our other tools.

As it turns out that "Sapient Race" on said neighboring planet literally eats, like... I'm not quite sure what but some sort of, Impulse Control maybe? Whatever combination of factors lets a species maintain a society? It's said they eat "Sapience" in the book itself buuuuuuut. The Xenocides have this organ that basically stores an edible memory copy, they use the organ to convey certain things. Before the Xenocides and Humans manage to get away from the arena the Neighbors use to eat the Xenocides Sapience while they are there a bunch of said "edible memories" winds up in the hands of said Neighbors and the book closes on the only Neighbor we ever get any thoughts from going "OOOOOOOOOOOOH, this works".

So like, who are the villains? Who won? I have no idea but that book left a mark. I rarely read a book once and can then summarize it this well a decade later.

EDIT: FOUND IT! I misremembered the title! Background to The Xenocide Mission | Ben Jeapes

EDIT2: Holy hell it's part of a series... I need this series...
 
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D

Deleted member

Guest
Does the villains winning provide anything redemptive about the story? It can.



I mean all of the good guys die in the start of Maghdheera, but the story has a point, and the redemptive message expected of an Indian film, and it is a marvelously fun romp across time, space and reincarnation.
 
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bullethead

Part-time fanfic writer
Super Moderator
Staff Member
It depends a lot on how the villain character is portrayed and whether or not the audience is given enough content for them to not feel like the win is total BS/an absolute bad end. The closest I've seen to this is Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans, and it still falls horribly flat because the guy who wins is barely developed and could've been killed by an established character who'd have motivation to do things better. The only reason a viewer of IBO can accept this is because the protagonists killed so many of his dudes that the guy got politically backed into a corner.

Well, I guess there was Stargate Continuum, but only when Baal was alive, and that was because he'd been around so long and used so well that he became a super likeable character. He'd basically earned his victory by outsmarting the heroes, plus he wasn't a "Imma blow up Earth's cities and enslave the population" type anymore, so him winning wasn't as horrible an outcome as it could've been.
 

Erwin_Pommel

Well-known member
Depends, too many villain victories will make rooting for the hero worthless while too many hero victories will make the heroes come off as unstoppable. So honestly, I'd balance it out as much as possible, for example, in the "light novel" series I am working on, I plan on having a... Hm... Interesting? (would that be the best term? I dunt know) villain victory in where one of the volumes build-up to their ultimate defeat but the reason the protag moved to stop them is still lost to the villain in question.

Basically, mix it up a little and then you can truly have people wondering who will win or who will lose. Especially if you have the villain complete many minor goals of theirs and that will add to the tension and the who will win factor. But you also don't want to go overboard and make the villains themselves unstoppable unless they're the protag I guess.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Fallen (1998) was pretty good, and one of the very few films I've seen where the antagonist wins in the end. I also rather liked the ending of The Mist (2007).
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Most people enjoy seeing the good guys win, and would be sad to see the evil side win.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
What can be interesting is a story where it seems like one side won, but there's clues left around that things aren't as they appear...
Could be done for either the protagonist or the antagonist.
 

Vargas Fan

Head over heels in love :)
An example of a win for both sides in a way is the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Bond and co foil Blofeld's plans, however Bond loses his new wife which has a lasting effect on him.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
I think the best example of it done well was Helmut Zemo from Captain America: Civil War. He won because he exposed the flaws in the heroes.

Fundamentally, a story where the villain wins should be constructed as a tragedy rather than a comedy. If the villain is the antagonist, then he should win by exploiting the hero's flaws and hubris. If the villain is the protaganist, his victory should leave him the taste of ash in his mouth.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Well, the bad guys losing is realistic, at least for actual "bad guys" rather than simple "antagonists". That I think is an important distinction: movies where an antagonist wins is much more common than where a villain wins: the one that popped into my head immediately was the first Rocky Movie: the "antagonist" of the movie, Apollo Creed, wins the fight. But since Apollo Creed isn't really a villian, he's just another Boxer trying to win, there's no moral reason for him to lose, and the impressive thing with Rocky was how close he came to winning.

