AVAC: Antagonist/ Villain Appreciation Club

 fiflydramalover:

Villains often times feel like an opportunity to process and explore negative emotions in a safe way

THANK YOU for your contribution, full of deep insights that might just help me and others to understand their journey on these topics a little better. Your point of view is eye-opening to me, it might just be what made me start my journey as well. The unique perspectives of the antagonists and villains are often what might have felt silenced or overlooked in other parts of the story.

I also think, the better the backstory of the antagonist and the depth of their character traits, the more weirdly understandable they become -  the better the TV drama/movie. This must be rooting in the relatability of the entire plot and where we emotionally find ourselves entangled.  

I think regarding the dramas on MDL, I often find myself thinking about Wei Wuxian himself.  While this might sound a little unituitive, since he is the protagonist and therefore the opposite of an antagonist, he is often framed as a villain. I also find it extremely complicated to draw a line between "good and bad" in series like "The Untamed", or even with a recent drama I started watching called "Si Jin".   Wei Wuxian is usually the first to cross my mind because, out of many other perspectives, he would be the opposing figure. Naturally, he was only seeking for justice, for the Jiang Clan, for the innocent. But because of his struggles for justice, he deeply troubled many characters. Yet, he had unyielding support because even though he was opposed by most, he still had a point by pointing out the grieviances of injustice by the never-ending oppression from above.

 Tia:

Can I be honest and say that I love villain protagonists? Do they count? 👀

The name gives it away, so I would say they count, because I always include the moral compass of a mass of characters to refer to antagonists and villains. Who exactly do YOU have in mind?

 fiflydramalover:

A popular villain I also enjoy is Xue Yang.

 LiN:

I think regarding the dramas on MDL, I often find myself thinking about Wei Wuxian himself.  While this might sound a little unituitive, since he is the protagonist and therefore the opposite of an antagonist, he is often framed as a villain. I also find it extremely complicated to draw a line between "good and bad" in series like "The Untamed

In The Untamed, Wei Wu Xian is deemed as the villain by the masses, only because he thinks differently from the masses, and sees beyond the surface, beyond what the masses see and perceive as righteous. 

And if Xue Yang has run into Xiao Xing Chen earlier, like how Wei Wu Xian has run into Uncle Jiang when he was a child and had been kindly treated, Xue Yang could have been a better person.. Conversely, if Wei Wu Xian has not run into Uncle Jiang, he well could have been a true villain...

 Elmond_u:

I wrote an essay about the insane villain character trope as used in Korean dramas with Vincenzo, My Demon, and It's Okay to Not be Okay as case studies. If you'd be interested in reading it, here's the Google doc link.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12K25n2KwLuykGtEbXaHOg4nSrDeJ541U0BUTq5qc9vQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

I feel ya. One of my biggest complaints with Teen Wolf is that many of the villains felt so flat and thus boring (with the exception of season 3b >:3). Understanding a villains point of view can make them more compelling and can even increase the narrative tension if that underlying philosophy plays well with the lead's. My first favorite villain of dramaland was from Faith, and I liked him because I could understand why he was devolving into madness. He had this insatiable greed and loneliness that consumed and confused him. He's far from the standard of excellent villain writing, but he was the first to make me want more from writers of antagonists. 

The Story of Ming Lan, as I've mentioned before, has some delicious villains. Each is complex with clear goals they are desperate to achieve. The Story of Yanxi Palace also has some fantastic villains and again part of that has to do with their own narrative archs surrounding their goals and well structed characterization. Love when it's done well. And of course, The Untamed's villains were all characterized to be multi-faceted, though some with more depth than others. It just adds something interesting to the story when we can get more from the villains. 

That being said though, there are some villains we don't get much clarity on that are still pretty interesting. Oh My Ghost's villain is really just a malevolent spirit, and we don't learn much about its backstory. Still, I remember enjoying the protagonist's mysterious relationship with him anyway.

Joining! ^^