Villains is a different kind of antagonist, where there is something morally wrong with them. However, moral rules aren't just arbitrarily bad things: they're generally there to tell people not to do inherently violent things. The seven deadly sins are not just dangerous to the people the person committing them inflicts harm onto because of them, but to the person who commits them as well.

Thus, its actually I think somewhat realistic that a Villain loses, because doing villainous things is often self destructive to some degree, even if it takes time for their actions to catch up to it. To quote a very cheesy line, from Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems that will slip through your fingers". The thing the Emperor was doing which made him evil, the desire control the galaxy personally, was one of the things that was weakening and undermining the Empire, and meant his Empire with a army to rival anything seen in the galaxy for a 1,000 years lasted less than a generation.

The more outright evil the villain is, the more self destructive they really need to be: like, take the Queen from Snow White: she was so vain and petty that she tried to kill someone who was implied to be her family, caused her henchmen to betray her, leading to her killing her henchmen in petty rage, and refusing to let such an immensely petty thing go resulted in her pointlessly putting herself in danger to try and kill a girl who is absolutely no threat to her, resulting her death to a bunch of very small men who before hand seemed to barely be aware of her existence. Her petty evilness led her to self destructive after self destructive act.

In a less fantastical example, someone who's just pure evil, say a serial killer, who's just doing bad for the sake of doing bad, realistically has a short shelf life: they're actions makes them no friends, makes a lot of enemies, and puts them in very personally dangerous situations. Now, serial killers do make great potential movie villains, we've seen a lot of them, and they will often make a couple of "victories" in the movie as they kill people or escape traps, but he rarely "wins", and that is the realistic outcome: it makes perfect sense that a serial killer is caught and "loses" in the end.

A serial killer winning in itself is a bit of a hollow concept: as a figure of near pure evil, there is nothing constructive to his goals: he's purely destructive force, and his only victory he's looking for is to go a bit longer without being caught so that he might have more time to cause more destruction.
 

Es Arcanum

Princeps Terra
Founder
If the 'villain' has an actual greater 'cause' which even if you disagree with can actually be rationalised then it is okay.

For example "I will plunge the world into darkness forever! mwahahahaha" is one of the stupidest fucking 'causes' in fiction,

Why? everything, including you will freeze your arse off and starve to death. Congrats dude.

And "I will keep killing people horribly for no reason whatsoever! mwahahahaha" is also dumb and petty and stupid. Its why I find characters like Pennywise and such more annoying than anything. Their 'victories' if they have them are non-satisfying and usually pulled out of their arse.

On the other hand you can have great tragic villains like Admiral Bosch from Freespace who figures out that the Shivans have been wiping out interstellar civilisations since time immemorial and that the Human-Vassuden Alliance (former enemies) established after the first Shivan attack has no chance at stopping a second Shivan assault. So he creates the Neo-Terran Front a rebel army of Humans fighting for an end to the alliance, an army of "stupid cattle driven by hatreds and fear" as he says in his monologue in order to acquire the resources to run his secret project to contact the Shivans and communicate with them in order to save Humanity.

The great thing about the storyline in Freespace 2 is that we never really get a solid end to his story, did he in fact win? His ship the Iceni is boarded by the Shivans (despite your best efforts to stop it) and he and his top officers go aboard the Shivan transport (rest of his crew is killed) but we don't know what happens after that as the Alliance is cut off from the Shivans as they collapse a star and destroy an entire system and their assault suddenly ends...

Could it be that the whole campaign you've been fighting, all yours and your comrades efforts were really just pissing into the wind and at the end of the day the one who saved Humanity (and possibly the Vassudens) was Admiral Bosch who everyone condemns as a xenophobic hatemonger?
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Then we have villains driven by selfish motives but they're within a reasonable degree of selfishness. For example a fight for the throne when the villain is actually capable and not an inept ruler can have a satisfying conclusion even if the villain wins as he can be seen to have earned his victory. And frankly everyone knows that Kings or Queens can be douchebags and sometimes its an actual job requirement.

For example Cersei Lannister seizing the throne at Kings Landing after the destruction of the Tyrell family and the High Sparrow and his acolytes was fine by me and was actually quite satisfying. She earned that throne and all the people clutching their pearls and bleating about 'right of succession' and what about the 'sub-lords' are ignoring the many times in history when illegitimate tyrants did just what she did. Cersei as the wife of one king, mother of two more and head of the house of the most powerful family left and leader of all the military forces in Kings Landing seizing power and not being seriously contended with by the rabble who just saw her blow up all the high lords and the pope and getting away with it was fine by me. Afterall you don't see the North Korean people rising up enmasse and overthrowing Kim Jong Un do you?

Yes Cersei was annoying at times and seemingly retarded at others (all the characters were) but her progression as a character, her motivations and trials were intriguing to watch and at times you actually rooted for her (like when she got her revenge on Oberyns wife and daughter and that nun).


And its not like it was without cost. She lost all her children which were the most important things in the world to her so if the show had just ended there it would have been a satisfying villain 'victory' for her. If you wanted to add a more 'hopeful' ending for her then you would have her becoming queen, ascending the throne thinking she had won but still lost it all and then finding out that she was pregnant afterwards... cut on the scene of her holding her stomach and looking out over her Kingdom as she realises that she will have another child.

So I guess make the villain interesting and their motives reasonable within the context and you can then have a satisfying villain victory because the audience can empathise with the villain.
 

Shipmaster Sane

You have been weighed
Considering how overly common it is for the good guys to win in fiction, it's made watching/consuming fiction kind of bland because it is unrealistic.

It would be a very satisfying thing to see more movies and series where the villain outright wins.

Like imagine watching a several season long series where the protagonist surprisingly loses to the villain. Would be a nice change. The series would make you root for the good guys and then at finale pull out the rug from under you and good guys lose and villain triumphs.
Stories are not just a sequence of plausible events.
 

Vargas Fan

Head over heels in love :)
Then we have villains driven by selfish motives but they're within a reasonable degree of selfishness. For example a fight for the throne when the villain is actually capable and not an inept ruler can have a satisfying conclusion even if the villain wins as he can be seen to have earned his victory. And frankly everyone knows that Kings or Queens can be douchebags and sometimes its an actual job requirement.

For example Cersei Lannister seizing the throne at Kings Landing after the destruction of the Tyrell family and the High Sparrow and his acolytes was fine by me and was actually quite satisfying. She earned that throne and all the people clutching their pearls and bleating about 'right of succession' and what about the 'sub-lords' are ignoring the many times in history when illegitimate tyrants did just what she did. Cersei as the wife of one king, mother of two more and head of the house of the most powerful family left and leader of all the military forces in Kings Landing seizing power and not being seriously contended with by the rabble who just saw her blow up all the high lords and the pope and getting away with it was fine by me. Afterall you don't see the North Korean people rising up enmasse and overthrowing Kim Jong Un do you?

Yes Cersei was annoying at times and seemingly retarded at others (all the characters were) but her progression as a character, her motivations and trials were intriguing to watch and at times you actually rooted for her (like when she got her revenge on Oberyns wife and daughter and that nun).


And its not like it was without cost. She lost all her children which were the most important things in the world to her so if the show had just ended there it would have been a satisfying villain 'victory' for her. If you wanted to add a more 'hopeful' ending for her then you would have her becoming queen, ascending the throne thinking she had won but still lost it all and then finding out that she was pregnant afterwards... cut on the scene of her holding her stomach and looking out over her Kingdom as she realises that she will have another child.

So I guess make the villain interesting and their motives reasonable within the context and you can then have a satisfying villain victory because the audience can empathise with the villain.

If you're going to use GOT as an example, contrast Roose and Ramsay Bolton. Roose was a conniving, ruthless git, but he had his limits, he generally had reasons for doing what he did, no matter how twisted it might seem to us.

Ramsay on the other hand was a petty minded, downright sadist. Even his father branded him as a 'mad dog'.
 

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